I must say that I find myself to be mostly in agreement with what JD Lasica wrote earlier: if it is true that P2P does not truly influence the sales, then trying to regulate a rapidly evolving technology may very likely do more harm than good, especially to lesser known artists. If the industry persists in their current reaction to this new technology it is not unlikely that they will work themselves out of existence in about 10-15 years, but I’m sure they’ll eventually find a way to work with it, just like they did with all new technology of the past century. If not: for the larger part of history there was no recording industry. They filled a need while technology evolved, and perhaps with the new technology advances they no longer have a purpose as an intermediary between artist and fan.

As written by others: there are also many artists that are embracing this new technology as a (very) cheap way to reach their fanbase, and to promote the one thing they actually make money off: live tours. Who are we trying to protect? The artists that create the music, or the industry whose role as a middleman may slowly be phasing out in favor of a cheaper alternative? Considering how artists have been treated by record companies in the past (e.g. the ‘work for hire’ clauses), I can imagine many artists who’d love to break free of the restraints placed on them by this industry.

I’m very much in favor of letting the market decide where this will go. You are correct: many Americans are technically acting outside the law, but I can’t imagine an industry sueing their clientbase getting any improvement on their bottomline either. I’m sure they’ll come up with better alternatives when they have to.

But, to me (as a musican who releases recordings independently), the interesting aspect of the EFF proposal is that it implicitly addresses the intangible value of music and the absence of a tangible “medium” of music commerce in the digital, interconnected, environment.

Before recordings, music commerce happened around the tangible events of performances and/or around the development of compositions–and that commerce was in the form of both patronage and “for hire”. With records/CDs, music commerce has been happening around tangible media (discs) as commodities.

But, we don’t usually want discs that happen to have music on them: we usually want music that has happened to be on discs.

Music recordings on the Internet, in terms of commerce, become more akin to a singular utility service than to individual commodities. And, the EFF proposal, I think, recognizes this and attempts to address it in a neutral/open/comprehensive manner.

But, I also think this issue is about putting the past to rest: the music commodities of the past are now like utilities. Let’s support them functioning this new way. Then, judging from history, musicians will continue to find new ways to associate their work with tangible events and/or artifacts around which individual patronage/commerical transactions will be conducted.

In the past, statutory licensing has been one decent way to put the old technology/media to rest with the new. The other good option has been to give to the old no protection (e.g., VCRs vs films). Let’s roll, either way!

* 3 Models

Anarchy
This means there is neither copyright, nor any other specific regulations for cultural affairs working at all. There was a historical precedent pretty close to these conditions. In Jacobinian France, for a short period of time, which ended in 1793, all royal publishing privileges were abolished. Aside from that particular case, individual printing privileges were granted by the royalty in the pre-copyright era.

Copyright
A universal publishing monopoly. It is the private property, like ownership, imposed onto cultural phenomena. This regime was introduced for the first time in England in 1710.

Authoright
A universal right to attribution for individual authors. This regime has never existed thus far, although its partial implementations have occurred.

* Method

As a method for the deliberation we take a virtual writer, who is looking for a publisher, say, in XVIII century. We will put the writer in different possible scenarios in his quest up to its resolution. It is my understanding that neither genre or kind of art, nor historical time, nor any other technicalities play a central role in the reality we are going to scrutinize. Said scenarios, in their essential features, can be equally applied to any creator at any time in any area of human activity. It would be all the same for a music composer, or painter, or inventor, in XIX, or XXI, or XXX century, regarding fundamental points, although all mentioned above cases and countless others obviously differ in detail.

# Anarchy

* Scenarios

An author has to shop for a publisher. He never found one, and thus end of story.

Suppose he did find a publisher. He can conduct preliminary negotiations before letting his work go.

Suppose he got some result. For instance, in case the work is accepted, the author will be paid such and such. If the sum is considerable – we get a happy ending in the very beginning.

