Doctorow and the Copyfight
JA
August 26
Photo by Jonathan Worth(via)
For years now, Cory Doctorow has been something of the go-to guy for all things digital. His blog, craphound.com, and external website, boingboing, give a fair idea of what he’s all about – gaming, DIY, distribution, technology, sci-fi, pop culture and, of course, copyright. It would probably be too simplistic to say that he’s outright against it, but he is certainly a big campaigner for experimentation, and for rewriting the rulebook.
Nowadays, the fact that current copyright laws are largely inept for dealing with the leviathan that is the web is hardly a radical observation, yet Doctorow, as expected, is incisive regarding the thinking behind this. A few points raised in this old article in Locus struck me as particularly worth mentioning. Firstly, there is the simple, cutting argument that everything online runs on copying. Ever since reading Elmo Keep’s wonderful post on the why the internet is punk, I’ve been ruminating over how you could best sum up the web under a singular idea. So far, only thing I’ve been able to come up with is what both she and Doctorow, in varied ways, say – it’s all about DIY. Online is first and foremost to do with filesharing and creating, especially the type of creativity that finds roots in remixing, splicing and networking. Think Youtube and Flickr, Twitter and Facebook, Wikipedia and Wordpress – this is the motor that they all run on. Doctorow sums it up thus:
… Internet transactions are more apt to commit a copyright offense than their offline equivalents. That’s because every transaction on the Internet involves copies. The Internet is a system for efficiently making copies between computers. Whereas a conversation in your kitchen involves mere perturbations of air by noise, the same conversation on the net involves making thousands of copies. Every time you press a key, the keypress is copied several times on your computer, then copied into your modem, then copied onto a series of routers, thence (often) to a server, which may make hundreds of copies both ephemeral and long-term, and then to the other party(ies) to the conversation, where dozens more copies might be made.
The second point that struck me was Doctorow’s observation about the relationship between copyright and culture:
There’s a word for all the stuff we do with creative works — all the conversing, retelling, singing, acting out, drawing, and thinking: we call it culture. Culture’s old. It’s older than copyright.
The existence of culture is why copyright is valuable. The fact that we have a bottomless appetite for songs to sing together, for stories to share, for art to see and add to our visual vocabulary is the reason that people will pay money for these things.
Let me say that again: the reason copyright exists is because culture creates a market for creative works. If there was no market for creative works, there’d be no reason to care about copyright.
Content isn’t king: culture is.
So, he concludes, ‘[c]opyright’s purpose is to promote participation in culture’.
This leads us to the Creative Commons license, of which Doctorow is a huge proponent (he was the first author to release a work of fiction in this way). Given the basic requirements of attribution and non-commercial use, it’s easy to see the philosophy of ‘copyright complementing culture’ at work here. CC began life in California, via a not-for-profit organisation consisting of various intellectual property aficionados, including Michael Carroll, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, and Lawrence Lessig. I’ve always taken this license somewhat for granted, but according to the site, over 130 million works are currently being distributed under it. When you think about this really saying something. Doctorow describes CC as ‘the greatest legal hack every accomplished: a single, unified copyright system that crosses borders as easily as Internet packets’.
He has since released all of his books under the license, as well as via a ‘traditional’ publisher, Tor, to great success. You could, as many have, argue that this model works for Cory Doctorow because he is Cory Doctorow – i.e, he’s made a name for himself by being the first to do it and harnessing the novelty factor. Indeed, Doctorow seems to be well-aware of this. ‘Releasing a book as a free download isn’t newsworthy in and of itself. It was, once upon a time’. His advice then?
A publisher’s publicity and marketing for a book is an excellent way to get it into some readers’ hands, and the word of mouth enabled by freely copyable ebooks then acts as a force-multiplier to expand the publisher’s efforts. Whether your “natural” audience is small or large, free downloads generally expand it, by letting readers make informed guesses about who else will like it, and giving those readers a persuasive tool for closing the sale.
Cory Doctorow will be appearing at the Melbourne Writers Festival as part of Meanland’s ‘Big Ideas: Copyright versus Creativity’ lecture. This’ll be a cracker of a session on writing and the digital future, Thurs Sept 2 at RMIT’s Capitol Theatre, 6pm. We’re excited, and hope to see you there. Bookings here.
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Comments
26 Aug 10 at 9:05
Great post thanks Jess and interesting comments from Doctorow.
I can’t help thinking that there’s a more fundamental reason copyright exists than the culture-personifying one he gives: ‘Let me say that again: the reason copyright exists is because culture creates a market for creative works.’ ‘Culture’ didn’t create a market for creative works before the sixteenth century. I think copyright exists because artists and creators want to be paid for their work and with the collapse of the Renaissance model of patronage the concept of copyright emerged as a way for creators to stake ownership of their creations and thereby attempt to earn a living through them.
...27 Aug 10 at 11:46
Yes that’s true as well – I suppose I’d read the copyright/culture point more broadly to include ensuring that artists derived some value for their work. I.e. If copyright’s purpose is to ensure the production of culture, then it too must ensure that the creators of culture – artists, writers etc – are adequately valued. Will be interesting to hear what Docotorow has to say about it on the night…
...27 Aug 10 at 15:47
His argument – that the internet’s inherent making of copies renders copyright redundant – is a little disingenuous.
Most jurisdictions have amended the general operation of copyright law to accommodate this.
But that’s a very small point within a very large and controversial topic. We certainly have to come up with new ways of protecting and monetising cultural output.
...31 Aug 10 at 10:53
Great post, Jess. Cory’s MWF session clashes with Emily Maguire’s on Thursday, but I’m looking forward to your succinct appraisal on Friday morning! Rod
...31 Aug 10 at 14:11
There will be dot points, and maybe even a filched lanyard or two.
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