AMAZON.COM says soon you will be allowed to lend out electronic books purchased from the Kindle Store. For a whole 14 days. Just once, ever, per title. If the publisher allows it. Not mentioned is the necessity to hop on one foot whilst reciting the Gettysburg Address in a falsetto. An oversight, I’m sure.

Enumerating the ways in which this current offer fails, he correctly notes that time is running out for publishers. Perhaps it’s already too late.

This prompted a fair amount of back-and-forth among geeks, along fairly predictable lines. The majority riffed on the mantra that Information Wants to be Free, while others tried to find some accommodation between droit d’auteur, commerce and society’s fundamental desire to share:

I realize Slashdot has a certain “information should be free” ethos, but it doesn’t make much sense to build in the ability to give unlimited copies to everyone and think that it won’t undermine the business. While the publishers “wish you to engage in two separate hallucinations”, it seems like lots of other people want us to engage in another hallucination: that giving out unlimited copies won’t turn into a financial problem for booksellers.

Just for the sake of argument, let’s accept that assertion as truth: Infinite distribution necessarily causes financial problems for publishers. That doesn’t explain why they would choose to give fewer lending rights to possessors of digital copies than to those who buy the paper object. Nor does it explain why they charge pretty much the same price for this reduced capability.

We seem to be dealing (yet again) with anti-features: The publishers are actually adding to the consumer’s burden in exchange for nominally lowering the cost and ‘allowing‘ them the convenience of reading an electronic copy of a given book.

As the Economist rightly notes, this won’t stand. Anti-features (including DRM) only need to be removed once. Argue however much you like about the rights of the author. As a writer, I’m pretty damn sympathetic. But realistically, creators have to adjust to the world as it is. People will share things that delight them. They do so with photos, with posters, books, music, TV shows and movies… in short, with everything they can.

And there will always be someone willing to feed that desire.

Yes, it puts creators in a quandary. Yes, it threatens livelihoods and, potentially, might even prevent the next great opus. But to attempt to remodel the world to fit an outdated vision? That’s just insane. I don’t mean stupid -it actually requires a fair amount of imagination to get there- I mean insane, nuts, cuckoo. The idea is premised on the fact that all of society (save the poor, beleaguered author) is wrong, and must change. Even if the first clause is correct, the second does not follow. And even if we accept it logically, we still have no hope of effecting that change through technical means.

I suppose it is possible that we could change society. It’s happened before. But we will not do it with DRM and anti-features.

So what, then, is a creator to do? The best I can come up with right now is enough to make most established professional creators despair: Rely on the kindness of strangers.

Let’s face it; as Adrian Hon says, rampant sharing of books (and music, and TV shows, and movies, and photos, and… well, everything digital) is a fact of life. Some publishers will fail. Some (more) newspapers will die.

But surely there must be some way to extend the practice of gift culture[*] beyond the geek world? Surely there’s a way to turn social approbation into status and status into success?

It already happens in the celebrity world. People will go out of their way to provide goods and services for free -even to pay handsomely- solely because they want appropriate someone’s popularity for their own purposes, be it more guests at a restaurant or more people buying their shirt. Interestingly, celebrity endorsement’s success is inversely proportional to its relationship to straight-up capitalist quid pro quo. We like both the celebrity and the product less when we know their relationship is strictly economic.

Let’s take a perverse example for a gedankenexperiment: Imagine if the Star Wars kid had not only received millions of views, but millions of pennies from people willing not only to laugh at him, but to show a little fellow-feeling as well? Ignore the mechanics for a moment; just imagine what society would be like if our online status were directly related to economic and social standing?

Follow that scenario far enough and one arrives at some fascinating places, not all of them pretty. Jealousy, gossip, pretension and slander become more influential. One has only to get a certain number of people to dislike someone to limit or even end their ability to profit.

Worse yet, if we make it possible for people to take their pennies back, we quickly approach the tyranny of the small town. Life would at times resemble a Hawthorne novel more than anything else.

