My latest weekly Forbes column (“The Twilight of Copyright?”) considers the future of copyright law and the controversy generated by “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA). [See Ryan Radia’s mega-post for all the details on the SOPA fight.] After co-editing a big book on copyright law with Wayne Crews nine years ago (Copy Fights: The Future of Intellectural Property in the Information Age, Cato Institute, 2002), I decided to stop covering copyright policy altogether. Any attempt to try to find balance in this debate is pretty much futile, and I also got tired of losing friends over the issue. (Nothing starts a good catfight among libertarians like copyright policy.)
I don’t plan to jump back in the fight in a big way, but I felt compelled to say something about SOPA since it represents one of the most sweeping attempts at Internet regulation ever conceived. As much as I detest the culture of free-riding that exists online today, I think extreme solutions like SOPA are never justified. And I’m not even sure it would work in practice. In my Forbes essay, I wonder aloud about what’s left to try. I lay out three options: (1) Do nothing: Leave the shell of copyright law in place and hope for best; (2) Massive vertical integration: Let conduit guys buy out content owners and let them figure out how to pay content creators; (3) Blanket online compulsory license: Force everyone to pay an embedded fee on broadband or devices to cross-subsidize content.
In the end, I argue that all three solutions have serious drawbacks but, sadly, I don’t really have any fresh ideas to offer. Anyway, read the whole thing if you’re interested in the topic. I think I’m done with it for another decade.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.