The copyright scam and its demise
It's unsurprising to hear of copyright cartel success in buying (aka lobbying) to 'protect' petty rentier 'rights' following the UK's exit from the EU. A sensible government would appreciate the burden imposed upon legitimate business and individuals by geographical fragmentation of copyright and recognise simplification arising from EU arrangements. The simplest solution would have been to put this matter on hold whilst a trade agreement incorporating copyright is worked out with the EU.
One suspects Johnson and his cronies have their eyes upon a lucrative (for them) trade deal with the USA. So called 'intellectual property' (IP) figures highly in recent US trade deals and in the aborted TTIP. This reflects not only immense influence of corporate IP rentiers but actual economic necessity too. The USA economy is in dire straits regarding production of physical goods for export. It relies upon the Far East to meet requirements of its home market. It re-badges IT products from the Far East and sells them onward with luxury item mark-up. A notable example is Apple branded products.
Intangible goods and services are becoming bedrock of the US economy. These encompass copyright applied to entertainment and culture (e.g. Hollywood's emanation of trash and dismal failure with culture), financial services, and patents controlling production of pharmaceuticals.
A nation dependent upon IP exports is in perilous position. IP is 'property' only by virtue of agreement and convention. It differs from physical property in one important respect: IP may arbitrarily be duplicated, sold, and form basis of continuing income into almost perpetuity for no additional effort. Digital representation of cultural artefacts is bringing about realisation that 'medium' and 'message' are separable. The medium, e.g. a vinyl disc or CD, is physical. Its production and sale appears to occur in the realm of standard market-economics where scarcity applies; of course it never has because monopoly distribution rights are conferred and therefore 'price discovery' is inapplicable.
During the latter half of the twentieth century it became feasible for ordinary individuals to separate (copy) the analogue component of a vinyl disc from the medium embedding it. That set wings flapping in copyright cartel dove-cotes but there was little to worry about because transfer of analogue material on tape from one to another is cumbersome and subject upon repeated copying to entropy degrading the 'content'. Digitally encoded material on CDs was a different matter. Multiple sequential copies taken with care need not suffer degradation. Yet, the 'content' still required transporting on a duplicated physical disc. Advent of portable digital devices and of widespread Internet connection brought about huge qualitative change. The message no longer depended upon particular instantiations of a physical medium or on a particular kind of medium.
From separability of medium and message is arising the slowly dawning truth that digital sequences (regardless of what they encode) are, once free floating from a particular instance of a medium, not subject to scarcity; they are indefinitely reproducible and each example may be considered realisation of a 'master copy' held in the same Platonic Heaven as the digital sequence known as Pi.
Lack of inherent scarcity vitiates reasoning based upon market economics applicable to physical goods and to individually applied services. No meaning attaches to 'theft' of a digital sequence because nobody is deprived of the original. What was constructed under copyright monopoly has never been other than an ersatz market; its futility now completely exposed. Attempts to prop up rentiers' presumed entitlements inevitably fail regardless of whether mediated through legislation or DRM. Each further attempt has knock-on effect of drawing public attention to the price gouging scam perpetuated by publishers/distributors. Thereby, a critical mass of people willing to disobey copyright shall emerge and grow unstoppably.
Nations importing IP from the USA may begin to grasp its leeching effect on their economies. It grabs an undue proportion of disposable incomes for repatriation in the USA and in tax havens. That represents a local opportunity cost to the economy; a general truth pertaining to all rentier activities (e.g. commercial property rental) within a nation. Regarding copyright, much of the opportunity cost relates to stifling creative activity (e.g. forbidding 'derivation') and corralling favoured creative individuals within boundaries set by production/distribution conglomerates enabling shaping cultural output to meet wholly commercial aims such as pleasing advertisers.
Current USA diplomacy via sanctions opens the door to retaliation via repudiation of IP 'rights'. There already is evidence of restrictive practices by 'rights' holders engendering disobedience e.g. farmers in India resisting bullying by Bayer/Monsanto. Price gouging pharmaceuticals are ripe for comeuppance too.
So, does disobedience to copyright and its eventual collapse take food from the mouths of creative people? By no means. However, it does deny sustenance to corpulent intermediaries (publisher/distributors) which take the lion's share of income generated from monopoly priced products passed off as necessarily expensive luxury items.
Digital products (e.g. software, TV shows, film, eBooks, and music) have no intrinsic monetary worth (regardless of cost of making). However, their cultural value sets out the stalls of creative individuals seeking patronage for their next work. Cutting out middlemen, as now enabled by the Internet, turns upside down habitual assumptions about pricing. Voluntary donations toward commissioning need be tiny fractions of current retail pricing of 'content'. Voluntary subscription can be bundled with added value goods and services. What arises is a genuine market with price discovery. Individuals within each genre of cultural output compete one with another for attention from patrons, donors, and subscribers. They are selling their skills in creation of works appealing to their intended audience. Reputation becomes all. Each finished digital work goes into the commons but serves to promote demand for the next.
The jobbing painter and decorator does not seek indefinite royalty payments from customers. However, each finished job evinces his skill to all seeing it. The same applied to Leonardo da Vinci. He achieved commissions for projects based upon reputation.
Copyright is now meaningless. It must be replaced by entitlement to attribution, this being greatest reward for genuinely creative people spurred on by internal driving forces.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
