Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Holy BLEEP: Life in the Digital Age

Copyright LawI don't care what anyone says Justin Timberlake's best, and if you ask my brother only tolerable, song is "Dick in a box." The subtlety-be-damned Christmas spoof may have been too hot for TV, but aired minus the BLEEPs on NBC's website. This sparked an internet frenzy (who knew SNL could still be funny!), spawning parodies which bought their giggling creators fifteen minutes in the spotlight.

As the paranoid sphincter of the FCC tightens around traditional broadcast media the internet has emerged as a tenable sidestep. Even though there are strides toward a blog registry, any American-based blog with a readership of over 500 people per day would be obliged to list their site, this wild, digital frontier won't be tamed by such a measure. With little expense to the speaker speech has little to no limitations in cyberspace - hate groups and holocaust deniers circulate their messages unmitigated as can anyone with a modicum of creativity. Middle Eastern countries, Bahrain specifically, maintain a subversive online community under the nose of the disapproving nobility. Like the popular worker's press which thrived in the early part of the last century, the internet is being used as a tool to unite people who share common goals to achieve a common good.

The prickly aspect of the new digital age, or if you prefer the active buzzword, Web 2.0, is when intellectual property gets involved. The greatest advancement to the written word since the printing press is for everyday folk to wield the ability to incorporate audio, video and hypertext into the body of their work. Nothing will replace the tactile delight of dog-earing a bona fide page-turner, as far as interactivity goes, however, the flow of information is unilateral. With this new model ideas evolve quicker, user participation is broader, comprehension is greater. Concepts can be cross-referenced through links, people can criticize wayward notions by leaving comments or posting a response on their site, points are reinforced through a multimedia presentation.

Trouble arrives when the same media users wish to appropriate is protected. Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against Google is evidence of this disharmony. This case has its roots in the '80s where a Betamax ruling shifted all responsiblity for creative licensing decisions to the Congress. Years later Congress passed The Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, simply put this shielded providers, such as Google, from lawsuits as long as they removed copyrighted material in a timely fashion at the owner's request. In 2005, MGM Studios v. Grokster, Ltd. maintained that peer-to-peer services were held liable for the copyright infringement they facilitated. Matters of this variety would then be heard by the Supreme Court, not the Congress, and, as has been the current trajectory, this Court appears to be on the side of corporations, not the people.

Another maddening power play is being waged on the musical front as well. The RIAA has collected the IP addresses of college students across the country and has sent letters demanding each offender make a choice: settlement or suit. Because the only legal information the RIAA can obtain are IP addresses, they passed these threats to the students' campuses asking for their complicity and so far it's been a disaster for the RIAA. I'm proud to report the University of Wisconsin system refused the RIAA's bullying, stating the campus would need subpoenas before continuing, which defeats the cost-reducing point of the letters in the first place.

All of this seems to be a waste of time. Do a small experiment: go to google video, type in "Elegant Universe" and note what comes back. The fact that String Theory is so well understood by so many people so fast was assisted in no small part by the internet. You can download theoretical physicists explaining how multiple universes work, rewind episodes of NOVA, available free on Google, to help elucidate some of the more convoluted principles. And why stop there at educational programming? Wilco just streamed its forthcoming album to interested fans for an entire day.

Here's a message to the RIAA and Viacom and whoever else - don't get mad, get creative. Make your product irresistible, use the internet to tease us. Don't restrict the availability of the product, increase it. Work in synchronicity with orthodox channels of communication to seduce our hard-fought money from our grip. In this new digital age the crusty idea of copyright needs to be reconsidered.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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yeah i wish i could make songs like that what a fucking genius. Any musical respect i had for you is now lost