I 1928 ble en tegnefilmfigur født. En tidlig Mikke Mus debuterte i mai dette året, i en stille flopp ved navn Plane Crazy. I november, i Colony teateret i New York City, ble den første vidt distribuerte tegnefilmen med synkronisert lyd, Steamboat Willy, vist frem med figuren som skulle bli til Mikke Mus.

Film med synkronisert lyd hadde blitt introdusert et år tidligere i filmen The Jazz Singer. Suksessen fikk Walt Disney til å kopiere teknikken og mikse lyd med tegnefilm. Ingen visste hvorvidt det ville virke eller ikke, og om det fungere, hvorvidt publikum villa ha sans for det. Men da Disney gjorde en test sommeren 1928, var resultatet entydig. Som Disney beskriver dette første eksperimentet,

Disneys daværende partner, og en av animasjonsverdenens mest ekstraordinære talenter, Ub Iwerks, uttalte det sterkere: «Jeg har aldri vært så begeistret i hele mitt liv. Ingenting annet har noen sinne vært like bra.»

Disney hadde laget noe helt nyt, basert på noe relativt nytt. Synkronisert lyd ga liv til en form for kreativitet som sjeldent hadde—unntatt fra Disneys hender—vært noe annet en fyllstoff for andre filmer. Gjennom animasjonens tidligere historie var det Disneys oppfinnelse som satte standarden som andre måtte sloss for å oppfylle. Og ganske ofte var Disneys store geni, hans gnist av kreativitet, bygget på arbeidet til andre.

Dette er kjent stoff. Det du kanskje ikke vet er at 1928 også markerer en annen viktig overgang. I samme år laget et komedie-geni (i motsetning til tegnefilm-geni) sin siste uavhengig produserte stumfilm. Dette geniet var Buster Keaton. Filmen var Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Keaton ble født inn i en vauderville-familie i 1895. I stumfilm-æraen hadde han mestret bruken av bredpenslet fysisk komedie på en måte som tente ukontrollerbar latter fra hans publikum. Steamboat Bill, Jr. var en klassiker av denne typen, berømt blant film-elskere for sine utrolige stunts. Filmen var en klassisk Keaton—fantastisk populær og blant de beste i sin sjanger.

Steamboat Bill, Jr. kom før Disneys tegnefilm Steamboat Willie. Det er ingen tilfeldighet at titlene er så like. Steamboat Willie er en direkte tegneserieparodi av Steamboat Bill,^[20] og begge bygger på en felles sang som kilde. Det er ikke kun fra nyskapningen med synkronisert lyd i The Jazz Singer at vi får Steamboat Willie. Det er også fra Buster Keatons nyskapning Steamboat Bill, Jr., som igjen var inspirert av sangen «Steamboat Bill», at vi får Steamboat Willie. Og fra Steamboat Willie får vi så Mikke Mus.

Denne «låningen» var ikke unik, hverken for Disney eller for industrien. Disney apet alltid etter full-lengde massemarkedsfilmene rundt ham.^[21] Det samme gjorde mange andre. Tidlige tegnefilmer er stappfulle av etterapninger—små variasjoner over suksessfulle temaer, gamle historier fortalt på nytt. Nøkkelen til suksess var brilliansen i forskjellene. Med Disney var det lyden som ga gnisten til hans animasjoner. Senere var det kvaliteten på hans arbeide relativt til de masseproduserte tegnefilmene som han konkurrerte med. Likevel var disse bidragene bygget på toppen av fundamentet som var lånt. Disney bygget på arbeidet til andre som kom før han, og skapte noe nytt ut av noe som bare var litt gammelt.

Noen ganger var låningen begrenset, og noen ganger var den betydelig. Tenkt på eventyrene til brødrene Grimm. Hvis du er like ubevisst som jeg var, så tror du sannsynlighvis at disse fortellingene er glade, søte historier som passer for ethvert barn ved leggetid. Realiteten er at Grimm-eventyrene er, for oss, ganske dystre. Det er noen sjeldne og kanskje spesielt ambisiøse foreldre som ville våge å lese disse blodige moralistiske historiene til sine barn, ved leggetid eller hvilken som helst annet tidspunkt.

Disney tok disse historiene og fortalte dem på nytt på en måte som førte dem inn i en ny tidsalder. Han ga historiene liv, med både karakterer og lys. Uten å fjerne bitene av frykt og fare helt, gjorde han morsomt det som var mørkt og satte inn en ekte følelse av medfølelse der det før var frykt. Og ikke bare med verkene av brødrene Grimm. Faktisk er katalogen over Disney-arbeid som baserer seg på arbeidet til andre ganske forbløffende når den blir samlet: Snøhvit (1937), Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Song of the South (1946), Askepott (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Robin Hood (1952), Peter Pan (1953), Lady og landstrykeren (1955), Mulan (1998), Tornerose (1959), 101 dalmatinere (1961), Sverdet i steinen (1963), og Jungelboken (1967)—for ikke å nevne et nylig eksempel som vi bør kanskje glemme raskt, Treasure Planet (2003). I alle disse tilfellene, har Disney (eller Disney, Inc.) hentet kreativitet fra kultur rundt ham, blandet med kreativiteten fra sitt eget ekstraordinære talent, og deretter brent denne blandingen inn i sjelen til sin kultur. Hente, blande og brenne.

Dette er en type kreativitet. Det er en kreativitet som vi bør huske på og feire. Det er noen som vil si at det finnes ingen kreativitet bortsett fra denne typen. Vi trenger ikke gå så langt for å anerkjenne dens betydning. Vi kan kalle dette «Disney-kreativitet», selv om det vil være litt misvisende. Det er mer presist «Walt Disney-kreativitet»—en uttrykksform og genialitet som bygger på kulturen rundt oss og omformer den til noe annet.

I 1928 var kulturen som Disney fritt kunne trekke veksler på relativt fersk. Allemannseie i 1928 var ikke veldig gammelt og var dermed ganske levende. Gjennomsnittlig vernetid i opphavsretten var bare rundt tredve år—for den lille delen av kreative verk som faktisk var opphavsrettsbeskyttet.^[22] Det betyr at i tredve år, i gjennomsnitt, hadde forfattere eller kreative verks opphavsrettighetsinnehaver en «eksklusiv rett» til a kontrollere bestemte typer bruk av verket. For å bruke disse opphavsrettsbeskyttede verkene på de begrensede måtene krevde tillatelse fra opphavsrettsinnehaveren.

Når opphavsrettens vernetid er over, faller et verk i det fri og blir allemannseie. Ingen tillatelse trengs da for å bygge på eller bruke dette verket. Ingen tillatelse og dermed, ingen advokater. Allemannseie er en «advokat-fri sone». Det meste av innhold fra det nittende århundre var dermed fritt tilgjengelig for Disney å bruke eller bygge på i 1928. Det var tilgjengelig for enhver—uansett om de hadde forbindelser eller ikke, om de var rik eller ikke, om de var akseptert eller ikke—til å bruke og bygge videre på.

Dette er slik det alltid har vært—inntil ganske nylig. For mesteparten av vår historie, har allemannseiet vært like over horisonten. Fram til 1978 var den gjennomsnittlige opphavsrettslige vernetiden aldri mer enn trettito år, som gjorde at det meste av kultur fra en og en halv generasjon tidligere var tilgjengelig for enhver å bygge på uten tillatelse fra noen. Tilsvarende for i dag ville være at kreative verker fra 1960- og 1970-tallet nå ville være fritt tilgjengelig for de neste Walt Disney å bygge på uten tillatelse. Men i dag er allemannseie presumtivt kun for innhold fra før mellomkrigstiden.

Walt Disney hadde selvfølgelig ikke monopol på «Walt Disney-kreativitet». Det har heller ikke USA. Normen med fri kultur har, inntil nylig, og unntatt i totalitære nasjoner, vært bredt utnyttet og svært universell.

Vurder for eksempel en form for kreativitet som synes underlig for mange amerikanere, men som er overalt i japansk kultur: manga, eller tegneserier. Japanerne er fanatiske når det gjelder tegneserier. Over 40 prosent av publikasjoner er tegneserier, og 30 prosent av publikasjonsomsetningen stammer fra tegneserier. De er over alt i det japanske samfunnet, tilgjengelig fra ethvert tidsskriftsutsalg, og i hendene på en stor andel av pendlere på Japans ekstraordinære system for offentlig transport.

Amerikanere har en tendens til å se ned på denne formen for kultur. Det er et lite attraktivt kjennetegn hos oss. Vi misforstår sannsynligvis mye rundt manga, på grunn av at få av oss noen gang har lest noe som ligner på historiene i disse «grafiske historiene» forteller. For en japaner dekker manga ethvert aspekt ved det sosiale liv. For oss er tegneserier «menn i strømpebukser». Og uansett er det ikke slik at T-banen i New York er full av folk som leser Joyse eller Hemingway for den saks skyld. Folk i ulike kulturer skiller seg ut på forskjellig måter, og japanerne på dette interessante viset.

Men mitt formål her er ikke å forstå manga. Det er å beskrive en variant av manga som fra en advokats perspektiv er ganske merkelig, men som fra en Disneys perspektiv er ganske godt kjent.

Dette er fenomenet doujinshi. Doujinshi er også tegneserier, men de er slags etterapings-tegneserier. En rik etikk styrer de som skaper doujinshi. Det er ikke doujinshi hvis det bare er en kopi. Kunstneren må gjøre et bidrag til kunsten han kopierer ved å omforme det enten subtilt eller betydelig. En doujinshi-tegneserie kan dermed ta en massemarkeds-tegneserie og utvikle den i en annen retning—med en annen historie-linje. Eller tegneserien kan beholde figuren som seg selv men endre litt på utseendet. Det er ingen bestemt formel for hva som gjør en doujinshi tilstrekkelig «forskjellig». Men de må være forskjellige hvis de skal anses som ekte doujinshi. Det er faktisk komiteer som går igjennom doujinshi for å bli med på messer, og avviser etterapninger som bare er en kopi.

Disse etterapings-tegneseriene er ikke en liten del av manga-markedet. Det er enorme. Mer en 33 000 «sirkler» av skapere over hele Japan som produserer disse bitene av Walt Disney-kreativitet. Mer en 450 000 japanere samles to ganger i året, i den største offentlige samlingen i langet, for å bytte og selge dem. Dette markedet er parallelt med det kommersielle massemarkeds-manga-markedet. På noen måter konkurrerer det åpenbart med det markedet, men det er ingen vedvarende innsats fra de som kontrollerer det kommersielle manga-markedet for å stenge doujinshi-markedet. Det blomstrer, på tross av konkurransen og til tross for loven.

Den mest gåtefulle egenskapen med doujinshi-markedet, for de som har juridisk trening i hvert fall, er at det overhodet tillates å eksistere. Under japansk opphavsrettslov, som i hvert fall på dette området (på papiret) speiler USAs opphavsrettslov, er doujinshi-markedet ulovlig. Doujinshi er helt klart «avledede verk». Det er ingen generell praksis hos doujinshi-kunstnere for å sikre seg tillatelse hos manga-skaperne. I stedet er praksisen ganske enkelt å ta og endre det andre har laget, slik Walt Disney gjorde med Steamboat Bill, Jr. For både japansk og USAs lov, er å «ta» uten tillatelse fra den opprinnelige opphavsrettsinnehaver ulovlig. Det er et brudd på opphavsretten til det opprinnelige verket å lage en kopi eller et avledet verk uten tillatelse fra den opprinnelige rettighetsinnehaveren.

Likevel eksisterer dette illegale markedet og faktisk blomstrer i Japan, og etter manges syn er det nettopp fordi det eksisterer at japansk manga blomstrer. Som USAs tegneserieskaper Judd Winick fortalte meg, «I amerikansk tegneseriers første dager var det ganske likt det som foregår i Japan i dag. … Amerikanske tegneserier kom til verden ved å kopiere hverandre. … Det er slik [kunstnerne] lærer å tegne—ved å se i tegneseriebøker og ikke følge streken, men ved å se på dem og kopiere dem» og bygge basert på dem.^[23]

Amerikanske tegneserier nå er ganske annerledes, forklarer Winick, delvis på grunn av de juridiske problemene med å tilpasse tegneserier slik doujinshi får lov til. Med for eksempel Supermann, fortalte Winick meg, «er det en rekke regler, og du må følge dem». Det er ting som Supermann «ikke kan» gjøre. «For en som lager tegneserier er det frustrerende å måtte begrense seg til noen parameter som er femti år gamle.»

Normen i Japan reduserer denne juridiske utfordringen. Noen sier at det nettopp er den oppsamlede fordelen i det japanske mangamarkedet som forklarer denne reduksjonen. Jussprofessor Salil Mehra ved Temple University hypnotiserer for eksempel med at manga-markedet aksepterer disse teoretiske bruddene fordi de får mangamarkedet til å bli rikere og mer produktivt. Alle ville få det verre hvis doujinshi ble bannlyst, så loven bannlyser ikke doujinshi.^[24]

Problemet med denne historien, derimot, og som Mehra helt klart erkjenner, er at mekanismen som produserer denne «hold hendene borte»-responsen ikke er forstått. Det kan godt være at markedet som helhet gjør det bedre hvis doujinshi tillates i stedet for å bannlyse den, men det forklarer likevel ikke hvorfor individuelle opphavsrettsinnehavere ikke saksøker. Hvis loven ikke har et generelt unntak for doujinshi, og det finnes faktisk noen tilfeller der individuelle manga-kunstnere har saksøkt doujinshi-kunstnere, hvorfor er det ikke et mer generelt mønster for å blokkere denne «frie takingen» hos doujinshi-kulturen?

Jeg var fire nydelige måneder i Japan, og jeg stilte dette spørsmål så ofte som jeg kunne. Kanskje det beste svaret til slutt kom fra en venn i et større japansk advokatfirma. «Vi har ikke nok advokater», fortalte han meg en ettermiddag. Det er «bare ikke nok ressurser til å tiltale tilfeller som dette».

Dette er et tema vi kommer tilbake til: at lovens regulering både er en funksjon av ordene i bøkene, og kostnadene med å få disse ordene til å ha effekt. Akkurat nå er det endel åpenbare spørsmål som presser seg frem: Ville Japan gjøre det bedre med flere advokater? Ville manga være rikere hvis doujinshi-kunstnere ble regelmessig rettsforfulgt? Ville Japan vinne noe viktig hvis de kunne stoppe praksisen med deling uten kompensasjon? Skader piratvirksomhet ofrene for piratvirksomheten, eller hjelper den dem? Ville advokaters kamp mot denne piratvirksomheten hjelpe deres klienter, eller skade dem? La oss ta et øyeblikks pause.

Hvis du er som meg et tiår tilbake, eller som folk flest når de først begynner å tenke på disse temaene, da bør du omtrent nå være rådvill om noe du ikke hadde tenkt igjennom før.

Vi lever i en verden som feirer «eiendom». Jeg er en av de som feierer. Jeg tror på verdien av eiendom generelt, og jeg tror også på verdien av den sære formen for eiendom som advokater kaller «immateriell eiendom».^[25] Et stort og variert samfunn kan ikke overleve uten eiendom, og et moderne samfunn kan ikke blomstre uten immaterielle eierrettigheter.

Men det tar bare noen sekunders refleksjon for å innse at det er masse av verdi der ute som «eiendom» ikke dekker. Jeg mener ikke «kjærlighet kan ikke kjøpes med penger» men heller, at en verdi som ganske enkelt er del av produksjonsprosessen, både for kommersiell og ikke-kommersiell produksjon. Hvis Disneys animatører hadde stjålet et sett med blyanter for å tegne Steamboat Willie, vi ville ikke nølt med å dømme det som galt—selv om det er trivielt og selv om det ikke blir oppdaget. Men det var intet galt, i hvert fall slik loven var da, med at Disney tok fra Buster Keaton eller fra Grimm-brødrene. Det var intet galt med å ta fra Keaton, fordi Disneys bruk ville blitt ansett som «rimelig». Det var intet galt med å ta fra brødrene Grimm fordi deres verker var allemannseie.

Dermed, selv om de tingene som Disney tok—eller mer generelt, tingene som blir tatt av enhver som utøver Walt Disney-kreativitet—er verdifulle, så anser ikke vår tradisjon det som galt å ta disse tingene. Noen ting forblir frie til å bli tatt i en fri kultur og denne friheten er bra.

Det er det samme med doujinshi-kulturen. Hvis en doujinshi-kunstner brøt seg inn på kontoret til en forlegger, og stakk av med tusen kopier av hans siste verk—eller bare en kopi—uten å betale, så ville vi uten å nøle si at kunstneren har gjort noe galt. I tillegg til å ha trengt seg inn på andres eiendom, ville han ha stjålet noe av verdi. Loven forbyr stjeling i enhver form, uansett hvor stort eller lite som blir tatt.

Likevel er det en åpenbar motvilje, selv blant japanske advokater, for å si at etterapende tegneseriekunstnere «stjeler». Denne formen for Walt Disney-kreativitet anses som rimelig og riktig, selv om spesielt advokater synes det er vanskelig å forklare hvorfor.

Det er det same med tusen eksempler som dukker opp over alt med en gang en begynner å se etter dem. Forskerne bygger på arbeidet til andre forskere uten å spørre eller betale for privilegiet. («Unnskyld meg, professor Einstein, men kan jeg få tillatelse til å bruke din relativitetsteori til å vise at du tok feil om kvantefysikk?») Teatertropper viser frem bearbeidelser av verkene til Shakespeare uten å sikre seg noen tillatelser. (Er det noen som tror at Shakespeare ville vært mer spredt i vår kultur om det var et sentralt rettighetsklareringskontor for Shakespeare som alle som laget Shakespeare-produksjoner måtte appellere til først?) Og Hollywood går igjennom sykluser med en bestemt type filmer: fem astroidefilmer i slutten av 1990-tallet, to vulkankatastrofefilmer i 1997.

Skapere her og overalt har alltid og til alle tider bygd på kreativiteten som eksisterte før og som omringer dem nå. Denne byggingen er alltid og overalt i det minste delvis gjort uten tillatelse og uten å kompensere den opprinnelige skaperen. Intet samfunn, fritt eller kontrollert, har noen gang krevd at enhver bruk skulle bli betalt for eller at tillatelse for Walt Disney-kreativitet alltid måtte skaffes. Istedet har ethvert samfunn latt en bestemt bit av sin kultur være fritt tilgjengelig for alle å ta—frie samfunn muligens i større grad enn ufrie, men en viss grad i alle samfunn.

Det vanskelige spørsmålet er derfor ikke om en kultur er fri. Alle kulturer er frie til en viss grad. Det vanskelige spørsmålet er i stedet «hvor fri er denne kulturen er?» Hvor mye og hvor bredt, er kulturen fritt tilgjengelig for andre å ta, og bygge på? Er den friheten begrenset til partimedlemmer? Til medlemmer av kongefamilien? Til de ti største selskapene på New York-børsen? Eller er at frihet bredt tilgjengelig? Til kunstnere generelt, uansett om de er tilknyttet til nasjonalmuseet eller ikke? Til musikere generelt, uansett om de er hvite eller ikke? Til filmskapere generelt, uansett om de er tilknyttet et studio eller ikke?

Frie kulturer er kulturer som etterlater mye åpent for andre å bygge på. Ufrie, eller tillatelse-kulturer etterlater mye mindre. Vår var en fri kultur. Den er på tur til å bli mindre fri.

I 1839 fant Louis Daguerre opp den første praktiske teknologien for å produsere det vi ville kalle «fotografier». Rimelig nok ble de kalt «daguerreotyper». Prosessen var komplisert og kostbar, og feltet var dermed begrenset til profesjonelle og noen få ivrige og velstående amatører. (Det var til og med en amerikansk Daguerre-forening som hjalp til med å regulere industrien, slik alle slike foreninger gjør, ved å holde konkurransen ned slik at prisene var høye.)

Men til tross for høye priser var etterspørselen etter daguerreotyper sterk. Dette inspirerte oppfinnere til å finne enklere og billigere måter å lage «automatiske bilder». William Talbot oppdaget snart en prosess for å lage «negativer». Men da negativene var av glass, og måtte holdes fuktige, forble prosessen kostbar og tung. På 1870-tallet ble tørrplater utviklet, noe som gjorde det enklere å skille det å ta et bilde fra å fremkalle det. Det var fortsatt plater av glass, og dermed var det fortsatt ikke en prosess som var innenfor rekkevidden til de fleste amatører.

Den teknologiske endringen som gjorde masse-fotografering mulig skjedde ikke før i 1888, og det var takket være en eneste mann. George Eastman, selv en amatørfotograf, var frustrert over den plate-baserte fotografi-teknologien. I et lysglimt av innsikt (for å si det slik), forsto Eastman at hvis filmen kunne gjøres bøyelig, så kunne den holdes på en enkel rull. Denne rullen kunne så sendes til en fremkaller, og senke kostnadene til fotografering vesentlig. Ved å redusere kostnadene, forventet Eastman at han dramatisk kunne utvide andelen fotografer.

Eastman utviklet bøyelig, emulsjons-belagt papirfilm og plasserte ruller med dette i små, enkle kameraer: Kodaken. Enheten ble markedsfør med grunnlag dens enkelhet. «Du trykker på knappen og vi fikser resten.»^[26] Som han beskrev det i The Kodak Primer:

For $25 kunne alle ta bilder. Det var allerede film i kameraet, og når det var brukt ble kameraet returnert til en Eastman-fabrikk hvor filmen ble fremkalt. Etter hvert, naturligvis, ble både kostnaden til kameraet og hvor enkelt et var å bruke forbedret. Film på rull ble dermed grunnlaget for en eksplosiv vekst i fotografering blant folket. Eastmans kamera ble lagt ut for salg i 1888, og et år senere trykket Kodak mer enn seks tusen negativer om dagen. Fra 1888 til 1909, mens produksjonen i industrien vokste med 4,7 prosent, økte salget av fotografisk utstyr og materiale med 11 prosent.^[28] Salget til Eastman Kodak i samme periode opplevde en årlig vekst på over 17 prosent.^[29]

Den virkelige betydningen av oppfinnelsen til Eastman, var derimot ikke økonomisk. Den var sosial. Profesjonell fotografering ga individer et glimt av steder de ellers aldri ville se. Amatørfotografering ga dem muligheten til å arkivere deres liv på en måte som de aldri hadde vært i stand til tidligere. Som forfatter Brian Coe skriver, «For første gang tilbød fotoalbumet mannen i gata et permanent arkiv over hans familie og dens aktiviteter. … For første gang i historien fantes det en autentisk visuell oppføring av utseende og aktivitet til vanlige mennesker laget uten [skrivefør] tolkning eller forutinntatthet.»^[30]

På denne måten var Kodak-kameraet og film uttrykksteknologier. Blyanten og malepenselen var selvfølgelig også en uttrykksteknologi. Men det tok årevis med trening før de kunne bli brukt nyttig og effektiv av amatører. Med Kodaken var uttrykk mulig mye raskere og enklere. Barrièren for å uttrykke seg var senket. Snobber ville fnyse over «kvaliteten», profesjonelle ville avvise den som irrelevant. Men se et barn studere hvordan best velge bildemotiv og du får følelsen av hva slags kreativitetserfaring som Kodaken muliggjorde. Demokratiske verktøy ga vanlige folk en måte å uttrykke dem selv på enklere enn noe annet verktøy kunne ha gjort før.

Hva krevdes for at denne teknologien skulle blomstre. Eastmans genialitet var åpenbart en viktig del. Men den juridiske miljøet som Eastmans oppfinnelse vokste i var også viktig. For tidlig i historien til fotografering, var det en rekke av rettsavgjørelser som godt kunne ha endret kursen til fotograferingen betydelig. Domstoler ble spurt om fotografen, amatør eller profesjonell, måtte ha ha tillatelse før han kunne fange og trykke hvilket som helst bilde han ønsket. Svaret var nei.^[31]

Argumentene til fordel for å kreve tillatelser vil høres overraskende kjent ut. Fotografen «tok» noe fra personen eller bygningen som ble fotografert—røvet til seg noe av verdi. Noen trodde til og med at han tok målets sjel. På samme måte som Disney ikke var fri til å ta blyantene som hans animatører brukte til å tegne Mikke, så skulle heller ikke disse fotografene være fri til å ta bilder som de fant verdi i.

På den andre siden var et argument som også bør bør være kjent. Joda, det var kanskje noe av verdi som ble brukt. Men borgerne burde ha rett til å fange i hvert fall de bildene som var tatt av offentlig område. (Louis Brandeis, som senere ble høyesterettsjustitiarus, mente regelen skulle være annerledes for bilder tatt av private områder.^[32]) Det kan være at dette betyr at fotografen får noe for ingenting. På samme måte som Disney kunne hente inspirasjon fra Steamboat Bill, Jr. eller Grimm-brødrene, så burde fotografene stå fritt til å fange et bilde uten å kompensere kilden.

Heldigvis for Mr. Eastman, og for fotografering generelt, gikk disse tidligere avgjørelsene i favør av piratene. Generelt ble det ikke nødvendig å sikre seg tillatelse før et bilde kunne tas og deles med andre. I stedet var det antatt at tillatelse var gitt. Frihet var utgangspunktet. (Loven ga etter en stund et unntak for berømte personer: kommersielle fotografer som tok bilder av berømte personer for kommersielle formål har flere begrensninger enn resten av oss. Men i det vanlige tilfellet, kan bildet fanges uten å klarere rettighetene for a fange det.^[33])

Vi kan kun spekulere om hvordan fotografering ville ha utviklet seg om loven hadde slått ut den andre veien. Hvis den hadde vært mot fotografen, da ville fotografen måttet dokumentere at tillatelse var på plass. Kanskje Eastman Kodak også måtte ha dokumentert at tillatelse var gitt, før de utviklet filmen som bildene ble fanget på. Tross alt, hvis tillatelse ikke var gitt, da ville Eastman Kodak ha nytt fordeler fra «tyveriet» begått av fotografer. På samme måte som Napster nøt fordeler fra opphavsrettsbrudd utført av Napster-brukere, så ville Kodak nytt fordeler fra «bilde-rettighets»-brudd til deres fotografer. Vi kan forestille oss at loven da krevede at en form for tillatelse ble vist frem før et selskap fremkalte bildene. Vi kan forestille oss et system bli utviklet for å legge frem slike tillatelser.

Men selv om vi kan tenke oss dette godkjenningssystemet, så vil det være svært vanskelig å se hvordan fotografering skulle ha blomstret slik det gjorde hvis det var bygd inn krav om godkjenning i reglene som styrte det. Fotografering ville eksistert. Det ville ha økt sin betydning over tid. Profesjonelle ville ha fortsatt å bruke teknologien slik de gjorde—siden profesjonelle enklere kunne håndtert byrdene pålagt dem av godkjenningssystemet. Men spredningen av fotografering til vanlige folk villa aldri ha skjedd. Veksten det skapte kunne aldri ha skjedd. Og det ville uten tvil aldri vært realisert en slik vekst i demokratisk uttrykksteknologi. Hvis du kjører gjennom området Presidio i San Francisco, kan det hende du ser to gusjegule skolebusser overmalt med fargefulle og iøynefallende bilder, og logoen «Just Think!» i stedet for navnet på en skole. Men det er lite som er «bare» mentalt i prosjektene som disse bussene muliggjør. Disse bussene er fylt med teknologi som lærer unger å fikle med film. Ikke filmen til Eastman. Ikke en gang filmen i din videospiller. I stedet er det snakk om «filmen» til digitale kamera. Just Think! er et prosjekt som gjør det mulig for unger å lage filmer, som en måte å forstå og kritisere den filmede kulturen som de finner over alt rundt seg. Hvert år besøker disse bussene mer enn tredve skoler og gir mellom tre hundre og fire hundre barn muligheten til å lære noe om media ved å gjøre noe med media. Ved å gjøre, så tenker de. Ved å fikle, så lærer de.

Disse bussene er ikke billige, men teknologien de har med seg blir billigere og billigere. Kostnaden til et høykvalitets digitalt videosystem har falt dramatisk. Som en analytiker omtalte det, «for fem år siden kostet et godt sanntids redigerinssystem for digital video $25 000. I dag kan du få profesjonell kvalitet for $595.»^[34] Disse bussene er fylt med teknologi som ville kostet hundre-tusenvis av dollar for bare ti år siden. Og det er nå mulig å forestille seg ikke bare slike busser, men klasserom rundt om i landet hvor unger kan lære mer og mer av det lærerne kaller «medie-skriveføre» eller «mediekompetanse».

