While driving into work this morning and trying to catch up on my audioblogs for the weekend, I noticed that Dave Slusher had mentioned the comment that I left on his weblog regarding the idea of giving fees to the record labels in exchange for making filesharing legal. Woohoo! I feel just like Jonathan Frakes! Front Row!

Sadly, while trying to find a screencap of this stupendous achievement in Mr. Frakes’ career, I found that the screen captures at gotfuturama.com was just slightly early, and so he doesn’t appear. Sorry Jonathan!

Lessee now, if Dave is an C class blogger, and he cites me, that means… well. My blog still is a bottom feeder. I’ll keep trying though. Perhaps the patina of coolness (or at least novelty) will eventually rub off on me.

In the end, I think that Dave is right: we are in near complete agreement. His argument as expressed in his audioblog was more convincing, and closely followed Lessig’s own about using fees to compensate old media while the disrupting new media take its place. The key difference in the situation that exists now versus the past is that the terms and scope of copyright protections have gone far beyond where they were in the early days of film, radio, or even the VCR. Under the law, record labels can sue you for copyright infringement for even the most minor infractions, even infractions which would fall under fair or unlicensed uses if you could afford to bring them in front of a judge. The only way to prevent this from happening is to make legislative changes which prevent them from doing that. It would be within the scope of the legislative power of Congress to attempt to make that balance, perhaps by instituting a statutory license and fees to balance the scales between producer and consumers as they did in the case of licensing for radio broadcast. I suppose that I could in fact support such a notion: my reaction was mainly to the fact that Dave didn’t mention these legislative changes: only their desired effect.

There are still many questions to be answered, such as exactly how record labels would divide up this booty, and whether it is fair to small or independent record labels. I also still question exactly where Congress should draw the line between the interests of the music business and the citizenry at large, and given the way they are funded, where they are likely to draw that line, but I suspect now that Dave’s opinion and mine differ only in detail, not in substance.

Thanks for the mention in any case Dave!