How can the ‘culture business’ – newspapers, books, films, music, TV –survive in the digital age? That is the burning question tackled by business and technology journalist Robert Levine in his book, Free Ride: How the Internet is Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back.

“But the internet runs as a business. And as a business it depends on professionally created content.”

“Free Ride needed to be written”, says Levine, on the phone from Berlin. “There are a lot of books out there informing us that copyright is the worst idea in the history of the world, but until now, not a single one to tell us why it is a good thing.” Levine is well qualified to write such a book. Formerly executive editor of Billboard magazine, and before that a features editor at Wired and the New Yorker, he began writing about technology as a result of his passion for music: “I see things in a rather different way. I’m a business journalist who started out as a rock critic, so I’m also a business journalist who cares a lot about the culture business.”

And it is as a business that we must think of it. Levine firmly believes that the explosion of creativity brought about by the internet has enriched our culture immensely, bringing forth many wonders, “but the internet runs as a business. And as a business it depends on professionally created content.” He points out that two of the most followed Tweeters in the world are Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. You might turn your creative nose up at that fact, but make no mistake, he says; it’s the advertising revenue that their presence pulls in that helps fund the Twitter party.

“Traditional media companies aren’t in trouble because they’re not giving consumers what they want; they are in trouble because they can’t collect money for it.”

Hard times
But although the party booms on Twitter, Google and YouTube, elsewhere it appears all but over. Through chapters on newspapers, the film industry, publishing and television as well as the music business, Levine diagnoses why the big ‘content creating’ names of yore – from NBC and the Washington Post, to EMI and even the roaring lion of MGM – have fallen on hard times. With piracy rife (according to one study, almost a quarter of global internet traffic consists of pirated content), and the protection offered by copyright laws seemingly little more than theoretical, the old cultural business models are no longer sustainable. And this, despite the fact that the public nurtures as big an appetite for TV, journalism, films and books as it ever did: “Traditional media companies aren’t in trouble because they’re not giving consumers what they want; they are in trouble because they can’t collect money for it. ”The digital era, Levine argues, has empowered a whole new group of middlemen – particularly technology companies like Google – who have built hugely profitable businesses distributing content, without seeing any need to invest in creating it. Economically, they are getting a free ride.

We have to show that far from stifling creativity, copyright actually encourages it, giving artists an economic incentive to create more of it.

Most people in the technology business haven’t the least appreciation of the labour-intensive nature of content creation, says Levine: “They are all about making everything quicker and easier. But writing, and for that matter publishing, doesn’t work that way.” He is observing with interest Amazon’s entry into the publishing business: “I think they are going to find that it isn’t as easy as it looks. Are they really going to develop their own writers? Or are they just going to publish glorified PowerPoint presentations in e-book format? Amazon is known as the company that gave people greater access to books. Do they now want to be known as the company that gives people access to ‘written stuff’?”

It’s not just that creating content is harder work than merely ‘writing stuff’. Free Ride also hammered home to this writer just how vital it is that we don’t let the now hugely influential technology companies turn the tide of public opinion against the idea of paying for that hard work. For despite their billion-dollar businesses, many technology companies are keen for us to believe that they are the underdogs, fiercely championing the rights of ordinary consumers by easing their access to the creative content they want. Unlike the ‘big boys of content creation’ who, it is implied, are getting in the way, and trying to lock it up. There is a very real danger that those of us who seek to uphold copyright will be perceived as ‘anti-consumer’, or even against the freedom of expression. We have to show that far from stifling creativity, copyright actually encourages it, giving artists an economic incentive to create more of it. As Levine writes in Free Ride, “It’s hard to think of a country without intellectual property rights where free expression really thrives.”

Writers must make their voices heard
Levine believes that writers must make their voices heard about the benefits of copyright, especially the economic ones: “If copyright laws in the US and the UK are as negative as Google and others say they are, then how come those countries have the most widely exported culture businesses in the world?” He points out that India, though it has a thriving film industry, will stand little chance of exporting those films to the economic benefit of the nation as a whole whileit lacks functioning copyright laws.

