# propositional writing

# You Cannot "Fix" Copyright, Because the "Copyright War" Is, Actually, A War. To The Death. Or At Least, Until One Or The Other Side Surrenders Completely.

Philip Dorrell, 17 January 2012

Can we somehow "fix" copyright, so that it is sufficiently enforced to keep the "copyright industry" happy, but without destroying our digital freedoms?

Possibly not.

- The "Copyright War" is a war between two opponents: Copyright and Digital Freedoms

  By "Digital Freedoms", I mean the freedoms of me, you and everyone else, to " do things" with our computers.

  Here are some specific digital freedoms which I think are important for the benefits which they give to everyone, and which are relevant to copyright infringement:

  - The freedom to write software and install it on your own computer.
  - The freedom to write software and give copies of it to other people to install on their computers.
  - The freedom to copy data from one part of a computer system to another part of the same computer system.
  - The freedom to copy data from one computer to another computer.
  - The freedom to connect any two computers together.
  - The freedom to connect any two computers together via the internet.
  - The freedom to create digital content and give copies of that digital content to other people.
  - The freedom to help other people collaborate over the internet.
  - The freedom to convert digital data into analog form (like sound, or pictures).
  - The freedom to "read" any analog input, and convert it into digital data.
  - The freedom to design and manufacture digital electronic devices.
- In the long term, copyright and digital freedoms cannot co-exist.

  As they used to say in the old westerns: "This town ain't big enough for the two of us."

  The reason that copyright and digital freedoms cannot co-exist is that ...

- Every digital freedom that matters is also an enabler of copyright infringement.
  - Software that you write and install on your own computer may be software which is extracting data from some legally "protected" digital content. Or it might be software which is searching for unauthorized copies of copyrighted content on the internet and then arranging to download that content.
  - Software that you write which is installed on other people's computers may be software which those people are using to do unauthorized things with copyrighted content on their computers.
  - When you copy data from one part of a computer system to another part of the same computer system you might be copying copyrighted content which is not authorized to be copied.
  - When you copy data from one computer to another computer you might be copying copyrighted content which is not authorized to be copied.
  - The owners of two computers connected to each other may be using the connection to copy copyrighted content from one computer to the other without the authorization of the copyright-holder.
  - The owners of two computers connected to each other via the internet may be using the connection to copy copyrighted content from one computer to the other, across the internet, without the authorization of the copyright-holder.
  - Any system for creating and distributing digital content may be used to distribute unauthorized copies of copyrighted content and it may be used to create and distributed unauthorized derived works.
  - If you run a service on the internet which helps other people to collaborate with each other in some way, one of the things that they might collaborate on is the unauthorized location, discovery, uploading and downloading of unauthorized copies of copyrighted content. They might also collaborate on the production, promotion, discovery and distribution of unauthorized works derived from copyrighted content.
  - Any system for converting digital data into an analog output may be used to "play" unauthorized copies of copyrighted digital content.
  - Any system for "reading" an analog input and converting it into digital data may be used to "read" an analog version of copyrighted content and convert it into an unauthorised copy of that same content.
  - Freely designed and manufactured digital electronic devices may be used as components and peripherals of general purpose computer systems, where such systems are capable of doing all of the above.
- You can say that you agree that piracy is bad. But, if you advocate digital freedoms, you are advocating a world in which piracy is going to happen.

  In other words, in the "war", you have to take sides. You can claim to be in favour of digital freedoms and claim to be in favour of copyright, but in the long run, only one of those two things is going to survive.

- In the war between copyright and digital freedoms, there can be no stable balance, "negotiated peace" or compromise. In the long run.

  With digital freedoms, there is no half-way. You either have freedom, or you don't have freedom.

  If you can write and run software written in a particular programming language, or on a particular general purpose CPU, then you can write and run any conceivable software.

  If you can copy digital data, then you can copy any type of digital data. A system which attempts to control or restrict the copying of data on other people's computers is going to be far more complex and expensive than any system which just copies. And people really don't want to pay excessively for their own unfreedom.

- There may be a possibility of a "balance" between copyright and digital freedoms right now, but in the long run there won't be.

  Currently there is some kind of "balance" between copyright and digital freedoms, because copyright still operates, and at the same time many of us enjoy some or all of the digital freedoms in the list above.

  But the stability of this balance depends very much on the existence of a small but non-zero amount of friction currently associated with piracy. That is, to pirate some content, first you have to find someone you trust who has the content that you want to pirate, and then you have to arrange with that person to copy the content from their computer system to your computer system, and then you finally have what you want. And to do all that probably cost you more in time and effort than working in your job to earn some money to pay for a legal copy of the content (if the legal price isn't too high).

  Also there are existing P2P systems which allow for a direct search and download. These systems have less friction, but they are "piracy with strangers", and anyone using them has a significant risk of getting caught and being punished for their piracy (because the strangers might actually turn out to be the "copyright police").

