Let the copyright system apply to the digital age

Absrtact: First, tell us three stories. The first story is this. An American law professor wrote an article in 1994, saying that copyright law in the United States is technical and inconsistent, and needs to be explained and not used for many people and things.

Let me tell you three stories first. The first story is this. An American law professor wrote an article in 1994, saying, "Copyright law in the United States is technical and inconsistent, and needs to be explained and not used for a lot of people and things." For a writer or a book, a map, the Copyright Act has an influence on the author, the producer, the publisher of the chart, the painting, the sculpture, the photographic work, but for the bookseller, the producer, the filmmaker, the congressman and the average consumer, in the course of the work, the copyright issue is completely disregarded. Later he wrote that copyright law in the United States is becoming more and more difficult to understand, and more important is the breadth of its reach, can be said that a variety of ways of reproduction and transmission has become a part of people's daily life, most people do not contact with the copyright law, can say that an hour will not survive

The second story is still about this man. In 1996, he went to the United States Congress to testify about a technology called a talking machine. He is not a fan of the speaker. Instead, he thinks the machines will destroy the country's art future. When I was a kid, he said, there were young people in every house who were getting together to sing old songs, and now it was a machine that was broadcasting day and night. The vocal cords will be the product of human evolution, just as the gorilla's tail evolves into the tailbone of the human. Especially young people get together to sing, this is a cultural scene, is a literacy culture, we can participate in cultural creation and re-creation. His concern is that human beings will lose the ability to create and recreate, because this machine will remove this ability, we no longer have a literacy culture, but only a "read-only culture." In this case, the culture is top-down, the human vocal cords are no longer useful. Looking back on the developed countries of the 20th century, it is hard to say whether he is right or wrong, because in the culture of mankind, there has never been such a centralized trend, and art has never been so specialized. Because of the existence of machines, people's creative ability is constantly replaced. Just like the radio tower and the TV tower, the so-called culture into passive consumption activities, so that we can carry out efficient consumption, like reading, but amateur creation has not. This technology can be listened to, but not able to say, can see, but not to create. The 20th century was such a unique century that culture became a read-only culture.

So the past is readable and writable, and 20th century can only be read and cannot be written. Then the story went on. By the year 2002, a composer had created a guitar song titled "My Life". He put guitar music in a knowledge-sharing license album, and later a woman put a violin song, she has never seen the composer, but changed again, the song's name changed to "My life." Then at least 60 people did the same thing, they rearranged the music and made it a very successful site for a remix of the music. It can be said that the creation of the previous creative, this is consistent with the copyright law, the middle of no lawyer at work.

This is the three stories we see, what is the point of view? First, he gives us a first look at how creation happens and how it evolves in an ecosystem or environment. He talked about the conditions of communication, the ecosystem composition of the system is not the same, some people are the center of the ecosystem is money, and some not, professional or professionalized people have different ways of writing. The Beatles and other creators can be seen with a wide variety of creations. For these creators, control is important and it is necessary to ensure that their creations are materially rewarded. The whole ecology depends on whether there is enough copyright protection to sustain the ecology we have just mentioned. This kind of protection is not amateur, spontaneous, because some people do not say that today is free to create, but because love so to create, for these people to create is their work, is a shared economy. What is a shared economy? For example, a shared economy between children, a shared economy between friends, or a shared economy between lovers. They were not created for money, and we had to use this shared economy to define the relationship. If this relationship is well defined, we may change our relationship.

Economic sharing refers to the sharing beyond money, and this creation depends on whether we can make free use of creative results. What we call ecology, such as the ecology of scientific creation, includes teachers and scholars. All creation relies on a very complex economy, on the one hand created because love is a thing, this love is more than they can get the return of money, but the whole ecology must still rely on one o'clock-it can be used in a free, reasonable and free way to use.

The various kinds of ecology that we have just mentioned will coexist and complement each other. The copyright system must be able to support the work of professionals, give them enough incentive, but also give these scientists some free space. So copyright has to achieve two things, must provide incentives, but also to ensure freedom.

