Fair Use Worth More Than Copyright To Economy 274
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."
ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is "worth more" is irrellevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Meaningless numbers don't help the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:ok (Score:5, Insightful)
Trillion??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
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.
Re:ok (Score:5, Insightful)
If only they could give the true value of Fair Use rights in this report: priceless.
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.
Comment removed (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.
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:ok (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Creative Commons needs a better fair use plan t (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:Good Idea, Wrong Model (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 stinks and their CEOs can't see past the $$$ signs erected during the 1990s. The world's changed since then, they haven't adapted.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Re:Good Idea, Wrong Model (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:Advertising $$$ (Score:3, Insightful)
That's probably true. "Fair use exception" rarely allows for commercial content, as to do otherwise would crush an original author's ability to make any profit for an original idea. The exception tends to lie in reviews and criticisms. And in that field, review sites, online newspapers, and online magazines rather fit the bill.
Now, this I somewhat disagree with. I don't believe 80% of Internet "content" is commercial in nature. Most comes in the form of personal webpages, blogs, and all sorts of other personal content. Look at how many posts that exist on /. that don't rely upon fair use exceptions. Now, if you wanted to talk about *quantity* of content that flows through the internet, I'd still disagree. It seems ~50% of internet traffic is piracy (bittorent/p2p). I don't think the lack of fair use exceptions would decrease that.
It's funny you say that, since a majority of commercial copyright ventures outside the internet are done through corporations/companies that buy their original content from other people. Having said that, if it is the case that fair use exceptions allow for others to gain revenue, then it's a tautology that removing fair use exceptions will remove that revenue (since the classification will no longer exist). Of course, that just means more revenue from piracy.
Tell that to Disney. Seriously, though, not all economies are based upon copyrights (or patents). In fact, such economies may very well be inately doomed to failure. But, yea, since the US's economy *is* based highly upon copyright, it does need more original works to avoid "[running] out of gas". Or, you know, we could try to change the US's economy to rely less upon copyright, given how fragile copyright is.
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)
Re:Capitalist doesn't have to be pro-economy (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad that system only works (and the theory explicitly STATES this) when no particular entity has too much control over it. Then, that entity becomes a parasite. Much of what we call free market capitalism today is in reality that sort of parasitic relationship.
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.
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.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Get rid of currency and people have no problem going back to what money represents. That's why there'll always be bartering, as people use their own work / energy as relative currency to another's. As an aside, the reason gold was originally the first most valuable and widely used 'currency' everywhere is because it is, in an of itself, a very useful material. It has heft, which humans like, it is colorful (lustre) and aesthetically pleasing, it does not rust or break down, it is easily made into many things, and it is scarce. So you could make a case for gold being intrinsically valuable, but currently "money" (paper and electronic numbers in a bank's database) have no value at all. Coins are the vestigial holdout, and seem to be nearly extinct in the U.S. anyway. People don't bother to pick up a dropped quarter on the ground anymore! So much for the Almight Dollar...
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.
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.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
But, you're ignoring the fact that human beings did not create or produce oxygen; we just found oxygen all around us. Books, movies, etc. are completely different, because people created those works.
Morality is concerned with human action, not just the current state of things. So, yes, creative works became plentiful after they were created. But that tells us nothing about whether or not it is moral to copy those works.
A similar argument would be, "Terrorist attacks and earthquakes are similar, because in both cases, a lot of people die. But we don't punish anyone for an earthquake, so why should we punish anyone for a terrorist attack?" The argument notes the final state of things (i.e. people died), but fails to ask the relevant moral question (i.e. How did people die?). In the same way, you note the final state of things (i.e. a certain type of good is plentiful), but fail to ask the relevant moral question (Why is that type of good plentiful?). And so, you draw no moral distinction between breathing oxygen and copying creative works.
I'm a little rusty on economics... (Score:3, Insightful)
Joe spends $1000 a year on media
Therefore $1000 of his money re-enters the economy, going the the record labels and the stores he bought his music from
Joe spends $500 a year on media, and copies $500 "worth" of media from friends, etc
Therefore $500 of his money re-enters the economy, going the the record labels and the stores he bought his music from. The $500 he WOULD have spent does not vanish from the economy - it'll be spent on somethign else instead. Joe now has $500 of disposable income that'll only be "lost" to the economy if he takes his Benjamins and burns them.
