Why Creators Shouldn't Fear File Sharing

Recorded media is just over a century old (excluding books). Creativity flourished in the past, it will continue to do so in the future. Perhaps we can revive the days of oral storytelling. The Story adapts.

In the USA at least, copyright is offered as limited privilege meant to achieve specific goals, so the scare quotes might be better used when talking about the "rights" of content creators over the material they "own".

I mean, if you really own something, you can maintain that ownership as long as you like, and then pass it on to others to own, who can do the same, on and on, forever.

But (modulo corporate shenanigans) that's not the case with copyright.

And were it considered a natural right there would be no need to make special mention of it in the U.S. Constitution.

This is the thing that concerns me the most about the current battle between pirates and Big Media.

The pirate side likes to point out that copyright infringement is not theft. A ripped copy does not imply a lost sale, they say, and of course there is some truth in that.

However, these arguments are based on the fact that we are now dealing with pure information products rather than physical products that happen to contain the information. The other side of that distinction is if you no longer buy a physical product, you no longer have something you can keep and use as you see fit. Instead, you are only paying for a service, which provides information with certain controls and under certain conditions.

It is natural that people who put a lot of money into developing this information will react in this way, and clearly for now a lot of people are willing to sign up to on-line music services, games services, etc. But we are drifting into a world where the industry Powers That Be are going to hide everything behind rental models, and it will no longer be possible to buy an open-ended, use-it-as-you-like version of information products. When they switch the servers off, it's gone. If you move account, it's gone, and you have to pay again on your new service, just like when they went from LPs to tapes to CDs.

I'm not sure that is a healthy direction to move in, but as long as significant numbers insist on breaking the law and ripping off others' hard work, that's the direction that market forces will push. If, as some artists believe, there is more upside than downside to allowing open sharing of works, then they will be free to continue releasing things on that basis, and time will tell whether they are right. But for an article that keeps talking about having no evidence for illegal downloads causing a reduction in sales, it is assuming a lot about a culture that shares freely that is also not really supported by evidence yet.