In the course of his book William Patry covers the history of copyright, beginning with its development in England through time to where we are today in America. Essentially his argument focuses on the definition that capitalism is by design a system of "creative destruction" for established business models, which is to say that our economic system can never be fixed and necessitates new business models that over take old business models infinitely (in the name of progress?). This we can call the "free market" ideology. Copyright, in its history, has never been retained for the protection of authors or creators rights--however many times this has been the claim--but for the protections of business models that depend on monopoly rights to fight off new technological developments. The argument to establish the monopoly rights goes something like this: in order to enable society to receive a surplus of works via the market, copyright is essential to guarantee a monetary return to the producers of these works. Works which would assumingly therefore not exist with out copyright protection. Finally we are to remember that the owner of copyright is almost unanimously not the original creator of the work, the creator having been paid for "labor," but the publishers of the work who seek to capitalize on the "intellectual property" of the author or artist.
Our courts bought the argument, and more recently with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the film industry and music industry have control over the forms that their copyrighted works become available and how these works become available to the public.
The underlying point of the book, which is spelled out for us on every occasion possible, is that contrary to its ontology copyright actually works to handicap development, create monopolies, and "fix" a market while using as its defense "free market ideology."
Patry even goes on to equate the current copyright rights as they're provided by our own legal system as Lenin style Communism, or even Mussolini style Fascism.
Far and away all of the information contained within this book is interesting and useful, and on one level--according to the definitions he establishes for Communism and Fascism, and how they relate to the business practices of copyright industry--we're in agreement with him. But the curious thing is trying to decipher exactly what Patry thinks of the free market ideology itself.
He praises Obama multiple times, uses Greenspan as an apt example of deregulation and how free market ideology isn't by definition a good thing in itself, and the entire thrust of the book is about breaking down the monopoly of copyright law. One of his early examples, from the first English copyright wars, is how they define copyright alongside property right, as intellectual property.
It seems he is opposed to a truly free market, believes in private property, but uses a jingoistic appeal to free market ideology to oppose the copyright monopoly. I guess that makes him a moderate. Yet the conclusion of the book suggests otherwise, perhaps he is progressive. He cites the development of Korea and Japan in opening up new markets for internet use through their determined approach to providing high speed internet for their citizens. In fact they have internet connections that are cheaper, or the same price as ours even, which run at 2-4 times our current connections speeds. In South Korea this is done through government action, the exact opposite of private enterprise or corporate development, and Patry seems to suggest that we really need our government to provide these large scale infrastructures for us.
Yet if we understand the development of capitalism, like all things established by legislation and practice to not exist in nature--that is to say it's a social development--then wouldn't the free market ideology be the thing that moves us forward? Isn't large scale government the opposite of free market development? If he can recognize that copyright explicitly protects the wealth of Southern California while impoverishing our national culture, why does he attempt to use the exact same economic system that brought us to this point as a possible way out of it? Finally we're asked to take action against these entities who believe that control equals profit (and what other end does capitalism really have?):
In other areas where government monopoly, created to serve the public interest, is blatantly abused over a long period of time, it is taken away.
It seems as though he's calling for a revolution, a change, you know, something akin to the nature of capitalism, that elusive "creative destruction." So while we little people of America ponder how to fit that revolution into our house payments, loans, student debts, and family lives, Patry will go back to doing legal work for google.com
3 comments:
Dean Baker has some ideas about how to replace copyright laws in "The Conservative Nanny State," which is free to download here:
http://www.conservativenannystate.org/
Thanks for the review, I guess. It seems you really haven't read the book though. How else could you say, "Patry even goes on to equate the current copyright rights as they're provided by our own legal system as Lenin style Communism, or even Mussolini style Fascism."
There is nothing in the book that remotely supports this, and I reject it emphatically. Nor do you cite anything that would support such a twisted view. My view is that what we need is effective copyright laws and that to obtain effective copyright laws, we need to strip away the rhetoric surrounding the Copyright Wars, including references to copyright as property, which is of no practical help at all.
"Thanks to the DMCA, the copyright market has now come to resemble the planned Soviet economies of the early twentieth century, but with [sic] the market planning is done by corporations exercising government created monopoly power. The government's role in this scheme is limited to setting up the laws that make it an unlawful [sic] to circumvent whatever rules corporations establish for us. What results is a form of "corporatism." "Corporatism" involves actions by unelected bodies (not necessarily corporations) whose purpose is to exert control over the social and economic life of their respective areas through agreements that are reached internally but that find support in elected, political bodies. Such special interests reach agreement among themselves and privately, but after agreement is reached, the agreement is touted as being for the public's benefit, not that of the corporatists. Corporatism only works if the government uses its coercive power to demand compliance with what the corporatists have agreed to, and that is the precise role played by the DMCA. Corporatism was previously thought to have reached its zenith during Mussolini's Fascist Italy, but with the DMCA it is enjoying a healthy resurgence"(164).
So, Mr. Patry, with all due respect you make two wide accusations about the DMCA in one paragraphy. That it resembles the planned Soviet economies, and that it is representative of corporatism which is a synonym for Fascism. In one single paragraph.
That said, yeah the review here is a little more condescending than it was meant. I found the book illuminating. But I differ with you in that I don't think copyright should exist at all. And since I'm not much of a capitalist either, there's still a ton of ideology within these pages that reflects your respective politics. And that's fine, it's your book.
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