Re: copyright under stress

On Mon, Jun 12, 2000, Robert Cumbow <rcumbow[_at_]grahamdunn.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 11 Jun 2000, Eric Eldred <eldred[_at_]eldritchpress.org> wrote, in part:
> >
> > [...]
> > much of our popular culture is produced by big monopolies that more
> > and more concentrate capital, perhaps for less and less return.
>
> Since Mr. Eldred is discussing the motion picture industry primarily,
> and the live theatre and book publishing industries secondarily, the
> term "monopolies" is way off base. Few businesses in the US economy
> today are more fiercely competitive than those.

"Monopoly" is used in two senses: (1) legal: copyright is an extension by statute of exclusive rights; (2) economic: concentration of economic units of power whether or not this power is being used in an anti-competitive manner.

As far as these industries are concerned, I assert that each of them (Hollywood, Broadway, New York publishers and global media conglomerates) is as concentrated as ever in our economic history. (Well, I guess Hollywood was a little more concentrated at one point, but it is again approaching that.) Since they, like the music publishing industry, hold in their hands the effective distribution channels for almost all our popular culture (whether they produce it themselves or just buy it), I believe they constitute "monopolies" even if there is not one corporation that controls 90% of the market, as Microsoft does with operating systems and office application software suites.

In the case of television broadcasting, for example, I have seen estimates that fewer than a dozen people control the content for 90% of what U.S. viewers see. For print publishers, there are now five or six giant conglomerates that control most segments of the market. Hollywood and music publishers likewise number only a handful in each market, and they tend to make it hard for competitors to arise. U.S. trade policy likewise attempts to extend this monopoly to all other nations. There might be fierce "competition" between Bertelsmann and Thomson, but even if they do not act as a cartel in economic terms they tend to exclude competition except from within their circle. The new competition seems to be coming from the Internet such as Amazon, and the conglomerates justify their concentration in terms of competing with this new force -- i.e., stifling it when possible, or taking it over when necessary. Here is where the monopolists are trying to employ their legal monopolies, I believe.

I believe it was "commonsense" during the Reagan term to speak of U.S. Public Broadcasting as a government monopoly that needed to be broken up -- that if the networks did not supply "quality" programming then the cable systems would -- if viewers really wanted it -- therefore there was no need to "correct" the free market. This was and is an empirical prediction that can be proven false, I believe. Cable has not produced the quality and variety, and it is questionable if the Internet will effectively provide competition in the long run as well. Perhaps it would be better to recognize that our popular culture really is in the hands of monopolists and that we need to do something about that directly, perhaps by increasing author rights vs. publisher rights, or perhaps by limiting the extent of the legal monopoly, by reducing copyright term and increasing fair use rights and the public domain in general. (For example, consider the manner in which "intellectual property" rights of Microsoft are being treated after that company has been determined to be a monopoly and acting in restraint of trade -- that remedy might be more effective than the structural ones, because it strikes at the heart of what causes the monopoly in the first place.)

-- 
"Eric"  Eric Eldred  Eldritch Press
mailto:Eldred[_at_]EldritchPress.org
http://www.eldritchpress.org/EricEldred.vcf