From the online bio of Cory Doctorow.
I believe that we live in an era where anything that can be expressed as bits will be. I believe that bits exist to be copied.
Cory Doctorow is co-editor of Boing Boing, a popular blog about Science, politics, and culture. BoingBoing has been on the Web for years, having promoted their first post in January of 2000.
And this is when the bits started to hit the fan. Why?
For precisely the same reason that Cory alludes to in his bio. Back when information was trapped on vinyl and cassette tapes, the ability to copy this information was limited. Sure, it was possible, but it was an arduous process that resulted in poor sound quality. Remember taping Grateful Dead bootlegs that were on cassette?? Your copy came from another copy that came from another and so forth and so on. With that said, by the time you finally got your copy it sounded as if were taped from the parking lot. This was the problem with analogue transfers.
When information is digitised, however, near perfect copies are made. Whether it be documents or audio, your rough draft on The Social Effects of File Sharing in Developing Countries is just as good as the one backed up on your 120 gig Maxtor once a week.
The same principles apply to music. While this sounds obvious, once I rip the latest track from Kanye West, those bits are freed from the confines of a CD and placed in a whole new environment. This environment is one with potentially limitless capacity for storage, sharing, copying, and distribution.
Kanye West's new single can be placed on my IPOD, backed up to my Maxtor, played from my PC, beamed to my home theatre, and burned to a mix cd for my friends or even played in my car. If bits didn't lend themselves to copying, I wouldn't be able to do any of these things.
Our society has often associated this information with the media that it is printed on, and not necessarily the information itself. Through no fault of their own, there was simply no other way to deliver the content that we enjoy. Firms had no other choice at the time but to actually sell the newspaper instead of selling the news. Record labels sold tapes and Cds because that was the most practical business model.
Ever asked for a cup of ice at a movie theatre? They sell you the cup and not what is inside.
When we begin to abandon the concept of the media, and focus on the information, (or better yet, what's inside) I think we'll be in a much better place than we are right now. A world with new business models, innovation, and less law suits.
Cory, I think you are right.
By the way, the Grateful Dead, a popular rock band from the US, is a prime example to use when examining copyright. The band encouraged the live taping and disribution of their live shows for over 30 years. This was seen as revolutionary, absurd, and innovative in the music business. They have since had to modify their policy since nearly all of their shows were being offered at the Internet Archive as bits.
