Saturday, May 29, 2004

Just two examples that illustrate further how out-of-hand copyright law is now.
Reynolds works for the London Ambulance Service, and has just been on a course covering new treatment guidelines. He and his colleagues will, however, be getting an out-of-date version of the course handbook because the copyright holders won't allow the London Ambulance Service to edit the newest version so that it is more relevant to London.
Result: Londoners won't be getting the best health care because of copyright.
A less dramatic, but in a way more alarming example is the conversation I've just had with my Mum. She knits, and sometimes sells what she has knitted to her friends or on eBay. Today she was given a magazine with a knitting pattern for a Thomas The Tank Engine child's jumper.
“You know something about copyright,” she said. “If I knit this, will I get in trouble?”
The very fact that my Mum is worried about being sued for knitting a jumper shows how pervasive the threats of retribution from copyright holders has become. I don't believe that damage would be done to any of the Thomas The Tank Engine rights holders by the knitting of a jumper for a small child, even if it was sold on eBay. Common sense used to recognise that fact and react accordingly.
But common sense has been bludgeoned into submission by the actions of the RIAA and others who are quite happy to sue children and grandparents for the most minor infringement. Suddenly, 'Am I going to get sued for this?' is not the stupid question it would have been even a couple of years ago, because selling something on eBay immediately opens up the possibility of being tracked down and prosecuted.
Result: Copyrights are no more secure now than they were before, but people are thinking twice about engaging in previously commonplace activities.
Absence of evidence
Of course, the latter example, you could say, it's just one person. Not very important at all. Who cares if one person does or doesn't knit a jumper? But to me, the unimportance of this is exactly why it is important.
A couple of weeks ago I went to a meeting at LIFT to discuss Lawrence Lessig's lecture last Thursday. LIFT had brought together a small group of people knowledgeable about the issues covered in Free Culture (so god knows what I was doing there!), and one of the questions raised was 'Where is the evidence for the harm that Lessig discusses? Where is the mischief caused by current copyright laws?'.
The point was that there is little or no quantitative evidence of the damage done by copyright. All the evidence is anecdotal and, to some people, anecdotal material has no value and therefore cannot be cited as evidence.
Compare with something like smoking. Whenever there's a report on the news about the effects of smoking, we are bombarded with statistics: how many people die from smoking-related illnesses, how much money treating smokers costs the health service, how much it costs the economy. We see figures and from those figures we infer meaning. The harm done is not only clear, it's quantifiable.
The problem with much of the harm done by copyright is that it is 'invisible' – when someone is prevented from doing something that they otherwise would have done, it is impossible to quantify that effect. You're looking for something that's missing, but which you cannot see is missing.
When someone steals your driveway you can see what is missing because there is a big hole where your driveway once was. With the harm done by copyright, it's the equivalent not of your driveway being taken away, but of your driveway never having been paved in the first place.
The important thing about my Mum worrying about getting sued for breach of copyright is that what she wants to do is so supremely unimportant. The chances of her actually getting sued are very low. Yet for a moment there she was considering not doing something she would otherwise have done.
I wonder how many other small acts of creation are now not done because of fears over litigation? How impoverished does our culture and community have to become before the effect of widespread unimportant noncreation is noticeable? How do you quantify this? How do you prove the harm done?

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