Quote:
Originally Posted by pshrynk
The lounge is being accused of being a silly place. So, I thought I'd present a topic that is important to all of us and have a discussion just to show that it can be done.
What would be a useable and acceptable replacement for the current process of copyright protection, known as DRM? This would have to satisfy all parties, allow for fair compensation for authors, and keep everyone from becoming criminals.
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The honor system. I am actually serious. No amount of DRM will keep a determined hacker from ripping off a copyrighted work. But DRM will keep an honest citizen from buying a book, if they know that they won't be able to read it once the device they're reading it on goes obsolete. So DRM as we know it is useless for the purpose for which it has ostensibly been created, and actually harms authors.
In contrast, the honor system - i.e. sell the book in a DRM-free format - treats all purchasers of the book in question as honest people rather than criminals. Will it mean that some people will copy the book? Sure it will. But will this actually result in decreased sales? I'm not so sure of that.
I am a musician, and I sell CD's at festivals. All my CD's are Creative Commons licensed, and I explain this licensing to the people who buy the disc from me. I tell them that they have my blessing to place my music on any file-sharing server, to copy it for their friends, to use it for whatever purpose they wish, provided they credit me. This has resulted in much wider exposure for my music, and a lot of performance and recording opportunities I would never have had otherwise.
Do people pirate my CD? Of course they do. Would the person who ended up with a pirated copy have bought my CD otherwise? I'm not so sure. But once they heard my music, maybe they'd want to buy my next one. Piracy is advertising. Every pirate placing your creative work on a filesharing service is advertising your work by word-of-mouth - the best kind of advertising there is.
I believe Cory Doctorow has said something similar about e-books - and his books are selling just fine. I don't read much sci-fi, so I just downloaded a copy of one of his books for free (from his own site, legally). While this is not the sort of stuff I'd want to buy for myself, I now know what it's like - and I can recommend it to friends who may enjoy it, and who will buy it. As mentioned, Doctorow's books appear to be doing just fine, despite the fact that he's giving away free e-books - or, possibly, because of it.
Most people are honest. At various festivals, I have had people insist on paying me for a disc even when I wanted to give it away. If people know the money actually goes to the artist, they'll want to pay. What people don't want to do is pay oodles of money to some faceless corporation that will not ever compensate the author.
Another unrelated issue: the terms of copyright protection are ridiculously long. Why does creative work stay locked up for 70 years after the author's death? Are we hoping to incentivize the author to write more from the grave? If copyrights lasted as long as patents do - 20 years - any kind of DRM would be a lot more tolerable, as things would enter the public domain more easily. Surely 20 years of royalty payments is enough to incentivize anyone to write?