After I read the rest of Cory Doctrow's Microsoft Research DRM Talk, I was struck by a point he made in the second half:

New media don't succeed because they're like the only media, only better: they succeed because they're worse than the old media at the stuff the old media is good at, and better at the stuff the old media are bad at. Books are good at being paperwhite, high-resolution, low-infrastructure, cheap and disposable. Ebooks are good at being everywhere in the world at the same time for free in a form that is so malleable that you can just pastebomb it into your IM session or turn it into a page-a-day mailing list.

The problem with Jack Valenti, the MPAA, the RIAA, and anyone who supported the DMCA (maybe if we charged royalties for the use of the letters "M" and "A" that would shut them up) is that they're living in the past. They expect new media formats -- the VCR, the CD, the DVD, the MP3, the eBook -- to behave like old media formats (the record, the cassette tape, the motion picture, the TV program, the print book). The problem is that new media formats open up a whole new host of opportunities for the consumer. The VCR, for example, allowed me to record One Life to Live while I was work and keep up on the intrigue going on in whatever town that's called on that show -- all without having to be there to watch it! The CD improved the quality of my music and allowed me to put more music into the same space. The DVD outdid the VHS tape by improving my picture quality and letting me watch a gazillion other things like director commentary, "making of" specials, and trailers. The MP3 outdid the CD in portability. I don't even carry around the few CDs I own anymore; all of my music is on my iPod, and it sure beats walking around with only one CD. I've got 3 gigabytes of CDs, however much that is. And I know people who have a lot more.

But, like all innovations, these new things can be used for the forces of evil. Cars killed people. People used the motion picture camera to make pornography. Xerox machines could be used to counterfeit things. Airplanes flew into the World Trade Center, but is anyone arguing that airplanes should be removed from American society because they can kill huge numbers of people? Of course not! Americans want innovation, and with innovation comes freedom. Americans, as President Bush is ready to point out to anyone who's listening, are a freedom-loving people. If a new technology can be be used for illegal purposes, but will offer a whole host of new conveniences (i.e. freedoms), then Americans will take the chance and opt for the convenience, even though these new innovations could be used for evil purposes. Our laws are the same way. Sure, some criminals can weasel their way out of jail by using the Fourth Amendment to their advantage, but that doesn't mean that we think the Fourth Amendment is bad. We would rather uphold everyone's rights rather than deny everyone those rights because a few people will use those rights to evil ends.

The DMCA, DRM, and the new INDUCE Act all remove the convenience and innovation of new kinds of media simply because that innovation could be used for, as the INDUCE Act argues, child pornography, or to violate copyrights. Although, when it comes to motion pictures, TV, or music, the ultimate concern is the bottom line: people might be able to steal content. Doctrow recounts Jack Valenti's Congressional testimony in 1982, where he told them "that the VCR was to the American film industry 'as the Boston Strangler is to a woman home alone.'" Copyright holders have opposed technology every time that a new technology has appeared. Why? Because it's a threat to their pocketbooks, which are invested in the old way of doing things. If people could suddenly makes their own VHS tapes, Valenti predicted, then it would be the end for movie studios. That never happened. In fact, movie studios embraced VHS and developed content specifically for that format. It made them far more money than they could have dreamed of -- because they didn't dream. They weren't innovative. When you're "The Man," innovation is a threat.

Doctrow also talks about how the market can squelch DRM. People decide what they want to buy, and the decision has been clear: people don't like DRM. Doctrow says:

When MP3 rolled around and Sony's Walkman customers were clamoring for a solid-state MP3 player, Sony let its music business-unit run its show: instead of making a high-capacity MP3 walkman, Sony shipped its Music Clips, low-capacity devices that played brain-damaged DRM formats like Real and OpenAG. They spent good money engineering "features" into these devices that kept their customers from freely moving their music back and forth between their devices. Customers stayed away in droves.

Customers are used to freedom. They want the ability to do whatever they want with the stuff they've bought. Customers, too, are operating on archaic notions of property: "This is mine, I bought it, it belongs to me, and I can do whatever I want with it." But customers will determine whether or not an innovation is "good" by virtue of their purchase of it or not. Content providers had better cater to customers' notions of property, or else they'll soon find customers "stay[ing] away in droves." Customers certainly aren't going to conform to the RIAA's notion of property; they'll go somewhere else.

Case in point. The iPod is a fantastical machine, but it has built-in limitations. You can only transfer songs from your comuter to the iPod. It doesn't go the other way. I found this out and was pretty upset with Apple. That doesn't make sense: what if I want to move a song back on to my computer? So, I looked on the Internet for an alternative to Apple's iTunes as a method for managing my music. And I came upon EphPod, which allows you to freely move your music between the computer and the iPod. This is capitalism at its most basic: I have a demand for a product, and Apple supplies me with a product. I don't like, so I'll go somewhere else.

Now that content providers like RIAA and MPAA have failed at capitalism, they're going to bring the government in. They know now that people hate DRM. It's like calling up Mitsubishi and asking permission to drive your car. Mitsubishi will say, "Do you promise not to run anyone over?" You'll say, "Yes," and Mitsubishi will allow your car to operate for an hour. After that, it quits working.

Rather than step up to the promise of new technology and its prospects for innovation (but also illegality), content providers will use the law to lock new technology into the paradigm of old technology. EBooks will be treated like regular books, MP3s like CDs, and DVDs like VHS tapes.

The public has already gotten a taste of what digital media can do, and it's not willing to give it up. If RIAA and MPAA wanted to stop the proliferation of digital media, they should have stopped it ten years ago. Now it's a part of our lives, and for it to be taken away will be akin to prohibition. Remember how well that worked?

At its heart, this debate is about money. "Intellectual property" is a great facade and a really big, neat-sounding word. But it's a proxy for "control." Content providers want to exercise as much control as they can over their content, extorting the most money they can out of consumers. If consumers have complete freedom over the content they have purchased, then perhaps they will use the content in ways that the Old Guard can't exploit. By locking down technology and keeping in the realm of what MPAA and RIAA can do, it is ensured that no one else will be able to use their content in any way except that which is dictated by them. They will have the keys to innovation and will choose to lock that room forever, since they cannot control what's inside. They're not visionary enough to come up with new ways to exploit the uses of new forms of technology, so it's better for them that no one else be able to, either.

Copyright law in this country cannot be dictated by a few Old White Men who would rather live in the past than the future. People must be allowed to innovate; they must be allowed the freedom to innovate and use new technologies in ways dictated by those technologies. This reminds me of The Fountainhead, where architect Howard Roark's designs are too forward-thinking for the common people. They are radically different and don't use any "classical" elements, they don't draw on the past. Roark believes that a building should stand on its own, without having to draw from the past: form follows function, and a skyscraper is not a Greek temple. Let it be said, then, that an MP3 is not a phonograph and an eBook is not a papyrus scroll.