In 10 or 20 years, all copyright material will be free, legal and available for download from any computer.
At least that’s my theory.
Let me be clear that I’m not advocating illegal downloading. I subscribe to a pay music service, I listen to Internet radio, and I purchase video games with cash.
However, I do advocate the loosening of copyright restrictions.
Technology has already had a serious effect on the way many people interact with entertainment media, not only through music services such as Napster and iTunes, but also through new personalized internet radio stations such as Pandora.com, last.fm and finetune.com.
It’s no trouble to imagine that, five years from now, an iPod will hold ten times more music, and people are going to want to fill those empty MP3 players with something.
Wikipedia is already attempting to get textbooks online for free, and Google is adding more and more books to its legal online library.
For better or worse, it’s only a matter of time before the line between legal downloading and piracy is erased. Our society is approaching what Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig calls a “free culture.”
In his book, “Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity,” Lessig makes a case for piracy by arguing for more freedom to distribute educational and entertainment media.
Lessig says, “If “˜piracy’ means using the creative property of others without their permission … then the history of the content industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of “˜big media’ today ““ film, records, radio and cable TV ““ was born of a kind of piracy so defined.”
And yet the use of technology to record media has always met with stiff resistance.
Universal studios sued Sony over the creation of Betamax VCRs because they wanted to keep people from recording television shows. Fortunately, Universal lost, and VCRs, TiVo and other digital video records have become the norm.
While a culture where all forms of entertainment are free sounds great, it will have some serious problems, the biggest of which will be the question of how to support those who create art, music, games and movies.
There are three ways to provide for artists. The first is to get the government to stop the rapid spread of file-sharing and other types of illegal downloading programs so that artists get their fair share.
Unfortunately, the government is notoriously slow when it comes to stopping issues that are widespread and done in secret (Prohibition comes to mind).
The second possibility is for online stores to entice users away from using illegal sources to using those stores’ legal services.
In other words, they will need to provide more services, faster downloads and better-quality games, movies and music. However, it’s difficult to convince people to use something that costs money when those people are already using something that’s free.
The third and most interesting possibility is that society should find a way to support these people who create the works we enjoy, while allowing them to be free for everyone. The old saying that the “worker is due his wages” still applies, even if the work is distributed freely.
Artists could ask for donations or sell personalized editions of their creations, advertising space product endorsement, and tickets for live concerts and productions. Artists will make less money than they do now, but frankly, many of them are overpaid anyway.
There will be many who think that this will be the death of culture as we know it. The argument goes: When everything is free, why would anyone produce anything?
The answer? YouTube.
YouTube features thousands of homemade music videos and movies. Some of them are real garbage, but many are hilarious, heart-wrenching or poignant. Surprisingly, the majority of these movies are produced for free.
Loosening copyright restrictions won’t kill culture, it will free it. Humanity will continue to create art simply for the love of creating things and ““ on a more base level ““ for their desire for attention.
Society may have trouble adjusting, but current trends show that the free culture is inevitable.
So don’t download that song yet. Wait 10 years.
Send comments, love letters and sandwiches to jcrandall@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.