CMNS 253 - July 27, 2006

• Issues in the Information Age: New Media, File Sharing & Digital Copyright

File Sharing & Everyday Life

• Have you ever downloaded a copyright protected song? Movie? Television Show?

• Is this unethical? Is it stealing? Should it be illegal? Completely Legal? Regulated?

Today’s Lecture• Copyright & Intellectual Property

– IP as a both a Public Good and Private Property• Copyright in the Digital Age

– The Characteristics of Digital Media Content– The Industry’s Response to File Sharing– Myths & Realities of File Sharing & Music

• Does the Law Shape Technology?– Digital Rights Management– Anti-Circumvention Provisions

• Digital Copyright in Canada– Bill C-60

• The Future of Digital Copyright in Canada– CIPPIC (Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest

Clinic)– CMCC (Canadian Music Creators Coalition)

What is Intellectual Property (IP)?

• How can a song or other creative work be considered property?

• Who Benefits from Copyright Law?

“Abstract objects are not like physical objects. They do not, for Abstract objects are not like physical objects. They do not, for instance, have obvious boundaries. For this reason at least instance, have obvious boundaries. For this reason at least intellectual property rights are worth a separate philosophical intellectual property rights are worth a separate philosophical

investigation.”(investigation.”(Drahos 1996)• Creative works are both Private Property & Public Goods• What is a Public Good?• Public goods are not used up by consumers, in contrast to

private goods, which when consumed by one person is no longer available to others– Non-Excludable

• If one person has ‘consumed’ the content this does not mean that someone else cannot also consume it

– Non-Rival• One listener’s enjoyment of music has no

consequence for someone else’s enjoyment of it – Free Riding

• Consumers may benefit from from the goods without actually having paid for them

Frith & Marshall (2004)

How does IP Law Work?

• Copyright is an incentive, not a reward• Copyright is a bargain between artists &

the public• Public Characteristics of IP Law

– Fair Use/Fair Dealing• Certain copying/usage privileges allowed

– Public Domain• All protected work will one day become public

Copyright in the Digital Age

• “While a consumer may freely borrow a CD from a neighbour and copy it onto a digital audio tape, downloading the same content from his neighbour via Napster and then creating a digital audio tape is copyright infringement. This is the kind of “logic” that makes the public give up on copyright, copyright owners and copyright lawyers” (Schaumann 2002).

The Characteristics of Digital Media

• Freedom from a tangible medium– Content no longer fixed to a tangible medium (CD,

Film)

• Perfect Copying and Easy Distribution– A copy is an original– “Combined with the Internet, digital reproduction

makes it possible for every home computer to make and distribute perfect copies at billions of bits per second.” (Ku 2002)

The Digital Dilemma for Copyright Owners & The Public

• File Sharing threatens the rights of property owners

• Digital Technology also makes it possible to control information to an unprecedented degree…digital technology has the potential to demolish a careful balancing of public good and private interest that emerged in the evolution of IP law.

The Industry’s Response to New Media - Through the Years

• "I foresee a marked deterioration in American music...and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue—or rather by vice—of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines..." -John Philip Sousa on the Player Piano (1906)

• "The public will not buy songs that it can hear almost at will by a brief manipulation of the radio dials." -Record Label Executive on FM Radio (1925)

• "But now we are faced with a new and very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the videocassette recorder." -MPAA on the VCR (1982)

• "When the manufacturers hand the public a license to record at home...not only will the songwriter tie a noose around his neck, not only will there be no more records to tape [but] the innocent public will be made an accessory to the destruction of four industries." -ASCAP on the Cassette Tape (1982)

The Industry’s Response to Digital Media

• Downloading music harms the artist financially

• Downloading has led to a decrease in album sales

Myths & Realities

• “Downloading is stealing from artists”– Downloaded music isn’t free; computers & Internet

connections cost money - these are distribution and material costs

– In this way, consumers are internalizing the cost of distribution (getting a song from one place to another) and storage (the tangible artifact that contains the music)

– Ku argues that this is the challenge for the music industry, maintaining their monopoly over distribution - Artists primarily rely upon touring and merchandise to make money

Myths & Realities

• Downloading Decreases Album Sales– “An internal music label study found that between

2/3 and 3/4 of recent sales decline had nothing to do with downloading. (The Economist, Oct. 2004)

– “The assumption that demand for CDs is fundamentally strong and that Internet piracy is to blame for falling sales is a simplistic reaction to a complex problem…to place the burden wholly or partly on downloads from the Internet is to ignore a host of other reasons” (Cathy Allison, Report for Canadian Heritage, 2004).

Why have CD Sales Declined?

• DVD Sales: $0 revenue in 1999; $170 million between 200-2004

• People are listening to less music - videogames, cellphones, Cable TV, Web

• Increase in sales as consumers replace older formats with newer formats; once fans replaced vinyl with CDs, sales naturally declined

Does the Law Shape Technology?

• Digital Rights Management (DRM)– Designed to automatically manage rights in

relation to digital content– DRM is embedded in content and when played

using a computer becomes embedded in that computer

“The goals of the DRM system are purely economic; the system is designed to protect and enable the business models of the record labels” (Halderman & Felton 2006)

How does DRM Effect Media?

• Control– If Alice cannot copy a CD for Bob, Bob

might buy that CD himself– MP3s: you bought it, they still own it

• Apple reserves the right to change at any time what you can do with the music you boughtat the iTunes Music Store (Electronic Frontier Foundation)

How does DRM affect the Consumer?

• Privacy concerns– DRM can be used to override fundamental privacy

protection by using surveillance to monitor and collect detailed information about people’s access to and use of copyrighted material

– Each CD DRM contains a special application for listening to music - this platform can be used to gather information about the user’s activities, which can be exploited for business purposes

How DRM is Protected Under Law

• The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) • United States, 1998• Anti-Circumvention Provision

– Makes it a federal crime to circumvent anti-piracy measures built into commercial software

– Outlaws the manufacture, sale or distribution of code cracking devices used to illegally copy content

Oh Canada

• Bill C-60: An Act to Amend the Copyright Act– New anti-circumvention provisions; how

does this effect practices and uses formerly allowed under copyright?

– It will be illegal to upload content (unless you own it) but it is not illegal to download content

Critiques of Bill C-60

• “The bill calls for a massive transfer of rights out of the hands of Canadians and into the hands of copyright holders”– CIPPIC

• The most disheartening aspect of the bill is that there is so little in it that unifies technology with culture and education to the benefit of all. Rather,the potential of the Internet is viewed as a threat”– Michael Geist

What can we do?

• CMCC (Canadian Music Creator’s Coalition)• CIPPIC (Canadian Internet Policy & Public

Interest Clinic)• EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)• Find out where the Federal Parties stand on

the issue of copyright reform