[governance] Richard Stallman: Open Letter on Sharing Licence in Brazil

Wed Dec 8 11:21:45 EST 2010

Richard Stallman today published an Open Letter to Brazil’s President Elect
Dilma Rousseff and the Citizens of Brazil. He congratulates Brazil on its
readiness to introduce the freedom to file-share into copyright law. He
proposes improvements to ensure that the levy goes to authors and artists
rather than to companies and to avoid favoring superstars. He also suggests
a mechanism for incentivizing foreign artists to work for the adoption of
the Sharing Licence in their own country.

in English:
http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html

in Portuguese (translated by Pablo Hess, with support by Alexandre Oliva):
http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.pt.html

Also see the campaign website for the Sharing Licence and sign the petition
to ensure that the „momentous improvement” of the freedom to share in
copyright law will actually happen:
http://www.compartilhamentolegal.org

Dear President Elect Rousseff and the Citizens of Brazil

In Brazil's debate over copyright law, a momentous improvement has been
suggested: freedom to share published works, in exchange for a levy
collected from Internet users over time. To recognize the usefulness to
society of Internet file sharing among the citizens will be a great advance,
but that plan raises a second question: how to use the funds collected? If
used properly, they provide the chance for a second great advance, in
support for the arts.

Publishers typically propose to use the money to "compensate" the "rights
holders" -- two bad ideas together. "Rights holders" is a disguised way of
directing the money mainly to publishers rather than artists. As for
"compensate", that concept is inappropriate, because it means to pay someone
for doing a job, or to make up for taking something away from him. Neither
of those descriptions applies to the practice of file sharing, since
listeners and viewers have not hired publishers or artists to do a job, and
sharing more copies does not take anything from them. (When they claim to be
harmed, it is by comparison with their dreams.) Publishers use the term
"compensate" to pressure others to view the issue their way.

There is no need to "compensate" anyone for citizens' file sharing, but
supporting artists is useful for the arts and for society. If Brazil adopts
a sharing license fee system, it should design the system for distribution
of the money so as to support the arts efficiently. With this system in
place, artists will benefit when people share their work and will encourage
sharing.

What is the efficient way to support the arts with these funds?

First of all, if the goal is to support artists, don't give the funds to
publishing companies instead. Supporting the publishers does little to
support artists. For instance, record companies pay musicians little or
nothing of the money that comes in from sale of records: the musicians'
record contracts are cunningly arranged so that musicians do not receive
"their" share of record sales until a record sells a tremendous number of
copies. If file sharing levy funds are distributed to record companies, they
would not reach the musicians. Book contracts are not quite as outrageous,
but even authors of best-sellers may get little. What society needs is to
support these artists and authors better.

I propose therefore to distribute the funds solely to the creative
participants, and ensure in the law that publishers cannot claim it back
from them or deduct it from money otherwise owed them.

The levy would be collected initially by the user's Internet Service
Provider. How should it travel to the artist? It might pass through the
hands of a state agency; it might pass through a collecting society,
provided that collective societies are reformed so that any group of artists
can start their own.

However, artists must not be compelled to work through the existing
collecting societies, because these may have antisocial rules. For instance,
the collecting societies of some European countries forbid their members to
publish anything under licenses that permit sharing (for instance, using any
one of the Creative Commons licenses). If Brazil's fund for supporting
artists includes foreign artists, they must not be compelled to join those
collecting societies in order to receive their shares of Brazilian funds.

Whatever chain the money follows, none of the instutions in the chain (ISP,
state agency, or collecting society) may have any authority to alter what
share goes to each artist. That should be firmly set by the rules of the
system.

But what should those rules be? What is the best way to apportion the money
among all the creative participants?

The most obvious method is to compute each artist's share in direct
proportion to her work's popularity. (Popularity can be measured by inviting
100,000 randomly chosen people to provide the lists of the works they have
played.) That's what "compensate the rights holders" proposals typically do.
But that method of distribution is not very effective for promoting the
arts, because a large fraction of the funds would go to the few superstars,
who are already rich or at least comfortable, leaving little money to
support all the artists who really need it.

I propose instead to pay each artist according to the cube root of his or
her popularity. More precisely, the system could ascertain the popularity of
each work, divide that among the work's artists to get a figure for each
artist, then compute the cube root of that, and set the artists' shares in
proportion to these cube roots.

The effect of this would be to increase the shares of moderately popular
artists by reducing the shares of superstars. Each individual superstar
would still get more than an individual non-superstar, even several times as
much, but not hundreds or thousands of times as much. With this offsetting,
a given total sum of money will adequately support a larger number of
artists.

Promoting art and authorship supporting artists and authors is the proper
goal of a sharing license fee because it is the proper goal of copyright
itself.

A final question is whether the system should support foreign authors and
artists. It would seem natural for Brazil to demand reciprocity from other
countries as a condition of giving support to their authors and artists, but
I think that would be a strategic mistake. The best way to convince other
countries to adopt a plan like this is not by pressuring them through their
artists--they won't feel the lack of these payments because they are not
accustomed to receiving any--but rather by educating their artists about the
merits of this system. Including them in the system is the way to educate
them.

Another option is to include foreign artists and authors but cut the payment
down to 1/10 when their coutries do not join in reciprocal cooperation.
Imagine telling an author, "You have received $50 from Brazil's sharing
license levy. If your country had a similar sharing license levy and made a
reciprocal agreement with Brazil, you would have received $500 from Brazil
just now, plus the amount from your own country."

I know of one possible obstacle to adopting this system in Brazil: Free
Exploitation Treaties such as the one which established the World Trade
Organization. These are designed to make governments act for the benefit of
business rather than that of the people; they are the enemies of democracy
and of most people's well-being. (We thank Lula for saving South America
from ALCA.) Some of them demand "compensation for rights holders" as part of
their general policy of favoritism for business.

Fortunately this obstacle can be surmounted. If Brazil finds itself
compelled to pay for the misguided goal of "compensating rights holders", it
can still adopt the system presented above. Here is how.

The first step towards ending an unjust dominion is to deny its legitimacy.
if Brazil is compelled to "compensate rights holders", it should denounce
that imposition as wrong and yield to it temporarily. The denunciation could
be stated in the preamble of the law itself, like this:

Whereas Brazil wishes to encourage the useful and helpful practice of
sharing published works on the Internet.

Whereas Brazil is compelled by the World Trade Organization to ransom this
freedom from the rights holders, even though that money will mainly enrich
publishers rather than supporting artists and authors.

Whereas Brazil wishes, aside from that imposed requirement, to support
artists and authors better than the existing copyright system does.

Then, after establishing a levy for the sake "compensation", establish a
second additional levy (equal or greater in amount) for supporting authors
and artists. The wasteful, misdirected plan for "compensation" should not be
a replacement for the useful, efficient plan. So implement the useful,
efficient plan that supports artists directly, because that is good for
society, and implement the "compensation" required by the WTO but only so
long as the WTO retains the power to impose it.

This will begin the transition to a new copyright system that suits the
Internet age.

Thank you for considering these suggestions.

Copyright (c) 2010 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of
this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

----
http://www.vgrass.de/
http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck/

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Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade
FGV Direito Rio

Center for Technology and Society
Getulio Vargas Foundation
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
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