The Internet has made copyright law outdated. Social norms are in the process of adjusting to the new situation.
Well, the Internet certainly has led to a generation of young people who are accustomed to downloading freely from various sources without regard to copyright restrictions and, in this sense, I would concur that social norms are changing.
Unfortunately, the law itself is far from changing and, while some of this has to do with corporate lobbyists, the greatest reason is that copyright is a key part of many forms of commercial activity whose nature is not changed by the Internet and whose deep-seated roots require the continuation of copyright.
Just as one example, Steve Jobs had funded Pixar when it was a fledgling company primarily trying to design a hardware solution while also supporting a team of animators who were doing primarily experimental things. In time, it became clear that the hardware piece was not going to be promising but that the animation team might just produce a breakthrough in animated films. The problem: it took someone with tons of money and a huge appetite for risk to carry this through. A whole team of creative people and their families suffered through that one and did not come out whole even as it was - but they stuck it out, as did Mr. Jobs, who invested countless millions in the venture at a time when that strained his personal resources. The outcome: Toy Story (and the whole Pixar legacy). The outcome without copyright: a big goose egg. Why? Because the participants in this venture underwent great hardship to get to the final result and the only hope of a financial payoff lay in being able to have a film that would be owned, controlled, and marketed by the Pixar venture and that might become a large commercial success. This is indeed what happened but only because of the protections afforded by copyright.
Now take the whole universe of startups as a larger example, where founders are today offering massive incentives to highly skilled developers in order to develop key functionality based on proprietary code whose value lies precisely in the fact that it is protected by copyright. If all this were simply public domain, then funding for these ventures would vanish or the business models radically restructured. Unless and until someone comes up with a model by which public domain code can be used to gain competitive advantage in the standard startup of this type, copyright will continue to play a huge and important role.
Such examples could be replicated many times over. My point, though, is that, insofar as the law is concerned, copyright law is hardly "outdated" and the reasons for its existence and its commercial value have not gone away. That body of existing law does indeed protect the interests of mega-corporations who are using lobbying efforts to gain special privileges at the expense of us all, and this is despicable. But it also protects countless other people who create things - writers, musicians, film makers, software developers, etc. - whose livelihood in the economy as currently structured depends on it. Unless and until the needs of such creative people to control their works change, copyright law will persist as before (I did a lengthy post on the reasons for this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3479959).
I am not saying that it is justified to mount a moral crusade against acts of infringement. But to suggest that a radical change in the law of copyright is imminent - or that it is about to be abolished - is, in my view, to misread the legal landscape in a serious way.
Thanks for your thoughtful posts on this topic. I can only agree when you say that "copyright is a key part of many forms of commercial activity whose nature is not changed by the Internet and whose deep-seated roots require the continuation of copyright" - however, it seems this begs the question whether society wouldn't be as likeable without those forms of commerce, and with others in their place?
I think you're right that in a world of weaker IP, Pixar wouldn't have happened, for want of capital. However, Toy Story might still have happened - perhaps it would have taken a few years more, until the cost of making it would have dropped enough to make it worthwhile investing in even though you'd only get a few weeks of box-office revenue?
Perhaps, also, many movies would be closer to "Dogville" (shot on a bare film set) than to "The Wolfman" (last year's remake, costing ~150M dollars). But, as Boldrine and Levine argue in their book "Against Intellectual Monopoly", maybe actors would compensate for their lower income by making more films per year (they look to the adult film industry to back up this suggestion, arguing that that is a reasonable model for a world of weak copyright). That is, creative output would not necessarily drop.
> ... whose livelihood in the economy as currently structured depends on it.
Your careful wording here tells me that we don't really disagree: certainly a reform that brings weaker copyright laws would cause a lot of pain to many established trades. With a well-designed transitional period though, I suspect that in the long term they would adapt, rather than simply cease to be creative.
Some movies wouldn't be made without large budgets and associated risks but technologies improve and lower the costs. I'm perfectly happy to wait 10 or 20 yeras for a a given movie to be made with desktop class pc instead of hiring 1000 people and sinking a real ship or two.
Big budget movies are expensive only because they can be. They are huge waste of resources enabled by copyright.
Well, the Internet certainly has led to a generation of young people who are accustomed to downloading freely from various sources without regard to copyright restrictions and, in this sense, I would concur that social norms are changing.
Unfortunately, the law itself is far from changing and, while some of this has to do with corporate lobbyists, the greatest reason is that copyright is a key part of many forms of commercial activity whose nature is not changed by the Internet and whose deep-seated roots require the continuation of copyright.
Just as one example, Steve Jobs had funded Pixar when it was a fledgling company primarily trying to design a hardware solution while also supporting a team of animators who were doing primarily experimental things. In time, it became clear that the hardware piece was not going to be promising but that the animation team might just produce a breakthrough in animated films. The problem: it took someone with tons of money and a huge appetite for risk to carry this through. A whole team of creative people and their families suffered through that one and did not come out whole even as it was - but they stuck it out, as did Mr. Jobs, who invested countless millions in the venture at a time when that strained his personal resources. The outcome: Toy Story (and the whole Pixar legacy). The outcome without copyright: a big goose egg. Why? Because the participants in this venture underwent great hardship to get to the final result and the only hope of a financial payoff lay in being able to have a film that would be owned, controlled, and marketed by the Pixar venture and that might become a large commercial success. This is indeed what happened but only because of the protections afforded by copyright.
Now take the whole universe of startups as a larger example, where founders are today offering massive incentives to highly skilled developers in order to develop key functionality based on proprietary code whose value lies precisely in the fact that it is protected by copyright. If all this were simply public domain, then funding for these ventures would vanish or the business models radically restructured. Unless and until someone comes up with a model by which public domain code can be used to gain competitive advantage in the standard startup of this type, copyright will continue to play a huge and important role.
Such examples could be replicated many times over. My point, though, is that, insofar as the law is concerned, copyright law is hardly "outdated" and the reasons for its existence and its commercial value have not gone away. That body of existing law does indeed protect the interests of mega-corporations who are using lobbying efforts to gain special privileges at the expense of us all, and this is despicable. But it also protects countless other people who create things - writers, musicians, film makers, software developers, etc. - whose livelihood in the economy as currently structured depends on it. Unless and until the needs of such creative people to control their works change, copyright law will persist as before (I did a lengthy post on the reasons for this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3479959).
I am not saying that it is justified to mount a moral crusade against acts of infringement. But to suggest that a radical change in the law of copyright is imminent - or that it is about to be abolished - is, in my view, to misread the legal landscape in a serious way.