Censorpaedia

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Censorpaedia

 Last week three related events occurred: the governments of New Zealand and the United States cooperated in the arrest of a German citizen accused of providing free (read: stolen) download access to copyrighted music and movies.  The purported perp pocketed his profits by peddling fast access modes and advertising.  Within the United States a law regarding downloads of copyright music, a law that no one appears to have read, was proposed and then ignored.  Finally, several ‘net providers of information – some say misinformation – shut themselves down for a day in protest of censorship.  Irony clearly eludes them.

All this is part of the continuing confusion of property rights regarding cultural endeavors.

The manufacturers of movies, for instance, enjoy repeated paydays under copyright laws.  After a film is constructed, the owners and actors receive payments every time the flickering bits of light are legally projected on a wall. 

In contrast, and in a clear denial of equal protection under the law, the builders of a house are paid only once.  An unbilled actor who appears for ten seconds in the background of one scene in Star Trek XXIV: The Girl Scout Zombie Cannibals of Mars will receive periodic residuals for the duration of the copyright, dependent on the marketability of the, um, art.  An equally unbilled bricklayer is paid only once; he will receive no residuals no matter how long the house he helped construct is inhabited or how many times it is sold.

The defense of residuals for actors is that someone makes money every time the film is (legally) displayed, so it’s only fair that the actors take a bit of that.  However, a house, too, generates profits each time it is sold, and perhaps daily if it becomes a commercial property, but our hypothetical bricklayer receives nothing.

Y’r ‘umble scrivener doesn’t have even a residual of a solution for that legal inconsistency: the laborer is worthy of his hire; why are most laborers paid once, but a privileged few, by law, over and over?  No one can steal the bricklayer’s residual payments because he receives none.

Two other problems with the electronic storage of movies, pictures, poems, and other forms of art are these: (1) How do we know that a work of art has not been tampered with? and (2) How do we sustain the existence of a work given the fragility of electronics?

The first problem is wonderfully Orwellian; without a verifiable original we can’t know if anything stored or transmitted on the World Wide Wonk, the Internaif, or in some unknowable Fog is as originally built.  Decades ago a few words in the introductory song in the Disney film Aladdin were modified because of perceived insensitivity.  A first-run videotape contains the cruel words; all subsequent tapes and DVDs do not.  Hardly anyone noticed; fewer cared.  Those who follow the news are well aware of how a re-broadcast of part of a speech or debate can change the intent of a speaker or the significance of an event by cutting a few words or an audience response.

The conventional fear of control and censorship is of a government (it’s all George Bush’s fault, blah-blah-blah), but other than the more feral sorts of porn the feds pretty much leave the aether alone; the proven censors (and thieves), over and over, are the private-enterprise owners of the servers. 

A physical book is certainly vulnerable enough: paper burns and rots, and is consumable by rats, mice, insects, and habitués of New Jersey.  However, as long as a particular volume exists, one can be sure it has not been altered; with an electrical book beamed down from moonbeams or rainbows no such assurance obtains.

The second problem is the existence at all of a book, film, picture, or bit of music.  The oldest book y’r umble scrivener owns was printed in 1806, is in quite good shape, and is almost without value because of its commonality.  Books over 1,500 years old are not unknown.  Good paper, stable ink, a little reasonable care, and avoiding Goths, Vandals, Anglo-Saxons, Frisians, Danes, Turks, Huns, and the New York subway means that a book written by a fellow, almost surely a Benedictine, in the 5^th century is easily readable today (if one can work through schoolchild Latin).

Consider, though, the weakness of every little box that glows in the dark.  No one has been spared the annoyance of the loss of information from an expensive device that, like Aunt Pittypat, fainted from the vapours.

We are told that someone setting a metaphorical match to certain types of easily-constructed bombs can destroy all computer storage and functionality continent-wide.  Not only can one not read the blank screen on a now-useless chunk of dead weight, there would be no light by which to read, not for years.  All the books, music, pictures, and films entrusted to the good fairies would cease to exist forever, while physical books, music scores, and pictures would carry civilization successfully through a new dark age.

Electronic books and other works of art are convenient, but they’re all Aunt Pittypats (or is that Aunts Pittypat?).

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