Copyright Bout ’09: The Digital v. Physical Distinction – Round One
Mark Barrett commented on my last post, the aim of which was to attempt to begin to examine the underpinnings of copyright. The substance of his comment was the idea that there was no way to protect against corporations (or rich companies/people) from exploiting the copyrights of an individual without copyright law. I thought about this for awhile, trying to find a counter argument.
When I read Mark’s comment, his arguments made sense to me, and I realized that some of our differences could be resolved (or, at the very least, explained) by outlining how we differ in a key area of the copyright debate: digital versus physical.
I know I’ve been talking about copyright from this angle already, but I feel there is more to be examined here, since I think the internet (the digital) is as revolutionary as the printing press was way back when – it represents a paradigm shift so vast that the old modes won’t work anymore.
Mark explains a theoretical situation in his comment – a guy writes an amazing novel but has no money. Without copyright, a rich publishing company steals the book and publishes it, paying the author nothing. The author is effed just because he has shallower pockets and can’t compete.
Preventing this situation is the reasoning behind copyright in the first place – it’s there to protect the little guy from the big guy. However, it still carries a few assumptions that I’d like to bring to the surface of our discussion:
1. The author will support himself from selling copies of his book.
2. Distributing and selling copies of the book costs money.
3. People will pay for a copy of a book.
4. People like physical copies of books.
Mark’s theoretical (and before copyright law, actual) situation hinges on the idea that the rich company has more resources to publish the book – they own the presses and the distribution networks. The poor author does not have those things. Thus, without copyright, the author cannot compete.
However, digital distribution blows all that away. With the internet, bit torrent, and other distribution channels, authors can distribute their works digitally for virtually nothing. In Mark’s example, the author has six bucks in his checking account. That’s pretty low, because there is a difference between virtually nothing and nothing, even it’s just the 50 bucks a year I spend for hosting costs. There are free distribution networks out there – Scribd, Wattpad, etc, but the internet is required for those things. Six bucks won’t get you internet, though I wonder how this hypothetical author is living, if he only has six bucks. Maybe in his Ma’s basement. If that’s the case, the dude should bug his old lady until she gets AOL or something. Or he should get a job.
Anyway, the copyright discussion we’re really having here needs to address those four hinge-points above, so let’s go through them one by one:
1. The author will support himself from selling copies of his book. Digital distribution, at least without DRM (or with DRM, but that’s easily crackable), does not allow for the author to profit from selling copies of the book, or at the very least, profit is limited. Other models are needed, that’s true. Finding another model should be part of our discussion, but we’ve already talked about those a little and I don’t want to get sidetracked by them here.
2. Distributing and selling copies of the book costs money. Printing costs, shipping fees, bribes for Wal-Mart product buyers, and all that stuff doesn’t exist with digital distribution. These things are virtually free. So this is a non-issue.
3. People will pay for a copy of a book. This applies to physical books, but people will still do things to circumvent some of the costs – libraries, second hand shops (from which the author and publisher make nothing) argue that some people will try to get it for free or cheap if they can. With digital distribution, the free (even if illegally pirated) is almost always available. When I tried to find a print publisher for my tech poems, since they’d done pretty well on the internet (for poetry, at least), I was shot down at every turn, even before the small houses read my manuscript. I was always told, “you can’t compete with free.” That’s true. But with a different business model, authors shouldn’t have to. But then, corporations won’t be able to, either.
4. People like physical copies of books. This is a tough one, since printing and physical distribution cost money and our hypothetical author has shallow pockets. Now, there are book-printing kiosks available in some places, but those are probably just a stopgap measure. More importantly, I believe that preference for physical print is going away. As smartphones, e-reader devices, and the mythical Apple tablet start to become the favorite reading method, eventually this change will speed up. Physical books are hard to move, take up lots of space, smell funny, get stained, fall apart, and cost the planet an epic amount of trees every year. There are so many advantages to digital books that I believe physical books will eventually become the rarity, once the digital platform becomes more widespread, easier to use, and the old generation dies.
(Note: the old generation dying may sound a little harsh, but that’s how things change. People have a hard time changing their beliefs, but people don’t last forever. They still last awhile, however, and that’s why change is slow. 500 years ago when people began saying the earth orbited the sun, not the other way around, no one believed it except the scientists. However, the scientific community accepted it and began teaching a new generation that was taught this truth from a young, impressionable age. The old died, and lo and behold, the truth became universally accepted. If suddenly we realized the reverse was true, that the earth was the center of the universe (due to some trick of quantum-physics or some other scientific magic), good scientists would look at the proof, and if it was solid, they accept it. But most people wouldn’t. “That’s damn foolery. That’s not what I was taught,” they’d say. However, scientists and teachers would teach the young and eventually the idea would be universally adopted once the old guard died off. That’s how change works. The young are taught young, and the old eventually die. It’s sad, but it’s true. I believe the same thing will happen with humanity’s transition to the digital in the next X (or probably XX) number of years. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled discussion…)
The real issue with copyright is not that the corporation can rip off the author’s work and leave the author with nothing. Digital distribution does that already. The author needs to find a new business model. That’s a cold fact. Whether it is corporations or piracy, the author needs to make money from something other than selling copies of work.
So my argument to Mark (and everyone else) is this: yes, it’s sad for that author who is relying on the old publishing model. In that model, copyright is a necessity, since the author does not have the resources to fight in the same arena as the big guys. However, this is only an issue in physical publishing. With digital publishing, this is not an issue. And therein lies the disconnect. This whole time I’ve been considering copyright from a digital standpoint, not a physical one. From a physical one, all the old arguments still apply. However, remove the physical, and most of the justifications for copyright drop away.
If I release a digital book for free, there is no reason for corporations to rip it off. My book is already out there for free. There is no way for them to make money from it unless they are going to take my digital copy and try to sell it (which is unethical, but I guess some people package and sell GPL software and people buy it, but that’s makes the consumer who didn’t research first the stupid one. And corporations will always capitalize on stupidity) or by selling print copies of my book. They can’t win in the digital market, but they can still win in the physical market.
Now, people still want print copies of books, and though I think that’s changing, it gonna be awhile.
So I guess I’m coming to this conclusion: we need a hybrid copyright law that makes the distinction between physical and digital copies, a law that treats them differently. (Keep in mind, we’re talking books here. It’s harder to transition this idea to movies or music, since CD, DVD, and Blueray media is a physical method for digital distribution (meaning you need a device to consume it). Physical books need nothing except a little education to consume. Digital books need a device.)
Anyway, this post is getting pretty long already, so I’ll examine what a hybrid copyright law might look like in the next post. We’ll take a look at some of the methods to define what’s physical and what’s digital, talk about the reasoning behind it, and maybe take a whack at what the ecosystem could look like.
Until next time, this is mispeled signing off with a famous (and probably copyrighted) line from Edward R. Murrow (not because I see myself as a muckraker, but simply because I like the weighty gravitas of the thing): good night and good luck.
Tags: copyright, digital vs physical
