It’s important to consider what media sellers and rights-holders are doing correctly, and not solely deride them for their perpetual myopia in terms of business models.

To wit: what’s the deal with Amazon Prime? This three-tiered service costs $80 a year for unlimited streaming, access to their ebook library, and free two-day shipping on some items.

Streaming is certainly a step in the right direction. The more that larger companies continue to license streaming content, the cheaper and broader the selection will become. Compare this with rip-offs like some ISP’s “on-demand” movies that cost $6 apiece. Sure, those films are newer, but for the majority of consumers that are at least partially price sensitive, charging $6 for one streaming session is the same as offering nothing at all (especially for those of us without cable to begin with – a sub-group to which I happily belong).

Prime doesn’t have as many titles as Netflix, but they’re also the new kid on the block. In time, they should build a comparable library. If you’re super-picky, let’s face it: you’re probably reluctant to abandon your cable anyway. But if you’re flexible, you can get much more media for much cheaper with either streaming service.

Skipping to the free shipping: like most services, this is advantageous when used often. If you buy the hell out of media, then it could be a perk of Prime, but that’s not what I’m interested in here.

The most important feature is “access” to the lending library of ebooks. When I read this pitch over quickly, I was immediately impressed. Finally, someone gets it – way to go Amazon! But then the fine print (it wasn’t fine, I have to admit, but it wasn’t exactly bulleted as a feature either). It seems you can only get one ebook loaned per month. This stopped me entirely. What do the huge numbers of available titles really mean when you’ve so completely bottlenecked access?

I understand: few people even finish one title a month; this should be enough, and compared with ebook prices (and considering that ebook sales skirt first-sale doctrine’s right to resale), this is a great deal.

But it’s still fundamentally an approach of exclusion and artificial scarcity. And while they understandably don’t want to give access to unlimited downloads of unlimited titles to everyone on the Net, the Prime model still assumes that the way to do business is to limit what your customers can do. Pick one book out of 100,000? The idea is silly.

What indeed would customers do if allowed unfettered access to the entire collection? Would they suddenly “borrow” hundreds of titles per month and then refuse to buy any? Of course not. And even if they did: what is Amazon selling here? Prime or ebooks? The two needn’t be mutually exclusive, of course, and they wouldn’t be, but perhaps they shouldn’t need to be mutually inclusive either.

But what’s wrong with a more pragmatic model that’s much closer to the way a physical library operates? I love the idea of having unlimited numbers of copies (a bottlenecked which currently affects library ebook loans, alongside horrid DRM schemes), but why have the loan last forever? If someone is a Kindle owning Amazon customer, they likely value their immediate selections rather than their long-term library, especially if it means having higher availability.

Would you rather have any number of books available to you for a limited amount of time, or one book a month for as long as you want it? Most would choose the former, and – importantly – that doesn’t imply that they would stop buying ebooks. I use my local library like crazy, and I can check out a book over and over if I want, but eventually, if it’s a book that I want to read multiple times or one that I need always to have on-hand (or one that I eventually want to give away, though we’re not there yet with legal ebooks services) then I end up buying it.

If they had to restrict access, perhaps the barrier could be connectivity instead of the number of media. Say, Prime allows unfettered access so long as the user is connected, but to have a book available “off-line”, the person might have to buy it. This might sound restrictive, but this is essentially how the successful Steam platform operates. The price of easy shopping, demos, deals, updates, and stability is that you have to be connected. The benny for them is obvious: that they can better know who you are (and thus that you’re supposed to have access).

That said, it would not take long to conjure many more scenarios that beat the pants off of one book per month. It’s still certainly a step in the right direction, but because it employs artificial scarcity, I have to remain critical.

An unsettling trend has emerged on Facebook timelines, and I don’t mean sharing copyrighted content. I’m talking about sharing media behind access walls that demand Facebook information to view.

One thing should be clear at the onset: sharing media – embedded or linked to – should not require surrendering your personal data to some third-party application. Facebook makes sharing ridiculously easy. You just paste the URL into your status update, and Facebook even adds a thumbnail image and a synopsis.* For videos, you can even watch the clips inside Facebook. There is no need to abide by the shady terms of some application that supposedly makes sharing easier at the expense of selling out all your friends.

