Spying On Networks Will Simply Not Suffice As A Means Of Containing Copying

I was reading e-Reads latest post about how the British are gonna “do something” about eBook Piracy like the RIAA has not been saying the same thing since what the 90s. Blah blah blah!

Cory Doctorow has of course already checked that stupidity out.

Cory Doctorow: Why does Mandelson favour the Analogue Economy over the Digital?

Mandelson is standing up for the Analogue Economy, the economy premised on the no-longer-technically-true idea that copying is hard. Companies based on the outdated notion of inherent difficulty of copying must change or they will die. Because copying isn’t hard. Copying isn’t going to get harder. This moment, right now, 2009, this is as hard as copying will be for the rest of recorded history. Next year, copying will be easier. And the year after that. And the year after that.

And don’t suppose for a moment that other countries are in the dark about this. Right now, the future of the world’s economies hangs on each government’s ability to ignore the Analogue Economy’s pleading.

Countries that declare war on copying – and on all those businesses that are born digital – are yielding their economic futures to countries that embrace it, creating a regime that nurtures the net and those who use it.

If Mandelson wants to provide a subsidy to the Analogue Economy, he could order them to license their works to ISPs at a fixed fee, so that ISPs could opt in to offer Big Content’s copyrights to their users and pay a fair price. There are many difficulties and headaches with this approach, but it has the advantage of having a hope in hell of succeeding (blanket licensing is already used to manage copyright in radio broadcast, live performance, sound recordings and other technologies); that is quite a big lead over the mad idea that somehow British copying will fall off by 70% (or fall off at all) in the next 12-18 months.

Tags: eBook Commentary

Tags: eBook Commentary