Copyright alternatives

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Various copyright alternatives in an alternative compensation systems (ACS) have been proposed as ways to allow the widespread reproduction of digital copyrighted works while still paying the authors and copyright owners of those works. This article only discusses those proposals that involve some form of government intervention. Other models, such as the street performer protocol or voluntary collective licenses, could arguably be called "alternative compensation systems," although they are very different and generally less effective at solving the free rider problem.

Contents

The impetus for these proposals has come from the widespread use of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. A few authors argue that an ACS is simply the only practical response to the situation. [1] But most ACS advocates go further, holding that P2P file sharing is in fact greatly beneficial and that tax or levy-funded systems are actually more desirable tools for paying artists than sales coupled with digital rights management copy prevention technologies.

Artistic freedom voucher

The artistic freedom voucher (AFV) proposal argues that the current copyright system providing a state enforced monopoly leads to "enormous inefficiencies and creates substantial enforcement problems". Under the AFV proposed system, individuals would be allowed to contribute a refundable tax credit of approximately $100 to a "creative worker", this contribution would act as a voucher that can only be used to support artistic or creative work.

Recipients of the AFV contribution would in turn be required to register with the government in similar fashion to that of religious or charitable institutions do so for tax-exempt status. The sole purpose of the registration would be to prevent fraud and would have no evaluation of the quality or work being produced. Alongside registration, artists would also now be ineligible for copyright protection for a set period of time (5 years for example) as the work is contributed to the public domain and allowed to be freely reproduced. The AFV would not affect creative workers ability to receive funds via live performances.

Proponents claim that this system could create up to $20 billion annually to pay artists, which is far greater than what currently flows to them through copyrighted material. At $100 per adult voucher, over 500,000 writers, musicians, singers, actors, or other creative workers could be paid some $40,000 a year. Baker also states that it is realistic to assume that the savings from the reduced expenditures on the copyrighted work would vastly exceed the cost of the AFV. The majority of these savings would come from individuals deciding to use AFV supported work in place of copyrighted work as well as lower advertising costs because the AFV material would be public domain. Copyright enforcement demand would also decrease as AFV material increased. The assumptions made are that in the low end direct costs to the public of copyrighted material would be reduced around 20 percent while in the high end all the way up to 60 percent. Over time it is also likely that the savings would increase due to the lesser costs of the system and brighter prospects. [2]

In a 2010 article critical of the AFV proposal, graphic designer Mark Stanley writes:

"Like school vouchers, the flat tax, and other pretenders, the AFV assumes the necessity of state intervention, and tries to bend liberty around such strictures. Freedom isn’t so forgiving to such manipulation." [3]

Donation-based record labels

While the systematic restructuring of copyright laws proposed by AFV is far from being put into practice, the concept of paying artists with donations has been tested, with some success. In 2006, musician Jeff Rosenstock founded Quote Unquote Records, which advertised itself as the first donation-based record label. Artists on this label make their music available to download for free, and invite listeners to make a small donation if they want to. Between donations and ticket sales for live shows, Quote Unquote Records has been successfully recording music and expanding the number of bands on their label for the past twelve years.

Architectural details

Where does the money come from

Proposals have included targeted levies on internet connections, blank CDs, digital media players, etc. (many of these goods are levied various countries' existing private copying schemes); income taxation; or optional payments by users.

In terms of economic theory, consumer "opt in" regimes are very different from universal ones, but depending on how the scheme was administered, the differences might not be so large. For example, if the default option for ISP subscribers was to pay an ACS surcharge, which could be avoided by filing a signed commitment not to make unauthorised downloads from P2P networks, the effects might be quite similar. This scheme however is unsuitable for business owners who maintain free internet connections as incentive for customers. It would then be the responsibility of the business owner to monitor his or her customer's internet use.

Where does it go

Various proposals have been made to base the distribution of royalties on measures of consumer downloading, usage or voting.

The computer security issues to be addressed in collecting this data are considerable. The privacy and verifiability obstacles are very similar to those encountered in Internet voting; they may be soluble, but only with hardware assistance not currently available on ordinary PCs. The most practical way to deploy an ACS in the short term would be to collect statistical samples from a much smaller population.

The actual distribution of royalties would likely be carried out by a copyright collecting society.

Advantages and disadvantages

Alternative compensation systems have two very significant advantages over digital copyright. They do not impose artificial scarcity on copyright works: everyone can download as many songs, ebooks and films as they want (in economic terns, ACS eliminate the deadweight loss of copyright monopolies). They also avoid the very high technological and social costs of digital copyright enforcement.

The two greatest drawbacks of ACSes are the excess burden of the taxation that is collected, and the need to decide what tax/levy rates to use for the system (although methods such as contingent valuation may help a little with that question).

Alternative compensation systems in practice

Canada's private copying levy had the unforeseen result of temporarily creating an ACS for some kinds of P2P downloading. [4] In BMG v. Doe, a dictum suggested that this should also apply to uploading; but the dictum was criticised on appeal.

In France, the December 2005 DADVSI amendments that were passed by the Senate would have created an ACS called a "global license". These amendments were removed before the bill finally became law.

