Copyright in Digital Media, Not the Solution to Digital Piracy - Essay Example

12 April Copyright in Digital Media, Not the Solution to Digital Piracy Copyright protection is war, a war between big media firms and digital pirates and free-riding consumers. Not! This black-and-white viewpoint of what digital media ought to be limits the deliberation on how different stakeholders can work on a common solution to digital piracy. Copyright in digital media seems to be the best path in ending digital piracy with its punitive approach to violators, but it is not truly the best when other alternatives are easily dismissed. This article is prepared for the opinion pages of The New York Times, specifically fitting the debate on copyright in digital media. It opposes the highly punitive and restrictive approach to copyright in digital media because it has not and will not solve digital piracy and instead, innovative business models with collectivistic values can help curb it. Increasingly punitive copyright laws are not effective in ending digital piracy because technology is faster than lawmaking. Several laws have been passed for the past twenty-five years that support copyrighted media, but up to now, digital media continue to be pirated and shared through P2P and other networking systems. The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA) provides a structure that implements a system of copyright protections, which include important automatic restrictions with criminal and civil sanctions, wherein they generally define “knowledge as an asset more than a public resource” (Filby 207). The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) reinforced the CDPA, as it treated various media products as corporate assets, even when they were previously perceived and used as public resources. Despite these laws, digital media piracy continues, particularly affecting the industries of movies, TV shows, and music. Corporate media firms allege that they are losing billions of dollars because of piracy and free content sharing online. Supporters of stricter copyright policies promote the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in Congress and its Senate bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These bills aim to stop websites and organizations, including those outside the United States, from selling or sharing pirated copyrighted digital media material and fake counterfeit goods. These are additional laws that will fail as others have because technology changes rapidly enough to support digital piracy and free sharing of copyrighted products. A good example of failed copyright laws is the Rojadirecta Case, where technology facilitates the ineffectiveness of these laws. On February 1, 2011, the U.S. government seized the rojadirecta.com and rojadirecta.org domain names. These websites provided a guide to Internet TV (Picker). Compared to the initial business of Napster, Rojadirecta gives links, not direct hosting, to assist P2P TV (Picker). Rojadirecta might have lost its U.S. domain names, but it easily fixed the problem by establishing new domain names offshore and relocating them to Spain at rojadirecta.es (Picker). In other words, it is back to business as usual. Organizations, groups, and individuals that support free sharing know international laws, and they have a large and supportive network, as well as the money and technology to help them continue their services in any part of the world. Globalization through the Internet has expanded the boundaries and opportunities for these stakeholders. The U.S. government and media corporations can paint them as the bad guys, but for their allies and customers, they are the good guys, who are using technology for freedom of speech and digital media content. Thus, the case of Rojadirecta shows that people with technology will always find a way to circumvent these copyright laws because they believe that they are right in using digital media as public resources. The tighter the laws, the more rebelliously creative they become. What should the government do instead? Look away as digital pirates sell content that others own and many customers pay for? No, this is not the proposed solution. I do not support digital pirates because they are making money from digital media that they did not pay for. These pirates steal digital media content for their own economic interests and this is wrong. On the contrary, I encourage ideas of collaboration and interaction among stakeholders. One example is reported in an article from Chloe Albanesius, who writes for PC Magazine. In her article, she depicts the process of Copyright Alert System. The system lessens lawsuits against ISPs for being intermediaries of prevalent peer-to-peer sharing (Albanesius). I support this system because ISPs should also do their best to avoid copyright infringement. A long-term resolution to digital piracy begins with collaboration among various stakeholders. My recommendations involve different options that respond to various stakeholder concerns, and not limited to a restrictive approach that current copyright laws promote. One of the resolutions can provide win-win solutions to media firms and P2P supporters and clients. Critics assert that the DMCA offers more protection for content owners than for the public (Harvard Law Review; Wright). As public resources, users should not be punished for freely accessing and sharing digital media, since they are not economically benefitting from them (Wright). In her article for the University of Baltimore Intellectual Property Law, Kristen M. Cichoki offers an alternative licensing structure for digital content that will benefit publishers, libraries, and library patrons. Her recommendation includes a rights management scheme that will secure the rights of content owners without alienating public access (Cichoki). Moreover, copyright law must not be too restrictive that it hampers business innovation. Jeffrey A. Tranchtenberg of the Wall Street Journal reports on the legal skirmish between a paper publishing and an e-book publishing firm. The e-book firm argues that the paper publishing company reserves the print publishing rights of a particular book, so it must be allowed to sell e-book copies (Tranchtenberg). Punitive copyright laws should not curtail business innovation and lead to monopoly rights. These cases indicate the importance of flexibility, not restrictions, to copyright laws, so that businesses and consumers can maximize the benefits of digital media technologies and content. Another affected industry of digital piracy is the music industry, but punitive laws have not at all dented piracy in any significant way, so legislators and media firms should consider other options. David Ratner argues that copyright laws cannot protect digital media ownership. He proposes an alternative business model that can reduce the motivation of illegal