[FanDeAliFee]

For all anyone cares, I support respecting intellectual property rights as the basis of rewarding the labor and capital which produces the property. From now on, these rights will be subject to grave stress because of how cheap it is to store and transmit information. Legal and ethical regimens are evolving to accommodate this stress, and we are nowhere near a final equilibrium.

The Google Books project offers one perspective on the journey underway. Last I checked, Google claims the right to scan and index all books, even without the consent of their copyright owners, some of whom claim this very act of indexing is unprotected by law, and have in consequence sued Google. Note that Google does not reproduce to the public any but trivial portions of books for which it lacks copyright license, and its ambition is to assist the legitimate sale of all books for which copyrights are asserted.

Because it is possible to create robust and succinct digests of media files, in principle one could create a global registry of owners for them and their variants. YouTube continues to build a registry of this type, however modest and incomplete.

A comprehensive registry would make it possible for media purveyors and consumers to build practical automatic payment schemes which would partially compensate property owners with the voluntary cooperation of honest people. Such schemes include advertising and fee-for-service. Perhaps enough money would flow to substantially help motivate the continuing creation of new material. Surely, iTunes proves that at least for now, large numbers of people will pay for some recorded media, given the moral and practical costs of the pirated alternative. (Media creators should realize that if they do not make it easy for people to pay for its consumption under liberal circumstances, some people who would be happy to pay will instead dishonestly consume pirated copies which can be made absent a system which chaperones all viewers of the material.)

For now, the "YouTube test" is the best low-cost method for investigating the legitimacy of redistributing a media file. I condemn redistribution of files which flunk this test.

And even readers who rationalize ignoring copyrights should realize that they are making it ever harder for artists like Alizée to do business, and even so if she has already sold or otherwise traded away her rights in media files which contain her image, voice or other artifacts. If people are in practice, and feel, free to pirate the material I originate, then the resellers who buy my produce will be paying me that much less for it.

Ok, end of sermon.