File sharing and copyright...

Yesterday the guys behind thepiratebay (the nets leading torrent tracker) lost their appeal in a Swedish court. The Court found that "The Pirate Bay has facilitated illegal file sharing in a way that results in criminal liability for those who run the service." The gist of the defense argument in this dispute is that thepiratebay only shares information (trackers to torrents), not the actual content. Information is and should be free and no limit should be placed on it for the sake of copyright.

This story got me thinking about copyright in general. I think as a general rule, if you don't work then you shouldn't get paid. In practical terms, if you are a singer or musician, then you should sing or play for your money. Making an album then not working and expecting huge returns on some intangible content in the ether of the internet is unreasonable.

Singers have always gotten paid for singing. They have only very rarely (when taken in the context of music history perhaps only twenty-five years) gotten paid for things they have sung in the past. This same principle can be applied to other fields in the entertainment industry. If you are an actor, you get paid when you act. If you are a producer, you get paid when you produce. If you are a record maker, you get paid to make records.

You shouldn't get paid for things that you've done in the past. There should be no compensation for any representation of that past performance. You have sung your song, performed your act and taken your bow. How someone memorializes your performance shouldn't be your issue. If they make a near representation using a divx codec or an abstract representation by finger-painting, that is their business. It's over and you've gotten paid for it.

Our whole idea of copyright and the economy of the recording industry needs to wake up to this and needs to change. That industry needs to get back to work and forget about their twenty-five year heyday. Information and replication of information is here to stay with or without the existence of thepiratebay or dns (if they block file-sharing at the dns level be sure that another protocol will be invented). The problem is in our idea of copyright and the economy of Hollywood, not in the idea of freedom of information.