«Media-skriveføre,» eller «mediekompetanse» som administrerende direktør Dave Yanofsky i Just Think!, sier det, «er evnen til … å forstå, analysere og dekonstruere mediebilder. Dets mål er å gjøre [unger] i stand til å forstå hvordan mediene fungerer, hvordan de er konstruert, hvordan de blir levert, og hvordan folk bruker dem».

Dette kan virke som en litt rar måte å tenke på «skrivefør». For de fleste handler skrivefør å kunne lese og skrive. «Skriveføre» folk kjenner ting som Faulkner, Hemingway og å kjenne igjen delte infinitiver.

Mulig det. Men i en verden hvor barn ser i gjennomsnitt 390 timer med TV-reklaager i året, eller generelt mellom 20 000 og 45 000 reklameinnslag,^[35] så er det mer og mer viktig å forstå «gramatikken» til media. For på samme måte som det er en gramatikk for det skrevne ord, så er det også en for media. Og akkurat slik som unger lærer å skrive ved å skrive masse grusom prosa, så lærer unger å skrive media ved å konstruere masse (i hvert fall i begynnelsen) grusom media.

Et voksende felt av akademikere og aktivister ser denne formen for skriveføre som avgjørende for den neste generasjonen av kultur. For selv om de som har skrevet forstår hvor vanskelig det er å skrive—hvor vanskelig det er å bestemme rekkefølge i historien, å holde på oppmerksomheten hos leseren, å forme språket slik at det er forståelig—så har få av oss en reell følelse av hvor vanskelig medier er. Eller mer fundamentalt, de færreste av av oss har en følelse for hvordan media fungerer, hvordan det holder et publikum eller leder leseren gjennom historien, hvordan det utløser følelser eller bygger opp spenningen.

Det tok filmkusten en generasjon før den kunne gjøre disse tingene bra. Men selv da, så var kunnskapen i filmingen, ikke i å skrive om filmen. Ferdigheten kom fra erfaring med å lage en film, ikke fra å lese en bok om den. En lærer å skrive ved å skrive, og deretter reflektere over det en har skrevet. En lærer å skrive med bilder ved å lage dem, og deretter reflektere over det en har laget.

Denne gramatikken har endret seg etter hvert som media har endret seg. Da det kun var film, som Elizabeth Daley, administrerende direktør ved Universitetet i Sør-Califorias Anneberg-senter for kommunkasjon og rektor ved USC skole for Kino-Televisjon, forklarte for meg, var gramatikken om «plasseringen av objekter, farger, … rytme, skritt og tekstur».^[36] Men etter hvert som datamaskiner åpner opp et interaktivt rom hvor en historie blir «spillt» i tillegg til opplevd, endrer gramatikken seg. Den enkle kontrollen til forstellerstemmen er forsvunnet, og dermed er andre teknikker nødvendig. Forfatter Michael Crichton hadde mestret fortellerstemmen til science fiction. Men da han forsøkte å lage et dataspill basert på et av sine verk, så var det et nytt håndverk han måtte lære. Det var ikke åpenbart hvordan en leder folk gjennom et spill uten at de far følelsen av å ha blitt ledet, selv for en enormt vellykket forfatter.^[37]

Akkurat denne ferdigheten er håndverket en lærer til de som lager filmer. Som Daley skriver, «folk er svært overrasket over hvordan de blir ledet gjennom en film. Den er perfekt konstruert for å hindre deg fra å se det, så du aner det ikke. Hvis en som lager filmer lykkes så vet du ikke at du har vært ledet.» Hvis du vet at du ble ledet igjennom en film, så har filmen feilet.

Likevel er innsatsen for å utvide skriveføren—til en som går ut over tekst til å ta med lyd og visuelle elementer—handler ikke om å lage bedre filmregisører. Målet er ikke å forbedre filmyrket i det hele tatt. I stedet, som Daley forklarer,

«ikke kunne skrive.» Passive mottakerne av kultur produsert andre steder. Sofapoteter. Forbrukere. Dette er medieverden fra det tjuende århundre.

Det tjueførste århundret kan bli annerledes. Dette er et kritisk punkt: Det kan bli både lesing og skriving. Eller i det minste lesing og bedre forståelse for håndverket å skrive. Eller det beste, lesing og forstå verktøyene som gir skriving mulighet til å veilede eller villede. Målet med enhver skriveførhet, og denne skriveførheten spesielt, er å «gi folket myndighet til å velge det språket som passer for det de trenger å lage eller uttrykke».^[38] Det gir studenter mulighet «til å kommunisere i språket til det tjueførste århundret».^[39]

Som det alle andre språk, læres dette språket lettere for noen enn for andre. Det kommer ikke nødvendigvis lettere for de som gjør det godt skriftlig. Daley og Stephanie Barish, direktør for Institutt for Multimedia-skriveføre ved Annenberg-senteret, beskriver et spesielt sterkt eksempel fra et prosjekt de gjennomførte i en videregående skole. Den videregående skolen var en veldig fattig skole i den indre byen i Los Angeles. Etter alle tradisjonelle måleenheter for suksess var denne skolen en fiasko. Men Daley og Barish gjennomførte et program som ga ungene en mulighet til å bruke film til å uttrykke sine meninger om noe som studentene visste noe om—våpen-relatert vold.

Klassen møttes fredag ettermiddag, og skapte et relativt nytt problem for skolen. Mens utfordringen i de fleste klasser var å få ungene til å dukke opp, var utfordringen for denne klassen å holde dem unna. «Ungene dukket opp 06:00, og dro igjen 05:00 på natta», sa Barish. De jobbet hardere enn i noen annen klasse for å gjøre det utdanning burde handle om—å lære hvordan de skulle uttrykke seg.

Ved å bruke hva som helst av «fritt tilgjengelig web-stoff de kunne finne», og relativt enkle verktøy som gjorde det mulig for ungene å blande «bilde, lyd og tekst», sa Barish at denne klassen produserte en serie av prosjekter som viste noe om våpen-basert vold som få ellers ville forstå. Dette var et tema veldig nært livene til disse studentene. Prosjektet «ga dem et verktøy og bemyndiget dem slik at de både ble i stand til å forstå det og snakke om det», forklarer Barish. Dette verktøyet lyktes med å skape uttrykk—mye mer vellykket og kraffylt enn noe som hadde blitt laget ved å kun bruke tekst. «Hvis du hadde sagt til disse studentene at 'du må gjøre dette i tekstform', så hadde de bare kastet hendene i været og gått og gjort noe annet», forklarer Barish. Delvis, uten tvil, fordi å uttrykke seg selv i tekstform ikke er noe disse studentene gjør godt. Heller ikke er tekstform en form som kan uttrykke disse idéene godt. Kraften i denne meldingen avhenger av dens forbindelse med denne for for uttrykk.

«Men handler ikke utdanning om å lære unger å skrive?» spurte jeg. Jo delvis, naturligvis. Men hvorfor lærer vi unger å skrive? Utdanning, forklarer Daley, handler om å gi studentene en måte å «konstruere mening». Å si at det kun betyr skriving er som å si at å lære bort skriving kun handler om å lære ungene å stave. Tekstforming er bare en del—og i større grad ikke den kraftigste delen—for å konstruere mening. Som Daley forklarte i den mest rørende delen av vårt intervju,

Da to fly krasjet inn i World Trade Center, og et annet inn i Pentagon, og et fjerde inn i et jorde i Pennsylvania, snudde alle medier verden rundt seg til denne nyheten. Ethvert moment for omtreng hver eneste dag den uka, og ukene som fulgte gjenfortalte TV spesielt, men media generelt, historien om disse hendelsene som vi nettopp hadde vært vitne til. Genialiteten i denne forferdelige terrorhandlingen var at det forsinkede andre-angrepet var perfekt tidsatt for å sikre at hele verden ville være der for å se på.

Disse gjenfortellingene ga en økende familiær følelse. Det var musikk spesiallaget for mellom-innslagene, og avansert grafikk som blinket tvers over skjermen. Det var en formel for intervjuer. Det var «balanse» og seriøsitet. Dette var nyheter koreaografert slik vi i stadig større grad forventer det, «nyheter som underholdning», selv om underholdningen er en tragedie.

Men i tillegg til disse produserte nyhetene om «tragedien 11. september», kunne de av oss som er knyttet til internettet i tillegg se en svært annerledes produksjon. Internettet er fullt av fortellinger om de samme hendelsene. Men disse internet-fortellingene hadde en veldig annerledes smak. Noen folk konstruerte foto-sider som fanget bilder fra hele verden og presenterte dem som lysbildepresentasjoner med tekst. Noen tilbød åpne brev. Det var lydopptak. Det var sinne og frustrasjon. Det var forsøk på å tilby en sammenheng. Det var, kort og godt, en ekstraordinær verdensomspennende låvebygging, slik Mike Godwin bruker begrepet i hans bok Cyber Rights, rundt en nyhetshendelse som hadde fanget oppmerksomheten til hele verden. Det var ABC og CBS, men det var også internettet.

Det er ikke så enkelt som at jeg ønsker å lovprise internettet—selv om jeg mener at folkene som støtter denne formen for tale bør lovprises. Jeg ønsker i stedet å peke på viktigheten av denne formen for tale. For på samme måte som en Kodak, gjør internettet folk i stand til å fange bilder. Og på samme måte som med en film laget av en av studentene på «Just Think!»-bussen, kan visuelle bilder bli blandet med lyd og tekst.

Men i motsetning til en hvilken som helst teknologi for å enkelt fange bilder, tillater internettet at en nesten umiddelbart deler disse kreasjonene med et ekstraordinært antall menesker. Dette er noe nytt i vår tradisjon—ikke bare kan kultur fanges inn mekanisk, og åpenbart heller ikke at hendelser blir kommentert kritisk, men at denne blandingen av bilder, lyd og kommentar kan spres vidt omkring nesten umiddelbart.

11. september var ikke et avvik. Det var en start. Omtrent på samme tid, begynte en form for kommunkasjon som hadde vokst dramatisk å komme inn i offentlig bevissthet: web-loggen, eller blog. Bloggen er en slags offentlig dagbok, og i noen kulturer, slik som i Japan, fungerer den veldig lik en dagbok. I disse kulturene registrerer den private fakta på en offentlig måte—det er en slags elektronisk Jerry Springer, tilgjengelig overalt i verden.

Men i USA har blogger inntatt en svært annerledes karakter. Det er noen som bruker denne plassen til å snakke om sitt private liv. Men det er mange som bruker denne plassen til å delta i offentlig debatt. Diskuterer saker med offentlig interesse, kritiserer andre som har feil synspunkt, kritisere politigere for avgjørelser de tar, tilbyr løsninger på problemer vi alle ser. Blogger skaper en følelse av et virtuelt offentlig møte, men et hvor vi ikke alle håper å være tilstede på samme tid og hvor konversasjonene ikke nødvendigvis er koblet sammen. De beste av bloggoppføringene er relativt korte. De peker direkte til ord bruk av andre, kritiserer dem eller bidrar til dem. Det kan argumenteres for at de er den viktigste form for ukoreografert offentlig debatt som vi har.

Dette er en sterk uttalelse. Likevel sier den like mye om vårt demokrati som den sier om blogger. Dette er delen av USA som det er mest vanskelig for oss som elsker USA å akseptere: vårt demokrati har svunnet hen. Vi har naturligvis valg, og mesteparten av tiden tillater domstolene at disse valgene teller. Et relativt lite antall mennesker stemmer i disse valgene. Syklusen med disse valgene har blitt totalt profesjonalisert og rutinepreget. De fleste av oss tenker på dette som demokrati.

Men demokrati har aldri kun handlet om valg. Demokrati betyr at folket styrer, og å styre betyr noe mer enn kun valg. I vår tradisjon betyr det også kontroll gjennom gjennomtenkt meningsbrytning. Dette var idéen som fanget fantasien til Alexis de Tocqueville, den franske nittenhundretalls-advokaten som skrev den viktigste historien om det tidlige «demokratiet i Amerika». Det var ikke allmenn stemmerett som fascinerte han—det var juryen, en institusjon som ga vanlige folk retten til å velge liv eller død før andre borgere. Og det som fascinerte han mest var at juryen ikke bare stemte over hvilket resultat de ville legge frem. De diskuterte. Medlemmene argumenterte om hva som var «riktig» resultat, de forsøkte å overbevise hverandre om «riktig»resultat, og i hvert fall i kriminalsaker måtte de bli enige om et enstemming resultat for at prosessen skulle avsluttes.^[40]

Og likevel fremheves denne institusjonen i USA i dag. Og i dets sted er det ingen systematisk innsats for å muliggjøre borger-diskusjon. Noen gjør en innsats for å lage en slik institusjon.^[41] Og i noen landsbyer i New England er det noe i nærheten av diskusjon igjen. Men for de fleste av oss mesteparten av tiden, er det ingen tid og sted for å gjennomføre «demokratisk diskusjon».

Mer merkelig er at en generelt sett ikke engang har aksept for at det skal skje. Vi, det mektigste demokratiet i verden, har utviklet en sterk norm mot å diskutere politikk. Det er greit å diskutere politikk med folk du er enig med, men det er uhøflig å diskutere politikk med folk du er uenig med. Politisk debatt blir isolert, og isolert diskusjon blir mer ekstrem.^[42] Vi sier det våre venner vil høre, og hører veldig lite utenom hva våre venner sier.

Så kommer bloggen. Selve bloggens arkitektur løser en del av dette problemet. Folk publiserer det de ønsker å publisere, og folk leser det de ønsker å lese. Det vanskeligste tiden er synkron tid. Teknologier som muliggjør asynkron kommunasjons, slik som epost, øker muligheten for kommunikasjon. Blogger gjør det mulig med offentlig debatt uten at folket noen gang trenger å samle seg på et enkelt offentlig sted.

Men i tillegg til arkitektur, har blogger også løst problemet med normer. Det er (ennå) ingen norm i blogg-sfæren om å ikke snakke om politikk. Sfæren er faktisk fylt med politiske innlegg, både på høyre- og venstresiden. Noen av de mest populære stedene er konservative eller libertarianske, men det er mange av alle politiske farger. Til og med blogger som ikke er politiske dekker politiske temaer når anledningen krever det.

Betydningene av disse bloggene er liten nå, men ikke ubetydelig. Navnet Howard Dean har i stor grad forsvunnet fra 2004-presidentvalgkampen bortsett fra hos noen få blogger. Men selv om antallet lesere er lavt, så har det å lese dem en effekt.

En direkte effekt er på historier som hadde en annerledes livssyklus i de store mediene. Trend Lott-affæren er et eksempel. Da Logg «sa feil» på en fest for senator Storm Thurmond, og essensielt lovpriste segregeringspolitikken til Thurmond, regnet han ganske riktig med at historien ville forsvinne fra de store mediene i løpet av førtiåtte timer. Det skjedde. Men han regnet ikke med dens livssyklus i bloggsfæren. Bloggerne fortsatte å undersøke historien. Etter hvert dukket flere og flere tilfeller av tilsvarende «feiluttalelser» opp. Så dukket historien opp igjen hos de store mediene. Lott ble til slutt tvinget til å trekke seg som leder for senatets flertall.^[43]

Denne annerledes syklusen er mulig på grunn av at et tilsvarende kommersielt press ikke eksisterer hos blogger slik det gjør hos andre kanaler. Televisjon og aviser er kommersielle aktører. De må arbeide for å holde på oppmerksomheten. Hvis de mister lesere, så mister de inntekter. Som haier, må de bevege seg videre.

Men bloggere har ikke tilsvarende begresninger. De kan bli opphengt, de kan fokusere, de kan bli seriøse. Hvis en bestemt blogger skriver en spesielt interessant historie, så vil flere og flere folk lenke til den historien. Og etter hvert som antalet lenker til en bestemt historie øker, så stiger den i rangeringen for historier. Folk leser det som er populært, og hva som er populært har blitt valgt gjennom en svært demokratisk prosess av likemanns-generert rangering.

Det er også en annen måte, hvor blogger har en annen syklus enn de store mediene. Som Dave Winer, en av fedrene til denne bevegelsen og en programvareutvikler i mange tiår fortalte meg, er en annen forskjell fraværet av finansiell «interessekonflikt». «Jeg tror du må ta interessekonflikten» ut av journalismen, fortalte Winer meg. «En amatørjournalist har ganske enkelt ikke interessekonflikt, eller interessekonflikten er så enkelt å avsløre at du liksom vet du kan rydde den av veien.»

Disse konfliktene blir mer viktig etter hvert som mediene blir mer konsentert (mer om dette under). Konsenterte medier kan skjule mer fra offentligheten enn ikke-konsenterte medier kan—slik CNN innrømte at de gjorde etter Iraq-krigen fordi de var rett for konsekvensene for sine egne ansatte.^[44] De trenger også å opprettholde en mer konsistent rapportering. (Midt under Irak-krigen, leste jeg en melding på Internet fra noen som på det tidspunktet lyttet på satellitt-forbindelsen til en reporter i Iraq. New York-hovedkvarteret ba reporteren gang på gang at hennes rapport om krigen var for trist: Hun måtte tilby en mer optimistisk historie. Når hun fortalte New York at det ikke var grunnlag for det, fortalte de henne at det var dem som skrev «historien».)

Blogg-sfæren gir amatører en måte å bli med i debatten—«amatør» ikke i betydningen uerfaren, men i betydningen til en Olympisk atlet, det vil si ikke betalt av noen for å komme med deres rapport. Det tillater en mye bredere rekke av innspill til en historie, slik rapporteringen Columbia-katastrofen avdekket, når hundrevis fra hele sørvest-USA vendte seg til internettet for å gjenfortelle hva de hadde sett.^[45] Og det får lesere til å lese på tvers av en rekke fortellinger og «triangulere», som Winer formulerer det, sannheten. Blogger, sier Winer, «kommunserer direkte med vår velgermasse, og mellommannen er fjernet»— med alle de fordeler og ulemper det kan føre med seg.

Winer er optimistisk når det gjelder en journalistfremtid infisert av blogger. «Det kommer til å bli en nødvendig ferdighet», spår Winer, for offentlige aktører og også i større grad for private aktører. Det er ikke klart at «journalismen» er glad for dette—noen journalister har blitt bedt om å kutte ut sin blogging.^[46] Men det er klart at vi fortsatt er i en overgangsfase. «Mye av det vi gjør nå er oppvarmingsøvelser», fortalte Winer meg. Det er mye som må modne før dette området har sin modne effekt. Og etter som inkludering av innhold i dette området er det området med minst opphavsrettsbrudd på internettet, sa Wiener at «vi vil være den siste tingen som blir skutt ned».

Slik tale påvirker demokratiet. Winer mener dette skjer fordi «du trenger ikke jobber for noen som kontrollerer, [for] en portvokter». Det er sant. Men det påvirker demokratiet også på en annen måte. Etter hvert som flere og flere borgere uttrykker hva de mener, og forsvarer det skriftlig, så vil det endre hvordan folk forstår offentlige temaer. Det er enkelt å ha feil og være på villspor i hodet ditt. Det er vanskeligere når resultatet fra dine tanker kan bli kritisert av andre. Det er selvfølgelig et sjeldent menneske som innrømmer at han ble overtalt til å innse at han tok feil. Men det er mer sjeldent for et menneske å ignorere at noen har bevist at han tok feil. Å skrive ned idéer, argumenter og kritikk forbedrer demokratiet. I dag er det antagelig et par millioner blogger der det skrives på denne måten. Når det er ti milloner, så vil det være noe ekstraordært å rapportere.

John Seely Brown er sjefsforsker ved Xerox Corporation. Hans arbeid, i følge hans eget nettsted, er «menneskelig læring og … å skape kunnskapsøkologier for å skape … innovasjon».

Brown ser dermed på disse teknologiene for digital kreativitet litt annerledes enn fra perspektivene jeg har skissert opp så langt. Jeg er sikker på at han blir begeistret for enhver teknologi som kan forbedre demokratiet. Men det han virkelig blir begeistret over er hvordan disse teknologiene påvirker læring.

Brown tror vi lærer med å fikle. Da «mange av oss vokste opp», forklarer han, ble fiklingen gjort «pa motorsykkelmotorer, gressklippermotorer, biler, radioer og så videre». Men digitale teknologier muliggjør en annen type fikling—med abstrakte idéer i sin konkrete form. Ungene i Just Think! tenker ikke bare på hvordan et reklameinnslag fremstiller en politiker. Ved å bruke digital teknologi kan de ta reklameinnslaget fra hverandre og manipulerer det, fikle med det, og se hvordan det blir gjort. Digitale teknologier setter igang en slags *bricolage* eller «fritt tilgjengelig sammenstilling», som Brown kaller det. Mange får mulighet til å legge til på eller endre på fiklingen til mange andre.

Det beste eksemplet i større skala så langt på denne typen fikling er fri programvare og åpen kildekode (FS/OSS). FS/OSS er programvare der kildekoden deles ut. Alle kan laste ned teknologien som får et FS/OSS-program til å fungere. Og enhver som har lyst til å lære hvordan en bestemt bit av FS/OSS-teknologi fungerer kan fikle med koden.

Denne muligheten gir en «helt ny type læringsplattform», i følge Brown. «Så snart du begynner å gjøre dette, så … slipper du løs en fritt tilgjengelig sammenstilling til fellesskapet, slik at andre folk kan begynne å se på koden din, fikle med den, teste den, seom de kan forbedre den». Og hver innsats er et slags læretid. «Åpen kildekode blir en stor lærlingeplatform.».

I denne prossesen, «er de konkrete tingene du fikler med abstrakte. De er kildekode». Unger «endres til å få evnen til å fikle med det abstrakte, og denne fiklingen er ikke lenger en isolert aktivitet som du gjør i garasjen din. Du fikler med en fellesskapsplatform. … Du fikler med andre folks greier. Og jo mer du fikler, jo mer forbedrer du.» Jo mer du forbedrer, jo mer lærer du.

Denne sammen tingen skjer også med innhold. Og det skjer på samme samarbeidende måte når dette innholdet er del av nettet. Som Brown formulerer det, «nettet er det første medium som virkelig tar hensyn til flere former for intelligens». Tidligere teknologier, slik som skrivemaskin eller tekstbehandling, hjelper med å fremme tekst. Men nettet fremmer mye mer enn tekst. «Nettet … si hvis du er musikalsk, hvis du er kunstnerisk, hvis du er visuell, hvis du er interessert i film …da er det en masse du kan gå igang med på dette mediet. Det kan fremme og ta hensyn til alle disse formene for intelligens.»

Brown snakker om hva Elizabeth Daley, Stephanie Barish Og Just Think! lærer bort: at denne fiklingen med kultur lærer såvel som den skaper. Den utvikler talenter litt anderledes, og den bygger en annen type gjenkjenning.

Likevel er friheten til å fikle med disse objektene ikke garantert. Faktisk, som vi vil se i løpet av denne boken, er den friheten i stadig større grad omstridt. Mens det ikke er noe tvil om at din far hadde rett til å fikle med bilmotoren, så er det stor tvil om dine barn vil ha retten til å fikle med bilder som hun finner over alt. Loven, og teknologi i stadig større grad, forstyrrer friheten som teknolog, nysgjerrigheten, ellers ville sikre.

Disse begresningene har blitt fokusen for forskere og akademikere. Professor Ed Felten ved Princeton (som vi vil se mer fra i kapittel 10) har utviklet et kraftfylt argument til fordel for «retten til å fikle» slik det gjøres i informatikk og til kunnskap generelt.^[47] Men bekymringen til Brown er tidligere, og mer fundamentalt. Det handler om hva slags læring unger kan få, eller ikke kan få, på grunn av loven.

«Dette er dit utviklingen av utdanning i det tjueførste århundret er på vei», forklarer Brown. Vi må «forstå hvordan unger som vokser opp digitalt tenker og ønsker å lære».

«Likevel», fortsatte Brown, og som balansen i denne boken vil føre bevis for, «bygger vi et juridisk system som fullstendig undertrykker den naturlige tendensen i dagens digitale unger. … We bygger en arkitektur som frigjør 60 prosent av hjernen [og] et juridisk system som stenger ned den delen av hjernen».

Vi bygger en teknologi som tar magien til Kodak, mikser inn bevegelige bilder og lyd, og legger inn plass for kommentarer og en mulighet til å spre denne kreativiteten over alt. Men vi bygger loven for å stenge ned denne teknologien.

«Ikke måten å drive en kultur på», sa Brewster Kahle, som vi møtte i kapittel 9, kommenterte til meg i et sjeldent øyeblikk av nedstemthet.

Høsten 2001, ble Jesse Jordan fra Oceanside, New York, innrullert som førsteårsstudent ved Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, i Troy, New York. Hans studieprogram ved RPI var informasjonsteknologi. Selv om han ikke var en programmerer, bestemte Jesse seg i oktober å begynne å fikle med en søkemotorteknologi som var tilgjengelig på RPI-nettverket.

RPI er en av Amerikas fremste teknologiske forskningsinstitusjoner. De tilbyr grader innen områder som går fra arkitektur og ingeniørfag til informasjonsvitenskap. Mer enn 65 prosent av de fem tusen laveregradsstudentene fullførte blant de 10 prosent beste i deres klasse på videregående. Skolen er dermed en perfekt blanding av talent og erfaring for å se for seg og deretter bygge, en generasjon tilpasset nettverksalderen.

RPIs data-nettverk kobler studenter, forelesere og administrasjon sammen. Det kobler også RPI til internettet. Ikke alt som er tilgjengelig på RPI-nettet er tilgjengelig på internettet. Men nettverket er utformet for å gi alle studentene mulighet til å bruke internettet, i tillegg til mer direkte tilgang til andre medlemmer i RPI-fellesskapet.

Søkemotorer er et mål pa hvor nært et nettverk oppleves å være. Google brakte internettet mye nærmere oss alle ved en utrolig forbedring av kvaliteten på søk i nettverket. Spesialiserte søkemotorer kan gjøre dette enda bedre. Idéen med «intranett»-søkemotorer, søkemotorer som kun søker internt i nettverket til en bestemt institusjon, er å tilby brukerne i denne institusjonen bedre tilgang til materiale fra denne institusjonen. Bedrifter gjør dette hele tiden, ved å gi ansatte mulighet til å få tak i materiale som folk på utsiden av bedriften ikke kan få tak i. Universitetet gjør også dette.

Disse motorene blir muliggjort av netverksteknologien selv. For eksempel har Microsoft et nettverksfilsystem som gjør det veldig enkelt for søkemotorer tilpasset det nettverket å spørre systemet etter informasjon om det offentlig (innen nettverket) tilgjengelige innholdet. Søkemotoren til Jesse var bygget for å dra nytte av denne teknologien. Den brukte Microsofts nettverksfilsystem for å bygge en indeks over alle filene tilgjengelig inne i RPI-nettverket.

Jesse sin var ikke den første søkemotoren bygget for RPI-nettverket. Hans motor var faktisk en enkel endring av motorer som andre hadde bygget. Hans viktigste enkeltforbedring i forhold til disse motorene var å fikse en feil i Microsofts fildelings-system som fikk en brukers datamaskin til å krasje. Med motorene som hadde eksistert tidligere, hvis du forsøkte å koble deg ved hjelp av Windows-utforskeren til en fil som var på en datamaskin som ikke var på nett, så ville din datamaskin krasje. Jesse endret systemet litt for å fikse det problemet, ved å legge til en knapp som en bruker kunne klikke på for å se om maskinen som hadde filen fortsatt var på nett.

Motoren til Jesse kom pa nett i slutten av oktober. I løpet av de følgende seks månedene fortsatte han å justere den for å forbedre dens funksjonalitet. I mars fungerte systemet ganske bra. Jesse hadde mer enn en million filer i sin katalog, inkludert alle mulige typer innhold som fantes på brukernes datamaskiner.

Dermed inneholdt indeksen som hans søkemotor produserte bilder, som studentene kunne bruke til å legge inn på sine egne nettsider, kopier av notater og forskning, kopier av informasjonshefter, filmklipp som studentene kanskje hadde laget, universitetsbrosjyrer—ganske enkelt alt som brukerne av RPI-nettverket hadde gjort tilgjengelig i en fellesmappe på sine datamaskiner.

