[Free-sklyarov-uk] Content providers and content consumers: a cynic's view (was: SSSCA discussion)

[Chris Lightfoot]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 09:21:37PM +0000, Jim Peters wrote:
>=20
> Of course there are loads of human weaknesses in a system like this,
> because real people have to write the code and make the hardware, and
> so on.  But probably if you put enough people up against a wall in
> front of a firing squad, almost everyone else will be too scared to
> act.  Oh sorry, I forgot -- we don't have despicable violations of
> human rights any more in the West, like firing squads and squalid
> prisons.  We have nice clean and morally defensible violations of
> human rights instead.  The effect is the same emotionally, though, on
> the rest of the population.

Hmm.

There follows my personal view on this; per title, it is
Not Very Idealistic.

It seems to me that the whole issue is, at core, simply a
conflict between the providers or creators of content and
its `consumers'. In my discussion below I've typically
used the example of a record company and its customers as
the example content provider and consumer, but my basic
points apply, I think, to other types of media. On we go:

1. Where does the conflict arise?

   Content providers want to make more money from their
   content; they want to do this by using new technology
   to facilitate the sales of, e.g., music, while
   restricting the ability of the public to use content as
   they see fit, for instance by giving copies to their
   friends, especially because the same technology which
   they wish to exploit to sell content also makes it easy
   to use content in ways which the content providers have
   not sanctioned, and which the content providers view as
   prejudicing their ability to make money.

   Yes, giving copies of music to your friends is illegal
   under current and proposed copyright law. But this
   doesn't stop people doing it, however much the industry
   whinges about `piracy' and `copyright theft'.  A man
   who would never think of burgling his neighbour's house
   or raping his neighbour's wife would borrow a CD from
   him and copy it without hesitation, with neither
   believing that they've done anything significant wrong.

   This, to my mind, is the core point of this dispute:
   the majority of content consumers don't care about free
   software, cryptography, the availability of general
   purpose computers, the power of large corporations or
   the principle that `it's my stuff, I'll do what I damn
   well like with it'. These are minority issues. But
   everyone likes to get something for nothing. The status
   quo makes doing this illegal, but so what?

   The only type of content which isn't habitually copied
   by consumers against the wishes of the content creators
   is the printed book, and this is only the case because
   copying printed books is -- in the majority of cases,
   anyway -- more expensive than buying new copies of the
   books. Whereas it's unlikely to get any cheaper to
   photocopy whole books, it's almost inevitable that
   copying arbitrary digital media will become cost
   effective as the costs of new types of recordable media
   drop (case in point: CDRs dropped in unit price from
   something like =A312 to about 50p in the space of 5
   years).

2. How can the conflict be resolved?

   - by preventing copying of content by consumers either
     by technical measures such as DRM or by societal
     measures such as proactive enforcement of
     legislation;

   - or by the destruction of or change of policy in the
     content providers.

3. Which of these outcomes is more plausible?

   Well, we know that technical measures can always be
   defeated. If you can see it, or hear it, or whatever,
   you can always copy it. Yes, the quality will be lousy,
   but that isn't stopping people from buying
   camcorder-in-cinema recordings of new motion pictures.
   It isn't stopping them from recording their friends'
   CDs onto tape or their DVDs onto analogue video
   casettes. It won't stop them from recording `encrypted'
   audio streams by putting a microphone next to the
   speakers in their next generation hi-fi or pointing
   their camcorders at their HDTVs. Sophisticated
   technical measures haven't put a stop to banknote
   forgery.

   Certainly, technical measures will increase the
   barriers to entry for copying, but that will only serve
   to push it slightly further into the black market. But
   I don't think that mass private copying of content is
   going to disappear overnight just because of some lame
   cryptosystem.

   What about societal measures? Well, normal people who
   view themselves as law abiding, in the weak sense that
   they would be extremely indignant to find themselves in
   prison, still consume illegal drugs, drive over the
   speed limit, and copy one another's CDs. Even in the
   USSR, where there were severe penalties on the
   distribution of material not approved by the state and
   where the means of copying were strictly controlled,
   distribution of samizdat was widespread.

   I don't believe that any democratic society would
   tolerate the criminalisation of informal copying of
   content. The recent U-turn on the siting and visibility
   of speed cameras is, I think, indicative of the limited
   extent to which unpopular laws may be enforced. Why
   should new legislation on copyright be any different?

   The alternative is for big content providers to go bust
   or change their business models, and consequently stop
   trying to change the law to harass us. Isn't this
   basically what we want?

4. How might this come about?

   Well, for all the whinging about the effect of private
   copying upon record company profitability, in reality,
   the record companies are doing Just Fine Thank You
   (unless they pick up an act which turns out to be a
   complete dud, but nobody is accusing these people of
   having 20:20 foresight in musical taste).
  =20
   Will private copying ever seriously affect the
   profitability of the content providers? Well, it hasn't
   yet, despite the absence of the extremely repressive
   copyright law which the content providers would like to
   implement. Sure, the record companies will go out of
   business if, after paying $20,000,000 to sign Generic
   Youth Band 2003, only one person in the world buys
   their CD -- the remainder of the market refraining from
   doing so either because they've already got a copy from
   Napster, or on the more plausible grounds of artistic
   taste -- but in reality this isn't going to happen.

So, as far as I can see, this conflict will go on forever.
Even worse, the vast majority of content consumers don't
and won't ever care about the subtle issues surrounding
personal freedom in its wider sense, technical innovation,
privacy and so forth. Worse, since content providers are
likely to carry on driving `innovation' in the legislative
sphere, we will always be on the defensive.

I have no idea what we can do about this. I'm not sure
that previous successful campaigns -- such as the ghastly
Brent Spar thing -- provide a model: it's easy to boycott
one vendor of a commodity, since there are always others.
If you need petrol and won't buy it from BP, you can
always buy it from Shell. But if you want the new single
from Generic Youth Band 2003, you will only be able to buy
it from AOLTimeWarnerJKRowling or whoever. Or copy it from
your friends-- but that's not a useful protest: if BP
suddenly starts selling 0.5% less petrol because of a
protest, they'll take notice. But if AOLTimeWarnerJKRowling
starts selling 0.5% fewer copies of a single, who knows,
that might just be because the band is lame.


I'd dearly like to be more positive about all this, but I
haven't seen any cause to be. Perhaps I'm too negative....


--=20
 ``It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.''
   (Chic Murray)