Summary: The Need for Cooperation among Disciplines—Artists, Presenters, Producers and Distributors

checks that the Library of Congress wrote recently to reimburse creators and presenters under a statisticalsample -governed agreement to cover home videotaping. The fourth scheme, which my science colleague.joel de Rosnay, described , is the pure technological fix. Computer technology provides possibility of including in every digital file of text, sound, or image a "public-private key coding," a sort of electronic signature , which could be used as part of a global automatic billing scheme. Every access or use of a digital file would result in an automatic debit of a preset amount to the consumer's credit card account, and a credit to the creators' and presenters' accounts. Like the statistical fix, the technological fix requires global acceptance of the particular scheme used, and a means of enforcing that scheme. The fifth (and least studied) scheme is the shareware solution. It relies on an ethical commitment by a significant number of participants. This scheme makes electronic forms of art available to everybody for free, and asks consumers to make voluntary payments for what they use. This scheme has actually been working as a means of providing computer software. There is an Association of Shareware Professionals. Some of the most popular programs in the world are shareware programs, like PKZIP, the leading data file compression program. You can obtain copies free and legally from the Internet, from local bulletin boards, and from friends. The first time you run any shareware program, you are reminded by a message on the screen that this is a copyrighted program and that, while it may be distributed freely, you are expected to send a check for $49.95 (or whatever) to the publisher if you like and use the program. Dozens of software authors and smaller publishers are getting checks from thousands of people for shareware. Would this scheme work for mass-market music, or feature-length videos? These various schemes involve very different mixtures of technology, cooperation , and trust on the part of individuals , corporations, and our social structures. As we learned from the day's discussions, especially this afternoon, there is a wide range of opinions on how much we can rely on technology, and how much trust we are prepared to place in our institutions and our fellow citizens. Are we prepared to tolerate some risk? Accept some loss of control and some cheating? How much enlightened self-interest do we believe the benefits of the new technologies can engender? I've offered my extraction of five solutions from our hours of discussion, and there may be other solutions presented which I missed. I think an interesting point is that in each solution I've heard the constraints of economy, law, and technology fall far short of suggesting a workable system. All of these solutions , to some extent, require an adjustment to the social contract as well, a new combination of trust and cooperation , in order to create a new, mutually rewarding relationship among creators, presenters, and consumers. We will be taking a risk by trying any one of these schemes, or a mixture of schemes tailored to different combinations of art, media, and audience. But we must act soon if we are to maximize the promise of the new technologies. The technologies are here, and they are being used, for better and for worse, by creators, presenters, and consumers to carry out the commerce of culture. I think we can improve both the quality and quantity of that commerce . But to do that we will need to invest in new relationships, and be ready to fix them as they break. Summary: The Need for Cooperation among DisciplinesArtists , Presenters, Producers and Distributors RogerF. Malina We had in today's seminar a wide-ranging and comprehensive exploration of the issues surrounding intellectual property in the arts as affected by the new electronic media. These issues are not trivial or academic issues. They are urgent and affect the very basis that allows artists and creators to make a living from their work. If we care about the place of the artist in the new culture that is being built, we must pro-actively create new models of economic systems that recognize the new...