Current and Future Challenges in Copyright Law

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Thursday, Oct 29, 2009

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Entertainment insiders, USC Law professors, examine the collision of technology and artistic content

Whether it’s downloading a song through iTunes, watching a favorite show on Hulu, or using BitTorrent to download computer software, students on university campuses across the nation are undoubtedly familiar with some of the major players and problems in the ever-expanding field of copyright law.

USC Law students packed Room 7 to listen to several top industry minds tackle “Current and Future Challenges in Copyright Law” on Oct. 20.

The event was presented by the USC Federalist Society, the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Society, the USC International Law Society and the Gould/Marshall Alliance. It was supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Josh Wattles, Jon Healey and John Malcom listen to Prof. Jonathan Barnett

Alongside USC Law Professors Jonathan Barnett and Jack Lerner on the panel were John Malcolm (Motion Picture Association of America), Carlos Linares (Recording Industry Association of America), Jon Healey (Los Angeles Times) and Josh Wattles (deviantART.com).

The professors laid the foundation for the discussion by asking three important questions of the guests:

• Taking the law as it currently reads, are there workable business models to support revenue streams to fund content generation and delivery?
• How could the law be changed to allow for better business models not currently possible?
• What will actually happen considering the current political economy?

Healey mentioned two possible models to fit within the current market framework of lower profit margins per item and higher volume. One was a subscription model where consumers might pay for music like they do cable television and the other was Lala.com’s model, where customers only pay 10 cents per song instead of the dollar or two they might spend on iTunes, but access to the song is limited to an online “locker.”

Carlos Linares and Josh Wattles

Malcolm was not sold on the necessity to adhere to a low-margin, high-volume setup because he said he has not given up on law enforcement’s ability to crack down on piracy, which would in turn create a much better climate for legal downloading to succeed.

But he stressed that content generators no longer have the upper-hand compared to consumers.

“The consumer is king and the consumer is speaking in terms of how it wants to enjoy copyrighted material: where, when and at roughly what price points,” he said.

Wattles added several colorful commentaries to the discourse, including an idea on why the Internet is not a perfect fit for the movie and music industries. Wattles explained that in most technology transfers (VHS to DVD, for example) the new technology was designed specifically for its industry. But the Internet was not designed specifically for movies and music, so there have been a number of growing pains.

“You have to speak to the medium, understand the technology, get inside that technology, and design your product to that technology,” Wattles said.

Prof. Jack Lerner

Linares ran with that point and made the case that technology that is not designed for music has diminished the sound quality of downloadable songs. Song writers and publishers, in addition to recording labels, are trying to survive and although download-based, subscription-based, and advertising-based models all exist, Linares said everyone needs the end product to sound good.

“Technology has made it so much easier for things to get so much worse,” he said.

The discussion continued for over two hours as the panelists fielded student questions about international piracy enforcement, protection of an individual’s copyrighted work, taxation of distribution points and more.

But perhaps the most encouraging comment for the students in attendance came from Wattles, as he discussed all the parties that need to butt heads and eventually come together to solve copyright law issues and keep the affected industries afloat.

“It’s going to be great for lawyers,” he said.

-Story by Jason Finkelstein; photos by Maria Iacobo.