This week’s topics are copyright and online infringement. In Lockdown, Corry Doctorow is not positive about the strong copyright regulations over the online contents. He indicates some failure instances of Digital Rights Management, including challenge-response-protocol detector and encrypted files, which is because it limited the ability of the software to those who legally paid for it and even though the content’s founders put the stops for copying, users somehow had found way to unlock it. When newer and newer regulations came out to strengthen the act of copyright, it caused other failures. Doctorow compares these solutions as detergent that looks like it is working well when it is used on clothes but as a result it actually destroys the cloth by eroding the surface. For example, Sony used covert rootkit installer on its audio CDs that terminate its own sound files when it detects an extraction of its files. It works similar to spyware by hiding existence of oneself and performing without the user knowing. In the end, that kind of surveillance attempts will invade privacy and human rights. Doctorow writes that we need to win the copyright war in order to keep the internet and the PC free and open.
On the other hand, James Boyle emphasizes the importance of the copyright. According to Boyle, the internet is a potential threat for artists and creators. He writes that intellectual property is different from material property and he sees that without ascent of private property rights, cheaper copyrights will kill the creative and cultural industries. Intellectual property rights should yield the certain amount of incentive in purpose to encourage the level of creative innovation. Thus, Boyle argues that we need control over_ private intellectual property and therefore we must have each computer with an individual ID, we must license the contents, not buy_them on specific computers for certain periods times. Moreover, he suggests to remake Net for digital creativity using the term “technology of freedom” so that Net can have perfect control both in legal and technical structure.
Industries surely want perfect protection over their contents even if it_blocks the contents’_ circulation over the market. It was the bad example of over-regulation. Boyle talks about Napster as an example of the violation of fair use. Free music spread over the world through Napster and music industries were so mad with the assumption that they would lose profits through illegal copying. They tried lockdown on their CDs to prevent copying even though it caused inconvenience for legitimate purchasers. It fired the desire to get the free music. As Doctorow mentioned the regulation and the failure, it was the endless cycle of the attempts to prevent copying and to copy for free. Then, i-Tunes appeared, Boom!
I do believe there should be a protection over copyright. However, I think it is important to find a proper margin line between protection of copyright and respect of fair use. I believe i-Tunes is the best model that satisfies both demands for those who want_Napster and those who hate_Napster. I-Tunes has a protection so people cannot get products for free but they can get it cheap. Also, even though the price per song is cheaper than selling a CD, music industries still make_more money than selling CD’s because now people are more willing to pay for a song rather than a whole CD. Contents creators should_ get paid for what they have made whether they charge cheap or expensive and I do not think it would give the customer a problem. The entertainment agencies put up footage of their signers’ new released songs or footages of their actors. We can watch dramas on the Hulu website for free with options on how to watch commercials along with it. Software developers provide trial samples for their software. Living in the internet age, we still can get tons of legally provided contents. Then, if you want more than that, we should pay for it. You cannot just take a candy from supermarket without paying.
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