Men indeksen inneholdt også musikkfiler. Faktisk var en fjerdedel av filene som Jesses søkemotor inneholdt musikkfiler. Men det betyr, naturligvis, at tre fjerdedeler ikke var det, og—slik at dette poenget er helt klart—Jesse gjorde ingenting for å få folk til å plassere musikkfiler i deres fellesmapper. Han gjorde ingenting for å sikte søkemotoren mot disse filene. Han var en ungdom som fiklet med Google-lignende teknologi ved et universitet der han studerte informasjonsvitenskap, og dermed var fiklingen målet. I motsetning til Google, eller Microsoft for den saks skyld, tjente han ingen penger på denne fiklingen. Han var ikke knyttet til noen bedrift som skulle tjene penger fra dette eksperimentet. Han var en ungdom som fiklet med teknologi i en omgivelse hvor fikling med teknologi var nøyaktig hva han var ment å gjøre.

Den 3. april 2003 ble Jesse kontaktet av lederen for studentkontoret ved RPI. Lederen fortalte Jesse at Foreningen for musikkindustri i USA, RIAA, wille levere inn et søksmål mot han og tre andre studenter som han ikke en gang kjente, to av dem på andre undersiteter. Noen få timer senere ble Jesse forkynt søksmålet og fikk overlevert dokumentene. Mens han leste disse dokumentene og så på nyhetsrapportene om den, ble han stadig mer forbauset.

«Det var absurd», fortalte han meg. «Jeg mener at jeg ikke gjorde noe galt. … Jeg mener det ikke er noe galt med søkemotoren som jeg kjørte eller … hva jeg hadde gjort med den. Jeg mener, jeg hadde ikke endret den på noen måte som fremmet eller forbedret arbeidet til pirater. Jeg endret kun søkemotoren slik at den ble enklere å bruke»—igjen, en søkemotor, som Jesse ikke hadde bygd selv, som brukte fildelingssystemet til Windows, som Jesse ikke hadde bygd selv, for å gjøre det mulig for medlemmer av RPI-fellesskapet å få tilgang til innhold, som Jesse ikke hadde laget eller gjort tilgjengelig, og der det store flertall av dette ikke hadde noe å gjøre med musikk.

Men RIAA kalte Jesse en pirat. De hevdet at han opererte et nettverk og dermed «med vilje» hadde brutt opphavsrettslovene. De krevde at han betalte dem skadeerstatning for det han hadde gjort galt. I saker med «krenkelser med vilje», spesifiserer opphavsrettsloven noe som advokater kaller «lovbestemte skader». Disse skadene tillater en opphavsrettighetseier å kreve $150 000 per krenkelse. Etter som RIAA påsto det var mer enn et hundre spesifikke opphavsrettskrenkelser, krevde de dermed at Jesse betalte dem minst $15 000 000.

Lignende søksmål ble gjort mot tre andre studenter: en annen student ved RPI, en ved Michegan Technical University og en ved Princeton. Deres situasjoner var lik den til Jesse. Selv om hver sak hadde forskjellige detaljer, var hovedpoenget nøyaktig det samme: store krav om «erstatning» som RIAA påsto de hadde rett på. Hvis du summerte opp disse kravene, ba disse fire søksmålene domstolene i USA å tildele saksøkerne nesten $100 milliarder—seks ganger det totale overskuddet til filmindustrien i 2001.^[48]

Jesse kontaktet sine foreldre. De støttet ham, men var litt skremt. En onkel var advokat. Han startet forhandlinger med RIAA. De krevde å få vite hvor mye penger Jesse hadde. Jesse hadde spart opp $12 000 fra sommerjobber og annet arbeid. De krevde 12 000 for å trekke saken.

RIAA ville at Jesse skulle innrømme at han hadde gjort noe galt. Han nektet. De ville ha han til å godta en kjennelse som i praksis ville gjøre det umulig for han å arbeide i mange områder innen teknologi for resten av hans liv. Han nektet. De fikk han til å forstå at denne prosessen med å bli saksøkt ikke kom til å bli hyggelig. (Som faren til Jesse refererte til meg, fortalte sjefsadvokaten på saken, Matt Oppenheimer, «Du ønsker ikke et tannlegebesøk hos meg flere ganger») Og gjennom det hele insisterte RIAA at de ikke ville inngå forlik før de hadde tatt hver eneste øre som Jesse hadde spart opp.

Familien til Jessie ble opprørt over disse påstandene. De ønsket å kjempe. Men onkelen til Jessie gjorde en innsats for å lære familien om hvordan det amerikanske juridiske systemet fungerte. Jesse kunne sloss mot RIAA. Han kunne til og med vinne. Men kostnaden med å loss mot et søksmål som dette, ble Jesse fortalt, ville være minst $250 000. Hvis han vant ville han ikke få tilbake noen av de pengene. Hvis han vant, så ville han ha en bit papir som sa at han vant, og en bit papir som sa at han og hans familie var konkurs.

Så Jesse hadde et mafia-lignende valg: $250 000 og en sjanse til å vinne, eller $12 000 og et forlik.

Musikkindustrien insisterer at dette er et spørsmål om lov og moral. La oss legge loven til side for et øyeblikk og tenke på moralen. Hvor er moralen i et søksmål som dette? Hva er dyden i å skape offerlam. RIAA er en spesielt mektig lobby. Presidenten i RIAA tjener i følge rapporter mer enn $1 million i året. Artister, på den andre siden, får ikke godt betalt. Den gjennomsnittelige innspillingsartist tjener $45 900.^[49] Det er utallige måter som RIAA kan bruke for å påvirke og styre politikken. Så hva er det moralske i å ta penger fra en student for å drive en søkemotor?^[50]

23. juni overførte Jesse alle sine oppsparte midler til advokaten som jobbet for RIAA. Saken mot ham ble trukket. Og med dette, ble unggutten som hadde fiklet med en datamaskin og blitt saksøkt for 15 millioner dollar en aktivist:

Foreldrene til Jesse avslører en viss stolthet over deres motvillige aktivist. Som hans far fortalte meg, Jesse «anser seg selv for å være konservativ, og det samme gjør jeg. … Han er ingen treklemmer. … Jeg synes det er sært at de ville lage bråk med ham. Men han ønsker å la folk vite at de sender feil budskap. Og han ønsker å korrigere rullebladet.»

Hvis «piratvirksomhet» betyr å bruke den kreative eiendommen til andre uten deres tillatelse—hvis «hvis verdi, så rettighet» er sant—da er historien om innholdsindustrien en historie om piratvirksomhet. Hver eneste viktige sektor av «store medier» i dag—film, plater, radio og kabel-TV—kom fra en slags piratvirksomhet etter den definisjonen. Den konsekvente fortellingen er at forrige generasjon pirater blir del av denne generasjonens borgerskap—inntil nå.

There is piracy of copyrighted material. Lots of it. This piracy comes in many forms. The most significant is commercial piracy, the unauthorized taking of other people's content within a commercial context. Despite the many justifications that are offered in its defense, this taking is wrong. No one should condone it, and the law should stop it.

But as well as copy-shop piracy, there is another kind of «taking» that is more directly related to the Internet. That taking, too, seems wrong to many, and it is wrong much of the time. Before we paint this taking «piracy,» however, we should understand its nature a bit more. For the harm of this taking is significantly more ambiguous than outright copying, and the law should account for that ambiguity, as it has so often done in the past.

William Shakespeare skrev Romeo og Julie i 1595. Skuespillet ble først utgitt i 1597. Det var det ellevte store skuespillet Shakespeare hadde skrevet. Han fortsatte å skrive skuespill helt til 1613, og stykkene han skrevhar fortsatt å definere angloamerikansk kultur siden. Så dypt har verkene av en 1500-talls forfatter sunket inn i vår kultur at vi ofte ikke engang kjenner kilden. Jeg overhørte en gang noen som kommentere Kenneth Branaghs utgave av Henry V: «Jeg likte det, men Shakespeare er så full av klisjeer.»

I 1774, nesten 180 år etter at Romeo og Julie ble skrevet, mente mange at «opphavsretten» kun tilhørte én eneste utgiver i London, John Tonson. ^[98] Tonson var den mest fremstående av en liten gruppe utgivere kalt «the Conger»^[99], som kontrollerte boksalget i England gjennom hele 1700-tallet. The Conger hevdet at de hadde en evigvarende rett over «kopier» av bøker de hadde fått av forfatterne. Denne evigvarende retten innebar at ingen andre kunne publisere kopier av disse bøkene. Slik ble prisen på klassiske bøker holdt oppe; alle konkurrenter som lagde bedre eller billigere utgaver, ble fjernet.

Men altså, det er noe spennende med året 1774 for alle som vet litt om opphavsretts-lovgivning. Det mest kjente året for opphavsrett er 1710, da det britiske parlamentet vedtok den første loven. Denne loven er kjent som «Statute of Anne» og sa at alle publiserte verk skulle være beskyttet i fjorten år, en periode som kunne fornyes én gang dersom forfatteren ennå levde, og at alle verk publisert i eller før 1710 skulle ha en ekstraperiode på 22 tillegsår.^[100] På grunn av denne loven, så skulle Rome og Julie ha falt i det fri i 1731. Hvordan kunne da Tonson fortsatt ha kontroll over verket i 1774?

Årsaken var ganske enkelt at engelskmennene ennå ikke hadde bestemt hva opphavsrett innebar -- faktisk hadde ingen i verden det. På den tiden da engelskmennene vedtok «Statute of Anne», var det ingen annen lovgivning om opphavsrett. Den siste loven som regulerte utgivere var lisensieringsloven av 1662, utløpt i 1695. At loven ga utgiverne monopol over publiseringen, noe som gjorde det enklere for kronen å kontrollere hva ble publisert. Men etter at det har utløpt, var det ingen positiv lov som sa at utgiverne hadde en eksklusiv rett til å trykke bøker.

At det ikke fantes noen positiv lov, betydde ikke at det ikke fantes noen lov. Den anglo-amerikanske juridiske tradisjon ser både til lover skapt av politikere (det lovgivende statsorgen)og til lover (prejudikater) skapt av domstolene for å bestemme hvordan folket skal leve. Vi kaller politikernes lover for positiv lov og vi kaller lovene fra dommerne sedvanerett.«Common law» angir bakgrunnen for de lovgivendes lovgivning; retten til lovgiving, vanligvis kan trumfe at bakgrunnen bare hvis det går gjennom en lov til å forskyve den. Og så var det virkelige spørsmålet etter lisensiering lover hadde utløpt om felles lov beskyttet opphavsretten, uavhengig av lovverket positiv.

Dette spørsmålet var viktig for utgiverne eller «bokselgere», som de ble kalt, fordi det var økende konkurranse fra utenlandske utgivere, Særlig fra Skottland hvor publiseringen og eksporten av bøker til England hadde økt veldig. Denne konkurransen reduserte fortjenesten til «The Conger», som derfor krevde at parlamentet igjen skulle vedta en lov for å gi dem eksklusiv kontroll over publisering. Dette kravet resulterte i «Statute of Anne».

«Statute of Anne» ga forfatteren eller «eieren» av en bok en eksklusiv rett til å publisere denne boken. Men det var, til bokhandernes forferdelse en viktig begrensning, nemlig hvor lenge denne retten skulle vare. Etter dette gikk trykkeretten bort og verket falt i det fri og kunne trykkes av hvem som helst. Det var ihvertfall det lovgiverne hadde tenkt.

Men nå det mest interessante med dette: Hvorfor ville parlamentet begrense trykkeretten? Sprøsmålet er ikke hvorfor de bestemte seg for denne perioden, men hvorfor ville de begrense retten i det hele tatt?

Bokhandlerne, og forfatterne som de representerte, hadde et veldig sterkt krav. Ta romeo og Julie som et eksempel: Skuespillet ble skrevet av Shakespeare. Det var hans kreativitet som brakte det til verden. Han krenket ikke noens rett da han skrev dette verket (det er en kontroversiell påstanden, men det er urelevant), og med sin egen rett skapte han verket, han gjorde det ikke noe vanskeligere for andre til å lage skuespill. Så hvorfor skulle loven tillate at noen annen kunne komme og ta Shakespeares verkuten hans, eller hans arvingers, tillatelse? Hvilke grunner finnes for å tillate at noen «stjeler» Shakespeares verk?

Svaret er todel. Først må vi se på noe spesielt med oppfatningen av opphavsrett som fantes på tidspunktet da «Statute of Anne» ble vedtatt. Deretter må vi se på noe spesielt med bokhandlerne.

Først om opphavsretten. I de siste tre hundre år har vi kommet til å bruke begrepet «copyright» i stadig videre forstand. Men i 1710 var det ikke så mye et konsept som det var en bestemt rett. Opphavsretten ble født som et svært spesifikt sett med begrensninger: den forbød andre å reprodusere en bok. I 1710 var «kopi-rett» en rett til å bruke en bestemt maskin til å replikere en bestemt arbeid. Den gikk ikke utover dette svært smale formålet. Den kontrollerte ikke mer generelt hvordan et verk kunne brukes. Idag inkluderer retten en stor samling av restriksjoner på andres frihet: den gir forfatteren eksklusiv rett til å kopiere, eksklusiv rett til å distribuere, eksklusiv rett til å fremføre, og så videre.

Så selv om f. eks. opphavsretten til Shakespeares verker var evigvarende, betydde det under den opprinnelige betydningen av begrepet at ingen kunne trykke Shakespeares arbeid uten tillatelse fra Shakespeares arvinger. Den ville ikke ha kontrollert noe mer, for eksempel om hvordan verket kunne fremføres, om verket kunne oversettes eller om Kenneth Branagh ville hatt lov til å lage filmer. «Kopi-retten» var bare en eksklusiv rett til å trykke--ikke noe mindre, selvfølgelig, men heller ikke mer.

Selv dnne begrensede retten ble møtt med skepsis av britene. De hadde hatt en lang og stygg erfaring med «eksklusive rettigheter», spesielt «enerett» gitt av kronen. Engelskmennene hadde utkjempet en borgerkrig delvis mot kronens praksis med å dele ut monopoler--spesielt monopoler for verk som allerede eksisterte. Kong Henrik VIII hadde gitt patent til å trykke Bibelen og monopol til Darcy for å lage spillkort. Det engelske parlamentet begynte å kjempe tilbake mot denne makten hos kronen. I 1656 ble «Statute of Monopolis» vedtatt for å begrense monopolene på patenter for nye oppfinnelser. Og i 1710 var parlamentet ivrig etter å håndtere det voksende monopolet på publisering.

Dermed ble «kopi-retten», når den sees på som en monopolrett, en rettighet som bør være begrenset. (Uansett hvor overbevisende påstanden om at «det er min eiendom, og jeg skal ha for alltid,» prøv hvor overbevisende det er når men sier «det er mitt monopol, og jeg skal ha det for alltid.») Staten ville beskytte eneretten, men bare så lenge det gavnet samfunnet. Britene så skadene særinteresserte kunne skape; de vedtok en lov for å stoppe dem.

Dernest, om bokhandlerne. Det var ikke bare at kopiretten var et monopol. Det var også et monopol holdt av bokhandlerne. En bokhandler høres greie og ufarlige ut for oss, men slik var det ikke i syttenhundretallets England. Medlemmene i «the Conger» ble av en voksende mengde sett på som monopolister av verste sort - et verktøy for kronens undertrykkelse, de solgte Englands frihet mot å være garantert en monopolskinntekt. Men monopolistene ble kvast kritisert: Milton beskrev dem som «gamle patentholdere og monopolister i bokhandlerkunsten»; de var «menn som derfor ikke hadde et ærlig arbeide hvor utdanning er nødvendig.»^[101]

Mange trodde at den makten bokhandlerne utøvde over spredning av kunnskap, var til skade for selve spredningen, men på dette tidspunktet viste Opplysningen viktigheten av utdannelse og kunnskap for alle. idéen om at kunnskap burde være gratis er et kjennetegn for tiden, og disse kraftige kommersielle interesser forstyrret denne idéen.

For å balansere denne makten, besluttet Parlamentet å øke konkurransen blant bokhandlerne, og den enkleste måten å gjøre det på, var å spre mengden av verdifulle bøker. Parlamentet begrenset derfor begrepet om opphavsrett, og garantert slik at verdifulle bøker ville bli frie for alle utgiver å publisere etter en begrenset periode. Slik ble det å gi eksisterende verk en periode på tjueen år et kompromiss for å bekjempe bokhandlernes makt. Begrensninger med dato var en indirekte måte å skape konkurranse mellom utgivere, og slik en skapelse og spredning av kultur.

Når 1731 (1710+21) kom, ble bokhandlerne engstelige. De så konsekvensene av mer konkurranse, og som alle konkurrenter, likte de det ikke. Først ignorerte bokhandlere ganske enkelt «Statute of Anne», og fortsatte å kreve en evigvarende rett til å kontrollere publiseringen. Men i 1735 og 1737 de prøvde å tvinge Parlamentet til å utvide periodene. Tjueen år var ikke nok, sa de; de trengte mer tid.

Parlamentet avslo kravene, Som en pamflett sa, i en vending som levere ennå idag,

Etter å ha mislyktes i Parlamentet gikk utgiverne til rettssalen i en rekke saker. Deres argument var enkelt og direkte: «Statute of Anne» ga forfatterne en viss beskyttelse gjennom positiv loven, men denne beskyttelsenvar ikke ment som en erstatning for felles lov. Istedet var de ment å supplere felles lov. Ifølge sedvanerett var det galt å ta en annen persons kreative eiendom og bruke den uten hans tillatelse. «Statute of Anne», hevdet bokhandlere, endret ikke dette faktum. Derfor betydde ikke det at beskyttelsen gitt av «Statute of Anne» utløp, at beskyttelsen fra sedvaneretten utløp: Ifølge sedvaneretten hadde de rett til å fordømme publiseringen av en bok, selv følgelig om «Statute of Anne» sa at de var falt i det fri. Dette, mente de, var den eneste måten å beskytte forfatterne.

Dette var et godt argument, og hadde støtte fra flere av den tidens ledende jurister. Det viste også en ekstraordinær chutzpah. Inntail da, som jusprofessor Raymond Pattetson har sagt, «var utgiverne … like bekymret for forfatterne som en gjeter for sine lam.»^[103] Bokselgerne brydde seg ikke det spor om forfatternes rettigheter. Deres bekymring var den monopolske inntekten forfatterens verk ga.

Men bokhandlernes argument ble ikke godtatt uten kamp. Helten fra denne kampen var den skotske bokselgeren Alexander Donaldson.^[104]

Donaldson var en fremmed for Londons «the Conger». Han startet in karriere i Edinburgh i 1750. Hans forretningsidé var billige kopier av standardverk falt i det fri, ihvertfall fri ifølge «Statute of Anne».^[105] Donaldsons forlag vokste og ble «et sentrum for litterære skotter.» «Blant dem,» skriver professor Mark Rose, var «den unge James Boswell som, sammen med sin venn Andrew Erskine, publiserte en hel antologi av skotsk samtidspoesi sammen med Donaldson.»^[106]

Da Londons bokselgere prøvde å få stengt Donaldsons butikk i Skottland, så flyttet han butikken til London. Her solgte han billige utgaver av «de mest populære, engelske bøker, i kamp mot sedvanerettens rett til litterær eiendom.» ^[107] Bøkene hans var mellom 30% og 50% billigere enn «the Conger»s, og han baserte sin rett til denne konkurransen på at bøkene, takket være «Statute of Anne», var falt i det fri.

Londons bokselgere begynte straks å slå ned mot «pirater» som Donaldson. Flere tiltak var vellykkede, den viktigste var den tidlig seieren i kampen mellom Millar og Taylor.

Millar var en bokhandler som i 1729 hadde kjøpt opp rettighetene til James Thomsons dikt «The Seasons». Millar hadde da full beskyttelse gjennom «Statute of Anne», men etter at denne beskyttelsen var uløpt, begynte Robert Taylor å trykke et konkurrerende bind. Millar gikk til sak, og hevdet han hadde en evig rett gjennom sedvaneretten, uansett hva «Statute of Anne» sa.^[108]

Til moderne juristers forbløffelse, var en av, ikke bare datidens, men en av de største dommere i engelsk historie, Lord Mansfield, enig med bokhandlerne. Uansett hvilken beskyttelse «Statute of Anne» gav bokhandlerne, så sa han at den ikke fortrengte noe fra sedvaneretten. Spørsmålet var hvorvidt sedvaneretten beskyttet forfatterne mot «pirater». Mansfield svar var ja: Sedvaneretten nektet Taylor å reprodusere Thomsons dikt uten Millars tillatelse. Slik gav sedvaneretten bokselgerne en evig publiseringsrett til bøker solgt til dem.

Ser man på det som et spørsmål innen abstrakt jus - dersom man resonnere som om rettferdighet bare var logisk deduksjon fra de første bud - kunne Mansfields konklusjon gitt mening. Men den overså det Parlamentet hadde kjempet for i 1710: Hvordan man på best mulig vis kunne innskrenke utgivernes monopolmakt. Parlamentets strategi hadde vært å kjøpe fred gjennom å tilby en beskyttelsesperiode også for eksisterende verk, men perioden måtte være så kort at kulturen ble utsatt for konkurranse innen rimelig tid. Storbritannia skulle vokse fra den kontrollerte kulturen under kronen, inn i en fri og åpen kultur.

Kampen for å forsvare «Statute of Anne»s begrensninger sluttet uansett ikke der, for nå kommer Donaldson.

Millar døde kort tid etter sin seier. Boet hans solgte rettighetene over Thomsons dikt til et syndikat av utgivere, deriblant Thomas Beckett.^[109] Da ga Donaldson ut en uautorisert utgave av Thomsons verk. Etter avgjørelsen i Millar-saken, gikk Beckett til sak mot Donaldson. Donaldson tok saken inn for Overhuset, som da fungerte som en slags høyesterett. I februar 1774 hadde dette organet muligheten til å tolke Parlamentets mening med utøpsdatoen fra seksti år før.

Rettssaken Donaldson mot Beckett fikk en enorm oppmerksomhet i hele Storbritannia. Donaldsons advokater mente at selv om det før fantes en del rettigheter i sedvaneretten, så var disse fortrengt av «Statute of Anne». Etter at «Statute of Anne» var blitt vedtatt, skulle den eneste lovlige beskyttelse for trykkerett kom derfra. Og derfor, mente de, i tråd med vilkårene i «Statute of Anne», falle i det fri så fort beskyttelsesperioden var over.

Overhuset var en merkelig institusjon. Juridiske spørsmål ble presentert for huset, og ble først stemt over av «juslorder», medlemmer av enspesiell rettslig gruppe som fungerte nesten slik som justiariusene i vår Høyesterett. Deretter, etter at «juslordene» hadde stemt, stemte resten av Overhuset.

Rapportene om juslordene stemmer er uenige. På enkelte punkter ser det ut som om evigvarende beskyttelse fikk flertall. Men det er ingen tvil om hvordan resten av Overhuset stemte. Med en majoritet på to mot en (22 mot 11) stemte de ned forslaget om en evig beskyttelse. Uansett hvordan man hadde tolket sedvaneretten, var nå kopiretten begrenset til en periode, og etter denne ville verket falle i det fri.

«Å falle i det fri». Før rettssaken Donaldson mot Beckett var det ingen klar oppfatning om hva å falle i det fri innebar. Før 1774 var det jo en allmenn oppfatning om at kopiretten var evigvarende. Men etter 1774 ble Public Domain født.For første gang i angloamerikansk historie var den lovlige beskyttelsen av et verk utgått, og de største verk i engelsk historie - inkludert Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Johnson og Bunyan - var frie.

Vi kan knapt forestille oss det, men denne avgjørelsen fra Overhuset fyrte opp under en svært populær og politisk reaksjon. I Skottland, hvor de fleste piratugiverne hadde holdt til, ble avgjørelsen feiret i gatene. Som Edinburgh Advertiser skrev «Ingen privatsak har noen gang fått slik oppmerksomhet fra folket, og ingen sak som har blitt prøvet i Overhuset har interessert så mange enkeltmennesker.» «Stor glede i Edinburgh etter seieren over litterær eiendom: bål og *illuminations*.»^[110]

I London, ihvertfall blant utgiverne, var reaksjonen like sterk, men i motsatt retning. Morning Chronicle skrev:

«Ruinert» er en overdrivelse. Men det er ingen overdrivelse å si at endringen var stor. Vedtaket fra Overhuset betydde at bokhandlerne ikke lenger kunnen kontrollere hvordan kulturen i England ville vokse og utvikle seg. Kulturen i England var etter dette fri. Ikke i den betydning at kopiretten ble ignorert, for utgiverne hadde i en begrenset periode rett over trykkingen. Og heller ikke i den betydningen at bøker kunne stjeles, for selv etter at boken var falt i det fri, så måtte den kjøpes. Men fri i betydningen at kulturen og dens vekst ikke lenger var kontrollert av en liten gruppe utgivere. Som alle frie markeder, ville dette markedet vokse og utvikle seg etter tilbud og etterspørsel. Den engelske kulturen ble nå formet slik flertallet Englands lesere ville at det skulle formes - gjennom valget av hva de kjøpte og skrev, gjennom valget av *memes* de gjentok og beundret. Valg i en konkurrerende sammenheng, ikke der hvor valgene var om hvilken kultur som skulle være tilgjengelig for folket og hvor deres tilgang til den ble styrt av noen få, på tros av flertallets ønsker.

Til sist, dette var en verden hvor Parlamentet var antimonopolistisk, og holdt stand mot utgivernes krav. I en verden hvor parlamentet er lett å påvirke, vil den frie kultur være mindre beskyttet.

Jon Else er en filmskaper. Han er mest kjent for sine dokumentarer og har på ypperlig vis klart å spre sin kunst. Han er også en lærer, som meg selv, og jeg misunner den lojaliteten og beundringen hans studenter har for ham. (Ved et uhell møtte jeg to av hans studenter i et middagsselskap og han var deres Gud.)

Else arbeidet med en dokumentarfilm hvor også jeg var involvert. I en pause så fortalte han meg om hvordan det kunne være å skape film i dagens Amerika.

I 1990 arbeidet Else med en dokumentar om Wagners Ring Cycle. Fokuset var på *stagehands* på San Francisco Opera. Stagehands er spesielt morsomt og fargerikt innslag i en opera. I løpet av forestillingen oppholder de seg blant publikum og på lysloftet. De er en perfekt kontrast til kunsten på scenen.

Under en forestilling, filmet Else noen stagehands som spilte *checkers*. I et hjørne av rommet stod det et fjernsynsapparat. På fjernsynet, mens forestillingen pågikk og operakompaniet spilte Wagner, gikk The Simpsons. Slik Else så det, så hjalp dette tegnefilm-innslaget med å fange det spesielle med scenen.

Så noen år senere, da han endelig hadde fått ordnet den siste finansieringen, ville Else skaffe rettigheter til å bruke disse få sekundene med The Simpson. For disse få sekundene var selvsagt beskyttet av opphavsretten, og for å bruke beskyttet materiale må man ha tillatelse fra eieren, dersom det ikke er «rimelig bruk» eller det foreligger spesielle avtaler.

Else kontaktet Simpson-skaper Matt Groenings kontor for å få tillatelse. Og Groening gav ham det. Det var tross alt kun snakk om fire og et halvt sekund på et lite fjernsyn, bakerst i et hjørne av rommet. Hvordan kunne det skade? Groening var glad for å få ha det med i filmen, men han ba Else om å kontakte Gracie Films, firmaet som produserer programmet.

Gracie Films sa også at det var greit, men de, slik som Groening, ønsket å være forsiktige, og ba Else om å kontakte Fox, konsernet som eide Gracie. Og Else kontaktet Fox og forklarte situasjonen; at det var snakk om et klipp i hjørnet i bakgrunnen i ett rom i filmen. Matt Groening hadde allerede gitt sin tillatelse, sa Else. Han ville bare få det avklart med Fox.

Deretter, fortalte Else: «skjedde to ting. Først oppdaget vi … at Matt Groening ikke eide sitt eget verk — ihvertfall at noen [hos Fox] trodde at han ikke eide sitt eget verk.» Som det andre krevde Fox «ti tusen dollar i lisensavgift for disse fire og et halvt sekundene med … fullstendig tilfeldig Simpson som var i et hjørne i ett opptak.»

Ellers var sikker på at det var en feil. Han fikk tak i noen som han trodde var nestleder for lisensiering, Rebecca Herrera. Han forklarte for henne at «det må være en feil her … Vi ber deg om en utdanningssats på dette.» Og de hadde fått utdanningssats, fortalte Herrera. Kort tid etter ringte Else igjen for å få dette bekreftet.

