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Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright To Economy
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Sep 12, 2007 07:48 PM
from the make-more-money dept.
from the make-more-money dept.
Dotnaught writes "The Computer and Communications Industry Association — a trade group representing Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, among others — has issued a report (PDF) that finds fair use exceptions add more than $4.5 trillion in revenue to the U.S. economy and add more value to the U.S. economy than copyright industries contribute. "Recent studies indicate that the value added to the U.S. economy by copyright industries amounts to $1.3 trillion.", said CCIA President and CEO Ed Black. The value added to the U.S. economy by the fair use amounts to $2.2 trillion."
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Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t (Score:5, Insightful)
If I host a YouTube video for my relatives with personal photos synched to some commercial track, it's supposed to be ok. But what if I have a cut from the ads since I signed a deal with YouTube.
Even worse, what if YouTube automate the process, and I get a cut if my video becomes popular automatically. Then I can wake up one day to see the video popularity rise and I'm suddenly a criminal.
I really wish the industry representatives would sit down and rethink copyright, DMCA and fair use (while following the same basic rules), but I know if they do, they'll tilt it further away from fair use rights, versus recognizing them better.
We'll need some screwed up revolution again after sitting through hundreds of frivolous suits, since greed on both sides (consumers and the industry) overshadows their reasoning.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
>synced to some commercial track, it's supposed to be ok
Nope, it's not. It is copyright infringement. YouTube STILL makes money, even if you don't. And even if they weren't, you are still not licensed to use music that way.
Agreed with the rest of your points.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No problem at all. RIAA or MPAA will send DCMA take down notices and will, through the handy help of Congress, steal your content by declaring it as their own.
Welcome to America, land of political whores.
Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t (Score:4, Insightful)
They did, that's the problem, that's how we got the DMCA in the first place.
I really wish the people's representatives would sit down and rethink copyright, DMCA and fair use. And remember while doing so whose representatives they are.
Parent
Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't really a comment on your thesis here, but you got me thinking ... is there a CC license that basically says, "NO, you cannot distribute my work ... you may only distribute derivative works?" In other words, sure, sync my music with your video, put it up on YouTube... make a remix of it... but if folks just want an MP3 of it, they need to download it from me. Might be kinda interesting.
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Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:What does that have to do with "fair use"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think in part that is what the GP was unhappy about. Derivative work should really only apply to commercial ventures. If I want to make a slide show DVD of my cousin's wedding pictures and set it to their favorite love song and give it to them for an anniversary present, is that really a "derivative work" or is it just something that has added value to some of my family and doesn't mean jackshit to the rest of the world? Or to make it more public, if I sync clips of The Muppet Show with a Snoop Dog song and post it to YouTube, am I somehow depriving Snoop Dog and Jim Henson of income they would have otherwise had or am I simply freely contributing some humor into the world and adding slightly to the value of YouTube? If a work would not exist if I were required to pay someone for the right to make it, then copyright is depriving the world of the value of that work.
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ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:ok (Score:5, Insightful)
If only they could give the true value of Fair Use rights in this report: priceless.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ok (Score:5, Insightful)
versus:
fair-use value of 50,000 copies of a P2P-shared $120 Physics Textbook.
Calculate the benefit to us all from the outcome of such unrestricted sharing.
In the first case, Britney Spears doesn't get paid, and perhaps stops producing music.
In the second, 50,000 kids learn physics, maybe grow up and write their own textbooks.
Parent
The difference (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright generates a lot of money to some people.
So the real question is what does our society value? Many people getting a slice of the the pie, or a few people getting all the pie?
Re:The difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair use generates vast sums of money for some people (hardware manufacturers, for one) that completely dwarfs the income generated by copyright on materials played or viewed by that equipment. Furthermore, if it were not for widespread exercise of fair use, a hell of a lot of technology (home audio recording, VCRS, CD & DVD burners, MP3 players, and so forth) would never have seen the light of day. People would have had much less use for such things if it were not for fair use. Furthermore, the content creators and copyright holders themselves have benefited from fair use, to the tune of many billions of dollars in sales they would otherwise never have made.
Copyright generates a lot of money to some people.
A lot fewer people, many of whom (unlike the hardware manufacturers) provide no creative or other useful contributions to society, and in fact have historically stood in the way of progress.
So the real question is what does our society value? Many people getting a slice of the the pie, or a few people getting all the pie?
You have it wrong, it's not zero-sum. What society values (and is the underlying goal of the specific legal environment originally crafted by the Founders) is a bigger pie! Copyright no longer serves that purpose in many areas, and is in need of serious repair (or reversion.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The difference (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'm talking about is what copyright law was originally designed to promote
If Thomas Jefferson isn't turning over in his grave he will be, once somebody tells him what's going on.
