UK Report Proposes Changes To IP Laws 146
NKJV writes "A new report from the Institute for Public Policy Research, a UK think tank, has some concrete suggestions on how to reform the UK's dated intellectual property laws. The starting point for its deliberations is the notion that knowledge is both a commodity and a public good, and it recommends that the UK move from a model where knowledge is 'an asset first and a public resource second' to one where knowledge is primarily a public resource and secondarily an asset. Is that an anti-business attitude? The report's authors don't think so."
Meaning what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Those sound at odds to me. The record labels/movie studios don't care that you're not making a profit by distributing their music/movies P2P. They care that a whole bunch of people have it but didn't buy it, and that they're not making a profit. Do they get to enforce their IP rights or don't they?
If you tell them that it's now completely legal to distribute their content as long as it's "non-commercial", that dramatically changes their entire business. Fine with me, but don't try to tell me that it's not anti-business. New businesses will spring up, and we may well all be better off for it, but you're legally killing off the old ones or forcing them to completely alter their models.
You can't have your cake and eat it too on this one. Either I own the distribution rights, or I don't; telling me that my distribution rights come second is as good as saying I don't have them. Feel free to tell the RIAA/MPAA where to stuff themselves, but don't piss on their heads and tell yourself it's raining on them.
Anti-human attitude. (Score:3, Insightful)
So is treating information as a public resource first anti-business? Um, maybe, if they can only conceive of information as commodity, but I don't care. More importantly, treating information as a public resource is pro-human, accepting that the natural status of information is that it can be shared freely without it being lost to the sharer. If, after acknowledging this, we wish to add on what are necessarily artifical regulations which prevent information from being shared freely, then so be it. But it should always be seen as what it is: an artificial restriction, given for a specific purpose, on top of the natural unrestricted state.
It is not copyright or other IP law that is the problem. Not inherently, at least. The base problem, the cause that results in the laws becoming a problem, is the mentality that information is something to be owned first, and only if nobody wants to own it should it then be public. The right mentality is to view information as an infinitely shareable resource that we allow, in some select circumstances and for limited times, to be "owned" as long as it benefits society at large.
Re:And while you're at it (Score:3, Insightful)
Not zero-sum: copyright benefits the public good (Score:2, Insightful)
If you believe that copyrights, patents, and so forth encourage the creation of new works, then you must also believe they serve the public good. So placing the public good first and business second doesn't mean IP will go away. It means designing those laws so that the optimize the public good, rather than maximizing profits.
This is not necessarily bad for business. Maximizing the public good aspect of information benefits everyone. Reducing the costs of information benefits businesses who rely on it as an economic input. If more business benefits from reduced costs of information, this will result in a net gain. Yochai Benkler argues that even among businesses dependent on the creation of IP, very few rely primarily on IP protections to make their money. When you consider all the businesses who depend on information as an input but don't make a profit from it, this approach could end up being very pro-business.
Maximizing direct profits from IP, on the other hand, is a terrible idea. The best way to maximize profits is to create a monopoly and use price discrimination to charge the maximum the market will bear. When the monopoly of copyright is extended over derivative activity, this goes way off the rails. Google indexes my book? Well then, I should make some money! How much money? I'm a monopolist, so I only have to leave Google the minimum to make it worth their while; I can take all the rest (and I don't even have to do any work). This works like the market in reverse: it maximizes prices. It's like charging the storage place that sets up shop next to the U-Haul because it's benefiting from U-Haul's customers.
As for non-commercial copying, copyright used to be aimed at publishers, not private use. The recording industry's business model is relatively recent; the reliance of the movie industry on sales to consumers only came about over the past couple of decades. The current situation, in which individuals are sued for private copying, is the radical innovation. Without it, the change to their business is traceable to technology - and the other businesses who created it - not some sort of policy intervention.