Take an example. Here’s what pops up when you attempt to listen to a music post. Sure, the post LOOKS like you could just play it right within Facebook, and what could be easier? Then you’re presented with yet another access wall, which we’ve come to detest and ignore, simply clicking whatever it demands to move forward. After all, we’ve got Farmville farms to tend to and mafias to run; we can’t be bothered to read pop-ups or even create accounts. We’re just fine using Facebook to bypass nag screens, despite what this means for our own privacy and the privacy of our friends.

Here’s another access wall – this one for Yahoo! News stories. It seems to suggest that to “share the news with your friends”  you have to surrender your personal data. I’ve seen other Yahoo! Facebook apps that require even more access, and for what? For a news story that users could just as easily find online and post a link to as share with the Yahoo! app.

Yet another – called SocialCam – requires access to personal data to play a video, even though the scores of embedded YouTube videos all over Facebook fly in the face of such an unnecessary sharing tack.

But notice what it reads at the bottom of each one of these, about posting as you. Isn’t this a little disturbing? Should sharing – an organic and timeless activity – really be coupled with auto-generated, canned opinions about what you’re listening to, or watching, or reading?

Facebook is contrived enough as it is; we don’t need canned updates about whatever media you’re consuming void of any context or users’ actual reason for sharing it.

Because of this, I took a closer look at my own Facebook account, specifically at the apps that were allowed some sort of access. I was surprised to find somewhere around 20 application with some manner of access to my account (and more importantly, my friends’ information). Fewer than half of these did I use on a regular basis. The others I had no doubt carelessly given access many moons ago, and I found that ALL of them had gleaned my updated data no more than a month prior.

So, for that silly little quiz I made a few years back, I’ve been surrendering my own and my friends’ data for countless months.

That sharing or even creating media requires such subjugation is silly. While Facebook is arguably not the freest and certainly not the most anonymous or secure platform for sharing, it does not demand surrendering data to the extent that we’ve been willing to hand it over. We clamor about identity theft and online privacy, but then allow the highest level of access just to view the latest meme pic, falls compilation, or headline news story.

I petition everyone to take a closer look at his/her Facebook settings and to take the few extra seconds necessary to avoid putting shared media behind an unnecessary access wall.

We’re sold out enough by those pushing consumer goods; we don’t need to subject each other to it as well.

An electronic version of my book Pirate Nation is now available for download. Just check out the “My Book” tab above or you can find it on its own site Pirate Nation.

I’ve employed a “pay what you want” model, and I’d love to receive some feedback or criticism about the book via the contact form also above.

Thanks so much for reading Piracy Happens, without which I’m certain Pirate Nation would have never been written.

Another cause for professional content’s decline is one of business model. I know: blaming business models borders on banal, but in this case it may just be accurate. Newspapers and magazines have long operated off readership (among other factors) dictating the amount to charge advertisers for ad space. So while you’re paying a buck an issue for a top-notch magazine, it’s possible the magazine even took a loss on that copy, but makes its money instead on the idea that you’re more prone to buy something that you saw advertised within its pages.

This is somewhat directed advertising in terms of magazines, but is often slinging spaghetti at the wall when it comes to newspapers. Who reads the newspaper? The old, the young, the rich, the poor, the liberal and the conservative, the male and the female.  The adverts are just as likely to have no appeal to a reader as they are to resonate.

And there are strong forces killing formerly reliable revenue streams for print media, such as lists of job openings moving online to sites such as Career Builder or Monster. The once-lucrative Classifieds are all but dead in print media because of Craigslist. Same for movie show times, community goings-on, and the like.

This has nothing to do with user-generated content (UGC), let alone with copyright, but with technology itself.

In terms of actual lost journalism jobs, while it’s arguable that user-generated film reviews have created a decrease in demand for newspaper-employed review writers, there is still a distinct difference between amateur film reviews and amateur investigative journalism. The former is a matter of experience, insight, and solid communication; the latter is also about access, dogged investigation, and established connections (things that it’s certain the lay writer has not developed like the career journalist).

Thus, it’s unlikely that professional investigative journalism about the war or about Darfur or Haiti has lost out to the rants of someone living comfortably in his mother’s basement so much as it has been negatively affected by the newspapers poor economics from the other listed factors.

Granted, what Slant writer Jack Shafer calls “social currency”  - that is, knowledge of what’s happening in the world right now – is indeed a currency being doled out by users alongside professional journalists, but the question then becomes “so what?”

