Promises to Keep

Promises to Keep. Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment. William Fisher. Stanford University Press 2004

2 chapters available at http://www.tfisher.org/PTK.htm

Description

Professor Fisher offers a serious calculation of what it would take to obtain unlimited free downloads without damaging artists revenue, see at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/01/free_legal_downloads/

For $6 per month, broadband users could have free access to unlimited downloads and artists and record companies could be fairly compensated.

Citation:

"...we should consider a fundamental change in approach.... replace major portions of the copyright and encryption-reinforcement models with a variant of....a governmentally administered reward system. In brief, here’s how such a system would work. A creator who wished to collect revenue when his or her song or film was heard or watched would register it with the Copyright Office. With registration would come a unique file name, which would be used to track transmissions of digital copies of the work. The government would raise, through taxes, sufficient money to compensate registrants for making their works available to the public. Using techniques pioneered by American and European performing rights organizations and television rating services, a government agency would estimate the frequency with which each song and film was heard or watched by consumers. Each registrant would then periodically be paid by the agency a share of the tax revenues proportional to the relative popularity of his or her creation. Once this system were in place, we would modify copyright law to eliminate most of the current prohibitions on unauthorized reproduction, distribution, adaptation, and performance of audio and video recordings. Music and films would thus be readily available, legally, for free.

Painting with a very broad brush...., here would be the advantages of such a system. Consumers would pay less for more entertainment. Artists would be fairly compensated. The set of artists who made their creations available to the world at large--and consequently the range of entertainment products available to consumers--would increase. Musicians would be less dependent on record companies, and filmmakers would be less dependent on studios, for the distribution of their creations. Both consumers and artists would enjoy greater freedom to modify and redistribute audio and video recordings. Although the prices of consumer electronic equipment and broadband access would increase somewhat, demand for them would rise, thus benefiting the suppliers of those goods and services. Finally, society at large would benefit from a sharp reduction in litigation and other transaction costs." (http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2006/02/can_there_be_co.html)

More Information

See our entry on the Alternative Media Cooperative