Digital Communism

National Review ^ | 5/6/2003 | James D. Miller

[traditionalist]

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.

[wideawake]

Don't forget everything by Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Honore de Balzac, Emile Zola, Rudyard Kipling...

You are presuming that everything these authors ever wrote was great art.

In reality, all these authors were extremely prolific and not all their work is of the same quality - their works which are considered truly great were not ones for which they anticipated being profitably remunerated.

Is Kipling remembered for the journalism which earned him his bread - or is he remembered for the poems and stories he eventually convinced his editors to run alongside his reportage without remuneration?

Dickens' story is similar - he made his money as a journalist and then as editor of Household Words: his novels began as a way for him to enjoyably fill the space he could not sell to advertisers. Dickens was pleasantly surprised when he found the public was interested in reading his prose.

Zola wrote to express his ideas about society and the human condition: he conceived his major novels as a cycle of 20 volumes before they were even sold to a publisher. The first few were abject failures - he wrote assiduaously for eleven years before L'Assommoir became a surprise literary success.

What most consider his greatest work - Germinal - was written as a political provocation: his personal correspondence implied that he would lose readers because of it.

It's interesting that you should mention de Balzac, since he was the epitome of the starving artist. He spent a decade in a slum writing unprofitable books - he also planned a gigantic cycle of novels before he ever found out he could make a cent from them.

Mark Twain, like Dickens and Kipling, Twain began as a journalist and an editor - using his fiction as extra copy to fill space and delighted that people actually liked his autobiographical sketches and stories. He made his name and fortune as a travel writer.

[genefromjersey]

You bring up interesting points ; however, the intent of copyright / patent laws is to protect the originator of a work for a set period of time , in order that the originator may reap any potential benefits of what has been sown for that specified period. It was never intended to prevent folks from reading passages from a work, making limited quotes, whistling or singing ,or playing a catchy tune, etc. - with a BIG exception : If you get up on stage, for pay, or at an event in which admission is charged, and perform somebody else's work, you are not allowed to pass it off as YOURS, and you may be liable for royalty payments ( which are, in essence, rent paid for the temporary use of the work for commercial purposes. ) Is "file-sharing" a commercial performance ? At the moment, the courts seem to feel it is- I think, because the technology now available permits the creation of "counterfeit" CD's , which are being sold in competition with the originals. The "reasonable use" of a work does not,and should never include the production of competing counterfeits.

[wideawake]

Question 1: Yes. There is no need for art to be subsidized by the government.

Question 2: the process of writing can make some professors better teachers of their subject and more valuable to their students. As long as they show up for class, teach their students well and make themselves available to their students for assistance and instruction outside of class - that is, fulfill their responsibilities - who cares how they structure their time?

Tenure should be abolished.

[brbethke]

Thanks for the reply. I just needed to know whether you were another cranky unpublished writer or an actual active parasite.

It's ten minutes before the hour. Isn't there a class you're supposed to be in?

[wideawake]

Being paid for a job doesn't mean making a profit.

The Sistina is a great illustration of what I'm talking about, actually.

Michelangelo spent something like 12 years on and off planning, painting and adorning the Chapel.

He made thousands of sketches and studies and went far above and beyond the original terms of his contract. No one can honestly say the commission he received for the Sistina was adequate to the time and effort he invested in it, let alone made it a profitable transaction for him.

If I'm not mistaken, he was paid more for the Paulina nearby, and it's never even metioned among his great works - most people don't even realize he was the painter, and compared to the Sistina it looks very uninspired and generic.

[wideawake]

I haven't been a student in years and I'll probably never be a teacher.

[Protagoras]

He painted for money.

No one said these people are good businessmen. But they do it for pay. Like books and music.

Anyway, carry on. None of it is important, your opinion was noted, and discarded. Just like your attacks on me.

[wideawake]

C.S. Lewis' novels are another example of a man who wrote for fun while holding onto his day job. His very first venture at creative writing - The Pilgrim's Regress was written for himself. He first wrote The Narnia Chronicles on a lark - they didn't become popular for years.

Tolkien could be the prime example of a person who wrote purely for amusement rather than remuneration. He'd been writing about Middle Earth for thirty years before his friends and family finally convinced him to publish.

As far as Hemingway was concerned, he was another writer who made his name as a journalist. The Sun Also Rises was written, he said, as an experimental novel utilizing his "iceberg" theory of narrative.

He submitted it for publication when a publishing house approached him for a book of war journalism and the only thing he had available to give them was the novel.

He was amazed that they they took it and shocked that it became popular.

[wideawake]

He painted for money.

Again, his greatest works, the ones we remember, were not done for profit. He was paid for a fraction of what his work was worth.

I never said that artists didn't seek to make money by their art: I pointed out the truism that no truly great work of art (like the Sistina) was undertaken for profit.

Before Michelangelo even touched brush to plaster, he knew he was being underpaid. That apparently did nothing to deter him.

[tm22721]

So you are admitting that guns should be outlawed too ?

File trading software doesn't violate copyright law, people do !

BUMP

[Protagoras]

He painted for money.

[wideawake]

He painted for money.

But not for profit - which was the point at issue.

[babyface00]

I think we mostly agree, but I would argue that current copyright law is straying further and further from the original intent towards an ownership of the work that is absolute and transferable in perpetuity (if you extrapolate the trend to its logical conclusion).