Is most social currency coming from a professional on, say, political events, community news, or entertainment news necessarily better than from an amateur? It is going to be written better and following guidelines that ensure integrity better than Facebook, but is that necessarily so? Does it need to be that way? Are readers better off finding out that an earthquake rocked India or that a madman gunned down 10 people in a McDonald’s from a journalist rather than from a 140 character Twitter feed?

Sure, the latter is more likely to indulge rumors, but even the most respected television stations and even newspapers got a slew of “facts” ridiculously wrong on September 11^th, 2001. I remember reports of vans filled with explosives going off in front of federal buildings across the nation. Can we ridicule Facebook or Twitter for stoking rumors when mainstream media often shovels the same slop?

Indeed, magazines must bear some responsibility for poorer content as well. I heard a speech from a former editor-in-chief of Omni who talked about the “good ole days” where they paid a buck per word and took pieces up to 20,000 words. Such a payday hasn’t been seen since. But the issue was that advertisers disliked the Omni model, where readers actually – y’know – read the magazine. Advertisers and magazine publishers alike are far keener on the mag that gets only ten minutes face time, and a full 75% of that time is staring at ads, not content. This has birthed the 250 word “in depth” and the 100 word blurb. And all this was well underway long before the Internet was widespread.

I don’t believe that this decline has to do with copyright. I believe that – no matter the outcome of UGC and participatory culture – tighter copyright laws would simply not return the genii to the bottle. Regulations to control content on the Web might lessen the flow of some content some of the time. Might force a respect of some content at a hefty price (both in terms of pushback and actual logistical costs that no one entity wants to bear). But if a publication wants continually to pay writers less (spurred, I have little doubt, with fewer streams of income, not necessarily greed), then the quality will continue to decline.

In other words: a decline in quality and pay might be due to the willingness of a million amateurs to write whatever comes their way for pennies on the pro’s dollar, but what came first: the gigs or the willingness to fulfill them?

In case you missed the first two parts of this series, here are parts One and Two!

I’ve covered how I’m dubious about user-generated content (UGC) and amateur content’s role in harming the market for newspapers and magazines. However, amateur content has greatly impacted a photographer’s landscape, where anyone with a point-and-shoot is suddenly a “photographer” willing and able to shoot everything from a wedding to a birthday. However, here is where a more pragmatic attitude toward copyright can bolster business.

The older photogs who still insist that they retain all rights and only sell “packages” to their clients (with an assumed amount of business coming from clients returning for more photos to which only the photog has access) are going the way of the Dodo. Instead, forward-thinking photographers relinquish most or even all rights to their content the moment the transaction is complete – often by surrendering a disk of full-size or even lossless image files, and also with many “doctored” shots that the photographer cares little about thereafter.

While it’s understandable that this increases the upfront “sitting fee”, clients simply don’t want to be nickeled and dimed any longer; they want to own and be able to share their photos with the world, without the fear of stepping on any photographer’s toes.

And since a photographer’s own overhead has shrunk enormously with digital technology, gone are the days of costly packages anyway. Photoshop demands a fraction of the time light room development required, and there’s no question digital storage media are practically free compared with the erstwhile costs of film.

This doesn’t mean all photographers exist on a level playing field, however; there are still plenty high-end shutterbugs out there, and their work indeed stands above. Just as it’s unlikely that bootleg Louis Vuitton’s entice or take away customers who want the real deal, it’s equally unlikely that amateur point-and-click photographers are taking business away from these higher-end professionals.

Certainly, there are ways in which UGC has edged out other professional content, as well. For instance, I used to buy computer books on any program I was interested in learning or already knew but wanted to develop a mastery of. But where the book is static – having to teach assuming that each reader is going to have the same goal, the same problems, the same projects – I can go online to any of my favorite forums and tap into the wisdom of hundreds of people who work with that program daily. Who love to solve other people’s problems, and who custom-tailor their responses to my questions or problems.

I have received invaluable bits of code, shortcuts, tweaks to my workflow, and all for free. My contribution is that the solution remains online for anyone who has that same problem in the future (and the very sparse moments where I can contribute to the solution of someone else’s inquiry).

I had no problem paying for computer books and I might still buy one here and there if they are very visual and can be treated more for a quick reference (though responses on many message boards are equally quick), but it’s certain that my patronage of computer book publishers has waned almost to non-existence, and in this I am not alone.

