You'd think law is the most boring subject on the planet. Next to accounting, maybe. Look, I find both fascinating, but then, I'm weird that way.
Yet there's little that gets Internet geeks more worked up than a discussion about copyright. Mention copyright, and it's as though everyone dons cat or dog suits. No matter who's right, they're sure going to fight.
Yet like the material over which they argue - the insignificant rubbish the record companies flog as art - is as full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, as the arguments.
On one side, you have those who berate the content owners - as embodied in the corporate giants that own the rights to music, movies and games.
They have succumbed to mass-marketing franchise models that produce unoriginal, undistinguished bubblegum pop, and cut even those costs so deep that doddering old farts with their mikes on Zimmer frames are now regularly needed just to fill the year's music events calendar.
All true. At least those doddering old farts play real music.
The music industry has lobbied for draconian laws, called file-sharers terrorists, demanded that ISPs police their customers, provide information without warrants, pay restitution and cut off customers on demand. They ended up suing babies, grannies and dead people.
All true. People who work for the RIAA or MPAA tell their children it's like the SPCA and they put down puppies for a living.
On the other hand, there are consumers, who say they are ill served, and cannot get the content they want in the format they want under the conditions they want.
All true. Apple, wake the hell up.
They say they would pay for music if they could, or pay for some of it, or would pay if the price was lower, or mean well.
Undoubtedly. I'd also pay for that Hummer H2, if it were cheaper. Promise.
In the middle are the ISPs, who say they know nothing, did nothing, and shouldn't be held responsible for anything. Ever.
People who work for the RIAA or MPAA tell their children it's like the SPCA and they put down puppies for a living.
Ivo Vegter, freelance journalist and columnist
Also true. Neither did the motel owner who had the only key to the room where the crime was in progress.
Yet nobody disputed that copyright remains a valid right, and can be legitimately enforced by its owners, whether they are the creators of the content or those, like record companies, to whom the rights have been transferred.
And on the question of how to enforce copyright, given the technical difficulty of doing so in an online world, and the failed attempts at imposing idiotic laws in the US (and by the US), there was no real answer. Besides maybe deep-packet inspection and digital rights management, which everyone hates too.
If content providers, ISPs and content users don't get together and find a modus vivendi, the only thing that's going to happen is ISPs slapped with warrants, consumers up in arms, and record companies vilified. Because lawmakers, who are clueless about both the technology and the way copyright might work in a digital, connected world, will take matters into their own hands and create a compromise law that offends everyone and doesn't work.
So here's a request. Instead of railing against copyright, just because you don't like the music industry or the way it is enforced in the US, help figure out a way in which it can be enforced. And not just by bands that have already made it and can use word-of-mouth or free downloads or pay-what-you-want publicity stunts, but for everyone.
Instead of railing against pirates, making them out to be evil criminals, offer them the content they want, in the way they want it and at a price they will not only pay, but find easy to pay.
Instead of saying the ISP is just the conduit, and bears no responsibility, consider the fact that you just may have the only keys that will enable legitimate rights owners to enforce their legitimate rights, and can avoid a whole ton of legislation down the road if you can find a way to be helpful.
If everyone stands on their extreme definition of their rights and needs and desires, there will be no modus vivendi, no way to live together, and any chance at a modus vivendi will be legislated to death.
* Ivo Vegter is a columnist, freelance journalist and has never, ever downloaded music illegally. Nor is he a lawyer in his spare time. He (sometimes) blogs at http://ivo.co.za/.
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