But it might easily create a few Shakespeares (or more accurately, Lord Chamberlain’s Men) as well, with the populace more than willing to toss a penny[**] each their way and society figures vying to be seen supporting and associating with them.

The mechanisms by which this could be achieved are not hard to imagine. An iPhone or a Facebook app would suffice – if online commerce could ever be wrested from the banks and credit card companies.

The unpredictable part is the non-technical side. Making it not only Good but Desirable to be seen associating one’s wealth with popular figures of all stripes would require a quantum shift in online society. I’m sure if a poll were conducted, most people would agree with the idea of rewarding those who have delighted, entertained or enlightened us in some small way. But as every busker will tell you, there’s an immense gap between the idea and the practice.

I’m going to offer a prediction: Something like this will -must- happen. And sooner rather than later. I await the change with mixed apprehension and excitement.

[**] According to my admittedly poor math, about 1/2000th of a prosperous merchant’s monthly income.

Following a recent workshop on copyright, the plight of the local reggae group Naio was used to demonstrate how copyright legislation could improve the lot of struggling Vanuatu artists.

Unauthorised copying, they claimed, had so reduced income from CD sales that the band simply couldn’t make a living on recording alone.

While the principle of respecting creative works is one I support wholeheartedly, I need to make this clear: Recent copyright reform has done little to change the plight of performers elsewhere in the world.

There are numerous interwoven ideas wrapped up inside what people call ‘Intellectual Property’. The World Intellectual Property Organization, a UN body, clumps many of them them together under the term Copyright. In essence, it says that Copyright – the right to exercise control over one’s creation – can be exerted over any creative work, its production or its broadcast.

The idea here is quite simple: Artists deserve to be rewarded for their work. Because they share their work with the world, and because we all benefit when they do so, they should be allowed a limited monopoly on the right to reproduce the work in question.

Well, that seems perfectly reasonable.

Of course, we do need to carve out a few exceptions. We need the idea of Fair Use. People need to be able to talk about the artists’ work; so common everyday uses such as humming a tune or copying out a few key sentences of a book are considered okay. How about using creative material to teach? That seems safe enough. We should also be allowed to re-sell, trade or give away books, CDs, DVDs and magazines, right? We can make copies of them to safeguard our purchase, can’t we?

But what about a sing-along at a bar? That popularises the song, so that should be fine, right? How about if we pop the CD into the bar’s sound system, so that everyone can listen and dance to it? Or how about if I keep one copy of a song at home and put another onto an MP3 player to listen to in the car? It’s already been paid for, right? So that shouldn’t be a problem. What if I copy just a little bit of it, and use it as a ringtone in my phone? Can I give that ringtone to my friends?

What if I use a well-known hook as a witty commentary in a song of my own?

What if I’m in a band and I like a song so much I want to play it myself? Do I have to ask permission to play it?

The rights enjoyed by the authors of creative works vary widely from one country to another. In some countries most of what I’ve described above is can be done without worrying.

In some other countries, you start paying as soon as you buy a blank CD to make a backup. The music you hear in restaurants and elevators and when you’re holding the phone? Paid for.

Copyright is a great idea. In practice, however, it gets messy fast.

It doesn’t have to be that way. It’s possible to boil down copyright to a few basic elements, and many of them are easily enforced, even without special legislation.

If I record a song, for example, I can license a distributor to press a number of copies and sell them in stores around the country. In order to protect our collective investment, I give the distributor the exclusive right to sell my disks for a period of time. That’s a pretty straightforward grant of copyright that I could write up in a simply-worded contract.

But that’s not where copyright is going. Increasingly, copyright favours not the original artist, but the distributor.

Fair use provisions such as the right to make a few copies or to share with my friends actually popularise the artist’s creation. Especially in the early days of an artist’s career, exposure is everything. Some people contend that the best way to become popular quickly is to give stuff away and rely on people to spread the word to their friends.