Is this to be mourned? Is it any more impacting than the moribund nature of encyclopedias after Wikipedia? In the case of my computer issues, I don’t believe I am any worse off learning from other users than I am from a professional writer. And as much as I enjoyed a well-crafted encyclopedia, I think it’s naive to believe that there is so great a difference between Britannica and Wikipedia that the former is to be idolized as the pinnacle of human knowledge while the other is subject to perpetual ridicule for being “amateur”. Even a cursory glance at a popular Wiki’s edit history will reveal intense scrutiny and refinement. Is this so dissimilar to the sort of scrutiny entries for Britannica underwent? Dissimilar enough to disregard Wikipedia as worthless? Doubtful.

Check out Part Three, where I keep peeling the onion on what is happening to professional content creation, or go back and read Part One if you missed it.

What is causing a decline in the market for professional media?

Inspired by discussion on the sister Facebook page, I want to write a bit about this question, which is on the periphery of copyright law and digital piracy, but certainly germane.

Foremost, is there a decline? That depends on the media. For newspapers, certainly. The only real issue of debate is whether the decline is large or small each year, and not whether – over several years – circulation has indeed shrunk. There are a couple of papers that still enjoy a solid readership, but for most, each year entails laying off reporters and copy editors: both of which mean an eventual decline in professional content.

How about for magazines? Some titles are indeed suffering a steady decrease in print sales, though this offers plenty of time to migrate some facets to the Web and to figure out other ways of reclaiming their former glory. Other magazines, however, continue to thrive. However, content has moved from lengthy articles to tiny blurbs amid slews of adverts, so it’s safe to assume a hefty decrease in the market they present to professional writers.

I’ve heard it argued that the primary culprit hurting professional media is amateur and user-generated content, and – as a secondary but related cause – a cavalier attitude toward having to pay for any media since the advent of ubiquitous Internet.

But for journalism, I’m unconvinced that the rise of amateur and user-generated media is to blame. One big elephant in the room is that content creators now compete with many other media. Video games enjoyed only modest face time until a few years ago, around the time of widespread Internet usage (not implying that the Internet was gaming’s sine qua non, only that they are coeval technologies).  Now, games cull ridiculous amounts of face time that once went to more traditional forms of media: television, books, magazines, newspapers, and films. Where once a game’s appeal was in replay (and annoyingly so) now the technology has allowed game developers to create worlds of depth, immersion, and non-linear game play that demand hundreds or even thousands of hours to defeat.

Too, the Internet itself is taking away face time formerly spent patronizing professional media. Just think about how much time people spend “catching up” on Facebook daily. But neither gaming nor “surfing” needs user-generated content (UGC). At least not content that bears any relation to what one might find in a newspaper or magazine. While there’s plenty of user-generated media akin to newspaper content on Facebook, it is not necessary to garner attention. In fact, I generate much more interest in a picture of my toddler or pithy comment about the new GI Joe movie than I do for any “notes” I’ve written or links to my blog posts. For good or ill, we simply don’t have the time to dedicate to newspapers or magazines that we used to, but that doesn’t imply we’re spending that time reading amateur content covering the same topics.

One has to consider that traditional media was as much about connecting to the outside world as it was building a working knowledge of events, and now games and Internet social media sites provide that connection, despite not being tied to the latest military coup or catastrophic mudslide.

So perhaps it’s just as much a case of decreased demand as it is rising supply – either of which will greatly impact what a journalist is paid for a story (among other things). That’s not to suggest that there is a lack of amateur journalism out there: it is ubiquitous. But blaming it for shrinking a professional’s market and/or paycheck could prove a leaky case.

Check out Part Two, where I keep peeling the onion on what is happening to professional content creation. 

There has been some great discussion on Piracy Happens’ sister Facebook page Pirate Nation about the ways in which larger companies are involved in copyright infringement. More importantly, whether this is a boon to them, and even more importantly, whether it actually hurts content creators.

Every day the patent grab means robbing Peter to pay Paul. This company sues this one, who counter-sues, followed by appeals, followed by a lot of wealthy, happy patent lawyers. But I’m not terribly concerned about that in the scope of this post because I don’t believe that patent infringement has much in common with, say, generating ad or transaction revenue from copyright infringement. It is far more diaphanous than that, and – arguably – has much more to do with rights-holders than content creators.

