[16622] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: the Arts "contre" the Internet?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Thu Mar 16 20:28:25 2006
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Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 18:00:01 -0800
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From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
FYI France: the Arts "contre" the Internet?
The digital world needs to do a better job, still, of explaining
itself to the non-digital. The journal "Libération" has been
running a full-page petition: jeudi 2 mars 2006, p. 5 --
APPEL
A MESDAMES ET MESSIEURS LES DÉPUTÉS
CONTRE LA LICENCE GLOBALE
DES OEUVRES CULTURELLES SUR INTERNET
(APPEAL! To Mesdames et Messieurs the Deputies!!
_against_ the Global License for
cultural works on the Internet!!!)
-- signed by a long and fascinating "who's who" list of leading
luminaries in the arts, in France, most of them in music --
... C. Aznavour, J. Birkin, J. Dassin, C. Deneuve,
J. Depardieu, C. Dion, A. Dombasle, Y. Duteil,
H. Dutilleux, J. Dutronc, Enzo Enzo, Freedom for King
Kong [?], Y. Gilbert, J. Gréco, D. Hallyday, J. Hallyday,
F. Hardy, J. Iglesias, Jenifer, E. Macias, M. Mathieu, Miou
Miou, E. Mitchell, G. Moustaki, V. Paradis, V. Perez,
R. Stengel, C. Stills, N. Wayne Toussaint, Zazie... etc...
-- also signed by a fairly extensive assortment of major French
music firms and organizations... UNAC, SACEM, UPFI, SPPF...
And for several weeks, now, the Assemblée Nationale has been
debating, heatedly, their new "Droits d'Auteur et Droits Voisins
dans la Société (DADVSI)" legislation: not their last word, on
copyright in France and its enforcement in the digital era, but
thus far the most comprehensive, and intrusive, and protective,
and above all inflammatory effort by all sides --
http://lestelechargements.fr/
(And for library & "digital library" aspects, see:)
http://listes.cru.fr/sympa/arc/biblio-fr
http://listes.cru.fr/sympa/arc/biblio-fr/2006-03/msg00110.html
http://droitauteur.levillage.org/spip/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=5
Various issues have surfaced, in these digital era copyright
debates, in France, which may sound familiar to others among us
grappling with these very same issues elsewhere:
* technique -- "failsafe" filters & safeguards & snooping which
turn out not to be so "failsafe";
* exceptions -- whether & to what extent educational and
non-commercial and strictly personal copying are to be permitted;
* enforcement -- who enforces, and how, and when & where -- the
specter of "copyright police", armed with more power than regular
"police" even possess -- "copyright police" on-campus, in school
classrooms, looking over both child and adult shoulders, in
libraries and even at-home;
* "emergencies" -- how urgent is it, how critical, that copyright
be strengthened, now, before we know where digital information is
headed? Are we "there", yet? Why the hurry, now? And why _really_?;
* legislative "sneak attack tactics" -- hurried legislation,
which pretends to do one thing while in fact doing another --
"preventing terrorism" vs. "political snooping", or "protecting
music" vs. many other things...;
* procedures -- is legislation, "emergency" or otherwise, the
best way to accomplish all of this, or is for example "market
competition" & "contracts"... as France is trying the former
approach, the US seems bent on re-assembling its national
telephone monopoly, now, and pitting _that_ against its
increasingly-powerful Internet companies;
* "big people" vs. "little people" / "old people" vs. "new
people" -- and exactly who is being protected, & from what -- is
it, really, independent artists, or is it companies including
some very large and wealthy ones -- and is this just a matter of
"new" vs. "vested" interests -- and how threatening are the
threats to those interests, really?
One thing seems clear, in all cases, and in all cases it seems to
be un-clearly understood:
* The online digital world is a Good Thing, for the world of
print and other traditional publishing industries;
* At the same time, the world of print and other traditional
publishing industries remains a Good Thing for the digital, too.
That last was the lesson of the Dotcom Boom & Bust: a great many
small and poorly-funded and poorly-thought-out companies
discovered, to their great and ultimately fatal cost, that print
and other traditional publishing industries -- such as the music
"biz" -- do a great deal of good work, in fact, to earn their money.
