Becky Hogge argues that we should celebrate, not criminalise, illegal downloaders
As the British Phonographic Industry, the body that represents the UK music business, begins a fresh assault on those who use peer-to-peer file-sharing networks to download music illegally off the internet, it's worth asking if there might be a better way to protect the creative industries than by punishing potential customers.
This autumn, the government will wind up a nine-month review tasked with examining intellectual property (IP) law. The law as it stands was not designed for the digital world - notoriously, IP law and the internet explode on contact. The internet's defining ability allows anyone to reproduce stuff simply and cheaply; thus those who engage in piracy in the digital, networked world do so, in a sense, because it is harder not to. Gone are the days when your average IP infringer was a bulk publisher ripping off textbooks at a secret factory in Jaipur; now he's more likely to be sitting upstairs in his Star Wars pyjamas waiting for you to call him down for supper.
Conversely, the nuances encoded in IP law to protect the rights of consumers and citizens to gain access to information are not easily captured in digital form. Machines don't do nuance - they generally prefer zeros and ones. This means that when rights holders such as those represented by the BPI employ machines to encode copyright protection into digital works, they can't encode fair dealing, or the private right to copy, and then end up getting accused of standing in the way of choice and progress.
When the Chancellor announced the IP law review, it was clear that the man he was bringing in for the job, the former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers, would be spending most of his time refereeing two opposing points of view. No wonder the government solution is one of "finding a balance" - it is a last, exasperated call for appeasement between two parties, one convinced that the other is a monopolist, and the second that the other is a thief.
So it is refreshing to read Rufus Pollock's paper "The Value of the Public Domain", published on 14 July by the Institute for Public Policy Research. Pollock, a committed conservationist of the internet's open culture, calls on his readers to stop bickering and recognise the value - in both indirect economic and social gain - of information goods to which access is not restricted by intellectual property law. Sharing music widens our cultural horizons, argues Pollock, creating tastes for live concerts, vinyl and CDs. Similarly, lifting restrictions to access on older works spreads knowledge and creates repackaging markets.
Not only are Pollock's economic arguments fresh, but he's got the evidence to back them up. His IPPR paper should be top of the reading list for the BPI, Gowers, and anyone else who fears for the safety of the new knowledge economy.
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