For example, I’ll choose auction monolith eBay. There should be little doubt that – according to the letter of copyright law – eBay facilitates copyright violation every hour of every day. That is: they house auctions for items that violate copyright, whether it’s a bootleg film or tv series, unauthorized re-sale of royalty-free b-roll, or selling computer hardware with pre-loaded apps that are not legitimate versions. I’ll be borrowing from my book Pirate Nation a little here.

So foremost: does eBay profit from this? Despite slews of angry customers claiming that eBay is little more than a treasure trove of pirated warez – that they resist fighting infringement because they welcome any commission, there is – as usual – much more to it than that. After a case in which filmmaker Robert Hendrickson attempted to sue eBay for copyright violation for supposedly selling bootleg DVDs, it was decided in the courts that eBay fell under protection based on a facet of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). It basically goes like this: eBay isn’t responsible for what others try to sell so long as they remove the content and take action to prevent it recurring whenever the rights-holder (or someone else) files a complaint. But they went beyond this.

eBay created Verification Rights Owner (VeRO), a program to report infringement and for rights-holders to create ‘about me’ pages regarding permissions. eBay also employs hundreds of people who traverse thousands of auctions solely to stop sellers from hawking infringing material. eBay also relies on buyer and seller finger-pointing. A customer receives a bootleg copy of a film instead of the original, reports the seller, and eBay stops their auctions or even cancels their seller accounts.

So it’s incorrect to claim that eBay does nothing to stop infringement OR to claim that they make lots of money from violating content. While I have no balance statement handy, I somehow doubt that their return on commissions for pirated warez is greater than the salary of a few hundred employees. Bit of a stretch there.

And let me say: I DON”T CARE about eBay’s anti-piracy actions. I am not awed by them; I don’t claim they are headed in the right direction; they have their own sets of drawbacks. I merely mention them because they are a fitting example of a large corporate infringer-by-proxy.

Secondly, does it hurt the artists? This would be even harder to prove. First, you’d have to discount all sales using the first-sale doctrine: that is, all used material. If you sell a used copy of The Simpsons: Season 20 on eBay or Amazon or Craigslist or a yard sale, nothing goes back to the content creators. And this indeed comes far closer to constituting a “lost sale” because – unlike with pirates – it’s evident that the buyer is willing to pay something for the media, though not full price. And yet, media has long flourished despite the first-sale doctrine: in music, movies, publishing – you name it.

But are there bootleg media sales where the product is passing off as new, costs nearly as much, and thus might represent a loss to the rights-holder (and often the content creator)? I’m sure. But again, this is a very difficult number to tally. If the buyer were willing to pay full price for a retail copy, he would have walked his butt to Best Buy and laid it down.

Most importantly: is the loss large enough to dissuade content creation? Obviously not. I’m sure there are investors out there gun-shy about putting money into media creation because of perceived threats from everyone from Google to The Pirate Bay, but that does not diminish the zillion or so dollars still poured into media creation all the time. Is it less for some media? Sure, but we also have crap-tons more media to choose from now.

Check out part two for a look at what ad-revenue on sites infringing copyright means for content creators and rights-holders. 

A post on Reddit.com that blew up in a single workday turned into a movie deal with Warner Bros. and Madhouse Studios. Pretty cool, you might say. I would certainly go for some of that, despite Warner Bros. horrid track record so far as copyright common sense is concerned (save for their pragmatic approach to Harry Potter fanfic).

This story was picked up in the last issue of Wired, which detailed how this whirlwind idea went from Reddit post to a screenplay worth beaucoup bucks in a short order. Sounds like an uplifting tale of small-time writer getting his comeuppance, and I truly hope that Rome Sweet Rome author James Erwin goes on to write full-time, as I’m sure is his goal.

However, what is ignored here is that something that was entertaining and – much more importantly – engaging many thousand Reddit users came to a blunt halt when it turned onto a path of mainstream entertainment and all the controls that come with it. When Erwin was contacted by Warner Bros. about securing his idea for a screenplay for Madhouse Productions, he was “asked” to stop posting the story on Reddit. That he stop Reddit altogether in fact, because – as Wired mentioned – “the more of the story he gave away for free, the less valuable it would be to a studio.”

This is a popular misconception, and one generally fostered by large rights-holders who cannot fathom media bearing no price tag. And yet, there are numerous examples of exposure (even *gasp* FREE exposure) summoning swaths of customers. Interest is interest. And interest pays. It doesn’t matter if the interest came from advertising or from free-to-browse posts on Reddit.