“Piracy is a natural force, and you can’t legislate it away. But the point is to minimise it as much as possible.”

It is not just a PR offensive for copyright that is needed, however, crucial though that may be. To ensure its continuing relevance, we also need to enforce copyright. Levine argues that it is imperative that we establish a functioning market for creative content online, which is not going to be easy. But it is possible, despite what many would have us believe.
When interviewed for this magazine two years ago, another influential US technology journalist Chris Anderson told me, “Piracy is a natural force, not a social behaviour that can be trained or legislated away.” I test this comment on Levine. “Well, he’s right in one sense. Piracy is a natural force, and you can’t legislate it away. But the point is to minimise it as much as possible. I have a car that I like to drive really fast. Wanting to drive really fast is a natural force. I’m not a bad person for wanting to do it. But most people agree that if everyone drove fast, the roads would be really unsafe. The UK is a relatively safe place to drive your car because you have a functioning system of law enforcement.”

Convenience: not a right
“Desirable though it might be, convenience is not a right,” says Levine. We must make piracy both more difficult, and more difficult to get away with, so that more people will opt to pay for the content they want, instead of appropriating it illegally. The experience of the music industry apparently suggests that some consumers will pirate books no matter what they cost; others will buy them, and the behaviour of the rest depends more than anything else on convenience: “Piracy used to be inconvenient when it involved copying music onto blank cassette tapes, or running a whole book through the photocopier. Now with the widespread availability of illegal downloads, it’s incredibly easy. We have to make piracy a hassle again, and establish a penalty for it so that people think twice before doing it.”

And with the right systems in place, such penalties would be enforceable. It’s a mistake, says Levine, to think that the internet is some sort of big, open, uncontrollable global system, which cannot be made to conform to an individual country’s laws: “Governments can and should have sovereignty over the internet. Despite those people – and there are plenty of them – who say ‘laws don’t matter online’, they patently do. We can’t have a completely free and open internet where anyone can do anything to anyone. That would be a libertarian nightmare.”

“Online activists present the choice about our online future as one between control and creativity, but it’s really about commerce or chaos.”

Critics of copyright like to point out that despite the lack of copyright enforcement, artists are producing work in greater quantity than ever before, with more albums being made, more books written and published and more films released. But this does not, says Levine, mean that they are being adequately remunerated for them. He points out that the purpose of copyright as enshrined in the US constitution is to promote ‘the Progress of Useful Arts’, not merely the participation in them: “Online activists present the choice about our online future as one between control and creativity, but it’s really about commerce or chaos. ”Free Ride contains a memorable quote from the founder of an independent music label: “We live in fear that the next Kurt Cobain is sitting around saying, ‘Fuck this, the music business is over. I’m going to join my dad at the printing plant.’”

Whether it’s TV, or books, or film, the consumption of entertainment is now increasingly based on the internet. As writers, we are already face to face with our future. If, by championing and upholding copyright, we can ensure that the majority of consumers recognise the value of that entertainment, and commit to paying for it, just as they were once willing to pay for a newspaper, or a cable TV subscription, or a cinema ticket or a paperback novel, then the culture business will be saved. As Levine puts it: “Copyright has always been imperfect. It’s often inconvenient and occasionally annoying. And plainly necessary for the greater good. So hey, let’s get on with protecting it already.”

Free Ride: How the Internet is Destroying the Culture Business and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back by Robert Levine is published by Bodley Head (£18.99 hardback). Read Robert Levine’s blog at freeridethebook.wordpress.com

Caroline Sanderson is a freelance writer, and the Editor of ALCS News. Someone Like Adele, her biography of the chart-topping, Grammy Award-winning singer will be published in March 2012 by Omnibus Press.

© Caroline Sanderson