June 18, 2008

  • Just a thought...

    ...about all this Bill C-61 business.

    Proposed modern copyright laws seem to hinge on one major premise - that people given the choice between ethical and unethical action will generally choose the latter.

    This is not about stealing one person's creation and presenting it as one's own.  Granted, this happens but it is definitely not the norm.  Uncredited plagiarism ought to be illegal and it is.  Of course, this plagiarism also needs to be distinguished from non-malicious use of purchased material (or of material that is disproportionately difficult to purchase by obscurity or otherwise).  I sincerely believe that credited use and other such use of such material without the intent of misrepresentation - placing music on a cd as background music in a personal video and then crediting the artist at the end, or sharing a track with a friend with the intent of introducing said friend to a new artist, or listening to a cd on speakers in a public place without presenting such material as one's own - should be a legal right, since these actions only serve to promote the original artist in the end.

    What concerns me more is the charge that, given the choice between two options, people will naturally take the choice that destroys what they value.  The two choices I speak of are these:  first, paying and supporting the creator of something for which we enjoy a (and I do emphasize this) fair and reasonable rate dependent upon what we - the audience of that material - feel it is worth; and second, instead taking that material with no returns, thereby letting that creator suffer and be unable to continue to create that work.  It is a question that strikes at the very heart of human nature, and by introducing the type of copyright bills which are currently at issue, the government's answer is thus:  "Guilty until proven innocent". 

    That's not how our country works, and it is not how our basic human rights presume.  Making the assumption of guilt wrongly puts all Canadians into the role of the criminal and 'justifies' the removal of our rights to actions we really ought to be allowed to do.  Curtailing and funneling of our rights to act into corridors whose tolls are collected by companies is exactly what those who stand to collect those tolls would love to see. 

    It's under this light that we see the wealthy industry lobbyists who cry loudest for such draconian laws and who claim to be representing the artists as actually having their own checkbooks foremost in mind - it's really a matter of greed.  As for the artists who protest alongside lobbyists, most often these
    are the ones who really aren't in dire need of extra cash or promotion.  It is clear from the growing number of independent artists promoting their work for free on sites like Myspace that many artists welcome the kind of attention to which I listed at the start.  Intransigent record labels who fail to adapt might just be heading the way of the extinction now that tools exist for artists to directly market and distribute their work to willing audiences.

    An interesting article on this subject with details on loopholes and implications can be found at Michael Geist's blog at the following link:
    http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3026/159/