For one, the idea that a written story posted to completion would somehow lessen the popularity of a movie based on that story is completely false. Did Lionsgate ask Stephanie Meyer to stop writing the Twilight Saga once the first film was in the works? Did Warner Bros. ask J.K. Rowling to complete the Harry Potter series as a screenplay only, because the books might hurt ticket sales?

Of course not. So why this idiocy? Why would a studio pay LESS for Rome Sweet Rome (the transformative work – the screenplay) because Erwin completed the story on Reddit?

Of course, faced with a monster check, Erwin quickly acquiesced, admitted to his Reddit fans and Wired alike that he sold out. And let’s be honest: I would gladly sell out if offered enough money to publish this blog instead of post it for free; I claim no moral high-ground.

My issue is with the purblind nature of the copyright rich, who seemingly have no grasp on what fuels consumer demand. The mere idea that the story would be worth less (that is, have less of a chance of turning a profit) if completed and posted online must seem ridiculous. There is simply too much evidence to suggest otherwise.

I also admit some disappointment at Erwin trying to wax self-righteous with taking the money, saying that the reach would be much greater outside of Reddit and using this as an excuse to stop posting. If you sold out at least own up to it. Say that you’re not posting because you got a fat check from a company that knows only content restriction and not inclusion, don’t act as if the decision was in any way for the good of the story.

Because come on: we should all be rather dubious regarding Rome Sweet Rome now. Despite the engaging, entertaining posts that Erwin managed (during a workday no less), what we can expect from a mainstream film studio is…well, mainstream.

When’s the last time some mid-budget action flick inspired anything? Engaged anyone? Involved anyone? It’s just so much passive consumption; another 90 minutes of Hollywood drivel, filtered a hundred times over after being weighed and balanced to draw the most profit from the greatest number of people.

What does this have to do with creating a great story? Nothing, why do you ask?

In many ways, arguments for thick copyright are just more of the same polemic side-choosing that we see in most public politics. We’ve become convinced that doubt or criticism of any current policy is the sine qua non for two-party schisms, and that any uncertainty or two-sidedness is the mark of a hopeless, temporizing waffler. That any insecurity need be squashed, and that our policies should bear no scrutiny unless paraded as political spectacle.

Such it is with a recent speech for the American Association of Publishers given by US Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante. She seems determined to express her position with polemics, as if doubt, consideration, and scrutiny would be akin to a show of weakness. This is endemic of our 24/7 news culture, however, where one is free to assert a stalwart and contentious stance on an issue that – mere years later – turns out to be completely misconceived and erroneous.

Take the battle against the VRC, the mix-tape, and cable television as fine examples of this. Bought-and-paid-for politicians echoed industry lobbyists in asserting the evil of these devices, only to forget their complete lack of prospection when such technology produced more media, not less; more money, not poverty.

She begins with the popular mantra: “It goes without saying that where there is publishing, there is copyright,” which would come as a great surprise to Nigerians, who make 1,200 films a year (the US makes about 600) without any existing copyright to protect the content. Implying that publishing cannot exist without copyright (particular in its current, unprecedented form) is wholly bogus, and implies that the argument for whether copyright is needed at all is completely off the table (which it certainly is not).

She also says that rights-holders have “long served the public interests,” but this has to be a joke. Any “service” rights-holder have performed is – at best – an adventitious outcome to serving their own best interests. Let’s be clear: rights-holders do not care about common interests, about public benefit, or even about art. They care only for return on their investment. This is not – in and of itself – wrong or egregious, and certainly isn’t evil. It is, however, NOT to be confused with benevolence, concern, or public service.

Pallente also makes a rather circular argument regarding copyright “respect” by citizens, suggesting that if copyright in its current form is not adhered to, then congress will have no choice but to make the laws stricter. This one-way-valve approach is for more “dangerous” (a word she uses for a lack of respect for current copyright) than actually thinking critically about WHY people might not abide by current copyright laws.

This suggests that the only path toward compliance is to tighten the belt, restrict more content, enforce more laws, enact greater controls. This wholly ignores the possibility that applying heavy-handed, thick copyright to modern media is counter-productive to all but a select few (those already owning massive amounts of content) and highly detrimental to anyone creating content hereon or to those consuming it.