If the publisher wants exclusive rights (effectively, for that period of time only, before the work is published, because after that any other publisher can use it) he may pay more to buy the author’s loyalty.

If the publisher does not want exclusive rights, the author may bring the manuscript to another one and get paid by both. He has to have more than one copy in this case.

What happens after the publishing? This depends on the acceptance of the work by the public. Generally the author gets more and more exposure as far as other publishers use his work. And they do it, while it brings any money. They all promote him.

Does second-hand publishing bring any incentive to the author? If a publisher wants to be branded he may pay the author so that the publisher will be the author’s announced sponsor. Furthermore, the next work will be sold for a greater price, if the first one got famous. In the latter case, publishers will compete for the ability to get the next one first hand. Being the first in this environment means being a brand.

What if the very first publisher robs the author: does not give any written promise, take the work and publish it under some other name? This does change situation, but not much. If the first stolen work brings considerable money, the second one will not be stolen, but bought, because other publishers will intervene in order to get it. Thanks to anarchy, that is to say, thanks to the no-exclusive-rights situation, it will become known sooner or later, who is the real author with all corresponding consequences for the author, the publisher-thief and the entire artist and publishing communities.

As soon as this variant brings bad reputation to the thief, he must take it into account. Also, the author may turn to a court and sue the publisher under civil law. This will be a matter of proof and money, but still is possible. For example, the author could have another copy of the work and a witness he had it before bringing the work to a publisher. Such measure may effectively secure the work from stealing.

Now, suppose the first work does not bring money, which means the author hasn’t got any popularity. In this case the entire story starts over with the next work.

* Summary

Making the first summary, let us stress that as far as this model creates a highly competitive situation, publishers have to fight to develop brand names. A publisher may achieve this by:
1. Trying to be always the first,
2. Trying to offer the best in terms of quality-for-price,
3. Trying to sponsor authors, instead of making appearance as a lover of free rides.

This should bring another layer of incentives to authors.

It is noteworthy that as far as all works are accessible for all publishers, success of an author depends on his talent. On the other hand, if an author lacks talent, it is not for us to worry about his failures.

*
A Historical Excurse

The Anarchy model is based mostly on contractual law, so eventually, publishers, after getting considerable economical power may (and, history says, they have), plot to contract authors and conduct publishing in a copyright-like manner. That is, they would try to secure their portfolios and thus revenues for some time. The next step will definitely be an attempt to make it universal and to have a government backing this, so to strip, effectively, authors’ abilities to dictate conditions. This is what happened in 1710 in England.

Before then, for about two hundred years, the Crown resisted the demands of licensed scribes to limit the freedom of the spread of the printing press and free publishing. In 1710, the Crown was eager to get rid of anonymous pamphlet writers, so the government’s desire for effective censorship met with publishers’ desire for easier money and thus brought about the Statute of Queen Anne. It is even more interesting that actually the same law (in its basic features: 14+14 years of limited printing monopoly) was later adopted in the US in order to provide “the progress of science and useful arts.”

The question is, how could the same mechanism work in such contradictory directions: to back monopolies for big guys and, at the same time, to provide incentives for “starving artists?”

Through centuries and countries publishing monopolies have definitely proved to be practical for governments and big publishers, the pretext being that it is to protect authors, creativity, culture, education, etc., but has this speculation ever been proved to work, in reality? Let us see.

# Publishing Monopoly aka Copyright

What I am going to do now, is copy the above text and make changes to it when necessary to stress the differences between two models. I shall mark the changes by numbers in parentheses.

* Scenarios

Well, an author has to shop for a publisher. He may never find one and thus end of the story. There is no difference with the Anarchy in this regards.

Suppose he did find a publisher. He may conduct preliminary negotiations before letting his work go. There are no differences so far.

Suppose he got some result, like: in case the work is accepted, then the author will be paid such and such. Happy ending in the very beginning. No differences as of yet.