Marketing and management and inventory control and "back office"
are not the most glamorous parts of a corporate organization
chart or expense statement, but they _are_ necessary; "customer
service", above all, is a necessity too, although a burdensome
and expensive job, for all commercial firms; the little Dotcom
era startups which tried to do without these necessities, and
without budgeting generously for them, all failed.
Bureaucracy is what the commercial world does best -- all those
"meetings" and "minutes", and all the internal get-ahead mutual
sniping and jealous backbiting and ambitious politicking -- some
folks in the commercial world actually enjoy all that, even if
"artists" and imaginative "digital engineers" do not.
Seeing that the bills get sent out, and get paid, and that
returns get handled promptly and efficiently, and customer tech
support and complaints patiently registered and resolved: instead
of referring customers to some convoluted "website", to do the
work themselves... Large corporate bureaucracies like those of
traditional print and music and movie publishers have long
experience, and do this sort of thing much better than most
little beginner "startups" do.
The first consideration, though, too -- that the online digital
world likewise can be a Good Thing for the traditional industries
-- has been a lesson felt heavily, in every branch of every
industry, since the Dotcom Boom. Digital technique at last has
revolutionized national productivity -- after the long
"productivity paradox" wait, of the end of the last century --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox
http://www.neweconomyindex.org/productivity.html
http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP130/ccswp130.html
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=375522
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471986925.html
(& Alan Greenspan: carefully _not_ being "irrationally exuberant" about it...)
http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/Speeches/2002/20021023/default.htm
-- as of the 2000s, the productivity of firms and industries and
even entire national economies, which had not embraced digital
techniques sufficiently and correctly, was slipping, while that
of the others which had embraced and mastered "the digital" was
soaring. And the Internet had emerged as the planet's #1 new
advertising and general marketing vehicle.
But is it only that: is the Internet only a place to buy and
sell? That is the dilemma faced now by the traditional marketing
and merchandising industries, because there are many who say that
the Internet needs to do _more_ than simply "buy and sell"...
handle just "goods and service"... be governed only by "market
economics"....
Those in the copyright debates now, for example, who insist on
exceptions for things like "education" and "libraries" -- also
those who insist, for social policy reasons they say, that access
to important "free information" on the Internet, as a "free
information network", be free-of-charge or nearly so -- also
those who offer values, of privacy and confidentiality and
various civil liberties, which they say are at odds with the very
guarantees and enforcement procedures which commercial Internet
users believe are so important to their own financial success.
So it's a dance, a balancing act, between the print and other
traditional publishing industries, who want the Internet for
keeping up competitively and expanding their businesses, and
those in the digital world who have developed it and want to see
it "remain free": each group in fact needs the other -- the one
for business support and financial solvency, the other to keep
the free-wheeling and innovative techniques progressing and
expanding, too -- and yet neither bunch currently seems anxious
to compromise, too much.
The Internet, even if it is not to become completely commercial
-- entirely a sales infrastructure, governed solely by "market
mechanisms" -- remains the single best place to advertise, in the
modern commercial world. Commercial firms which "get" this are
prospering -- from books to music to automobiles to even real
estate, now -- while firms which don't are going bankrupt.
The Internet is the ideal place to offer the "teaser" -- the
"hot" item or service which leads consumers in to buy the other
products offered by the company -- or the "loss-leader", the item
or service offered cheap, in the hope that consumers will
investigate and buy the others. Any commercial firm does this:
the book-dealer's list of "bargains", the automobile sales
"discount", the auctioneer's "firm price" bid -- but commercial
firms need not offer everything online, and so any insistence
that everything online be governed and regulated "commercially"
is over-reaching -- it ought to be enough that "online" is
invaluable to them, the commercial firms which use it, so that,
online as offline, the traditional balances between the
commercial and non-commercial aspects of our lives, may be continued.
So if commercial people enter negotiations for this particular
venture, which by its very nature is required to be "joint and
several", insisting on their particular world-view and allowing
for no other, they will do what business people never like to do:
"clue the deal", "kill the goose that has been laying golden
eggs", "throw out the baby with the bathwater" -- they're going
to _need_ these "digital" kids, their new ideas and unfamiliar
freedoms and unstructured thinking, to keep their Internet going.
