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R eviewing current literatureabout the Internet quicklyreveals broad interest incopyright enforcement tech-niques. Given the magnitude

of the economic forces involved, thisinterest is not surprising. It appears to be concentrated in two areas: soft-ware and music.

The emphasis on music stems in partfrom the existence of file exchange ser-vices primarily related to music, suchas Gnutella or Kazaa. But music alsoserves as a prototype for other mediacopyright issues in that every technicaland legal intellectual property protec-tion developed for music will likelyextend to other forms of artisticexpression made available on theInternet.

Looking closely at recent technicalwork on music exchange, we see a dis-turbingly narrow focus: Virtually allmainstream computing professionalsconcentrate their efforts on enforcingcurrent copyright principles rather thanexploring ways in which technologycan expand and redefine copyright. Toclaim that sharing songs on the Internetis piracy because it infringes on currentcopyright laws is, on one hand, a tru-ism. On the other hand, however, itunderstates the role music exchangemay have in altering the economic andbusiness environment that has beendefining and extending copyright lawfor the past century.

Given their antithetic relationship,software and music offer an informa-tive comparison. In the case of soft-ware, a relevant percentage ofcomputing academia and a reasonablepercentage of the computing industryhave led efforts to create new forms ofcopyright including open source, thecopyleft contract that allows for openfile sharing, and centralized communalprojects like Linux. In the case ofmusic, on the other hand, the industryseems unable to give credibility to anymodel other than strict corporate con-trol of copyright.

Thus, the difference between copy-right related activities for software andmusic is striking and analyzing it canreveal something about who we, ascomputing professionals, are. Beforeembarking on such an analysis, how-ever, we should consider the principlesof copyright.

COPYRIGHT PRINCIPLESIn its current form, copyright results

from the conjunct action of two his-

torically profound revolutionaryforces: the printing press and industri-alization.

Gutenberg’s legacyThe printing press consolidated the

concept of the text as a closed corpusthat can be changed only by the author,who is always clearly identified andtakes responsibility for the contents ofthe text. This notion represents achange from the classic and medievalconcept of a text as an open work towhich the whole reader communitycontributes. Saint Bonaventura, theFranciscan monk and philosopher,

looked almost in scorn at those copy-ists who merely reproduced a textwithout altering it in any way.Likewise, Plato considered written lan-guage inferior to spoken languagebecause it exposed the text to the riskof closure. Before the invention of theprinting press, collectively written textswere common—from the tales ofHomer to the commentaries ofmedieval philosophers.

Closing the text is essential for estab-lishing the notion of ownership,whether the text’s owner is the actualauthor or a surrogate. A closed textfosters the idea of giving credit to anauthor for his work and codifies oper-ations that today we consider naturalfor a writer, such as the citation or quo-tation with attribution of a passagefrom another book.

The notion of closed and thereforecontrollable text and the reproducibil-ity of books afforded by the pressresulted at first in such governmentalconcern about the diffusion of seditious

Bringing Copyright into theInformation AgeSimone Santini, University of California at San Diego

T H E P R O F E S S I O N

Continued on page 102

Current copyright statutespromote an outdated,Industrial-Age approach tointellectual property.

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T h e P r o f e s s i o n

tic—tendencies, we should questionthe notion, endorsed by the USConstitution, that we still need copy-right to protect creative efforts. In thisrespect, however, we have no reason tobelieve that a profound redefinition ofcopyrights would have a noticeableeffect on creativity. This is quite evi-dent in software, in which open sourceefforts hold the creative forefront.Music’s history also confirms thisassertion, with its rich heritage of pop-ular, anonymous songs and authoredpieces produced before modern copy-right’s introduction.

Little more than a century ago, folkmusic was being created constantly,then shared, reproduced, and modifiedby thousands of musicians withoutrestriction. The very notion that some-one could somehow own popularmusic someone seemed ridiculous. Yetthis open environment in no wayrestricted these composers’ creativity.

Thus, the justification for promot-ing the progress of arts as the basis forcopyright’s existence—which, in theUS, at least, is its only rationale forexistence—doesn’t seem to apply tosoftware and music. What does applyis companies’ understandable desire tocontinue making money with the cur-rent business model. These companiesshould not, however, demand thatintellectual property’s evolution beblocked by their greed.

Many aspects of today’s music busi-ness that people take for granted—thesale of music independently of live per-formances, the existence of a celebritysystem and consequent narrowing ofmainstream music to a few profitablegenres and artists, and the very idea ofowning a musical piece—arose from acertain industrial culture that has been

material that the immediate antecedentsof modern copyright emerged: thelicenses ad imprimendum solumgranted in England by the Tudors since1538, and the monopoly granted to theLondon Stationers’ Company.