«Jeg måtte være sikker på at jeg hadde riktige opplysninger foran meg», sa han. «Ja, du har riktige opplysninger», sa hun. Det ville koste $10 000 å bruke dette lille klippet av The Simpson, plassert bakerst i et hjørne i en scene i en dokumentar om Wagners Ring Cycle. Som om det ikke var nok, forbløffet Herrera Else med å si «Og om du siterer meg, vil du høre fra våre advokater.» En av Herreras assistenter fortalte Else at «De bryr seg ikke i det heletatt. Alt de vil ha er pengene.»

Men Else hadde ikke penger til å kjøpe lisens for klippet. Så å gjenskape denne delen av virkeligheten, lå langt utenfor hans budsjett. Like før dokumentaren skulle slippes, redigerte Else inn et annet klipp på fjernsynet, et klipp fra en av hans andre filmer The Day After Trinity fra ti år tidligere.

Det er ingen tvil om at noen, enten det er er Matt Groening eller Fox, eier rettighetene til The Simpsons. Rettighetene er deres eiendom. For å bruke beskyttet mteriale, kreves det ofte at men får tillatelse fra eieren eller eierne. Dersom Else ønsket å bruke The Simpsons til noe hvor loven gir verket beskyttelse, så må han innhente tillatelse fra eieren før han kan bruke det. Og i et fritt markes er det eieren som bestemmer hvor mye han/hun vil ta for hvilken som helst bruk (hvor loven krever tillatelse fra eier).

For eksempel «offentlig fremvisning»* av The Simpson er en form for bruk hvor loven gir eieren kontroll. Dersom du velger ut dine favorittepisoder, leier en kinosal og selger billetter til «Mine Simpson-favoritter», så må du ha tillatelse fra rettighetsinnhaveren (eieren). Og eieren kan (med rette, slik jeg ser det) kreve hvor mye han vil; $10ellr $1 000 000. Det er hans rett ifølge loven.

Men når jurister hører denne historien om Jon Else og Fox, så er deres første tanke «rimelig bruk».^[112] Elses bruk av 4,5 sekunder med et indirekte klipp av en Simpsons-episode er et klart eksempel på «rimelig bruk» av The Simpsons— og «rimelig bruk» krever ingen tillatelse fra noen.

Så jeg spurte Else om hvorfor han ikke bare stolte på «fair use». Og her er hans svar:

I teorien betyr «fair use» at du ikke trenger tillatelse. Teorien støtter derfor den frie kultur og arbeider mot tillatelseskulturen. Men i praksis fungerer «fair use» helt annerledes. Men de uklare linjene i lovverket, samt de fryktelige konsekvensene dersom man tar feil, gjør at mange kunstnere ikke stoler på «fair use». Loven har en svært god hensikt, men praksisen har ikke fulgt opp.

Dette eksempelet viser hvor langt denne loven har kommet fra sine syttenhundretalls røtter. Loven som skulle beskytte utgiverne mot urettferdig piratkonkurranse, hadde utviklet seg til et sverd som slo ned på _all_ bruk, transformativ* eller ikke.

In 1993, Alex Alben was a lawyer working at Starwave, Inc. Starwave was an innovative company founded by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen to develop digital entertainment. Long before the Internet became popular, Starwave began investing in new technology for delivering entertainment in anticipation of the power of networks.

Alben had a special interest in new technology. He was intrigued by the emerging market for CD-ROM technology—not to distribute film, but to do things with film that otherwise would be very difficult. In 1993, he launched an initiative to develop a product to build retrospectives on the work of particular actors. The first actor chosen was Clint Eastwood. The idea was to showcase all of the work of Eastwood, with clips from his films and interviews with figures important to his career.

At that time, Eastwood had made more than fifty films, as an actor and as a director. Alben began with a series of interviews with Eastwood, asking him about his career. Because Starwave produced those interviews, it was free to include them on the CD.

That alone would not have made a very interesting product, so Starwave wanted to add content from the movies in Eastwood's career: posters, scripts, and other material relating to the films Eastwood made. Most of his career was spent at Warner Brothers, and so it was relatively easy to get permission for that content.

Then Alben and his team decided to include actual film clips. «Our goal was that we were going to have a clip from every one of Eastwood's films,» Alben told me. It was here that the problem arose. «No one had ever really done this before,» Alben explained. «No one had ever tried to do this in the context of an artistic look at an actor's career.»

Alben brought the idea to Michael Slade, the CEO of Starwave. Slade asked, «Well, what will it take?»

Alben replied, «Well, we're going to have to clear rights from everyone who appears in these films, and the music and everything else that we want to use in these film clips.» Slade said, «Great! Go for it.»^[113]

The problem was that neither Alben nor Slade had any idea what clearing those rights would mean. Every actor in each of the films could have a claim to royalties for the reuse of that film. But CD- ROMs had not been specified in the contracts for the actors, so there was no clear way to know just what Starwave was to do.

I asked Alben how he dealt with the problem. With an obvious pride in his resourcefulness that obscured the obvious bizarreness of his tale, Alben recounted just what they did:

Some actors were glad to help—Donald Sutherland, for example, followed up himself to be sure that the rights had been cleared. Others were dumbfounded at their good fortune. Alben would ask, «Hey, can I pay you $600 or maybe if you were in two films, you know, $1,200?» And they would say, «Are you for real? Hey, I'd love to get $1,200.» And some of course were a bit difficult (estranged ex-wives, in particular). But eventually, Alben and his team had cleared the rights to this retrospective CD-ROM on Clint Eastwood's career.

It was one year later—«and even then we weren't sure whether we were totally in the clear.»

Alben is proud of his work. The project was the first of its kind and the only time he knew of that a team had undertaken such a massive project for the purpose of releasing a retrospective.

And no doubt, the product itself was exceptionally good. Eastwood loved it, and it sold very well.

But I pressed Alben about how weird it seems that it would have to take a year's work simply to clear rights. No doubt Alben had done this efficiently, but as Peter Drucker has famously quipped, «There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.»^[114] Did it make sense, I asked Alben, that this is the way a new work has to be made?

For, as he acknowledged, «very few … have the time and resources, and the will to do this,» and thus, very few such works would ever be made. Does it make sense, I asked him, from the standpoint of what anybody really thought they were ever giving rights for originally, that you would have to go clear rights for these kinds of clips?

Or at least, is this how the artist should be compensated? Would it make sense, I asked, for there to be some kind of statutory license that someone could pay and be free to make derivative use of clips like this? Did it really make sense that a follow-on creator would have to track down every artist, actor, director, musician, and get explicit permission from each? Wouldn't a lot more be created if the legal part of the creative process could be made to be more clean?

Alben worked for a big company. His company was backed by some of the richest investors in the world. He therefore had authority and access that the average Web designer would not have. So if it took him a year, how long would it take someone else? And how much creativity is never made just because the costs of clearing the rights are so high?

These costs are the burdens of a kind of regulation. Put on a Republican hat for a moment, and get angry for a bit. The government defines the scope of these rights, and the scope defined determines how much it's going to cost to negotiate them. (Remember the idea that land runs to the heavens, and imagine the pilot purchasing flythrough rights as he negotiates to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco.) These rights might well have once made sense; but as circumstances change, they make no sense at all. Or at least, a well-trained, regulationminimizing Republican should look at the rights and ask, «Does this still make sense?»

I've seen the flash of recognition when people get this point, but only a few times. The first was at a conference of federal judges in California. The judges were gathered to discuss the emerging topic of cyber-law. I was asked to be on the panel. Harvey Saferstein, a well-respected lawyer from an L.A. firm, introduced the panel with a video that he and a friend, Robert Fairbank, had produced.

Videoen var en glimrende sammenstilling av filmer fra hver periode i det tjuende århundret, rammet inn rundt idéen om en episode i TV-serien 60 Minutes. Utførelsen var perfekt, ned til seksti minutter stoppeklokken. Dommerne elsket enhver minutt av den.

Da lysene kom på, kikket jeg over til min medpaneldeltager, David Nimmer, kanskje den ledende opphavsrettakademiker og utøver i nasjonen. Han hadde en forbauset uttrykk i ansiktet sitt, mens han tittet ut over rommet med over 250 godt underholdte dommere. Med en en illevarslende tone, begynte han sin tale med et spørsmål: «Vet dere hvor mange føderale lover som nettopp brutt i dette rommet?»

For of course, the two brilliantly talented creators who made this film hadn't done what Alben did. They hadn't spent a year clearing the rights to these clips; technically, what they had done violated the law. Of course, it wasn't as if they or anyone were going to be prosecuted for this violation (the presence of 250 judges and a gaggle of federal marshals notwithstanding). But Nimmer was making an important point: A year before anyone would have heard of the word Napster, and two years before another member of our panel, David Boies, would defend Napster before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Nimmer was trying to get the judges to see that the law would not be friendly to the capacities that this technology would enable. Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you couldn't easily do them legally.

We live in a «cut and paste» culture enabled by technology. Anyone building a presentation knows the extraordinary freedom that the cut and paste architecture of the Internet created—in a second you can find just about any image you want; in another second, you can have it planted in your presentation.

But presentations are just a tiny beginning. Using the Internet and its archives, musicians are able to string together mixes of sound never before imagined; filmmakers are able to build movies out of clips on computers around the world. An extraordinary site in Sweden takes images of politicians and blends them with music to create biting political commentary. A site called Camp Chaos has produced some of the most biting criticism of the record industry that there is through the mixing of Flash! and music.

All of these creations are technically illegal. Even if the creators wanted to be «legal,» the cost of complying with the law is impossibly high. Therefore, for the law-abiding sorts, a wealth of creativity is never made. And for that part that is made, if it doesn't follow the clearance rules, it doesn't get released.

To some, these stories suggest a solution: Let's alter the mix of rights so that people are free to build upon our culture. Free to add or mix as they see fit. We could even make this change without necessarily requiring that the «free» use be free as in «free beer.» Instead, the system could simply make it easy for follow-on creators to compensate artists without requiring an army of lawyers to come along: a rule, for example, that says «the royalty owed the copyright owner of an unregistered work for the derivative reuse of his work will be a flat 1 percent of net revenues, to be held in escrow for the copyright owner.» Under this rule, the copyright owner could benefit from some royalty, but he would not have the benefit of a full property right (meaning the right to name his own price) unless he registers the work.

Who could possibly object to this? And what reason would there be for objecting? We're talking about work that is not now being made; which if made, under this plan, would produce new income for artists. What reason would anyone have to oppose it?

In February 2003, DreamWorks studios announced an agreement with Mike Myers, the comic genius of Saturday Night Live and Austin Powers. According to the announcement, Myers and Dream-Works would work together to form a «unique filmmaking pact.» Under the agreement, DreamWorks «will acquire the rights to existing motion picture hits and classics, write new storylines and—with the use of stateof-the-art digital technology—insert Myers and other actors into the film, thereby creating an entirely new piece of entertainment.»

The announcement called this «film sampling.» As Myers explained, «Film Sampling is an exciting way to put an original spin on existing films and allow audiences to see old movies in a new light. Rap artists have been doing this for years with music and now we are able to take that same concept and apply it to film.» Steven Spielberg is quoted as saying, «If anyone can create a way to bring old films to new audiences, it is Mike.»

Spielberg is right. Film sampling by Myers will be brilliant. But if you don't think about it, you might miss the truly astonishing point about this announcement. As the vast majority of our film heritage remains under copyright, the real meaning of the DreamWorks announcement is just this: It is Mike Myers and only Mike Myers who is free to sample. Any general freedom to build upon the film archive of our culture, a freedom in other contexts presumed for us all, is now a privilege reserved for the funny and famous—and presumably rich.

This privilege becomes reserved for two sorts of reasons. The first continues the story of the last chapter: the vagueness of «fair use.» Much of «sampling» should be considered «fair use.» But few would rely upon so weak a doctrine to create. That leads to the second reason that the privilege is reserved for the few: The costs of negotiating the legal rights for the creative reuse of content are astronomically high. These costs mirror the costs with fair use: You either pay a lawyer to defend your fair use rights or pay a lawyer to track down permissions so you don't have to rely upon fair use rights. Either way, the creative process is a process of paying lawyers—again a privilege, or perhaps a curse, reserved for the few.

In April 1996, millions of «bots»—computer codes designed to «spider,» or automatically search the Internet and copy content—began running across the Net. Page by page, these bots copied Internet-based information onto a small set of computers located in a basement in San Francisco's Presidio. Once the bots finished the whole of the Internet, they started again. Over and over again, once every two months, these bits of code took copies of the Internet and stored them.

By October 2001, the bots had collected more than five years of copies. And at a small announcement in Berkeley, California, the archive that these copies created, the Internet Archive, was opened to the world. Using a technology called «the Way Back Machine,» you could enter a Web page, and see all of its copies going back to 1996, as well as when those pages changed.

This is the thing about the Internet that Orwell would have appreciated. In the dystopia described in 1984, old newspapers were constantly updated to assure that the current view of the world, approved of by the government, was not contradicted by previous news reports.

Thousands of workers constantly reedited the past, meaning there was no way ever to know whether the story you were reading today was the story that was printed on the date published on the paper.

It's the same with the Internet. If you go to a Web page today, there's no way for you to know whether the content you are reading is the same as the content you read before. The page may seem the same, but the content could easily be different. The Internet is Orwell's library—constantly updated, without any reliable memory.

Until the Way Back Machine, at least. With the Way Back Machine, and the Internet Archive underlying it, you can see what the Internet was. You have the power to see what you remember. More importantly, perhaps, you also have the power to find what you don't remember and what others might prefer you forget.^[115]

We take it for granted that we can go back to see what we remember reading. Think about newspapers. If you wanted to study the reaction of your hometown newspaper to the race riots in Watts in 1965, or to Bull Connor's water cannon in 1963, you could go to your public library and look at the newspapers. Those papers probably exist on microfiche. If you're lucky, they exist in paper, too. Either way, you are free, using a library, to go back and remember—not just what it is convenient to remember, but remember something close to the truth.

It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it. That's not quite correct. We all forget history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us honest. Libraries help do that, by collecting content and keeping it, for schoolchildren, for researchers, for grandma. A free society presumes this knowedge.

The Internet was an exception to this presumption. Until the Internet Archive, there was no way to go back. The Internet was the quintessentially transitory medium. And yet, as it becomes more important in forming and reforming society, it becomes more and more important to maintain in some historical form. It's just bizarre to think that we have scads of archives of newspapers from tiny towns around the world, yet there is but one copy of the Internet—the one kept by the Internet Archive.

Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive. He was a very successful Internet entrepreneur after he was a successful computer researcher. In the 1990s, Kahle decided he had had enough business success. It was time to become a different kind of success. So he launched a series of projects designed to archive human knowledge. The Internet Archive was just the first of the projects of this Andrew Carnegie of the Internet. By December of 2002, the archive had over 10 billion pages, and it was growing at about a billion pages a month.

The Way Back Machine is the largest archive of human knowledge in human history. At the end of 2002, it held «two hundred and thirty terabytes of material»—and was «ten times larger than the Library of Congress.» And this was just the first of the archives that Kahle set out to build. In addition to the Internet Archive, Kahle has been constructing the Television Archive. Television, it turns out, is even more ephemeral than the Internet. While much of twentieth-century culture was constructed through television, only a tiny proportion of that culture is available for anyone to see today. Three hours of news are recorded each evening by Vanderbilt University—thanks to a specific exemption in the copyright law. That content is indexed, and is available to scholars for a very low fee. «But other than that, [television] is almost unavailable,» Kahle told me. «If you were Barbara Walters you could get access to [the archives], but if you are just a graduate student?» As Kahle put it,

Why is that? Why is it that the part of our culture that is recorded in newspapers remains perpetually accessible, while the part that is recorded on videotape is not? How is it that we've created a world where researchers trying to understand the effect of media on nineteenthcentury America will have an easier time than researchers trying to understand the effect of media on twentieth-century America?

In part, this is because of the law. Early in American copyright law, copyright owners were required to deposit copies of their work in libraries. These copies were intended both to facilitate the spread of knowledge and to assure that a copy of the work would be around once the copyright expired, so that others might access and copy the work.

These rules applied to film as well. But in 1915, the Library of Congress made an exception for film. Film could be copyrighted so long as such deposits were made. But the filmmaker was then allowed to borrow back the deposits—for an unlimited time at no cost. In 1915 alone, there were more than 5,475 films deposited and «borrowed back.» Thus, when the copyrights to films expire, there is no copy held by any library. The copy exists—if it exists at all—in the library archive of the film company.^[116]

The same is generally true about television. Television broadcasts were originally not copyrighted—there was no way to capture the broadcasts, so there was no fear of «theft.» But as technology enabled capturing, broadcasters relied increasingly upon the law. The law required they make a copy of each broadcast for the work to be «copyrighted.» But those copies were simply kept by the broadcasters. No library had any right to them; the government didn't demand them. The content of this part of American culture is practically invisible to anyone who would look.

Kahle was eager to correct this. Before September 11, 2001, he and his allies had started capturing television. They selected twenty stations from around the world and hit the Record button. After September 11, Kahle, working with dozens of others, selected twenty stations from around the world and, beginning October 11, 2001, made their coverage during the week of September 11 available free on-line. Anyone could see how news reports from around the world covered the events of that day.

Kahle had the same idea with film. Working with Rick Prelinger, whose archive of film includes close to 45,000 «ephemeral films» (meaning films other than Hollywood movies, films that were never copyrighted), Kahle established the Movie Archive. Prelinger let Kahle digitize 1,300 films in this archive and post those films on the Internet to be downloaded for free. Prelinger's is a for-profit company. It sells copies of these films as stock footage. What he has discovered is that after he made a significant chunk available for free, his stock footage sales went up dramatically. People could easily find the material they wanted to use. Some downloaded that material and made films on their own. Others purchased copies to enable other films to be made. Either way, the archive enabled access to this important part of our culture. Want to see a copy of the «Duck and Cover» film that instructed children how to save themselves in the middle of nuclear attack? Go to archive.org, and you can download the film in a few minutes—for free.

Here again, Kahle is providing access to a part of our culture that we otherwise could not get easily, if at all. It is yet another part of what defines the twentieth century that we have lost to history. The law doesn't require these copies to be kept by anyone, or to be deposited in an archive by anyone. Therefore, there is no simple way to find them.

The key here is access, not price. Kahle wants to enable free access to this content, but he also wants to enable others to sell access to it. His aim is to ensure competition in access to this important part of our culture. Not during the commercial life of a bit of creative property, but during a second life that all creative property has—a noncommercial life.

For here is an idea that we should more clearly recognize. Every bit of creative property goes through different «lives.» In its first life, if the creator is lucky, the content is sold. In such cases the commercial market is successful for the creator. The vast majority of creative property doesn't enjoy such success, but some clearly does. For that content, commercial life is extremely important. Without this commercial market, there would be, many argue, much less creativity.

After the commercial life of creative property has ended, our tradition has always supported a second life as well. A newspaper delivers the news every day to the doorsteps of America. The very next day, it is used to wrap fish or to fill boxes with fragile gifts or to build an archive of knowledge about our history. In this second life, the content can continue to inform even if that information is no longer sold.

The same has always been true about books. A book goes out of print very quickly (the average today is after about a year^[117]). After it is out of print, it can be sold in used book stores without the copyright owner getting anything and stored in libraries, where many get to read the book, also for free. Used book stores and libraries are thus the second life of a book. That second life is extremely important to the spread and stability of culture.

Yet increasingly, any assumption about a stable second life for creative property does not hold true with the most important components of popular culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For these—television, movies, music, radio, the Internet—there is no guarantee of a second life. For these sorts of culture, it is as if we've replaced libraries with Barnes & Noble superstores. With this culture, what's accessible is nothing but what a certain limited market demands. Beyond that, culture disappears.

For most of the twentieth century, it was economics that made this so. It would have been insanely expensive to collect and make accessible all television and film and music: The cost of analog copies is extraordinarily high. So even though the law in principle would have restricted the ability of a Brewster Kahle to copy culture generally, the real restriction was economics. The market made it impossibly difficult to do anything about this ephemeral culture; the law had little practical effect.

Perhaps the single most important feature of the digital revolution is that for the first time since the Library of Alexandria, it is feasible to imagine constructing archives that hold all culture produced or distributed publicly. Technology makes it possible to imagine an archive of all books published, and increasingly makes it possible to imagine an archive of all moving images and sound.

The scale of this potential archive is something we've never imagined before. The Brewster Kahles of our history have dreamed about it; but we are for the first time at a point where that dream is possible. As Kahle describes,

Kahle is not the only librarian. The Internet Archive is not the only archive. But Kahle and the Internet Archive suggest what the future of libraries or archives could be. When the commercial life of creative property ends, I don't know. But it does. And whenever it does, Kahle and his archive hint at a world where this knowledge, and culture, remains perpetually available. Some will draw upon it to understand it; some to criticize it. Some will use it, as Walt Disney did, to re-create the past for the future. These technologies promise something that had become unimaginable for much of our past—a future for our past. The technology of digital arts could make the dream of the Library of Alexandria real again.

Technologists have thus removed the economic costs of building such an archive. But lawyers' costs remain. For as much as we might like to call these «archives,» as warm as the idea of a «library» might seem, the «content» that is collected in these digital spaces is also someone's «property.» And the law of property restricts the freedoms that Kahle and others would exercise.

Jack Valenti has been the president of the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966. He first came to Washington, D.C., with Lyndon Johnson's administration—literally. The famous picture of Johnson's swearing-in on Air Force One after the assassination of President Kennedy has Valenti in the background. In his almost forty years of running the MPAA, Valenti has established himself as perhaps the most prominent and effective lobbyist in Washington.

The MPAA is the American branch of the international Motion Picture Association. It was formed in 1922 as a trade association whose goal was to defend American movies against increasing domestic criticism. The organization now represents not only filmmakers but producers and distributors of entertainment for television, video, and cable. Its board is made up of the chairmen and presidents of the seven major producers and distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States: Walt Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers.

Valenti is only the third president of the MPAA. No president before him has had as much influence over that organization, or over Washington. As a Texan, Valenti has mastered the single most important political skill of a Southerner—the ability to appear simple and slow while hiding a lightning-fast intellect. To this day, Valenti plays the simple, humble man. But this Harvard MBA, and author of four books, who finished high school at the age of fifteen and flew more than fifty combat missions in World War II, is no Mr. Smith. When Valenti went to Washington, he mastered the city in a quintessentially Washingtonian way.

In defending artistic liberty and the freedom of speech that our culture depends upon, the MPAA has done important good. In crafting the MPAA rating system, it has probably avoided a great deal of speech-regulating harm. But there is an aspect to the organization's mission that is both the most radical and the most important. This is the organization's effort, epitomized in Valenti's every act, to redefine the meaning of «creative property.»

In 1982, Valenti's testimony to Congress captured the strategy perfectly:

The strategy of this rhetoric, like the strategy of most of Valenti's rhetoric, is brilliant and simple and brilliant because simple. The «central theme» to which «reasonable men and women» will return is this: «Creative property owners must be accorded the same rights and protections resident in all other property owners in the nation.» There are no second-class citizens, Valenti might have continued. There should be no second-class property owners.

This claim has an obvious and powerful intuitive pull. It is stated with such clarity as to make the idea as obvious as the notion that we use elections to pick presidents. But in fact, there is no more extreme a claim made by anyone who is serious in this debate than this claim of Valenti's. Jack Valenti, however sweet and however brilliant, is perhaps the nation's foremost extremist when it comes to the nature and scope of «creative property.» His views have no reasonable connection to our actual legal tradition, even if the subtle pull of his Texan charm has slowly redefined that tradition, at least in Washington.

While «creative property» is certainly «property» in a nerdy and precise sense that lawyers are trained to understand,^[119] it has never been the case, nor should it be, that «creative property owners» have been «accorded the same rights and protection resident in all other property owners.» Indeed, if creative property owners were given the same rights as all other property owners, that would effect a radical, and radically undesirable, change in our tradition.

Valenti knows this. But he speaks for an industry that cares squat for our tradition and the values it represents. He speaks for an industry that is instead fighting to restore the tradition that the British overturned in 1710. In the world that Valenti's changes would create, a powerful few would exercise powerful control over how our creative culture would develop.

I have two purposes in this chapter. The first is to convince you that, historically, Valenti's claim is absolutely wrong. The second is to convince you that it would be terribly wrong for us to reject our history. We have always treated rights in creative property differently from the rights resident in all other property owners. They have never been the same. And they should never be the same, because, however counterintuitive this may seem, to make them the same would be to fundamentally weaken the opportunity for new creators to create. Creativity depends upon the owners of creativity having less than perfect control.

Organizations such as the MPAA, whose board includes the most powerful of the old guard, have little interest, their rhetoric notwithstanding, in assuring that the new can displace them. No organization does. No person does. (Ask me about tenure, for example.) But what's good for the MPAA is not necessarily good for America. A society that defends the ideals of free culture must preserve precisely the opportunity for new creativity to threaten the old. To get just a hint that there is something fundamentally wrong in Valenti's argument, we need look no further than the United States Constitution itself.

The framers of our Constitution loved «property.» Indeed, so strongly did they love property that they built into the Constitution an important requirement. If the government takes your property—if it condemns your house, or acquires a slice of land from your farm—it is required, under the Fifth Amendment's «Takings Clause,» to pay you «just compensation» for that taking. The Constitution thus guarantees that property is, in a certain sense, sacred. It cannot ever be taken from the property owner unless the government pays for the privilege.

Yet the very same Constitution speaks very differently about what Valenti calls «creative property.» In the clause granting Congress the power to create «creative property,» the Constitution requires that after a «limited time,» Congress take back the rights that it has granted and set the «creative property» free to the public domain. Yet when Congress does this, when the expiration of a copyright term «takes» your copyright and turns it over to the public domain, Congress does not have any obligation to pay «just compensation» for this «taking.» Instead, the same Constitution that requires compensation for your land requires that you lose your «creative property» right without any compensation at all.

The Constitution thus on its face states that these two forms of property are not to be accorded the same rights. They are plainly to be treated differently. Valenti is therefore not just asking for a change in our tradition when he argues that creative-property owners should be accorded the same rights as every other property-right owner. He is effectively arguing for a change in our Constitution itself.

Arguing for a change in our Constitution is not necessarily wrong. There was much in our original Constitution that was plainly wrong. The Constitution of 1789 entrenched slavery; it left senators to be appointed rather than elected; it made it possible for the electoral college to produce a tie between the president and his own vice president (as it did in 1800). The framers were no doubt extraordinary, but I would be the first to admit that they made big mistakes. We have since rejected some of those mistakes; no doubt there could be others that we should reject as well. So my argument is not simply that because Jefferson did it, we should, too.

Instead, my argument is that because Jefferson did it, we should at least try to understand why. Why did the framers, fanatical property types that they were, reject the claim that creative property be given the same rights as all other property? Why did they require that for creative property there must be a public domain?

To answer this question, we need to get some perspective on the history of these «creative property» rights, and the control that they enabled. Once we see clearly how differently these rights have been defined, we will be in a better position to ask the question that should be at the core of this war: Not whether creative property should be protected, but how. Not whether we will enforce the rights the law gives to creative-property owners, but what the particular mix of rights ought to be. Not whether artists should be paid, but whether institutions designed to assure that artists get paid need also control how culture develops.

To answer these questions, we need a more general way to talk about how property is protected. More precisely, we need a more general way than the narrow language of the law allows. In Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, I used a simple model to capture this more general perspective. For any particular right or regulation, this model asks how four different modalities of regulation interact to support or weaken the right or regulation. I represented it with this diagram:

Figur 10.1. How four different modalities of regulation interact to support or weaken the right or regulation.

At the center of this picture is a regulated dot: the individual or group that is the target of regulation, or the holder of a right. (In each case throughout, we can describe this either as regulation or as a right. For simplicity's sake, I will speak only of regulations.) The ovals represent four ways in which the individual or group might be regulated— either constrained or, alternatively, enabled. Law is the most obvious constraint (to lawyers, at least). It constrains by threatening punishments after the fact if the rules set in advance are violated. So if, for example, you willfully infringe Madonna's copyright by copying a song from her latest CD and posting it on the Web, you can be punished with a $150,000 fine. The fine is an ex post punishment for violating an ex ante rule. It is imposed by the state.

Norms are a different kind of constraint. They, too, punish an individual for violating a rule. But the punishment of a norm is imposed by a community, not (or not only) by the state. There may be no law against spitting, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished if you spit on the ground while standing in line at a movie. The punishment might not be harsh, though depending upon the community, it could easily be more harsh than many of the punishments imposed by the state. The mark of the difference is not the severity of the rule, but the source of the enforcement.

