The analogy that opens this piece is a little inaccurate: “To digital zealots, defending copyright is like advocating the return to the typewriter” and then the author goes on to defend typewriters. Actually, to say that copyright needs no adjustment for the digital age is to say everyone should be forced to use typewriters in order to protect the typewriter industry and the creator of typewriters. Since Filloux hasn’t used a typewriter for this post, I think Levine should write a book vilifying him as a virulently against the creators of all typewriters.

How could Filloux be so heartless, I wonder?

Yes, innumerable ISPs and aggregators and piracy sites and ad companies have “cashed in” on the the great web 2.0 fleecing of the creative class. That’s not news. What point are you trying and failing to make?

My favorite Lessig quotes come from his appearance on The Colbert Report:

Lessig: “Like people build in Flickr, a free sharing economy, and then Flickr makes money on top of it – a commercial economy.”

Colbert: “So the ‘Hybrid Economy’ is that everybody else does the work, and Flickr makes the money…”

Lessig: “Don’t tell anybody this…”

LOL

1. Quality of Content or Greed:

Increasingly the industry (with the collusion of artists) would place 1-3 attractive tracks with 9-12 lower quality offers and charge the full pricing of the album. Overall quality appeared to suffer (IMO) and so when un-bundling became relatively easy the buyers increased the quality per their $. I’ve never pirated a piece of music and my album purchases declined for precisely this reason and they would have declined due to this whether the digital revolution occurred or not.

2. Copyright went through a relatively long period of strengthening prior to the current (argued by the author) relaxation.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
So society – it could be argued – has been relatively generous to content owners overall. Not sure whether this was addressed in the book also.

3. Obsolescence

A proportion of the music (and other) industries revenues were made by periodic licensing. As formats shifted the same licensed content was resold on new (or worn out) content. Digital destroyed this proportion of revenue (that arguably wasn’t deserved).

4. Bone headed DRM or treating your paying customers like Thieves

The content industries protect their current revenue in ways that badly inconvenience the legal users of their content. Regional coding of DVDs is an example. I’ve lived all over the world and so need to ensure that I’ve unlocked all DVD players that I buy to Region zero so I can use all the content I’ve legally licensed. Other various copyright protection schemes cause inconvenience. There is no exchange mechanism in place to legally and inexpensively exchange content for a fee to avoid these inconveniences (leading to 2 above). As a result I despise the content delivery companies and restrict purchasing.

Given the above a proportion of Music Industry Revenues deserved to drop as technology improved even without the argued copyright relaxation occurring.

I do not think Google influenced Lessig’s position on copyright, since his position has not changed much. HOWEVER, I think everything he says should be taken with a grain of salt, and I do not believe his anti-creator campaign would get so much attention if it was not funded by Googlebucks.

Would Lessig still believe as he did if Google did not give money to most of the organizations he’s involved with? I suspect so. Would Stanford Law School have launched an aggressive campaign to expand fair use just after receiving $2 million form Google if it had not received that money. I do not think so. Would Sergey Brin’s mother-in-law have a leadership position at Creative Commons if Google had not given the organization so much money. Hard to imagine.

Lastly, it is important to remember that courts have rejected almost all of his arguments.

There is (effectively) no copyright on the internet. Yes, I can’t turn around and sell other people’s work, but any careful person can copy and distribute whatever they want for free, with no fear of consequences. This isn’t a good or bad thing — just the nature of digital. Smart people have already cashed in on that fact, and used it to make truckloads of cash. People who pretend that digital materials can be somehow regulated will gain nothing (unless, like Levine, they write pointless books for clueless people to buy).

BTW- iTunes massive success has already proven that the whole Napster fiasco was entirely created by music publishers’ refusal to enter the online realm themselves. Businesses who don’t give their customers what they want can expect their customers to seek alternatives. That this is still seen as something shocking tells us all we need to know about lessons learned by Big Media.

Copyright must be relaxed for the simple reason that the current system is insanely unbalanced in favor of copyright cartels, and against the interests of both creators and consumers of content. The attack on YouTube and other platforms for user-supplied content give away Levine’s real intent, which is to attack any disruptive competition to the traditional copyright cartels.

And one final note — in the past decade, musicians’ incomes, both as a fraction of music industry income and in absolute terms. The only folks getting thrashed by the digital revolution are the record companies, who richly deserve it.

While I think that Congress is dearly in need of the reforms Lessig advocates, I am somewhat sad that he has turned his attention there. I just don’t think he has much hope in that direction, alas.

Failing to capture potential income is not a financial loss (i.e. spend $100 for $75 in revenue). n.b. ‘pirated content’ = potential income.

I am very much open to reasonable criticism, but if you are going to call me a liar – much less imply I have a habit of being so – I would like to see some evidence.

That only makes Levine and Lessig liars. But that’s not exactly news.