Comments on: “Copyright is Effectively Dead”

By: Timothy Li

Timothy Li — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 15:37:30 +0000

Thanks for the link to the audio broadcast Rob.

I worked in a DRM project last year during the whole Broadcast Flag deed. Frankly after seeing how it’s done, DRM technology stopped making sense to me, at least the implementation part.

But it was quite interesting to hear that DRM has found a better fundation in the music industry and the “multi bitrate” and “pay for number of access” models are such delightful ideas. :)

By: FieldNotes: Notes on the Anthropology of British Columbia » Is Copyright Still Respected?

Sat, 29 Apr 2006 00:28:08 +0000

[...] Rob Hyndman has another great post today, asking whether or not copyright is dead.Â It’s part of a larger conversation about file sharing and the fact that many people will download music and other kinds of files despite the fact they know that it is illegal to do so. [...]

By: Rob Hyndman

Rob Hyndman — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 18:39:16 +0000

The right to record a broadcast for one’s own personal use, for example. Or the right to consume media on whatever device one wishes to use, eg.

By: Tad McIlwraith

Tad McIlwraith — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 17:21:10 +0000

User rights? What rights would these include? Kaavya Viswanathan, the Harvard sophmore who used too much of another’s book in her own novel, is getting raked over the coals right now. I don’t really understand what rights the movie industry, for example, should cede to the user.

By: Rob Hyndman

Rob Hyndman — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 17:01:22 +0000

Tad – I think the article was a good bit of hyperbole, to be sure. But I do think it’s true that there’s an enormous appetite for change – to a regime, for example, that has user rights more vigorously baked in. It’s going to take a lot of dollars to do it, though. The copylobby has to be one of the more powerful lobbies out there and its resources are seemingly inexhaustible. Maybe this is why Hollywood movies “never make money” :)

By: Rob Hyndman

Rob Hyndman — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 16:56:47 +0000

And I think the latter is far more likely, TImothy. For example, there’s an excellent discussion in the first This Week in Media podcast (http://twit.tv/node/4074) about the different bitrate model of online music sales – to my mind there’s enormous potential there, and as the labels get more comfortable with the current state of DRM and with online selling generally, they will eventually go there. Same thing with DVDs not being available until some time after a theatrical release – that will come to fade away, too, IMO.

But these behemoths will never, ever be able to respond to the market in a timely way unless the fundamentals change. For now, they are ruled by fear, I think – too afraid of making mistakes to actually make something happen. Which creates an enormous market opportunity. I think a direct-to-market model is definitely workable in music, and I bet Apple gets there reasonably soon.

By: Tad McIlwraith

Tad McIlwraith — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 16:12:55 +0000

Rob … are ‘holding copyright’ and ‘owning intellectual property’ the same things? Or, is ‘owning content’ the same as owning intellectual property? I suspect this discussion as much about the demise of copyright as it is about alternative ways of protecting the legal rights of the owner of the intellectual property. The article you quote seems to suggest that copyright is outdated simply because it is easy now to circumvent it. Am I reading that correctly? What are the alternatives?

Being a luddite who spends a lot of time with books, I am less concerned about people copying my work and more concerned with them doing it without giving me credit when credit is due. Likewise, I expect my (anthropology) students (a consumer, I suppose, of academic intellectual property) to use the copyrighted work of others but also to acknowledge that they do so — even if they get the information via the web or downloaded as an e-book. Is there a parallel here or is this the basis for a different conversation?

By: Timothy Li

Timothy Li — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:55:48 +0000

Hi Rob,
for your conclusion “the market will be bent to its will”, in my very limited understandings, for this to happen, either this will change – “monopoly is absolute” or content owners will eventually embrace the “daylight”. is that correct? :)