The end of copyright


    Yesterday, I opened the Wikipedia article Copyright and was surprised to find the “End of Copyright” section in it. Having started to read it, I decided that this was someone's joke. But then he accidentally drew attention to the line at the top of the page: “ This version of the page is awaiting verification and may differ from the last confirmed version verified on August 17, 2043 .

    Without thinking, I updated the page and saw another, past date. Of course, there was no longer any section that interested me in it. Without wasting time, I decided to write down from what I read that I could remember, and now I am publishing this text here on the hub


    The end of copyright


    At the very end of the beginning of the 21st century, copyright owners realized that it was not necessary to prohibit free copying in order for people to pay for intangible goods (as in the century before, ordinary grocery store owners realized that it was not necessary to isolate products from people so that they would not be stolen).

    It may seem strange, but it all started in Ukraine, where the company Digital Supermarket LLC (name changed) somehow convinced seemingly irreconcilable enemies to start collaborating on a digital goods distribution project.

    In the beginning, in addition to “CA”, project participants included several major movie copyright holders, several Ukrainian Internet providers, as well as ... some of the most popular Ukrainian and Russian-language torrent trackers and pirated sites showing movies and TV shows online.

    “Digital Supermarket” has collected a rather large collection of rights to films and series from their owners participating in the project (such companies have come to be called copyright agents ).

    He agreed with Internet providers to sell their subscribers along with Internet access for unlimited access to all the films in the collection for a little less than $ 2 per month.

    He agreed with pirated sites and trackers that subscribers of participating providers in the project access to films from the collection is provided only with a subscription. If there is no subscription, it is proposed to purchase it by including the payment in the Internet bill for the next month. At the same time, nothing changes for subscribers of providers who are not participating in the project.

    In order to motivate pirated sites to join the project, “CA”, using cooperation with providers and technology developed for this purpose, began filtering pirated content. But he did it wisely. Instead of simply denying access, the user was asked to download the same movie from one of the directories participating in the project instead of a movie from a pirate site (after subscribing, of course).

    In order to compensate subscribers with the unpleasant need to pay for access to video, Digital Supermarket provided them with the opportunity to download movies from the same sites at very high speeds and watch them in very good quality, which was not difficult, given the cooperation with providers.

    An important part of the project was that any site could connect to the project and provide content from the collection, after making sure that the user had a subscription, for which a special protocol and web service were created. Such sites later became known as content directories .

    Users grumbled a little, but since they downloaded the movie they wanted, moreover, at a higher speed than usual, and they didn’t require money from them right now, as a rule they were satisfied.

    So “Digital Supermarket” became the first of many companies that are now called copyright sellers .

    Agents, sellers and catalogs

    All participants in the new project were the winners:
    • Providers earned additional revenue from subscription sales
    • Pirated sites, which have now become semi-legal, also received part of the revenue from subscriptions, and the outflow of users to free sites was slowed down by an increase in the quality of content and filtering technology that worked against large competitors.
    • Copyright owners began to receive money for what they used to get ears from a dead donkey.
    • Users, although they began to pay for the content, but an acceptable amount, and the quality of services has grown markedly. In addition, they did not have to change the usual sites to new ones (except for the few that have not yet connected to the project).


    The project began to expand. New Internet service providers connected to the project. More copyright owners added their digital products to the collection, which, in addition to films, began to include music, lyrics, programs. More and more sites became (semi-) legal, just connecting the user with a subscription check.

    Now, every site that organized a convenient catalog, a way to deliver content to users, or any other service related to digital goods, had the opportunity to work legally, and even to receive money.

    Any user could once buy the right to receive digital goods and without any problems receive it from the site that he chose.

    There were many directories. There are many copyright holders too. And “Digital Supermarket” is one. Seeing this, other companies thought “why are we worse?” And also decided to collect and sell copyrights.

    They differed in terms and methods of payment, collections of goods, a list of catalogs working with them.

    Thus, a new ecosystem for the creation and sale of intangible goods was formed.

    Agents represent the interests of the author on the network. They agree with the sellers of copyright on the conditions for their sale, make sure that the works of the author are not distributed illegally. The author may also be the author of the work, if he is not too lazy to do this.

    Rights sellersgrant access rights to the work to the end user and distribute income between the authors. They can sell works one at a time, in sets or provide full access. They can take money or embed advertising in the content. But they do not sell the product itself, but the right to receive it anywhere in the network.

    Rights sellers usually agree with Internet providers to add the cost of access rights to an Internet account.

    Often, sellers have their own content directories, but users are not limited to them.

    Since the seller works closely with the provider, in addition to selling rights, he can restrict access to illegal downloads of works he sells.

    Content Directoriesdirectly supplies the user with works in one form or another. Before delivery, the catalog must make sure that the user has purchased the right of access to this particular work. If the user did not do this, the directory offers him to buy access from one of the rights sellers.

    Aggregate search engines are ancillary services that collect and organize information about works, their authors, sellers of rights and catalogs of content. They allow you to:
    • Agents track their works on legal and illegal sites, look for suitable sellers of content.
    • Sellers find works and agents that may be of interest to them.
    • Catalogs organize their content and find sellers of rights to their works (even if users add content to the catalog)


    A single company does not necessarily fulfill only one of these roles. There are companies that combine them all.

    Transition period

    Until the system stabilized, its participants tried to pull the blanket in their direction.

    Some agents tried to profit by selling goods only through “their” store at a price higher than they would have received from other sellers. But faced with the fact that semi-legal content directories did not pay attention to them, distributing works for free, and attempts to put pressure on them led to little, because without the support of Internet providers (which protected only the content of “their” stores) leverage on such there were no sites.

    Directory sites tried to attract users by distributing authorial content for free. But since most Internet providers collaborated with rights sellers and prevented illegal downloads, they quickly realized that being a part of the system is easier than resisting it.

    Some sellers of rights (most often being part-time Internet providers) tried to earn more by raising the price of works for their users. But this only led to the fact that some users chose other providers, and some began to look for ways to get the same works for free.

    Some users basically did not want to pay for intangible goods and used pirated sites to get them. But as soon as the site they used became quite popular, the providers paid attention to it and started filtering illegal works. As a result, most users decided that paying a small amount and using convenient legal sites was better than constantly looking among the mountains of garbage for free downloads.

    At first, semi-legal content catalogs prevailed that didn’t go completely out of the shadows to provide users with as many works as possible, regardless of the desire of the authors. They made part of the works paid when it was more profitable than fighting by the owners of the rights, and the rest were handed out freely.

    But over time, the system stabilized and became predictable for all its participants, which made it possible for catalogs to become completely legal, almost without losing their assortment. Of course, there were and will be underground torrent trackers, but their number is decreasing: they do not withstand competition with legal trackers, which are larger, more stable and more convenient, which for most users compensates for the need to pay.

    Total

    So the system exists to this day, maintaining a balance between the cost of works and the desire of users to pay for them, between the greed of the owners of rights and the desire of other participants in the system to ignore these rights.

    Over time, this division of roles in the intangible goods market has given rise to many consequences, including the disappearance of companies that used to be called “majors,” the proliferation of ex-post payments and the rise of advisory services. But read about it in other articles.

    And do you think this is possible with us? Or was the article that caught my eye from parallel reality?

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