Now the point is, their old business model wasn't better for the artists and it wasn't better for consumers, it was better for [big record companies]. When people talk about alternatives [to that model], serious people are not talking about alternatives that make artists worse off and they're not talking about alternatives that would make consumers worse off, they're talking about alternatives that might make five companies worse off.
What are the alternatives that serious people are talking about?
Lessig: The closest alternative to the existing system are things like iTunes or the new [legal] Napster. And, of course, iTunes is better than where we were before, because it's cheaper and it's a really nice interface. But the problem with that model is that these are technologies that require digital-rights management — DRM — built into them. DRM is this overhead technology that will make it extremely hard to make music accessible on all sorts of different devices.
Some people then talk about another alternative, which is basically the way radio stations pay for music that they play regularly on the radio. It's a simple method for counting what's getting distributed so popular groups get paid more than less popular groups. That's the way a market works, but it doesn't require that you lock up the content in DRM — you just let the content flow and you monitor and you pay on the basis of that.
Waagner: [On an Internet chat group, someone] posted the math of [proposing], if they just did a compulsory license across 105 million households — if it was $5 a month, it would basically equal the equivalent of what the record companies sell, without any cost of physical goods or distribution, and it would just be pure profit that could then come into the industry and be spread out to the artists. [That's] with everything [on P2P] being tracked, not via the big DRM system but with just a data tracking system.
Would the record industry ever go for that?
Lessig: No. [Laughter]
Does the average consumer understand that the legislation that will govern all these new technologies is being created right now?
Waagner: I don't really see the general public being aware of it at all. I think people hear "copyright" and they hear "legislation" and they just turn off. . . .
Lessig: We have produced a generation of criminals and the response of the recording industry or Jack Valenti [head of the Motion Picture Association of America] is, "Let's just increase the penalties to teach them not to be criminals," and my response is, "Yeah, it's terrible that we've produced a generation of criminals. Let's find a way to make it so that they're not criminals, mainly by changing the law." . . .
Article comments
1 - Martin Blank
I think without a doubt the Internet can be employed as a fabulous tool to promote bands to semi-stardom who otherwise would have never been heard anywhere, anytime, outside their home towns and perhaps a very tiny worldwide cult following. But, I firmly believe that the amount of play in copyright and licensing is up to the artist -- music, literature, film, etc. This is why the "mash license" intrigues me: it gives the original artist greater flexibility in saying, You can use this for reasonable interpretations, or, without issuing such a license, You may never use this under any circumstances whatsoever without paying me.
I further believe that Cory Doctorow is a hack and a blemish on contemporary literature -- granted, I am no doubt overly picky when it comes to novelists -- but he has done the writing community a great service with his most recent book: he proved that you can release a novel for absolutely no cost via the Internet and not remarkably undermine retail sales of the book.
On the other hand -- one must love symmetry! -- the fact that you may so freely publish books or music on the Internet, no editorial and production talent involved, puts the onus on the unwashed masses to separate the meritorious from the schlock, to send the *real* hero up the pop charts. Are the filthy rabble up to the task?