If publisher wants exclusive rights for the printing monopoly of the legal term – here is the first difference with the Anarchy model (1) – he may pay more.

If the publisher does not want exclusive rights, or the author does not want to relinquish all of his rights, he can bring the work to another publisher and get paid by both.

What happens after publishing? This depends on acceptance of the work by public. Author gets exposure depending on his (one!) publisher’s marketing efforts and abilities (2) – this is the second difference with the Anarchy model. The next work may be sold for a greater price, if the first one got famous. In latter the case, publisher will compete for the ability to get the next one first hand. On the other hand, the publisher, having exclusive rights is interested to promote the work, no matter how talented it is (3).

However, there is one new circumstance brought in by legally extended printing monopoly: having secured portfolio for some prolonged time (initially for 14 + 14 years, about 100 years today) a publisher may not be interested in buying another book (4). Or he may buy it not for publishing, but to prevent competitors from doing this (5). In any case, this is exactly what publishers fought for: to make their life easier at the expense of public and this is how the printing monopoly turns around and strips authors of an income instead of providing it. The latter phenomenon fires back on an author: condemned to sell a work to a single publisher, whoever he is, the author has to take this fact in consideration and make adjustments to the work, which, generally speaking, undermines creativity (6) – which is one more specific feature brought in by publishing monopoly.

What if the very first publisher robs the author: does not give any written promise, takes the work and publishes it under some other name? This does change situation, because having exclusive rights the publisher can provide that no one ever learn who the real author is (7).

However this variant can bring bad reputation to the publisher-thief, so he must take it into account.

The author may turn to a court and sue the publisher under the copyright law (8). But again, if stealing is not proved, the author lost his work forever, while within the Anarchy he may just compete with the publisher-thief. Anyway, a law suit is always a matter of proof and money, and in this respect there is no difference between models.

Another new feature is the following: by the very nature of art we, the audience, develop personal relations with a work of art. These relations are, in fact, very similar in nature to those with real people. The differences are only in the consequences of the relations. When it comes to the access to some wanted work of art, generally speaking, there is no substitute available: if you want to read the Bible, then you want to read the Bible, if you want Lord of the Rings, then you want Lord of the Rings. It is a personal matter. Yes, in practice, if you cannot get the artistic work that you want, you may find some “substitute,” but this would hurt like losing and finding substitute for a friend. That means a publishing monopoly on a single book is, in fact, a monopoly that is as effective as if this book were the only one on the market. Thus, copyright allows the raising of the prices to the maximum level possible (9). This feature stays in the way for public access to distributed works in terms of price and thus badly affects markets.

A quite unexpected development within the copyright-driven environment, is promotion of actual plagiarism (10). Plagiarism cannot survive within the Anarchy, because the public is very sensitive to it and no publisher would like to risk his brand, while all original works are at his disposal. This is not the case within the copyright-driven environment. It is very tempting here to get and sell something similar to a well-selling work. In order to do so, one only needs to provide some measured formal differences with the example to follow. What is it, if not a plagiarism? Interestingly enough, another publisher would prefer to buy described plagiarism instead of something really new with an uncertain projection for sales. Hence, we have one more blow to creativity caused by publishing monopolies.

Yet another lovely consequence of copyrights is that publishers try to influence audiences in order to conserve a current level of perception of arts (11). Having secured a portfolio for years, a publisher wants to make sure all of it would be sellable as long as the monopoly lasts. Thus, publishers must try to retard the promotion of new ideas, new aesthetic approaches to arts, new kinds of arts, new genres, you name it. They need to restrain the development of public tastes. This trend must bear some inertia in it: while investing money in the retardation and conservation of public development, publishers are driven to get new works to fit the picture, thus contributing again, for the third time in the suppression of creativity.

Now, let’s get back to the author. Suppose the first work does not bring money, which means the author hasn’t got any popularity. The entire story starts over with the next work. However this would be harder for the author to start over in the environment poisoned by publishing monopolies: publishers having backed by their portfolios would not want to risk for the author, which had not succeed already. It wouldn’t matter if he was misunderstood genius or one which just failed to convince a powerful publisher to market his work.

