Ian Betteridge is bothered.

He’s immensely irritated by those ‘assholes’ who give good businesses grief by being big and clever – or not.

In this case, the business suffering from grief – in the form of RIAA’s litigious attention – is Muxtape, an online service that simulates the liberty we used to enjoy in recording great music from the radio receiver or Gramophone records onto Compact Cassette tapes in the privacy of our own homes.

Fortunately, some kind coders realised they could greatly improve the service by enabling people to actually make recordings, rather than just pretend they did. There is no harm in this, after all, Muxtape remains unaffected. The same information is sent to users as normal, it’s just that thanks to neat scripts the users actually get to hold the cassette tapes they so lovingly made in their grubby little hands. The digits in their digits, as it were.

So, strangely, just because of this user enhancement, completely beyond the control of Muxtape, the RIAA is leaning on it. Because the RIAA does that sort of thing – to protect its monopolies concerning who gets to make recordings.

It seems Ian Betteridge blames those who improved Muxtape, rather than those monopolists who would prefer it remained a sham, remained a child’s toy as in “Let’s pretend we’re making recordings”, and “Let’s pretend the cassette tape on the screen is actually real”, rather than a useful tool for adults.

I disagree and suggest that we should not blame those who add value just because it upsets those who’d rather that value not be added.

Moreover, on the subject of assholes, these aren’t those big and clever coders who recognise the technical insignificance of the difference between ‘streaming’ and ‘downloading’, but those luddite legislators who decided that the law should recognise a significant difference. The same digital bits are communicated. The law simply holds that their different names, in indicating a different metaphor, distinguish between the delivery of a copy of a recording and its recordable transmission. This reveals the law to be an ass when it comes to the communication of information. It is folly to shoehorn the Internet into metaphors of inked paper and telegraph.

Revealing this anachronistic sophistry may well upset devout believers in a digital distribution/transmission duality. It is also likely to cause political and litigious grief to those businesses attempting to rely upon it – this technically insignificant, but legislatively critical distinction. However, there’s a greater cause at stake than just avoiding any erosion of a fragile metaphor that might bring little businesses to the bullying attentions of their bigger brothers.

The moral imperative of our time is to abolish these mercantile privileges of monopoly, that not only allow corporate bullying and extortion between businesses, but also allow corporations to persecute individual members of the public should they fail to accept the suspension of their cultural liberty.

Having the streaming/downloading sophistry revealed is an inevitability for all businesses, large or small, YouTube or MuxTape. Those entrepreneurs in this field will be technically astute enough to understand the fragile, technically insignificant, though legally significant, difference between streaming user uploaded works and file sharing. It is not the responsibility of the public to cooperate in maintaining any pretence or archaic law: that, of the music legitimately communicated to them, some bits they may keep, some bits they should discard, some bits they may copy, and some bits they should not.

So, rather than admonish people for pointing out the elephant in the room, they should be commended, for the sooner the law finally recognises it the better.

Free speech is free communication of one’s own or another’s published intellectual works, whether by voice, morse code, or TCP/IP, and whether by physical delivery of paper, piano roll, magnetic tape, acetate discs, or memory stick, and without grant of monopoly over any particular pattern or arrangement of expression.

Scott Carpenter has noticed that a Creative Commons license is worth less than the paper it could have been printed on. Indeed, if it had been printed on paper, it might have been worth keeping.

In Free Culture ‘Take Backsies’ on Flickr Scott tells of how a photographer has subsequently removed the CC licenses applying to his photos on Flickr and reverted to undiluted copyright.

Having promoted the photographer in exchange for the liberty apparently provided by his CC license, Scott no doubt has a bad taste in his mouth now that his liberty has apparently been withdrawn – despite theoretically remaining irrevocable.

This is another reason why copyright is unsuited to digital work. You don’t have a piece of paper on which the license is printed (something that was once difficult to counterfeit).

In terms of online publications, one’s only hope in demonstrating that a liberal license was ever provided is the Internet Archive.

Although, copyright licenses are just as ridiculous as copyright in their application to digital works, they do serve as a form of ward against those who still believe copyright is sensibly applied to them. Thus the GPL needs no power against those who don’t believe in copyright, only against those who do.

Really, when championing free culture, the artist has to make a public statement rejecting copyright. A standard license is not something that can really be ‘attached’ to digital works, and it doesn’t hold much weight if the artist is fickle.