  In other words, copyright can "compete with free", because actually "free" isn't completely free.

  At least not yet.

  But in the long run, technological advances will eliminate even the small amount of friction and risk that does exist.

  For example, when all the music released in a given year that anyone is likely to be interested in can fit onto a single thumb-drive, the location problem goes away. Instead of working hard to "locate" a copy of a song somewhere on the internet and then initiate the possibly risky download of that one particular song, all you have to do is locate a single copy of "all the songs", perhaps on a friend's thumb drive, and you're done. You have that song, and all the other songs. As long as you are not unlucky enough to have a friend who is actually working for the copyright police and is more loyal to them than to you, you aren't going to be caught and punished.

- Asserting that copyright-holders should "choose better business models" is equivalent to telling them to surrender gracefully in the "copyright war".

  A "better business model" is a model that competes successfully against piracy. But the whole point of copyright is that copyright-holders "own" content, and therefore copyright-holders can choose to sell their content at whatever price they choose and under whatever contractual conditions they choose to include as part of the purchase agreement.

  A "better" business model is one where copyright-holders are forced to surrender this choice, because they have to "compete with free". Which is really like telling them that they don't fully own their own content any more.

  As technological advances make piracy ever easier and more convenient, even these better business models will shrink to the point of disappearing.

  (This is not to say that "choose a better business model" isn't good advice for content authors trying to make money in the current environment – but that advice will be unacceptable to those who consider the full enforcement of copyright to be an intrinsic natural right of authors.)

- The primary battlefield in the war is that of public opinion about which side is more "right" – that is, the public must decide which is morally the most important: copyright or digital freedoms.

  Right now, as I see it, the copyright side of the debate is winning the moral battle.

  This is largely because the current copyright "debate", especially as reported in the mainstream media, is very copyright-oriented. That is, the "copyright war" is presented as the "war on piracy", where the only thing that needs to be decided is how piracy will be stopped, or, to use an expression popular with spokespersons of the copyright industry, "stamped out".

  This copyright-orientation is reinforced by those who argue against extreme measures to enforce copyright, but who also talk of "balance". These "balanceists" concede that it is desirable to "stamp out" (or at least reduce) piracy, but they suggest that this can be done in a manner which is not destructive of freedoms, implying that there is some possible balance which doesn't destroy all digital freedoms.

  Unfortunately, if the only way to "stamp out" piracy, in the long run, is indeed to eliminate all digital freedoms, then, in the long run, there will be no balance.

  If we value digital freedoms, then we need to present digital freedoms as an intrinsically good thing to have and defend, and we should not consider digital freedoms as something that might be allowed to exist, but only if they don't threaten copyright.

- Copyright is winning the war of public opinion as a moral issue, because the concept of intellectual "property" is easy to understand. Whereas "digital freedom" is harder to understand.

  Once we accept the notion of digital content as "property", based on the apparently reasonable assumption that if you create something then it should be "yours", then the whole moral understanding of concepts such as "ownership" and "theft" can be transferred to the understanding of copyright.

  This is something that everyone can understand.

  The concept of "digital freedom" is more obscure. You can't properly understand the concept of digital freedom unless you understand the technologies involved.

  For example ...

- To properly understand what it means to have the freedom to write software and install it on your own computer, you have to be someone who has actually written software and installed it on your own computer.

  (With extra points if you did it all in the computer's own machine language.)

  This is something that most people haven't done. So most people cannot properly understand what this freedom represents.

  (Granted, a large number of people have enjoyed some of the other freedoms in the list above. However, most of the other freedoms depend on the more fundamental freedom to write software and install it onto your own computer, and also on the freedom to install any software on your computer that any other person has written – and it is difficult to understand this dependence without an understanding of computer science concepts that most people don't understand.)

- Nevertheless, regardless of how the general public understands the moral issues, the "war" may be won pre-emptively by technical means, in which case the outcome will be a fait accompli, and the battle of public opinion will be irrelevant.

  Advances in file-sharing software, combined with general advances in hardware technology, may soon make it possible for anyone to pirate anything with impunity and with very little effort. At which point copyright will have effectively disappeared. Whether we thought it was a good thing to have or not.

  On the other hand, the copyright industry might somehow devise "technical measures" which are so complete and thorough and foolproof that all piracy becomes impossible, and these "technical measures" are imposed on the public so quickly and effectively that even the possibility to write "countermeasures" disappears.

  Such technical measures will require such a total loss of digital freedoms, that if they are successfully imposed on us, we will all be living in something that is no longer recognisable as Western civilisation, because all communications and all information processing systems will necessarily be controlled by the "central copyright authority", and there won't be any more free speech, and without free speech, there won't be any more democracy.

  This scenario is possible, but unlikely.

  More likely is that we will all suffer while "they" attempt to impose their technical measures upon us, and those technical measures will all eventually fail, but until that happens we will all suffer the consequences of whatever those measures are, even though the only result of that suffering, in the long run, will be that we all suffer.

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