Told you it would run and run.

Yesterday, Tom Watson MP generously linked to my competition to find a convincing defense of copyright theft (which in turn was a follow up to my earlier post which was… etc).

Within a matter of hours Tom’s link had attracted a couple of spirited replies - including one from ‘Labour Matters’ who took me to task on the basis that - well - “copyright is wrong and can only be defended by manipulating truth, innovation, and creativity by holding up so-called victims as examples of why piracy is theft.”

Jeepers. I’ve responded in Tom’s comment section but I think it’s worth cross-posting my reply here…

…

Hi Labour Matters,

Thanks for taking the time to post a response to my copyright post. I just wanted to clarify what I said in the hope that it might address some of your points. I hope Tom doesn’t mind me using his comments box for the purpose (I’m going to cross-post to my blog too).

Firstly, I didn’t say “that high quality content can only be produced if backed by a army of paid professionals.” What I said was that “what we can safely assume is that, without IP protection, high quality content production will go down.”

It will. It is an absolute fact that, without the revenue from sales and controlled advertising, many high budget films and TV programmes will go unmade. Likewise many mass-market books will go unprinted, unpromoted and unread.

It’s interesting that you mention cave painting. I did too…

“Noone is assuming that content creation as a whole goes down without copyright protection. Humans are a creative species and cavemen didn’t need to add a little copyright symbol to their pictures of wooly mammoths.”

See. We agree on that at least. Although there’s a Gary Larson cartoon idea in the copyright symbol gag.

It’s more interesting that you mention Da Vinci. Da Vinci was paid. He was paid a lot, in fact - by a variety of rich benefactors who commissioned him to produce one off works. That was his revenue model - selling his work. Of course, there were countless knock-offs produced but there were no laws at the time to criminalise the thieves. I’m pretty sure had the laws existed, Da Vinci, and his benefactors who had paid for an original - would have been glad to use them. And rightly so.

Another thing worth remembering is that music is just one aspect of copyright law, which in turn is just one part of IP law. IP laws were developed to encourage, not stifle, creativity. They were introduced to ensure that someone who spent their life creating works that enriched the cultural landscape, would be rewarded for the duration of his/her lifetime plus the lifetime of the immediate next generation. That’s why the term of copyright was lifetime plus 50 years, before going up to lifetime plus 70 years when the laws were later harmonised.

After that time, the work enters the public domain and everyone gets to build on the original creativity to produce their own works, be they books, films, designs or inventions. (I’m aware these have different copyright terms, but this isn’t the place for law school footnotes¹.) Sure, with the ability to sign away copyright to record labels or to other third parties, that intention is capable of being undermined, but that’s the rub with all property ownership. You can sell it and it can be stolen by thieves (which is why ‘thieves’ is the word used to describe those who seek to permanently deprive copyright owners of their right to exclusive possession of their property).

You head towards a conclusion with this phrase…

“That’s because copyright is wrong and can only be defended by manipulating truth, innovation, and creativity by holding up so-called victims as examples of why piracy is theft.”

Now, you see, up until that point, you were making a reasoned response. And yet with those three lines you undermined your credibility, entirely. “Manipulating truth, innovation and creativity?”

Who is manipulating creativity to a greater, and worse, extent? Is it the author who slaves for years writing books in an Edinburgh cafe, gets turned down by publisher after publisher, before eventually getting a deal and becoming a literary sensation largely responsible for bringing an entire generation back to the written word and then expects to receive an income for her work, and the risk she took in devoting her time to it? Or is it the unimaginative teenage schmuck who distributes a PDF of the latest Harry Potter book on a P2P network to gain mad propz from their mates? Or for that matter the market trader who flogs the DVDs of Order of the Phoenix from the back of his van?

If you’ve read by original post on the subject - also on my blog - you’d know that I think copyright owners should go easy on the individuals and clamp down hard on the dealers, which is largely what they are doing now. But in terms of who the law should be protecting - forgive me, but I’m on J.K Rowling’s side. And the filesharer and the pirate and the dealer can pick up a pen, learn to write, and then slave for years to produce their own bloody masterpiece.

Don’t make this a left vs right issue. It isn’t. It’s right versus wrong. And on copyright, you’re just plain wrong.

Best,

Paul

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I have to say, I’m really enjoying this debate. Intellectual Property law is only going to become more and more important as digital media continues to become the primary distribution format for music, film, television and books.

If anyone else wants to pitch in on their own blog, feel free and I’ll link back. No reason why the competition should be limited to stuff posted here.

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Footnotes...

1. As opposed to here which is - http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/UKpga_19880048_en_1.htm / http://www.artquest.org.uk/artlaw/copyright/28916.htm [↩]

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