Admittedly, avowals against copyright can be implicitly expressed to some degree by wholly neutralising licenses such as the GPL, but then these are effectively recognised and recorded by a large number of deriving coders.

This is why those in the free culture movement (unlike free software) could never really form a consensus endorsement of a license. The manumission of one’s audience cannot be sufficiently performed by permissive licensing (especially given the pollution of CC’s pix’n‘mix). It needs a public statement rejecting the manacles of copyright that bind them. The artist must tell their audience emphatically that they are, and will always be, free.

Of course, copyleft licenses can still be additionally applied to non-s/w works (such as photos), but then with less reuse, there’s less establishment of their copyleft status.

What you’re left with as assurance is the risked reputation of the self-publishing artist.

As we have seen, the artist can piss about with CC licenses, tweaking the terms, even reverting back to full copyright, and not really worry about this fickle behaviour having much affect on their reputation.

This is all in line with Lawrence Lessig’s misguided belief that copyright can and should be wielded by the author as a means of authorial control rather than be reserved for the publishers it was originally intended for.

This is why an artist’s avowal is far more significant than a CC license, and indispensible for those cultural works that may see little reuse.

It gives us a much bigger clue in determining which kind of artist they are:

1. The Lessigite artist who believes they should control what people do with their published work, and the uses to which it may be put. The sort of artist who one day may feel generous in giving their audience a little more liberty, and another day less, and considers this their authorial prerogative. If you can copy their work, it’s because they’ve permitted you to, not because you have any right to.
2. The libertarian artist who believes that no-one, especially themselves, should control what other people do with their published work, and who will not change their mind. Nevertheless, this artist still expects honour and integrity among their audience, for themselves and their work to be truthfully represented, as they truthfully represent those artists and works they build upon.

Being the latter, this is why on my blog I put my reputation on the line. I don’t just piss about with a CC license.

“I will not accept the enslavement of my fellow man, nor any imposition upon his liberty, as reward for the publication of my art”

That means I reject copyright, and will not assert it except as a means to prevent anyone else asserting it, e.g. via copyleft licenses such as the GPL.

Having a single published statement of my rejection of copyright (its grant to me of the public’s suspended cultural liberty) then backs up any copyleft licenses I might provide for those who find them useful.

There was a very good article on the Million Music blog yesterday:
http://millionmedia.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/bloggers-vs-majors

This asked why music bloggers had changed from sympathy and tolerance toward major record labels to outright condemnation, and wondered if this had been due to the labels’ recent ‘assertion of their rights’ by exercising their powers under the DMCA that had resulted in people’s entire blogs being taken down rather than just an offending post.

So I commented thus:

Individuals (human beings) have natural rights. Corporations don’t, they have privileges.

Copyright is a privilege that suspends the natural right to cultural liberty (specifically the right to share and build upon published works) in order to grant a lucrative monopoly to publishing corporations.

The DMCA is simply an enhancement of powers granted to copyright holders.

So, the majors are not asserting their rights, but exploiting their privileges.

If anyone was going to assert their rights it would be individuals asserting their right to share copies of published music recordings.

Unfortunately, most file-sharers and people who publish blogs containing mp3 files don’t realise they have a right to do what they’re doing.

Users of Google’s ‘Blogger’ service are reliant upon Google, so really they should host their blogs themselves on their own PCs if they don’t want them taken down by those privileged by the DMCA.

The blogger agreed in a subsequent comment with my moral viewpoint, but invited my further explanation.

So I then suggested in a second comment that if the labels kept on using the DMCA (or EUCD) as if it were a cultural sniper rifle, that eventually they’d have so many victims that they’d prompt a rebellion, that the worms would turn – if they haven’t started already. Cultural participants will either develop bullet proof vests (defenses against the DMCA) or will shoot back (use the DMCA against the labels).

Shortly afterwards it seems (from my referral logs) that someone from Universal Music found the post and its comments so disagreeable that they’ve ‘persuaded’ the blogger to discontinue publication.

Time: 21 Nov 2008 11:06am
IP: 167.167.136.2
Host: ip-167-167-136-2.ukrom.umusic.com
Page: index.php
Referrer: http://millionmedia.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/bloggers-vs-majors/
Method: GET
Status: 200

Interesting times…

There is considerable propaganda attempting to mislead the public into believing that downloading is a criminal act on the part of the downloader, e.g. “Illegal downloads caused considerable losses to the music industry last year” or “If you download copyrighted music you are committing a serious crime”.

