O'Reilly, Lessig, 'piracy,' and common sense

A thought-provoking column by Graeme Philipson in Australia's The Age dissects some of the issues surrounding intellectual property in the digital age. Extended excerpt:

It does my heart good. It really does. Amid all the blather and hypocrisy about copyright and intellectual property, a publisher has come out and stated the bleedin' obvious - that the free flow of information helps authors, and restricting it is counterproductive and ultimately futile.

Tim O'Reilly, whose company publishes a highly successful line of technical computing titles, has come out swinging against the restrictions imposed by the current copyright regimen. His comments were made before the current controversy over the Google Print program, but they could have been made in direct response to the stupid reaction of many publishers and writers, who claim that Google's attempt to digitise the contents of some of the world's libraries is a breach of copyright.

Mr O'Reilly has written a short polemic which outlines the changed realities of the digital age as succinctly as I have ever seen it put. And this from a man who made his fortune through the traditional publishing model.

"Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy," he points out. This should be self-evident to anybody with even a passing understanding of publishing, but it seems most people just don't get it.
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"More than 100,000 books are published each year, with several million books in print, yet fewer than 10,000 of those books have any significant sales, and only 100,000 or so of all the books in print are carried in even the largest stores. Most books have a few months on the shelves of the major chains, and then wait in the darkness of warehouses from which they will move only to the recycling bin."

The power of the internet vastly improves the likelihood of a reader and an author linking up. The same is true of music and film. The old distribution models favour a few top-selling authors and musicians, and the big Hollywood studios, to the detriment of lesser-known but in many cases more talented creative artists. ...

Professor [Lawrence] Lessig makes the point that if Google Print is illegal, so is Google itself. Google is simply indexing and organising text, which is what any library does. The fact that it is using the internet to do so is irrelevant - it just makes it easier to do what any visitor to a physical library does. All that's changed is the technology, which means the old ways need to be re-examined. ...

The authors and publishers trying to stop Google indexing their books, the music industry middlemen trying to stop file sharing, the movie moguls clinging to their 20th-century distribution models, and the software companies relying on proprietary development and physical sales, are all on the wrong side of history.

Common sense will prevail. In the meantime, be wary of anybody who benefits from the current outmoded system who defends the system using altruistic arguments. They have either deluded themselves, or they are trying to delude you.