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Revision as of 17:08, 14 January 2012

Solution to the problem of copyright piracy and protecting civil liberties

The United States Congress in order to address the concerns of copyright holders like the RIAA and the MPA have made several attempts to pass laws to protect intellectual property. Many of these ideas have led to terrible laws and proposals the totally break the Internet.

Make Piracy your Friend

Here's an idea for a solution to the piracy problem that is a win/win solution. This eliminates the need for SOPA. It is an outside the box solution so think deeply. The idea is:

Don't try to stop piracy. Make piracy your friend!

What we now call piracy - people copying movies and songs over the internet - can be look at as a free advertising and distribution system. Allow files to be uploaded - downloaded - copied - and distributed. The more the better.

Copyright ID Tags

All files will carry ID tags and public keys etc that identify the copyright owner, rights information, how and where to buy the product, web site of copyright holder and/or artist.

Media players will recognize these ID tags and be able to allow user to immediately purchase anything with a single click that is tied in through Paypal or Google wallet or iTunes and apps store or any number of micro payment system.

Those who provide music players would have an incentive in getting a small piece of the transaction giving them an incentive to install that capability.

The idea is that this is a new paradigm. Piracy becomes free distribution and advertizing. Kids download - they like it - they pass it on - they blog about it - and because it is both cheap and easy - they buy it. At least enough of them buy it that the RIAA makes a bigger profit than they are now.

The model assumes that higher volume at lower costs is more profitable. 1 movie at $10 is the same as 10 movies at $1. The RIAA and MPA also eliminate their advertizing and distribution costs. No CDs on plastic being shipped. All money is pure profit.

The paradigm shift is - yes - there will be piracy. There will be a LOT of people who don't pay. There will be more who don't pay than those who do pay. but that's OK because the real test is if the amount of profit in the new system is greater than that of the current system. I say it will be. And I have evidence to support that.

Even those who don't pay benefit the copyright holders. They download it and play it for free. They like it and pass it on to 10 friends and 2 friends pay. Thus the one who didn't pay resulted in 2 sales. The person who didn't pay likes the music and uploads it to a popular blog and thousands download it resulting in hundreds of sales and even greater distribution.

In this model all the copyright holders need to do is put it out there and spend the money that is automatically deposited in their bank account by the system.

Will it Work?

I came up with this idea back in 2002 and presented it to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) who was disinterested in solutions at the time. This idea was very radical and untested at the time. However since 2002 a number of things have happened in the world where this model is already working. Several major players are already doing similar things and it works. New infastructures are in place. This is a PDF I had made to explain my idea at the time:

http://www.perkel.com/piracy.pdf

Apple, Google, Amazon, and Broadcast Television are doing it

We are all familiar with Apple iTunes and the 99 cent songs. Google is now selling media through its app store. Amazon is doing it. Then there are the unlimited subscription models where you pay $8/month for all you can eat such as Netflix, Pandora radio, etc. There are advertizing supported models like broadcast radio and TV. No one wants to throw me in jail for watching "Desperate Housewives" on my TV without paying.

But - you ask - why would people pay if they don't have to?

Piracy would still be illegal. But like possession of small amounts of marijuana in California it would be at best an infraction. You don't have to pay, but you are expected to. Much like leaving a tip at a restaurant in America. You don't have to tip, but people do it anyway. AND - this is important - the media players make it both cheap and easy to pay. It's one dollar and one click. It can even be less than a dollar. When I divide how many shows I watch on Netflix in a month into $8 it come to like 25 cents a movie.

And .... this is also important - the music industry is your friend - not your enemy. The business model where the recording industry sues the customers for uploading a baby video with music to YouTube - how does that make sense. That's not marketing - that terrorism. And we all know it's not working.

Example:

Proposed law fir singing a Michael Jackson and uploading it to YouTube - 5 years in prison. Killing Michael Jackson (manslaughter) - 4 years in prison

My Personal Experience

In the 1990s I owned a small software company. Had 3-5 employees and sold about $2 million in network control programs to companies like PG&E, Wells Fargo Bank, Chase Bank. I had online trial downloads and I exhibited at trade shows.

It quickly became apparent that there ware people pirating my software. I tried to fight it at first but I soon realized that 2/3 of my business was coming from piracy. People were copying my programs and passing them around and they were ending up in major companies who were sending my large orders. And in my case these were not inexpensive programs. So as wierd as it seemed at the time - this was working. Piracy was my friend.

Conclusion

When you have a system that isn't working it's time to rethink everything and come up with a completely new paradigm. One thing that everyone agrees on is that what we have not doesn't work. Everyone is unhappy.

The new paradigm suggested here is now proven to work. Netflix, Apple iTunes, Google, Amazon, Pandora, all working. Making money - happy customers. If you changed the distribution to include piracy - it would even work better.

For example - now you have to download iTunes songs through iTunes and you're limited to that source and what they sell. But suppose you download a song from a web site that was just recorded yesterday? You play it on your iTunes player, you like it, and you can immediately purchase it through iTunes because the artist has embedded information into the song file to do that. Apple not gets a new sale and $$$ without even having to do anything. And the new purchase is automatically added to Apples inventory and is now searchable. The possibilities of ways to market media are endless once you get rid of the idea that a lot of people are going to not pay.