So, let’s get the legality of downloading established once and for all:

1. Downloading is the act of communicating a file from a supplier’s server computer to a recipient’s client computer, at the latter’s request, and at the former’s consent.
2. Downloading a file (containing or representing an intellectual work) involves the manufacture of a copy.
3. The copy is manufactured by the supplier (by their server) because they (unlike the downloader) are in receipt or possession of the source work, or have access to it.
4. The manufactured copy is communicated by the supplier to the downloader (the recipient) via a computer network (whether electronically, optically, or by radio transmission, etc.).
5. The downloader receives the manufactured copy, but does not participate in its manufacture (impossible without the source) in the download process.
6. It is possible that ephemeral, intermediate copies were produced by the network and other devices during the transmission of the copy and its storage by the recipient.
7. The recipient (their client computer) may have had to assemble the final file if the copy was transmitted in small fragments rather than in one piece, however, the act of such assembly does not constitute copying.

If the intellectual work is not protected by copyright no infringement can occur.

If the intellectual work is protected by copyright, and the supplier is not licensed by all copyright holders to the work to manufacture and distribute copies, then the supplier may infringe copyright in the process of manufacturing and supplying copies to downloaders.

In no case does the downloader, the recipient of a downloaded file, commit copyright infringement.

Having downloaded, the downloader may then commence the manufacture and supply of further copies to others, which is of course a potential infringement.

Culpability for copyright infringement lies not with who requests an act of copying, nor with who receives a copy, but with who performs the critical act of manufacturing a copy (and who distributes/transmits it).

In conclusion:

• Downloading may involve copyright infringement, but this is not an act committed by the downloader.

I am reminded by Improbulus (via ORG) that David Lammy, Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property (UK), has launched an Intellectual Property Office initiative on the future direction of copyright:
© the future – Developing a copyright agenda for the 21^st century

It begins “The copyright system is of fundamental importance to the future health and prosperity of our creative industries and our economy”, but a century or two ago a similar initiative might just as well have begun “The trade in slaves and their exploitation is of fundamental importance to the future health and prosperity of our manufacturing industries and our economy”.

Both of these statements demonstrate a lack of imagination, bordering upon a self-interested refusal, to envision a future in which a healthy and prosperous industry can be achieved without suspending individual liberty.

Of course, it is not in dispute that the suspension of individual liberty can be lucrative to those privileged with its suspension, nor that such beneficiaries will be keen to retain it. However, this unethical exploitation is not something to look forward to in the future, but an embarrassment to consign to the history books.

As for the IPO’s request for comments on the future direction of copyright I’d suggest that it can be compared to that of Robert Mugabe’s direction of Zimbabwe. Presumably well intentioned, but all his directions lead Zimbabwe to its doom. Despite everyone else’s attempts to stop the runaway train of his ‘government’, it continues on, inexorably as if in a slow motion crash.

Until people start recognising that copyright is an unethical anachronism, a vestige of a bygone era in which individual liberty was considered secondary to industrial prosperity, then any direction will be the wrong direction.

Copyright has to be abolished. Asking for comments on the future direction of copyright is like asking the same for slavery (with any unenthusiastic comments to be ignored).

Just as with Zimbabwe, the sooner copyright runs out of steam and its crash is complete the better for everyone, when people can rediscover their culture free of its totalitarian yoke and resume the enjoyment of their freedom to share and build upon it.

Attempting to adjust the direction of copyright onto an apparently less damaging course, at best simply postpones its inevitable crash (abolition) and thus extends the duration of its current damage.

The plutocratic publishers (à la Mugabe) do not need my assistance in their lobbied direction of copyright toward abolition – and they are doing an excellent job of making it sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, until people see the damage that copyright does they will be unable to recognise that it should be abolished. Therefore, Cassandras such as I eventually realise, despite trying, that there’s nothing we can do or say to avert the disaster.

The train wreck that is copyright’s future has to happen.

Mike Masnick introduces us to a great new work, the like of which I have not seen since the Grey Album.

Let us wonder why this musician ‘Kutiman’ may not have either prepared his derivative art or even obtained our reward without seeking the permission of all those whose work he sampled.

