In my last post I mentioned that I wanted to do one more post about copyright, detailing what a physical/digital hybrid copyright system might look like. I apologize for the delay in this follow-up post, but it’s been a pretty busy time at work in the last few weeks. I wasn’t allowed to mention why we were so busy until the deal went through, but now I’m able to talk about it. The company I work for was bought by a larger company, so transitioning to new systems, getting everything in order, soothing clients, and finishing up projects created a pretty hectic schedule. Now it’s winding down a little and I have free time again, so I can get back to our copyright conversation. Thanks for waiting.

Anyhow, I don’t want to retread already discussed ground, so let’s get right to the heart of the thing: I believe a hybrid copyright system is needed to address both physical and digital copyright issues. Specifically, the issue involved is money. I believe that copyright should be abolished, at least for text in the digital realm. I think that authors should find new business models for making a living in order to become professionals at their craft.

In the digital realm, releasing work to the public is not the financial burden it once was, since digital distribution is virtually free. However, without a copyright, there is nothing to prevent a corporation from taking a popular online work and sending it to the printing press, printing out copies to sell and make money, and more importantly, stiffing the author from making any money print copies of their works garner.

So here’s a possible solution – copyright should only apply to physical, print copies of works. Let’s walk through a couple of scenarios to see how this might play out:

We have an author named Lisa, and Lisa writes a book called “Happy Times in Hamtown: A Piggy’s Memoir.” She tries to get published via the traditional models, through agent query and all that noise, but gets no bites. Maybe her book is bad, or too niche, or maybe she just can’t write a cover letter to save her life. So after a year of rejection notices (or, that awful crime: no notification at all), Lisa decides that putting her book out to be read is more important than making money from it.
Lisa starts a website to host her book, or she releases it on a few of the document hosting sites: Scribd, Wattpad, etc, and gets her work out there. She isn’t trying to make any money, but puts a Paypal donation button on her site, just in case anyone wants to donate.

Lo and behold, Lisa’s book becomes pretty popular on the net. Even she didn’t foresee how much the story of Larry the pig’s life in Hamtown would pull at people’s heart strings and fly off the digital databases. Since it’s copyright free, Lisa’s book is passed around to whomever wants to read it, first via her website or the mainstream distribution sites, but eventually through newsgroups, bit torrent, email, and news servers.

Not many people use Lisa’s paypal button (She makes a grand totally of $27.13 over six months), but at least her work is being read. Sometimes, that’s enough. For her next book, she’s considering trying to find a sponsor or maybe create a threshold release system on her website – releasing a chapter to the public once a threshold has been reached, say, 5 bucks for the first chapter, 10 bucks for the second, and so on. Once the threshold is reached, she releases the next chapter to everyone. She’s not really sure, but is willing to try it, since she’s got a little bit of a name now and might be able to swing some donations.

Anyway, Dingus McGee Publishing, though woefully behind about what’s cool on the internet, stumbles across Lisa’s book about a year after it’s released. In a world with no copyright, Dingus McGee Publishing nabs the book and prints 10,000 copies to sell at 15 bucks a pop. Since there is no copyright, Dingus McGee is legally able to do this.

Now, here’s the reason behind hybrid copyright – preventing this situation. In order to get unlimited and wide digital distribution of her book, Lisa is happy that there is no copyright on her book. It allows people to pass it to someone else for free, with no legal concerns, and this is one of the reasons her book did so well on the internet. However, it also allows Dingus McGee Publishing to grab it, print it, and make money without compensating her.

Digital works should be copyright-less, since there are no costs save author costs (And Lisa is already looking into business models for her next book). Distribution costs nothing and there are no printing costs. More so, digital copyright should not exist because it is completely unfeasible to track down all the infringers. Since putting up work on the internet costs nothing, there are a potential 7 billion copyright infringers on the planet. How do you track down and sue all the people who infringe the copyright? You can’t. It’s not possible. And why have a law on the books that isn’t enforceable? It’s silly. Better to be well read and release the work copyright free.

However, physical printing costs money. Physical distribution costs money. It requires resources. It requires a company to have connections, a network, an expensive printing press. It requires them to be in the phone book. I’m not an advocate of registration of any kind, but being a physical printer requires a type of “social” registration. People know who you are, because your operation requires resources, and resources require public knowledge. You are sue-abl e because you’re findable. But more importantly: you’re out to make money. And if you make money off an author’s work, you owe the author money.

The reasoning, beyond what I’ve already stated, is simple: no costs = free release, for profit = compensation. Dingus McGee Publishing must pay Lisa to print physical copies of her work and sell them, even if she released the book on the internet for free. This is an enforceable system, since Dingus McGee Publishing is in the phone book, they have assets, whereas Mike from Norway, who passed a digital copy of Lisa’s book to Steve in Germany – he’s not in the phonebook, at least in the sense we’re talking about. Of course, Mike from Norway also isn’t trying to sell the book to Steve – he’s giving it away for free, since it’s digital.

Does this make sense? Now, let’s compile the caveats before anyone freaks out:

As I’ve been saying all along, this is a system for books, text, whatever, not music and films. The reasoning is multifaceted, but stems on text being a “consume once” media, while music and films are a “consume many times” media. More importantly, however, it’s about business. Music and films cost must more to produce, so their business models must be different. Books, separated from printing and distribution costs, take only the author’s time. Time only costs a reasonable lifestyle, which authors should be providing by finding new business models to support themselves.

Why should Lisa just not sell digital copies of her book? This is a tough one, and the best argument against abolishing copyright, so let’s look at it a little deeper.
First of all, there is nothing stopping Lisa from selling digital copies of her book. However, there is nothing stopping Mike from Norway from buying the first digital copy of her book and releasing it for free, whether her books is under copyright or not. Sure, things like DRM will make it more complicated, but the headache and inability to track Mike from Norway down as the guy who first leaked the book is very, very difficult.

Now, some might say that the headache of managing a pay system for digital copies still means more cash in hand for the author. That’s a decent argument, and very possible. It remains to be seen how new authorial business models will work. However, there’s still going to be a lot of piracy, because it’s hard to compete with free. This inability to compete with free is also what would likely prevent companies to try to sell digital copies of Lisa’s book, although some companies do try to get away with selling GPL software, so you never know.

The third major point I see someone raising is that Dingus McGee Publishing wouldn’t try to sell a print copy of the book anyway, if the digital copy was available for free. To this I say two things: 1. Good. Physical print is wasteful and dying. If they can’t sell books, that’s fine – it gives people more money to support authors instead of publishing companies. And, 2: yeah, right. People like to collect stuff and still want physical media for video games and movies. Physical copies aren’t going anywhere for awhile, even if the market diminishes.

The only reason the market for the physical media for music is dying is because of mp3 players, which can’t consume physical media anyway. As long as people use televisions, DVD, and Blueray players to consume films, and PS3’s and Xboxes to consume video games, there will be people who want physical media. Only when the playback device can no longer consume physical media will demand for physical media slow and die. (Sony recently tried it with video games – it was called the PSP Go and it’s a friggin’ failure.) But we’re talking books, anyway. Phyical books need no device to consume them, so it’s unlikely they will ever go out of style completely, despite people like me clamoring for the death of print.

Anyway, this post is already gargantuan, so I’m going to end it here, having accomplished my objective, which was to talk about a hybrid copyright system.

Thoughts? Flames? Ice Cream?