We Can’t “Fix” Copyright and the Internet. Here’s Who Can.
A couple of days ago, I had a realization: even though my day job is basically about bringing overlooked perspectives — those of musicians and other creators — to the policymaking sphere, the fact is that most of what my organization ends up doing is reactive, rather than proactive. There are simply too many large and moneyed interests in Washington, and they enjoy a level of influence that is impossible to match. Often, these interests are advanced in proposed legislation, which typically requires some kind of response: either analysis and translation for our community, or helping policymakers understand how proposals may affect parties with a different set of values and approaches to doing business. While this is kind of fun, it’s not particularly progressive. And if you do this for, say, a decade, you eventually become a fixture. This can lead to myopia, or at worst, cynicism.
With regard to copyright and the Internet, another recent epiphany is that lasting change is likely to come from content producers and users participating in systems that don’t necessarily depend on the contours of existing law. It’s probably too early to predict which approaches will prove viable over the long term, but I think success will be informed by two criteria: community tolerance of the framework, along with technological feasibility and scalability. At some point, legislators may be compelled to codify some or all of these approaches, but that coming to pass likely depends on a demographic shift among members, which is slow to occur. There are still individuals in Congress who don’t use email.
The problem with a unified proposal to redefine permissions and economic reward on the network is that various parties are highly invested in the current system, even if they complain about it. A decade or so ago, you probably could have gotten the emerging Internet companies and some subset of users and creators to advance a new conception of content access, distribution, interactivity and economics. But even the barest attempts at reform faced heavy resistance from the entertainment and media incumbents. Today, those same Internet companies are less concerned about advancing a grand vision of reform, because they have achieved scale and are already making gobs of money from data mining, advertising or other means. Copyright and the licensing of content is mostly a nuisance. At most, these companies seek to maintain leverage by keeping content acquisition costs down or by (lightly) advocating for streamlined licensing.
Meanwhile, the content companies, despite their outrage, are making a lot of money through deals with the digital service providers. They are neither incentivized to clean their own house to better serve creators, nor be more flexible with licensing terms and exceptions for fear of giving Internet companies additional leverage. But make no mistake about it: the consolidated media and entertainment conglomerates and the global digital service providers are in business with one another. You are simply not a concern, unless it is advantageous to point to you as an the standard bearer of their agenda(s).
That means that change has to come from the bottom up. I do believe it is achievable, and perhaps even inevitable. But it will require experimentation, coordination, and the ability to describe the virtues of emerging systems and approaches to a policymaking community more attuned to technological and cultural realities.
A mass extinction event from climate change or interstellar impact object is probably more likely to occur within the time frame I’m describing. That doesn’t mean that the experimentation and collaboration described above isn’t worth attempting. Along the way, it will be necessary for older generations to demonstrate why creative work has value, while resisting the attempt to force our conceptions of how things “should be” on those who are likely the ones to conceive of collaborative systems built on mutual reward. We can educate, encourage, perhaps even offer advice. But we shouldn’t assume that we have all the answers. If we did, things would already look different.
I have faith in the future. How about you?
