Is Morality Even A Question In Copyright?

from the and-should-it-be? dept

I've explained in the past why I think it doesn't make much sense to include a moral argument in discussing things like copyright law. If you can structure things such that everyone is better off, then morality shouldn't even come into play at all. My focus, then, is on setting up systems that do tend to benefit everyone, so there isn't a moral question at all. If even the content creators are better off under certain systems, then where is the moral question? The problem, of course, is that it's often not the actual content creators whose livelihoods are at stake. Instead, it's various middlemen who have worked themselves into a certain position. But arguing that they need to prop up their own obsolete business model isn't very interesting, so they tend to play the morality card, claiming that a system where content is given away for free has some sort of negative moral component. That's hogwash.

William Patry recently did a series of posts over at The Volokh Conspiracy, and addressed this issue as well, concerning copyrights and morality, where he noted:

Morality is used in the Copyright Wars as a way to cover up the inability to justify expansion of rights on economic grounds.

Indeed. Since copyright is intended as an economic right (as detailed and cited in Patry's post), the arguments over copyright need to focus on the economic issues. And a properly calibrated system is one where there's the greatest overall economic good and everyone has the greatest opportunity to benefit. At that point, where's the morality question at all? The answer is that there isn't one. Claiming morality in an economics discussion on copyright is a crutch used by those who can't support their position. There is no moral issue at all.

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Latest Unsubstantiated Claim: Twitter Makes You Immoral

from the oh,-please... dept

What is it with these bizarre exaggerated claims about the "harms" associated with modern social networking tools? There was just a totally exaggerated report claiming that social networking was harmful to your health, but when you looked at the details, it didn't actually say that at all. The latest, is the claim that new research says that Twitter can make you "immoral." Really? Well, if you actually read the details that doesn't seem to be what the report says at all. Instead, it seems to note that if you only interact with people through short bursts of information, it may take you longer to recognize the emotional impact of what's being said because it's harder to spend the time to reflect. It's difficult to see how that finding is really all that new or surprising. But it says nothing about Twitter somehow turning moral people into immoral people, as the original story suggests.

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Free Market Capitalism, Moral Character And Doing Good All Work Hand In Hand

from the can-we-get-over-this-already? dept

I've never quite understood the complaints of some that free market capitalism somehow goes against morality or good deeds. As we've discussed in the past, moral questions shouldn't even come up at all in scenarios where everyone is better off. Moral questions only arise in scenarios where some are worse off and some are better off, and a decision needs to be made about who is worse off and who is better off. The nice thing about free market capitalism is that it tends to increase the overall pie, allowing a much larger number of people to be better off, and tends to do so in a more efficient manner than other systems.

Yet, then we have odd stories about people complaining about for-profit charitable organizations even when those charitable organization end up raising significantly more money for charities than their non-profit "competitors." There's nothing inherently evil about profit -- and if you look at much of the important charitable giving out there today, it was created because of profit. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- which is based on this very idea of doing good through capitalism is built off of the vast profits earned by Gates and Warren Buffet. Google's charitable wing, Google.org, is also designed as a for-profit enterprise, recognizing that if it can make everyone better off while making itself better off, there's no moral dilemma at all.

But, still, there are some who suddenly question whether or not the free market takes away a moral backbone -- but the only situations in which that would clearly be true are in cases of either outright fraud, or where you're dealing with a zero-sum game. In an economy that has the potential for growth, then one should encourage more growth to increase opportunities for everyone. There may be additional moral questions later concerning overall allocation, but increasing the wider opportunity, which is exactly what free market capitalism does, seems ridiculous to question.

In the end, it seems that some have this odd guilt associated with money -- as if because one person has made a lot of it that it somehow takes away from others. That's simply not true. Adam Smith, who wrote the original book on free market capitalism, The Wealth of Nations, only did so after first writing a book on morality, called The Theory of Moral Sentiment. Free market economics and morality go hand in hand. To think that they're mutually exclusive shows both a misunderstanding of morality and economics.

