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Copyrights and Wrongs

Peer-to-peer file sharing remains the bogeyman, driving entertainment companies toward ever-increasing control over content. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision holding Grokster liable for the actions of its copyright-defying users, and despite more than 13,000 lawsuits filed by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America, file swapping is still growing. According to P-to-P research site Big Champagne, some 6.5 million U.S. users share files at any one time--up more than 30 percent from the year before.

Media companies have responded in two ways. Using their influence in Washington, D.C., they've pushed for laws friendlier to the rights of content owners. At the same time, Hollywood has threatened to withhold access to its libraries unless electronics manufacturers build devices with sufficient copy protection.

This is not the way the copyright process was supposed to work, according to Jessica Litman, author of Digital Copyright (Prometheus Books, 2001).

"Copyright law was intended to protect reading, viewing, and listening as much as creating and distributing," says Litman, a professor of copyright law at Wayne State University Law School. "Now it takes what people previously saw as their rights and treats them as loopholes the copyright owners will close, if they can."

Take books, for example. You can read a book anywhere you want, skip chapters at will, give the book away or sell it, quote portions of it on your blog, or scan it into your PC and print out a copy. And when the book eventually becomes part of the public domain, you can do anything you please with it--including printing copies and selling them at a profit.

Buy an electronic book, however, and your rights start to wither. You're now subject to the terms of an end-user license agreement. Depending on the EULA, you may be able to read the book on only a limited number of machines (usually just one), and you probably won't be allowed to sell it, lend it, or make backup copies.

As you move up the content spectrum to digital music, movies, radio, and TV, the rules can be just as restrictive.

"[Hollywood's] model is to make experiencing copyrighted material--reading a book, listening to music, or watching a movie--legally like going to a movie theater," Litman says. They want you to buy a ticket, watch ads, eat only their food, leave when they want you to, and pay for it all again each time you do it, she says.

Brad Hunt, senior vice president and chief technology officer for the MPAA, disagrees, arguing that content owners are seeking ways to offer users more options than they have with today's media. "Instead of saying 'here's the movie locked to a piece of plastic, take it or leave it,' content owners may make other rights available to you to do more with it," he explains.