The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Oil
I just finished watching/listening to Lawrence Lessig's fascinating lecture on the challenges facing copyright law in the modern era, and it brought to my mind a topic that has a high degree of relevance to politics.
This topic concerns the first lesson of interest group economics that I learned back in my undergraduate days: a small group that is strongly affected by a particular law or regulation will have a much greater impact on shaping the rules than a much, much larger group that isn't affected as strongly on an individual level.
For example, the National Beer Wholesalers Assocation has been one of the leading proponents of killing the estate/death tax. Their membership really, really cares about this issue because many of these wholesalers are family owned, and would stand to gain an incredible amount of money if the tax were repealed. While this is an incredibly small proportion of the country, this group (and similarly motivated wealthy families) have been successful in almost completely eliminating this tax.
On the other side of the ledger are the 99%+ of the population that will never have to pay this tax, and would probably see it as a fair way for the government to realize the capital gains taxes that are never paid because the owner dies before cashing in. In addition, the approximately $30 billion a year in tax revenue the estate/death tax generates each year will need to be made up somewhere, much of it from those who do not face the likelihood of paying this tax.
However, most Americans care little if at all about this tax; it is thought of most often in the context of conservatives opposing it as an unfair tax, but still in a very superficial way. This is unsurprising: if one person stands to lose tens of millions of dollars from the tax and another stands to lose perhaps a thousand or two over many years, who do you think is going to make noise about it?
There are countless other examples of interest group economics, and I think our current copyright status in this country certainly qualifies as one of them. Before watching/listening to Lessig's speech, I had really only thought of it in terms of sharing music online, since that was really the only way that I had been exposed to it.
I've had a few experiences with music copyrights--basically using copyrighted music as a backing track to a video, a topic we discussed in class a bit last night--and those experiences were certainly more relevant to the stifling of creativity aspect discussed in the speech. For example, I think web video is enhanced considerably by being able to use popular music; it's a damn shame that it is basically impossible given the royalty structures most popular works fall under.
Going back to the interest group economics topic, the copyright holders--in particular the labels, publishers, producers, and distribution companies--are obviously the ones that are affected most by copyright issues. Time-Warner is going to care a hell of a lot more about this than I ever will. Thus it is no surprise that we are where we are today, with a digital space that has eclipsed all fair and unregulated use of media, and a burgeoning guerilla war against private citizens for at most a 5% drop in sales.
I certainly have hope that we'll figure this out over the coming years, but it is clear that this issue needs to be made more relevant to normal people's lives. As Lessig says, the copyright holders have effectively framed this debate in a simple way as one revolving around property; it will not be an easy to task to shift that frame towards one of creativity. But there's always hope; and it's nice to know that there are some very smart minds working on this issue...
This topic concerns the first lesson of interest group economics that I learned back in my undergraduate days: a small group that is strongly affected by a particular law or regulation will have a much greater impact on shaping the rules than a much, much larger group that isn't affected as strongly on an individual level.
For example, the National Beer Wholesalers Assocation has been one of the leading proponents of killing the estate/death tax. Their membership really, really cares about this issue because many of these wholesalers are family owned, and would stand to gain an incredible amount of money if the tax were repealed. While this is an incredibly small proportion of the country, this group (and similarly motivated wealthy families) have been successful in almost completely eliminating this tax.
On the other side of the ledger are the 99%+ of the population that will never have to pay this tax, and would probably see it as a fair way for the government to realize the capital gains taxes that are never paid because the owner dies before cashing in. In addition, the approximately $30 billion a year in tax revenue the estate/death tax generates each year will need to be made up somewhere, much of it from those who do not face the likelihood of paying this tax.
However, most Americans care little if at all about this tax; it is thought of most often in the context of conservatives opposing it as an unfair tax, but still in a very superficial way. This is unsurprising: if one person stands to lose tens of millions of dollars from the tax and another stands to lose perhaps a thousand or two over many years, who do you think is going to make noise about it?
There are countless other examples of interest group economics, and I think our current copyright status in this country certainly qualifies as one of them. Before watching/listening to Lessig's speech, I had really only thought of it in terms of sharing music online, since that was really the only way that I had been exposed to it.
I've had a few experiences with music copyrights--basically using copyrighted music as a backing track to a video, a topic we discussed in class a bit last night--and those experiences were certainly more relevant to the stifling of creativity aspect discussed in the speech. For example, I think web video is enhanced considerably by being able to use popular music; it's a damn shame that it is basically impossible given the royalty structures most popular works fall under.
Going back to the interest group economics topic, the copyright holders--in particular the labels, publishers, producers, and distribution companies--are obviously the ones that are affected most by copyright issues. Time-Warner is going to care a hell of a lot more about this than I ever will. Thus it is no surprise that we are where we are today, with a digital space that has eclipsed all fair and unregulated use of media, and a burgeoning guerilla war against private citizens for at most a 5% drop in sales.
I certainly have hope that we'll figure this out over the coming years, but it is clear that this issue needs to be made more relevant to normal people's lives. As Lessig says, the copyright holders have effectively framed this debate in a simple way as one revolving around property; it will not be an easy to task to shift that frame towards one of creativity. But there's always hope; and it's nice to know that there are some very smart minds working on this issue...
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