[free-sklyarov] Copyright Contradictions

[jok707s at smsu.edu]

Mickey's posting on Aug. 6 reveals some of the fundamental problems in the 
current "system," but I think that they need to be stated more explicitly.

This planet has two huge industries that are essentially incompatible with 
each other.  The older one, built around traditional copyright assumptions, is 
based on restricting what people can do with information; the newer one, tied 
to many advancing technologies (primarily electronic), rests on selling people 
tools that give them more and more power over information.  Some companies are 
heavily involved in both halves of the dilemma at the very same 
time--Microsoft is probably the biggest example of this.

Since the copyright-destroying effects of the new technologies crept up on the 
world (we all know how short-sighted raw greed can be), millions of 
jobs--indeed, many entire careers--became tied to each part of the 
contradiction before the overall problem became clearly visible, so a lot of 
people are solidly bound and determined to somehow have their cake and eat it 
too.  There is just enough of a bare theoretical possibility of this to keep 
people trying.

In reality, of course, no system of technology or law enforcement or both is 
going to be able to preserve the kind of environment that Michael Eisner, Jack 
Valenti, &c would like to see; it would require the kind of bizarre global 
totalitarian state that Franz Kafka and George Orwell might dream up if they 
dropped LSD together and tried to collaborate on a novel.  However, a lot of 
bought-and-paid-for legislators are going to keep working for a long time on 
laws that will supposedly make it happen.  The tragicomic mess will probably 
continue for quite a while before we see a total collapse of copyright.  As so 
often happens, the biggest short-term beneficiaries will be the lawyers.

Joel Kahn