sharing. His recommendation centers on a subscription model that offers access to digital media products. Subscribers will only pay a flat fee to pay for music that they can use on any device (Ratner). The flexibility of sharing one product across all mobile and communications technologies, as if in a cloud system, is one of the appeals of P2P-shared media. Subscription fees will be paid to artists, according to the popularity of their songs (Ratner). The pooling of resources can decrease product prices to levels low enough that users will be encouraged to pay for them. Media firms should not dictate prices, but the demand for it should. I have suggestions of my own, where media firms can earn money, but not as high as they may have wanted. I personally propose that firms should transform digital media into a free service with advertisements. Movies can be accessed for free, as long as advertisements are side-by-side it. Or, users only have to watch one commercial, and then he/she can access the entire digital media product. Companies can even offer more movies and other kinds of benefits, if users are willing to share the commercial in their tweets and other social networking sites. This way, media firms are making money from “free” products through including advertisements, in the same way that TV media firms make money. Media firms might say that they do not have to give anything for free, if consumers will pay for it. This is the problem. Not many people want to pay for these products. They want it for free or for a very low price, since they will only watch it one time. Another proposition is that firms can offer a low-resolution version for free and a high-resolution version for a minimal price. The high-resolution version should include something more, like director’s cut and interviews with actors, directors, and other important people to the movie, so that consumers will be stimulated to pay for them. The crux of my position is that firms should accept the reality that people can find a way to get the product for free, so if these firms cannot offer added-value that consumers want, they will continuously find ways to access digital media for free. Aside from alternative business models that can promote purchasing behaviors among consumers, media firms and consumers of shared or pirated media should also consider the concept of Creative Commons. Michael Filby, a Lecturer in Law at the University of Hertfordshire, argues that the restraining and punitive approach to digital media copyright is not the best and solitary solution to copyright infringement. He believes that the Creative Commons will help resolve the conflicting issues of diverse stakeholders. The Creative Commons was formed as a non-profit organization in 2001, an entity that the Centre for Public Domain supported (Filby 217). The founders of Creative Commons are law professor Lawrence Lessig, who has published extensively copyright regulation; Eric Eldred, whom Lessig represented when the former legally challenged the constitutional soundness of randomly expanding the default copyright term from “life plus 50 years to life plus 70 years in the U.S. Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act 19985; and Hal Abelson, a U.S. computer science professor who participated in Free Software Foundation (Filby 217). These founders envision a socialist digital society, where rights are not limited to owners, but shared between owners and consumers. The main objectives of the Creative Commons are to: …increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in ‘the commons’, the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing, and [to characterize] the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright and the public domain. (Filby 217). Founders sought to give a more flexible and open substitute to copyright by proposing a set of Creative Commons licenses for the public or any company who can freely use their ideas (Filby 217). The key licenses are drafted on a number of special permissions and stipulations that licensors can customize to produce the final complete series of licenses. Each basic Creative Commons license consists of an Attribution term that conserves the “moral right of paternity through the inclusion of a requirement for future users to attribute the work to its author no matter how it is used” (Filby 217). Thus, attribution does not promote plagiarism. Creative Commons contains cybersocialism that Filby envisions. Though his vision is not something that for-profit firms root for, his recommendations ensure the IP rights of the actual makers of digital media, such as writers and scriptwriters. The opposing sides of copyright in digital media must find common interests. No one side can impose one law unto another because success will not be attained in the long run, as conflicts brew and grow underneath these punitive copyright laws. Instead of restricting access to digital media, other business models and public resource sharing frameworks must be explored. The answer to the battle between media content owners and non-paying users is not war. The answer is peace- a peaceful negotiation and flexibility in options, so that win-win solutions can be realistically attained. Works Cited Albanesius, Chloe. “Pirates Beware, ISPs Agree to Copyright Alert System.” PC Magazine 30.8 (Aug.2011): 1. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. Academic Search Complete. Cichocki, Kristen M. “Unlocking the Future of Public Libraries: Digital Licensing that Preserves Access.” University of Baltimore Intellectual Property Law, 29. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. Lexis Nexis Academic. Filby, Michael. “Regulating File Sharing: Open Regulation for an Open Internet.” Journal of International Commercial Law & Technology 6.4 (Oct. 2011): 207-223. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. Academic Search Complete. Harvard Law Review. “Intellectual Property -- Eighth Circuit Holds that the First Amendment Protects Online Fantasy Baseball Providers' Use of Baseball Statistics in the Public Domain. -- C.B.C. Distribution & Marketing, Inc. v. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, L.P.” Harvard Law Review 121.5 (2008): 1439-1454. Web. 29 Mar. 2013. Academic Search Complete. Picker, Randal C. “The Yin and Yang of Copyright and Technology.” Communications of the ACM 55.1 (2012): 30-32. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. Academic Search Complete. Ratner, David. “Music 2.0 -- The Future Of Delivering Music Digitally,” University of Denver Sports & Entertainment Law Journal 136. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. Lexis Nexis Academic. Tranchtenberg, Jeffrey A. “New Fight Breaks out over Digital Rights to Old Books.” Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition 259.8 (11 Jan. 2012): B7-B7. Web. 27 Mar. 2013. Academic Search Complete. Read More