Industrialization’s influenceIn an opposition that appears to have

been essentially antimonopolistic andclose to the interests of the emergingindustrial class, when the Stationers’monopoly expired in 1694, England’sHouse of Commons ignored renewalpetitions for several years. Between1694 and 1710, when the Statute of Anne was promulgated, copyrightchanged from a governmental instru-ment to control the diffusion of sedi-tious material to a law regulatingownership, well suited to the needs ofthe upcoming industrial revolution.

Antimonopolistic concerns aboutcopyright permeate these early lawsthat, judging by today’s standards,granted monopoly for a short timeonly: 14 years in the case of earlyEnglish patent law.

Concerns with monopoly, and theidea that copyright represents a some-what necessary evil to be granted onlyto the extent needed to ensure society’swell-being, can also be glimpsed in thewording of the US Constitution:“[Congress shall have the power] topromote the progress of science anduseful arts, by securing for limited timeto authors and inventors exclusiverights to their respective writings anddiscoveries.” This passage shows thatCongress’s true end in framing theConstitution was to ensure that copy-right protected the progress of scienceand useful arts, more than the finan-cial interests of their creators. Thecharacter of copyright, however,changed with the evolution of theindustrial establishment, coming toendorse a much more positive view ofextended monopolies.

COPYRIGHT AND CREATIVITYApart from large corporations’

monopolistic—and thus anticapitalis-

built around music in the past century.If we expect the Internet to take usbeyond this culture, we should beunsurprised if the copyright conceptscreated especially for it will be changed.

There is little doubt that most musi-cians, who regard live performances astheir almost exclusive source ofincome, would benefit from havingtheir music distributed for free.Extrapolating from our music exam-ple, it should be obvious that what wemay lose with a drastic reduction ofcopy rights is not the variety of artisticor cultural expressions—which havebeen around long before any intellec-tual property law and are in fact oftenhindered by corporate use of copy-right—but simply the industrial modelthat, in the past two centuries, has beenbuilt upon them.

This model connects intimately toaccidents like the music industry’sreliance on a significant marginal costand a physical medium. Once thesepremises change, the model and thecopyright concept that came with themshould change as well. The computingprofession has already been somewhatsuccessful in proposing and endorsing,even at an industrial level, alternativemodels of software distribution. Whythen have the alternative solutions pro-posed for music exchange been sorestricted and, by and large, divergentfrom the computing mainstream?

ALTERNATIVE MODELSA rather obvious difference between

software and music arises because elec-tronic distribution of software, with itsensuing impact on copyright, has beenaround much longer than electronicdistribution of music. This extendedperiod has given original softwarecopyright protections more time tomature.

Possibly more importantly, softwaredevelopment takes place within thecomputing profession’s completelyenclosed confines. As a consequence,the industry can develop autochtho-nous solutions for software’s distribu-tion with relative ease, even if they

Continued from page 104

We should question thenotion that we still need

copyright to protectcreative efforts.

August 2003 103

plying the medium’s physical support.Many computing applications share

this rather common situation with thestate of music distribution: New tech-nologies have the potential to alterwell-established power and economicequilibria. Yet those who represent thecomputing profession to mainstreamsociety tend to support—and seek topreserve—the very same power struc-tures we have the potential to disrupt.

Structural changes in the premisesunderpinning industrial culture, suchas those exemplified in potential alter-ations to existing copyright statutes,require that computing professionalsparticipate more openly in the relevantsocial and cultural debate. We shouldoperate in a way that does not restrictdevelopment of computer systems ona massive scale, but also makes themavailable to other entities, from non-profit organizations to advocacygroups. Universities in particularshould take on the goal of creating eco-

require a redefinition of traditionalideas about intellectual property.

In the case of music—and, for theforeseeable future, all other forms ofcultural expression—because produc-tion and distribution remain externalto the profession, the creation of alter-native sharing practices requires aninteraction with external referents.Traditionally, the computing profes-sion’s main referent has been the indus-trial establishment. It is natural that,in this interplay, the industry’s concernsmake their way into the collective con-sciousness of computing professionals.

So, for example, the standarddefense offered in favor of musicexchange techniques is that they willhelp CD sales. No one ever openly dis-cusses that a new technology mightradically change how artists makemusic and alter the music arena’spower relationships—possibly at theexpense of the current industrial estab-lishment, which relies heavily on sup-

nomic and social awareness of com-puting scientists beyond their restrictedindustrial environment.

I t remains unclear if the net effect ofcomputers on our cultural and intel-lectual life will be positive. If we want

at least the possibility that it will be,computing professionals must avoidbecoming yet another cog in the mech-anism of industrial globalization. �

Simone Santini is a project researcherat the University of California at SanDiego. Contact him at ssantini@ncmir.ucsd.edu.

Editor: Neville Holmes, School of Comput-ing, University of Tasmania, Locked Bag 1-359, Launceston 7250; neville.holmes@utas.edu.au

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