Also, none of us, or very few, spend the entire day thinking
about money. At the same time few of us can remain financially
solvent without thinking about money at least just a little bit,
during our day. Just so with the Internet, then: if activities
there swing entirely in a "commercial" direction -- dominated by
buying & selling & getting & spending, governed by copyright and
other legislation & enforcement all designed solely for the
benefit of commercial firms, the Internet will have less and less
to do with our daily lives, in fact.
In addition to necessary commercial goods and services we also
seek education, and entertainment, and relaxation, and political
and social participation, and other personal goals which to us
are non-commercial -- or at least most of us cannot afford to
pay, for all of the "optional" latter, as much as we can for the
former "necessities" which we really must have.
The commercial world can get our online attention, with the "free
music download" -- and use that to woo us over to the purchase of
the music CD, or the monetized full-album download -- protecting
the latter "virtual" purchase, as it does "physical" purchases
now, with various enforcement mechanisms, as it always has. All
of us need this: the business economics, of conducting a music
industry without the "back office" and other services of
commercial music production and distribution companies, largely
are naive and would defeat us once again, as they did so many
during the Dotcom Boom & Bust. It's a new paradigm, perhaps, but
some things about it are not so new.
So, too, with the "free text download": traditional print
publishing firms still are needed -- even as they migrate much of
their output increasingly to digital downloading formats,
suitably-protected, they nevertheless still will be needed
online, as well. Imagining mass market and for that matter most
other text production and distribution without the risky and
difficult and expensive services of the traditional industries
can be as naive as the many Dotcom Bust garage-band-style "music
companies"... someone has to put up the venture capital, do the
editing, sell the product, handle the bills & marketing &
merchandising & packaging, and the customer service... all of it
expensive, and all of it very necessary...
And without the digital, the traditional industries will die:
many have died already, or now are dying, or have migrated
overseas to die there instead -- if they don't "get digital" they
simply delay the inevitable by outsourcing, and their business
competitors will beat them -- "nowhere to run to, nowhere to
hide", from the new digital era, not even and perhaps
particularly in China.
So there is a symbiosis, here -- a mutual need, certainly --
digital needs industry, and industry needs digital. It is a
balancing, a negotiation, a dance: each must win concessions from
the other -- but if either partner crushes the other completely
the entire effort will fail, as both are needed.
Copyright licensing which snuffs out traditional industries will
leave a vacuum, which new digital industries as yet cannot fill:
no bright new digital firm can do without at least some of the
supposedly decrepit bureaucracy it so abhors in the old tweedy
institutions it wants to replace -- those elderly bureaucrats and
their byzantine procedures are cherished by the _customers_, who
tend to be un-interested in the arcane details of "digital", and
so are relentlessly passé themselves. Digital innovations which
insist on the purity and value-free status, literally, of their
new techniques will be, as before during the Dotcom Bust, unable
to pay their bills.
But digital innovations also need their freedom, and room for
innovation, and flexibility: otherwise nothing new can be added,
to the old commercial superstructures as well as in other arenas,
and then the tremendous "economies of scale" and "global reach"
and "productivity" advantages of the digital era will not be
realized, by the commercial industries or by anyone else.
Copyright and other old techniques which try to make the jump
from the old world to the new, without changing, simply will
snuff out the new.
And there always are those non-commercial applications to
consider, as well: education, entertainment, political and social
participation, others -- "one size" simply never fits "all", here
-- the commercial mold is neither necessary nor sufficient for
the non-commercial, no matter what the commercial people may say
or even truly believe themselves. When the only tool you have is
a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail...
"Napster redux", Americans in the U.S. might say... But Americans
in the U.S. need to remember -- and we always forget -- that
things legal and governmental and regulatory work a lot
differently in some other systems than they do in the US: what
may seem more benign in the US case may turn out to be far more
sinister overseas -- also the reverse, but not always. This
particular "digital" fracas originated in the US, and it would be
informative for us -- and at least good market research -- to
understand how it is manifesting itself elsewhere: in France, and
in China, and in other places.
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071-5916
*
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