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UK Culture Secretary Pushes Copyright Extension With Questionable Logic

from the can-I-get-paid-the-rest-of-my-life-please? dept

SteveD points us to the full text of a speech given by UK Cultural Secretary Andy Burnham, pushing for copyright extension on performance rights. The speech itself is interesting, in that Burnham at least pays some tribute to other ideas, even quoting John Perry Barlow on the nature of information. However, there are still plenty of troublesome (or downright incorrect) statements in the speech. Even though he kicks it off by saying that the government generally should stay out of the music business, he then goes on to mostly ignore that:

But, the truth is, government intervention in the music business does not have a glorious history. To paraphrase one of our greats, mixing pop and politics is not a straightforward business and, indeed, can be a bit embarrassing for all concerned.

The British music business has been a major success story with government at arm's length, or further - in something of a state of mutual distrust.

Over the second half of the last century the industry grew into one of real economic and cultural significance -- and its output for many defined us internationally -- yet without significant government intervention or political help.

But I'm going to make the case this morning that necessity means that the old order of things needs to change.

You would think, having admitted that when the industry has been successful without intervention and admitting that when the gov't does get involved, things tend to get messed up, he'd have a pretty rock solid reason for saying it's time to change. But he doesn't. His focus seems to be on the fact that musicians need to get paid for every song listened to -- which is simply not true. That may be the way things worked in the past (actually, that's not true -- because most record labels never handed that money over to musicians, but...), but plenty of musicians have figured out other ways of getting paid. Burnham seems to ignore all that, and posits the fallacy that if musicians don't get paid from each use of a recorded song, they don't get paid at all.

While he talks about new and innovative business models that can come about due to the internet, he then makes the mistake that all music industry business models must be based on copyright:

Copyright underpins the music business -- and all our creative industries -- and the right response when it's put under pressure is not to abandon a system as outdated, but to make it work better.

And then he goes for the "moral" angle, which makes very little sense:

There is a moral case for performers benefiting from their work throughout their entire lifetime.

There are numerous problems with this sentence. First of all, no one has ever said that performers don't benefit from their work throughout their lifetimes, even if they're not paid for every single use. But they should be the ones who set up how they benefit -- not the government. If I performed on a hit song in the 60s, there are plenty of ways to benefit: such as by convincing others to hire me by noting "Hey, look, I played the guitar on this number one hit from 1968..." or whatever.

But, Burnham is making a totally fallacious argument: that if you're not getting paid directly and repeatedly for the work, then there's some sort of moral code broken. On that, I think many people would disagree. Most folks get paid for their work once. They don't continue to get paid directly for it throughout their lifetimes. They're expected to keep working, and to save money so that eventually they can retire. Why should things be any different for performers?

And, the worst part is that Burnham leaves out the truly "moral" question of copyright extension: that it's taking content away from the public domain. The musicians who recorded performances fifty years ago entered into a deal with the public -- the public that Burnham is supposed to be representing, though he seems to think he represents the artists. They would perform the music and retain exclusive rights over it for 50 years. Then it goes into the public domain. To retroactively and unilaterally change that deal is completely unfair to everyone. It's saying that a deal that was entered into fifty years ago can be ignored and changed to benefit a single party against every other person. How is that possibly moral?

There's a lot more in the speech that is equally troubling, but it's just repeating the same old talking points. The speech also ignores the research that has shown that copyright extension won't actually give very much to the musicians, but will dump millions into the coffers of the big record labels. It's not surprising, because we've heard this before, but it's a speech that ignores reality and paints a fantasy picture of both what's happening in the industry and the entire purpose of copyright law.

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The Reality Facing Those Who Rely On The Copyright Crutch

from the it's-not-pretty dept

Whenever I write things like the post yesterday about the fact that too many people are relying on copyright as a crutch that allows them to avoid putting any effort into more innovative business models, people accuse me of being some sort of "idealist" who is not in touch with the real world. That always strikes me as a funny thing to say, because my discussions on copyright have nothing to do with idealism -- but are simply based on the reality of what's happening in copyright. If you want further evidence of that, just take a look at David Pogue's latest column where he discovers that college kids don't view this as a moral issue at all. They just don't see why anyone would think it's "wrong" to copy content. No education campaign, no legal campaign, no change in laws is going to change that. That is the reality anyone who relies on copyright is going to face in the near future, if they aren't facing it already. So, given that reality, why not look into business models that embrace it, rather than pretending we live in an idealistic world where everyone respects the artificial barriers of copyright? Is it really so idealistic to try to build business models based on reality?

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