Swimmer out of water
General | Georgina Lock | 14.04.08
Comments (0)
New on The Broadsheet
Copyright in the 21st Century: Fair Trade or Foul Play?
by Bill Thompson
On the evening of March 8th this year I spent an hour and a half in the parallel world of the professional writer, courtesy of a public debate organised by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society to discuss the future of copyright.
It was not a pleasant experience, mostly because it revealed just how deep the misunderstanding of copyright law is among some of our most prominent writers. Since everyone involved in the world of new media is affected by the changes to the way we deal with copyright, and since writers are an outspoken and sometimes influential group, it seems worth exploring just what was missing from the discussion.
The panel session, chaired by broadcaster John Humphry, was preceded by an introductory talk from ALCS Honorary President Maureen Duffy, who talked about the history of copyright and pointed out that writers were failing to benefit from the increasing availability of material online.
We then heard from a panel of the great and good of the literary world, including writers Alan Plater, Joan Smith, Maureen Freely and publisher Anthony Cheetham, as they discussed the changing nature of publishing and the pressures on writers brought about by the internet and electronic publishing, liberally sprinkling their comments with tales of woe about mistreatment at the hands of grasping publishers, newspapers or broadcasters.
I thought I was a professional writer myself, but I fear that my years of immersion in computers, the net, digital rights management, creative commons, new business models, podcasting, free software, open source, software libre and all the rest of the panoply of network-fuelled innovation has made me a stranger in this strange land, since almost everything that was said seemed to be completely disconnected from the brave new online world.
Why fret so much about the terms offered by newspapers when they are a rapidly declining business? And why continue to insist that copyright infringement is theft when the digitisation of our literary heritage means that the books and DVDs stay in the shops – unsold, but also unstolen?
Yet none of this seemed to be up for debate. The panel decided that we need to educate young people about intellectual property, that it should be a criminal offence to coerce a writer to give up their copyright, that newspapers should be legally obliged to inform writers when they syndicate their material and that Google is evil for daring to index books.
A proposal that every operating system manufactured should be obliged to record every download and report it to the authorities so that income could be distributed to creators was only rejected after Mike Holderness from the NUJ pointed out how useful that would be in repressive regimes such as China or Turkey. Without this intervention it might well have been approved, since when it was suggested there were murmurs of approval from around the room from those whose desire to grab onto new income streams far outstrips their technological understanding.
I wanted to agree with the argument in favour of copyright, because I’m a journalist who gets ripped off by publishers myself, because the BBC rights grab means I can’t take clips from my own appearances and put them on my blog – and because the woman I love is a children’s writer struggling to make a living from her craft.
But this bunch were lost souls blown about in a storm, cursing the gods of technology that had conjured up the tempest, and I had nothing to say to them once we were five minutes into the debate and its true nature became clear: this was to be a whinge fest.
When poet Wendy Cope stood up to complain that the sales of her books were suffering nobody suggested that she find a new way of making money because the old one was clearly vanishing before her eyes, or asked if she’d thought of publishing all her poems online and putting adverts next to them, even though this model is working for musicians. (Making Typhoo with Kingsley Amis, anyone?)
I would have spoken out myself, but by that point I knew that there was no hope. It felt like a meeting of the record industry about five years ago, at the time when there was a dawning realisation that the network was creating new forms of value.
They could see that something was going on, and they wanted it. Because they couldn’t bear the possibility that someone, somewhere, could take their work, add value to it, and make more money.
At the time the record industry executives had no idea what they were going to do except whine about how badly they were treated and attempt to buy compliant legislatures into giving them more legal protection for their dying business models. It was an approach that led them straight into the open hands of Apple’s Steve Jobs, whose iTunes Music Store now defines the online music market.
Over ninety minutes in the auditorium the discussion veered widely around like a concussed victim of a hit and run trying to remember what happened, find someone to blame and look for help all at the same time.
First it was the way screenwriters fail to make money from downloads, then it was the way that journalists get paid too little or not at all when their work is syndicated, then it was how literary publishing is in crisis because the money goes to Chantelle/Colleen and not to the real writers, then it was how everybody downloads books and poems and TV shows without paying the writer… the theme rapidly became apparent. One of the few things that writers seem to know about the internet is that there is money to be made there, and they want some of it.
There were two sensible voices. One was Mike Holderness from the NUJ, who knows about rights and deal making and the unidentified other was also from the NUJ, making a direct and effective argument in favour of collective action by pointing out that writers of all types will only change things if they work together.
However Alan Plater summarised this idea from the platform as ‘writers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your living’, which simply came across as a smug epithet from an established and successful writer who gets to write © Alan Plater after his pieces in The Guardian – unlike me. It even got a laugh from the audience, who did not perhaps realise that he had just undermined the only realistic proposal for real change.
Of course you need to decide what to use your collective voice to ask for, and it can’t just be more rights for more licensable stuff , like a penny each time an ebook is downloaded, or perhaps when it is read. There’s a danger that instead of condemning the way Apple has arbitrarily removed first use and resale rights from iTunes songs this will be seen as a way forward for novels.
Kids today don’t respect copyright not because they are greedy and want it all for free, but because they have the tools and the capability to do far more with a text or an image or a sound than was possible ten years ago and they will use that freedom with or without our permission. One day the world will be theirs, so we might as well start to make it one they will like to live in.
Among the unsensible voices was Joan Smith, a writer whose work I enjoy and one who has shown through her campaigning work that she has a moral compass and integrity unusual in our profession. Yet she repeatedly made the point that ‘stealing’ writing is a form of theft just like stealing a physical object, and even got a round of applause for this egregious misrepresentation.
There was a drinks reception after the debate, but this reporter made his excuses and left for the train. I knew I’d end up waving a glass of wine around and shouting ‘copyright is not property right, it’s a state granted monopoly! Taking your work and using it without your permission may be morally reprehensible and deprive you of money but it is not and never was the equivalent of stealing your car or your biscuit!’
Until the people assembled in the auditorium of the British Library this afternoon realise what is going on and start to engage with reality there is really no point talking to them about it.
We need a new copyright settlement, we need a new deal between creators and the state that encourages creative expression and provides reasonable reward to the creator, and we need a recognition that not every licensable act should be licensed, but none of this was even remotely on the agenda.
One of the outcomes of the meeting may be a new ‘guide to copyright’ intended to inform people about the way rights work and how they can be protected. But it seems to me that the audience in the British Library are the ones that really need to be educated in the realities of copyright in the digital age.
Digital | Bill Thompson | 14.05.07 Comments (0)
Agree? Disagree? Have an opinion? Join the debate and let us know below.
