Cory Doctorow @ PSU
Posted by: dalas | From: November 20, 2006
I almost missed Cory Doctorow's lecture Thursday night at Portland State University due to highly unusual Max Train delays. Doctorow is a co-editor of Boing Boing, writer of fascinating science fiction, and a copyright activist. I had been looking forward to seeing him in person for a few weeks. As I stood on the platform checking the time and watching the number of waiting passengers grow, I felt like I was back in Brooklyn again, dealing with the A Train. Luckily, the Max was merciful and I got to the campus just in time.
The introduction was a little rocky. The professor who was doing the introducing got many of his "facts" about Doctorow wrong. For example, he said that Doctorow was visiting from UCLA, when in fact he is currently based out of USC, "Where we don't taser our students," he quipped.
However, as soon as the lecture proper was underway, Doctorow was in his element, and delivered a thought-provoking talk on the purpose of copyright. It's quite pointless for me to go into too much detail, since you can just listen to the lecture yourself, but I thought I would highlight a few points that I found particularly interesting.
To start with, Doctorow brought up an issue currently facing documentary filmmakers. I am a filmmaker myself, and prefer to work on documentary projects, so I was appalled to hear that we have now entered an age where it can be very difficult to get distribution for a film unless you have cleared everything that might possibly have a copyright attached to it that appears in even the smallest area of the screen. Just look around you as you move through the modern world and you'll see that it's pretty much an impossible task to turn on a camera and not capture a corporate logo, a piece of music drifting through the air, or an artist-created image on the shirt of a passerby. Mind you, you might not actually need the permission, but the very real threat of legal action is enough to dissuade many from doing business with you if you don't have permission.
On the subject of mashups, Doctorow pointed out that it's almost impossible to release a commercial mashup album unless you are on a major label that can "play ball" with all of the rightsholders involved. This would seem to have the effect of limiting the diversity of our culture. If there is a compulsory license for covering a song someone else wrote, why is there no similar compulsory license for sampling?
Also of interest to the particular choir that is reading this post were Doctorow's thoughts on blogging and copyright. He spoke about the No Electronic Theft Act, or NETA. Under NETA, each act of "copy and paste" that a blogger commits could be penalized by up to $150,000 in damages. There are currently no prosecutions, but wherever the money goes, the lawyers are sure to follow.
Finally, I want to touch on what Doctorow seems to view as one possible solution to the financial impact that unauthorized copying has on media creators, that being the concept of subscriptions. "Pay me for what I'll make tomorrow," he says. A very good idea in theory, and certainly one that should appeal to our Yankee ingenuity. However, the flaws immediately become apparent when you think of something like TV shows. You subscribe to cable in order to watch the next episode of that TV show you like, but these days it's just as easy to download that show on a torrent site.
I think we are instead facing a future in which it will become more important than ever for media creators to impress upon their audience a need to be supported. "Pay me so that I am able to make something tomorrow." Admittedly, this is not the ideal situation for media creators, but the "pirates" will most likely never be defeated, so the system has no choice but to adapt.
In closing, I leave you with a special message from Mr. Cory Doctorow himself:
A message from Cory Doctorow on Vimeo