* Summary

Actually, I used to think that the Copyright model was not as bad than as it appears now. It looks like it completely disrupts a self-tuning market, applies pressure on a creator’s mind to give up to tastes of the now-well-defended-publishers, compromises creativity, and promotes actual plagiarism. Its important feature is that any work of art may disappear unnoticed, regardless of how talented it is. High prices must overwhelm the book/art market and undermine its development.

The last trend brings in tensions in the industry and spurs up attempts to extend the initial monopoly even further in order to restore vanishing profits. Actually such attempts come forward even before markets shrink or regardless. As long as the idea of monopoly is considered to be the right one, holders should fight to always extend it.

The copyright trick amazes me more and more. It badly affects culture and civilization in many ways while helping publishers to make business easier. What is really striking here, is that “easier” does not mean “better” in terms of revenues!

# Authoright

I want to explain some of our guidelines to this really simple model. We saw the Anarchy model provides a pretty good framework for culture and culture related market development. Still, there is some uncertainty in terms of the author’s well being, some room for dishonesty and other anti-cultural trends to exploit. Thus, it makes sense to provide backing by society for culture so that cultural phenomena would be treated according “the law of nature” of culture:

1. The main law of nature causing cultural development is ultimate freedom.
2. Cultural equivalent of physical stealing is lying.
3. Cultural phenomena is produced in an individual mind or in free communication of individuals.
4. Culture, while being governed according to its nature, will pay back in infinitely greater degree to an author, publisher and the entire society.

The main features determining the Authoright model are:

1. No entity of any kind may control or regulate in any way copying, sharing, distribution, all and any public use of an idea, work of art or any other cultural phenomena.
2. Every author has an eternal and unalienable right for attribution.
3. A publisher or any other entity may pay an author for the right to be named his/her sponsor. The amount is the matter of negotiations.
4. No company, organization or a group entity of any kind and nature beyond the actual author(s) may be considered an author for any creative work.
5. The source (publication) of a work must be attributed to in every public use of the work.
6. Any sponsor of an author, or a single work, or a single publication deserves proper attribution.

What I am going to do now, is to copy Copyright model text and make changes to it when necessary. The differences with the Anarchy model will also be noted. I shall number all the specific features of the model in parentheses.

* Scenarios

Like the other two models, an author has to shop for a publisher. He may never find one, and thus end of the story. However, we have to note now, this kind of ‘end’ is essentially less probable here (and within Anarchy, as well) than in the environment poisoned by publishing monopolies: as far as it is much more difficult to secure a portfolio for considerable time, it is vital for a publisher to be first in finding a new work or discovering a new author (1).

Suppose the writer did find a publisher. He may conduct preliminary negotiations before letting his work go.

Suppose he got some result. For instance: in the case the work is accepted, then the author will be paid such and such. Happy ending in the very beginning. However, it is noteworthy that this kind of end is more probable here than having publishing monopolies in place: an author and his new work are much more valuable assets now for many reasons (2). Firstly, because he is free to bring his work to as many publishers as he wants. Secondly, because only individual authors can claim authorship. Thirdly, because the best way for a publisher to develop a brand is to get the work first hand, to name just a few reasons.

If a publisher wants exclusive rights (until the work is published) he may pay more. The same story happens within other models. Differences lie in time frames only, and this affects publishing only. We saw that copyrights bring nothing good here.

If the publisher does not want exclusive rights until the moment of publishing, the author may bring it to another one and get paid by both.

