Aside from being mentioned in this Sunday’s New York Times, each of them is used to illustrate the issues with today’s “intellectual property system” (specifically copyright), and how dysfunctional it has become–especially in light of modern digital communications. Esoteric law just for the lawyers? Definitely not if you agree that “content is king” in the information and entertainment upheaval we’re experiencing right now. Does it matter to advertisers? Sure it does. Much of the battleground on copyright is with the content that advertising supports, or is licensed for use in the ads.

Viacom’s billion-dollar suit against Google/YouTube is the latest, and loudest, in the copyfight. It may seem obvious that YouTube is in the wrong for allowing clips of The Daily Show to be put up on its site, but the “safe harbor” provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was supposed to protect companies that support user-generated content from being held liable if one of its users posts infringing content. As long as the company responds quickly to a DMCA take-down request they were supposed to be safe. Indeed, Viacom went that route in February when they asked YouTube to take down more than 100,000 videos. It’s clear that the rules aren’t working, but then…the rules have changed haven’t they?

How is copyright law dysfunctional? There are too many ways to enumerate here. In short, the digital world is predicated on copying. The act of surfing a single web page creates a temporary copy of that page. Addressing the ease of digital copying, without taking away current consumer rights, or stifling creativity, has so far proven to be beyond lawmaker’s abilities.

On a positive note, the three articles from one issue of the New York Times and the recent Viacom/YouTube suit may indicate that this issue is moving more mainstream. Copyright law may yet get the sensible treatment that it deserves.

The articles:
• Edison the Inventor, Edison the Showman, discusses Edison’s stranglehold on the recording industry.
• Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved, talks about the Brazilian musician, minister of culture and one-time dissident’s efforts to find a better way to distribute music in the context of the Internet.
• History, Digitized (and Abridged), largely talks about the cost and effort to digitize works in order to make them available to the public, but a portion of the article discusses the challenges behind copyright laws, including having to get permission from the Jackie Onassis’ estate to digitize a letter. The most prescient quote in the article is by author Tim Brooks noting that, “Copyright is a very blunt instrument”.

If you’ve read this far, you may be interested to note that Edison also had a stranglehold on the motion-picture industry. Hollywood as the film capital of the world owes much to the early film entrepreneurs’ desire to get as far away from Edison and his patents as possible. Link

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