Digital copyright protection – some success, but mostly failure
In this cross-posting from The Conversation Nicholas Sheppard of Victoria University explores what measures have so far been tried, and failed, to stop copyright infringement and piracy.
There’s been a bit of talk recently about getting internet service providers (ISPs) involved in the enforcement of copyright law. The federal Attorney-General and Minister for Communications recently released an Online Copyright Infringement Discussion Paper in the belief that “even where an ISP does not have a direct power to prevent a person from doing a particular infringing act, there still may be reasonable steps that can be taken by the ISP to discourage or reduce online copyright infringement”.
Exactly what might be “reasonable steps” and how they might be funded are among the subjects up for discussion. Critics fear that it means turning ISPs into copyright police.
Before evaluating any new steps, it’s worth recalling digital copyright measures that have been implemented before – to see what worked, and what didn’t.
Copyright destroys innovation and rewards non-creators who horde copyright monopolies.
We need a new paradigm for the digital age that isn’t based on 17th century technologies.
Ditching copyright would be a good start, but that’s effectively what the public has done anyway. Time for the law to catch up.
Clearly, unless intellectual product workers are remunerated for their entrepreneurship then it will cease to become available to end users.
How about offering a suugestion other than “We need a new paradigm for the digital age that isn’t based on 17th century technologies.”
Have to agree with the thrust of the article.
Copyright protection just doesn’t work – people who want to bypass copyright do – a technologies/legal measures aimed at preventing this are quickly adapted to a circumenvted.
Worse still, copyright measures seem to have the unhappy side-effect of making life harder for paying consumers who find verifications/Digitial rights management ect an annoyance. For example in the world of computer game DRM – there have been cases of people buying a legitimate copy of the game to satisfy their conscience, but install a pirate version instead because the pirate version doesn’t have the annoying DRM.
A lot of Software developers have recently and publically raised the whiteflag, admitting all they achieved with copyright protection was iritating their paying customers and turning legitimate users into pirates.
Anyone considering spending money trying to develop new copyright measures should do their homework to see the long and consitent trend of abject failure. Why throw good money after bad? You come out better off financially by just making things people want and accepting that some people will steal it – but as always the majority of happy customers will chose to pay as long as you make it easy and don’t price gouge them.
Louis CK sums this up well with his direct approach to fans and setting a low price point to encourage greater purchase over piracy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d458sm5ToWk
http://www.businessweek.com/te.....42011.html