I think it makes an important statement, in terms of offering a level, common understanding that could be used widely across society, government, and business. Early in the manifesto, it says the public domain

“. . . is the basis of our self-understanding as expressed by our shared knowledge and culture. It is the raw material from which new knowledge is derived and new cultural works are created. The Public Domain acts as a protective mechanism that ensures that this raw material is available at its cost of reproduction – close to zero – and that all members of society can build upon it. Having a healthy and thriving Public Domain is essential to the social and economic well-being of our societies.”

I think this is a particularly well-put point. I’d hoped to express a similar idea in my response to the recent Canadian copyright consultation (and other writings). The manifesto proposes principles and guidelines to foster the well-being of our public domain for the 21st century.

Many of its recommendations make sense to establish as a common global basis. Having such a basis would foster an understandable and common societal/cultural norm in the face of special interests that don’t always operate from a larger, more long-term perspective.

It recommends (I’ll paraphrase, but these are spelled out with more precision and detail in the manifesto itself)

• Reducing the term of copyright protection
• Changes to the scope of copyright protection take into account the effects on the Public Domain
• Material in the Public Domain in its country of origin, is in the Public Domain in all other countries
• Punishing false or misleading attempts to misappropriate Public Domain material
• Prohibiting other rights from reconstituting exclusivity over Public Domain material. Ensure a practical and effective path to make orphan and non-comercially available works available for re-use by society
• Make it the role of cultural heritage institutions to label and preserve Public Domain works
• Get rid of legal obstacles preventing the voluntary sharing of works
• Enabling personal non-commercial uses of protected works and looking into alternate forms of remuneration for authors/artists.

I see these as a welcome prescription for the cancers spreading through various governments’ approaches to copyright, particularly in the age of digital reproduceability,  Internet distribution, and an imbalance of corporate influence.

Setting these recommendations as a baseline would provide a common understanding from which to open up new, modern business models. We desperately need to affirm something like this manifesto to keep our culture vibrant, and our creative arts and sciences bubbling with inspiration and discovery.

I’ve often argued in the past that companies selling stuff like music on CDs should recognize that their distribution medium changed. Rather than selling content on discrete units of physical storage media (compact discs), they needed to recognize that the Internet is the medium for distribution.

The old physical delivery mechanism, CDs, mostly have no value. There’s little reason to buy a physical item that requires a lot of effort and resources to produce and deliver but provides no significant advantage (nor even quality anymore).

I was never a fan of AOL but when Time Warner and AOL announced their merge in 2000, I thought it was a sign that finally a big media company delivering all sorts of content had recognized that their delivery mechanism changed. Big media got a clue. Rather than complaining about people copying and distributing content on their own (thus losing sales of their discrete physical storage medium), Time Warner must have realized that the delivery medium they should be selling is the one that people value, Internet access. That’s how content will be delivered, so if they wanted to collect money from customers, they’d better offer the actual product (actually that product is now a service) that’s in demand. But I don’t think Time Warner ever really did get this concept. They failed to recognize their own combined strengths and offer them in an appealing way to customers.

Time Warner has been divesting its control over access to the Internet medium. It spun off its Time Warner Cable division earlier this year. They’ve been driving AOL further into the ground, as far as I can tell, since they went from providing Internet access to being largely just a consumer profiling and advertising delivery system. Thats’s the big opportunity that they missed taking advantage of. Rather than doing anything truly interesting and innovative with their merged relationship.Had Time Warner/AOL/Time Warner Cable really focused on gaining Internet access subscribers, they could have used their content to offer people all kinds of innovative, quality, unrestricted content, attempting to boost bandwidth usage (sell more of their service medium). But now Time Warner doesn’t want AOL anymore either.

In the meantime, what’s been happening with Time Warner’s core content publishing business? According to the press, it doesn’t sound fantastic. From the AFP:

“Revenue from Time Warner’s Networks unit, which includes CNN, HBO and Turner Broadcasting, rose six percent in the quarter to 2.8 billion dollars.

Filmed Entertainment unit revenue fell seven percent to 2.6 billion dollars on lower DVD sales and only moderate box office success…

Revenue for the publishing unit fell 23 percent to 806 million dollars with advertising revenue down 30 percent and subscription revenue down 16 percent.

Advertising sales at AOL… were down 20 percent while subscription revenue fell 27 percent.”

The company’s publishing, film, and advertising revenue all fell (notice the drop in DVD sales/physical delivery medium). Its television networks unit rose a bit. But essentially that’s another publishing medium that will be reproduced through the Internet. Ad and subscription revenues there, I imagine will be effected.

So Time Warner, making all kinds of content (and continuing to focus on that area of business), still faces challenges for harvesting money from the content it makes. It seems that won’t happen through owning access to the dominant distribution medium–they never put the right effort into making that successful. Perhaps they foresee problems with that model as well–free wireless community access is on the rise (though that’s an oversimplification).

Whatever it is they do with their content, I’m certain that the (movies, music, etc.) will continue to be widely replicated through the labour of individuals on the Internet and will take place quite outside of Time Warner’s control.

The point seemed to be that the US would make a deal with other countries, leaving manufacturing to them but idea production to the US.

It managed to present the issues in a passionate way that, I imagine, should capture the imaginations of many people who otherwise wouldn’t care about copyright issues at all.

“RiP: A remix manifesto is an open source documentary about copyright and remix culture. Created over a period of six years, the film features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people who have contributed to this website, helping to create the world’s first open source documentary.”

Filmmaker Brett Gaylor encourages remixes of the film too.

“With opposition likely to come from broadcasters, education groups, consumers, privacy commissioners, and the technology community, copyright could emerge as an issue where the Liberals and Conservatives sing a different tune.”

Which I think would be great. I recently wrote about how “intellectual property” issues should be brought into mainstream political discourse.

Besides, I think it’s good to write letters. It’s one way to communicate between votes and I can’t assume anyone in the political sphere necessarily reads anything I put on any of the blogs/sites I write.

It’s a funny thing, protesting “intellectual property” issues. I suppose people could organize large-scale public protests. Or you could regularly do acts of peaceful protest–perhaps sharing some creative commons-licensed music would qualify. But at the very heart of it, you’re essentially dealing with something that is invisible, it’s a concept embodied in progaganda, policies, and laws, and expressed in people’s activities. It’s a bit more tricky than showing polluted lakes requiring environmental reform, or people waiting in hospitals that require more doctors.

Letter-writing and article publishing are some of the ways to address it. That’s why I published the letter on the web. It adds to the monuments of discussion and perspectives building the force behind sentiment against restrictive IP regulation.