Digital Communism

Internet file-trading tools, a California court handed a major victory to communism. The Internet allows the well-wired to take copyrighted material freely. Left unchecked, rampant copyright theft may soon destroy the for-profit production of movies, music and books and may usher in an age of digital communism.

Technology will soon increase the ease of copyright theft because as broadband access proliferates, more people will be able to download pirated movies and music quickly. Currently, authors are safe from Internet piracy because most book readers still prefer printed words to electronic text. We may soon, however, see electronic paper that is as easy to read as printed pulp. How much money would Tom Clancy be able to make when readers can download all his books freely in under a second? Can you imagine college students paying $75 for a textbook they could download for free?

The best hope to stop copyright piracy lies in stopping the distribution of peer-to-peer networks that facilitate such theft. By holding that these networks have no liability for inappropriate use of their tools the California court has reduced the value of digital property rights.

Some have claimed that Internet piracy simply represents another form of competition and all copyright holders need do to compete successfully is to lower prices. But a central tenant of economics holds that if multiple firms sell identical products, consumers will patronize the lowest price provider. If pirates give away their product for free, content providers can compete only by also charging nothing.

The ability to exclude is the essence of property rights. If I "own" land but anyone can trespass I don't really have any property rights. Similarly, if I own a movie, but anyone can freely watch it, my rights have disappeared.

Is it necessarily bad if piracy destroys intellectual property rights? After all, when everything is free we can live out Karl Marx's dream and have everyone take according to his needs.

The twentieth century witnessed a brutal competition between communism and capitalism. Communists believe that people can be motivated to work for the common good, while capitalists believe that profit provides the best catalyst for economic production. Capitalism, of course, triumphed mainly because of its superior economic performance. By decimating profits for content producers, peer-to-peer piracy may give us a communist system of intellectual-property production.

I imagine that few would invest in a factory in the Congo. Because of political strife, property rights in the Congo aren't respected, so it would be nearly impossible to profit from building a factory in the Congo since once it was built, armed men would come and steal the equipment. Businesspeople only make investments they can profit from.

Copyright holders were able to sue Napster into submission, but Napster had a centralized database that was easy to locate and destroy. New forms of Internet piracy, however, rely upon peer-to-peer networks where users download material directly from each other's hard drives. Since it would be impractical for content providers to sue millions of Internet users, to protect digital-capitalism copyright holders must be able to stop the proliferation of piracy tools.

Some might argue that copyright holders should fend for themselves in the marketplace. Imagine, however, the fate of stores if there were no effective laws against shoplifting: Theft would drive them to bankruptcy. True, copyright holders can somewhat protect themselves by imbedding copy protection technology in their products. A movie, for example, could contain a code allowing it to be played only on your hardware. Imbedded copy-protection technology is foiled, however, if even one user creates and disseminates a clean and playable copy. Furthermore, imbedded copy protection can never protect e-books since you can create a copyable e-book merely by scanning the text of a physical book.

Of course, copyright holders could still find a few ways to profit in a world of rampant piracy. Movies could be financed by the sale of action figures and musicians could profit from concerts. It's difficult to see how authors could profit, however, except, perhaps, by begging for tips.

As I said:Why bother. Whatever example you produce, wideawake will find some way of disqualifing it as "great art" or "profitable".

You then proceeded to do just that. Every one of the people I mentioned lived or do live on the proceeds of their art. They profited.

The relative greatness is a matter of opinion. Glengarry Glenross sucked. Joyce's writings are 12 years of wasted drivel, while Asimov is a seminal figure of an entire genre of writing.

See, opinion is useless to support an argument. Merely by stating that any given example is not "great art" does not make your opinion valid.

Isn't Barber's Adagio for Strings a 20th century work? Having TRIED To listen to works by the masters of European Art music(aka classical) I can say there is much that is beautiful and much that is overly fanciful and more a display of skill rather than a work of beauty.

I'm no scholar, but much of 'classical' music was the soundtrack score of its day, set to operas rather than film. IMO, not only is Barber's Adagio superior as a single piece to almost anything ever composed, so are a few pieces by modern day composers of film scores--Zimmer, Williams and Horner have all composed music that will be remembered for as long as Beethoven.

Indeed much of what is considered "great" is great by virtue of the fact that there was not a mass production of such music until very recently. Prince himself is incredibly prolific and learned to play over 20 instruments by ear, but I doubt many Beethoven fans will acknowledge his genius.

Now that there is more competition and music released pretty regularly, I doubt much of what is considered great now, will be common listening fare 200 years from now.

Every one of the people I mentioned lived or do live on the proceeds of their art.

Almost everyone on this thread makes assumptions about my thesis that I have never stated. I never said that artists never make a living off their art or their chosen skill - a lucky minority of them have.

What I said is that individual great works of art are never done for profit. I'll use the Michelangelo example again. He made his living as a painter and a sculptor working on commission. He was prolific, but his reputation probably rests on three works: the Pieta, the David and the Sistina.

He did other works on commission as well - many more, but for the Pieta and Sistina he put in an amount of labor out of all proportion to the money he received - in terms of time and passing up other lucrative opportunities, Michelangelo lost a great deal monetarily by undertaking these two pieces. But they are his best.

The David is also instructive: he abandoned the well-paid assignment of decorating an altar for Piccolomini to do the David for a pittance - he basically did it because the government of Florence gave him a free block of marble rejected by another sculptor.

Michelangelo was sued by the Piccolomini for abandoning their easy, lucrative project for the David.

If Michelangelo was intent on working for profit, then he would never have done the work on his three greatest pieces.

The relative greatness is a matter of opinion.

I agree. Of course, the people you named are heavily weighted toward pop and niche - Asimov and Smokey Robinson, for example. Or they are too recent or contemporary to say that they are enduring classics - Mamet, say.

Your opinion of Joyce is rather silly - beneath you, really - but there is a canon of writers and composers and painters which are generally accepted by all well-educated people as great, independent of taste.

Although I find Paradise Lost to be a tedious exercise, I realize the scope of Milton's achievement and his prodigious talent for language and its sonority. I will probably never reread PL but I acknowledge its rightful status in the canon.

Merely by stating that any given example is not "great art" does not make your opinion valid.

I agree - but can we really compare I, Robot with The Divine Comedy? Seriously?

BTW, your point about The Prince is well taken. It was the desire to please a patron which really coalesced The Prince into the integrated work we know today.

What I said is that individual great works of art are never done for profit.

What I object to is your use of the word "never". Great works are done for many reasons; that's one of the things that make them great. Now if you had said that individual great works of art are never done only for profit, I'd agree with you.

BTW: my list of artists doesn't represent my personal tastes, per se. It was meant to show how "great" was a matter of taste.

That canon is not independent of tastes, it is a consensus of tastes. And that canon is constantly changing. What is now pop culture is tomorrow's classics. Shakespeare was the pop culture of his day, as were Dickens and Twain.

I think Joyce is overrated by the intellegencia, much as is Jackson Pollack in the fine art community. I guess that means I'm not included among "all well-educated people".

In my opinion, your education, knowledge, and experiences should inform your tastes, not dictate them. I can evaluate for myself if a work of art should be considered great, by judging it against a set of standards derived from my knowledge of the subject.

Is the work technically outstanding? Is it innovative? Does it speak beyond the borders of the culture it was created in? Did it influence and change its field significantly? Does it hold meaning across the years? Does it transend its inevitable flaws?

Or is it sensationalist, trendy and ephemeral, the current darling of the In Crowd? A worthy member of the canon will persist, the unworthy won't. The consensus will change.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.