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Script:
Devan-Buyer/User -Catherine | Arnold-Publisher -Bill | Mora-Artist -Sally
Artist- So what are your guys’ thoughts on Digital Copyright? I hear there are some concerns but at the same time there are a lot of people who support the idea.
Publisher- Personally, as a publisher myself, I dislike Digital Copyright. It is creating a lot of problems in my business. The switch from non-digital to digital copying technologies is causing profit losses for publishing companies because of piracy. Also as Publishers we are unable to segment the market to users’ disutility from deteriorated quality.
Buyer/User- I understand and respect what you are saying Bill but from my point of view as a buyer and user I see Digital Copyright as being a positive thing. The internet allows for quick, easy access and provides a low-cost channel to distribute a wide variety of digitally stored products.
Publishers- Okay point taken Catherine, but now different modes of information can be distributed via the same distributing channels. Moreover, information can be legally or illegally copied because they are using the same transmission channels. This includes things such as burned CD’s, DVD’s, and of course through file sharing via the Internet.
Artist- Well…Wouldn’t that be beneficial to a buyer or user like Catherine? Because now they can gain more in only one way of obtaining information of all forms, whether it is printed, audio or video? Before the digital era, distributions of different forms of information required completely different knowledges and equipments.
Publisher- Well yes it would beneficial for a user or a buyer, but not for me as a publisher Sally, I am the one losing money here!!
Buyer/User- Okay I see what you are saying Bill. But I think you and I are completely missing a huge key in this conversation, we should really see what Sally’s view is on this topic considering she is the artist and it is her work that we are talking about.
Artist- Thanks Catherine, I thought you two would never ask! I recently participated in a survey done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project4 that found a surprising fact that 43% of us, the paid artists, agree that, file –sharing services are not really bad for us, since they help to promote and distribute an artist’s work to much broader audience. In that same survey it also found that the idea of file sharing of music and movies being legal is supported by one third of the paid artists.
Publisher-Well said Sally, but what are your thoughts on the common argument that digital convergence and the emergence of the Internet as a key distribution channel, enhance the incentives to take legal measures against those who illegally copy digital material?
Artist- Right, Bill. Actually I have been asked about this before. And for your information, these claims generally do not take into consideration about the fact that the incentives to take legal action are not the same among all participants. Clearly the lawyers, always gain from increased court cases support that. But it is not clear whether us, the artists benefit. And as I answered before in the survey, I am pretty neutral about that. However I seriously doubt this would be the same view as my lawyer has.
Publisher- I see what you saying Sally and I was actually thinking the other day that I should take more of stand with what digital copyright is doing to my business. That’s when I came across the digital-rights-management systems. These systems are complicated pieces of software that could if deployed widely establish property rights in the digital domain and also strengthen the power of us, publishers.
Buyer/User- Oh com’on now Bill I know you want to protect and help your business but do you really think this digital-rights-management is a good idea? I mean with these systems you will be monitoring what people are doing on the internet and basically telling them what they can and can not do. For example some time next year the Secure Digital Music Initiative company hopes to settle on a standard for the comprehensive digital-rights system. This would let publishers in the music industry decide things for the user like how many times they are allowed to play a song or how many copies they could make of it and if they should be able to upload it on to an Internet server.
Artist-I agree with Catherine, why do I need a publisher to tell me how many times I can listen to a song? That just makes no sense. Also note that I was reading an article by Dr. Stefik, whose research is focused on concepts for trusted systems and digital property rights when publishing digital works, he stated that in the end the rights management system are unlikely to be sufficient.
Buyer/User- And on another note, I heard that some Digital-rights management produces enormous amounts of “information exhaust” as Intertrust puts it and that can’t be a good thng..
Publisher- But many companies believe that it is a good thing.
Buyer/User- That is true Bill, but one of the most important things to a user is privacy and with this “information exhaust” , digital-right management products can track “usage data as the time when a customer plays and interactive game, or even evokes in specific modules in game and many people will not regard this as such a great idea. Most people would rather keep their game-playing habits—and other things… secret.
Artist- Civil libertarians will not like the technologies either, because it would create new boundaries in cyberspace by restricting the flow of information.
Publisher- Oh wow guys, I should of done my homework I didn’t realize all the negative things that could come into play from trying to implement Digital-rights management systems. There must be a better away around these concerns for Digital copyright. I think that if us three work together and try to figure out a way so that everyone; publishers, buyers, users and artists can be happy and satisfied with Digital Copyright.
Artist- Actually there maybe a solution, a friend of mine, who is also a author of many great works, mentioned this term called copyleft several days ago, so I did some research on it. And I think it can be one of the solutions. Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free to everyone. The easiest way to make a program considered “free software” is to put it in the public domain, in which softwares are not copyrighted. The problem of this is that it allows uncooperative people to convert the program into proprietary software, which makes the whole “public domain” and “uncopyrighted” meaningless. However, copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further user. Indeed, Copyleft guarantees that every user has equal freedom. So, who do you think will benefit from Copyleft?
Publisher- Well, first of all, it benefits us all because we all get full access to free software with absolute freedom; it also provides an incentivefor other programmers to add to free software; moreover, copyleft helps some professional programmers who want to contribute improvements to free software. Therefore through programs involved with copyleft these professional programmers get permission to contribute without having their employer turning the changes into a proprietary software product. But I'm not clear about how exactly copyleft works...
Buyer/User- In order to copyleft a program, they actually first state that the program is copyrighted; but then they add distribution terms, which are a legal instrument that gives everyone the rights to use, modify, and redistribute the program's code or any program derived from it. This is all possible as long as the distribution terms are unchanged. Thus, the code and the freedoms become legally inseparable. Proprietary software developers use copyright to take away the users' freedom; however copyleft uses copyright to guarantee their freedom. That's why we reverse the name, changing ‘copyright’ into ‘copyleft.’'
All the Copyleft works are in a project called GNU, if you need any further information about the distribution terms or how to join Copyleft, there is a link on or conference page where you can find all the information needed.
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M.A.D Presentation Keynotes.ppt
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