[R-G] The Entertainment Industry Police Crackdown

[Anthony Fenton]


The Entertainment Industry Police Crackdown

By Dean Baker

This column was published on October 8, 2007 by Truthout.


Last week, a jury determined that Jammie Thomas, a single mother  
living in Minnesota, should pay $222,000 to the recording industry  
for allowing other people to download 24 songs off her computer on a  
file-sharing system. That's a pretty steep fine for passing along a  
few copies of Britney Spears' latest hits.
The recording industry was apparently able to track down this crime  
by hiring a high-tech sleuth who has software that can monitor the  
files people place on their computers. No doubt, the recording  
industry's sleuth has been visiting a computer near you.

The recording industry has been having a difficult time adjusting to  
the modern world. Digital technology and the Internet make it  
possible to instantly and costlessly transfer recorded music, movies,  
videos, and other material anywhere in the world. While this is great  
news for consumers, and those who value freedom of expression, as  
well as writers and musicians who want their work to reach the  
greatest possible audience, these technological developments are  
really bad news for the entertainment industry.

The entertainment industry makes its money off of copyrights. It  
wants to be able to charge people to get music and movies and it  
can't do that if people can get it for free. And, they want the nanny  
state to make people pay them. That's why Ms. Thomas may spend the  
rest of her life paying a fine for allowing 24 songs to be shared  
with others.

This is not the first time the entertainment industry has gone over  
the top to try to enforce copyrights. A few years back, it had a  
Russian computer scientist arrested at an academic conference for  
presenting a paper that explained how the industry's encryption codes  
could be broken. It has gone into college dorm rooms and teenagers'  
bedrooms looking for evidence of unauthorized copies of recorded  
music. It has coerced colleges into having propaganda classes on the  
virtues of copyrights for incoming freshman (no doubt led by experts  
from North Korea). It has even prepared a new curriculum that seeks  
to indoctrinate kids as early as kindergarten in the merits of  
copyright protection.

It's long past time for a little reality check. Copyright dates back  
to 16th century Venice. It was a mechanism for allowing writers to  
profit from their work by giving them a state-enforced monopoly. It  
has continued since that time, with the state-granted monopoly being  
extended both in scope and duration. Copyrights now cover music,  
movies, video games, and a wide range of other material. The duration  
has also been repeatedly extended so that copyrights in the United  
States now persist for 95 years after the death of the author.

While copyrights do provide an incentive for creative work, they are  
an extremely inefficient mechanism for this end. It is most efficient  
when items are sold at their marginal cost. Economists generally get  
infuriated about the economic distortions that are created when  
tariffs of 10 percent or 20 percent are placed on items like steel or  
clothes. In the case of copyrights, material that could otherwise be  
transferred at zero cost, instead commands prices of $15 for CDs, $30  
for movies, and even higher prices for other items, entirely because  
of the government-granted monopoly. For this reason, the economic  
distortions created by copyright dwarf the economic damage caused by  
other forms of trade protection.

There are many other mechanisms for supporting creative work, such as  
university funding (most professors are expected to publish in  
addition to their teaching), foundation funding, or direct public  
support. It is easy to design alternative mechanisms to expand this  
pool of non-copyright funding, such as the Artistic Freedom Voucher,  
which would give each person a small tax credit to support creative  
work of their choosing.

With the entertainment industry getting increasingly out of control,  
it is important that we start to develop better alternatives to  
copyright. We need to think of how we should support creative work in  
the 21st century and not let the entertainment industry drag us back  
into the 16th century.


Dean Baker is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy  
Research, in Washington, D.C. (www.cepr.net).


Center for Economic and Policy Research, 1611 Connecticut Ave, NW,  
Suite 400, Washington, DC 20009

Phone: (202) 293-5380, Fax: (202) 588-1356, Home: www.cepr.net