Copyrights Are No Longer About Copies (Part 1)

...Copyright laws can, in fact, serve valuable purposes: They can ensure that once works are created, their authors are able to protect them and benefit from them economically. But copyright laws rarely cause people to create things they otherwise wouldn’t have. Nor are copyright laws responsible for either commercial or critical success. The benefits from ownership of copy rights have always flowed disproportionately to gatekeepers who are interested in artificial scarcity and monopoly profits, rather than abundance and diversity.

Why do so many think copyright laws directly lead to more works and more money in authors’ pockets? Because the copyright industries -- which are after all in the storytelling business - - have constructed a very powerful story, complete with heroes and bad guys, that policy makers want to believe. In this story, the villains are file sharers and Internet companies out to destroy the American (or fill in any other country’s) way of life. And like Superman, legislators can swoop in and pass stronger copyright laws to put the bad guys in jail. The sun will come out; there will be milk and honey in the land again. That’s a great story, but it doesn’t match today’s reality...

Yet copyright policy makers often fail to appreciate that the underlying issue today is pricing, not technology. Technology is not the enemy but simply the means by which market expectations are created and satisfied...Copyright laws should not act to shore up outdated business models against the tide of new technologies...