But that particular kind of free publicity reduces profits for the distributor, at least notionally. Every copy made for free seems like a lost sale to the distributor.

Most of the movement on copyright law is being driven by distributors, not artists. They feel threatened by the ease with which music and video can be copied on the Internet, and they’re doing what they can to turn back the tide.

Naio’s work – and that of countless other talented musicians and performers – needs protecting. Of that there is no doubt. We can protect those rights today: Penalise anyone who sells their CDs without permission. Two policemen on weekly patrol could reduce the black market nearly to zero.

What WIPO is proposing, however, is much broader than that.

Bands like Naio and others in Vanuatu could benefit hugely from the free exposure that the Internet provides. (One can only hope that their exclusive sponsorship agreement with TVL includes some kind of ring-tone/website/online distribution provision.) But measures currently being touted internationally would make things harder, not easier for small acts like them.

There is increasing movement internationally toward what distributors have termed a ‘graduated response’ to file copying. If you’re caught copying online once, you get a warning; two times and there’s a penalty; three times and you’re out.

That’s a bit like revoking someone driver’s license, not for dangerous driving, but for running on knock-off tires.

It may be inevitable that Vanuatu harmonises its so-called Intellectual Property laws with the rest of the world. But let’s not pretend: We’re doing it for Disney’s sake, not Naio’s. By forcing all music and video through official distribution channels, bands like Naio might find recognition harder than ever to come by.

News has leaked out in dribs and drabs over the last several months about a US-led drive to negotiate an international treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Conducted under a veil of secrecy, these negotiations have been the source of considerable speculation and not a little alarm among advocates of online freedom.

Part of the reason for the alarm is the utter lack of publicly verifiable information concerning the content of the treaty. When US organisations attempted to gain access to a copy of the draft, their government withheld them, citing national security, of all things.

Intellectual Property expert professor Michael Geist writes, “The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.”

In spite of their best efforts, however, details of the online enforcement aspects of the treaty leaked out last week, following a negotiating round in Seoul, South Korea.

The details don’t look good.

Geist summarised the broader strokes in a recent blog post, noting that the leak “provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty.”

The net effect of the proposed rules is that copyright would be radically redefined. The ability to make copies of or deconstruct other people’s content, for example, would be severely limited. Activities that breach copyright would be subject to increased scrutiny and penalties for all involved – including, potentially, Internet Service Providers who provide the connection over which such breaches occurred.

This is a real worry for ISPs. iiNet, one of Australia’s largest service providers, was recently sued by media organisations merely for allowing its customers to download unlawfully copied movies. Online rights watchdog Electronic Frontiers Australia remarked, “This lawsuit is the latest attempt by the movie industry to bully Internet Service Providers into becoming copyright police.”

ACTA would make this the norm. If the leaks are accurate, it would effectively make ISPs responsible for the conduct of their customers. While ISPs have traditionally cooperated with courts and police in their investigations, they worry that they’re being made liable for actions over which they have no real control.

Consumers find this troubling too, because such a regime would almost certainly impose a level of surveillance unacceptable to most. In the worst case scenario, it could create a situation similar to the infamous Great Firewall of China, in which everyone’s online activities are under constant scrutiny.

Pacific Island nations have thus far played no part whatsoever in these top-secret negotiations. Whatever regime emerges, however, would almost certainly be imposed on them in years to come. Australia’s copyright laws are already increasingly circumscribed by the bilateral trade agreement they signed with the US. Their participation in ACTA negotiations has been characterised as simply ensuring that they remain ‘in the tent’.

Jordan Carter of InternetNZ, a New Zealand Internet governance group, warns that Pacific Island nations need to be aware of the progress of these negotiations, as “the agreement would set a de facto standard for anticounterfeiting policy.”