Internet changes Copyright ecology

Such an ecology does change, and technology may change the ecology, and the government can support it with different forms of subsidy. 18th century of the music advocated by the 20th century may be a completely different style of music, this ecological economy will also keep pace with the times.

The internet has also changed the ecology, and it has changed the professional dimension, for example, through the platform shared by Apple, to improve diversity, so that we can buy the services we want to get through money anytime, anywhere. Through the periodical, the paper website lets everybody read free, this kind of subversive change enables the concept to spread quickly. The same technology has also changed for amateurs or non-professional creators, like YouTube, where you respond so that we can have a culture of re writing and everyone can change.

For example, Canon used a piece of audio to explain Canon's technology. The video shows that music can drive the child's senses, and he transforms the same music into different instruments. The same concerts have different creations, and a child who has a remix of Canon music has 79 million clicks. The remix created more than 2,600 responses to the mix on YouTube, and the same music can be paired with different animations.

As a result of the changes in knowledge sharing, we found that our copyright does not do a good job of protection. Neither scientists nor amateurs have the right to play a role, because the entire copyright structure itself does not conform to the way it is. Because in a digital environment, the traditional copyright protection framework no longer applies-the original copyright inherited the concept of industrial social entities, it is obvious that the traditional framework of copyright restrictions too much, really able to regulate too little. Suppose that today we speak of copyright is a book, reading is free, because this matter does not mean that there will be another copy, the book to another person is not copying, but the book for sale is infringed copyright. Copyright drafters in the United States just take the book as a sleeping pillow, which in the strictest sense does not constitute a replica.

Reasonable use inside also have a lot of skills, now we entered the network era, each time the use is actually equal to a copy. It is precisely because we have entered the reasonable use space that has not been regulated, so that we cannot use the existing platform to solve the environment change. The evolution of copyright law over the past more than 100 years has not taken into account the advent of the Internet and the digital age, making it possible for many people to protect their creations by copyright. The problem with this design framework is the copyright law itself, which makes copyright law not effective. For the past 15 years, the United States has spent a long time waging war, and this battle is a copyright dispute. The president of the American Film Association used to say that this was a war of terror, and he said that our children seem to be terrorists, and we need to understand why the whole structure has failed. It is caused by conflict between digital technology and copyright framework, and we need to carry out system repairs.

Let the copyright system apply to the digital age

10 days ago I told the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva that we had to have a process to revise the copyright system, and that China needed to push this process forward so that it would make sense in the digital age. In the short term we need to encourage people to voluntarily license copyrighted works, showing our respect and better balancing the copyright code. This is the so-called Knowledge sharing project launched 8 years ago, and we want to use this project to provide an easy way for authors. Let them turn the pattern of retention of ownership into a pattern of retaining certain rights-some of them in their own hands and other rights to the audience.

We made a website that allows them to make choices about which copyrights are free and which ones to keep. By asking simple questions to understand what people think, if you allow deductive authoring, you allow the deductive author to do the same. This license supports different ecosystems in different ways, and the most liberal permission is to use my work to refer to me, so that the products created in different biosphere development. The authors put forward the requirement of "signed and not used for commercial purposes", which is more suitable for amateurs ' biosphere. If it is a non-commercial use of the license, you can set some conditions to give more rights. Here is a link to say that this work can also be licensed for business, you can deduce it, but it must be licensed in the same way as the amateur window. This most liberal way of licensing can support the development of three different biosphere.

China has a "knowledge sharing" project, which can be said to be important, the China Daily reported in 2006. Last year also had a very important event, a website with "knowledge sharing" licensed a large number of movies, which makes video data can be spread wide. The White House also uses the "Knowledge sharing" license to provide the audience with the freedom to open materials to the public. We saw an unprecedented increase in the number of licenses in 2009, with a total of 350 million licensed topics protected by knowledge-sharing licenses. We see the collapse of traditional licensing and a simple way of licensing that enables people to support a shared, shared technology economy.