Joe spends $0 a year on media and is a prolific internet pirate. $300 dollars a year goes to his ISP for a fast internet connection, $200 a year go to hard drive and DVD-R manufacturers, and yet again we have an "extra" $500 that Joe will spend on something other than a media cartel. Perhaps he'll buy an Xbox, or enroll on a mechanics course. Perhaps he'll blow it on beer. But at no point is him not spending money on $a_product destroying his ability to spend it on $b_product instead.
The only difference between any of these scenarios is the amount of money that goes to any particular industry (Joe's pyromaniac tendencies notwithstanding). All of these arguments that $activity will [add|subtract] $dollars from the economy are specious.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you disagree that there are those that sincerely believe we should pay to read them? Baby Boomers and those preceding got that information is power, but they associated it with gold, the need to control and pay per use. Why can't information be associated with a credit system, rather than a debit system like most (all?) economies? I think this is what the OP was arguing with his references to oxygen and German/Russian currencies. If the poorest of the poor is already rich, then the only inequalities in societies would be a result of the inequalities of equals. (apologies W. Churchill)
If the library of Alexandria had been spread around a little more, we may still have a lot of those texts with us today. How many more texts that may or may not be of value to future generations will be lost because we continue to restrict access and availabilities?
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Using your logic anybody that's ever used the omnipresent (or do I have to use the word ubiquitous with someone so hip and edgy?) slashdot car analogy is just stupid and wrong because computers don't have transmission fluid.
You're being a shit while completely avoiding the point the GP is making, it kinda makes you look like -YOU- don't know what you're talking about, but are too cool (or afraid, yeah, probably afraid) to say so.
I was going to use my time to explain it to you, but after a quick review of your posts, I can see that you don't WANT it explained to you, you want to be derisive and seem (that's an important word, seem) knowledgeable while saying nothing of value.
As long as he has wealth, yes (Score:1, Insightful)
You could then take all his money. His wealth is the resources he is able to use to continue life. And that isn't a piece of paper.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
It's me whos done all the hard work and the journalist has just stolen it and even worse he's then sold it on for profit. I'd like to see the copyright laws strengthened in this area so anything which I have seen is protected and can't be relayed or re-imaged without my say so.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Whoever creates those works doesn't really do so for the money, but for the wealth. Now due to the organization of our society, more money usually means more wealth. However that's not a law of nature, as e.g. inflation shows. Therefore the correct question to ask is not: How would the creator get the money he deserves for his work, but: How does the creator get the wealth he deserves for his work.
Or in short: If I understand him correctly, he means that capitalism (i.e. usig money as way to represent your share of wealth) isn't really a good fit for information. And it's not a good fit because information can easily be copied, i.e. as soon as a certain information exists, there's plenty of that. Which means information, once created, doesn't really have any economic value. The economic value it gets in our society comes from making it an artificially scarce resource through applying copyright. Now those copyright schemes get harder to defend due to copying getting easier, which is why all those technical and legal measures are created (DRM, DMCA). All this harms society as a whole.
Now what the OP suggests is basically that instead of trying to "fix" the plentiness of information in order to get capitalism work right on information, instead economy should change to accomodate the real economics of information, that is, find ways to give the creators the wealth they deserve through other means than capitalism.
Now I don't know what a good alternative could be, of if it really exists, but as long as capitalism is treated as a dogma rather than as the tool it actually is, we will not find out.
The current situation in a nutshell (a note: when I speak of new information in the following, I actually mean valuable new information, not just some crap anybody could produce):
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize it isn't a big enough pie to go around? If you wanted a cut you shouldn't have told the reporter, you should have advised them that someone will have to pay for your story.
Fair Use vs Copyright (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple's iTunes Ringtones and Complex World of Copyright Law [roughlydrafted.com]
Why copyright law involves more complex issues than many seem to recognize, and why we need to start caring about it.