The market is a third type of constraint. Its constraint is effected through conditions: You can do X if you pay Y; you'll be paid M if you do N. These constraints are obviously not independent of law or norms—it is property law that defines what must be bought if it is to be taken legally; it is norms that say what is appropriately sold. But given a set of norms, and a background of property and contract law, the market imposes a simultaneous constraint upon how an individual or group might behave.

Finally, and for the moment, perhaps, most mysteriously, «architecture»—the physical world as one finds it—is a constraint on behavior. A fallen bridge might constrain your ability to get across a river. Railroad tracks might constrain the ability of a community to integrate its social life. As with the market, architecture does not effect its constraint through ex post punishments. Instead, also as with the market, architecture effects its constraint through simultaneous conditions. These conditions are imposed not by courts enforcing contracts, or by police punishing theft, but by nature, by «architecture.» If a 500-pound boulder blocks your way, it is the law of gravity that enforces this constraint. If a $500 airplane ticket stands between you and a flight to New York, it is the market that enforces this constraint.

So the first point about these four modalities of regulation is obvious: They interact. Restrictions imposed by one might be reinforced by another. Or restrictions imposed by one might be undermined by another.

The second point follows directly: If we want to understand the effective freedom that anyone has at a given moment to do any particular thing, we have to consider how these four modalities interact. Whether or not there are other constraints (there may well be; my claim is not about comprehensiveness), these four are among the most significant, and any regulator (whether controlling or freeing) must consider how these four in particular interact.

So, for example, consider the «freedom» to drive a car at a high speed. That freedom is in part restricted by laws: speed limits that say how fast you can drive in particular places at particular times. It is in part restricted by architecture: speed bumps, for example, slow most rational drivers; governors in buses, as another example, set the maximum rate at which the driver can drive. The freedom is in part restricted by the market: Fuel efficiency drops as speed increases, thus the price of gasoline indirectly constrains speed. And finally, the norms of a community may or may not constrain the freedom to speed. Drive at 50 mph by a school in your own neighborhood and you're likely to be punished by the neighbors. The same norm wouldn't be as effective in a different town, or at night.

The final point about this simple model should also be fairly clear: While these four modalities are analytically independent, law has a special role in affecting the three.^[120] The law, in other words, sometimes operates to increase or decrease the constraint of a particular modality. Thus, the law might be used to increase taxes on gasoline, so as to increase the incentives to drive more slowly. The law might be used to mandate more speed bumps, so as to increase the difficulty of driving rapidly. The law might be used to fund ads that stigmatize reckless driving. Or the law might be used to require that other laws be more strict—a federal requirement that states decrease the speed limit, for example—so as to decrease the attractiveness of fast driving.

Figur 10.2. Law has a special role in affecting the three.

These constraints can thus change, and they can be changed. To understand the effective protection of liberty or protection of property at any particular moment, we must track these changes over time. A restriction imposed by one modality might be erased by another. A freedom enabled by one modality might be displaced by another.^[121]

10.1. Hvorfor Hollywood har rett

The most obvious point that this model reveals is just why, or just how, Hollywood is right. The copyright warriors have rallied Congress and the courts to defend copyright. This model helps us see why that rallying makes sense.

Let's say this is the picture of copyright's regulation before the Internet:

Figur 10.3. Copyright's regulation before the Internet.

There is balance between law, norms, market, and architecture. The law limits the ability to copy and share content, by imposing penalties on those who copy and share content. Those penalties are reinforced by technologies that make it hard to copy and share content (architecture) and expensive to copy and share content (market). Finally, those penalties are mitigated by norms we all recognize—kids, for example, taping other kids' records. These uses of copyrighted material may well be infringement, but the norms of our society (before the Internet, at least) had no problem with this form of infringement.

Enter the Internet, or, more precisely, technologies such as MP3s and p2p sharing. Now the constraint of architecture changes dramatically, as does the constraint of the market. And as both the market and architecture relax the regulation of copyright, norms pile on. The happy balance (for the warriors, at least) of life before the Internet becomes an effective state of anarchy after the Internet.

Thus the sense of, and justification for, the warriors' response. Technology has changed, the warriors say, and the effect of this change, when ramified through the market and norms, is that a balance of protection for the copyright owners' rights has been lost. This is Iraq after the fall of Saddam, but this time no government is justifying the looting that results.

Figur 10.4. effective state of anarchy after the Internet.

Neither this analysis nor the conclusions that follow are new to the warriors. Indeed, in a «White Paper» prepared by the Commerce Department (one heavily influenced by the copyright warriors) in 1995, this mix of regulatory modalities had already been identified and the strategy to respond already mapped. In response to the changes the Internet had effected, the White Paper argued (1) Congress should strengthen intellectual property law, (2) businesses should adopt innovative marketing techniques, (3) technologists should push to develop code to protect copyrighted material, and (4) educators should educate kids to better protect copyright.

This mixed strategy is just what copyright needed—if it was to preserve the particular balance that existed before the change induced by the Internet. And it's just what we should expect the content industry to push for. It is as American as apple pie to consider the happy life you have as an entitlement, and to look to the law to protect it if something comes along to change that happy life. Homeowners living in a flood plain have no hesitation appealing to the government to rebuild (and rebuild again) when a flood (architecture) wipes away their property (law). Farmers have no hesitation appealing to the government to bail them out when a virus (architecture) devastates their crop. Unions have no hesitation appealing to the government to bail them out when imports (market) wipe out the U.S. steel industry.

Thus, there's nothing wrong or surprising in the content industry's campaign to protect itself from the harmful consequences of a technological innovation. And I would be the last person to argue that the changing technology of the Internet has not had a profound effect on the content industry's way of doing business, or as John Seely Brown describes it, its «architecture of revenue.»

But just because a particular interest asks for government support, it doesn't follow that support should be granted. And just because technology has weakened a particular way of doing business, it doesn't follow that the government should intervene to support that old way of doing business. Kodak, for example, has lost perhaps as much as 20 percent of their traditional film market to the emerging technologies of digital cameras.^[122] Does anyone believe the government should ban digital cameras just to support Kodak? Highways have weakened the freight business for railroads. Does anyone think we should ban trucks from roads for the purpose of protecting the railroads? Closer to the subject of this book, remote channel changers have weakened the «stickiness» of television advertising (if a boring commercial comes on the TV, the remote makes it easy to surf ), and it may well be that this change has weakened the television advertising market. But does anyone believe we should regulate remotes to reinforce commercial television? (Maybe by limiting them to function only once a second, or to switch to only ten channels within an hour?)

The obvious answer to these obviously rhetorical questions is no. In a free society, with a free market, supported by free enterprise and free trade, the government's role is not to support one way of doing business against others. Its role is not to pick winners and protect them against loss. If the government did this generally, then we would never have any progress. As Microsoft chairman Bill Gates wrote in 1991, in a memo criticizing software patents, «established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.»^[123] And relative to a startup, established companies also have the means. (Think RCA and FM radio.) A world in which competitors with new ideas must fight not only the market but also the government is a world in which competitors with new ideas will not succeed. It is a world of stasis and increasingly concentrated stagnation. It is the Soviet Union under Brezhnev.

Thus, while it is understandable for industries threatened with new technologies that change the way they do business to look to the government for protection, it is the special duty of policy makers to guarantee that that protection not become a deterrent to progress. It is the duty of policy makers, in other words, to assure that the changes they create, in response to the request of those hurt by changing technology, are changes that preserve the incentives and opportunities for innovation and change.

In the context of laws regulating speech—which include, obviously, copyright law—that duty is even stronger. When the industry complaining about changing technologies is asking Congress to respond in a way that burdens speech and creativity, policy makers should be especially wary of the request. It is always a bad deal for the government to get into the business of regulating speech markets. The risks and dangers of that game are precisely why our framers created the First Amendment to our Constitution: «Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.» So when Congress is being asked to pass laws that would «abridge» the freedom of speech, it should ask— carefully—whether such regulation is justified.

My argument just now, however, has nothing to do with whether the changes that are being pushed by the copyright warriors are «justified.» My argument is about their effect. For before we get to the question of justification, a hard question that depends a great deal upon your values, we should first ask whether we understand the effect of the changes the content industry wants.

Her kommer metaforen som vil forklare argumentet.

In 1873, the chemical DDT was first synthesized. In 1948, Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller won the Nobel Prize for his work demonstrating the insecticidal properties of DDT. By the 1950s, the insecticide was widely used around the world to kill disease-carrying pests. It was also used to increase farm production.

No one doubts that killing disease-carrying pests or increasing crop production is a good thing. No one doubts that the work of Müller was important and valuable and probably saved lives, possibly millions.

But in 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which argued that DDT, whatever its primary benefits, was also having unintended environmental consequences. Birds were losing the ability to reproduce. Whole chains of the ecology were being destroyed.

No one set out to destroy the environment. Paul Müller certainly did not aim to harm any birds. But the effort to solve one set of problems produced another set which, in the view of some, was far worse than the problems that were originally attacked. Or more accurately, the problems DDT caused were worse than the problems it solved, at least when considering the other, more environmentally friendly ways to solve the problems that DDT was meant to solve.

It is to this image precisely that Duke University law professor James Boyle appeals when he argues that we need an «environmentalism» for culture.^[124] His point, and the point I want to develop in the balance of this chapter, is not that the aims of copyright are flawed. Or that authors should not be paid for their work. Or that music should be given away «for free.» The point is that some of the ways in which we might protect authors will have unintended consequences for the cultural environment, much like DDT had for the natural environment. And just as criticism of DDT is not an endorsement of malaria or an attack on farmers, so, too, is criticism of one particular set of regulations protecting copyright not an endorsement of anarchy or an attack on authors. It is an environment of creativity that we seek, and we should be aware of our actions' effects on the environment.

My argument, in the balance of this chapter, tries to map exactly this effect. No doubt the technology of the Internet has had a dramatic effect on the ability of copyright owners to protect their content. But there should also be little doubt that when you add together the changes in copyright law over time, plus the change in technology that the Internet is undergoing just now, the net effect of these changes will not be only that copyrighted work is effectively protected. Also, and generally missed, the net effect of this massive increase in protection will be devastating to the environment for creativity.

In a line: To kill a gnat, we are spraying DDT with consequences for free culture that will be far more devastating than that this gnat will be lost.

10.2. Opphav

America copied English copyright law. Actually, we copied and improved English copyright law. Our Constitution makes the purpose of «creative property» rights clear; its express limitations reinforce the English aim to avoid overly powerful publishers.

The power to establish «creative property» rights is granted to Congress in a way that, for our Constitution, at least, is very odd. Article I, section 8, clause 8 of our Constitution states that:

Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. We can call this the «Progress Clause,» for notice what this clause does not say. It does not say Congress has the power to grant «creative property rights.» It says that Congress has the power to promote progress. The grant of power is its purpose, and its purpose is a public one, not the purpose of enriching publishers, nor even primarily the purpose of rewarding authors.

The Progress Clause expressly limits the term of copyrights. As we saw in chapter 6, the English limited the term of copyright so as to assure that a few would not exercise disproportionate control over culture by exercising disproportionate control over publishing. We can assume the framers followed the English for a similar purpose. Indeed, unlike the English, the framers reinforced that objective, by requiring that copyrights extend «to Authors» only.

The design of the Progress Clause reflects something about the Constitution's design in general. To avoid a problem, the framers built structure. To prevent the concentrated power of publishers, they built a structure that kept copyrights away from publishers and kept them short. To prevent the concentrated power of a church, they banned the federal government from establishing a church. To prevent concentrating power in the federal government, they built structures to reinforce the power of the states—including the Senate, whose members were at the time selected by the states, and an electoral college, also selected by the states, to select the president. In each case, a structure built checks and balances into the constitutional frame, structured to prevent otherwise inevitable concentrations of power.

I doubt the framers would recognize the regulation we call «copyright» today. The scope of that regulation is far beyond anything they ever considered. To begin to understand what they did, we need to put our «copyright» in context: We need to see how it has changed in the 210 years since they first struck its design.

Some of these changes come from the law: some in light of changes in technology, and some in light of changes in technology given a particular concentration of market power. In terms of our model, we started here:

Figur 10.5. Copyright's regulation before the Internet.

Vi kommer til å ende opp her:

Figur 10.6. «Opphavsrett» i dag.

La meg forklare hvordan.

10.5. Lov og arkitektur: Rekkevidde

Whereas originally the law regulated only publishers, the change in copyright's scope means that the law today regulates publishers, users, and authors. It regulates them because all three are capable of making copies, and the core of the regulation of copyright law is copies.^[133]

«Copies.» That certainly sounds like the obvious thing for copyright law to regulate. But as with Jack Valenti's argument at the start of this chapter, that «creative property» deserves the «same rights» as all other property, it is the obvious that we need to be most careful about. For while it may be obvious that in the world before the Internet, copies were the obvious trigger for copyright law, upon reflection, it should be obvious that in the world with the Internet, copies should not be the trigger for copyright law. More precisely, they should not always be the trigger for copyright law.

This is perhaps the central claim of this book, so let me take this very slowly so that the point is not easily missed. My claim is that the Internet should at least force us to rethink the conditions under which the law of copyright automatically applies,^[134] because it is clear that the current reach of copyright was never contemplated, much less chosen, by the legislators who enacted copyright law.

We can see this point abstractly by beginning with this largely empty circle.

Figur 10.7. Alle potensielle bruk av en bok.

Think about a book in real space, and imagine this circle to represent all its potential uses. Most of these uses are unregulated by copyright law, because the uses don't create a copy. If you read a book, that act is not regulated by copyright law. If you give someone the book, that act is not regulated by copyright law. If you resell a book, that act is not regulated (copyright law expressly states that after the first sale of a book, the copyright owner can impose no further conditions on the disposition of the book). If you sleep on the book or use it to hold up a lamp or let your puppy chew it up, those acts are not regulated by copyright law, because those acts do not make a copy.

Figur 10.8. Eksempler på uregulert bruk av en bok.

Obviously, however, some uses of a copyrighted book are regulated by copyright law. Republishing the book, for example, makes a copy. It is therefore regulated by copyright law. Indeed, this particular use stands at the core of this circle of possible uses of a copyrighted work. It is the paradigmatic use properly regulated by copyright regulation (see first diagram on next page).

Til slutt er det en tynn skive av ellers regulert kopierings-bruk som forblir uregluert på grunn av at loven anser dette som «rimelig bruk».

Figur 10.9. Republishing stands at the core of this circle of possible uses of a copyrighted work.

These are uses that themselves involve copying, but which the law treats as unregulated because public policy demands that they remain unregulated. You are free to quote from this book, even in a review that is quite negative, without my permission, even though that quoting makes a copy. That copy would ordinarily give the copyright owner the exclusive right to say whether the copy is allowed or not, but the law denies the owner any exclusive right over such «fair uses» for public policy (and possibly First Amendment) reasons.

Figur 10.10. Uregulert kopiering anses som «rimelig bruk».

Figur 10.11. Uses that before were presumptively unregulated are now presumptively regulated.

In real space, then, the possible uses of a book are divided into three sorts: (1) unregulated uses, (2) regulated uses, and (3) regulated uses that are nonetheless deemed «fair» regardless of the copyright owner's views.

Enter the Internet—a distributed, digital network where every use of a copyrighted work produces a copy.^[135] And because of this single, arbitrary feature of the design of a digital network, the scope of category 1 changes dramatically. Uses that before were presumptively unregulated are now presumptively regulated. No longer is there a set of presumptively unregulated uses that define a freedom associated with a copyrighted work. Instead, each use is now subject to the copyright, because each use also makes a copy—category 1 gets sucked into category 2. And those who would defend the unregulated uses of copyrighted work must look exclusively to category 3, fair uses, to bear the burden of this shift.

So let's be very specific to make this general point clear. Before the Internet, if you purchased a book and read it ten times, there would be no plausible copyright-related argument that the copyright owner could make to control that use of her book. Copyright law would have nothing to say about whether you read the book once, ten times, or every night before you went to bed. None of those instances of use—reading— could be regulated by copyright law because none of those uses produced a copy.

But the same book as an e-book is effectively governed by a different set of rules. Now if the copyright owner says you may read the book only once or only once a month, then copyright law would aid the copyright owner in exercising this degree of control, because of the accidental feature of copyright law that triggers its application upon there being a copy. Now if you read the book ten times and the license says you may read it only five times, then whenever you read the book (or any portion of it) beyond the fifth time, you are making a copy of the book contrary to the copyright owner's wish.

There are some people who think this makes perfect sense. My aim just now is not to argue about whether it makes sense or not. My aim is only to make clear the change. Once you see this point, a few other points also become clear:

First, making category 1 disappear is not anything any policy maker ever intended. Congress did not think through the collapse of the presumptively unregulated uses of copyrighted works. There is no evidence at all that policy makers had this idea in mind when they allowed our policy here to shift. Unregulated uses were an important part of free culture before the Internet.

Second, this shift is especially troubling in the context of transformative uses of creative content. Again, we can all understand the wrong in commercial piracy. But the law now purports to regulate any transformation you make of creative work using a machine. «Copy and paste» and «cut and paste» become crimes. Tinkering with a story and releasing it to others exposes the tinkerer to at least a requirement of justification. However troubling the expansion with respect to copying a particular work, it is extraordinarily troubling with respect to transformative uses of creative work.

Third, this shift from category 1 to category 2 puts an extraordinary burden on category 3 («fair use») that fair use never before had to bear. If a copyright owner now tried to control how many times I could read a book on-line, the natural response would be to argue that this is a violation of my fair use rights. But there has never been any litigation about whether I have a fair use right to read, because before the Internet, reading did not trigger the application of copyright law and hence the need for a fair use defense. The right to read was effectively protected before because reading was not regulated.

This point about fair use is totally ignored, even by advocates for free culture. We have been cornered into arguing that our rights depend upon fair use—never even addressing the earlier question about the expansion in effective regulation. A thin protection grounded in fair use makes sense when the vast majority of uses are unregulated. But when everything becomes presumptively regulated, then the protections of fair use are not enough.

The case of Video Pipeline is a good example. Video Pipeline was in the business of making «trailer» advertisements for movies available to video stores. The video stores displayed the trailers as a way to sell videos. Video Pipeline got the trailers from the film distributors, put the trailers on tape, and sold the tapes to the retail stores.

The company did this for about fifteen years. Then, in 1997, it began to think about the Internet as another way to distribute these previews. The idea was to expand their «selling by sampling» technique by giving on-line stores the same ability to enable «browsing.» Just as in a bookstore you can read a few pages of a book before you buy the book, so, too, you would be able to sample a bit from the movie on-line before you bought it.

In 1998, Video Pipeline informed Disney and other film distributors that it intended to distribute the trailers through the Internet (rather than sending the tapes) to distributors of their videos. Two years later, Disney told Video Pipeline to stop. The owner of Video Pipeline asked Disney to talk about the matter—he had built a business on distributing this content as a way to help sell Disney films; he had customers who depended upon his delivering this content. Disney would agree to talk only if Video Pipeline stopped the distribution immediately. Video Pipeline thought it was within their «fair use» rights to distribute the clips as they had. So they filed a lawsuit to ask the court to declare that these rights were in fact their rights.

Disney countersued—for $100 million in damages. Those damages were predicated upon a claim that Video Pipeline had «willfully infringed» on Disney's copyright. When a court makes a finding of willful infringement, it can award damages not on the basis of the actual harm to the copyright owner, but on the basis of an amount set in the statute. Because Video Pipeline had distributed seven hundred clips of Disney movies to enable video stores to sell copies of those movies, Disney was now suing Video Pipeline for $100 million.

Disney has the right to control its property, of course. But the video stores that were selling Disney's films also had some sort of right to be able to sell the films that they had bought from Disney. Disney's claim in court was that the stores were allowed to sell the films and they were permitted to list the titles of the films they were selling, but they were not allowed to show clips of the films as a way of selling them without Disney's permission.

Now, you might think this is a close case, and I think the courts would consider it a close case. My point here is to map the change that gives Disney this power. Before the Internet, Disney couldn't really control how people got access to their content. Once a video was in the marketplace, the «first-sale doctrine» would free the seller to use the video as he wished, including showing portions of it in order to engender sales of the entire movie video. But with the Internet, it becomes possible for Disney to centralize control over access to this content. Because each use of the Internet produces a copy, use on the Internet becomes subject to the copyright owner's control. The technology expands the scope of effective control, because the technology builds a copy into every transaction.

No doubt, a potential is not yet an abuse, and so the potential for control is not yet the abuse of control. Barnes & Noble has the right to say you can't touch a book in their store; property law gives them that right. But the market effectively protects against that abuse. If Barnes & Noble banned browsing, then consumers would choose other bookstores. Competition protects against the extremes. And it may well be (my argument so far does not even question this) that competition would prevent any similar danger when it comes to copyright. Sure, publishers exercising the rights that authors have assigned to them might try to regulate how many times you read a book, or try to stop you from sharing the book with anyone. But in a competitive market such as the book market, the dangers of this happening are quite slight.

Again, my aim so far is simply to map the changes that this changed architecture enables. Enabling technology to enforce the control of copyright means that the control of copyright is no longer defined by balanced policy. The control of copyright is simply what private owners choose. In some contexts, at least, that fact is harmless. But in some contexts it is a recipe for disaster.

10.6. Arkitektur og lov: Makt

The disappearance of unregulated uses would be change enough, but a second important change brought about by the Internet magnifies its significance. This second change does not affect the reach of copyright regulation; it affects how such regulation is enforced.

In the world before digital technology, it was generally the law that controlled whether and how someone was regulated by copyright law. The law, meaning a court, meaning a judge: In the end, it was a human, trained in the tradition of the law and cognizant of the balances that tradition embraced, who said whether and how the law would restrict your freedom.

Det er en berømt historie om en kamp mellom Marx-brødrene (the Marx Brothers) og Warner Brothers. Marx-brødrene planla å lage en parodi av Casablanca. Warner Brothers protesterte. De skrev et ufint brev til Marx-brødrene og advarte dem om at det ville få seriøse juridiske konsekvenser hvis de gikk videre med sin plan.^[136]

Dette fikk Marx-brødrene til å svare tilbake med samme mynt. De advarte Warner Brothers om at Marx-brødrene «var brødre lenge før dere var det».^[137] Marx-brødrene eide derfor ordet Brothers, og hvis Warner Brothers insisterte på å forsøke å kontrollere Casablanca, så ville Marx-brødrene insistere på kontroll over Brothers.

Det var en absurd og hul trussel, selvfølgelig, fordi Warner Brothers, på samme måte som Marx-brødrene, visste at ingen domstol noensinne ville håndheve et slikt dumt krav. Denne ekstremismen var irrelevant for de ekte friheter som alle (inkludert Warner Brothers) nøt godt av.

On the Internet, however, there is no check on silly rules, because on the Internet, increasingly, rules are enforced not by a human but by a machine: Increasingly, the rules of copyright law, as interpreted by the copyright owner, get built into the technology that delivers copyrighted content. It is code, rather than law, that rules. And the problem with code regulations is that, unlike law, code has no shame. Code would not get the humor of the Marx Brothers. The consequence of that is not at all funny.

La oss se på livet til min Adobe eBook Reader.

En ebok er en bok levert i elektronisk form. En Adobe eBook er ikke en bok som Adobe har publisert. Adobe produserer kun programvaren som utgivere bruker å levere e-bøker. Den bidrar med teknologien, og utgiveren leverer innholdet ved hjelp av teknologien.

On the next page is a picture of an old version of my Adobe eBook Reader.

As you can see, I have a small collection of e-books within this e-book library. Some of these books reproduce content that is in the public domain: Middlemarch, for example, is in the public domain. Some of them reproduce content that is not in the public domain: My own book The Future of Ideas is not yet within the public domain. Consider Middlemarch first. If you click on my e-book copy of Middlemarch, you'll see a fancy cover, and then a button at the bottom called Permissions.

Figur 10.12. Bilde av en gammel versjon av Adobe eBook Reader.

If you click on the Permissions button, you'll see a list of the permissions that the publisher purports to grant with this book.

Figur 10.13. List of the permissions that the publisher purports to grant.

According to my eBook Reader, I have the permission to copy to the clipboard of the computer ten text selections every ten days. (So far, I've copied no text to the clipboard.) I also have the permission to print ten pages from the book every ten days. Lastly, I have the permission to use the Read Aloud button to hear Middlemarch read aloud through the computer.

Her er e-boken for et annet allemannseid verk (inkludert oversettelsen): Aristoteles Politikk

Figur 10.14. E-bok av Aristoteles «Politikk»

According to its permissions, no printing or copying is permitted at all. But fortunately, you can use the Read Aloud button to hear the book.

Figur 10.15. Liste med tillatelser for Aristotles "Politikk".

Finally (and most embarrassingly), here are the permissions for the original e-book version of my last book, The Future of Ideas:

Figur 10.16. Liste med tillatelser for «The Future of Ideas».

Ingen kopiering, ingen utskrift, og våg ikke å prøve å lytte til denne boken!

Now, the Adobe eBook Reader calls these controls «permissions»— as if the publisher has the power to control how you use these works. For works under copyright, the copyright owner certainly does have the power—up to the limits of the copyright law. But for work not under copyright, there is no such copyright power.^[138] When my e-book of Middlemarch says I have the permission to copy only ten text selections into the memory every ten days, what that really means is that the eBook Reader has enabled the publisher to control how I use the book on my computer, far beyond the control that the law would enable.

The control comes instead from the code—from the technology within which the e-book «lives.» Though the e-book says that these are permissions, they are not the sort of «permissions» that most of us deal with. When a teenager gets «permission» to stay out till midnight, she knows (unless she's Cinderella) that she can stay out till 2 A.M., but will suffer a punishment if she's caught. But when the Adobe eBook Reader says I have the permission to make ten copies of the text into the computer's memory, that means that after I've made ten copies, the computer will not make any more. The same with the printing restrictions: After ten pages, the eBook Reader will not print any more pages. It's the same with the silly restriction that says that you can't use the Read Aloud button to read my book aloud—it's not that the company will sue you if you do; instead, if you push the Read Aloud button with my book, the machine simply won't read aloud.

These are controls, not permissions. Imagine a world where the Marx Brothers sold word processing software that, when you tried to type «Warner Brothers,» erased «Brothers» from the sentence.

This is the future of copyright law: not so much copyright law as copyright code. The controls over access to content will not be controls that are ratified by courts; the controls over access to content will be controls that are coded by programmers. And whereas the controls that are built into the law are always to be checked by a judge, the controls that are built into the technology have no similar built-in check.

How significant is this? Isn't it always possible to get around the controls built into the technology? Software used to be sold with technologies that limited the ability of users to copy the software, but those were trivial protections to defeat. Why won't it be trivial to defeat these protections as well?

We've only scratched the surface of this story. Return to the Adobe eBook Reader.

Early in the life of the Adobe eBook Reader, Adobe suffered a public relations nightmare. Among the books that you could download for free on the Adobe site was a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This wonderful book is in the public domain. Yet when you clicked on Permissions for that book, you got the following report:

Figur 10.17. Liste med tillatelser for «Alice i Eventyrland».

Here was a public domain children's book that you were not allowed to copy, not allowed to lend, not allowed to give, and, as the «permissions» indicated, not allowed to «read aloud»!

The public relations nightmare attached to that final permission. For the text did not say that you were not permitted to use the Read Aloud button; it said you did not have the permission to read the book aloud. That led some people to think that Adobe was restricting the right of parents, for example, to read the book to their children, which seemed, to say the least, absurd.

Adobe responded quickly that it was absurd to think that it was trying to restrict the right to read a book aloud. Obviously it was only restricting the ability to use the Read Aloud button to have the book read aloud. But the question Adobe never did answer is this: Would Adobe thus agree that a consumer was free to use software to hack around the restrictions built into the eBook Reader? If some company (call it Elcomsoft) developed a program to disable the technological protection built into an Adobe eBook so that a blind person, say, could use a computer to read the book aloud, would Adobe agree that such a use of an eBook Reader was fair? Adobe didn't answer because the answer, however absurd it might seem, is no.

The point is not to blame Adobe. Indeed, Adobe is among the most innovative companies developing strategies to balance open access to content with incentives for companies to innovate. But Adobe's technology enables control, and Adobe has an incentive to defend this control. That incentive is understandable, yet what it creates is often crazy.

To see the point in a particularly absurd context, consider a favorite story of mine that makes the same point.

Consider the robotic dog made by Sony named «Aibo.» The Aibo learns tricks, cuddles, and follows you around. It eats only electricity and that doesn't leave that much of a mess (at least in your house).