Parent
Aha! So if it's worth more... (Score:5, Funny)
Capitalist is not pro-economy (Score:3, Informative)
Even within many companies, different business units will compete for the same cusomers and make competing products (wasting company resources in duplicated efforts). Rather than try improve the whole company's position, business unit managers will crush eachother to get ahead.
Basically it is the old story: you get what you reward. Competitors get rewarded (directly or via Wall St) by beating eachother up, not by their contribution to the economy at large.
Which is "worth more" is irrellevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Meaningless numbers don't help the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Advertising $$$ (Score:3, Interesting)
An economy can only sustain itself so long from re-packaging other people's work before it runs out of gas. Rewarding original creation is what is needed more.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
About time someone put hard numbers to it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Trillion??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good Idea, Wrong Model (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, the real model needs to consider the trade-off (not the relative numbers). That is, if a given avenue of fair use is curtained by x% (e.g., add another year to copyright protection or prohibit consumer copying of music beyond device shifting) how much does the economic contribution by fair use drop and how much does the contribution of copyright increase? I'll be the first to say that I don't know the answer to that and that this study doesn't answer it.
In looking at the trade-off we need a model that reflects how added fair-use may increases the value multiplier, but may decrease the incentive to create copyrighted material and the pool of copyrighted material. This might vary according to both the nature of the work and the nature of the fair use restriction. For example, I'd argue that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft wouldn't lose much if copyright terms were extended by a hundred years -- that aspect of copyright does not effect them much. And would Microsoft lose money if music sharing were impossible? Internet companies might even make more money if all music copying involved some payment (handled by an internet company). The Fair Use multiplier would not change by much even if some types of fair use were curtailed. On the other hand, these companies would lose a great deal if strict interpretations of copyright meant that every transient copy of a piece of text (e.g., copies in RAM, server caches, and internet routers) had to be subject to some copyright fee paid to a MAFIAA-like organization.
This study is a great start, but we need a better model of the marginal effects of the change in total economic value created as a function of more or less fair use. At the very least, this study proves we need some fair use but it does not prove whether we have enough fair use or too little fair use.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And how exactly do the RIAA and their paid-for laws contribute to this goal?
The web is full of articles where musicians end up owing money to the record companies. Very few of them get rich thanks to the RIAA (in fact some of them get poorer).
Things like the DMCA are detrimental to the economy outside the music biz and you can thank the RIAA for that one.
If the RIAA is having problems it's because their product sti
Re:Good Idea, Wrong Model (straw man) (Score:5, Insightful)
Nowhere do the authors suggest (or even intimate IMO), that copyright should be eliminated or that fair use is "better" than copyright. Their argument is that fair use *does* add significant value to the economy and should not be denigrated the way it often is lately, or worse, eliminated altogether.
I think they may also be arguing that if we merely restored the (old) status quo, where fair use was perfectly legal again, and the length of copyright was returned to a more reasonable length of time that we would all be better off economically.
At least that's the most reasonable inference to make from this study IMO.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
First, fair use will only occur if original works are created and original works will only be created if people have some chance of earning a living from them.
Wrong, try again. Motivation for profit is not what makes people do everything all the time, thank God.
Re:Good Idea, Wrong Model (Score:5, Insightful)
The economic value which can be exploited from a work by means of copyright compromises one incentive for creating works. There are other incentives, however, which are unrelated to copyright. For example, fine artists typically make money selling a specific copy of art, rather than just any copy of art (e.g. a Picasso painting may be worth millions; a print of a Picasso painting may be worth $10. Picasso dealt with the former.).
Presently, copyrights are granted to all copyrightable works upon creation, whether the possibility of getting a copyright actually incentivized the author or not. However, prior to 1978, in the US we granted copyrights only to authors who undertook extremely modest steps to indicate their desire for those rights. The idea is that if an author doesn't care to the point where he won't even so much as put a copyright notice on his work, then he probably wasn't incentivized by copyright to begin with; some other incentive or combination of incentives sufficed for him. They may still have involved money, but not money that required a copyright in order to be made.
As it happens, the vast majority of works created were of this latter type, where copyright appears to not have been a factor. The posts here on
As for the article, while it claims that fair uses provide more value for the economy than the creation of the underlying works does, remember that those uses would create the same value if they were made with regard to a public domain work. Indeed, the use of public domain works would surely be even better for the economy than if that work was copyrighted, since only a small subset of all possible uses actually turn out to be fair uses after looking at them. (Though any use may potentially be fair, mind you)
Parent
Re:Good Idea, Wrong Model (Score:4, Interesting)
In the past, you could clearly identify not only who or what was copyrighted, but you could also get a reasonable expectation of being able to get some identifying information about the copyright registrant to be able to track down the original author or publisher to be able to see "permission" to reproduce the content. Such information was made available in a public forum (the Library of Congress) in a central "database"... even if it was only in a stack of boxes in some government warehouse.
