‘Imagine a world without copyright’

Just ran across a fascinating essay on copyright written by Joost Smiers and Marieke van Schijndel and published last October in the International Herald-Tribune. Not wanting to start a copyright flame war, let me quote nonetheless the introduction to this piece, entitled “Imagine a world without copyright”:

Copyright was once a means to guarantee artists a decent income. Aside from the question as to whether it ever actually functioned as such — most artists never made a penny from the copyright system — we have to admit that copyright serves an altogether different purpose in the contemporary world. It now is the tool that conglomerates in the music, publishing, imaging, and movie industries use to control their markets.

These industries decide whether the materials they have laid their hands on may be used by others — and, if they allow it, under what conditions and for what price. European and American legislation extends them that privilege for a window of no less than 70 years after the passing of the original author. The consequences? The privatization of an ever-increasing share of our cultural expressions, because this is precisely what copyright does. Our democratic right to freedom of cultural and artistic exchange is slowly but surely being taken away from us.

It is also unacceptable that we have to consume cultural creations in exactly the way they are dished out to us, and that we may change neither title nor detail. We thus have every reason to ponder about a viable alternative to copyright.

At the same time, a fascinating development is taking place before our very eyes. Millions of people exchanging music and movies over the Internet refuse to accept any longer that a mega-sized company can actually own, for example, millions of melodies. Digitalization is gnawing away at the very foundations of the copyright system.

What might an alternative idea of copyright look like? To arrive at that alternative, we first have to acknowledge that artists are entrepreneurs. They take the initiative to craft a given work and offer it to a market. Others can also take that initiative, for example a producer or patron who in turn employs artists. All of these artistic initiators have one thing in common: They take entrepreneurial risks.

What copyrights do is precisely to limit those risks. The cultural entrepreneur receives the right to erect a protective barrier around his or her work, notably a monopoly to exploit the work for a seemingly endless period of time. That protection also covers anything that resembles the work in one way or the other. That is bizarre.

We must keep in mind, of course, that every artistic work — whether it is a soap opera, a composition by Luciano Berio, or a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger — derives the better part of its substance from the work of others, from the public domain. Originality is a relative concept; in no other culture around the globe, except for the contemporary Western one, can a person call himself the owner of a melody, an image, a word. It is therefore an exaggeration to gratuitously allow such work the far-reaching protections, ownership title and risk-exclusion that copyright has to offer.

One might ask whether such a protective layer is really necessary for the evolving process of artistic creation. …

Next follows a proposal that would put creative entrepreneurs on an equal footing (more or less) with other commercial ventures. The authors favor a world in which “a work will have to take its chances on the market on its own, without the luxurious protection offered by copyrights. After all, the first to market has a time and attention advantage.”

Nonetheless they recognize that “[c]ertain artistic expression, however, demands sizeable initial investments. … Think about movies or novels. We propose that the risk bearer — the artist, the producer or the patron — receive for works of this kind … right to profit from the works” for a limited timeframe (in their proposal, one year).

The Dutch authors of this proposal note in their conclusion, “Cultural monopolists desperately want us to believe that without copyright we would have no artistic creations and therefore no entertainment. That is nonsense. We would have more, and more diverse ones.”

Whether their specific proposal is the best one, their arguments certainly ring home the difference between protecting a Disney and a Shakespeare, both of whom heavily mined existing works for their creations.

Personally I think trademark laws would suffice for Disney (the company) and feel that corporations prefer the current copyright system because it’s heavily biased towards rewarding the top .1 percent or .01 percent of creators. Otherwise we wouldn’t see such outlandish circumstances as one rock musician receiving $20 million in royalties twenty years after a really big record or another’s estate pulling in $22 million 25 years after his death or an author of six well-written entertainments getting paid $1,000,000,000 for them or two popular-film directors with a combined net worth of $6 billion. However skilled their work, the system we have protects the commercial value of their works to the detriments of virtually all other creators.

Disagree with me if you will. Disagree with the Dutch proposal if you will. Cite your own substantial earnings as evidence to the contrary, if you can. I will restrict my responses, however, to discussions of alternatives to the current copyright system.