Re: Napster destroys Western Civilization

On Fri, 05 May 2000, Peter B. Hirtle <pbh6[_at_]cornell.edu> wrote:
>
> In short, while the IP industry may own Congress and the law, the
> public, through Napster, IMesh, Gnutella, etc., owns the technology
> that can make the law irrelevant. From the public's perspective, the
> only harm that would arise from their use of Napster would occur if
> Metallica decided to stop making music. Until that happens, why
> shouldn't a right to make and distribute non-commercial copies of
> copyrighted materials be a part of the public's grant of limited
> monopoly that copyright represents?
>
> Is that airy-fairy philosophical enough? :-)

This is what I feel the very essence of the whole discussion here. A law that isn't supported by a large proportion of the public is a bad law, and I think that is currently the case with copyright law -- its strict rules and draconian measures are not only ignored by people, they even undermine the basics of democracy. You may call it "tyranny of the majority", but I consider a large insult to democracy, even though I am the last to say it is perfect, it probably is the best system to avoid all kinds of tyranny and disaster.

Traditionally, it wasn't easy to copy, and those with the equipment to infringe on a large scale where relatively easy to pin-point. Now that it is -- and that started with tape-recorders and xerox machines, most people don't feel they harm the copyright owners, simply because they think they wouldn't spend the much higher price the real thing would cost -- even if they couldn't copy it at all.

I have no idea how to come up with a new scheme "to promote progress of sciences and arts", but probably that would come from some kind of licencing scheme, in which ultimately the creators will be happy to have a much smaller amount from a much larger part of the population. If we can come up with a scheme that says, you may copy my works for some amount per unit, and the amount is not too large, and the enforcement reasonably easy, many people will be happy to comply.

Jeroen Hellingman
<jehe[_at_]kabelfoon.nl> Received on Sat May 06 2000 - 20:41:47 GMT