Carter went on to stress that we can’t really be certain of the exact nature of this regime, as the details of both ACTA and PACER Plus have yet to be officially disclosed. Other commentators noted that it was more likely than not that ACTA’s requirements would be included in any regional trade dialogue, if only because of the perceived need in Australia to achieve a single regional solution.

If events transpire as anticipated, this could give rise to significant sovereignty concerns. EFA’s Nic Suzor states:

“The threat that we see is that sovereign states abdicate their responsibility to determine acceptable copyright policies for their own countries, and are forced into the harsh measures that are being pushed by the US copyright industry. We believe firstly that these measures mostly do not reach an appropriate balance, and second that developing copyright policy in secret trade negotiations which are essentially forced upon nation states are rarely likely to be an effective and beneficial mode of creating legislation.”

Viewed in this light, ACTA’s secretive negotiation process seems distinctly alarming. In practical terms, though, it’s unlikely that the treaty’s provisions would have significant impact on Pacific Islanders’ day-to-day lives. Like so many treaties before, it might simply be ignored. More to the point, the rest of the world might simply ignore us.

In the lead-up to its first abortive attempt at WTO accession, Vanuatu voted through laws with respect to the Berne Conventions on Copyright, but neglected to gazette them. Neither the vote nor the neglect seem to have ruffled many feathers.

A more likely scenario in which ACTA’s draconian copyright regime might make itself felt here in Vanuatu is if a foreign-owned ISP were to set up shop and simply apply the same set of rules to its Vanuatu customer base as it does to its overseas customers. In such a circumstance, however, market forces would mitigate against undue inconvenience. If people don’t like how they’re treated, they can simply cross the road to the competition.

Since the arrival of the Internet, there’s been unceasing talk about the imminent demise of traditional publishing models (especially newspapers), the subversive effect of ‘free’ online content and the purported damage done by Peer to Peer ‘pirates’ sharing music, movies and other creative works. At the centre of all this debate over the imbalance that new technology has created between creator and consumer is the oft-ignored conclusion that copyright as a regime for encouraging creativity in modern society is simply unworkable on the Internet.

Pundits, lawyers and media distributors the world over continue fighting the tide, thinking they can shape the Internet to match their expectations concerning copyright. Instead, they should be shaping their expectations to match the Internet.

Faced with the inevitable demise of mediated, controlled distribution – the core of the traditional content industries profit model – we have two obvious options: We can continue to tinker with copyright, attempting to redefine fair use, to place reasonable penalties (or at least disincentives) on unauthorised copying… ultimately, to renegotiate the compromise that lies at the heart of the concept.

This incremental, ostensibly pragmatic approach unfortunately ignores the fact that digital information is quite simply immune to copyright enforcement. The practical ‘right’ to make copies is the very essence of digital technology. Its usefulness is predicated on the fact that data is infinitely mutable and that copies cost as close to nothing as makes no difference. To pretend that we can place anything more than voluntary limits on this capability is dangerously naive.

People copy because they like to, because they can.

Alternatively, we can scrap copyright, go back to first principles and examine in detail what the rights of the creator really are.

I believe that the latter is the best course. We should try to find a new, workable model for managing creative works. But we’re making a big mistake if we assume from the outset that such a framework will be envisioned and enacted based exclusively on an iron-clad conception of ‘rights of the author’. Authors’ rights as a definable concept have been nebulous at best since they were first posited.

A fundamental conflict exists between the creator’s benefit and society’s. It’s a natural desire for all creators to want recognition (and ideally, validation) for their work. Creative processes resulting in notable works are time-consuming, exacting and often quite painful on a personal level. Poet Robert Frost memorably described this aspect of writing as ‘the pleasure of taking pains.’ Such pleasure notwithstanding, writing without reward often feels more like an affliction than an avocation.

Society, on the other hand, benefits most when the fruits of these efforts are replicated simply and as close to no-cost as possible. We can play the chicken-and-egg game of guessing whether society benefits more from its great authors or its newfound ability to reproduce their works at no cost, but the fact remains that society as a whole benefits most when no restrictions whatsoever are placed on the reproduction of creative works and ideas.