In 2009, the German Social Democratic Party added a proposal for an ACS variant called a "cultural flat-rate" to its party platform. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Napster</span> Online peer-to-peer file sharing software

Napster was an American peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application primarily associated with digital audio file distribution. Founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, the platform originally launched on June 1, 1999. Audio shared on the service was typically encoded in the MP3 format. As the software became popular, the company encountered legal difficulties over copyright infringement. Napster ceased operations in 2001 after losing multiple lawsuits and filed for bankruptcy in June 2002.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free music</span> Music in the public domain or under a free license

Free music or libre music is music that, like free software, can freely be copied, distributed and modified for any purpose. Thus free music is either in the public domain or licensed under a free license by the artist or copyright holder themselves, often as a method of promotion. It does not mean that there should be no fee involved. The word free refers to freedom, not to price.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Criticism of copyright</span> Dissenting views of copyright law

Criticism of copyright, or anti-copyright sentiment, is a dissenting view of the current state of copyright law or copyright as a concept. Critics often discuss philosophical, economical, or social rationales of such laws and the laws' implementations, the benefits of which they claim do not justify the policy's costs to society. They advocate for changing the current system, though different groups have different ideas of what that change should be. Some call for remission of the policies to a previous state—copyright once covered few categories of things and had shorter term limits—or they may seek to expand concepts like fair use that allow permissionless copying. Others seek the abolition of copyright itself.

A private copying levy is a government-mandated scheme in which a special tax or levy is charged on purchases of recordable media. Such taxes are in place in various countries and the income is typically allocated to the developers of "content".

As used by copyright theorists, the term copynorm is used to refer to a normalized social standard regarding the ethical issue of duplicating copyrighted material.

An anonymous P2P communication system is a peer-to-peer distributed application in which the nodes, which are used to share resources, or participants are anonymous or pseudonymous. Anonymity of participants is usually achieved by special routing overlay networks that hide the physical location of each node from other participants.

<i>A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc.</i> US legal case

A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 was a landmark intellectual property case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a district court ruling that the defendant, peer-to-peer file sharing service Napster, could be held liable for contributory infringement and vicarious infringement of copyright. This was the first major case to address the application of copyright laws to peer-to-peer file sharing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peer-to-peer file sharing</span> Data distribution using P2P networking technology

Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program that searches for other connected computers on a P2P network to locate the desired content. The nodes (peers) of such networks are end-user computers and distribution servers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DADVSI</span> French bill concerning copyright law

Loi DADVSI is the abbreviation of the French Loi relative au droit d’auteur et aux droits voisins dans la société de l’information. It is a bill reforming French copyright law, mostly in order to implement the 2001 Information Society Directive, which in turn implements a 1996 WIPO treaty.

File sharing in Canada relates to the distribution of digital media in that country. Canada had the greatest number of file sharers by percentage of population in the world according to a 2004 report by the OECD. In 2009 however it was found that Canada had only the tenth greatest number of copyright infringements in the world according to a report by BayTSP, a U.S. anti-piracy company.

<i>Steal This Film</i> 2006 short film

Steal This Film is a film series documenting the movement against intellectual property directed by Jamie King, produced by The League of Noble Peers and released via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol.

File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia, program files, documents or electronic books/magazines. It involves various legal aspects as it is often used to exchange data that is copyrighted or licensed.

<i>Good Copy Bad Copy</i> 2007 film

Good Copy Bad Copy is a 2007 documentary film about copyright and culture in the context of Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing and other technological advances, directed by Andreas Johnsen, Ralf Christensen, and Henrik Moltke. It features interviews with many people with various perspectives on copyright, including copyright lawyers, producers, artists and filesharing service providers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright infringement</span> Illegal usage of copyrighted works

Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to produce derivative works. The copyright holder is usually the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement.

File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia, documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include removable media, centralized servers on computer networks, Internet-based hyperlinked documents, and the use of distributed peer-to-peer networking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Music piracy</span> Copying and distribution of music without the consent of creators or copyright holders

Music piracy is the copying and distributing of recordings of a piece of music for which the rights owners did not give consent. In the contemporary legal environment, it is a form of copyright infringement, which may be either a civil wrong or a crime depending on jurisdiction. The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw much controversy over the ethics of redistributing media content, how much production and distribution companies in the media were losing, and the very scope of what ought to be considered piracy – and cases involving the piracy of music were among the most frequently discussed in the debate.

Metallica, et al. v. Napster, Inc. was a 2000 U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California case that focused on copyright infringement, racketeering, and unlawful use of digital audio interface devices. Metallica vs. Napster, Inc. was the first case that involved an artist suing a peer-to-peer file sharing ("P2P") software company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancillary copyright for press publishers</span>

The ancillary copyright for press publishers is a proposal incorporated in 2012 legislation proposed by the ruling coalition of the German government, led by Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to extend publishers' copyrights. The bill was agreed by the Cabinet at the end of August 2012 and submitted to parliament on 14 November 2012. It was passed by the Bundestag on 1 March 2013 by 293 to 243, following substantial changes in the week before the vote.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Javier de la Cueva</span>

Javier de la Cueva, is a lawyer specialized in issues related to technology and the Internet. He graduated in Law and is Doctor in Philosophy from the Complutense University of Madrid. He has defended numerous cases involving the use of free licenses of intellectual property.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open source</span> Source code made freely available

Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open source appropriate technology, and open source drug discovery.

References

  1. ↑ Gervais, D. "The Price of Social Norms: Towards a Liability Regime for File Sharing", 12 Journal of Intellectual Property Law 39, 2004.
  2. ↑ Baker, D. The Artistic Freedom Voucher: Internet Age Alternative to Copyrights Archived 2019-12-15 at the Wayback Machine 2003. "Related Views"
  3. ↑ Mark Stanley Archived 2014-05-17 at the Wayback Machine , The False Freedom of Art Vouchers
  4. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-06-17. Retrieved 2006-07-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. ↑ "The World is Going Flat(-Rate)". 11 May 2009.

Bibliography

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