Intellectual Property. In today's world, it's a necessary designation. Without copyright law, people could invest huge amounts of time into a book, a software project, or a film only to have it redistributed for free or sold by those without the legal right to it. The premise makes total sense, and few would deny that copyright law should exist.
But the ideal world is not the real world, and in the real world copyright is broken. I've been saying it for years, but just recently there have been a few developments that have forced me to take a fresh look at things. I'm not arrogant enough to delude myself that more than a half dozen people will ever read this, and so I'll resign myself to the fact that this article is largely to codify my own thoughts. But in the interest of readability I'll try to keep this as concise as possible.
I participated in the SOPA blackout last Wednesday more for solidarity than in expectation that anyone would take note of my site's removal. Due to the ad nauseum coverage of the topic in the blogosphere I won't say much about SOPA/PIPA. To me, the bigger story is Chris Dodd flaunting the MPAA's bribery of the Obama administration. Seriously, WTF. We need to get the money out of politics, or this will cease being a democracy and turn into a plutocracy.
The other thing I read that just chapped my ass is the news of a supreme court decision that public domain works can be copyrighted anew. I can understand the claim that the matter doesn't touch on the constitution - public domain isn't free speech - but that doesn't mean that this decision is right or that it makes any sense. I'm not a lawyer and don't have that great an understanding of how far-reaching this decision actually is. But if some corporation can come in and copyright Mozart or Mark Twain, I will be pissed.
The public domain is what allows great sites like Project Guterberg and Audiobooks For Free to exist. Jules Verne, HG Wells, Lewis Carroll, and Charles Dickens won't be upset that someone else is depriving their great-great-great-great grandsons of income. Heck - there are probably 314 descendants that would want to split the cash anyway.
Movies use the public domain all the time. Scrooged, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, and every remake of Alice in Wonderland, War of the Worlds, or The Three Musketeers you've ever seen relies on the public domain. Ditto Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Peter Pan, and even The Wizard of Oz and its various spin-offs. Without the public domain, I'll guarantee you that classic movie monsters wouldn't have the popularity they do today. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and even the original George Romero film Night of the Living Dead all fall under the public domain, and look at the wealth of vampire and zombie books and movies out there.
I'll spare you the countless articles I could link about the billions of dollars the MPAA says they're losing to movie piracy. Those books are as overcooked as the roast my family made for Christmas this year. It's been many years since I first heard someone point out that the college student who downloaded $12,000 of music from Napster wouldn't have actually spent that money on CDs if Napster wasn't available in 1999. It seems like a no-brainer, but this is the kind of math that the RIAA does to calculate their numbers, and then they double the figures just to be safe.
I've got a ton of respect for authors such as Cory Doctorow and Scott Sigler who make their complete catalogs of fiction available online for free. They feel that obscurity is a bigger problem than piracy. Know what? Despite making their works available freely online, both authors regularly appear on the New York Times bestseller lists.
Lots of people today get their media through illicit filesharing. This is at least in part because the distribution channels are effed up. Digital distribution of video games is well-covered by services such as Steam, GameFly, Direct2Drive, and the new EA Origin service. If you're pirating games, then I've got no sympathy for you. Even movies I understand, even if I don't condone the practice. The theater-going experience isn't what it once was. Home theaters have improved quite a lot, and people can be obnoxious with cell phones during public movie screenings.
Television is a different matter. There once was a time when you'd turn on your TV, sans cable, and watch whatever was on. Boy have things gotten more complex.
Let's say that there's a guy - for purposes of illustration we'll call him Schmeg - and he likes four TV shows: Dexter, Game of Thrones, Fringe, and The Walking Dead. These are on four different networks, and three of them aren't available over-the-air. If Schmeg wants to watch his four shows, he's looking at over $100 per month. Just to watch four TV shows. It makes no sense, and it's hard to imagine anyone on a realistic income making such a lopsided investment. I'm realizing now that I'm actually rehashing an argument I've already posted, and so I'll stop here.
Yeah, I know, I know. This rant has carried on a bit too long and become a bit too far-ranging. I'm probably also preaching to the choir if I predict the few who might actually read this.