The Aibo is expensive and popular. Fans from around the world have set up clubs to trade stories. One fan in particular set up a Web site to enable information about the Aibo dog to be shared. This fan set up aibopet.com (and aibohack.com, but that resolves to the same site), and on that site he provided information about how to teach an Aibo to do tricks in addition to the ones Sony had taught it.

«Teach» here has a special meaning. Aibos are just cute computers. You teach a computer how to do something by programming it differently. So to say that aibopet.com was giving information about how to teach the dog to do new tricks is just to say that aibopet.com was giving information to users of the Aibo pet about how to hack their computer «dog» to make it do new tricks (thus, aibohack.com).

If you're not a programmer or don't know many programmers, the word hack has a particularly unfriendly connotation. Nonprogrammers hack bushes or weeds. Nonprogrammers in horror movies do even worse. But to programmers, or coders, as I call them, hack is a much more positive term. Hack just means code that enables the program to do something it wasn't originally intended or enabled to do. If you buy a new printer for an old computer, you might find the old computer doesn't run, or «drive,» the printer. If you discovered that, you'd later be happy to discover a hack on the Net by someone who has written a driver to enable the computer to drive the printer you just bought.

Some hacks are easy. Some are unbelievably hard. Hackers as a community like to challenge themselves and others with increasingly difficult tasks. There's a certain respect that goes with the talent to hack well. There's a well-deserved respect that goes with the talent to hack ethically.

The Aibo fan was displaying a bit of both when he hacked the program and offered to the world a bit of code that would enable the Aibo to dance jazz. The dog wasn't programmed to dance jazz. It was a clever bit of tinkering that turned the dog into a more talented creature than Sony had built.

I've told this story in many contexts, both inside and outside the United States. Once I was asked by a puzzled member of the audience, is it permissible for a dog to dance jazz in the United States? We forget that stories about the backcountry still flow across much of the world. So let's just be clear before we continue: It's not a crime anywhere (anymore) to dance jazz. Nor is it a crime to teach your dog to dance jazz. Nor should it be a crime (though we don't have a lot to go on here) to teach your robot dog to dance jazz. Dancing jazz is a completely legal activity. One imagines that the owner of aibopet.com thought, What possible problem could there be with teaching a robot dog to dance?

Let's put the dog to sleep for a minute, and turn to a pony show— not literally a pony show, but rather a paper that a Princeton academic named Ed Felten prepared for a conference. This Princeton academic is well known and respected. He was hired by the government in the Microsoft case to test Microsoft's claims about what could and could not be done with its own code. In that trial, he demonstrated both his brilliance and his coolness. Under heavy badgering by Microsoft lawyers, Ed Felten stood his ground. He was not about to be bullied into being silent about something he knew very well.

But Felten's bravery was really tested in April 2001.^[139] He and a group of colleagues were working on a paper to be submitted at conference. The paper was intended to describe the weakness in an encryption system being developed by the Secure Digital Music Initiative as a technique to control the distribution of music.

The SDMI coalition had as its goal a technology to enable content owners to exercise much better control over their content than the Internet, as it originally stood, granted them. Using encryption, SDMI hoped to develop a standard that would allow the content owner to say «this music cannot be copied,» and have a computer respect that command. The technology was to be part of a «trusted system» of control that would get content owners to trust the system of the Internet much more.

When SDMI thought it was close to a standard, it set up a competition. In exchange for providing contestants with the code to an SDMI-encrypted bit of content, contestants were to try to crack it and, if they did, report the problems to the consortium.

Felten and his team figured out the encryption system quickly. He and the team saw the weakness of this system as a type: Many encryption systems would suffer the same weakness, and Felten and his team thought it worthwhile to point this out to those who study encryption.

Let's review just what Felten was doing. Again, this is the United States. We have a principle of free speech. We have this principle not just because it is the law, but also because it is a really great idea. A strongly protected tradition of free speech is likely to encourage a wide range of criticism. That criticism is likely, in turn, to improve the systems or people or ideas criticized.

What Felten and his colleagues were doing was publishing a paper describing the weakness in a technology. They were not spreading free music, or building and deploying this technology. The paper was an academic essay, unintelligible to most people. But it clearly showed the weakness in the SDMI system, and why SDMI would not, as presently constituted, succeed.

What links these two, aibopet.com and Felten, is the letters they then received. Aibopet.com received a letter from Sony about the aibopet.com hack. Though a jazz-dancing dog is perfectly legal, Sony wrote:

Your site contains information providing the means to circumvent AIBO-ware's copy protection protocol constituting a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

And though an academic paper describing the weakness in a system of encryption should also be perfectly legal, Felten received a letter from an RIAA lawyer that read:

Any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public Challenge would be outside the scope of activities permitted by the Agreement and could subject you and your research team to actions under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act («DMCA»).

In both cases, this weirdly Orwellian law was invoked to control the spread of information. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made spreading such information an offense.

The DMCA was enacted as a response to copyright owners' first fear about cyberspace. The fear was that copyright control was effectively dead; the response was to find technologies that might compensate. These new technologies would be copyright protection technologies— technologies to control the replication and distribution of copyrighted material. They were designed as code to modify the original code of the Internet, to reestablish some protection for copyright owners.

The DMCA was a bit of law intended to back up the protection of this code designed to protect copyrighted material. It was, we could say, legal code intended to buttress software code which itself was intended to support the legal code of copyright.

But the DMCA was not designed merely to protect copyrighted works to the extent copyright law protected them. Its protection, that is, did not end at the line that copyright law drew. The DMCA regulated devices that were designed to circumvent copyright protection measures. It was designed to ban those devices, whether or not the use of the copyrighted material made possible by that circumvention would have been a copyright violation.

Aibopet.com and Felten make the point. The Aibo hack circumvented a copyright protection system for the purpose of enabling the dog to dance jazz. That enablement no doubt involved the use of copyrighted material. But as aibopet.com's site was noncommercial, and the use did not enable subsequent copyright infringements, there's no doubt that aibopet.com's hack was fair use of Sony's copyrighted material. Yet fair use is not a defense to the DMCA. The question is not whether the use of the copyrighted material was a copyright violation. The question is whether a copyright protection system was circumvented.

The threat against Felten was more attenuated, but it followed the same line of reasoning. By publishing a paper describing how a copyright protection system could be circumvented, the RIAA lawyer suggested, Felten himself was distributing a circumvention technology. Thus, even though he was not himself infringing anyone's copyright, his academic paper was enabling others to infringe others' copyright.

The bizarreness of these arguments is captured in a cartoon drawn in 1981 by Paul Conrad. At that time, a court in California had held that the VCR could be banned because it was a copyright-infringing technology: It enabled consumers to copy films without the permission of the copyright owner. No doubt there were uses of the technology that were legal: Fred Rogers, aka «Mr. Rogers,» for example, had testified in that case that he wanted people to feel free to tape Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.

Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the «Neighborhood» at hours when some children cannot use it. I think that it's a real service to families to be able to record such programs and show them at appropriate times. I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the «Neighborhood» off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the «Neighborhood» because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been «You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.» Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.^[140]

Even though there were uses that were legal, because there were some uses that were illegal, the court held the companies producing the VCR responsible.

This led Conrad to draw the cartoon below, which we can adopt to the DMCA.

No argument I have can top this picture, but let me try to get close.

The anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA target copyright circumvention technologies. Circumvention technologies can be used for different ends. They can be used, for example, to enable massive pirating of copyrighted material—a bad end. Or they can be used to enable the use of particular copyrighted materials in ways that would be considered fair use—a good end.

A handgun can be used to shoot a police officer or a child. Most would agree such a use is bad. Or a handgun can be used for target practice or to protect against an intruder. At least some would say that such a use would be good. It, too, is a technology that has both good and bad uses.

Figur 10.18. VCR/handgun cartoon.

The obvious point of Conrad's cartoon is the weirdness of a world where guns are legal, despite the harm they can do, while VCRs (and circumvention technologies) are illegal. Flash: No one ever died from copyright circumvention. Yet the law bans circumvention technologies absolutely, despite the potential that they might do some good, but permits guns, despite the obvious and tragic harm they do.

The Aibo and RIAA examples demonstrate how copyright owners are changing the balance that copyright law grants. Using code, copyright owners restrict fair use; using the DMCA, they punish those who would attempt to evade the restrictions on fair use that they impose through code. Technology becomes a means by which fair use can be erased; the law of the DMCA backs up that erasing.

This is how code becomes law. The controls built into the technology of copy and access protection become rules the violation of which is also a violation of the law. In this way, the code extends the law—increasing its regulation, even if the subject it regulates (activities that would otherwise plainly constitute fair use) is beyond the reach of the law. Code becomes law; code extends the law; code thus extends the control that copyright owners effect—at least for those copyright holders with the lawyers who can write the nasty letters that Felten and aibopet.com received.

There is one final aspect of the interaction between architecture and law that contributes to the force of copyright's regulation. This is the ease with which infringements of the law can be detected. For contrary to the rhetoric common at the birth of cyberspace that on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog, increasingly, given changing technologies deployed on the Internet, it is easy to find the dog who committed a legal wrong. The technologies of the Internet are open to snoops as well as sharers, and the snoops are increasingly good at tracking down the identity of those who violate the rules.

For example, imagine you were part of a Star Trek fan club. You gathered every month to share trivia, and maybe to enact a kind of fan fiction about the show. One person would play Spock, another, Captain Kirk. The characters would begin with a plot from a real story, then simply continue it.^[141]

Before the Internet, this was, in effect, a totally unregulated activity. No matter what happened inside your club room, you would never be interfered with by the copyright police. You were free in that space to do as you wished with this part of our culture. You were allowed to build on it as you wished without fear of legal control.

But if you moved your club onto the Internet, and made it generally available for others to join, the story would be very different. Bots scouring the Net for trademark and copyright infringement would quickly find your site. Your posting of fan fiction, depending upon the ownership of the series that you're depicting, could well inspire a lawyer's threat. And ignoring the lawyer's threat would be extremely costly indeed. The law of copyright is extremely efficient. The penalties are severe, and the process is quick.

This change in the effective force of the law is caused by a change in the ease with which the law can be enforced. That change too shifts the law's balance radically. It is as if your car transmitted the speed at which you traveled at every moment that you drove; that would be just one step before the state started issuing tickets based upon the data you transmitted. That is, in effect, what is happening here.

10.7. Marked: Konsentrasjon

So copyright's duration has increased dramatically—tripled in the past thirty years. And copyright's scope has increased as well—from regulating only publishers to now regulating just about everyone. And copyright's reach has changed, as every action becomes a copy and hence presumptively regulated. And as technologists find better ways to control the use of content, and as copyright is increasingly enforced through technology, copyright's force changes, too. Misuse is easier to find and easier to control. This regulation of the creative process, which began as a tiny regulation governing a tiny part of the market for creative work, has become the single most important regulator of creativity there is. It is a massive expansion in the scope of the government's control over innovation and creativity; it would be totally unrecognizable to those who gave birth to copyright's control.

Still, in my view, all of these changes would not matter much if it weren't for one more change that we must also consider. This is a change that is in some sense the most familiar, though its significance and scope are not well understood. It is the one that creates precisely the reason to be concerned about all the other changes I have described.

This is the change in the concentration and integration of the media. In the past twenty years, the nature of media ownership has undergone a radical alteration, caused by changes in legal rules governing the media. Before this change happened, the different forms of media were owned by separate media companies. Now, the media is increasingly owned by only a few companies. Indeed, after the changes that the FCC announced in June 2003, most expect that within a few years, we will live in a world where just three companies control more than percent of the media.

Det er her to sorter endringer: omfanget av konsentrasjon, og dens natur.

Changes in scope are the easier ones to describe. As Senator John McCain summarized the data produced in the FCC's review of media ownership, «five companies control 85 percent of our media sources.»^[142] The five recording labels of Universal Music Group, BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI control 84.8 percent of the U.S. music market.^[143] The «five largest cable companies pipe programming to 74 percent of the cable subscribers nationwide.»^[144]

The story with radio is even more dramatic. Before deregulation, the nation's largest radio broadcasting conglomerate owned fewer than seventy-five stations. Today one company owns more than 1,200 stations. During that period of consolidation, the total number of radio owners dropped by 34 percent. Today, in most markets, the two largest broadcasters control 74 percent of that market's revenues. Overall, just four companies control 90 percent of the nation's radio advertising revenues.

Newspaper ownership is becoming more concentrated as well. Today, there are six hundred fewer daily newspapers in the United States than there were eighty years ago, and ten companies control half of the nation's circulation. There are twenty major newspaper publishers in the United States. The top ten film studios receive 99 percent of all film revenue. The ten largest cable companies account for 85 percent of all cable revenue. This is a market far from the free press the framers sought to protect. Indeed, it is a market that is quite well protected— by the market.

Concentration in size alone is one thing. The more invidious change is in the nature of that concentration. As author James Fallows put it in a recent article about Rupert Murdoch,

Murdoch's companies now constitute a production system unmatched in its integration. They supply content—Fox movies … Fox TV shows … Fox-controlled sports broadcasts, plus newspapers and books. They sell the content to the public and to advertisers—in newspapers, on the broadcast network, on the cable channels. And they operate the physical distribution system through which the content reaches the customers. Murdoch's satellite systems now distribute News Corp. content in Europe and Asia; if Murdoch becomes DirecTV's largest single owner, that system will serve the same function in the United States.^[145]

The pattern with Murdoch is the pattern of modern media. Not just large companies owning many radio stations, but a few companies owning as many outlets of media as possible. A picture describes this pattern better than a thousand words could do:

Figur 10.19. Mønster for moderne mediaeierskap.

Betyr denne konsentrasjonen noe? Påvirker det hva som blir laget, eller hva som blir distribuert? Eller er det bare en mer effektiv måte å produsere og distribuere innhold?

Mitt syn var at konsentrasjonen ikke betød noe. Jeg tenkte det ikke var noe mer enn en mer effektiv finansiell struktur. Men nå, etter å ha lest og hørt på en haug av skapere prøve å overbevise meg om det motsatte, har jeg begynt å endre mening.

Her er en representativ historie som kan foreslå hvorfor denne integreringen er viktig.

I 1969 laget Norman Lear en polit for All in the Family. Han tok piloten til ABC, og nettverket likte det ikke. Da sa til Lear at det var for på kanten. Gjør det om igjen. Lear lagde piloten på nytt, mer på kanten enn den første. ABC ble fra seg. Du får ikke med deg poenget, fortalte de Lear. Vi vil ha det mindre på kanten, ikke mer.

I stedet for å føye seg, to Lear ganske enkelt serien sin til noen andre. CBS var glad for å ha seriene, og ABC kunne ikke stoppe Lear fra å gå til andre. Opphavsretten som Lear hadde sikret uavhengighet fra nettverk-kontroll.^[146]

The network did not control those copyrights because the law forbade the networks from controlling the content they syndicated. The law required a separation between the networks and the content producers; that separation would guarantee Lear freedom. And as late as 1992, because of these rules, the vast majority of prime time television—75 percent of it—was «independent» of the networks.

In 1994, the FCC abandoned the rules that required this independence. After that change, the networks quickly changed the balance. In 1985, there were twenty-five independent television production studios; in 2002, only five independent television studios remained. «In 1992, only 15 percent of new series were produced for a network by a company it controlled. Last year, the percentage of shows produced by controlled companies more than quintupled to 77 percent.» «In 1992, 16 new series were produced independently of conglomerate control, last year there was one.»^[147] In 2002, 75 percent of prime time television was owned by the networks that ran it. «In the ten-year period between 1992 and 2002, the number of prime time television hours per week produced by network studios increased over 200%, whereas the number of prime time television hours per week produced by independent studios decreased 63%.»^[148]

Today, another Norman Lear with another All in the Family would find that he had the choice either to make the show less edgy or to be fired: The content of any show developed for a network is increasingly owned by the network.

Mens antall kanaler har økt dramatisk, har eierskapet til disse kanalene snevret inn fra få til stadig færre. Som Barry Diller sa til Bill Moyers,

Well, if you have companies that produce, that finance, that air on their channel and then distribute worldwide everything that goes through their controlled distribution system, then what you get is fewer and fewer actual voices participating in the process. [We u]sed to have dozens and dozens of thriving independent production companies producing television programs. Now you have less than a handful.^[149]

This narrowing has an effect on what is produced. The product of such large and concentrated networks is increasingly homogenous. Increasingly safe. Increasingly sterile. The product of news shows from networks like this is increasingly tailored to the message the network wants to convey. This is not the communist party, though from the inside, it must feel a bit like the communist party. No one can question without risk of consequence—not necessarily banishment to Siberia, but punishment nonetheless. Independent, critical, different views are quashed. This is not the environment for a democracy.

Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the «Innovator's Dilemma»: the fact that large traditional firms find it rational to ignore new, breakthrough technologies that compete with their core business. The same analysis could help explain why large, traditional media companies would find it rational to ignore new cultural trends.^[150] Lumbering giants not only don't, but should not, sprint. Yet if the field is only open to the giants, there will be far too little sprinting.

I don't think we know enough about the economics of the media market to say with certainty what concentration and integration will do. The efficiencies are important, and the effect on culture is hard to measure.

But there is a quintessentially obvious example that does strongly suggest the concern.

In addition to the copyright wars, we're in the middle of the drug wars. Government policy is strongly directed against the drug cartels; criminal and civil courts are filled with the consequences of this battle.

Let me hereby disqualify myself from any possible appointment to any position in government by saying I believe this war is a profound mistake. I am not pro drugs. Indeed, I come from a family once wrecked by drugs—though the drugs that wrecked my family were all quite legal. I believe this war is a profound mistake because the collateral damage from it is so great as to make waging the war insane. When you add together the burdens on the criminal justice system, the desperation of generations of kids whose only real economic opportunities are as drug warriors, the queering of constitutional protections because of the constant surveillance this war requires, and, most profoundly, the total destruction of the legal systems of many South American nations because of the power of the local drug cartels, I find it impossible to believe that the marginal benefit in reduced drug consumption by Americans could possibly outweigh these costs.

You may not be convinced. That's fine. We live in a democracy, and it is through votes that we are to choose policy. But to do that, we depend fundamentally upon the press to help inform Americans about these issues.

Beginning in 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy launched a media campaign as part of the «war on drugs.» The campaign produced scores of short film clips about issues related to illegal drugs. In one series (the Nick and Norm series) two men are in a bar, discussing the idea of legalizing drugs as a way to avoid some of the collateral damage from the war. One advances an argument in favor of drug legalization. The other responds in a powerful and effective way against the argument of the first. In the end, the first guy changes his mind (hey, it's television). The plug at the end is a damning attack on the pro-legalization campaign.

Fair enough. It's a good ad. Not terribly misleading. It delivers its message well. It's a fair and reasonable message.

But let's say you think it is a wrong message, and you'd like to run a countercommercial. Say you want to run a series of ads that try to demonstrate the extraordinary collateral harm that comes from the drug war. Can you do it?

Well, obviously, these ads cost lots of money. Assume you raise the money. Assume a group of concerned citizens donates all the money in the world to help you get your message out. Can you be sure your message will be heard then?

No. You cannot. Television stations have a general policy of avoiding «controversial» ads. Ads sponsored by the government are deemed uncontroversial; ads disagreeing with the government are controversial. This selectivity might be thought inconsistent with the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court has held that stations have the right to choose what they run. Thus, the major channels of commercial media will refuse one side of a crucial debate the opportunity to present its case. And the courts will defend the rights of the stations to be this biased.^[151]

I'd be happy to defend the networks' rights, as well—if we lived in a media market that was truly diverse. But concentration in the media throws that condition into doubt. If a handful of companies control access to the media, and that handful of companies gets to decide which political positions it will allow to be promoted on its channels, then in an obvious and important way, concentration matters. You might like the positions the handful of companies selects. But you should not like a world in which a mere few get to decide which issues the rest of us get to know about.

In a well-known short story by H. G. Wells, a mountain climber named Nunez trips (literally, down an ice slope) into an unknown and isolated valley in the Peruvian Andes.^[154] The valley is extraordinarily beautiful, with «sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit.» But the villagers are all blind. Nunez takes this as an opportunity. «In the Country of the Blind,» he tells himself, «the One-Eyed Man is King.» So he resolves to live with the villagers to explore life as a king.

Things don't go quite as he planned. He tries to explain the idea of sight to the villagers. They don't understand. He tells them they are «blind.» They don't have the word blind. They think he's just thick. Indeed, as they increasingly notice the things he can't do (hear the sound of grass being stepped on, for example), they increasingly try to control him. He, in turn, becomes increasingly frustrated. «`You don't understand,' he cried, in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke. `You are blind and I can see. Leave me alone!'»

The villagers don't leave him alone. Nor do they see (so to speak) the virtue of his special power. Not even the ultimate target of his affection, a young woman who to him seems «the most beautiful thing in the whole of creation,» understands the beauty of sight. Nunez's description of what he sees «seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence.» «She did not believe,» Wells tells us, and «she could only half understand, but she was mysteriously delighted.»

When Nunez announces his desire to marry his «mysteriously delighted» love, the father and the village object. «You see, my dear,» her father instructs, «he's an idiot. He has delusions. He can't do anything right.» They take Nunez to the village doctor.

After a careful examination, the doctor gives his opinion. «His brain is affected,» he reports.

«What affects it?» the father asks. «Those queer things that are called the eyes … are diseased … in such a way as to affect his brain.»

The doctor continues: «I think I may say with reasonable certainty that in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies [the eyes].»

«Thank Heaven for science!» says the father to the doctor. They inform Nunez of this condition necessary for him to be allowed his bride. (You'll have to read the original to learn what happens in the end. I believe in free culture, but never in giving away the end of a story.) It sometimes happens that the eggs of twins fuse in the mother's womb. That fusion produces a «chimera.» A chimera is a single creature with two sets of DNA. The DNA in the blood, for example, might be different from the DNA of the skin. This possibility is an underused plot for murder mysteries. «But the DNA shows with 100 percent certainty that she was not the person whose blood was at the scene. …»

Before I had read about chimeras, I would have said they were impossible. A single person can't have two sets of DNA. The very idea of DNA is that it is the code of an individual. Yet in fact, not only can two individuals have the same set of DNA (identical twins), but one person can have two different sets of DNA (a chimera). Our understanding of a «person» should reflect this reality.

The more I work to understand the current struggle over copyright and culture, which I've sometimes called unfairly, and sometimes not unfairly enough, «the copyright wars,» the more I think we're dealing with a chimera. For example, in the battle over the question «What is p2p file sharing?» both sides have it right, and both sides have it wrong. One side says, «File sharing is just like two kids taping each others' records—the sort of thing we've been doing for the last thirty years without any question at all.» That's true, at least in part. When I tell my best friend to try out a new CD that I've bought, but rather than just send the CD, I point him to my p2p server, that is, in all relevant respects, just like what every executive in every recording company no doubt did as a kid: sharing music.

But the description is also false in part. For when my p2p server is on a p2p network through which anyone can get access to my music, then sure, my friends can get access, but it stretches the meaning of «friends» beyond recognition to say «my ten thousand best friends» can get access. Whether or not sharing my music with my best friend is what «we have always been allowed to do,» we have not always been allowed to share music with «our ten thousand best friends.»

Likewise, when the other side says, «File sharing is just like walking into a Tower Records and taking a CD off the shelf and walking out with it,» that's true, at least in part. If, after Lyle Lovett (finally) releases a new album, rather than buying it, I go to Kazaa and find a free copy to take, that is very much like stealing a copy from Tower.

But it is not quite stealing from Tower. After all, when I take a CD from Tower Records, Tower has one less CD to sell. And when I take a CD from Tower Records, I get a bit of plastic and a cover, and something to show on my shelves. (And, while we're at it, we could also note that when I take a CD from Tower Records, the maximum fine that might be imposed on me, under California law, at least, is $1,000. According to the RIAA, by contrast, if I download a ten-song CD, I'm liable for $1,500,000 in damages.)

The point is not that it is as neither side describes. The point is that it is both—both as the RIAA describes it and as Kazaa describes it. It is a chimera. And rather than simply denying what the other side asserts, we need to begin to think about how we should respond to this chimera. What rules should govern it?

We could respond by simply pretending that it is not a chimera. We could, with the RIAA, decide that every act of file sharing should be a felony. We could prosecute families for millions of dollars in damages just because file sharing occurred on a family computer. And we can get universities to monitor all computer traffic to make sure that no computer is used to commit this crime. These responses might be extreme, but each of them has either been proposed or actually implemented.^[155]

Alternatively, we could respond to file sharing the way many kids act as though we've responded. We could totally legalize it. Let there be no copyright liability, either civil or criminal, for making copyrighted content available on the Net. Make file sharing like gossip: regulated, if at all, by social norms but not by law.

Either response is possible. I think either would be a mistake. Rather than embrace one of these two extremes, we should embrace something that recognizes the truth in both. And while I end this book with a sketch of a system that does just that, my aim in the next chapter is to show just how awful it would be for us to adopt the zero-tolerance extreme. I believe either extreme would be worse than a reasonable alternative. But I believe the zero-tolerance solution would be the worse of the two extremes.

Yet zero tolerance is increasingly our government's policy. In the middle of the chaos that the Internet has created, an extraordinary land grab is occurring. The law and technology are being shifted to give content holders a kind of control over our culture that they have never had before. And in this extremism, many an opportunity for new innovation and new creativity will be lost.

I'm not talking about the opportunities for kids to «steal» music. My focus instead is the commercial and cultural innovation that this war will also kill. We have never seen the power to innovate spread so broadly among our citizens, and we have just begun to see the innovation that this power will unleash. Yet the Internet has already seen the passing of one cycle of innovation around technologies to distribute content. The law is responsible for this passing. As the vice president for global public policy at one of these new innovators, eMusic.com, put it when criticizing the DMCA's added protection for copyrighted material,

In April 2001, eMusic.com was purchased by Vivendi Universal, one of «the major labels.» Its position on these matters has now changed.

Reversing our tradition of tolerance now will not merely quash piracy. It will sacrifice values that are important to this culture, and will kill opportunities that could be extraordinarily valuable.

To fight «piracy,» to protect «property,» the content industry has launched a war. Lobbying and lots of campaign contributions have now brought the government into this war. As with any war, this one will have both direct and collateral damage. As with any war of prohibition, these damages will be suffered most by our own people.

My aim so far has been to describe the consequences of this war, in particular, the consequences for «free culture.» But my aim now is to extend this description of consequences into an argument. Is this war justified?

In my view, it is not. There is no good reason why this time, for the first time, the law should defend the old against the new, just when the power of the property called «intellectual property» is at its greatest in our history.

Yet «common sense» does not see it this way. Common sense is still on the side of the Causbys and the content industry. The extreme claims of control in the name of property still resonate; the uncritical rejection of «piracy» still has play.

There will be many consequences of continuing this war. I want to describe just three. All three might be said to be unintended. I am quite confident the third is unintended. I'm less sure about the first two. The first two protect modern RCAs, but there is no Howard Armstrong in the wings to fight today's monopolists of culture.

In 1995, a father was frustrated that his daughters didn't seem to like Hawthorne. No doubt there was more than one such father, but at least one did something about it. Eric Eldred, a retired computer programmer living in New Hampshire, decided to put Hawthorne on the Web. An electronic version, Eldred thought, with links to pictures and explanatory text, would make this nineteenth-century author's work come alive.

It didn't work—at least for his daughters. They didn't find Hawthorne any more interesting than before. But Eldred's experiment gave birth to a hobby, and his hobby begat a cause: Eldred would build a library of public domain works by scanning these works and making them available for free.

Eldred's library was not simply a copy of certain public domain works, though even a copy would have been of great value to people across the world who can't get access to printed versions of these works. Instead, Eldred was producing derivative works from these public domain works. Just as Disney turned Grimm into stories more accessible to the twentieth century, Eldred transformed Hawthorne, and many others, into a form more accessible—technically accessible—today.

Eldred's freedom to do this with Hawthorne's work grew from the same source as Disney's. Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter had passed into the public domain in 1907. It was free for anyone to take without the permission of the Hawthorne estate or anyone else. Some, such as Dover Press and Penguin Classics, take works from the public domain and produce printed editions, which they sell in bookstores across the country. Others, such as Disney, take these stories and turn them into animated cartoons, sometimes successfully (Cinderella), sometimes not (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Treasure Planet). These are all commercial publications of public domain works.

