Reply to post: A most welcome and perhaps ground breaking move by the Internet Archive

A most welcome and perhaps ground breaking move by the Internet Archive

This act of so-called 'infringement' by the Internet Archive may be the trigger for cultural renaissance.

Copyright always has been pernicious, it is inherently so. It controls distribution and treats ideas as commodities. Worse still, in order for it to function it is necessary to restrict creation by others of 'derivative' works. Derivation is catalyst for creation; a fact understood within academia where plagiarism and confabulated data are the only sins; copyright dispute in that arena is primarily confined to distribution supposed 'rights'. For culture more generally, preventing derivation until many decades have passed is akin to stifling thought during the interim. Vibrant culture demands immediate response.

Digital representation of cultural artefacts gives the lie to rentier economics based upon copyright. Pretence is made of vending luxury goods at monopoly protected prices as if they were physical artefacts subjected to scarcity and hence to supply and demand market economics. Being indefinitely reproducible and easily distributable, both at negligible cost, digital sequences have zero monetary worth; this regardless of expense in constructing them.

Copyright law has become an almost impenetrable thicket. Its ramifications are grasped only by specialist lawyers. For that reason alone, copyright is bad law. All law ought be intelligible for those to whom it applies. The digital era reveals it as bad law in another respect too: disobedience is easy, widely prevalent, and legal remedies are becoming near impossible to enforce; in the past, laws ceasing to garner popular support have either gone into abeyance (e.g. witchcraft) or been repealed (e.g. when right to roam open countryside law was introduced). Indeed, demand for right to roam bears close analogy to demands for culture no longer to be kept fenced with admission only by payment of an arbitrarily determined sum to gatekeepers.

As matters stand, genuinely creative people must constantly look over their shoulders lest their efforts infringe someone else's copyright. Opacity of law makes certainty of adhering to copyright righteousness impossible, hence play it unimaginatively but safe.

Prior to copyright, people internally driven to creative acts sought patronage from others. Leonardo da Vinci exemplifies this. As he built reputation so he obtained commissions for bigger projects. He lived off commissions and presumably set aside money for old age. Any notion that he should receive royalty payments when people viewed his works would obviously have been ridiculous. Also, nobody was barred from making copies of his works or derivations with innovations.

Authors of books, I have written some, have no obvious moral entitlement to perpetual income. Books are written to share ideas (this includes fiction) and information. Authors' motivations may differ but each imagines they have something their readers will find amusing, interesting, or informative. Nowadays they easily can self-publish in digital format; they can solicit or buy technical support from other quarters; there is no need of traditional publishers except when paper copy is desired; even in that instance the words easily may be assimilated into digital format should need arise.

Persons seeking to make a living from authorship must persuade others to commission works; completed works belong in the public domain regardless of an author's wishes. Authors, and anyone else, constructing digital artefacts must compete if money is required. Authorship skills, in every genre, are subject to a market for commissions; reputation, just as for Leonardo, brings in steady income for funding the next work. Commissions can take the form of small voluntary donations, a subscription carrying privileges of interaction with the author, and crowd-funding. Additionally, physical artefacts and services subject to scarcity can be offered as added-value products.

No longer is there a place for traditional publishers to act as gatekeepers to publication and gatekeepers to access 'content'. This applies across the board of culture. Would-be authors will succeed on their own merits and draw income pro rata to skill in attracting readers

Fuss about the Internet Archive's initiative arises from cosseted authors and the publishers who take the lion's share of income generated.

This viral pandemic stands good chance of leaving fundamentally different attitudes toward the legitimacy of rentier economics. This not only in regard to ideas but also to rental applied to private and commercial premises.