The First Good Copyright News In a While

While the last few decades have seen an approach to copyright law that is more about protecting the dying business models of big industries than protecting small artists and creators, an update from the US Copyright Office released yesterday actually constitutes good news for those who think that copyright has gone off the rails.

Copyright is an interesting thing. It arose as a way to ensure that creators could derive value from their work that would allow them to continue to focus on their creation as their primary pursuit. The goal was not just to support the rights of a particular class of individuals, but a recognition of the fact that those individuals had a significant role in creating a vibrant artistic, scientific culture and civil society. The earliest copyright law in England had to do with the growing number of books being printed for broad consumption.

The internet has put immense stress on copyright. Simply put, the digitization of all media has lowered the cost of creating a copy of any movie, book, or song to zero. What's more, it has disrupted the role of the intermediaries who used to be charged with discovering, creating, and disseminating that media. Without the natural friction of either the cost of production or the cost of discovery of talent, the internet has created a Wild West in which anything can be shared and exchanged freely with just a few clicks.

Some see this as an amazing opportunity for opportunity to flourish and for the old monopolies of the publishing companies and record labels to be broken. Companies who have been intermediating value from the work of creators obviously see it as an existential threat.

One of the center pieces in the ideological battle has been the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), US legislation that passed in 1998 and created strict provisions for digital rights management (DRM). The act has given legal standing for companies to pursue legal action against "pirates" who use their content in ways not intended and who distribute it without permission. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have decried it as stifling free expression and inhibiting fair use -- a term which refers to the legitimate ways a customer can use media once they have purchased it.

Every few years, the US Copyright Office issues clarifications about what previous laws mean. The most recent DMCA clarification was a big win for user-advocates. Among the clarifications:

• People can use clips from DVDs they've purchased for the sake of education or criticism;
• People can use lawfully obtained software on their phones, even if the phone manufacturer doesn't support that software;
• People can repurpose their phones to run on the network of their choosing, even if the manufacturer doesn't support it.

The last two are directly relevant for Apple. Apple's iPhone has been tied exclusively to AT&T, but with this ruling, it is now legal for someone to unlock the phone and use a different network compatible with Apple's hardware (which effectively means T-Mobile). Apple's App Store has been the gatekeeper of the programs that can run on the iPhone, but tech savvy users have used a work around called "Jailbreaking" in order to install programs that haven't been approved. This ruling makes this activity completely legally sanctioned. This matters in part because Apple has used its store approval policies to keep out certain software it saw as competitive - like Google Voice.

It seems unlikely that this will have a dramatic impact on the day-to-day lives of most media consumers. But it will impact the way developers and entrepreneurs think about their opportunities, and could also influence other legal rulings about the changing nature of intellectual property law. Ultimately, those effects could be significant.

Photo credit: Horia Varlan