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Analysis: holding back the copying tide

The only way to end copying of copyright materials is to dismantle the Internet - NOW! Oh, and ban the production of general purpose computers.

Perhaps the best thing for copy protection pundits, would be to let them have their way, and see how they like the result. I think that if things could be made genuinely uncopyable, sales would slump. But I doubt we'll ever get there; the technology to do so simply can't exist.

A judge (in America, where lawyers are both gods and devils) has decided that the first criminal trial under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act will go ahead. In other words, he has parked his throne on the beach, and has instructed the tide to remain out.

When Canute did this, he did it with satirical intent, says the myth; he wanted to show his flatterers that he could see through them. Perhaps the judge in the Elcomsoft case wishes to go ahead with this trial, in order to prove that it, too, is impossible; but then, perhaps, the US has fallen out of love with the idea that a lawsuit will solve every problem?

I don't see it. I see that the obsession with "I'll sue!" and "There oughter be a law agin it" is endemic, despite the fact that we have ample evidence that the law can't move mountains.

The law can't. There are things that people do, and the majority of people want to do, and which are easy to do; and no amount of legislation will prevent these things from happening. So since technology makes copying possible, surely, it's sensible to try to make technology which prevents copying?

All I can say for sure is: it never worked yet. Oh sure, there was a temporary period, while CDs couldn't be duplicated easily, and when youth spending was high, when disc revenues went to astonishing levels. But that's not going to happen again.

Copying of original materials is always possible, if you're prepared to spend the effort. When you have a technology like the Internet, which can distribute any digital stream across the globe to the largest possible audience, it only takes one cracked version of the original, and the box is open. Surely, we know this, by now?

Copyright law attempts to provide a legal framework for negotiation. It's more like a tide time-table, than a Thames Barrier. It lets you know what you can do, and what you can't do, to make an honest penny; and if someone is dishonest, it provides a framework within which disputes can be resolved.

But it absolutely can't provide monopolies.

When the Internet first arrived, it was immediately obvious - to a lot of observers - that the framework which had supported copyright since the invention of the radio and the gramophone record, was broken.

As freelance wireless creeps into the fringes of the Internet, the situation gets worse, not better. It was always a forlorn hope that you might be able to take an ISP to court if they deliberately encouraged the traffic in copied material ... but with the number of servers rising, and the amount of traffic getting astronomical, and the number of alternate routes proliferating, it is simply not going to be possible to police traffic.

The temptation is to say: "OK, we'll stop this at source. If there's an illegal copy, we can't stop it spreading. So let's ensure that there are no such things as illegal copies."

Like a child's sand castle, it appears to work as a way of holding back the water, at first. But the more effective it is, the more pressure it generates; if it takes more effort to copy, then it becomes more worth-while for a pirate to do it, and sell it for his own profit.

Make the copy-protection even better, and the pirate has to be that much bigger and better protected; officials who would never accept a bribe of a few dollars to allow one copy for personal distribution, are suddenly faced with enough money to retire on, plus the threat of dismemberment by a faceless hit-man, if they don't co-operate. And the pirate, who might have been lucky to be able to distribute to a couple of dozen local shops twenty years ago, can now distribute, virtually cost-free, to a global Internet market. And his copies are copyable, and as soon as the first wave washes over the sand-castle wall, the wall collapses.

The enemy of copying is a mass market. The Internet, which makes copying possible, also makes it possible to destroy the point of copying.

The latest Star Wars movie is being distributed all around the world simultaneously. This is being done to foil the pirates, who previously could get a pirate copy from the first geographical area, and duplicate it before the copyright holder got around to arriving in other countries. It simply makes copying more effort than purchase, and moves the sand castle further up the beach, to a place where the tide can't reach it.

But nothing changes; and the true enemy of copy protection is always the copyright holder.

Someone who wants a work of original art or craft, is prepared to expend some effort in getting it; that effort comes in time or money. I can record any work I like with audio tape; but it's too much effort; and I listen to the wireless day after day without transcribing the music. And the reason I can listen to the wireless is simple; the music industry gives the wireless operator the music in order to create demand.

The copyright holders get a little money from every broadcast, usually. Well, sometimes. Enough to keep them from starvation. Oh, to be sure, if they were able to force every radio station to pay them royalties on every play, they'd be wildly wealthy; but the fact is, most small broadcast operations would simply close down if they had that sort of cost structure.

If there were, genuinely, a copy-protection system which absolutely defeated all attempts to reproduce originals, then sales of the originals would slump, because most people would never hear about them.

Within days, I think samples would be given away. Within weeks, full tracks would be made available, and copy protection schemes abandoned. I simply don't think it would work. But since all digital streams have to be turned into ordinary, copyable audio at some point, and nearly every digital stream can be copied by someone, given enough time, the issue simply will never arise. The Internet and the personal computer have given the world a new reality on copying, and the tide can't be pushed out when it wants to come in.