Copyrights and Wrong Copying
The place was rural Washington state. In daylight, a man busily unloaded trash from his pickup truck, scattering it on the shoulder of the road.
He was confronted. “Hey, this is private property!”
“Oh sorry,” the man with the pickup replied, “I thought this was Weyerhaeuser land.”
A Weyerhaeuser forest ranger recounted this story to me. Weyerhaeuser is a corporate landowner with vast timber holdings in Washington state. And it wasn’t the first time this ranger had encountered a citizen who believed that corporations were owed whatever insult you cared to deliver, including a load of garbage.
Which brings us to today, to the Internet, to the grudges we bear against corporations and, again, to private property. The property I have in mind is the creative work of writers, filmmakers and musicians -- the underpinnings of our culture, for better and for worse.
Over recent months, I’ve collected a stack of mail from Internet fundamentalists on the subject of what I call stealing and what they call the exercise of freedom, or “fair use,” or whatever.
The argument is this: I think it’s wrong to build libraries of music, books and movies by “sharing” from computer to computer without remunerating the creators; worshipers of the Web think it’s not only right, but a right.
Underlying the angry arguments of a growing number of these missionaries is rage against the corporation. That is, corporations are too big, too callous, too impersonal and too gluttonous for profits. They are ripping us off. So why complain about ordinary folks who respond in kind?
Even if you sympathize with this line of reasoning -- and who among us doesn’t, at least some of the time -- the Internet zealots turn out to be no less greedy and even more shortsighted than the institutions they loathe.
Most recently, the rampages of these Internet true believers have taken on respectable tones in a Supreme Court challenge against copyrights.
Under the U.S. Constitution, inventors, writers and the like can be granted exclusive rights to their works “for limited times” by Congress. Unfortunately, politicians have abused this authority.
Only too eager for campaign contributions and dazzled by dinners with movie stars, members of Congress have granted Hollywood lobbyists their wishes time and time again. The original 14-year copyright now has been extended to 95 years for collaborative works and 70 years for individual creations.
These perpetual copyrights are greedy and contrary to our founding principles. I wish the Internet crowd good luck as the high court now ponders whether Congress exceeded its authority.
But I share with many thousands of writers, musicians and actors a deeper fear: A victory over copyright is not all these fundamentalists want. And a win before the highest court in the land would only energize, and perhaps legitimize, the idea that technology, not common sense, must define “fair use” of creative work.
Simply put, many of these people don’t want to pay for music, literature or films. And they have machines on their desks that make it push-button easy to scoop up the work of others, all the while claiming they’re just freedom fighters out to settle scores with corporations.
There is dreamy religious mysticism to their reasoning. Bow before the almighty power of the Web and it will set us free. As for the incentive for writers to write, or singers to sing? Well, the believers have only faith. Artists will emerge from under the bootheels of their corporate masters and find other ways to put bread on the table.
Oh really?
What we have here is another installment in the modern fantasy fable about “new economics.” Never mind that the first testament proved to be pure hokum. There was no new economy in technology -- and millions of people paid dearly for the con. But the theology is still with us: If you cannot see the world the same as they do, you’re too dim to have it explained to you.
Let me speak to the writing of books, about which I know just a little. A writer spends years pursuing a subject of interest. The resulting book is offered for sale in the hopes that people will buy sufficient copies to finance the undertaking of another book. The role of the corporate publisher is essential to the process, but ancillary to the writer’s motive.
As envisioned by the Internet fundamentalists, only one copy of the book would have to be purchased. Then it could be posted on the Web, liberated, for everyone to share.
But what of the writer?
The reply is always vague. Well, she or he will find ways to prosper somehow, we’re told. Maybe by writing a sign and setting up on a street corner: “Will write for food.” More likely, they’ll resort to other work, like welcoming shoppers to Wal-Mart.
The way I figure it, if you can afford a computer, you can also afford to pay writers and singers and movie stars and best boys and costume designers and sound mixers and all the rest for their work. To argue otherwise, to say that you’re just settling scores with corporations, is another load of garbage.