What happens after publishing? This depends on the acceptance of the work by the public. Anyway, the author gets more and more exposure as far as other publishers may use his work. And they do it while the work brings any money. Thus the entire competing publishing-community promotes the author. (3). If a second-hand a publisher wants to be branded he may pay the author in order to be the author’s announced sponsor (4). These two features have a more powerful effect within Authoright compared with Anarchy, because attribution is mandatory here. More importantly, is that an author is really FREE TO CREATE now, has no necessity to adjust to anyone’s taste, but to his imaginary interlocutors only. Having his name protected by law and the work promoted by the entire publishing community, the author knows that he will be judged by the public for his work only (5).

The next work will be sold at a greater price, if the first one got famous. In the latter case, publishers will compete for the ability to get the next one first hand. It is important to underline that having no possibility to secure some prolonged portfolio, publishers must be really fast to grab any new work to use. This is important in terms of incentives for authors (6).

Now, what if the very first publisher may rob the author: will not give any written promise, take the work and publish it under some other name? This changes not much. If the first stolen work brings considerable money, the second one will not be stolen, but bought, because other publishers will intervene in order to get it.

This variant, on the other hand brings a bad reputation to the publisher-thief, so he must take it into account. Now, the author may turn to a court and sue the publisher under Authoright law (7). However, this difference between Authoright and Copyright is not essential. We just have to remember that under Authoright an author can sue for the stealing of the name only. The important point is that even if stealing happened, but is not proved, the author may just compete with the publisher-thief (8), which is one more advantage to compare with copyright.

Now, remember, we were discussing earlier, that by the very nature of art we, the audience, develop personal relations with a work of art. These, in fact, are the same as those with real people. The difference is only in consequences of the relations. So, when it comes to the access to some wanted work of art, there is no substitution available, by definition. Yes, in practice, if you cannot get the artistic work that you want, you may find something else, but it is as hurtful as losing and finding a substitute for your loved ones. Because of that, a printing monopoly on one book allows the rights-holder to raise the price as if this book was the only one on the market. This is absolutely impossible within the Authoright environment, where a work of art is accessible for everyone to copy and publish since the very moment it is published (9).

We also remember another quite unexpected development within the Copyright model, which is the promotion of actual plagiarism wrapped in hypocrisy: having copyright, it is very tempting to promote something similar to a well-selling work with some formal differences. This absolutely makes no sense within the Anarchy and Authoright models, because the public is very sensitive to plagiarism and no publisher would risk his reputation while all original works are at his disposal. Thus, while the publishing monopoly (copyright) promotes plagiarism and compromises creativity, Authoright promotes creativity and makes plagiarism impossible. It spurs the natural drive to get original works (10).

Authoright makes baseless another absolutely unacceptable consequence of copyrights: publishers’ motivation to restrain the development of audiences (11). As far as they cannot secure any portfolio for a period of time greater than the one necessary to prepare a work for publishing, a publisher has no interest in stagnating and thus organizing public taste. On the contrary, because in this environment everybody is chasing after the New, it is necessary to have a public capable of understanding the New. It would be in the publishers’ best interest to push the public to learn, to develop understanding of aesthetic principles and so forth.

Now, suppose the first work does not bring any money, which means the author hasn’t got any popularity. The entire story starts over with the next work then. Another start is likely to be easier in the Authoright environment, where the publishers and the public are in an ongoing hunt for new works and authors (2). After all, the only thing which really matters within Authoright is talent.