A few days ago, a Belgian court ruled that when the work was not the same as the license, copyright law would protect the author and impose copyright restrictions on the work. As far as I can see, China is able to walk in front of this alternative way of licensing and to respect more personalized copyright. We also need to change the law, and China needs to promote creative thinking. 10 days ago I suggested in Geneva that the World Intellectual Property Organization consider setting up a "Blue Sky Committee", which is the kind of manufacturing framework that should be used in the digital age.

The copyright system should be simple first, if the law is to restrict the 15-year-old, but the 15-year-old can not understand, so we should reshape, make it simple.

Second, efficient, because copyright law is a financial relationship system, if you can not quickly know who owns what will be a problem, because copyright does not require registration and marking, the only solution is to restore the modern version of the program, in a certain period of time to take registration or identification procedures, The American Record Association also supports the idea.

Third, the law should be more targeted, selective regulation, to the professional and amateur to make the difference. Various ways are subject to the inefficient regulation of the copyright system, some areas need to be strong protection, some entirely outside the copyright regulation, can let amateurs back to the mixed. Between the two is more difficult to define, such as a professional to the work of the new contraction.

Four, the law should be effective, so that artists can be rewarded. The present system is not yet able to achieve this goal.

The law should be realistic. For example, Peer-to-peer file sharing is an international problem, some people say it is a kind of piracy behavior. The war against piracy has been fighting for more than 10 years, but it failed, and did not block Peer-to-peer file sharing. Some "wars" can be said to have no end of hope, how to fight this war. Is it more ruthless? Our idea is the reverse, the purpose of the war is to achieve peace, such as statutory permission or voluntary collective permission, it can also achieve the purpose of copyright system, but also to deal with peer-to-peer behavior, we need to buy peace. There is a patent team, and they suggest that, like drug patents, a country can pay for a portion of GDP to build funds and use these funds to encourage creativity. Funds like the purchase of pharmaceutical patents for these creations to pay, we can use, we do not have to consider the drug-specific licensing fees, can make the most of the manufacturing, optimize manufacturing costs. The United States takes 0.2% of GDP as a copyright licence fee, and we can do the same. This part of GDP is distributed among different works by sampling the use of copyright works. How to collect and pay from the national citizen, this is the localization question, does not need to discuss now. If a country says that our country is free to replicate, it can be achieved in this way. It would be OK if the state were to reward the author with a portion of GDP and let its authors replicate it to the fullest.

Knowledge sharing permission is to encourage people to pay more attention to copyright, the people have to demand, the person will have respect for the creator. I think this respect for copyright is very important, the United States in response to this is very extreme, now if forced to accept a more extreme than the United States copyright law, extreme to you have to force people to go to the rules, is not appropriate. In the past few years, not only in China, but throughout the world, such coercion has been impractical. As far as possible norms less, the law should be regulated so that ordinary people can understand. What the state has to do is keep the law up to date and make people feel that it makes sense to abide by the law, not to trample it. Because not all people will consciously abide by the law, not law-abiding is not to say that human nature is evil, but legal problems, the law is divorced from social common sense, too far.

We have to realize the truth that this war is not won and cannot be fought out. What difference would it make if we did this 10 years ago? First, artists will be richer, because the Peer-to-peer war winners are lawyers. Second, there will be more wars between businesses, and once they know what the rules are, they will compete under the rules. We do not treat a generation as a criminal, and when the children are told by the teacher that their behavior is a crime, they will put the idea into perspective and think of themselves as criminals. The Blue Sky Law is at least a five-year plan, and we have to spend so much time. If we were to do it in Beijing, we could also call it the Beijing Convention phase I. In any case, it is a system that truly can be formed in the digital age.

(This article is the founder of Knowledge Sharing, Harvard University professor Lawrence Lessigues at Renmin University "open and Innovation" forum speech, this reporter Zhang finishing)