I think its reasonable to say that at some point, the public will be justified in using technology to reclaim their ability to access works which they own. I think some would argue that point has been passed, I'm not so sure. I definitely don't think that the act of exchanging MP3's is, in itself stealing. (I have downloaded MP3s for songs which are on albums that I own) It certainly can be, but what bothers me is the same logic that would outlaw an act just because it can be illegal would outlaw all kinds of activities (guns are the first that come to mind, but there are others).

An analogy (to what the original article is asserting) would be authors trying to get private printing presses banned because they could be used to make unauthorized copies of their works.

[SamAdams76]

Over the past year, I have bought CDs from the following artists:

Jack Lawrence
The Reverend Horton Heat
Rhonda Vincent
Boston
Brad Paisley
Chris Thompson
Gerry Rafferty
Nickel Creek
Blur
Travis

I can name more but those are what came off the top of my head. What do all the above artists have in common? All these artists I discovered (or rediscovered) by downloading "illicit" MP3s off the web. I liked the music enough that I surfed to Amazon.com and bought the CDs. None of this music was heard on the radio so I never would have bought these CDs otherwise.

For those wondering about Boston - a fairly well known band from the 1970s - I discovered music by them that was released in the 1990s. I honestly had no idea that Boston had released two studio albums in the 1990s. In fact, I was floored to find out that they did. Thanks to downloading MP3s from their older albums (that I already owned), I discovered the newer tracks. Now I own all five of Boston's studio albums, thanks to MP3 file-sharing.

Anyway, it sort of throws the "communism" argument right out the window, doesn't it?

BTW, when Apple's downloading service is made available for the PC, I'm checking out (unless something better comes along between now and then). Don't have a problem with paying for MP3s and never did. Until now, there has never been a mechanism for doing so (at least with major label music). And if there were, there were too many restrictions made on the downloads. If I'm going to pay for an MP3, I want to be able to download it, burn it to CD, copy it to portable MP3 players, etc.

[Protagoras]

I give up. There seems to be no common sense that would get you to admit, even to yourself, that the idea is absurd.

Artists and authors and song writters have never produced anything of any worth for profit.

People who write for a living have never produced anything of worth. People who write songs for profit have never produced anything of worth. People who design art objects for others under contract have never produced anything of worth.

< /sarcasm>

You sure have convinced me and the people who read this exchange. Now go tell someone else, this is boring.

[Billthedrill]

Being paid for a job doesn't mean making a profit.

I'm sorry, but I really don't see the distinction you're drawing here. Art, especially writing, is pure profit once you've paid for the materials. If you choose to make a dime a day at it, it's still profit.

Great works of art may, of course, be produced while the artist starves. That does not mean that starving is a necessary precondition to art, nor does it mean that eating is not a necessary precondition. It means that the artist has found a means other than art to support him- or herself.

Profit and professionalism aren't necessary in making automobiles, either - you could certainly make a case that some very fine stuff is produced by highschool mechanics working in their spare time. If you restrict the automobile world to only such individuals by denying profit, however, I don't think it would be a gain overall either in terms of the quality or the quantity of the autos produced. So with art.

[wideawake]

And to clarify:

You told another FReeper here that I called you a coward. That isn't true.

You accused me of running away and I have bad manners?

Again untrue. I accused you of being unable to think of a counterexample on the spot. Not of being a coward.

Your very first post to me on this thread, post 19, was pretty uncivil and your manners have degenerated since then.

Now you have changed the subject to art. Figures.

The subject was art to begin with. I refer you to your post 19 again, where you specifically quote me referring to art and literature.

You need a Dale Carnegie book. He wrote it for profit.

If you consider the writings of Dale Carnegie to be either great art or literature, then we need to define those terms a little more precisely.

Your statement was MORONIC.

If that were so, then it would be easily disproved by one concrete example.

You have attempted to shift the argument as to whether artists and writers have been paid - if you'll notice I made reference in post 13 to the fact that Michangelo was paid for his work on commission.

I acknowledged the money aspect from the very beginning of this discussion - which is why I made the distinction between pay and profit from the very beginning.

That's a distinction you are pretending was never made and which you are trying to erase.

Let's put it very simply - if I offered to give you $5 for a year's work would I be paying you? Of course. Would it be profitable for you? No.

I repeat my original contention:

There is not one valuable, enduring piece of art or literature out there which was made or written for material profit.

[Protagoras]

There is not one valuable, enduring piece of art or literature out there which was made or written for material profit.

This statement stands on it's own.

And your attack on me stands on it's own too.

[wideawake]

Art, especially writing, is pure profit once you've paid for the materials.

I disagree. Labor is a real cost of doing business. Almost all businesses would be insanely profitable if they didn't have to pay employees.

In one of my examples above, I pointed out that James Joyce spent something like 50,000 man hours writing Finnegans Wake, made about $3,000 from it and was surprised to have received that much.

No one rationally sets out to spend almost two decades to do a job which they expect will pay them less than six cents an hour.

It is, as they say, a labor of love.

My point is, again, that truly great creative accomplishments are not products of cost/benefit analysis.

I agree that starving or physical suffering is not a necessary precondition for great art: TS Eliot lived a very comfortable existence as a successful merchant banker, while producing great art - often during his free time on very posh vacations.

[wideawake]

Your grammar certainly stands on its own.

My original statement also stands on its own - since no one here has been able to knock it down by citing a single example of one specific classic work of art or literature that was done for material profit.

And again - I never attacked you. You accused me of calling you a coward, which I never did. Then I apparently "attacked" you by pointing out your bad manners.

read Billthedrill's posts - he is capable of disagreeing with me and yet being polite.