(You can argue that creating an environment that formalises authors’ entitlements benefits society by allowing creators to prosper, but you’d have to demonstrate some sort of causative relationship between the two. You’d also have to deal with the numerous historical counter-examples where art and culture have flourished in their absence. Until you do, I’ll assume that the argument is hypothetical at best.)

The approach that the copyright regime takes is to negotiate a compromise in which creators receive exclusive rights from the public in exchange for reasonable limitations on (and duration of) those rights. But those demands are becoming increasingly unreasonable, thanks largely to the eternal copyright policies driven by large media producers, and by their increasing tendency to carve away at existing consumer rights by licensing material rather than selling it.

The public recently got a sharp reminder of the cost of such licensing regimes when Amazon deleted George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from people’s Kindle e-book readers without so much as a by-your-leave.

On the other side of the issue, people blithely circumvent every technical measure thrown into their path, copying and sharing music, movies, e-books and anything else that strikes their fancy.

The copyright compromise has been subverted by both parties and cannot be remade.

Which leaves is with a sticky question: Given the circumstances, can we actually express what we mean when we talk about the rights of the creator?

The basic concept that creators retain some sort of moral (and therefore legal and economic) rights over their creations is implicit in many legal and philosophical arguments concerning creative works. That’s all well and good, but the plain fact is that, left to itself, society doesn’t recognise or respect them. It does not pay for creative works as ‘just desserts’; it recognises and rewards such efforts – usually according to arbitrary and fundamentally fickle criteria.

In short, societies generally recognise authors, but not their rights. They reward the artists they like and they often punish the ones they don’t. (And because societies are not monolithic, they sometimes do both at once. The list of authors who have perforce lived with this phenomenon could fill volumes.)

As a writer and photographer, I would like nothing better than an enforceable, predictable social contract that codifies the relationship between creator and society at large. But the fact of the matter is that in this day and age it’s just not reasonable to expect anything other than a rather ephemeral set of notions that rely on nothing more than the goodwill of the majority of the audience.

In short, I don’t think we really have any choice but to do what minstrels, painters, actors and countless other artists have done since time immemorial: Throw ourselves at the mercy of society and rely on the kindness of strangers to make a living out of a lifestyle. It’s often unjust and occasionally cruel, but I just don’t see a workable alternative.

In practical terms, this means that creators should look more closely at contract law and other means of asserting clear terms and conditions on the use of their creations on a case by case basis. And the contracts no longer need to be between the creator and the distributor (like the traditional – and much abused – recording contract). Instead, online technologies make it possible for creators to appeal directly to their fan base, establishing the terms for each creation on the fly, even, possibly, on different terms with different individuals.

Admittedly, this creates a bit of a Wild West atmosphere; in fact it militates against the average creator’s sense of justice (”I deserve to be paid for my hard work, not for some arbitrary valuation of my product.”). But the issue is not so much about justice as it is about practical means of being rewarded for one’s efforts. By relying on contract law, we can create a more adaptable, more organic regime that rewards innovative approaches without encumbering society with legal precedents whose logical conclusion is a copyright regime that turns consumers into criminals.

That leaves us with two options: We can continue to tinker with copyright, attempting to redefine fair use, to place reasonable penalties (or at least disincentives) on unauthorised copying… ultimately, to renegotiate the compromise that lies at the heart of the concept.

That’s a commendable, fundamentally reasonable approach that unfortunately ignores the fact that digital information is immune to copyright enforcement. The practical ‘right’ to make copies is the very essence of digital technology. Its usefulness is predicated on the fact that data is infinitely mutable and that copies cost as close to nothing as makes no difference. To pretend that we can place anything more than voluntary limits on this capability is dangerously naive.

Alternatively, we can scrap copyright, go back to first principles and examine in detail what the rights of the creator really are.

