Gunfight at the Circle-C Corral

October 15, 2006

Costa Tsiokos sees Google’s acquisition of YouTube as further evidence of their “disregard for copyright law”:http://www.populationstatistic.com/archives/2006/10/14/yahoo-google-and-copyright-approach/

bq. In other words, Google’s counting on its billions of dollars in cash reserves to pay its litigation lawyers to tie up any copyright suits in court for years. In the meantime, they can happily let new acquisition YouTube chug along and host video content rips from whatever. And sell plenty of AdSense inventory at the same time, which is the whole moneymaking point. And the market casts Yahoo! as the chump for following the rules. I’m not sure there’s any other business today that rewards such blantant illegal activity. [ "Yahoo, Google, and Copyright Approach":http://www.populationstatistic.com/archives/2006/10/14/yahoo-google-and-copyright-approach/ ]

Whatever Google’s motives[1], I’m looking forward to the showdown. The rampant violation and disrespect for copyright law demonstrates the extent to which copyright law is broken, and having heavy-hitting violators in the game will hopefully make some strides towards repairing it and making it useful again.

fn1. And I don’t believe they are always honorable.

Copyright holders have been unable to come to terms with the basic truth of their product: copyrighted works are by definition cultural assets. Performance, music — even computer games — become parts of people’s lives. They generate emotional response, they accrue emotional attachment, and in many cases become integrated into people’s identity. People _want_ to pass along the art and stories that appeal to them; it is a basic social activity that predates written language. You can no more expect people to stop sharing their culture than you could expect people to stop six thousand years of beer drinking because a handful of sanctimonious nutjobs pass Prohibition.

Copyright law as it stands now is abusive to consumers and an impediment to business. Consider “this ancient article from Wired”:http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66696,00.html:

bq. “The indication from the studios is that we may never see (_WKRP in Cincinnati_) because of all the music that would have to be licensed,” said David Lambert, news director of TVShowsOnDVD.com, a clearinghouse of information on TV shows released on DVD. “As the DJ spins the record as he’s talking to Loni Anderson, if there is music playing even for a couple of seconds, then the people producing the DVDs would have to license it.” [ "Copyrights Keep TV Shows off DVD":http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66696,00.html ]

Even the studios are suffering from copyright law; sure-sale products like _WKRP_ or _Muppet Show_ DVDs are genuine legal headaches to produce, no matter _what_ the clamor from fans.

So on one hand we have copyright holders that sit on cultural artifacts either because they can’t negotiate acceptable terms between themselves or don’t perceive enough demand; on the other, we have technology that allows easy and almost-free manipulation, excerpting, and distribution of those artifacts so I can do cool things like show you this clip of Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street:

Damn, that’s funky. If someone had been obeying copyright law, I would probably never have heard this. And I wouldn’t be able to share it with you.

Yahoo acquiesced to a broken system whose current implementation punishes _legitimate_ users, whereas Google and YouTube embraced six thousand years of human behavior. Regardless of the moral or ethical issues surrounding breaking the law, sharing stories is what people do. Trying to keep people from doing that is like holding back the wind. Only a chump would try.

Posted in Technology