^{In Defense of Copyright, Pt. 2}

Freud asked “What do women want?” He concluded that women want penises, penises and more penises. Perhaps Freud, a guy who by all reports had a penis, had a touch of self-interest in his answer. I hear some of the same self interest in the often repeated Net mantra “Information wants to be free.”

“Information wants to be free.” It sounds nice enough, as if information is a democratic force, working against elites for the power of all. It’s like G.I. Joe used to say in the old cartoons, “Knowing is half the battle.” (Having a big, fat automatic weapon appeared to be the other half.) This mantra sounds too good to be true. It makes information out to be a force of nature, like water or sunlight, which should be shared by all. Who would oppose spreading information?

This Net philosophy also frames the Napster debate into democratic freedom-lovers versus facsist information hoarders (relieving the boring adoring fans versus rich rock star angle.) Like any good leftist pinko, I don’t have much sympathy for the power of Sony Records or the finances of Madonna et al., but the Napster ruling will set precedent about intellectual work and this is why I want the courts to support copyright protection on line.

Speaking against Napster on-line makes me feel like a parent at Halloween or a bartender at last call, but no matter how much I like free stuff, I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em.

In the modern era, copyright is the first step in ensuring that artists are compensated for their works. Since wealthy patrons went out with the Renaissance and technology will soon allow us to reproduce precisely, easily and freely any work of art, we need copyright law to protect the interests of artists, while still allowing for private use, fair use, public domain and parody. Unfortunately for copyright, the principle that an artist (or business) owns a piece of work appears to run contrary to the credo “Information wants to be free.”

The current debate centers on music, but legally speaking, I see no way to separate musicians from writers, or musicians from visual artists, or musicians from actors. (This is why I’m indifferent to the bulk of the pro-Napster arguments that center around record company villainy. Record companies are the bathwater, copyright is the baby.) One standard will apply to intellectual and artistic works, regardless of the form or merit. Does someone own them and possibly want payment? Or is it all free?

Well, if art equals information, and we all know what information wants, we know the answer. Curiously enough, Steve Levy, the author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, says that the second rule of hacker ethics (“All information wants to be free.”) applies only to computer programming. The idea was, back when most users wrote code on their own computers, the best code should be spread around. This community philosophy is still alive in Linux circles. But, free entertainment being more interesting to most of us than free code, the original meaning fell by the wayside.

If the on-line world functions as a filter, shredding copyright off a work, artists are in trouble. If you have a perfect and perfectly legal copy, the only reason to buy a CD or a book is a love of liner notes or printer’s glue. Many supporters of Napster et al. recognize this fact. As Ian Clarke, the creator of Freenet, told Newsweek, “My opinion is that people who rely on copyright probably need to change their business model.” Technoprophet Esther Dyson, Wired magazine and others speculated that “content providers” – a.k.a. writers – will have to give their work away.

Others have claimed that attempts to be compensated for a song, movie or novel are immoral. Brendan Koerner at Feedmag.com wrote “The hacker credo is ‘Information wants to be free’ – like life itself, its replication and spread is resistant to human erected barriers.” Or you can join the Free Music Philosophy, an “anarchistic, grass roots, but high tech, system of spreading music: the idea that creating, copying and distributing music must be as unrestricted as breathing air, plucking a blade of grass, or basking in the rays of the sun.”

This is very nice sounding jibberish. It’s also insulting to artists. Memoirs of a Geisha did not spring up from the ground like a blade of grass. It took Arthur Golden years of research and rewrites to create it. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” did not drop out of the sky onto your pale white belly. A group of music-lovers who had been playing instruments for most of their lives seized the moment and deserve credit for a song that changed music. “Slacker” did not blow in on the wind. Richard Linklater spent his own money and used his spare time to film it.

To a passive consumer, art might seem to just happen, but it is work.

The Free Music Philosophy page quotes Richard Stallman writing in the GNU manifesto that “the desire to be rewarded for one’s creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.” Under this theory, creative work has become public property and a right, like air, water and even “like life itself.” (Actually, if you follow the link from FMP to Stallman’s quote, it turns out to be about sharing code for GNU systems, replicating the switch from software to art and entertainment Levy documented.)

Now I’m a supporter of giving work away. Back when I did editorial cartoons, I gave plenty away to try to get attention and because having a cartoon printed was better than working on it for the eyes of no one. I was grateful to be published without compensation. (Props to Comic Relief and Comic Press News.) I was even more grateful to be published with compensation. (Extra Props to the heavy-lifting Z Magazine.) But the thing about giving work away – there’s not a lot of money in it. And the other thing – it has to be the artists decision.

Let me put it this way: you can find the design for the odd Experience Music Project building in Seattle. What’s stopping me from taking those plans and building the building myself in New York? I’ll pay the builders, after all, they’re providing me with glass, steel and working elevators. I’ll pay for the land, it’s a physical thing. But if Frank O. Gehry, the architect, complains I’ll tell him his work is merely information and it wants to be free. It appeared on-line and has no protection. Or say Barnes and Noble pays Kurt Vonnegut to write an exclusive story for their site, why can’t Tryptic Cryptic do more than provide a link to it? Why don’t we steal it minutes after it goes up? We can even advertise. BN.com says they’ll have it at 10 a.m.? We can advertise that we’ll have it for free at 10:15. Vonnegut gets to write, TC gets the goods, and BN.com foots the bill. It sounds good, but sooner or later, BN.com will figure it out.

The techno-prophets who want to force artists to give their work away claim that they can make up for it other ways. Musicians can tour, writers can lecture, photographers and painters can do portraits, and everybody can sell T-shirts. (Actually, you can’t sell T-shirts. Your band name or image or book cover can be silkscreened by anyone if you don’t have copyright. The Offspring proved this in a brilliant stunt when they sold merchandise with Napster’s logo and kept the profits. Napster complained, incredibly, that their copyright was being violated. They compromised, sending the profits to charity, so the band would no longer be selling merchandise illegally and Napster would not look like jerks.)

If copyright is exiled from the Net we will be worse for it. Take recording profits away and fewer bands survive. Make writers and cartoonists work for free all the time and fewer will continue writing until they are popular enough to hit the lecture circuit. Let’s be realistic, how many writers could make a living from the lecture circuit? How many would people pay to hear talk? Maybe twenty? And companies and artists will viciously fight to keep their work off-line if the on-line world becomes instant public domain.

What does information want? And what is information anyway? Our medical histories. The notes of a therapist. Journalists’ sources. The name of an accuser in a rape case. Someone’s unfinished novel. This stuff doesn’t speak on its own and anyone who pretends to speak for it may really just be speaking for themselves.