Even if each of his sampled videos was CC-NC licensed, this mixing artist may not receive a single one of our pennies without theoretically becoming liable to copyright litigation – unless they painstakingly obtain permission from each and every copyright holder.

Why should such permission be required?

Why must this artist’s liberty be so suspended? Why may we not even reward them for their excellent intellectual work? Kultiman has provided attribution and links to each of the constituent works, so it is not as if we’re discouraged in also discovering and rewarding the underlying artists.

Elexis Trinity

Juice Lee

If such art can only be created and rewarded outside the law, then we must look to outlaws for such art, and reward them as outlaws.

Copyright is an unethical constraint on society’s cultural liberty and those societies who choose to remain bound by it choose cultural stagnation and obscurity.

The film industry’s latest advertisement in their campaign to prolong their anachronistic privilege of copyright (at the expense of suspending the public’s natural right to cultural liberty) is a bit of an own goal.

The amusing and yet depressing irony about the video clip is that its producer’s cultural liberty to incorporate the original soundtrack from Jaws has been suspended by copyright – and it comes across as if they didn’t fancy the prospect or expense of obtaining clearance – so they substituted something vaguely reminiscent.

This evasion does no credit to John Williams (the composer of the original music to Jaws), and implies that even the producers of the advert have no compunction in hypocritically avoiding paying the royalties they’d presumably otherwise argue he’s due. Isn’t that ‘copyright theft’?

They thus reveal the perverted, illiberal world they’d like us all to live in at the same time as ‘thanking’ people for similarly abstaining from taking natural liberties with the movies they buy. Those poor people the MPAA would thank for not yet having deprogrammed themselves from the brainwashing that it’s wrong to share copyrighted music and movies, and wrong to use copyrighted theme music in your own videos that you upload to YouTube.

On the other hand, when it comes to Knock-off-Nigels, most of us loathe them with good reason, those dishonest types who share inferior quality VHS transfers or videocam recordings and label them as full quality DVD rips when they should have truthfully described them. No-one will mourn Nigel’s passing (he was probably an MPAA employee).

So, come on everyone, let’s be honest. There is no shame in sharing and building upon published culture. Copyright is an unethical constraint on society’s cultural liberty and those societies who choose to remain bound by it choose cultural stagnation and obscurity.

Let’s see this video remixed with the appropriate musical segments from the original Jaws movie and uploaded to YouTube; let’s make John Williams proud that his music isn’t consigned to copyright oblivion to suffer the indignity of crude substitution. Let’s show the film industry what cultural freedom is all about, and how much more culturally vibrant and diverse the world is when artists are free to share and build upon each other’s work.

Don’t forget: that’s free as in free speech, not ‘free’ as in ‘free beer’.

Let us say that 35,000 CDs have been released every year since 1980, and will continue to be released.

Let us also say that a CD can generally be represented as a 100MiB MP3 file at an acceptable bit rate.

From the ‘back of envelope’ table below we can estimate that the cost of storing all the CDs ever released on a hard disk drive will fall to about $100 in 2015.

I suggest that the next file sharing application won’t be one that lets people pick and choose which CDs to share or audition. It will simply replicate and distribute EVERYTHING. There won’t even be any point in deleting all the CDs one doesn’t like. The problem will be entirely one of deciding what the heck to listen to.

Even so, once we have discovered the musicians we like there will still be the problem of how to persuade them to make more great music. Even all the music ever released can pale next to one more album from a favourite artist.

Don’t worry. That’s the problem I’m working on – enabling a musician’s fans to exchange their money for the musician’s production of music. It’s not rocket science. You just have to bear in mind that it’s not about enabling CD manufacturers to sell copies, but about enabling musicians to sell their music to their audience – directly instead of via record labels and CD manufacturers.

When you’re selling music instead of digital copies you don’t benefit from a monopoly; on the contrary, you want your music to spread far and wide.

So, if you’re hoping to fill that hard disk you’d probably better get started today.

Assuming a conservative 20Mbps share rate (given an efficient file-sharing system and no network contention) that works out at around 75TiB per year. In other words, all music ever released could be shared via the successor to BitTorrent within two years at such time as it became economic for everyone to store a duplicate set.

Within a decade, those who don’t share published music will be seen as a burden upon everyone else, akin to the way leechers are already perceived today.