I believe it is undeniable that a good part of the current upheaval in the area of copyright law is related to the changing technology of our time. Well, there’s another side to that coin. As I have pointed out on my own blog from time to time, there was an era when a storyteller was a person who regaled crowds of people wherever they were to be found, be it the fireside, the tavern, or the crossroads. Copyright consisted mostly of the difficulty of copying a true storyteller. The talent was as crucial to the pirated copy as to the original, and a talented person is more likely to want to serve their own muse than to steal the works of another. Herr Gutenberg and his fancy-dancy machine put an end to that need.

I submit that it is entirely possible that the concept of copyright law arose as a specific answer to a specific problem created by a specific technology, that the artists of the time could not have continued to make a living doing what they were doing, and that movable type could have killed off content production as a way of life, or as a form of art.

I further submit that the technological drives of our time could simply need a revolutionary answer of their own. Ok, here’s the part you get to abhor: I have no idea what that answer might be. But I’d like to point out that storytellers survived the invention of the press, and we will survive this, too.

On the subject of copyright, I think a good deal of analysis can be dispensed with because all arguments lead to the same nexus of thought and commerce. The question is whether thoughts can be or should be owned. Yet even on this point I think the debate starts not with an analysis of the concepts involved, but rather from considering what happens if there is no copyright law.

For example, imagine the following:

1) You write a seriously great/entertaining book.

2) You have six dollars in the bank.

3) There is no copyright law.

As soon as you publish your book so that others can read it, here’s what will happen:

1) Someone with very deep pockets will take your book and sell it themselves. They may add content, cut content, or leave it the same, but they will be able to market their version of your book in ways that you cannot. They will know who to cut deals with and they will be able to exploit pre-existing relationships. You will be able to do none of this.

2) Because they have lots of money and you have no money, they will drive massive sales, and you will sell little or no copies of your book.

3) Because you have no exclusive right to the content you created, you cannot sue or in any way compete against the deep-pocketed company.

From this point of view, copyright is a critical right that creators can use not simply to exploit their own content, but to keep from being blown out of the marketplace by rich competitors. Without copyright law — and I think this is probably the most important thing that can be said — there is no reason for producers, distributors or publishers to come to the bargaining table at all.

I can see no counter-argument to this. I can see no benefit to the individual creator from abolishing copyright law. I can only see the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer — and for my money we’ve institutionalized enough such inequity in our laws already.

Protecting the right to copyright individual expressions protects the individual. I am unwilling to entertain any suggestion that we do away with this protection.