I understand that context indeed matters. She is speaking to a group of old white guys who own a lot of content, so of course she’s going to kiss their asses and suggest that they are nothing short of demi-gods of information and pillars of our age. She needs their support. But to suggest that copyleft agenda are laughable and “dangerous” ignores the slew of well-educated, forward-thinking, powerful minds showing daily that what she believes to be a bulletproof truth contains myriad flaws. Just as similar arguments from our past we now know and believe are ridiculous, such as copying sheet music bringing about the end of music creation.

So once again we come to a rather frustrating impasse: where corporate-funded politicians and state-appointed potentates such as Pallente have only one rabbit in their hats – absolute compliance. No criticism. No introspection. No wiggle room. But so long as the same economic cycle continues, the same policies will resurface. SOPA will be back. Three or six or however many strikes will again have its turn. The very ideals necessary for real change in the way we handle IP in the US will simply not come from our government, not so long as they remain perpetually beholden to corporate interests.

Oh, and what does this have to do with art and culture? Nothing. Why do you ask?

Perhaps it’s heresy, but I am not a huge fan of the free EPUB reader Calibre. Doubtless, this has just as much to do with the not-so-well-formatted ebooks I read as it does sloppy coding, but – I admit – looks go a long way. I do work on a Mac after all.

So I naturally came upon Adobe Digital Editions eventually, which reads EPUB and other ebook formats, looks pretty sharp, and it’s free. Free from financial cost, at least. Since this is Adobe we’re talking about, I figured there might be a string or two attached, and rightly so.

Foremost Adobe makes you “activate” Digital Editions in some form. One way is to register with them, which restricts access to titles with Digital Rights Management (DRM), but lauds this as a good thing. The DRM system is called ADEPT, similar to what many ebook readers use. You can choose not to register (but still “activate”), and it gives the toothless warning that you won’t be able to see your books from PC to PC.

The rhetoric here is clear: That DRM is good and the absence of DRM somehow magically restricts your access. Thus, DRM = Greater Access. Of course, this isn’t true. DRM is ONLY for rights management; it has nothing to do with enabling sharing – just the opposite. But it could be perceived as such if companies such as Adobe bind customers when they refuse DRM and free them when they acquiesce.

Of course, if DRM is so snazzy, then why are there third-party programs out there with the sole object of removing ebook DRM? Are there consumer apps that embed DRM?

Even for the lay person unwilling to find a sharing solution, the ability to see one’s collections on other machines pales in comparison to the inevitable lack of freedom inherent in most DRM. You can’t share it, copy it, print it, change it. You can only consume it. And only you.

This is wholly different from the way traditional books operate, of course. You can transfer ownership of a traditional book an infinite number of times, even if only the first person pays for it. You can resell a used book. You can copy it at work or at the library, and though this is not likely legal (unless it fits snugly into a fair use exemption), but no one’s going to stop you, either.

So what is the difference in choosing NOT to register with an Adobe ID and thus forbid DRM from entering your life? How does this differ so far as access is concerned? Not much, it turns out. If you have Digital Editions installed on, say, your work PC and your home PC, you can access the same ebooks (even at the same time) so long as they’re stored in some shared space, such as in a mutual DropBox folder. This degree of freedom – just as with most any freedoms worth having – simply takes a little research and creative thinking. But this is preferable for a few reasons.

For one, while I don’t think any government spook is going to come knocking on my door because I’m reading Marx and Rand at the same time (just creepy!), I’m not crazy about the idea of my reading habits being logged, either. Mostly because I don’t want Adobe making a few bucks selling that data in the creation of some targeted advertisement scheme. Would they? I don’t know, but with every business on earth trying to get people to log in via their Facebook accounts nowadays, this is obviously a booming business.

Second, Adobe has a long history of loving DRM, so perhaps registering with them would forbid me from reading a random copy of an ebook instead of one bought from a traceable, legal channel (no doubt from which they would receive kickbacks). Akin to my vehement dislike of Windows Media Player, if a media player cares about the source, I’m simply not interested. Let ME worry about the source. A media player’s job is to play media – that’s it. If it cannot do this, there are usually about a zillion free apps out there unwilling or uninterested in playing Copyright Cops.

Indeed, not using an Adobe ID means Editions cares nothing about the source of my ebooks, which is a fine start. Alas, it’s likely most anyone installing Editions is going to buy into Adobe scare tactics and opt for DRM-laden literature only. Good luck sharing that $15 copy of “Hunger Games” with your best bud. You’ll be lucky to be able to open it five years down the road.