Before The Monopoly Should Be Permitted, There

The Crystal Ball Has A Question Mark In Its Center. There Are Some Fundamental Choices To Be Made. We Will Either Choose To Continue To Wage A Hopeless War To Preserve The Existing Architecture For Copyright By Upping The Stakes And Using Better Weapons To Make Sure That People Respect It. If We Do This, Public Support For Copyright Will Continue To Weaken, Pushing Creativity Underground And Producing A Generation That Is Alienated From The Copyright Concept.

Of All The Creative Work Produced By Humans Anywhere, A Tiny Fraction Has Continuing Commercial Value. For That Tiny Fraction, The Copyright Is A Crucially Important Legal Device.

The More Important Point, However, Is Not About What The Money Does. It's About What Has To Be Done To Get The Money. The Effect Of The Money Might Be (democratically) Benign. But What Is Done To Secure That Money Is Not Necessarily Benign. To Miss This Point Is To Betray The Robin Hood Fallacy: The Fact That The Loot Was Distributed Justly Doesn't Excuse The Means Taken To Secure It.

A Free Culture Is Not A Culture Without Property; It Is Not A Culture In Which Artists Don't Get Paid.

One Great Feature Of Modern Society Is The Institutionalized Respect We Give To Processes Designed To Destroy The Past.