It is shaping up as one of the big battles of the 21st century: content owners (who are not necessarily the artists who create content) versus the consumer electronics industry. On the one hand you have Hollywood with its record companies and the RIAA, and on the other, the manufacturers of products and technologies that facilitate the manipulation and use of digital content.The Consumer Electronics Association, which represents technology manufacturers, is looking to defuse the conflict, urging the content community to work with, not against, the technology industry in the critical area of copyright.The CEA's Gary Shapiro explains, "We are at a critical juncture in history when the inevitable growth of technology conflicts with the rising power and strength of copyright owners. How we resolve this tension between copyright and technology will define our future ability to communicate, create and share information, education and entertainment."
Shapiro says that copyright owners are terrified at the growth of reproduction, storage, and transmission technologies. "The content community has gone on a scorched-earth campaign, attacking and burning several new recording and peer-to-peer technologies. Copyright owners have used the Congress, the media, and courts to challenge the legality of technology and the morality and legality of recording. Despite cooperative efforts, the copyright community has declared war on technology."According to Shapiro, the content industry has reshaped the copyright debate by changing the language of the issue, tying it to the success of broadband and calling downloading illegal and immoral. "The content community has labeled downloading as 'copying' and more recently as 'piracy', 'shoplifting,' and 'stealing'. [It has] confused [legislators] and convinced [them] that there is a connection between broadband deployment and copyright; yet, broadband has little to do with songs and movies and more to do with high-speed Internet access, always-on convenience, exchanging home videos, and other potential uses for education, medicine, business, shopping, and gaming."Shapiro rejects the content community's claims that downloading is illegal or immoral. "One, fair use rights are guaranteed to consumers by statute, and applied judicially on a case-by-case basis. Two, historically, new technology such as the VCR and DVD have shown that technology can be beneficial to copyright owners. Three, the 1997 NET Act's requirement of a total retail value of $1000 per infringement protects ordinary consumers from threatened lawsuits from copyright owners.
"To make downloading immoral, you have to accept that copyrighted products are governed by the same moral and legal principles as real property. But the fact is that real and intellectual property are different and are governed by different principles. Downloading a copyrighted product does not diminish the product, as would be the case of taking and using tangible property such as a dress. Real property can be owned forever. A copyright can be owned only for a limited period of time. Copyright law must bow to the First Amendment, which expressly allows people to use a copyrighted product without the permission of the copyright owner. This concern contributes to the statutory and judicial concept of 'fair use'."Shapiro lists six guidelines for policymakers to follow when crafting copyright legislation: 1) Do no harm; 2) Advances in technology should not be restricted; 3) Claims of harm from new technologies should be greeted with great skepticism, as history has shown; 4) Copyright owners have a high burden of proof before any technology should be restricted; 5) Copyright owners should continue developing ways to protect their content at the source; 6) Any restrictions on technology should be narrowly crafted.Shapiro concludes, "The collision course between the copyright owners' desire to preserve existing business models and the inevitable development of newer, better, faster, and cheaper technologies need not be fatal. If the play button becomes the pay button, our very ability to raise the world's standard of living and education will be jeopardized."
