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Once again, I find myself indebted to John De Hoog for today’s entry.

This recent Salon article by the father-and-son tag team of John and Ben Snyder looks at the problems Intellectual Property law is having with new technologies.

The article also points to John Perry Barlow’s essay, ”The Economy of Ideas,” which was first published almost a decade ago by Wired magazine, Tim O’Reilly’s “Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution,” the EFF’s study on the unintended consequences of the DMCA, and a large number of other Salon articles, all well worth reading. (This summary doesn’t do justice to even a fraction of the material covered in the Snyders’ article and the ones it points to, so go over to Salon and get started with the reading--there’s quite a bit of homework required for an intelligent discussion of this issue.)

The Snyders do a nice job of summarizing this complex issue. The fact that both are music industry insiders makes for powerful indictments in the form of statements like the following (referring to Disney’s drive to extend copyrights):

This is a clear case of a multinational conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone but itself. So, instead of creating new content and allowing long-standing laws to work, the entertainment business frantically seeks to manipulate the process to its own ends.

Not long ago, I argued on the Democrats Abroad Japan mailing list that the music industry is its own worst enemy when it comes to the file-sharing problem. I think it is a colossal strategic failure on the industry’s part to fail to recognize a shift in consumer demands. The Snyders seem to agree when they write:

What drives radio is advertising and money, not music. A lot of music gets left behind thanks to the current state of radio; that consumers are rejecting it shouldn’t be surprising. They’re creating their own MP3 playlists, and if the labels were smart, they’d be doing everything in their power to be on those playlists, just like they do everything in their power to be on the playlists of radio stations. Instead, they scream copyright infringement and call their lawyers.

I have also argued that the reason that CD sales have been dropping has more to do with the increasing competition for the average person’s disposable income. A few years ago, a teenager with a part-time job did not have to choose between a new CD and a cell phone payment, because the cell phone did not exist. Now it does, and kids are finding out that they would rather have the phone than the tunes. That’s not such a big surprise, is it? (Here again, the Snyders seem to agree.)

It seems to me that the music industry (in particular, but it is not alone) is attempting to legislate its own survival in an era where it has chosen not to adapt. It is not the case that it cannot adapt--it simply doesn’t want to. Why? The answer, in a single word: Greed.

The Snyders suggest that DRM will simply add fuel to the fire. “Expect a very big blaze in 2003,” they write.

I think what we are seeing is the beginning of the end of fair use. The concept of public domain is now nearly dead. Only a great deal of public attention to these concepts will prevent the Hollywood/Microsoft axis of evil from slapping DRM manacles on all us thought criminals. Isn’t it strange how concepts like fair use and public domain, once essential parts of copyright and IP law, are now all but ignored by the content industry? 

Has the music industry truly “sown the seeds of [its] own decline,” as the Snyders argue, or are we all about to be reduced to DRM-shackled consumer-slaves, as I have argued? I believe, as the Snyders do, that we will find out soon, probably before the end of this year.

The implications of these movements go far beyond their simple anti-piracy origins. The nature of the discussion is so broad that it is no exaggeration to say that the music industry’s “remedy” to the file-sharing it claims is such a problem is to enact laws that are not simply anti-piracy, but anti-privacy as well.

Note: I find it worth mentioning that I have never downloaded music. I don’t own an iPod or other MP3-playing device. These things absolve me of any guilt the music industry seems fixated on pinning to users, but it does not mean that the larger issues here are none of my concern. They very distinctly are concerns--as they should be for anyone who loves freedom.