I have been meaning to post about some remarkable research by Eckhard Hoeffner for a while, but only now have time to do partial justice to it. Eckhard identified a nearly perfect natural experiment about the impact of copyright:

In 1815 the German confederation consisted of 39 states with no effective copyright. At that time Great Britain was a monolithic state in which the well enforced copyright had just been extended to 28 years or the life of the author. Germany was a bit larger in population about 27 million against 17 million, but population in England was growing much more rapidly, was concentrated in urban areas and England was a much richer nation. So many more titles were produced in England obviously with all that extra incentive from copyright.

A picture speaks louder than words

Eckhard goes on to analyze how authors fared with and without copyright. The bottom line: the journeyman author - those who produce most of the books - did better without copyright. The big guys at the top? They did better with copyright.

For all the details you can find Eckhard's slides here, and I am sure more is to come.

Having trouble with DRM on your ebooks? Try this site. The problem with DRM is it encourages piracy. It can always be removed - but it can be a hassle. So: if you are going to distribute it widely it is worth the effort - and if you take the trouble to do it yourself you are so pissed off that you feel a strong temptation to share it. Irritating your customers hasn't proven a winning business model in the past.

Glenn Thorpe draws our attention to a good article about the role of patents in video codecs. The brief story: video codecs are used to compress the storage of videos. Camcorders use codecs to record, and video devices use codecs to playback. This is about the use of codecs to record. The big players - including most camcorder makers, Apple and Microsoft - record using codecs that are encumbered by patents. In particular the license allows the recording that is made with the codec to be used for "personal use and non-commercial use" only. I'm dubious of the legality of this - perhaps some of our patent lawyers can comment on this? But regardless the threat of a lawsuit it there: if you were to shoot a film using a camcorder and sold the film and made a lot of money (not that likely - but then again there is Witch Mountain) you can be pretty sure you would get sued.

The bottom line: the patent holders on parts of video compression technology are trying to use their patents to tell us what we can do with content we create using their recording devices.

The "copyright" industry consisting of a technologically obsolete Hollywood studios; music recording companies; and publishers of books is minuscule . To protect this pipsqueak industry, the Obama administration proposes both through the Department of Justice and the ACTA to impose draconian steps that will threaten many other not so pipsqueak industries, including the IT industry. Michele and I have pointed out the problem before. Finally the rest of industry has realized the threat - here is a report report on the magnitude of the industry that depends on "fair use."

Hitler, as "Downfall producer" orders a DMCA takedown from Brad Templeton on Vimeo.

Links and analysis at Ars Technica.

Copyright and wrong

Is this the end of gene patenting?

Dale Sheldon-Hess writes:

I thought the folks at Against Monopoly might get a kick out of this, if you hadn't already seen it: a well-known and respected mainstream publication off-handedly endorsing copyright "abuse".

The January 2010 issue of Better Homes and Gardens had an article called "25 easy ways to conquer clutter"; number 20 on that list (on page 41) says the following:

"Convert your compact discs into digital music files, either yourself or using a service such as ripdigital.com or riptopia.com. (They give you materials to send in in your CDs, convert them to digital, and burn them on DVDs for you.) Then, donate or* sell the returned CDs.* --Sabrina Soto, host of HGTV's Real Estate Intervention"

(Emphasis added.)

Isn't that technically illegal? Is this an example of a dead-tree publication "getting it", or simply an example of naiveté in the face of the absurdity of copyright?

I've always thought that in a copyright free world (and de facto that is our online world now - whatever they law may proclaim) DRM had a role to play. Not the role of permanently putting content under lock and key - that isn't feasible. But it is possible to use DRM on a short-term basis for new releases to give some short-term monopoly power - and this might provide some useful incentive for creation, while being largely self-limiting. By unlocking the content after a brief period of initial sales the incentive to crack the DRM is greatly reduced, while from a revenue point of view, most of the money is from the initial sales anyway.

It seems that the gaming industry - by far the largest and most successful user of DRM - has figured this out. My main thought on this is that they would do themselves a huge favor by making formal commitments to removing DRM after a specified period of time, rather than the current informal "maybe we will, maybe we won't, and who can say exactly when" method. In fact the business model of closed source/DRM for a fixed prespecified period of time followed by unlocked open source rights going to the user would probably be an extremely successful business model. If only creators didn't act like small children: "mine, mine, mine."