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Copyright, copy wrong?

Tony Westbrook AnchorDesk

Published: 11 Apr 2000 13:55 BST

On the web, copyright has been a background issue for a long time. Who owns it, how is it controlled, managed, and how do owners recover their dues. When Ted Nelson did his innovative early work on hypertext, part of his original Xanadu model included these very issues, with a mechanism to inform copyright holders of each access of their content - per byte payments. It has taken us a couple of decades to catch up with the fundamentals he identified so long ago, even if we still can't agree on the precise mechanism.

But it is not academic interests which have shoved these issues to the front of our minds. It is ugly Mammon. Specifically the music industry has got highly excercised about a product called Napster. This is a software program that allows files (in this case MP3 music ones) to be shared between users connected to the internet. In the case of MP3 this means music files kept on one hard disk can be copied to another easily and in the background. US campuses were awash with these transfers until they were banned recently. There is nothing especially surprising about this development. The internet is the infrastructure that allows these files to be copied. The nature of the net means that multiple paths can be created between users. This particular software concentrates on MP3 files, but they could be anything. And the next big target is DVD files. These are bigger so copying will become an issue only as broadband becomes more widespread. But we know that will happen -- sometime.

Understandably the media producers are getting worried by this. They have got used to substantial revenue streams from entertainment and they see these potentially disappearing as we all instead copy pirated copies over the net. But they should look back. These are the same issues faced first when the photocopier arrived and made it possible to copy pages of text (copyright) at the press of a button. Then with the video making us able to copy TV programs, films and so on. The Internet just makes that copying even easier to achieve.

Some argue that copyright owners should just accept that this piracy is happening and grin and bear it. This, they suggest, is a force for democratisation, and a way of hitting the nasty record companies where it hurts. But this is nonsense. If you dream up a song, you have the right to determine how it is produced and distributed, and how you earn your reward. Period.

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