U.S. Copyright Law, Napster and
Innovation
Like patent
law, the copyright system is intended to protect innovation by persons and
organizations who develop materials (goods, information, concepts and
processes) for public, business or other target consumers. Ultimately, this
protection that is afforded to creators / artists / inventors, is intended to
secure incentives to create [things] for the good of the end user.
It is intuitive that
organizations supporting the production of goods may exchange monetary support,
marketing and research services, and technical support, for some measure of the
original concept creator's rights; a mutually beneficial system when creators
develop concepts but do not own the infrastructure required to bring products
to consumers.
Patent and
copyright law are therefore intended to protect:
- Inventors; Artists;
Creators; Innovators
- Consumers
- by implication --
Supporting Investors and Industry
During the
1990s, the "Internet Revolution" was considered to be a threat to controlling
rights. The Internet allows rapid dissemination of information of all kinds,
including music, images and knowledge. In fact, the origination of the Internet
was created "To provide for the free exchange of information and ideas," a
concept which fails under the book-burning policies of government and
special-interest control. The Millennium Intellectual Properties Act was
enacted within the U.S., and adopted by treaty, elsewhere, to plug legal holes
regarding information exchange across the world wide network, by vastly
increasing litigation powers of copyright and intellectual rights
claims.
As it took effect
during 1999, this new act became a feeding frenzy of corporate lawyers.
Corporations were making "land grab" claims by filing for ownership of
previously public-domain products. Large corporate legal staffs typically filed
thousands of such claims, grabbing all possible rights to any technology their
corporation might ever have tweaked through the production staff, partially in
self-defense against future lawsuits by other corporations who might otherwise
file on the same technology first. In many well-known instances, corporations
went so far as to file lawsuits against other businesses using that technology
which had been in common use for years. We saw corporations attempt to reclaim
rights to all .gif image presentation and the infamous "doubleclick" patent
awarded to Amazon.com. Rights to Java, in the public domain, were reclaimed by
Sun Microsystems, while excellent innovations to Java's utility by Microsoft
were trashed by uninformed and ignorant decrees of courts who assumed power far
beyond their own intellectual reach, drunkenly empowered by the
Act.
None of this served the very intent of copyright law;
to encourage innovation and protect innovators and consumer choices. Only the
lawyers and special-interest corporations have become rich from this horrid
abortion of legal power, at the expense of the intended beneficiaries of
copyright and patent law. Intermediate producers and their lawyers, not
intended to be direct beneficiaries of copyright protection, have become the
focus of rights provided by the Millennium Copyright Act, as creators and
consumers are collectively wounded, raped and forgotten on the legal
battlefield.
Sonny Bono was one of the original authors of the
Millennium Intellectual Properties Act. It was Bono's goal to protect artists
from uncontrolled distribution of their works without payment to the artists.
To date, the act has crushed creativity, smashed innovation of original works,
created obese police agencies to enforce this grotesque law, and trampled many
other rights while it has only served to benefit a tiny percentage of rich
artists as it oppressed all others.
Napster became one
of the most rapid and popular innovations of the Internet Revolution. Napster
created a system to locate and sample music beyond any means which had ever
existed. The Internet, Napster and MP3.com offered new hope for artists to
distribute their work without signing away all rights to their creations to the
obscene, greedy, record companies. No longer were the sweat-shop factories of
the recording companies able to control distribution; any recording studio
could produce and distribute artistic music at minimal cost through the
Internet. Old songs from Napster's massive database could be located even if
long-since abandoned by recording company distribution channels, or if only
produced in limited quantities by low-budget studios. Obscure artists could
reach an audience even when they didn't have power to influence the whims of
large record company executives through payoffs or favors or their own group's
fame. In some cases, republishing of lost and obscure music occurred by popular
demand, which was also rewarded by sales at record stores.
Actual
statistics demonstrate massive sales of both well-known and obscure artist's
records and CDs to audiences who sampled music on Napster. Mid-stream bands
became more popular and sold more CDs. Obscure bands with good tunes became
known and financially sound without selling their rights to big record
companies for the usual pittance.
By increasing
consumer choices and reducing the artificial barriers to entry against new
performing artists, Napster provided a service to artists and consumers that
realized the power of the Internet for a short time. But the few favorite
performing groups of recording company monopolies had much more competition
from other artists, and the record companies lost their absolute control over
music distribution and the power to decide what consumers could and could not
sample. Neither recording monopolies nor the richest performing groups
appreciated Napster's power to bring such diversity to
consumers.
The music recording & distribution industry is
one of the remaining monster, monopolistic industries today. It defies the
public's rejection of industry like the 20th century textile sweatshops by
still placing stereotypically inhumane and selfish company managers in charge
of vamping the souls and hopes of aspiring musicians. Whether a group even has
a chance to audition or not is often dependent on payoffs, kickbacks or favors
rather than the group's talent as performers. Performers are often selected for
a recording session based on their ability to pay exorbitant studio fees, and
studios prey off of hopeful artists in their ripoff scams. Distribution is
again dependent on favors, kickbacks, etc. A very small percentage of good
artists every get heard by anyone through the recording industry process.
Record companies are parasitic upon most artists, discarding them once they are
demoralized and bankrupt.
Napster was a
serious threat to the recording industry monopoly. It created a new set of
economic rules for artists, consumers and music distribution that did not
include the obese, traditional monopoly. In Napster's system, the distribution
of music already copyrighted by recording companies occurred. Napster likened
such distribution to "a book" where individual persons could share their books,
or records which can be shared by friends. Obvious consideration of a radio
station's ability to play a single record to many thousands of listeners at
once, or the vast increases of CDs attributable to Napster participants (to the
benefit of artists and consumers) were ignored by courts hearing legal action
against Napster as the monopolies sued to regain control over distribution.
Using the new Millenium Intellectual Properties Act, which includes the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, through court action until March, 2001, recording
monopolies won the virtual destruction of Napster by court decisions. Offers by
Napster to block all copyrighted material on Napster's servers and one $billion
in damage payments to recording companies for infringement were rejected, since
these companies were apparently interested only in retaining their absolute
monopolies, a system which should and would eventually disappear with Napster's
technology circumventing the monopolistic system of music
distribution.
Wired News
published a story,
Napster Loss is
Copyright Gain by Brad King, on March 1, 2001. King's article pointed out
how limiting to individual use of property the copyright law becomes if it is
only to be interpreted in favor of monopolistic interests instead of the
consumers and artists it was intended to protect. Is that a gain? And is the
law itself an entity which should "gain" according to how smashingly it
destroys freedom of choice? If the law, to date, has become a perverse, legal
battlefield where artists and consumers are both victims of court decisions
based on that law, shouldn't we apologize to the world and discard the
abomination of the Millennium Intellectual Properties Act before more damage is
done?
The recording industry did a remarkable job of
double-speak by convincing many that their own monopoly was somehow noble,
while Napster was a festering wound of artistic destruction. Even AnchorDesk's
David Coursey wrote,
Why
Napster Must Die, comparing the service to thieves raiding his house. A
thief lives; it's the recording industry that steals most creator's rights for
nearly zero compensation and provides meager or no services to either the
artists or consumers. Another thief exists; a law which prevents competitive,
alternative publication services for artists, with reasonable compensation to
the artists for creative works instead of obscene publishing rights and profits
only for the monopoly. Yet another thief steals individual rights to use
artistic expressions, as well as privacy and liberty, in favor of enforcing the
putrid abortion of Digital Millennium Copyright Law. That's a perverse law
supported by perverse court decisions, which has been sold to the public by
this new Millennium of double-speak justifications.
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