I’m sympathetic to the latter argument, that a new, workable model of managing creative works needs to be considered. But we’re making a big mistake if we assume a priori that it will be envisioned and enacted based on a concept of ‘rights of the author’. Authors’ rights as a definable concept have been nebulous at best since they were first posited.

A fundamental conflict exists between the creator’s benefit and society’s. It’s a natural desire for all creators to want recognition (and ideally, validation) for their work. Creative processes resulting in notable works are time-consuming, exacting and often quite painful on a personal level. Poet Robert Frost memorably described it as ‘the pleasure of taking pains.’ Unless one receives some kind of reward for those efforts, there is little if any incentive to undergo the costly struggle of the creative process.

Society, on the other hand, benefits most when the fruit of these efforts are replicated simply and as close to no-cost as possible. We can play the chicken-and-egg game of guessing whether society benefits more from its great authors or its newfound ability to reproduce their works at no cost, but the fact remains that society as a whole benefits most when no restrictions whatsoever are placed on the reproduction of creative works and ideas.

(You can argue that creating an environment that makes rewards for creative works more predictable benefits society by allowing creators to prosper, but you’d have to demonstrate some sort of causative relationship between the two. You’d also have to deal with the numerous historical counter-examples where art and culture have flourished in their absence. Until you do, I’ll assume that the argument is hypothetical at best.)

The approach that the copyright regime takes is to assert a happy medium in which creators demand exclusive rights from the public in exchange for reasonable limitations (and duration) on those rights. But those demands are becoming increasingly unreasonable (thanks to the eternal copyright policies driven by Disney et alia) and unenforceable (bittorrent, etc.).

The copyright compromise has been subverted by both parties and cannot be remade.

Which leaves is with a sticky question: Can we actually express what we mean when we talk about ‘droits d’auteur?’ At the risk of oversimplifying, let’s start with this broad summary [wikipedia.org]:

The moral rights regime differs greatly between countries, but typically includes the right to be identified as the author of the work and the right to object to any distortion or mutilation of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honour or reputation [...]. In many countries, the moral rights of an author are perpetual.

The basic concept that creators retain some sort of moral (and therefore legal and economic) rights over their creations is implicit in many legal and philosophical arguments concerning creative works. That’s all well and good, but the plain fact is that, left to itself, society doesn’t recognise or respect them. It does not pay for creative works as ‘just desserts’; it recognises and rewards such efforts – usually according to arbitrary and fundamentally fickle criteria.

In short, societies don’t recognise author’s rights. They reward the artists they like and they often punish the ones they don’t. (And because they are not monolithic, they sometimes do both at once. The list of authors who have perforce lived with this phenomenon could fill volumes, but J.D. Salinger, Arthur Miller and Jack Kerouac are notable American examples)

As a writer, photographer and generally creative person, I would like nothing better than an enforceable, predictable social contract that codifies the relationship between creator and society at large. But the fact of the matter is that in this day and age it’s just not reasonable to expect anything other than a rather ephemeral set of notions that rely on nothing more than the goodwill of the majority of the audience.

In short, I don’t think we really have any choice but to do what minstrels, painters, actors and countless other artists have done since time immemorial: Throw ourselves at the mercy of society and rely on the kindness of strangers to make a living out of a lifestyle. It’s often unjust and occasionally cruel, but I just don’t see a workable alternative.

In practical terms, this means that creators should look more closely at contract law and other means of asserting clear terms and conditions on the use of their creations on a case by case basis. This creates a bit of a wild west atmosphere; in fact it militates against the average creator’s sense of justice (“I deserve to be paid for my hard work, not for some arbitrary valuation of my product.”). But the issue is not so much about justice as it is about practical means of getting paid. By relying on contract law, we can create a more adaptable, more organic regime that rewards innovative approaches without encumbering society with legal precedents whose logical conclusion is the preservation of Mickey Mouse at all costs.

