Even the Greedy and the Oafish Enjoy the Protection of the Law. But Do We Have to Give Up Privacy To Make Things Fair?

Daniel Akst/NYTimes: Where Nobody Knows You're a Music Thief, on the internet:

If it's a place where nobody knows you're a dog, as a New Yorker cartoon once said, then it's also a place where nobody knows you're a crook, either. Even you may not know. Anonymity allows honest people to sustain a higher level of dishonesty without guilt...

After which he goes on to say that people rationalize stealing copyright protected works because they are not offered online for sale, the record companies charge too much, and are otherwise evil, and this is no excuse for stealing. He is right. However, those same companies are the ones who've lobbied Congress to make copyright law slant in their favor. That is the real issue, and in need of some major redoing (think the subpoena process under the DMCA as just one example of the ridiculous situation we currently have.)

He goes on:
The absurd Robin Hood narrative that has sprung up around music sharing only obscures what is happening: that a large group of mainly middle-class individuals are not just breaking the law, but also attacking the legal concept that is essential to freedom and prosperity in the information age.

Yes, and the whole copyright agreement (we give you the monopoly, you must deal responsibly with it, is out of balance...) needs work. Stealing is not okay. But neither is the current copyright regime. That regime needs to change or it will kill the freedom and prosperity of the information age because it locks information property (that word is really not right for this discussion, but until I find a better one...) down so tightly that fair use, scientific research, innovation and competition get run over.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, what's the fairest thing of all? The answer is probably authentication. Sooner or later we will need to know who everyone on the Internet is, and who confirmed their identities. Internet access providers who admit unauthenticated users will have to be shut out, even if that means shutting out whole countries.

One of the terrific things about the internet is our ability to be anonymous. Regarding our consumption of intellectual materials, this is critical. The idea that all need be revealed just so that copyright holders can count every unit is ridiculous, corrosive to the democracy and totally unnecessary. He is suggesting we lurch into the totalitarian.

In such a world, there would be no doubt about who was violating copyright laws or otherwise misusing the electronic commons. It's sad, I know. The ability to shed one's identity online seemed a dream for a while, but as the poet Delmore Schwartz reminds us, "in dreams begin responsibilities."

There are other possibilities, as the recently evolving discussion on compulsory licensing and other methods for paying artists for their works proves, and I wish Akst would have considered this before reiterating the fallacy that it's either privacy or ... {security, copyright, whatever}. We can pay artists, make an honest system, do the right thing for a healthy internet, and keep our privacy. The discussions around these issues are worth the effort, to find something better than what we have now, that doesn't hurt the public and the commons even more so than the current copyright regime has.

Posted by Mary Hodder at October 05, 2003 12:05 AM