# 3 Models. General Summary

* The Authoright model comprises the advantages of both, the Anarchy and the Copyright models, while bearing none of their disadvantages: Under Authoright, like within the Anarchy model, an author is more likely to find his first publisher, if he is unique. Unlike the Copyright model, an author is less likely to find the first publisher if he repeats after someone else.
* Like within Anarchy, an author is a more valuable asset in general terms to compare with Copyright, and thus always has a chance to get paid better from the very beginning.
* Unlike to any other environment it is impossible, under Authoright, for any entities, but the individual authors of the work to claim authorship. This specific feature gives the author another push into the very center of all culture-related businesses.
* Like within the Anarchy model, authorighted work gets promoted by the entire competing publishing community, while under Copyright the promotion of a work is restricted to the good will and real abilities of one or somewhat limited number of publishers and other public users of the work. Under Authoright, the promotion of a work automatically means promotion of its author.
* Similar to the Anarchy environment, an author may sell his work either literally fixed in some media or in the form of sponsorship as many times as he gets. However, within the environment poisoned by publishing monopolies, he is actually condemned to one time or otherwise limited sale. Regarding sponsorship, any entity may call itself an author’s sponsor if it provides agreed-upon incentives to the author. This can happen to an author in any environment, but cannot be considerably useful within Copyright, because the quantity of business and other public users of a work of art is extremely limited. It may be useful under Anarchy, but in a lesser degree than under Authoright, because of differences in the attribution requirements.
* Similarly to the Anarchy environment, the more talented an author is and thus the more unique, the more he gets promoted. However, within the environment poisoned by publishing monopolies, the author is pushed to follow well-selling examples.
* Like within the Anarchy environment, an author is free and encouraged to create truly new, and on the other hand, meets no restrictions to learn from others. However, under the copyright regime, an author must adjust himself to the tastes of a limited number of publishers in an increasingly greater degree, and, on the other hand, is limited to learn and build upon the works of others.
* Similarly to Copyright, an author can protect his name using the special law of the mandatory attribution, while under Anarchy, he has to use non-specific laws. On the other hand, I presume, it is likely that unwritten rules will emerge and work, like they do in academic environment.
* Similarly to Anarchy, if a publisher steals an author’s name, the author can still compete with the thief. On the contrary, under copyright, a work, if stolen and is not recovered in the court, is lost forever.
* Like within the Anarchy environment, markets are flooded with works of art with a spectrum of content, quality and prices, while under Copyright, market development is limited at least two times: firstly, by direct regulation by publishers and secondly, by monopolized prices. Within the Anarchy and Authoright environments, a work gets promoted by all of the publishers willing to copy it. Thus, it gets exposed regardless of the economic and other abilities of specific publishers. Within the Copyright environment, exposure of a work really depends on the one publisher who bought it. Hence, the author is naturally forced to look for a big publisher, which means that Copyright enforces regular monopolies also, not only culturally based ones. This trend once again forces for the author to bow to the taste of that big publisher in order to be published. Thus, an author’s dilemma in the Copyright-driven environment really is: “more exposure for less creativity”.
* Similarly to Anarchy, an author is discouraged to conduct plagiarism under Authoright, while he is encouraged to do so under Copyright. Within no-publishing-monopolies environment, where ALL WORKS ARE ACCESSIBLE FOR ALL PUBLISHERS, the publishers are naturally driven to go after the best, and have to get it by all possible means. Under the Copyright model, a publisher secures his portfolio for some prolonged time. This portfolio is the real essence of the entire Copyright business, nothing else. A big publisher may invest big money into the promotion of a work. A small one is tempted to follow: he will try to buy something similar to secure his profits. There is no urgent need to find the best for anybody, because the only urgent need is to find/order something somewhat different from a bestseller and to monopolize it. That is, plagiarism is encouraged. It reveals itself in false diversity, when the market is flooded by many talentless works following some greatly promoted ones as examples. We have to emphasize this: greatly promoted works, not the best ones, stage examples to follow. This also addresses the current situation regarding derivatives. While a real creator’s freedom to build upon earlier works is suppressed, a plagiarist can very easily measure the level of formal differences and follow all necessary formalities with permissions in order to be published.
* Like under Anarchy, publishers are interested in public development under Authoright , while under Copyright publishers are interested in public retardation.

# Conclusion

An amazing point is that every positive speculation about copyrights (and I understand, all the same applies to patents and other kinds of “intellectual property” as well) look somewhat rational on the surface and work in the opposite direction in reality. This is seen when exclusive rights get analyzed in depth.