To use the
I've tried (unsuccessfully I might add) to take Wikipedia and other Wikimedia project content and attempt to formally register the material with the Library of Congress as registered copyrighted content. To do so requires those contributing the written content to formally declare some basic information, most notably their nationality (what country they are eligible to get a passport from) and where they are currently living (not necessarily the same thing). Part of this is due to the fact that your nationality actually determines what laws can be applied to content which you write. You are also required to disclose a date of first publication, if it is a work for hire, and if somebody involved with the content has died.
What I discovered is that nearly unanimously the attitude among nearly all participants was that the formal copyright registration was not only unnecessary, but even providing these basic personal details (aka your actual name if you want to claim copyright) is considered a "privacy violation". And keep in mind all I was seeking was a voluntary disclosure of this information where those involved would be very much informed as to why the information was collected, and "anonymous" contributions were still allowed. Even being able to provide a mechanism to disclose this information was met with incredible hostility, and is only now being done on an ad hoc basis.... with repeated policy discussions to completely eliminate these pages where this kind of information has been disclosed.
Basically, under current copyright law, it is nearly impossible to determine what is or is not actually copyrighted, or even to whom it has been copyrighted. This is particularly difficult in "open source" projects like Linux or Wikipedia.
Parent
The copyright mine-field (Score:3, Interesting)
Great post. A few additional words of caution to those smelling blood and circling in hopes that copyright will fall of its own weight...
Fair use used to be something easy for people to do on their own, and it was a heavy burden on a publisher to show that someone was violating the copyright
Sharing the Fair Use Bucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The copyright industry just lost its great, politically powerful champion in Jack Valenti [wikipedia.org]. Valenti was completely tight with fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson (who was called "Master of the Senate" before becoming Kennedy's VP, then president by assassination), handling the press for him. Until Valenti left the White House in 1966, with Johnson's endorsement, to become head of the MPAA, just as Hollywood's products got a copyright venue in the TV explosion. Valenti just died this past Spring.
This is the time for the copying industries that really "promote the progress of science and useful arts" [cornell.edu] to push back the copyright monopoly industry. Let's finally get our First Amendment rights to free expression to trump the synthetic government monopolies on content that are holding us all back.
The value of Shakespeare alone... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The value of Shakespeare alone... (Score:4, Funny)
This study suggests that about 35% of the $13.1 trillion US economy comes from Fair Use. Despite the immense economic import of High School Drama Productions, I'm a bit suspicious.
Parent
Primate behavior... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly human beings are given to profound fits of primate behavior
If you've ever spent a minute watching Nova or the Science Channel when a show was on demonstrating said behavior, there is a tremendous drive for primated (most mammals) to take as much as they can possibly get away with. With a monkey, it's fill you cheek pouches with friut, cram fuit under your arms, between your legs, as much as you can carry and more!
In fact more than you can eat before it spoils. Because you're packing it away while the good times last, and you're biology tells you the good times won't. So you cram it in, into you can cram no further. That, and if another monkey tries to take what you've laid claim to... well heaven help that monkey.
It's like the Malay Monkee trap... people will actually try to control, lock up, take, and destroy if they can't use it personally, anything they can, because the very same biological imparative is calling the shots. They will actually hurt their long term profits, to have some sense of control, and to lock others out in the cold. All because they want all the goodies. They want to control all the goodies. Some is not enough, they want them all, and thay want to control them.
This is not subtle form of social insanity, and huge sectors of our population are in the grip. WAKE UP PEOPLE, you hunger to control, is being perpetrated on the world to your own detriment. STOP FIGHTING TO SURVIVE, and please begin living. The two mentalities are mutually exclusive, because the first leaves no room for the second.
Here's the real threat... some bright child will discover the inherent value of fair use, then it's going to be all over. The rest will cave in, or go the way of the Dodo bird.
What it really shows (Score:3, Interesting)
Trillions, so where's the taxes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Compromise (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is very smart of them really, and probably just the beginning of the FUD war.
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Money is not wealth, it's just a way to figure out how to split the pie.
Don't agree? Check out some footage of elderly people paying for food with wheelbarrows of money when the USSR fell.
Expect to watch the baby boomers frantically waving money and deeds around in the coming years, desperate for some young person to care for them, only to be confronted by the fact that they traded those who might have been able and willing in exchange for birth control, a desk job and an extra zero on their bank statement long ago.
Anyways.
When life improves because plenty is created, whatever there is plenty of becomes worthless.
Oxygen is worthless for this reason.
However, it would be difficult to argue that we'd be better off with less oxygen.
It would be hard to argue that we'd be better off if we found a way to hoard it and make people pay for it.
