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"Why not admit that copyright and culture evolved together, and that suddenly trashing one does irreparable harm to the other?" You are confusing correlation w

"Why not admit that copyright and culture evolved together, and that suddenly trashing one does irreparable harm to the other?" You are confusing correlation with causation. Copyright as we know it today is the result of a change in technology -- the printing press -- which also caused changes in culture. Prior to printing presses copying books was a vital service, worthy of praise and encouraged by society as a way to preserve knowledge (at least among those societies that gave a damn about such things). Ancient Greek science was preserved because Arab scholars copied Greek works. The Library of Alexandria had a vast collection because books were copied by law. Ironically, we might never have developed the technology that led to copyright law had it not been for such copying. Of course, how technology left to copyright is very different from how that technology changed culture. Copyright was the result of many years of efforts by the British government to censor printed material, which ultimately failed for political reasons. The censorship effort did create a very powerful lobby of printers who pushed very hard to reestablish the monopoly they had enjoyed during that effort, and who ultimately managed to get what they wanted in the form of copyrights. This is basically orthogonal to the cultural changes. "the preference for expensive productions is as clear as its ever been." Maybe those productions are a waste of resources that have been made economically viable by copyright. Do you really think people would be unable to produce and enjoy entertainment without the copyright system? It might mean the death of films that cost as much as it would take to end world hunger, but not the death of entertainment. The printing press changed how we communicate. Computers are doing so as well, and like it or not, entertainment will be affected as much by this change as it was by the printing press.

alexqgb 13y ago
I am not confusing correlation with causation. I am stating (correctly) that the trajectory of development followed by several of the most popular creative forms is directly related to the emergence an development of modern copyright law. It is absurd to insist that the contours of the legal environment governing a trade, and the products created under those arrangements just "happen" to reflect one another (i.e. coincidental correlation), and that they're not products of direct causation. As someone who has actually worked for years in a field shaped by copyright, I can assure you, the parameters of the law have a tremendous effect on what does and doesn't take place. And programs don't just happen to randomly conform to the legal environment magically, all by themselves. They conform because there are people whose entire jobs revolve around making sure that all the rights and clearances that are needed to make a legally marketable product have, in fact, been cleared. These are non-trivial requirements, and the development, production, and distribution of filmed media are all heavily influenced by these commercial and legal requirements. It's more than correlation. It's causation. No debate, full stop. You're also quite wrong about British printers recovering the monopoly they lost following the passage of Queen Anne's Law (1709/10 - the first modern copyright law). This transferred the basic right to print copies from the Printer's Guilds to the authors of a work, with whom it has remained to this very day. There is no longer any monopoly on printing itself and nor has there been for more than 300 years (at least in the English speaking world). The only "monopolies" that exist relate to specific works, and those accrue to the author of that work alone, or to whoever he sells the copyright. John D. Rockefeller ran a monopoly. AT&T ran a monopoly. No media or publishing company (at least, in the English speaking world) has enjoyed a monopoly for over three centuries. And no, controlling specific properties is not considred a monopoly any more than owning a house is considered a "monopoly" on that particular address. While it's true that some of today's publishers have become very powerful, this is because they adapted to the legal change by becoming, in essence, highly specialized financiers — the venture capital of the media world, really — and pairing this with development operations that optimized their deal flow as well as making possible the highly collaborative media arts that became the defining cultural forms in the 20th century. But again, these developments weren't coincidental to changes in the law, they were the direct results. Like I said, the law and the creative forms that most people like the most today are highly inter-related. Everything from movies to broadcasts to recorded orchestras to video games exist because of the law as it currently stands and the underlying business arrangements that it both necessitated and enabled. All I'm saying I that these two things go hand in hand. Sudden radical collapse of the law — for whatever reason — will have a traumatic effect on the art forms which depend on it. And again, these are hugely popular forms which have taken ages to develop an for which no clear substitutes exist.

alexqgb 13y ago

I am not confusing correlation with causation. I am stating (correctly) that the trajectory of development followed by several of the most popular creative forms is directly related to the emergence an development of modern copyright law. It is absurd to insist that the contours of the legal environment governing a trade, and the products created under those arrangements just "happen" to reflect one another (i.e. coincidental correlation), and that they're not products of direct causation. As someone who has actually worked for years in a field shaped by copyright, I can assure you, the parameters of the law have a tremendous effect on what does and doesn't take place. And programs don't just happen to randomly conform to the legal environment magically, all by themselves. They conform because there are people whose entire jobs revolve around making sure that all the rights and clearances that are needed to make a legally marketable product have, in fact, been cleared. These are non-trivial requirements, and the development, production, and distribution of filmed media are all heavily influenced by these commercial and legal requirements. It's more than correlation. It's causation. No debate, full stop. You're also quite wrong about British printers recovering the monopoly they lost following the passage of Queen Anne's Law (1709/10 - the first modern copyright law). This transferred the basic right to print copies from the Printer's Guilds to the authors of a work, with whom it has remained to this very day. There is no longer any monopoly on printing itself and nor has there been for more than 300 years (at least in the English speaking world). The only "monopolies" that exist relate to specific works, and those accrue to the author of that work alone, or to whoever he sells the copyright. John D. Rockefeller ran a monopoly. AT&T ran a monopoly. No media or publishing company (at least, in the English speaking world) has enjoyed a monopoly for over three centuries. And no, controlling specific properties is not considred a monopoly any more than owning a house is considered a "monopoly" on that particular address. While it's true that some of today's publishers have become very powerful, this is because they adapted to the legal change by becoming, in essence, highly specialized financiers — the venture capital of the media world, really — and pairing this with development operations that optimized their deal flow as well as making possible the highly collaborative media arts that became the defining cultural forms in the 20th century. But again, these developments weren't coincidental to changes in the law, they were the direct results. Like I said, the law and the creative forms that most people like the most today are highly inter-related. Everything from movies to broadcasts to recorded orchestras to video games exist because of the law as it currently stands and the underlying business arrangements that it both necessitated and enabled. All I'm saying I that these two things go hand in hand. Sudden radical collapse of the law — for whatever reason — will have a traumatic effect on the art forms which depend on it. And again, these are hugely popular forms which have taken ages to develop an for which no clear substitutes exist.