The Internet created the possibility of noncommercial publications of public domain works. Eldred's is just one example. There are literally thousands of others. Hundreds of thousands from across the world have discovered this platform of expression and now use it to share works that are, by law, free for the taking. This has produced what we might call the «noncommercial publishing industry,» which before the Internet was limited to people with large egos or with political or social causes. But with the Internet, it includes a wide range of individuals and groups dedicated to spreading culture generally.^[179]

As I said, Eldred lives in New Hampshire. In 1998, Robert Frost's collection of poems New Hampshire was slated to pass into the public domain. Eldred wanted to post that collection in his free public library. But Congress got in the way. As I described in chapter 10, in 1998, for the eleventh time in forty years, Congress extended the terms of existing copyrights—this time by twenty years. Eldred would not be free to add any works more recent than 1923 to his collection until 2019. Indeed, no copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until that year (and not even then, if Congress extends the term again). By contrast, in the same period, more than 1 million patents will pass into the public domain.

This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), enacted in memory of the congressman and former musician Sonny Bono, who, his widow, Mary Bono, says, believed that «copyrights should be forever.»^[180]

Eldred decided to fight this law. He first resolved to fight it through civil disobedience. In a series of interviews, Eldred announced that he would publish as planned, CTEA notwithstanding. But because of a second law passed in 1998, the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act, his act of publishing would make Eldred a felon—whether or not anyone complained. This was a dangerous strategy for a disabled programmer to undertake.

It was here that I became involved in Eldred's battle. I was a constitutional scholar whose first passion was constitutional interpretation. And though constitutional law courses never focus upon the Progress Clause of the Constitution, it had always struck me as importantly different. As you know, the Constitution says,

As I've described, this clause is unique within the power-granting clause of Article I, section 8 of our Constitution. Every other clause granting power to Congress simply says Congress has the power to do something—for example, to regulate «commerce among the several states» or «declare War.» But here, the «something» is something quite specific—to «promote … Progress»—through means that are also specific— by «securing» «exclusive Rights» (i.e., copyrights) «for limited Times.»

In the past forty years, Congress has gotten into the practice of extending existing terms of copyright protection. What puzzled me about this was, if Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then the Constitution's requirement that terms be «limited» will have no practical effect. If every time a copyright is about to expire, Congress has the power to extend its term, then Congress can achieve what the Constitution plainly forbids—perpetual terms «on the installment plan,» as Professor Peter Jaszi so nicely put it.

As an academic, my first response was to hit the books. I remember sitting late at the office, scouring on-line databases for any serious consideration of the question. No one had ever challenged Congress's practice of extending existing terms. That failure may in part be why Congress seemed so untroubled in its habit. That, and the fact that the practice had become so lucrative for Congress. Congress knows that copyright owners will be willing to pay a great deal of money to see their copyright terms extended. And so Congress is quite happy to keep this gravy train going.

For this is the core of the corruption in our present system of government. «Corruption» not in the sense that representatives are bribed. Rather, «corruption» in the sense that the system induces the beneficiaries of Congress's acts to raise and give money to Congress to induce it to act. There's only so much time; there's only so much Congress can do. Why not limit its actions to those things it must do—and those things that pay? Extending copyright terms pays.

If that's not obvious to you, consider the following: Say you're one of the very few lucky copyright owners whose copyright continues to make money one hundred years after it was created. The Estate of Robert Frost is a good example. Frost died in 1963. His poetry continues to be extraordinarily valuable. Thus the Robert Frost estate benefits greatly from any extension of copyright, since no publisher would pay the estate any money if the poems Frost wrote could be published by anyone for free.

So imagine the Robert Frost estate is earning $100,000 a year from three of Frost's poems. And imagine the copyright for those poems is about to expire. You sit on the board of the Robert Frost estate. Your financial adviser comes to your board meeting with a very grim report:

«Next year,» the adviser announces, «our copyrights in works A, B, and C will expire. That means that after next year, we will no longer be receiving the annual royalty check of $100,000 from the publishers of those works.»

«There's a proposal in Congress, however,» she continues, «that could change this. A few congressmen are floating a bill to extend the terms of copyright by twenty years. That bill would be extraordinarily valuable to us. So we should hope this bill passes.»

«Hope?» a fellow board member says. «Can't we be doing something about it?»

«Well, obviously, yes,» the adviser responds. «We could contribute to the campaigns of a number of representatives to try to assure that they support the bill.»

You hate politics. You hate contributing to campaigns. So you want to know whether this disgusting practice is worth it. «How much would we get if this extension were passed?» you ask the adviser. «How much is it worth?»

«Well,» the adviser says, «if you're confident that you will continue to get at least $100,000 a year from these copyrights, and you use the `discount rate' that we use to evaluate estate investments (6 percent), then this law would be worth $1,146,000 to the estate.»

You're a bit shocked by the number, but you quickly come to the correct conclusion:

«So you're saying it would be worth it for us to pay more than $1,000,000 in campaign contributions if we were confident those contributions would assure that the bill was passed?»

«Absolutely,» the adviser responds. «It is worth it to you to contribute up to the `present value' of the income you expect from these copyrights. Which for us means over $1,000,000.»

You quickly get the point—you as the member of the board and, I trust, you the reader. Each time copyrights are about to expire, every beneficiary in the position of the Robert Frost estate faces the same choice: If they can contribute to get a law passed to extend copyrights, they will benefit greatly from that extension. And so each time copyrights are about to expire, there is a massive amount of lobbying to get the copyright term extended.

Thus a congressional perpetual motion machine: So long as legislation can be bought (albeit indirectly), there will be all the incentive in the world to buy further extensions of copyright.

In the lobbying that led to the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, this «theory» about incentives was proved real. Ten of the thirteen original sponsors of the act in the House received the maximum contribution from Disney's political action committee; in the Senate, eight of the twelve sponsors received contributions.^[181] The RIAA and the MPAA are estimated to have spent over $1.5 million lobbying in the 1998 election cycle. They paid out more than $200,000 in campaign contributions.^[182] Disney is estimated to have contributed more than $800,000 to reelection campaigns in the cycle.^[183]

Constitutional law is not oblivious to the obvious. Or at least, it need not be. So when I was considering Eldred's complaint, this reality about the never-ending incentives to increase the copyright term was central to my thinking. In my view, a pragmatic court committed to interpreting and applying the Constitution of our framers would see that if Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then there would be no effective constitutional requirement that terms be «limited.» If they could extend it once, they would extend it again and again and again.

It was also my judgment that this Supreme Court would not allow Congress to extend existing terms. As anyone close to the Supreme Court's work knows, this Court has increasingly restricted the power of Congress when it has viewed Congress's actions as exceeding the power granted to it by the Constitution. Among constitutional scholars, the most famous example of this trend was the Supreme Court's decision in 1995 to strike down a law that banned the possession of guns near schools.

Since 1937, the Supreme Court had interpreted Congress's granted powers very broadly; so, while the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate only «commerce among the several states» (aka «interstate commerce»), the Supreme Court had interpreted that power to include the power to regulate any activity that merely affected interstate commerce.

As the economy grew, this standard increasingly meant that there was no limit to Congress's power to regulate, since just about every activity, when considered on a national scale, affects interstate commerce. A Constitution designed to limit Congress's power was instead interpreted to impose no limit.

The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Rehnquist's command, changed that in United States v. Lopez. The government had argued that possessing guns near schools affected interstate commerce. Guns near schools increase crime, crime lowers property values, and so on. In the oral argument, the Chief Justice asked the government whether there was any activity that would not affect interstate commerce under the reasoning the government advanced. The government said there was not; if Congress says an activity affects interstate commerce, then that activity affects interstate commerce. The Supreme Court, the government said, was not in the position to second-guess Congress.

«We pause to consider the implications of the government's arguments,» the Chief Justice wrote.^[184] If anything Congress says is interstate commerce must therefore be considered interstate commerce, then there would be no limit to Congress's power. The decision in Lopez was reaffirmed five years later in United States v. Morrison.^[185]

If a principle were at work here, then it should apply to the Progress Clause as much as the Commerce Clause.^[186] And if it is applied to the Progress Clause, the principle should yield the conclusion that Congress can't extend an existing term. If Congress could extend an existing term, then there would be no «stopping point» to Congress's power over terms, though the Constitution expressly states that there is such a limit. Thus, the same principle applied to the power to grant copyrights should entail that Congress is not allowed to extend the term of existing copyrights.

If, that is, the principle announced in Lopez stood for a principle. Many believed the decision in Lopez stood for politics—a conservative Supreme Court, which believed in states' rights, using its power over Congress to advance its own personal political preferences. But I rejected that view of the Supreme Court's decision. Indeed, shortly after the decision, I wrote an article demonstrating the «fidelity» in such an interpretation of the Constitution. The idea that the Supreme Court decides cases based upon its politics struck me as extraordinarily boring. I was not going to devote my life to teaching constitutional law if these nine Justices were going to be petty politicians.

Now let's pause for a moment to make sure we understand what the argument in Eldred was not about. By insisting on the Constitution's limits to copyright, obviously Eldred was not endorsing piracy. Indeed, in an obvious sense, he was fighting a kind of piracy—piracy of the public domain. When Robert Frost wrote his work and when Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, the maximum copyright term was just fifty-six years. Because of interim changes, Frost and Disney had already enjoyed a seventy-five-year monopoly for their work. They had gotten the benefit of the bargain that the Constitution envisions: In exchange for a monopoly protected for fifty-six years, they created new work. But now these entities were using their power—expressed through the power of lobbyists' money—to get another twenty-year dollop of monopoly. That twenty-year dollop would be taken from the public domain. Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects us all.

Some people view the public domain with contempt. In their brief before the Supreme Court, the Nashville Songwriters Association wrote that the public domain is nothing more than «legal piracy.»^[187] But it is not piracy when the law allows it; and in our constitutional system, our law requires it. Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.

As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture. Yet, as Eric Eldred discovered, we have set up a system that assures that copyright terms will be repeatedly extended, and extended, and extended. We have created the perfect storm for the public domain. Copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again.

It is valuable copyrights that are responsible for terms being extended. Mickey Mouse and «Rhapsody in Blue.» These works are too valuable for copyright owners to ignore. But the real harm to our society from copyright extensions is not that Mickey Mouse remains Disney's. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that have continuing commercial value. The real harm of term extension comes not from these famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result.

If you look at the work created in the first twenty years (1923 to 1942) affected by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 2 percent of that work has any continuing commercial value. It was the copyright holders for that 2 percent who pushed the CTEA through. But the law and its effect were not limited to that 2 percent. The law extended the terms of copyright generally.^[188]

Think practically about the consequence of this extension—practically, as a businessperson, and not as a lawyer eager for more legal work. In 1930, 10,047 books were published. In 2000, 174 of those books were still in print. Let's say you were Brewster Kahle, and you wanted to make available to the world in your iArchive project the remaining 9,873. What would you have to do?

Well, first, you'd have to determine which of the 9,873 books were still under copyright. That requires going to a library (these data are not on-line) and paging through tomes of books, cross-checking the titles and authors of the 9,873 books with the copyright registration and renewal records for works published in 1930. That will produce a list of books still under copyright.

Then for the books still under copyright, you would need to locate the current copyright owners. How would you do that?

Most people think that there must be a list of these copyright owners somewhere. Practical people think this way. How could there be thousands and thousands of government monopolies without there being at least a list?

But there is no list. There may be a name from 1930, and then in 1959, of the person who registered the copyright. But just think practically about how impossibly difficult it would be to track down thousands of such records—especially since the person who registered is not necessarily the current owner. And we're just talking about 1930!

«But there isn't a list of who owns property generally,» the apologists for the system respond. «Why should there be a list of copyright owners?»

Well, actually, if you think about it, there are plenty of lists of who owns what property. Think about deeds on houses, or titles to cars. And where there isn't a list, the code of real space is pretty good at suggesting who the owner of a bit of property is. (A swing set in your backyard is probably yours.) So formally or informally, we have a pretty good way to know who owns what tangible property.

So: You walk down a street and see a house. You can know who owns the house by looking it up in the courthouse registry. If you see a car, there is ordinarily a license plate that will link the owner to the car. If you see a bunch of children's toys sitting on the front lawn of a house, it's fairly easy to determine who owns the toys. And if you happen to see a baseball lying in a gutter on the side of the road, look around for a second for some kids playing ball. If you don't see any kids, then okay: Here's a bit of property whose owner we can't easily determine. It is the exception that proves the rule: that we ordinarily know quite well who owns what property.

Compare this story to intangible property. You go into a library. The library owns the books. But who owns the copyrights? As I've already described, there's no list of copyright owners. There are authors' names, of course, but their copyrights could have been assigned, or passed down in an estate like Grandma's old jewelry. To know who owns what, you would have to hire a private detective. The bottom line: The owner cannot easily be located. And in a regime like ours, in which it is a felony to use such property without the property owner's permission, the property isn't going to be used.

The consequence with respect to old books is that they won't be digitized, and hence will simply rot away on shelves. But the consequence for other creative works is much more dire.

Consider the story of Michael Agee, chairman of Hal Roach Studios, which owns the copyrights for the Laurel and Hardy films. Agee is a direct beneficiary of the Bono Act. The Laurel and Hardy films were made between 1921 and 1951. Only one of these films, The Lucky Dog, is currently out of copyright. But for the CTEA, films made after 1923 would have begun entering the public domain. Because Agee controls the exclusive rights for these popular films, he makes a great deal of money. According to one estimate, «Roach has sold about 60,000 videocassettes and 50,000 DVDs of the duo's silent films.»^[189]

Yet Agee opposed the CTEA. His reasons demonstrate a rare virtue in this culture: selflessness. He argued in a brief before the Supreme Court that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will, if left standing, destroy a whole generation of American film.

His argument is straightforward. A tiny fraction of this work has any continuing commercial value. The rest—to the extent it survives at all—sits in vaults gathering dust. It may be that some of this work not now commercially valuable will be deemed to be valuable by the owners of the vaults. For this to occur, however, the commercial benefit from the work must exceed the costs of making the work available for distribution.

We can't know the benefits, but we do know a lot about the costs. For most of the history of film, the costs of restoring film were very high; digital technology has lowered these costs substantially. While it cost more than $10,000 to restore a ninety-minute black-and-white film in 1993, it can now cost as little as $100 to digitize one hour of mm film.^[190]

Restoration technology is not the only cost, nor the most important. Lawyers, too, are a cost, and increasingly, a very important one. In addition to preserving the film, a distributor needs to secure the rights. And to secure the rights for a film that is under copyright, you need to locate the copyright owner.

Or more accurately, owners. As we've seen, there isn't only a single copyright associated with a film; there are many. There isn't a single person whom you can contact about those copyrights; there are as many as can hold the rights, which turns out to be an extremely large number. Thus the costs of clearing the rights to these films is exceptionally high.

«But can't you just restore the film, distribute it, and then pay the copyright owner when she shows up?» Sure, if you want to commit a felony. And even if you're not worried about committing a felony, when she does show up, she'll have the right to sue you for all the profits you have made. So, if you're successful, you can be fairly confident you'll be getting a call from someone's lawyer. And if you're not successful, you won't make enough to cover the costs of your own lawyer. Either way, you have to talk to a lawyer. And as is too often the case, saying you have to talk to a lawyer is the same as saying you won't make any money.

For some films, the benefit of releasing the film may well exceed these costs. But for the vast majority of them, there is no way the benefit would outweigh the legal costs. Thus, for the vast majority of old films, Agee argued, the film will not be restored and distributed until the copyright expires.

But by the time the copyright for these films expires, the film will have expired. These films were produced on nitrate-based stock, and nitrate stock dissolves over time. They will be gone, and the metal canisters in which they are now stored will be filled with nothing more than dust.

Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. For that tiny fraction, the copyright creates incentives to produce and distribute the creative work. For that tiny fraction, the copyright acts as an «engine of free expression.»

But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative work has a commercial life is extremely short. As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends.

Yet that doesn't mean the life of the creative work ends. We don't keep libraries of books in order to compete with Barnes & Noble, and we don't have archives of films because we expect people to choose between spending Friday night watching new movies and spending Friday night watching a 1930 news documentary. The noncommercial life of culture is important and valuable—for entertainment but also, and more importantly, for knowledge. To understand who we are, and where we came from, and how we have made the mistakes that we have, we need to have access to this history.

Copyrights in this context do not drive an engine of free expression. In this context, there is no need for an exclusive right. Copyrights in this context do no good.

Yet, for most of our history, they also did little harm. For most of our history, when a work ended its commercial life, there was no copyright-related use that would be inhibited by an exclusive right. When a book went out of print, you could not buy it from a publisher. But you could still buy it from a used book store, and when a used book store sells it, in America, at least, there is no need to pay the copyright owner anything. Thus, the ordinary use of a book after its commercial life ended was a use that was independent of copyright law.

The same was effectively true of film. Because the costs of restoring a film—the real economic costs, not the lawyer costs—were so high, it was never at all feasible to preserve or restore film. Like the remains of a great dinner, when it's over, it's over. Once a film passed out of its commercial life, it may have been archived for a bit, but that was the end of its life so long as the market didn't have more to offer.

In other words, though copyright has been relatively short for most of our history, long copyrights wouldn't have mattered for the works that lost their commercial value. Long copyrights for these works would not have interfered with anything.

But this situation has now changed.

One crucially important consequence of the emergence of digital technologies is to enable the archive that Brewster Kahle dreams of. Digital technologies now make it possible to preserve and give access to all sorts of knowledge. Once a book goes out of print, we can now imagine digitizing it and making it available to everyone, forever. Once a film goes out of distribution, we could digitize it and make it available to everyone, forever. Digital technologies give new life to copyrighted material after it passes out of its commercial life. It is now possible to preserve and assure universal access to this knowledge and culture, whereas before it was not.

And now copyright law does get in the way. Every step of producing this digital archive of our culture infringes on the exclusive right of copyright. To digitize a book is to copy it. To do that requires permission of the copyright owner. The same with music, film, or any other aspect of our culture protected by copyright. The effort to make these things available to history, or to researchers, or to those who just want to explore, is now inhibited by a set of rules that were written for a radically different context.

Here is the core of the harm that comes from extending terms: Now that technology enables us to rebuild the library of Alexandria, the law gets in the way. And it doesn't get in the way for any useful copyright purpose, for the purpose of copyright is to enable the commercial market that spreads culture. No, we are talking about culture after it has lived its commercial life. In this context, copyright is serving no purpose at all related to the spread of knowledge. In this context, copyright is not an engine of free expression. Copyright is a brake.

You may well ask, «But if digital technologies lower the costs for Brewster Kahle, then they will lower the costs for Random House, too. So won't Random House do as well as Brewster Kahle in spreading culture widely?»

Maybe. Someday. But there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that publishers would be as complete as libraries. If Barnes & Noble offered to lend books from its stores for a low price, would that eliminate the need for libraries? Only if you think that the only role of a library is to serve what «the market» would demand. But if you think the role of a library is bigger than this—if you think its role is to archive culture, whether there's a demand for any particular bit of that culture or not—then we can't count on the commercial market to do our library work for us.

I would be the first to agree that it should do as much as it can: We should rely upon the market as much as possible to spread and enable culture. My message is absolutely not antimarket. But where we see the market is not doing the job, then we should allow nonmarket forces the freedom to fill the gaps. As one researcher calculated for American culture, 94 percent of the films, books, and music produced between and 1946 is not commercially available. However much you love the commercial market, if access is a value, then 6 percent is a failure to provide that value.^[191]

In January 1999, we filed a lawsuit on Eric Eldred's behalf in federal district court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to declare the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act unconstitutional. The two central claims that we made were (1) that extending existing terms violated the Constitution's «limited Times» requirement, and (2) that extending terms by another twenty years violated the First Amendment.

The district court dismissed our claims without even hearing an argument. A panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also dismissed our claims, though after hearing an extensive argument. But that decision at least had a dissent, by one of the most conservative judges on that court. That dissent gave our claims life.

Judge David Sentelle said the CTEA violated the requirement that copyrights be for «limited Times» only. His argument was as elegant as it was simple: If Congress can extend existing terms, then there is no «stopping point» to Congress's power under the Copyright Clause. The power to extend existing terms means Congress is not required to grant terms that are «limited.» Thus, Judge Sentelle argued, the court had to interpret the term «limited Times» to give it meaning. And the best interpretation, Judge Sentelle argued, would be to deny Congress the power to extend existing terms.

We asked the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as a whole to hear the case. Cases are ordinarily heard in panels of three, except for important cases or cases that raise issues specific to the circuit as a whole, where the court will sit «en banc» to hear the case.

The Court of Appeals rejected our request to hear the case en banc. This time, Judge Sentelle was joined by the most liberal member of the D.C. Circuit, Judge David Tatel. Both the most conservative and the most liberal judges in the D.C. Circuit believed Congress had overstepped its bounds.

It was here that most expected Eldred v. Ashcroft would die, for the Supreme Court rarely reviews any decision by a court of appeals. (It hears about one hundred cases a year, out of more than five thousand appeals.) And it practically never reviews a decision that upholds a statute when no other court has yet reviewed the statute.

But in February 2002, the Supreme Court surprised the world by granting our petition to review the D.C. Circuit opinion. Argument was set for October of 2002. The summer would be spent writing briefs and preparing for argument.

It is over a year later as I write these words. It is still astonishingly hard. If you know anything at all about this story, you know that we lost the appeal. And if you know something more than just the minimum, you probably think there was no way this case could have been won. After our defeat, I received literally thousands of missives by well-wishers and supporters, thanking me for my work on behalf of this noble but doomed cause. And none from this pile was more significant to me than the e-mail from my client, Eric Eldred.

Men min klient og disse vennene tok feil. Denne saken kunne vært vunnet. Det burde ha vært vunnet. Og uansett hvor hardt jeg prøver å fortelle den historien til meg selv, kan jeg aldri unnslippe troen på at det er min feil at vi ikke vant.

Feil ble gjort tidlig, skjønt den ble først åpenbart på slutten. Vår sak hadde støtte hos en ekstraordinær advokat, Geoffrey Stewart, helt fra starten, og hos advokatfirmaet hadde han flyttet til, Jones, Day, Reavis og Pogue. Jones Day mottok mye press fra sine opphavsrettsbeskyttende klienter på grunn av sin støtte til oss. De ignorert dette presset (noe veldig få advokatfirmaer noen sinne ville gjøre), og ga alt de hadde gjennom hele saken.

Det var tre viktige advokater på saken fra Jones DaY. Geoff Stewart var den først, men siden ble Dan Bromberg og Don Ayer ganske involvert. Bromberg og Ayer spesielt hadde en felles oppfatning om hvordan denne saken ville bli vunnet: vi ville bare vinne, fortalte de gjentatte ganger til meg, hvis vi få problemet til å virke «viktig» for Høyesterett. Det måtte synes som om dramatisk skade ble gjort til ytringsfriheten og fri kultur, ellers ville de aldri stemt mot «de mektigste mediaselskapene i verden».

I hate this view of the law. Of course I thought the Sonny Bono Act was a dramatic harm to free speech and free culture. Of course I still think it is. But the idea that the Supreme Court decides the law based on how important they believe the issues are is just wrong. It might be «right» as in «true,» I thought, but it is «wrong» as in «it just shouldn't be that way.» As I believed that any faithful interpretation of what the framers of our Constitution did would yield the conclusion that the CTEA was unconstitutional, and as I believed that any faithful interpretation of what the First Amendment means would yield the conclusion that the power to extend existing copyright terms is unconstitutional, I was not persuaded that we had to sell our case like soap. Just as a law that bans the swastika is unconstitutional not because the Court likes Nazis but because such a law would violate the Constitution, so too, in my view, would the Court decide whether Congress's law was constitutional based on the Constitution, not based on whether they liked the values that the framers put in the Constitution.

In any case, I thought, the Court must already see the danger and the harm caused by this sort of law. Why else would they grant review? There was no reason to hear the case in the Supreme Court if they weren't convinced that this regulation was harmful. So in my view, we didn't need to persuade them that this law was bad, we needed to show why it was unconstitutional.

There was one way, however, in which I felt politics would matter and in which I thought a response was appropriate. I was convinced that the Court would not hear our arguments if it thought these were just the arguments of a group of lefty loons. This Supreme Court was not about to launch into a new field of judicial review if it seemed that this field of review was simply the preference of a small political minority. Although my focus in the case was not to demonstrate how bad the Sonny Bono Act was but to demonstrate that it was unconstitutional, my hope was to make this argument against a background of briefs that covered the full range of political views. To show that this claim against the CTEA was grounded in law and not politics, then, we tried to gather the widest range of credible critics—credible not because they were rich and famous, but because they, in the aggregate, demonstrated that this law was unconstitutional regardless of one's politics.

The first step happened all by itself. Phyllis Schlafly's organization, Eagle Forum, had been an opponent of the CTEA from the very beginning. Mrs. Schlafly viewed the CTEA as a sellout by Congress. In November 1998, she wrote a stinging editorial attacking the Republican Congress for allowing the law to pass. As she wrote, «Do you sometimes wonder why bills that create a financial windfall to narrow special interests slide easily through the intricate legislative process, while bills that benefit the general public seem to get bogged down?» The answer, as the editorial documented, was the power of money. Schlafly enumerated Disney's contributions to the key players on the committees. It was money, not justice, that gave Mickey Mouse twenty more years in Disney's control, Schlafly argued.

In the Court of Appeals, Eagle Forum was eager to file a brief supporting our position. Their brief made the argument that became the core claim in the Supreme Court: If Congress can extend the term of existing copyrights, there is no limit to Congress's power to set terms. That strong conservative argument persuaded a strong conservative judge, Judge Sentelle.

In the Supreme Court, the briefs on our side were about as diverse as it gets. They included an extraordinary historical brief by the Free Software Foundation (home of the GNU project that made GNU/ Linux possible). They included a powerful brief about the costs of uncertainty by Intel. There were two law professors' briefs, one by copyright scholars and one by First Amendment scholars. There was an exhaustive and uncontroverted brief by the world's experts in the history of the Progress Clause. And of course, there was a new brief by Eagle Forum, repeating and strengthening its arguments.

Those briefs framed a legal argument. Then to support the legal argument, there were a number of powerful briefs by libraries and archives, including the Internet Archive, the American Association of Law Libraries, and the National Writers Union.

But two briefs captured the policy argument best. One made the argument I've already described: A brief by Hal Roach Studios argued that unless the law was struck, a whole generation of American film would disappear. The other made the economic argument absolutely clear.

This economists' brief was signed by seventeen economists, including five Nobel Prize winners, including Ronald Coase, James Buchanan, Milton Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, and George Akerlof. The economists, as the list of Nobel winners demonstrates, spanned the political spectrum. Their conclusions were powerful: There was no plausible claim that extending the terms of existing copyrights would do anything to increase incentives to create. Such extensions were nothing more than «rent-seeking»—the fancy term economists use to describe special-interest legislation gone wild.

The same effort at balance was reflected in the legal team we gathered to write our briefs in the case. The Jones Day lawyers had been with us from the start. But when the case got to the Supreme Court, we added three lawyers to help us frame this argument to this Court: Alan Morrison, a lawyer from Public Citizen, a Washington group that had made constitutional history with a series of seminal victories in the Supreme Court defending individual rights; my colleague and dean, Kathleen Sullivan, who had argued many cases in the Court, and who had advised us early on about a First Amendment strategy; and finally, former solicitor general Charles Fried.

Fried was a special victory for our side. Every other former solicitor general was hired by the other side to defend Congress's power to give media companies the special favor of extended copyright terms. Fried was the only one who turned down that lucrative assignment to stand up for something he believed in. He had been Ronald Reagan's chief lawyer in the Supreme Court. He had helped craft the line of cases that limited Congress's power in the context of the Commerce Clause. And while he had argued many positions in the Supreme Court that I personally disagreed with, his joining the cause was a vote of confidence in our argument.

The government, in defending the statute, had its collection of friends, as well. Significantly, however, none of these «friends» included historians or economists. The briefs on the other side of the case were written exclusively by major media companies, congressmen, and copyright holders.

The media companies were not surprising. They had the most to gain from the law. The congressmen were not surprising either—they were defending their power and, indirectly, the gravy train of contributions such power induced. And of course it was not surprising that the copyright holders would defend the idea that they should continue to have the right to control who did what with content they wanted to control.

Dr. Seuss's representatives, for example, argued that it was better for the Dr. Seuss estate to control what happened to Dr. Seuss's work— better than allowing it to fall into the public domain—because if this creativity were in the public domain, then people could use it to «glorify drugs or to create pornography.»^[192] That was also the motive of the Gershwin estate, which defended its «protection» of the work of George Gershwin. They refuse, for example, to license Porgy and Bess to anyone who refuses to use African Americans in the cast.^[193] That's their view of how this part of American culture should be controlled, and they wanted this law to help them effect that control.