The Authoright driven environment, in very general terms, creates highly competitive, aggressively growing markets with the common intention towards the great New, providing market/competition-driven incentives to authors and publishers… The most important point here is that cultural affairs are governed according very nature of culture and thus it intensively develops. The last point is crucial for the “Knowledge Based Economy”

http://www.quicktopic.com/25/D/cD8dwc52A3p.html#QT_item_77

This is a quick topic page and has user comments.

I like this approach. In assigning a new file designation as *.drm, traditional record label distributors and big publishers (known as “hold-outs”) can avail themselves to an opt-out mechanism.

This allows the rest of us, (that is, the new entrants and songwriters,) to develop the innovations of P2P networks. We are the larger group after all. The celebrity artists in the major label system will find themselves sitting on the sidelines watching as a pool of money is paid out and they have none of it.

The major label artists will start peeling away from the company line and will surely investigate signing up for royalty collection with an independent royalty collection agency such as Royalty Logic.

We need Congress to preserve an alternative to the RIAA front group Sound Exchange. We have an opportunity to start a clean slate of accounting practices. Inviting the camel nose into the tent will perpetuate the classic racketeering accounting practices and “black box” methods that have accrued in the music business over the last 100 years.

I think you can count on Congress doing nothing regarding P2P, at least for the near term. The upraising of tech community opposition to the Induce Act has had an effect, and even though it has impressive Senate sponsorship, I think it is on life support and will be put to rest as gracefully as its sponsors can manage. I don’t want to encourage anyone to let their guard down because it can always surface again in an amendment of another copyright bill or in a conference committee, but at the moment, I think the tech community is winning. This is , in fact, the time to redouble the effort to defeat it , and a knockout punch is now possible.

On the liscensing front, several matters are a given:

1. Congress will do nothing until rights holders ask for legislation that would implement either a compulsory or voluntary liscensing arrangement. I explained the reasons for this result yesterday.

2. If a compulsory liscense is requested, the legislation will be through and detailed much like the cable compulsory liscense or the satelite TV distant signal liscense. That’s the invasive approach.

3. If content owners come to the sensible conclusion that enforcement alone does not work and opt to try a voluntary liscense alone the lines of the EFF proposal, the role of Congress will be only to watch with interest since as Andrew Greenberg points out, existing legal sturctures can easily accomodate it. If anything, Congress might be asked to provide seed money to launch the project.

Regarding the CBO study released yesterday. I have not had an opportunity to read it. Yes, in answer to your question, the CBO is widely respected by Members of Congress. It’s reports are influential.

On the other hand, sometimes in the effort to be even handed and to acknowledge the equities on all sides of a debate, the reports often do little to drive toward policy conclusions. There are typically quite useful in providing an authoritative source of data.

http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5738&sequence=0

Nathan Musick of CBO�s Microeconomic and Financial Studies Division wrote this paper under the supervision of Roger Hitchner and David Moore.

This paper is amazing! And moreso that we would normally expect a slanted view from the content industry perspective. This is a must-read. Congressman Boucher, do these kind of budgetary studies have any weight in Congressional offices?

A number of posters above have mentioned the “do nothing approach.” Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office paper suggests “forebearance” as one of three approaches. The other two are compulsory license schemes and revision of extant copyright law.

Here is an example and I urge you all to read the paper, 38 pages in length.

Forbearance
The Congress may choose to wait and see if the current
copyright debate resolves itself without further legislative
action. This course exploits the impending increase in the
supply of content-control technologies by the private sector,
as well as new services providing creative content in
digital format, to determine whether changes to copyright
law are in fact needed. Market-based solutions
might gain support among both copyright owners and
consumers.
One standard for judging the effectiveness of forbearance
is the case of the videocassette recorder. In that instance,
many content producers viewed the new home-recording
device as a threat to their intellectual property and consequently
sought to undermine a technology that consumers
were rapidly adopting. Yet ultimately, producers and
consumers reached a consensus that defined socially and
legally acceptable uses of the new technology.