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7.14.2004
NYT Rejoinder
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On June 25, the New York Times printed an oped by a Harvard Law professor entitled "Don't Beat Them, Join Them." The gist was that the music industry should stop trying to enforce its IP rights and get on board with academic proposals that creative works be funded by a licensing fee levied on Internet users.
Then, for balance as the term is defined at the NYT, it added a second oped by a professor of "communication studies" enthusiastically supporting the idea and extending it to movies, video games and software.
You can't download these pieces explaining the evils of IP rights unless you pay the NYT $2.95 each -- sorry.
I submitted a rejoinder, "Don't Join Them, Beat Them!", but alas, the NYT saw no need to confuse its readers with counterarguments.
No one who has seen this webjournal will be surprised to find that the article extols a vision based on property rights and markets, as opposed to the mushy communitarianism of the academics. It concludes:
"The road to this creative heaven is clear. Content creators must provide their wares over the Internet and share cost savings with consumers. Micropayment technologies must be perfected. And the illicit filesharers who want to deprive us of the benefits of the new technologies must be suppressed.
"The first two parts of this triad are well in train. The last one is in doubt, not least because the professoriat is trying hard to convince the public that illicit file sharers are freedom fighters.
"This impression must be reversed. A refusal to recognize the standards of conduct necessary to make great social systems work -- such as the economy in general or the production of creative work in particular -- is not a badge of superiority but an act of juvenile vandalism.
"Those who want to destroy a system based on markets and intellectual property must be told that they are destructive, just as someone who strews garbage across Central Park should not be called a performance artist.
"To the extent that education and social pressure do not work, content should be protected with digital rights management and anyone who cracks it to take the work for free should be sued.
"Those of us who want to live in the content heaven that is within our grasp, thanks to the Internet, owe it to ourselves, and to each other, not to be cozzened by utopian abstractionists."
posted by James DeLong : 7/14/2004 10:13:27 AM
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