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 5th 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?).
-30-
