February 08, 2012
Cary Sherman, the chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), had a column in the NYT complaining about “how the democratic process functions in the digital age.” The gist of the complaint seems to be that the Internet allows for the widespread dispersion of views contrary to the interests of the RIAA through outlets that they cannot dominate. This apparently contrasts with traditional media outlets like the NYT which seems to have an open door for the industry to say almost anything it wants regardless of whether it is true.
For example the column absurdly claims that Congress had an obligation to pass legislation like SOPA because it has a “constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American property from theft, to shield consumers from counterfeit products and fraud, and to combat foreign criminals who exploit technology to steal American ingenuity and jobs.”
Of course this it is absurd to argue that Congress is obligated to take steps to enforce every property claim to the extent that its owners would like. For example, it is standard practice for people to tear down political posters expressing views that they don’t like. Congress has never felt the need to pass special legislation that would prevent such destruction of property. According to Mr. Sherman’s logic, Congress has a constitutional obligation to pass stronger bills to ensure that such destruction of property does not take place.
Furthermore, to be analogous to SOPA, Congress would require third parties to take steps to ensure that destruction of political signs does not occur. This would mean that it could fine car companies for selling cars to people who use them to tear down political signs.
The jobs part of Mr. Sherman’s argument is even more ridiculous. The money that people save by not paying his clients doesn’t go under a mattress; it is spent on other products. This is the exact same argument as the gains from trade liberalization except instead of eliminating a tariff that might raise the price of a product by 10-20 percent, the availability of unauthorized copies can reduce the price of a product by 100 percent. This leaves consumers with more money to spend on cars, health care and a wide variety of other goods and services.
The real issue here is that copyright is an archaic property form that it is no longer practical to enforce in the Internet Age. Serious policy people should be looking to develop alternative mechanisms for financing creative and artistic work. Unfortunately, the organizations that ostensibly represent creative workers are not very creative.
It is impressive that the NYT allows a piece from the industry to appear with apparently no fact checking. Two days earlier it had a similar column complaining about the failure of SOPA. Given its dominance of the NYT’s opinion pages, it is understandable that the RIAA would be upset about the growth of independent voices on the Internet.
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