The situation is not novel: new media technologies enable people to reproduce, change, and share protected cultural artefacts. When the tape recorder came onto the consumer market in the 1950s, it became clear that its use in private homes could not be controlled, at least not without undermining the inviolability of the private sphere. The response by the German lawmaker and many others was to permit private copying and compensate authors and publishers through flat levies on recorders and recordable media. Thus, they enabled compensation of creators without control of users.
Since the advent of digital media and filesharing networks, again new uses of intellectual property occur on a massive scale. But this time, the predominant answer is highly invasive control through Digital Restrictions Management (DRM). Its the strategy that IT industries are offering, that content industries are only too eager to buy into, and that lawmakers across the globe are granting special protection to. As the negative impact of DRM on authors and users of creative works, and on culture as a whole gradually becomes clearer, the question becomes more pressing: why not apply the time-tested solution of levies to the challenges of the digital age? The digital rights of the creators and the digital rights of the public at large in perfect balance -- without the need for major re-architecting of cyberspace and mass criminalization: isn‘t it the perfect solution? The panel will present two version of the model -- a statutory and a voluntary one -- that would both permit free online circulation of works while ensuring compensation to authors. The discussion will explore the advantages and the feasibility of the model and its variations.
Mod: Felix Stalder Lecturer in Media Economy, Academy of Art and Design, Zurich & co-founder, Openflows.org, Vienna
Mod: Volker Grassmuck Project Lead, Wizards of OS & Helmholtz-Zentrum fuer Kulturtechnik, Humboldt University Berlin
William Fisher Professor of Intellectual Property Law, Harvard University & Director, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Boston
An Alternative Compensation System
Wendy Seltzer Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation & Fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, San Francisco
Voluntary Collective Licensing to Let the Music Play
The U.S. music industry's war on filesharing, now expanding
internationally, doesn't benefit artists or their public. We all
suffer when general-purpose networks are restricted in the name of
stopping copyright infringement. Instead, we at EFF are recommending
that those in the music business form a collecting society and offer
music fans a way to pay for filesharing. With a collecting society
looking for ways to improve its fans' musical experience, the more
people share, the more money goes to rights-holders. Filesharing
applications improve and creativity flourishes. This presentation
will discuss how a voluntary collective license could make existing
copyrigyht laws work better for all of us, as well as what that
collective license would look like.
Disc: Ronaldo Lemos Project Lead Creative Commons Brazil & Director, Center for Technology & Society (CTS) at the Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) Law School, Rio de Janeiro
Disc: Martin Kretschmer Director (joint), Centre for Intellectual Property Policy & Management & Professor of Information Jurisprudence, School of Finance & Law, Bournemouth University