Category: Culture

Spin This: Copyright Industries Grow at Twice the Rate of US Economy

A new report released today by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) offers the following big headlines for FY2012:  the copyright industries, for the first time, contributed over $1 trillion to the U.S. economy, accounting for nearly 6.5% of GDP; these industries represent nearly 5% of all private-sector jobs (5.4 million) in the U.S.; these industries grew at an aggregate annual rate of 4.73%, which is more than twice the rate of the U.S. economy (2.1%) overall.

So, what are we to make of these numbers?  Or just as importantly, how will copyright’s antagonists spin this report?  They could try to punch holes in the findings themselves, but that seems unfruitful; numbers this big would have to be grossly inaccurate to suggest that copyright industries aren’t a critically important segment of GDP, as has been attempted in the past.  On the other hand, copyright’s foes could spin this report as “See, we told you internet phenomena like piracy aren’t hurting anyone. Look how good things are, you whiners.” But here’s the bottom line I think we should take away from this report and any pollyanna attempts to rebut or redirect its relevance:  copyright works, don’t break it.

Seriously, the only reason I write about this stuff is that a massively powerful — although not so economically valuable — minority of companies  spend a lot of time, energy, and money trying to reverse, weaken, or obliterate IP laws on a global scale; and if nothing else, I happen to think squandering the economic engine fueled by copyright is a really bad idea unless someone can demonstrate precisely why we should monkey with a trillion-dollars worth of GDP.  So far, for all the academic theorizing and economic divination that claims without any evidence that “copyright stifles innovation,” the record is clear that investment in these industries supports economic health, and that should matter to anyone with a job in any sector.  To put that in perspective, if you’re a truck driver, you are at least 5,000 times more likely to be delivering goods to someone who works in a copyright-supported industry than to someone who works for a company pushing to weaken this legal framework.  It should be understood that the antagonists to which I refer are not all technology companies by any means.  To the contrary, this report includes software and other technologies that rely substantially on copyrights.

This afternoon, the House Judiciary Committee resumes deliberations on an ongoing review of copyright; and while there are reasonable grounds for revising this body of law, the process should, in my opinion, be viewed as requiring surgical revisions with particular attention to more robustly protecting the independent entrepreneur in the digital market.  Beyond that, it is hard to fathom why any American would want to needlessly and recklessly tamper with a system that promotes this kind of economic prosperity.  We have enough real problems.  Copyright isn’t one of them.

Leon Botstein on Education

“The cost of higher education is not a function of bricks and mortar. The cost is people. It is labor intensive. No matter what the technology, the learning is about face to face. The crude analogy I would make is between learning and sex. Technology can greatly improve, broaden and diversify what we define as the sexual experience, but in the end it’s about intimacy and human contact in real time. That’s the case with teaching as well. For all the improvements technology has brought us – in the end, those are all just tools behind the human social character of learning.” — Leon Botstein

I recommend this Q&A with C.M. Rubin and President of Bard College Leon Botstein.  It’s a familiar refrain:  no matter what technologies come along, the stuff of real value requires human labor.

Who’s Afraid of the TPP?

Ever heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership?

Okay, if you’re an internet issues follower, then yes, you’ve heard of these international trade negotiations still underway.  If you’re one of the other 180 or so million adult Americans, you probably haven’t.  And that works out to be very convenient for the self-proclaimed protectors of Internet freedom, if you’re inclined to believe the Obama Administration is chomping at the bit to whittle away your First Amendment rights at the behest of Hollywood movie moguls.  WikiLeaks just leaked what its editors seem to think is a damming excerpt from the trade agreement, and Mr. Assange has warned:

 “If instituted, the TPP’s IP regime would trample over individual rights and free expression, as well as ride roughshod over the intellectual and creative commons. If you read, write, publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if you’re ill now or might one day be ill, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.”

Ordinarily, that much hyperbole from the mouth of someone as transparently self-serving as Assange is its own weakness, but we’re about to see the blogosphere swell with headlines warning that the TPP is just like SOPA! Beware!  The fact that the leaked excerpt is already out of date notwithstanding, we can agree without even seeing current drafts that the agreement-in-progress does have one thing in common with SOPA:   it won’t affect your rights one wit.  Since the US began Fair Trade Agreements in 2000, not a single one has effected a change in US IP law. And without a change to US law (and by the way SOPA didn’t change domestic law either), how exactly is my dancing in the crosshairs, as Julian Assange insists?  I mean my dancing sucks, but I don’t think the USTR gives a damn.

Let’s be clear, the internet industry lobbies for and tries to sell the public a world view in which all activity online exists outside any law; and there is no way they’re not going to gin up fear over any trade agreement that covers intellectual property. And there won’t be any trade agreements that don’t include intellectual property because, so far anyway, IP is big business, quite possibly a business where you work right now. Meanwhile, Julian Assange maintains his apparent relevance by selling a lot of smoke and claiming there’s always a fire.

In all seriousness, any citizen so inclined should certainly pay close attention to these or any other trade negotiations and do so through less hyperventilating sources. I prefer other soporifics, but we all have our tastes.  One thing that will not, however, be keeping me up is a concern that the USTR is presently engaged in chilling my or my children’s or my neighbor’s right to free expression.  And you know why?  Because free speech can’t be taken away as easily as certain self interests would have you believe.  Dostoyevsky was executed by firing squad*, and we still read Dostoyevsky.  Tell me a trade agreement unfairly favors a multi-national over a small business, and I’m listening, but tell me it threatens my right of free expression?  Let ‘em try.

* No he wasn’t. See comment from Musician below and my response. I think the larger point is the same. I could have made any number of choices — Lorca executed, Wilde jailed, Solzhenitsyn imprisoned, etc. — but Dostoyevsky’s execution here is greatly exaggerated.