Copyright and a Bit of Porn

The basic thesis of the traditional copyright system protection lies in the following postulate: if we allow to steal everything, films will no longer be shot, music will no longer sound and poems will no longer be made. Devoid of the state machinery protection, the flow of intellectual products will run low and leave the mankind lead an aimless life beyond the progress.

The pictures depicted in regular plots about intellectual piracy often use the image of a starving poet who can not get an adequate fee for his work and talent. This image is extremely emotionally strong, especially considering the fact that not only right-holder representatives of big labels and corporations (though they definitely do not get a chicken feed) stand this position, but also actual authors and actors. The latter proved their right for own judgement.

But I think that this point of view is wrong. By the way, a lot of followers of copyright system reforming also think so. Therefore, I am not going to provide all of theoretical reasons in this respect. Instead, I will try to prove the falsity of the classic copyright position by an example.

The example lies in a word, for which, let the truth be told, most of you have opened this post. This word is porn. Let’s not pay attention to the content moral side and legality. We will just single out only the part of the fictitious asset monetization. After all, the adult content is the same audiovisual work as any video or movie. In case with some videos, even substantial content, there can arise some confusions.

The analysis of some aspects of the given specific content monetization allows to reveal some peculiarities of the modern copyright development.

To begin with, porn industry prospers. Billions swim in it. At that, porn is not protected by the law as strictly, as other content. The industry has managed to accumulate huge cash flows without sending anybody up for 5 years for the illegal use of Sasha Grey’s picture in a demotivator. It is wrong to state that all of this money is illegal like narcotraffic. If we exclude from statistics the obviously and absolutely illegal content, like real rape or that with the involvement of under-ages, the money flow in the industry will be huge. According to Wikipedia, it’s about 10 billion dollars a year. It’s more than in sports and music industries together.

Has anyone heard about a porn filmmaker who died of starvation?

To my mind, since the industry had been lacking the government support, it had to build market relations on a par. This has led to the following:

• There’re plenty of free content that makes money thanks to an advertising model or serves as an attraction for paid content;
• In addition to advertising, subscription model is popular as well;
• The content price is much lower than that of the media industry. It sometimes costs more to buy a movie or download a song than to get a monthly sub for some inappropriate resource (how could moral crusaders have overlooked it?).
• Considerable amount of the content becomes free within a short time (don’t have the heart to name it a public ownership)

We can observe all of these trends in the classic copyright but they are seriously slowed down by a Dutch copyright “disease”. The point is that this “disease” corrupts and weakens economy by means of free and superfluous resource. In the given case, government support is the mentioned resource.

Police and Courts guarding the classic media industry function as a temporary dam for future changes. All the might of lobbyists, lawyers and officials is focused on the possibility of providing an archaic law for right-holders to ban somebody from listening his music, singing his songs, or watching his movies if a user does not accept his terms. In other words, they fight for the right of holders not to pay attention to the market. But the trick is, the more a right -holder will rely on the government, the sooner he will end in a fiasco at the market.

Actually, right-holders should learn from porn as for the industry survival and the way it fleeces its consumers. Either the right-holders will follow the example of the porn industry in terms of content monetization, or the finances will make them feel like porn actors…