| HN Mirror

"You gave instagram a license to share your content."

No, that's not the flow here. A takes a picture and sends it to B. Whatever method A sends it to B can be presumed to at least have a license to do that much. Let's call it Instagram to be safe, which is a Facebook property. Google, an entirely separate entity which has never heard of this photo before in its life, is now obligated to prevent B from sending it to anybody else.

That requires Google to operate on the basis of knowledge it can't possibly have. That's not good legislation.

The solution the lawmakers will propose is a massive centralized registry. Said massive centralized registry will not be free, because it can't be; it's going to have huge operational costs if nothing else, and if it has any liabilities, it's going to need a massive war chest. (This war chest will basically be a slush fund for Big Media; when it gets big enough, lo and behold, there will be a lawsuit that coincidentally just happens to drain it, and, remarkably, the registry will basically throw the game. This can then be used to say they need even more money for the war chest, and they'll raise their fees, so the slush fund is even bigger for the next lawsuit.) When Instagram is obligated to use it, they're going to have to pass the costs on to the user. Once this all shakes out, A is going to find out that they can't send a photo to B without paying money to the copyright registry, despite their complete lack of desire or need to do so.

Eventually, when it turns out the centralized registry doesn't work either because people will start using the services that are excluded from it, the only solution will be to block people from uploading anything that could be copyrighted.

But given the expansive copyright laws that currently exist, "anything that could be copyrighted" is pretty much "anything". Don't worry, though, Big IP will have a solution to that, too; only their stuff will be worthy of being copyrighted. Probably it'll get a special "media copyright" or something, rather than contracting current copyright laws. Now big media will get special privileges that you can't have.

And copyright law will have come full circle, and instead of promoting innovation, will be 100% dedicated to protecting entrenched incumbents.

I'm don't particularly feel like I'm deploying a lot of rhetoric and trying to be scary about something that isn't going to happen. These are all very high-probability outcomes. I wouldn't be surprised the media companies behind their closed doors are totally gunning for the special privilege end games. They aren't stupid. It would incentivize them to continue to be pissy about violations, even after the registry is in place, and complain about the violations they still see, which will mystify anyone who doesn't understand the end goal.

The really sick part is that I suspect Big Media is overestimating the amount of money it will make doing this. It'll do immense damage to the societal fabric, and recover only a small portion of it, making them very heavily-stupid-trending B2 bandits by the basic laws of human stupidity: http://harmful.cat-v.org/people/basic-laws-of-human-stupidit...

This will be more difficult to get anywhere with in the US, as numerous elements of what I just outlined will have massive conflict with the First Amendment. And while laws often follow the money rather than the logic, it's worth remembering that, technically, should copyright and the First Amendment come into conflict, the latter, as an amendment, would win.

(Nominally, it ought to conflict with a number of European constitutions as well, but Europe appears to believe it unsophisticated and the sign of intellectual inferiority to be too bound by what constitutions say like those vulgar Americans who are always arguing over it.)