The Problem With Copyright

One book down, another five or so to go; As we switch between books, I thought that I might use this blog post to touch upon Open Code and Open Societies, a short article I just read that examines the detrimental affects of a society shifting towards closed source content on the internet. In it, Lawrence Lessig claims that copyright, which used to be employed solely to inhibit wrongful distribution of a work, is now exploited to enact a monopoly on the spread of information across the internet. The reason I find his idea compelling, is because it is true; Every time we pull data from the internet, we have to jump through a series of small hoops, designed by the author to prevent others from using the information for their own personal use.

Heck, even to publish the copyright symbol at the top of this post, I had to go to a media commons (a website where most, if not all items are free of copyright), find a picture, and then comply with all the author’s usage requests (i.e. attribute the picture in their name, don’t misuse the information, etc.). Luckily, however, because the symbol is so widely used, I was able to avoid the author’s requests and copyright infringement altogether.

This leads me to ask ‘how did copyright laws become so stringent?’ According to Lessig, it started when a group of “well paid Chicken Littles” began whispering in Congresses ear the damage that the internet revolution could have on copyright (Lessig 8). Paid by Hollywood for reasons not quite known, these mischievous people wanted a way to distribute their content without losing control. Eventually, the influence they put on Congress led to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which added more regulations to the already complex copyright code (Lessig 9).

With further protection under the law, authors were able to completely control who was able to view and use their work, creating a monopoly on the content. To take an example from Lessig, DVD’s provide for an excellent demonstration of this. Pretend you just bought the latest season of House MD, and you are about to watch it on your laptop. You slide the disk into the computer, and the first episode starts to play. While you are watching, your computer is using a program to continuously break the simple CSS encryption algorithm that protects the data on the DVD (Lessig 9). The program, however, is licensed to manufacturers of Windows computers and Macintosh only, so if you are running a different operating system (say Linux), you are theoretically breaking the law. At least that’s how it used to be. Today, the CSS code-breaking program is licensed to more manufacturers, but that’s not the point. The point is that at one time, there was a monopoly on the CSS program, one that was created by copyright laws.

While there isn't much hope of counteracting the copyright laws now that they are already in place, Lawrence Lessig challenges us as users of the internet to "resist this closing of the Internet's mind" (Lessig 14). The goal is to get people to see the balance point between open source content and someone's property. In the past we have almost always found the balance point, yet with the internet revolution on the rise, how much longer will we be able to maintain the equilibrium?

Works Cited:

• Lessig, Lawrence. "Open Code and Open Societies." Address. Free Software -- a Model for Society? Tutzing, Germany. 1 June 2000. Lessig. Lawrence Lessig, 1 June 2000. Web. 26 Jan. 2011. <http://www.lessig.org/content/articles/works/opensocd1.pdf>.
• Waldir. File:Copyright.svg. Digital image. Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia Foundation, 23 June 2009. Web. 26 Jan. 2011. <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Copyright.svg>.

Immune to The Cycle?

It is every company’s dream to out-compete its neighbors. Whether a business is advertising smear campaigns, or is lowering its own prices to entice customers, each company is doing its best to stay afloat. Generally, this unending chain of marketing techniques results in a competition stalemate, yet every so often, one business pulls ahead of the other and forces it out of business. As a result, with the sudden lack of competition in the market, a horizontal monopoly is created. With the market closed in this manner, consumers only have one choice when purchasing their commodity. This allows the monopoly to reap the monetary value of the market, and control what the consumer receives in the product. On the contrary, according to Tim Wu in his book The Master Switch, “…whatever has been closed too long is ripe for ingenuity’s assault..." (Wu 6). As the monopoly is attacked by new innovators, the chance that the market will reopen and become decentralized increases. Wu defines this alternating open/closed pattern as “The Cycle."

Photograph taken in December 2004 by Kornelia und Hartmut Häfele

Throughout The Master Switch, Wu gives the reader numerous examples of companies that exemplify this open and closed pattern, one of the first and more notable being the AT&T monolith. By out competing many of the smaller companies with tactics such as “predatory pricing,” AT&T quickly rose to dominate the commercial telephone sector (Wu 49). Yet as AT&T reached the peak of its success, it faced a storm of innovators-- as predicted by Wu roughly ninety years later -- that were eager to find their fortune in the telephony market. These small entrepreneurs, as described in my previous blog post Leaving the Door Open, were seen as a threat to the monopoly and consequently struck down as soon as they developed additions to the standardized AT&T telephone. The exception, however, was a small, rubber cup designed to fit over the phone’s receiver. Known as the Hush-A-Phone, the simple add-on was created to give the customer an added amount of privacy when talking on the phone. Contrarily, as soon as the Hush-A-Phone was marketed, designer Henry Tuttle was quickly attacked by AT&T. Determined to prevent any one inventor from developing an item that could potentially destabilize the centralized telephony market, AT&T engaged Tuttle in a major lawsuit. Afterwards, it was determined that AT&T could not inhibit a company from developing an add-on device, and that the consumer should be able to use the device without fear of violating their contract if they please. This ruling was controversial, and served as a precedent for other innovators that followed after Tuttle. With an influx of smaller producers, the AT&T monopoly was disbanded, thus completing Wu's cycle.

