We often debate over piracy in this plat form. Take a look at this article and
judge yourself.
When technology makes knowledge globally available, reshaping the
economics of buying and selling it becomes crucial, argues Peter
Eckersley
by Peter Eckersley
TEN years ago, a piece of software called Napster taught us that
scarcity is no longer a law of nature. The physics of our universe
would allow everyone with access to a networked computer to enjoy, for
free, every song, every film, every book, every piece of research,
every computer program, every last thing that could be made out of
digital ones and zeros. The question became not, will nature allow it,
but will our legal and economic system ever allow it?
This is a question about the future of capitalism, the economic system
that arose from scarcity. Ours is the era of expanded copyright
systems and enormous portfolios of dubious patents, of trade secrecy,
the privatisation of the fruits of publicly funded research, and other
phenomena that we collectively term "intellectual property". As
technology has made a new abundance of knowledge possible,
politicians, lawyers, corporations and university administrations have
become more and more determined to preserve its scarcity.
So will we cling to scarcity just so that we can keep capitalism? Or
will capitalism have to evolve into some new kind of digital
economics? The question underlines many things - from music piracy to
the woes of the newspaper industry to Google's efforts to scan all
the books in the world.
This fragile scarcity has a purpose: to make things expensive. Water
is plentiful and essential; diamonds are rare and useless. But
diamonds are much more expensive than water because they're much
rarer. People in the business of selling information have good reason
to want a future where knowledge is valued like diamonds rather than
water. Here pharmaceutical giants, Hollywood, Microsoft, even The Wall
Street Journal speak with one voice: "Keep expanding copyright and
patent laws so our products remain expensive and profitable." And they
pay lobbyists worldwide to ensure this message reaches governments.
The irony of the battle between advocates of abundance and advocates
of scarcity is that both sides are right. It makes no sense to limit
and control access now we have technologies to give information to
everyone. But it is also foolish to pretend we do not need incentives
to help produce and publish that information.
While financial incentives are a very complicated business, two simple
points hold true. First, even without payment, some folk will always
record music, write software, make their feature films, do their own
investigative journalism, occasionally even test their own drugs. You
couldn't stop them if you tried. Second, we will all be better off
with more, not fewer, professional careers available for knowledge
producers. Not having to stick with a day job allows creative workers
to be more creative and productive, for the benefit of all.
Crucially, though, if we really want to end scarcity, we will have to
build institutions that promote knowledge-sharing, while at the same
time ensuring that there are incentives for creative and technical
minds to contribute.
Science, and the universities that support it, is the grandest example
of a system that has evolved to promote the abundance of knowledge.
Universities offer incentives in the form of tenure, promotion and
prestige to researchers who can discover and share the information
which their peers consider most valuable. Academics are human: they
are as greedy, short-sighted and treacherous as everyone else, but the
academic environment encourages them to focus those vices and impress
their colleagues with their cleverness and cool discoveries published
in fancy journals. Sometimes those cool discoveries are imagined or
incomplete, but then others get ahead by pointing this out, and when
the whole process works, the result is science.
In recent years, however, science has become another front in the
conflict over scarcity. As any biologist will tell you, patents,
secrecy and commercialisation have become a way of life. At the same
time, science has inspired new institutions and movements that promote
its ideals and its liberty.
Take the open access movement, which has campaigned to ensure that
scientific articles are freely available to the public, who ultimately
paid for the research with their taxes. Historically, most scientific
writing was confined to expensive scholarly journals and essentially
available only to people with university affiliations. Some publishers
resisted the open access movement, but trends are against them. In
March this year, for example, the US Congress made permanent a
requirement that all research funded by the National Institutes of
Health be openly accessible, and other countries are following. Within
a decade or two, it is safe to say that all scientific literature will
be online, free and searchable. Journal publishers will still be paid,
but at a different point in the chain.
Outside the universities we have some even more remarkable
developments. Fifteen years ago, who would have predicted that
teenagers would be allowed to edit the world's primary reference
source from their homes? Twenty years ago, who would have predicted
that teams of volunteers would succeed in writing and giving away
software that produces many billions of dollars of economic wealth?
Wikipedia and the free and open-source software movements have
produced stores of knowledge while trying to insulate themselves from
the old institution of copyright, which is inherently unsuited to
their processes of authorship. But that's not enough: we urgently need
institutions to liberate knowledge produced under the old rules, too.
The music industry, for example, is slowly realising it cannot win the
war on copying. People are pirates, and there are still 10 songs
copied for every one bought on iTunes. Soon, the record labels will
start to experiment with alternatives to copyright, such as licences
that allow unlimited, restriction-free file sharing in exchange for
flat fees, maybe a $5 or $10 voluntary payment with your monthly
internet provider bill. This kind of system will not be perfect, but
it will allow us to have wonderful libraries of legal MP3s, and it may
help more independent professional musicians to flourish.
People are pirates... there are still 10 songs copied for each one
bought on iTunes
Another experiment in post-scarcity capitalism concerns the
digitisation of the world's books. One draft of the rules for access
to scanned books is currently being written in the US courts as Google
settles a class action over its scanning projects. This settlement
will make books more searchable and improve access to both
out-of-print and "orphaned" books whose copyright holders can't be
found. Under the current version, books will only be available in
snippets and sections. Some out-of-print books will be available
through institutional and individual subscriptions, but we don't yet
know whether the prices will be inviting to most of the public, thus
making Google Books a true post-scarcity project.
So here's a challenge to the governments of countries that want to
lead the way, whether rich or poor: sit down with Google (or one of
its competitors), authors and publishers, and work out a deal that
offers a complete, licensed digital library free to your citizens. It
would cost taxpayers something, but less than they currently spend on
buying scarce books and supporting large paper collections. It would
be great news for publishers and authors, who would receive most of
the funds and would no longer need to fear piracy.
It's time to recognise that when we build institutions to promote the
abundance of knowledge, everybody wins. When it comes to knowledge,
you can never have too much of a good thing.
Profile
Peter Eckersley is a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier
Foundation in San Francisco, which sets out to defend digital civil
liberties. His doctoral research at the University of Melbourne is on
alternatives to digital copyright. He can be contacted at [email protected]
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