That last paragraph is a simple – and absurd – example of why so-called intellectual property is an oxymoron. If it’s intellectual, it can’t be property. The concept is based on the premise that ideas can be treated as things, and that’s just not true.

Why is this important to us here in Vanuatu? This week, trade ministers from member nations of the Pacific Islands Forum have been meeting to discuss regional issues. One of the biggest items on the agenda is the creation of a new trade agreement with the European Union. Among the demands the EU is making is enforcement of what they call Intellectual Property Law. This includes trademarks, patents and copyright. In practice, it’s a hodge-podge of laws that are more or less useful for their original purpose, but which have lately been twisted into something else entirely.

The basic idea behind these laws makes perfect sense: Authors of creative works should have the right to be rewarded for their efforts. Copyright law says that people aren’t allowed to sell copies of a book (or a CD or a DVD – you get the idea) without permission from the author. After a reasonable period of time, copyright expires and anyone can copy these works without limitations, but the author gets first crack at it.

Trademark law says that a person or a company has the right to uniquely identify themselves. The Arnott company makes Timtam cookies, which I happen to love. Now imagine if another company were allowed to create second-rate cookies with the Arnott logo and the Timtam name. This other company would be trading on Arnott’s reputation, and not only would Arnott’s good name be sullied, I wouldn’t be guaranteed a reliable supply of my favourite cookies.

Patent law is another way for inventors to profit from their inventions. Let’s say I invent a process to manufacture pink dolphin toys and sell them as playthings to little girls the world over. That’s a pretty unique invention, and it would probably have a lot of appeal. But imagine if someone else with a lot of money – and no good ideas of their own – were able to copy my process and flood the market with their knock-off pink dolphins. I’d have the right to be upset, and patent law would allow me to either stop this happening, or at least to receive a royalty payment for every pink dolphin sold.

All the above examples have one thing in common. While ideas and creativity are crucial to each one, the laws themselves are about things. Copyright protects against copying. Trademark law protects against the abuse of identifying marks. Patent law gives protection against copy-cats.

But how do we apply these laws to computers and the Internet? In the material world, enforcement of the law is simple: I can lend my copy of a book to a friend, but I’ll be in trouble if I print off 500 copies and sell them in the market. But what about a song I download from the Internet? What if I want to make a copy to put on my iPod? What if I really like the song and want everyone I know to listen to it?

The big media and software companies have one answer: They want to be able to dictate exactly how people are allowed to use their creations. Their expectations range from the reasonable to the ridiculous. At the reasonable end of the spectrum, people or companies who invest their time in making something we enjoy deserve to be rewarded for their work. We should all try to make sure that the money we spend on software, music, movies etc. actually goes back to the people who worked so hard to create it.

But there are unreasonable aspects to the concept of intellectual property, too. I should be able to make a reasonable number of copies of song or a piece of software. I should not have to pay twice for the same thing. A reasonable ability to share files with friends and colleagues is actually good for everyone, too. It popularises creative works that might otherwise have a hard time getting people’s attention.

Applying patents to ideas is silly. If I invent a clever method for paddling a canoe left-handed, should I have the right to stop anyone else from paddling left-handed? Of course not. It might make sense if I made a special left-handed paddle. I could reasonably expect to profit from my invention. But a new paddle stroke? How could I possibly control its use?

Or suppose I write a song about pink dolphins? What reasonable expectations should I have? I should be able to be rewarded for my performance of it. And if I made a recording of that performance, it seems only right that I should earn some share of money that people pay to listen to it. But trying to stop people from ever writing other songs about pink dolphins – well that’s just foolish. Or trying to stop someone who likes the song from singing their own version of it, or letting their friends listen to it: Foolish foolish foolish.

And yet this is precisely what the EU want us to do. Trade negotiators have made it clear that they want to include ‘Intellectual Property’ laws in the next major trade agreement, the EPA.

Reasonable copyright, trademark and patent laws are fine. But they need to considered in light of what’s best for Vanuatu, not the EU. And they need to make sense.