Copyright Week: If We Want To Get Copyright Right, It's Time To Go Back To Basics

All week we've been posting stories for Copyright Week, discussing important elements of copyright law that are at risk of getting trampled or destroyed in the effort to reform copyright. These are issues that will be squashed almost entirely if we leave it to the lobbyists to hash out what a new copyright law looks like. Today is the final day of Copyright Week, which happens to coincide with the second anniversary of Internet Freedom Day -- the day that the internet spoke up and said NO!! the last time a group of lobbyist sought to change copyright in dangerous ways, with SOPA/PIPA. So how can we get copyright right? Well, respecting things like transparency, the public domain, open access, the freedom to tinker and fair use are certainly important and necessary starting points. But it goes much further than that. I think it's worth repeating the basic framework for copyright reform I suggested last year, because not only does it still apply, it appears that Congress has shown no interest in following that framework. Instead, they've still been setting everything up as a "blue team vs. red team" game where every proposal has someone arguing for the exact opposite, and everything is seen as a zero sum game, rather than looking for solutions that actually expand the opportunity for everyone. So here are the basic principles I suggested earlier, which I think bear repeating:

1. Pretty much everyone is both a content creator and a content consumer. Over and over again we heard about concerns of certain creators as if they were a separate class of people unrelated to the wider public. That's silly. Especially as we have copyright law today -- in which every piece of creative content is immediately covered by copyright at the moment the expression is set in fixed form -- we are all creators. Nearly every email you write is probably covered by copyright. Every creator is also a consumer of content, and that includes professional creators. Professional content creation often involves building off of the influences of other works. We should support that as well. Otherwise, we begin to treat copyright as a sort of welfare program for professional creators, which is never what it was intended to be.
2. Technology is just a tool. It is neither a competitor to, nor an enemy of, content creators. With so many Representatives setting up the debate as "content vs. technology," we start to go down a very dangerous and distorted path that has little to do with reality. As a tool, technology certainly can create challenges for existing and traditional business models, but also tremendous opportunity. Look at the success of platforms like Kickstarter today. Would anyone seriously argue that the "technology" company Kickstarter is "anti" creator? Similarly, we're seeing more and more artists succeed by embracing new technology platforms that enable them to do amazing things: Bandcamp, TopSpin, BandZoogle, ReverbNation, SongKick, Dropbox, SoundCloud, Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, HumbleBundle -- and many, many, many more. The list literally goes on and on and on. These are the tools that so many content creators are embracing today to help them to be better able to create, to promote, to distribute, to connect and to monetize their works than ever before. To argue that this is tech vs. content, when the tech companies seem to be handing content creators the most useful tools they've ever had to be successful, seems ridiculous.
3. Every legislative choice has costs and benefits. Too often, it seems like those pushing a certain proposal like to only look at one side of that equation. If we're to have an effective debate over copyright reform, it should include an upfront look at the costs and the benefits, the conditions and the consequences of various decisions across the board on the public. The purpose of copyright law, explicitly, is to promote the progress. We should be weighing carefully whether or not each change really would pro