But that's the argument being put forth by those who defend copyrights.
They feel that when people are kept away from art, music, etc, and only allowed to enjoy it if they pay, then wealth is created.
This is nonsense.
The truth is, leverage is created. Which is really what money represents.
And in a world where everything you might possibly need or want has been stamped with a "Property of so and so" marking, and police with guns will show up if you touch it without permission, leverage can seem pretty important.
Thing is, stupid, ignorant and desperate neighbors make bad neighbors, they make poor allies, and they make problems for everyone.
At this point, if we wanted to, we could put every book ever written on earth, every song ever sang, every play ever performed, every newscast, every scientific paper, the lot, we could put it on one little cube of holographic storage and distribute it far and wide across the earth. The tech was new two years ago.
So, aside from the collective "Intellectual Property" laws, which are intended to promote the creation and distribution of works of art and science for the common good, there is nothing stopping us from giving every human on earth a copy of the Library of Alexandria.
Wouldn't you think that the reward of having 6 billion and counting educated, informed neighbors to be your peers, partners and friends would be worth the price of finding a better system to fund creative works that doesn't require them to be locked away in order to properly operate?
Seriously. These intellectual property laws time has passed, and when you look at it in this fashion, it's pretty fucking glaringly obvious.
Lets get talking with open minds about alternatives economic structures that don't leave the creators out in the cold and don't require the poor people to flounder in ignorance any longer than they already have, hey?
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The point is that when there is less available, there is less available, and if no one is selling, you're not getting.
You can have situations where no one is paying for anything and everyone stops doing anything and suddenly there is abject poverty everywhere where only a short time ago there was plenty. But it's not because the money went away, it's because the people stopped having an organizational system, so they just stopped doing anything. Turns out money doesn't mean shit if no one is being industrious.
I think it's important to make the distinction that money isn't wealth, it's leverage. People like to confound the issue by talking about money going away from the artists, writers, musicians, technologists etc and depict scenarios where creativity disappears because no one is paying for it.
It's put forth as an inevitable consequence, but it isn't. The wealth that was putting food in those peoples stomaches, roofs over their heads, and the small little pleasures that make life worth living within their reach didn't just disappear. We don't suddenly not have the capacity to provide for them where before we did.
That's the most important point that needs to be addressed. If you can't break people out of the money-is-wealth mindset, you've already lost, because you really are destroying wealth in the terms a typical economist would use to describe it.
If we don't give them leverage the old-fashioned way, what system will we put in its place to see to it that these people are still cared for by our society.
If we answer that question, and do it well, there is no longer any reason why you, "The One And Only", cannot have a personal copy of the Library of Alexandria for yourself. Seriously, would you like one? I really, really want you to have one dude, that's why I mouth off and try to get people to think outside the box.
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
There's no need to be offensive. What you tell me I can and cannot do with my own computer and Internet connection is irrelevant.
"To insist that you do is communism, you realise that right?"
You appear confused. Communism is a system that uses violent aggression to negate one's right to physical property. If you tell me what I may or may not do with the data on my own hard disk, and whom I may send that data to, that's closer to Communism. A non-belief in copyright is entirely peaceful and non-violent, the very opposite of Communism.
"What natural freedom do you have to get free Hollywood movies?"
Again you miss the point. Hollywood Studios have every right to keep their movies locked in a vault, instead of broadcasting them all over the place, if they don't want anything copied or shared. Ah, but they want special treatment from the government that will let them sell me a DVD, and then tell me what I can and cannot do with my own physical property -- the DVD.
"grow up."
I am grown up enough not engage in ad hominem attacks or replace logic with vulgarities. How about you?
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
"Copyright groups claim study shows unlicensed usage of copyright materials is costing US $2.2 trillion."
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
That is easily offset by the fact that profits from copyrighted materials are credited across the board despite the fact that copyright may not be responsible for those materials existing. After all, there were songs, plays, books, and works of art before copyright and there likely would be movies, books, albums, plays, and works of art if copyright didn't exist today.
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize I already replied to this once with another point but something else has just occurred to me. That is a fairly terrible example. Newspapers couldn't exist without fair use. A fairly huge portion of any given newspaper is spent quoting people interviewed and excerpts of outside sources of information. In fact, if a reporter has done their job, a news article won't really contain any original material of note, just a collection of facts included from outside sources under fair use.
Parent
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Hey man, every time some yahoo walks down the street singing "Free Bird [wikipedia.org], our national value is improved by $0.10. Don't knock it!
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
People that (for example) buy computers and DVD burners and software and tons of blank media to copy movies and music. People that buy iPods to play tracks from the CDs they buy. Etc etc.
Parent
It most certainly is (Score:5, Interesting)
Being able to use the music that *I bought* on whatever playback device I choose is also very much Fair Use.
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