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Originally Posted by Harmon
In the digital universe, we might find that DRM protected by programs which erase the ebook if DRM is stripped, or even programs which counterattack the computer on which the stopping is attempted. There could be Trojan horse programs embedded in ebooks that activate when the book is moved to another EBR.
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The most strict and vicious DRM still can't get around the dedicated copyist with a keyboard. Books can still be typed in manually. With just slightly less restrictions, they can be screencapped and OCR'd. And the only software DRM that hasn't been broken is a matter of market share; once a type of DRM reaches a certain level of popularity, it gets cracked.
We've no reason to believe this dynamic would change if the law allowed DRM to hide secret viruses. On the contrary, I'd expect dedicated hacker networks to create virtual sandboxes devoted to cracking DRM--especially if the DRM-cracking itself is entirely legal, and the only possible violation is a TOS/contract law issue.
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Recorded music would continue to be made only as an adjunct to live performance. Studio music will be limited to genres like classical & jazz, where the costs can be recovered by initial sales. Live performances might increase, and be more profitable.
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I suspect recorded music would work much like it does now, where people pay for convenience rather than ownership. "Pay $1 to have this sent to your phone without bothering to get home, connect the USB, open the program & sign into the website" is okay for a lot of people.
Prices on CDs would drop, but could still be profitable if they contained a few things that can't be easily copied. Jewel case inserts with raised or metallic letters or signatures or special paper would make them worth buying, and everyone would know the CD itself was mostly a promo for the band.
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The commercial movie industry would collapse into television & cable, except for specialty theatres like art theatres. Theatres would turn to live broadcasts of concerts, theatre and opera.
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Could TV/Cable survive if it were legal for anyone to copy & share (and broadcast over the internet) the commercial-free version? What would prevent using local community-access channels from just scheduling popular movies, which would be much more popular than the Super Recycling Tricks show?
Movie theatres, I think, could survive just fine with very minor shifts. They've got something that end-users don't: extremely expensive hardware. If you want to see a movie on a 50' wide screen, you need to buy a ticket. Theatres would need to refocus their ads for "watch movies on big screen!" rather than "see the latest releases before anyone else has them!"--because they'd be available digitally almost immediately.
I suspect that the only way authors could count on making money if copyright were eliminated would be a return to patronage, and attempting to restrict actual copies from anyone who hadn't paid for access. (Which, gee, is what the Agency 6 do with their ebooks.) Tiny print runs with high costs, subscription clubs with strict contract language that mean "if you share this with someone who hasn't paid, you owe the author/distributor a year's income." Pbooks with tracking chips. Streamed ebooks that you can only read through once per payment.
I don't want copyright gone; I just want it returned to something like the 28+28 system. Bring back a way for content to fall into the public domain if nobody's paying attention to it.