p2p news / p2pnet: “In my job I am so enmeshed in the current copyright reform process in Canada (hell, there is a meeting of the Creator’s Rights Alliance going on down the hall from me right now) it is sometimes hard to pull back and get real perspective, but real perspective is the thing most needed right now, as far as I can tell,” posts John Degen on his blog.

“I’m confused,” he continues. “Please explain. Why the intense anger and recrimination from the anti-copyright, or copyleft crowd? Their blogs seem filled with bile - check out Copyrightwatch.ca, faircopyright.ca, excess copyright, the ever-angry Russell McOrmond in this letter to The Hill Times, or the less angry Michael Geist at michaelgeist.ca.

“Compare all that high blood pressure argumentation with the calm, rational approach of Canada’s creative community at creatorscopyright.ca.”

And there’s more. Go here to read it.

Meanwhile, here’s McOrmond’s response. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If some copyright is good, is more is better?

I invite John Degen and everyone else to continue this conversation. I live in Ottawa, and I’ll buy him a meal next time he’s in town and would like to chat.

If all the people who have written comments on their own websites could provide links then we can all read them.

I have to admit to being very confused by John Degen’s views expressed on his blog.

For literary works, he seems to think collective licensing, whether voluntary, extended or statutory (I can define in later article), is a good idea. He’s a strong supporter of Access Copyright, a royalty collecting administrative body for a mixture of voluntary and extended licensing. Access Copyright is also a lobby group, lobbying for more extended and statutory licenses into non-traditional areas such as the Internet.

Access Copyright is dominated by paper-publishers (I’m told mostly the educational publishers), as well as some authors who use those publishing methods. The Internet marketplace is very different than paper publishing, with a very different set of copyright holders. These Internet-publishing creators use a wider spectrum of business models that include, but aren’t limited to, those used for paper.

I also strongly believe that once adequate studies are done, it will be found Access Copyright members don’t represent a significant repertoire of works on the public (no membership/password required) part of the Internet, and thus any attempt to administrate an “extended” license should be rejected.

When it comes to private copies of music such as downloads onto iPods or other personal music devices, Mr Degen seems to be opposed to the statutory licensing system that was created by Sheila Copps. This is the much discussed “private copying regime”, which has both its supporters and its detractors.

Why is what Access Copyright is doing a good thing when they reach beyond their repertoire, but the legalization of putting any music from any source on your personal music devices (as long as you don’t share this music) with a payment to the CPCC for “blank audio recording media” a bad thing?

Either authors (and other copyright holders) and their audiences should be able to privately negotiate business arrangements (whether royalty licensing or otherwise), or the government should “step in” with a non-voluntary regime (extended or statutory licensing) and bureaucratically impose these arrangements.

The non-voluntary regimes area is one where there’s disagreement among the people John Degen incorrectly suggested was “one side”.

Michael Geist, a law professor, author and editor, has been a proponent of collective licensing for unauthorized music filesharing. This is a system that would mirror the regimes that legalized the recording industry (payments to composers/publishers/etc) and the common practises broadcasters (”right of remuneration” replacing copyright for music, as well as the “retransmission” regime for television).

I strongly agree with his goal, which is to keep private citizens out of the courts for doing things that shouldn’t have resulted in lawsuits in the first place. I worry about the unintended consequence of such a non-voluntary regime perpetuating the existing “superstar” system at the expense of the vast majority of musicians. When the government steps in and imposes a business model, this tends to freeze the marketplace such that the incumbents never being able to be unseated by innovators.

As an author, I prefer the bureaucrats stayed away from my creativity. I don’t personally support “collective” royalty-collecting regimes, and use alternatives for my own creativity. Where these regimes are voluntary I can live with them as both my customers and I can “opt out”, but I have a big problem with extended or statutory licensing as it removes all the control and choice that copyright holders and their audiences would otherwise have.

Note to John: For a system to be “voluntary,” it means my customers and I can “opt out”. Sayine you’re not “forcing me to collect a cheque from a collective” only infuriates people. If my customers can’t “opt out” of payments to a collective and use competitors, then there’s no money to pay these competitors and their businesses die.

In my business, the collective societies fill the same roll of stopping the flow of money to me as infringement does in your business.

I think this is long enough for now. I’ll end with a copy of a reply I just posted on my own blog.

I’m not comfortable with this pro-vs-anti copyright type of language. I’m not anti-copyright, even though an Ottawa Citizen article in 2002 used that as the headline.

When compared to those who believe “if some copyright is good, more is better” I seem anti-copyright. To those who want copyright to just go away, I seem strongly pro-copyright.

I believe that copyright is to creativity like water is to humans; too little and you dehydrate and die, too much and you drown and die.

John Degen seems to believe creators are dehydrated, and I believe creators are drowning. Unfortunately the debate is not yet at the maturity to allow John and I to discuss the issues as his community is still of the mistaken belief that we want creators to die.

John Degen and I both want to retain our control over our creativity, but have very different ideas of how to achieve this. He calls what I do “giving away” as I don’t charge per-copy royalties. I call what he does “giving away” as he gives up his control to a statistically driven bureaucracy (Access Copyright, Copyright Board, etc) which works well for the “superstars” but screws most creators.

Neither John Degen or I are “anti-Copyright”, if you ignore his unfounded accusations for the moment. We are both trying to make a living at our creativity, and at least one of us is fighting for the right of authors and their audiences to have a full spectrum of choices of methods of production, distribution and funding.

Russell McOrmond - p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons).]

Also See:
Go here - Anti-copyright: a rebel sell?, February 10, 2006

This entry was posted on Monday, February 13th, 2006 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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