“The End of Copyright” isn’t so right
I was doing my usual wandering around the ‘net tonight and came across this article at Gamasutra called “The End of Copyright”.
You’ll need to read the article before there is any point in reading on. Go ahead, I’ll be waiting on the other side of the break. Go on.
Ok, back? You did read it, right?
All righty. The general gist of the article is that so many people now regard copying as “ok” that, eventually, U.S. government policy will shift towards making it legal to do so. Copyright as it now stands will cease to be and all that.
I can’t say I agree, as much as I wish I could.
We have a large number of people in this country that have no problem with the idea of legalizing – or, at the least, decriminalizing – marijuana. Not all, of course, or even a supermajority. But a significant number of them. Think about that, we’ll get back to it.
The author of the above article cites the recent Supreme Court ruling on Grokster as evidence that, eventually, copyright will cease to be. (In case you weren’t paying attention, Grokster lost that ruling, and it put them out of business.) He states that this will drive P2P code development not underground, but out into the open – no one will own it, no company can be sued, and P2P clients will be made from the outset to be untraceable and use a mesh network to hide the source of the data. I tend to agree with that, and TOR (The Onion Router) is just a first step towards that, even if it is a layer effect and not built-in to the P2P apps at this time.
However, I don’t see this as any evidence that copyright will go away. Going back to the marijuana example – more and more people seem to regard it as less harmful than alcohol – but I see no trend in our government that indicates to me that they are going to back away from making the laws harsher and harsher.
What do these two have in common? Money.
Drug arrests are a cash cow for communities and for companies that build prisons and run mandatory re-hab centers. Copyright allows mega-companies to become unbelievably wealthy, and all of those companies contribute to candidates. There is going to be no shortage of money being spent to make sure the current monopolistic copyright scheme stays in effect – in fact, I expect more laws being submitted that not only solidifies the status quo but actually mandates that your computer enforce these schemes. I don’t know if these bills will pass, but it does not look good. By the way, have you donated to the EFF lately? You should.
Think I’m nuts? Go ahead an look up the odd coincidence that every time Disney was about to lose the copyright status on Mickey Mouse the U.S. Senate would magically pass another bill that extended the copyright statutes so that this did not happen. Just coincidence, of course.
Add to this the complication that the United States Senate has ratified a number of international treaties that also lean towards solidifying the current copyright scheme and it looks even worse.
I may be wrong, it would not be the first time. And maybe it is the gloomy, Damnation Alley look of the night sky outside my window right now, but I don’t see this problem getting better anytime soon.
