> The problem lies with believing that you're entitled to a successful, non-threatened business model. The problem lies with believing that the law should be changed primarily to protect your business model.
Nobody is entitled to a non-threatened business model. At the same time, Congress is entitled to limit unfair competition and free-riding off peoples' work, and in this case it has seen fit to do so. That's the crucial distinction that anti-copyright folks ignore. This isn't just about protecting a business model from technological change. It's about protecting a business model against a different business model: profiting from selling content you didn't create and didn't pay for.
It would be one thing if nobody wanted to watch big-budget Hollywood movies anymore, and MPAA were lobbying for laws to shut down P2P and Youtube so indie content producers couldn't distribute the movies that people did want to watch. But that's not what's happening here. Demand for Hollywood movies has never been higher, and despite a total lack of legal roadblocks, indie content has not become popular hardly at all.
What's happening is that companies like Youtube and Aereo, etc, have figured out there is profit to be made by being middle-men between the big-budget Hollywood content people demand and the consumers. Ideally, for them, there would be no copyright so they could get content for free attract viewers to peddle their advertising to.
It's one thing to prop up your business model against technological obsolescence that eliminates demand for your product. It's another thing to protect your rights against people free-riding on your creations, creations for which demand is higher than ever.
> For example, if I set up a stand on a street corner that creates an amazing aromas, it would not suddenly become my right to charge passersby for smelling these aromas, even though they are "mine".
But could you sue someone for putting up a big fan to blow the aroma into the air and charging people to stand in front?
The purpose of copyright and patent law in the US (as stated by the Constitution) is to promote the progress of the arts and sciences by granting a temporary limited monopoly to creators. While I don't disagree with the sentiment, things have gotten wildly out of hand in the past few centuries.
I get it. People make content, and they want their rightful monopolies to be protected from people who would copy and sell it. That's fine. But attacking the rights of those who are not copying or profiting from your content simply because the new method they're using to access it doesn't line your pockets with money is going too far. At that point you're going after all competition, rather than unfair competition.
You have no guaranteed right to a lucrative business model. You have no guaranteed right the control any and all actions of those with access to your content. The only thing you should have is the limited monopoly you've been given, and if that isn't enough to protect your business against the the onslaught of new technologies then so be it. (I should point out that I think the length of the monopolies themselves has gone overboard, but that's an argument for another day.)
> But could you sue someone for putting up a big fan to blow the aroma into the air and charging people to stand in front?
No, I don't think I should be able to sue. It's my own horrible business decision to release my aromas into the public air where everyone can access them. If I were a more astute businessman, I would keep my aromas in a privately-owned enclosure where I could create the rules and charge admission to boot.
I don't see how it's the government's place to step in and create laws that curtail the public's right to use the air as it pleases for no other purpose than to ensure that my crappy business model is lucrative.
> The purpose of copyright and patent law in the US (as stated by the Constitution) is to promote the progress of the arts and sciences by granting a temporary limited monopoly to creators.
Just because that's what the constitution says, doesn't mean that that's the real purpose.
Well, but it does mean that judges can invalidate (or not apply) copyright laws if they diverge sufficiently from that 'official' purpose.
Even if both the industry and congress want and intend other purposes, the constitution allows copyrights to exist only if/while they (at least a bit) also try "to promote the progress of the arts and sciences".
Copyright is an state enforced monopoly, created in 18th century for 18th century society and their goals. Nowhere does it even try to justify such monopoly by wordings of government intervention to prevent unfair competition or free-riding. In the several hundred years since them, no change to the basic fundamentals of the law has had any change, nor has any justification been added.
Most anti-copyright folks such as you describe them would welcome stated goals. Preventing unfair competition by state intervention is a fine goal. Lets do that, but then lets also apply 21st century governmental procedure rather than 18th century ones. The steps are quite easy: First you do a cost-benefit analyses such as determining cost and benefit. You ask what the cost to society is. Then you ask questions like how much protections vs how much costs. Is 3 years enough to prevent 90% of the unfair competition? Would 2 more years make that number reach 99%? Maybe a whole 10 years for special products needing special state attention?
Cost-benefit analyses. A tool made in the 19th century, was the tool that made 20th century government, and the only two laws not still using it is copyright and patent law. There is nothing to justify such bad use of state power to intervene in the market.
You say to do the cost benefit analysis like its easy - but in reality its not. Nothing is so clear cut and dry.
How do you count "unfair competition"? how do you define "special products"? How do you even count the revenue of a hypothetical work before its even made?
Nobody is entitled to a non-threatened business model. At the same time, Congress is entitled to limit unfair competition and free-riding off peoples' work, and in this case it has seen fit to do so. That's the crucial distinction that anti-copyright folks ignore. This isn't just about protecting a business model from technological change. It's about protecting a business model against a different business model: profiting from selling content you didn't create and didn't pay for.
It would be one thing if nobody wanted to watch big-budget Hollywood movies anymore, and MPAA were lobbying for laws to shut down P2P and Youtube so indie content producers couldn't distribute the movies that people did want to watch. But that's not what's happening here. Demand for Hollywood movies has never been higher, and despite a total lack of legal roadblocks, indie content has not become popular hardly at all.
What's happening is that companies like Youtube and Aereo, etc, have figured out there is profit to be made by being middle-men between the big-budget Hollywood content people demand and the consumers. Ideally, for them, there would be no copyright so they could get content for free attract viewers to peddle their advertising to.
It's one thing to prop up your business model against technological obsolescence that eliminates demand for your product. It's another thing to protect your rights against people free-riding on your creations, creations for which demand is higher than ever.
> For example, if I set up a stand on a street corner that creates an amazing aromas, it would not suddenly become my right to charge passersby for smelling these aromas, even though they are "mine".
But could you sue someone for putting up a big fan to blow the aroma into the air and charging people to stand in front?