Photograph taken in Winter 2003 by Stefan Kühn

Following the Hush-A-Phone incident and the disbanding of AT&T, Wu includes a passage on the development of the FM bandwidth. Decades ahead of its time, frequency modulated radio, as it was eventually named, was developed when Edwin Armstrong was tasked by David Sarnoff to invent a device that “might remove the static and distortions of AM radio” (Wu 126). Little did either innovator know that the resulting device would disrupt AM radio, and revolutionize radio broadcasting. By altering the frequency of the radio wave, instead of its amplitude, FM broadcasts were produced using less energy, and were capable of traveling farther distances with less static, making them ideal for broadcast stations. By selling his patents to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), Armstrong was hoping to make a substantial profit. Conversely, RCA saw FM radio as a threat to its current AM radio market and put the idea on the back burner. Furthermore, to prevent anyone from tampering with the FM technology without its permission, RCA banned commercial FM broadcasting, except for private use on a select group of high-frequency bandwidths. To combat this closed market, Armstrong continued to tinker with his new invention, in the process proving that FM radio waves were also capable of carrying telegrams and facsimile reproductions of the New York Times (Wu 129). Even after proving the superiority of FM radio, it took several years before RCA began to open up to Armstrong and the now growing group of amateur FM radio broadcasters. With this last fact, it is hard not to wonder what might have happened if RCA had not placed a restriction on FM radio's development, or conversely if they had not released the restriction at all. Would the affect on the AM radio monopoly been worse? Would the cycle accelerate or slow?

By analyzing these examples, it is clear that the cycle played a part in the continuous opening and closing of both the telephone and radio markets. In a sense, this cycle is beneficial, as it prevents one company from continuously controlling a specific market, and allows the underdog to have a chance at prosperity. Yet, Wu also gives a reason as to why so many monopolies fostered the harsh, unrelenting attitude that has come to stereotype them. Towards the end of part II, Wu claims that “the best antidote to the disruptive power of innovation is overregulation” (Wu 128). Here Wu supports the actions that monopolies have taken to choke out the competition, and suggests a way for them to continue prospering, thus bypassing the disbanding affects of The Cycle. Yet, although immunity to the cycle is theoretically possible, no one has been able to achieve it: the cycle has thus far been applicable to all corporations around the world, both past and present. Put simply, the cycle is unstoppable and inevitable, and even the strongest monopolies -- Verizon and the new AT&T -- will soon fall victim; for this reason it remains Wu's central and most compelling claim.

Works Cited:

• Häfele, Kornelia, and Hartmut Häfele. Alt Telefon.jpg. 2004. Photograph. Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Wikipedia, Dec. 2004. Web. 23 Jan. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alt_Telefon.jpg>.
•  Kühn, Stefan. Radio.jpg. 2003. Photograph. Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Wikipedia. Web. 23 Jan. 2011. <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Radio.jpg>.
• Wu, Tim. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. Print.

Leaving The Door Open

As I sit here, writing this blog on my laptop, I can't help but fathom the ingenuity that has brought us from writing with quill and paper to posting a message like this on the internet for hundreds of thousands, no millions of people to see. Over the 150 or so years that it took to span that technological gap, inventors were continuously building new devices and modifying old ones, turning “the cycle” that, as Eugene Wu describes in his book The Master Switch, governs the life of all innovations. The cycle, Wu says, is founded on the principle that every so often, a new piece of equipment will come around, rendering its predecessor obsolete. This new, “disruptive” innovation will then go on to function until it too is replaced by something even better. So, on and on the cycle turns, knocking out a dated technology, and sometimes even a company, with each revolution. Over time, however, corporations, obviously wanting to stay in business, did their best to block out the competition and any new innovations that threatened their market. The result was a monopoly that prevented few, if any, innovators from producing their ideas.

Since its founding in 1885, AT&T maintained a monopoly over the phone service industry until its split in the mid 1980’s. During its golden years, however, AT&T, as part of an agreement with the government, used a rule to prevent inventors from modifying the telephone. Specifically, the rule required that “No equipment, apparatus, circuit or device not furnished by the telephone company shall be attached to or connected with the facilities furnished by the telephone company, whether physically, by induction, or otherwise” (Wu 102). Yet several small businesses tried their luck against AT&T with little avail. The exception, Hush-A-Phone Incorporated, was a two-man team that marketed a small, rubber cup that fit over the mouth piece of a phone. According to the company motto, Hush-A-Phone was designed to “‘[Make] your phone as private as a booth’” (Wu 101). Yet even though Henry Tuttle, president of Hush-A-Phone Inc., meant no threat to the telephone company, he had still broken federal law, and was now involved in a lawsuit against the Bell affiliate.

So why was AT&T determined to squish its competitor in such a virulent attack? As the key player in the phone service industry, AT&T focused on Hush-A-Phone Inc. because it represented a threat to the industry, an industry that according to Wu was going to be pushed into the future by AT&T and AT&T alone. In fact, AT&T was so determined to keep this industry alive that it even kept its own researchers from innovating something that might make the telephone obsolete.

After losing the first case and having the ruling appealed, Hush-A-Phone was cleared of all charges after Judge Bazelon declared that “‘[the subscriber has the] right reasonably to use his telephone in ways which are privately beneficial without being publicly detrimental’” (Wu 113). So what does this simple court case prove? By winning such a “modest” victory as Wu describes it, the door was left open to all secondary inventors in the late twentieth century who wanted to make money off of improved devices, and eventually lead to the collapse of Bell (Wu 113).


Works Cited:

• Wu, Tim. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. New York: Knopf, 2010. Print.