Research and commentary on digital technologies in public life
The Ohio Secretary of State has announced the results of a study his office commissioned, which examined four e-voting systems. If you have been following this issue, you won’t be surprised to hear that the study found many flaws in the systems. Each system had at least one “high risk” problem.
In addition, a study of the vendors’ quality assurance methods led to a decision to “ask vendors to implement industry standard security and quality practices and procedures.”
The RIAA has filed yet another round of lawsuits against individuals they accuse of illegally redistributing music on the Net. There is some evidence that the suits filed so far may be working – that they may be successfully deterring some people from redistributing music online. And if the suits are working, that’s good news.
The music business is in a real mess right now. Many consumers fail to comply with even the traditional core of copyright law. The evidence is now fairly convincing that this non-compliance is reducing revenue to the industry, and eventually to artists. The problem seems to be getting worse, as people get accustomed to non-compliance and as the spread of digital technology creates more opportunities to get music without paying.
There are basically three things that can happen next.
Voluntary Compliance:: Something happens to change public behavior, so that a large majority of people choose to pay for music, even though they have the technical capability to get it illegally for free.
Alternative Compensation: We give up on the current system and switch to something very different, such as a compulsory license scheme that supports artists via a tax on bandwidth or storage.
Permanent Non-compliance: Unable to achieve Voluntary Compliance, and unwilling to risk Alternative Compensation, we accept low compliance rates as a long-term fact. The music industry shrinks and less music is created.
(Note that I did not include an Infringement Becomes Impossible future, in which people want to infringe but are technologically prevented from doing so. That future just isn’t plausible.)
Voluntary Compliance is the best of these, if we can figure out how to achieve it at reasonable cost. Alternative Compensation is risky, since it (at least partially) decouples music creation from the market, and we can’t foresee its consequences clearly given our current state of knowledge. And Permanent Non-compliance is bad for everybody; it’s probably bad even for the infringers, who would have less music to not pay for.
If the RIAA’s lawsuits against individuals do deter infringement, that brings us marginally closer to Voluntary Compliance. And, to me at least, the very real costs and bad feelings that the suits have imposed so far seem a worthwhile price to pay, if they actually make Voluntary Compliance more likely.
Of course, the suits may ultimately fail to deter infringement, or they may not deter it enough to achieve Voluntary Compliance. Did I mention that I’ll be attending a workshop on alternative compensation tomorrow?
