Don't Copy That Floppy!

Between a new copyright committee at work and a new media journalism candidate search, copyright has been on my mind recently. So just for fun I found and re-watched the 1992 Don't Copy That Floppy PSA video this morning. It predicted all but certain doom for the gaming and computing industries if young punks continued to make their own copies of Neverwinter Nights. What was really striking about the video was the fact that the "doom" described was the result of the inherent qualities of digital media. That is the ability for data to be copied or recreated intact, indefinitely, with lossless quality. What was even more striking was that 17 years later, this is still the best complaint they have.

Digital media consists of binary code. Ok, Duh. But at the same time, yes, this is really the whole point. No other medium has existed quite like digital media. Even in printmaking and photography, there is both quality loss and variations possible in reproduction. In 1935 Walter Benjamin wrote about the effect mechanical reproducibility had on artwork; nearly 50 years later Paul Virilio talks about Dromology, or the science of speed, and the effects technology has on concepts of distance, space and time. While Virilio is overall negative about this, it is inherently true that digital media has shifted our concepts of distance and time - just think how Twitter is being used as a device for breaking news journalism.

When I have my students read Benjamin I always ask them, "Are we still in the age of mechanical reproduction? If no, what age are we in?" The answer of course is the age of digital reproduction. We have to realize this is an entirely new distribution model. This is world altering, just at the Gutenberg press altered the world in the 1500's. Dissemination of information has shifted as much as when Church and Crown controlled access to hand-scribed manuscripts shifted to the production of faster, cheaper, widely-distributable books.

The first copyright laws quickly followed the invention of Gutenberg's press. Some say this was because the Church had a monopoly on the written word. In an age of common illiteracy, facts and information could be controlled by the powerful few and distributed at will. Can you think of any comparable product distribution being controlled today?

I don't think all copyright is bad. I don't think people should be denied the right to profit form their work. But I do think we need to have a shift in the way we view media, the way we understand the very nature of digital distribution and really examine and redefine the very nature of digital proliferation. Attacking the medium for it's unique qualities will fail. It will not spell out the doom of the future. Don't Copy That Floppy was wrong 17 years ago, and it's still wrong about that point today.

Don't Copy That Floppy on YouTube