This argument made clear a theme that is rarely noticed in this debate. When Congress decides to extend the term of existing copyrights, Congress is making a choice about which speakers it will favor. Famous and beloved copyright owners, such as the Gershwin estate and Dr. Seuss, come to Congress and say, «Give us twenty years to control the speech about these icons of American culture. We'll do better with them than anyone else.» Congress of course likes to reward the popular and famous by giving them what they want. But when Congress gives people an exclusive right to speak in a certain way, that's just what the First Amendment is traditionally meant to block.

We argued as much in a final brief. Not only would upholding the CTEA mean that there was no limit to the power of Congress to extend copyrights—extensions that would further concentrate the market; it would also mean that there was no limit to Congress's power to play favorites, through copyright, with who has the right to speak. Between February and October, there was little I did beyond preparing for this case. Early on, as I said, I set the strategy.

The Supreme Court was divided into two important camps. One camp we called «the Conservatives.» The other we called «the Rest.» The Conservatives included Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O'Connor, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas. These five had been the most consistent in limiting Congress's power. They were the five who had supported the Lopez/Morrison line of cases that said that an enumerated power had to be interpreted to assure that Congress's powers had limits.

The Rest were the four Justices who had strongly opposed limits on Congress's power. These four—Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer—had repeatedly argued that the Constitution gives Congress broad discretion to decide how best to implement its powers. In case after case, these justices had argued that the Court's role should be one of deference. Though the votes of these four justices were the votes that I personally had most consistently agreed with, they were also the votes that we were least likely to get.

In particular, the least likely was Justice Ginsburg's. In addition to her general view about deference to Congress (except where issues of gender are involved), she had been particularly deferential in the context of intellectual property protections. She and her daughter (an excellent and well-known intellectual property scholar) were cut from the same intellectual property cloth. We expected she would agree with the writings of her daughter: that Congress had the power in this context to do as it wished, even if what Congress wished made little sense.

Close behind Justice Ginsburg were two justices whom we also viewed as unlikely allies, though possible surprises. Justice Souter strongly favored deference to Congress, as did Justice Breyer. But both were also very sensitive to free speech concerns. And as we strongly believed, there was a very important free speech argument against these retrospective extensions.

The only vote we could be confident about was that of Justice Stevens. History will record Justice Stevens as one of the greatest judges on this Court. His votes are consistently eclectic, which just means that no simple ideology explains where he will stand. But he had consistently argued for limits in the context of intellectual property generally. We were fairly confident he would recognize limits here.

This analysis of «the Rest» showed most clearly where our focus had to be: on the Conservatives. To win this case, we had to crack open these five and get at least a majority to go our way. Thus, the single overriding argument that animated our claim rested on the Conservatives' most important jurisprudential innovation—the argument that Judge Sentelle had relied upon in the Court of Appeals, that Congress's power must be interpreted so that its enumerated powers have limits.

This then was the core of our strategy—a strategy for which I am responsible. We would get the Court to see that just as with the Lopez case, under the government's argument here, Congress would always have unlimited power to extend existing terms. If anything was plain about Congress's power under the Progress Clause, it was that this power was supposed to be «limited.» Our aim would be to get the Court to reconcile Eldred with Lopez: If Congress's power to regulate commerce was limited, then so, too, must Congress's power to regulate copyright be limited.

The argument on the government's side came down to this: Congress has done it before. It should be allowed to do it again. The government claimed that from the very beginning, Congress has been extending the term of existing copyrights. So, the government argued, the Court should not now say that practice is unconstitutional.

There was some truth to the government's claim, but not much. We certainly agreed that Congress had extended existing terms in 1831 and in 1909. And of course, in 1962, Congress began extending existing terms regularly—eleven times in forty years.

But this «consistency» should be kept in perspective. Congress extended existing terms once in the first hundred years of the Republic. It then extended existing terms once again in the next fifty. Those rare extensions are in contrast to the now regular practice of extending existing terms. Whatever restraint Congress had had in the past, that restraint was now gone. Congress was now in a cycle of extensions; there was no reason to expect that cycle would end. This Court had not hesitated to intervene where Congress was in a similar cycle of extension. There was no reason it couldn't intervene here. Oral argument was scheduled for the first week in October. I arrived in D.C. two weeks before the argument. During those two weeks, I was repeatedly «mooted» by lawyers who had volunteered to help in the case. Such «moots» are basically practice rounds, where wannabe justices fire questions at wannabe winners.

I was convinced that to win, I had to keep the Court focused on a single point: that if this extension is permitted, then there is no limit to the power to set terms. Going with the government would mean that terms would be effectively unlimited; going with us would give Congress a clear line to follow: Don't extend existing terms. The moots were an effective practice; I found ways to take every question back to this central idea.

One moot was before the lawyers at Jones Day. Don Ayer was the skeptic. He had served in the Reagan Justice Department with Solicitor General Charles Fried. He had argued many cases before the Supreme Court. And in his review of the moot, he let his concern speak:

«I'm just afraid that unless they really see the harm, they won't be willing to upset this practice that the government says has been a consistent practice for two hundred years. You have to make them see the harm—passionately get them to see the harm. For if they don't see that, then we haven't any chance of winning.»

He may have argued many cases before this Court, I thought, but he didn't understand its soul. As a clerk, I had seen the Justices do the right thing—not because of politics but because it was right. As a law professor, I had spent my life teaching my students that this Court does the right thing—not because of politics but because it is right. As I listened to Ayer's plea for passion in pressing politics, I understood his point, and I rejected it. Our argument was right. That was enough. Let the politicians learn to see that it was also good. The night before the argument, a line of people began to form in front of the Supreme Court. The case had become a focus of the press and of the movement to free culture. Hundreds stood in line for the chance to see the proceedings. Scores spent the night on the Supreme Court steps so that they would be assured a seat.

Not everyone has to wait in line. People who know the Justices can ask for seats they control. (I asked Justice Scalia's chambers for seats for my parents, for example.) Members of the Supreme Court bar can get a seat in a special section reserved for them. And senators and congressmen have a special place where they get to sit, too. And finally, of course, the press has a gallery, as do clerks working for the Justices on the Court. As we entered that morning, there was no place that was not taken. This was an argument about intellectual property law, yet the halls were filled. As I walked in to take my seat at the front of the Court, I saw my parents sitting on the left. As I sat down at the table, I saw Jack Valenti sitting in the special section ordinarily reserved for family of the Justices.

When the Chief Justice called me to begin my argument, I began where I intended to stay: on the question of the limits on Congress's power. This was a case about enumerated powers, I said, and whether those enumerated powers had any limit.

Justice O'Connor stopped me within one minute of my opening. The history was bothering her.

She was quite willing to concede «that this flies directly in the face of what the framers had in mind.» But my response again and again was to emphasize limits on Congress's power.

There were two points in this argument when I should have seen where the Court was going. The first was a question by Justice Kennedy, who observed,

Here follows my clear mistake. Like a professor correcting a student, I answered,

That was a correct answer, but it wasn't the right answer. The right answer was instead that there was an obvious and profound harm. Any number of briefs had been written about it. He wanted to hear it. And here was the place Don Ayer's advice should have mattered. This was a softball; my answer was a swing and a miss.

The second came from the Chief, for whom the whole case had been crafted. For the Chief Justice had crafted the Lopez ruling, and we hoped that he would see this case as its second cousin.

It was clear a second into his question that he wasn't at all sympathetic. To him, we were a bunch of anarchists. As he asked:

Things went better for us when the government gave its argument; for now the Court picked up on the core of our claim. As Justice Scalia asked Solicitor General Olson,

When Olson was finished, it was my turn to give a closing rebuttal. Olson's flailing had revived my anger. But my anger still was directed to the academic, not the practical. The government was arguing as if this were the first case ever to consider limits on Congress's Copyright and Patent Clause power. Ever the professor and not the advocate, I closed by pointing out the long history of the Court imposing limits on Congress's power in the name of the Copyright and Patent Clause— indeed, the very first case striking a law of Congress as exceeding a specific enumerated power was based upon the Copyright and Patent Clause. All true. But it wasn't going to move the Court to my side.

As I left the court that day, I knew there were a hundred points I wished I could remake. There were a hundred questions I wished I had answered differently. But one way of thinking about this case left me optimistic.

The government had been asked over and over again, what is the limit? Over and over again, it had answered there is no limit. This was precisely the answer I wanted the Court to hear. For I could not imagine how the Court could understand that the government believed Congress's power was unlimited under the terms of the Copyright Clause, and sustain the government's argument. The solicitor general had made my argument for me. No matter how often I tried, I could not understand how the Court could find that Congress's power under the Commerce Clause was limited, but under the Copyright Clause, unlimited. In those rare moments when I let myself believe that we may have prevailed, it was because I felt this Court—in particular, the Conservatives—would feel itself constrained by the rule of law that it had established elsewhere.

The morning of January 15, 2003, I was five minutes late to the office and missed the 7:00 A.M. call from the Supreme Court clerk. Listening to the message, I could tell in an instant that she had bad news to report.The Supreme Court had affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals. Seven justices had voted in the majority. There were two dissents.

A few seconds later, the opinions arrived by e-mail. I took the phone off the hook, posted an announcement to our blog, and sat down to see where I had been wrong in my reasoning.

My reasoning. Here was a case that pitted all the money in the world against reasoning. And here was the last naïve law professor, scouring the pages, looking for reasoning.

I first scoured the opinion, looking for how the Court would distinguish the principle in this case from the principle in Lopez. The argument was nowhere to be found. The case was not even cited. The argument that was the core argument of our case did not even appear in the Court's opinion.

Justice Ginsburg simply ignored the enumerated powers argument. Consistent with her view that Congress's power was not limited generally, she had found Congress's power not limited here.

Her opinion was perfectly reasonable—for her, and for Justice Souter. Neither believes in Lopez. It would be too much to expect them to write an opinion that recognized, much less explained, the doctrine they had worked so hard to defeat.

But as I realized what had happened, I couldn't quite believe what I was reading. I had said there was no way this Court could reconcile limited powers with the Commerce Clause and unlimited powers with the Progress Clause. It had never even occurred to me that they could reconcile the two simply by not addressing the argument. There was no inconsistency because they would not talk about the two together. There was therefore no principle that followed from the Lopez case: In that context, Congress's power would be limited, but in this context it would not.

Yet by what right did they get to choose which of the framers' values they would respect? By what right did they—the silent five—get to select the part of the Constitution they would enforce based on the values they thought important? We were right back to the argument that I said I hated at the start: I had failed to convince them that the issue here was important, and I had failed to recognize that however much I might hate a system in which the Court gets to pick the constitutional values that it will respect, that is the system we have.

Justices Breyer and Stevens wrote very strong dissents. Stevens's opinion was crafted internal to the law: He argued that the tradition of intellectual property law should not support this unjustified extension of terms. He based his argument on a parallel analysis that had governed in the context of patents (so had we). But the rest of the Court discounted the parallel—without explaining how the very same words in the Progress Clause could come to mean totally different things depending upon whether the words were about patents or copyrights. The Court let Justice Stevens's charge go unanswered.

Justice Breyer's opinion, perhaps the best opinion he has ever written, was external to the Constitution. He argued that the term of copyrights has become so long as to be effectively unlimited. We had said that under the current term, a copyright gave an author 99.8 percent of the value of a perpetual term. Breyer said we were wrong, that the actual number was 99.9997 percent of a perpetual term. Either way, the point was clear: If the Constitution said a term had to be «limited,» and the existing term was so long as to be effectively unlimited, then it was unconstitutional.

These two justices understood all the arguments we had made. But because neither believed in the Lopez case, neither was willing to push it as a reason to reject this extension. The case was decided without anyone having addressed the argument that we had carried from Judge Sentelle. It was Hamlet without the Prince.

Defeat brings depression. They say it is a sign of health when depression gives way to anger. My anger came quickly, but it didn't cure the depression. This anger was of two sorts.

It was first anger with the five «Conservatives.» It would have been one thing for them to have explained why the principle of Lopez didn't apply in this case. That wouldn't have been a very convincing argument, I don't believe, having read it made by others, and having tried to make it myself. But it at least would have been an act of integrity. These justices in particular have repeatedly said that the proper mode of interpreting the Constitution is «originalism»—to first understand the framers' text, interpreted in their context, in light of the structure of the Constitution. That method had produced Lopez and many other «originalist» rulings. Where was their «originalism» now?

Here, they had joined an opinion that never once tried to explain what the framers had meant by crafting the Progress Clause as they did; they joined an opinion that never once tried to explain how the structure of that clause would affect the interpretation of Congress's power. And they joined an opinion that didn't even try to explain why this grant of power could be unlimited, whereas the Commerce Clause would be limited. In short, they had joined an opinion that did not apply to, and was inconsistent with, their own method for interpreting the Constitution. This opinion may well have yielded a result that they liked. It did not produce a reason that was consistent with their own principles.

My anger with the Conservatives quickly yielded to anger with myself. For I had let a view of the law that I liked interfere with a view of the law as it is.

Most lawyers, and most law professors, have little patience for idealism about courts in general and this Supreme Court in particular. Most have a much more pragmatic view. When Don Ayer said that this case would be won based on whether I could convince the Justices that the framers' values were important, I fought the idea, because I didn't want to believe that that is how this Court decides. I insisted on arguing this case as if it were a simple application of a set of principles. I had an argument that followed in logic. I didn't need to waste my time showing it should also follow in popularity.

As I read back over the transcript from that argument in October, I can see a hundred places where the answers could have taken the conversation in different directions, where the truth about the harm that this unchecked power will cause could have been made clear to this Court. Justice Kennedy in good faith wanted to be shown. I, idiotically, corrected his question. Justice Souter in good faith wanted to be shown the First Amendment harms. I, like a math teacher, reframed the question to make the logical point. I had shown them how they could strike this law of Congress if they wanted to. There were a hundred places where I could have helped them want to, yet my stubbornness, my refusal to give in, stopped me. I have stood before hundreds of audiences trying to persuade; I have used passion in that effort to persuade; but I refused to stand before this audience and try to persuade with the passion I had used elsewhere. It was not the basis on which a court should decide the issue.

Would it have been different if I had argued it differently? Would it have been different if Don Ayer had argued it? Or Charles Fried? Or Kathleen Sullivan?

My friends huddled around me to insist it would not. The Court was not ready, my friends insisted. This was a loss that was destined. It would take a great deal more to show our society why our framers were right. And when we do that, we will be able to show that Court.

Maybe, but I doubt it. These Justices have no financial interest in doing anything except the right thing. They are not lobbied. They have little reason to resist doing right. I can't help but think that if I had stepped down from this pretty picture of dispassionate justice, I could have persuaded.

And even if I couldn't, then that doesn't excuse what happened in January. For at the start of this case, one of America's leading intellectual property professors stated publicly that my bringing this case was a mistake. «The Court is not ready,» Peter Jaszi said; this issue should not be raised until it is.

After the argument and after the decision, Peter said to me, and publicly, that he was wrong. But if indeed that Court could not have been persuaded, then that is all the evidence that's needed to know that here again Peter was right. Either I was not ready to argue this case in a way that would do some good or they were not ready to hear this case in a way that would do some good. Either way, the decision to bring this case—a decision I had made four years before—was wrong. While the reaction to the Sonny Bono Act itself was almost unanimously negative, the reaction to the Court's decision was mixed. No one, at least in the press, tried to say that extending the term of copyright was a good idea. We had won that battle over ideas. Where the decision was praised, it was praised by papers that had been skeptical of the Court's activism in other cases. Deference was a good thing, even if it left standing a silly law. But where the decision was attacked, it was attacked because it left standing a silly and harmful law. The New York Times wrote in its editorial,

The best responses were in the cartoons. There was a gaggle of hilarious images—of Mickey in jail and the like. The best, from my view of the case, was Ruben Bolling's, reproduced on the next page (Figur 13.1, “Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon”). The «powerful and wealthy» line is a bit unfair. But the punch in the face felt exactly like that.

Figur 13.1. Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon

The image that will always stick in my head is that evoked by the quote from The New York Times. That «grand experiment» we call the «public domain» is over? When I can make light of it, I think, «Honey, I shrunk the Constitution.» But I can rarely make light of it. We had in our Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment. A better lawyer would have made them see differently.

The day Eldred was decided, fate would have it that I was to travel to Washington, D.C. (The day the rehearing petition in Eldred was denied—meaning the case was really finally over—fate would have it that I was giving a speech to technologists at Disney World.) This was a particularly long flight to my least favorite city. The drive into the city from Dulles was delayed because of traffic, so I opened up my computer and wrote an op-ed piece.

It was an act of contrition. During the whole of the flight from San Francisco to Washington, I had heard over and over again in my head the same advice from Don Ayer: You need to make them see why it is important. And alternating with that command was the question of Justice Kennedy: «For all these years the act has impeded progress in science and the useful arts. I just don't see any empirical evidence for that.» And so, having failed in the argument of constitutional principle, finally, I turned to an argument of politics.

The New York Times published the piece. In it, I proposed a simple fix: Fifty years after a work has been published, the copyright owner would be required to register the work and pay a small fee. If he paid the fee, he got the benefit of the full term of copyright. If he did not, the work passed into the public domain.

We called this the Eldred Act, but that was just to give it a name. Eric Eldred was kind enough to let his name be used once again, but as he said early on, it won't get passed unless it has another name.

Or another two names. For depending upon your perspective, this is either the «Public Domain Enhancement Act» or the «Copyright Term Deregulation Act.» Either way, the essence of the idea is clear and obvious: Remove copyright where it is doing nothing except blocking access and the spread of knowledge. Leave it for as long as Congress allows for those works where its worth is at least $1. But for everything else, let the content go.

The reaction to this idea was amazingly strong. Steve Forbes endorsed it in an editorial. I received an avalanche of e-mail and letters expressing support. When you focus the issue on lost creativity, people can see the copyright system makes no sense. As a good Republican might say, here government regulation is simply getting in the way of innovation and creativity. And as a good Democrat might say, here the government is blocking access and the spread of knowledge for no good reason. Indeed, there is no real difference between Democrats and Republicans on this issue. Anyone can recognize the stupid harm of the present system.

Indeed, many recognized the obvious benefit of the registration requirement. For one of the hardest things about the current system for people who want to license content is that there is no obvious place to look for the current copyright owners. Since registration is not required, since marking content is not required, since no formality at all is required, it is often impossibly hard to locate copyright owners to ask permission to use or license their work. This system would lower these costs, by establishing at least one registry where copyright owners could be identified.

As I described in chapter 10, formalities in copyright law were removed in 1976, when Congress followed the Europeans by abandoning any formal requirement before a copyright is granted.^[194] The Europeans are said to view copyright as a «natural right.» Natural rights don't need forms to exist. Traditions, like the Anglo-American tradition that required copyright owners to follow form if their rights were to be protected, did not, the Europeans thought, properly respect the dignity of the author. My right as a creator turns on my creativity, not upon the special favor of the government.

That's great rhetoric. It sounds wonderfully romantic. But it is absurd copyright policy. It is absurd especially for authors, because a world without formalities harms the creator. The ability to spread «Walt Disney creativity» is destroyed when there is no simple way to know what's protected and what's not.

The fight against formalities achieved its first real victory in Berlin in 1908. International copyright lawyers amended the Berne Convention in 1908, to require copyright terms of life plus fifty years, as well as the abolition of copyright formalities. The formalities were hated because the stories of inadvertent loss were increasingly common. It was as if a Charles Dickens character ran all copyright offices, and the failure to dot an i or cross a t resulted in the loss of widows' only income.

These complaints were real and sensible. And the strictness of the formalities, especially in the United States, was absurd. The law should always have ways of forgiving innocent mistakes. There is no reason copyright law couldn't, as well. Rather than abandoning formalities totally, the response in Berlin should have been to embrace a more equitable system of registration.

Even that would have been resisted, however, because registration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was still expensive. It was also a hassle. The abolishment of formalities promised not only to save the starving widows, but also to lighten an unnecessary regulatory burden imposed upon creators.

In addition to the practical complaint of authors in 1908, there was a moral claim as well. There was no reason that creative property should be a second-class form of property. If a carpenter builds a table, his rights over the table don't depend upon filing a form with the government. He has a property right over the table «naturally,» and he can assert that right against anyone who would steal the table, whether or not he has informed the government of his ownership of the table.

This argument is correct, but its implications are misleading. For the argument in favor of formalities does not depend upon creative property being second-class property. The argument in favor of formalities turns upon the special problems that creative property presents. The law of formalities responds to the special physics of creative property, to assure that it can be efficiently and fairly spread.

No one thinks, for example, that land is second-class property just because you have to register a deed with a court if your sale of land is to be effective. And few would think a car is second-class property just because you must register the car with the state and tag it with a license. In both of those cases, everyone sees that there is an important reason to secure registration—both because it makes the markets more efficient and because it better secures the rights of the owner. Without a registration system for land, landowners would perpetually have to guard their property. With registration, they can simply point the police to a deed. Without a registration system for cars, auto theft would be much easier. With a registration system, the thief has a high burden to sell a stolen car. A slight burden is placed on the property owner, but those burdens produce a much better system of protection for property generally.

It is similarly special physics that makes formalities important in copyright law. Unlike a carpenter's table, there's nothing in nature that makes it relatively obvious who might own a particular bit of creative property. A recording of Lyle Lovett's latest album can exist in a billion places without anything necessarily linking it back to a particular owner. And like a car, there's no way to buy and sell creative property with confidence unless there is some simple way to authenticate who is the author and what rights he has. Simple transactions are destroyed in a world without formalities. Complex, expensive, lawyer transactions take their place.

This was the understanding of the problem with the Sonny Bono Act that we tried to demonstrate to the Court. This was the part it didn't «get.» Because we live in a system without formalities, there is no way easily to build upon or use culture from our past. If copyright terms were, as Justice Story said they would be, «short,» then this wouldn't matter much. For fourteen years, under the framers' system, a work would be presumptively controlled. After fourteen years, it would be presumptively uncontrolled.

But now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process. If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before because there are no formalities.

The Eldred Act was designed to respond to exactly this problem. If it is worth $1 to you, then register your work and you can get the longer term. Others will know how to contact you and, therefore, how to get your permission if they want to use your work. And you will get the benefit of an extended copyright term.

If it isn't worth it to you to register to get the benefit of an extended term, then it shouldn't be worth it for the government to defend your monopoly over that work either. The work should pass into the public domain where anyone can copy it, or build archives with it, or create a movie based on it. It should become free if it is not worth $1 to you.

Noen bekymrer seg over byrden på forfattere. Gjør ikke byrden med å registrere verket at beløpet $1 egentlig er misvisende? Er ikke ekstraarbeidet verdt mer enn $1? Er ikke dette det virkelige problemet med registrering?

It is. The hassle is terrible. The system that exists now is awful. I completely agree that the Copyright Office has done a terrible job (no doubt because they are terribly funded) in enabling simple and cheap registrations. Any real solution to the problem of formalities must address the real problem of governments standing at the core of any system of formalities. In this book, I offer such a solution. That solution essentially remakes the Copyright Office. For now, assume it was Amazon that ran the registration system. Assume it was one-click registration. The Eldred Act would propose a simple, one-click registration fifty years after a work was published. Based upon historical data, that system would move up to 98 percent of commercial work, commercial work that no longer had a commercial life, into the public domain within fifty years. What do you think?

Da Steve Forbes støttet idéen, begynte enkelte i Washington å følge med. Mange kontaktet meg med tips til representanter som kan være villig til å introdusere en Eldred-lov. og jeg hadde noen få som foreslo direkte at de kan være villige til å ta det første skrittet.

En representant, Zoe Lofgren fra California, gikk så langt som å få lovforslaget utarbeidet. Utkastet løste noen problemer med internasjonal lov. Det påla de enklest mulige forutsetninger på innehaverne av opphavsretter. I mai 2003 så det ut som om loven skulle være introdusert. 16. mai, postet jeg på Eldred Act-bloggen, «vi er nære». Det oppstod en generell reaksjon i blogg-samfunnet om at noe godt kunne skje her.

But at this stage, the lobbyists began to intervene. Jack Valenti and the MPAA general counsel came to the congresswoman's office to give the view of the MPAA. Aided by his lawyer, as Valenti told me, Valenti informed the congresswoman that the MPAA would oppose the Eldred Act. The reasons are embarrassingly thin. More importantly, their thinness shows something clear about what this debate is really about.

The MPAA argued first that Congress had «firmly rejected the central concept in the proposed bill»—that copyrights be renewed. That was true, but irrelevant, as Congress's «firm rejection» had occurred long before the Internet made subsequent uses much more likely. Second, they argued that the proposal would harm poor copyright owners—apparently those who could not afford the $1 fee. Third, they argued that Congress had determined that extending a copyright term would encourage restoration work. Maybe in the case of the small percentage of work covered by copyright law that is still commercially valuable, but again this was irrelevant, as the proposal would not cut off the extended term unless the $1 fee was not paid. Fourth, the MPAA argued that the bill would impose «enormous» costs, since a registration system is not free. True enough, but those costs are certainly less than the costs of clearing the rights for a copyright whose owner is not known. Fifth, they worried about the risks if the copyright to a story underlying a film were to pass into the public domain. But what risk is that? If it is in the public domain, then the film is a valid derivative use.

Finally, the MPAA argued that existing law enabled copyright owners to do this if they wanted. But the whole point is that there are thousands of copyright owners who don't even know they have a copyright to give. Whether they are free to give away their copyright or not—a controversial claim in any case—unless they know about a copyright, they're not likely to.

At the beginning of this book, I told two stories about the law reacting to changes in technology. In the one, common sense prevailed. In the other, common sense was delayed. The difference between the two stories was the power of the opposition—the power of the side that fought to defend the status quo. In both cases, a new technology threatened old interests. But in only one case did those interest's have the power to protect themselves against this new competitive threat.

Jeg brukte disse to tilfellene som en måte å ramme inn krigen som denne boken har handlet om. For her er det også en ny teknologi som tvinger loven til å reagere. Og her bør vi også spørre, er loven i tråd med eller i strid med sunn fornuft. Hvis sunn fornuft støtter loven, hva forklarer denne sunne fornuften?

When the issue is piracy, it is right for the law to back the copyright owners. The commercial piracy that I described is wrong and harmful, and the law should work to eliminate it. When the issue is p2p sharing, it is easy to understand why the law backs the owners still: Much of this sharing is wrong, even if much is harmless. When the issue is copyright terms for the Mickey Mouses of the world, it is possible still to understand why the law favors Hollywood: Most people don't recognize the reasons for limiting copyright terms; it is thus still possible to see good faith within the resistance.

But when the copyright owners oppose a proposal such as the Eldred Act, then, finally, there is an example that lays bare the naked selfinterest driving this war. This act would free an extraordinary range of content that is otherwise unused. It wouldn't interfere with any copyright owner's desire to exercise continued control over his content. It would simply liberate what Kevin Kelly calls the «Dark Content» that fills archives around the world. So when the warriors oppose a change like this, we should ask one simple question:

Hva ønsker denne industrien egentlig?

With very little effort, the warriors could protect their content. So the effort to block something like the Eldred Act is not really about protecting their content. The effort to block the Eldred Act is an effort to assure that nothing more passes into the public domain. It is another step to assure that the public domain will never compete, that there will be no use of content that is not commercially controlled, and that there will be no commercial use of content that doesn't require their permission first.

The opposition to the Eldred Act reveals how extreme the other side is. The most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has as its aim not the protection of «property» but the rejection of a tradition. Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. Their aim is to assure that all there is is what is theirs.

It is not hard to understand why the warriors take this view. It is not hard to see why it would benefit them if the competition of the public domain tied to the Internet could somehow be quashed. Just as RCA feared the competition of FM, they fear the competition of a public domain connected to a public that now has the means to create with it and to share its own creation.

Det som er vanskelig å forstå er hvorfor folket innehar dette synet. Det er som om loven gjorde at flymaskiner tok seg inn på annen manns eiendom. MPAA står side om side med Causbyene og krever at deres fjerne og ubrukelige eierrettigheter blir respektert, slik at disse fjerne og glemte opphavsrettsinnehaverne kan blokkere fremgangen til andre.

All this seems to follow easily from this untroubled acceptance of the «property» in intellectual property. Common sense supports it, and so long as it does, the assaults will rain down upon the technologies of the Internet. The consequence will be an increasing «permission society.» The past can be cultivated only if you can identify the owner and gain permission to build upon his work. The future will be controlled by this dead (and often unfindable) hand of the past.