October 5, 2003
So Which Is It?
I hear two conflicting arguments often these days:
A) CLs are not politically feasible because the music industry (and other copyright industries) will fight it. They want a market solution that favors them – they don’t want to trust the political process to arbitrate how much money they should earn. You can’t just hand them money and tell them to go away.
B) Once a CL for music is in place, the software, movie, and book industries will inevitably be clamoring for a CL. Software suffers from plenty of piracy, so they’ll want to jump on this solution. What does it matter that copyright is a “patchwork quilt” – we’ll just be opening it up to a whole new kind of rent seeking.
So which is it? I don’t see how the industries would (A) not want a CL unless (B) one’s already in place.
I think A is more plausible and fits reality better. If the music industry has a CL, I don’t see why the other industries will all of a sudden change their tune. If they do, then I suppose that would mean something’s either very right (the CL’s working more efficiently and effectively than the current system) or very wrong (it’s allocating way too much money because of political or technical difficulties). The former wouldn’t be such a bad thing; the latter isn’t such a foregone conclusion that the other industries will inevitably want a CL.
Filed by Derek Slater at 1:01 pm under General news
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