Free culture, the public domain and code as control

#med122

Plane Crazy (May 15th 1928)

Steamboat Willie (Nov 1928)

• A couple of my boys could read music, and one of them could play a mouth organ. We put them in a room where they could not see the screen and arranged to pipe their sound into the room where our wives and friends were going to see the picture.

• The boys worked from a music and sound-effects score. After several false starts, sound and action got off with the gun. The mouth organist played the tune, the rest of us in the sound department bammed tin pans and blew slide whistles on the beat. The synchronization was pretty close.

• The effect on our little audience was nothing less than electric. They responded almost instinctively to this union of sound and motion. I thought they were kidding me. So they put me in the audience and ran the action again. It was terrible, but it was wonderful! And it was something new!

1928

Walt Disney creativity

The public domain

No permissionNo lawyers

From 1790 until 1978, the average copyright term was never more than thirty-two years

As much as 95% of material (books, films, music, etc) is commercially unavailable to access

Up to 85% becomes commercially unavailable within just 28 years

Much of the material produced during the 20th century is locked down by copyright and has become ‘lost culture’

Google Books (2004)

Copyright industry

Sharing knowledge and culture

Copyright monopoly

Patent monopoly

Industrial Protectionism

Manufacturing copies

Digital Restriction Mechanisms

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.

In 2006, under 2 billion DRM-protected songs were sold worldwide by online stores, while over 20 billion songs were sold completely DRM-free and unprotected on CDs by the music companies themselves. The music companies sell the vast majority of their music DRM-free, and show no signs of changing this behavior, since the overwhelming majority of their revenues depend on selling CDs which must play in CD players that support no DRM system.

Questions

• In whose interest does copyright function?

• Does copyright limit or encourage creativity?

• Should copyright continue as it is, or does it need reforming?

• If it is reformed, what kind of changes would make it better?