End of copyright

Yesterday I opened the Copyright article on Wikipedia and was surprised to find the “End of Copyright” section in it. Starting to read it, I decided that it was someone's joke. But then he accidentally drew attention to the line at the top of the page: “ This version of the page is awaiting verification and may differ from the last confirmed, verified August 17, 2043 . "



Without thinking, I updated the page, and I saw another, past date. The section that interested me in it, of course, was no longer there. Without losing time, I decided to write down what I read, I was able to remember, and now I am publishing this text here in Habré.

End of copyright

At the very end of the beginning of the 21st century, copyright owners realized that it was not necessary to prohibit free copying, so that people would pay for intangible goods (as a century before, the owners of ordinary grocery stores understood that it was not necessary to shield products from people so that they would not be stolen).

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It may seem strange, but it all began in Ukraine, where the company “Digital Supermarket” LLC (the name was changed) somehow convinced the seemingly irreconcilable enemies to start cooperating in the project of distributing digital goods.



At the beginning, in addition to the “CA”, several major copyright holders for films, several Ukrainian Internet providers, as well as ... some of the most popular Ukrainian and Russian-speaking torrent trackers and pirated sites that show movies and TV shows online have become participants of the project.



“Digital Supermarket” has collected a fairly large collection of rights to films and TV shows from their owners participating in the project (such companies were called copyright agents ).



He agreed with Internet providers to sell them to subscribers, along with Internet access to unlimited access to all the films in the collection for a little less than $ 2 a month.



He agreed with pirate sites and trackers that subscribers of participating providers in the project access to films from the collection is provided only with a subscription. If there is no subscription, it is proposed to purchase it by including payment in the Internet bill for the next month. At the same time, for subscribers of providers who are not participating in the project, nothing changes.



In order to motivate pirated websites to connect to the project, “CA”, using cooperation with providers and technology developed for this purpose, began to filter pirated content. But he did it wisely. Instead of simply denying access, the user was asked to download the same movie from one of the directories participating in the project instead of a movie from a pirate site (having previously subscribed, of course).



In order to compensate subscribers for the unpleasant need to pay for access to video, Digital Supermarket provided them with the ability to download movies from the same sites at very high speeds and watch them in very good quality, which was easy, given the cooperation with providers.



An important part of the project was that any site could connect to the project and provide content from the collection, after making sure that the user had a subscription, for which a special protocol and web service was created. Such sites later became known as content catalogs .



The users grumbled a bit, but since they downloaded the movie they wanted, moreover, they were faster than usual, but didn’t demand money from them right now, as a rule, they were satisfied.



So “Digital Supermarket” was the first of many companies that are now called copyright sellers .

Agents, sellers and catalogs

All participants of the new project were the winners:

• Providers received additional revenue from the sale of subscriptions
• Pirate sites, which have now become semi-legal, also received a portion of the revenue from subscriptions, and the outflow of users to free sites was slowed down by an increase in the quality of content and filtering technology that worked against major competitors.
• Copyright holders began to receive money for what they had previously received from a dead donkey's ears.
• Although users began to pay for content, but a reasonable amount, and the quality of services has grown significantly. In addition, they did not have to change their usual sites to new ones (except for the few that have not yet joined the project).

The project began to expand. New Internet providers connected to the project. More copyright holders added their digital goods to the collection, which, in addition to movies, began to include music, lyrics, and programs. More and more sites became (semi-) legal, just by connecting with them a check of whether the user has a subscription.



Now every site that has organized a convenient catalog, a way to deliver content to users, or any other service related to digital goods, had the opportunity to work legally, and even get paid.



Any user could once buy the right to receive a digital product and easily receive it from the site that he chose.



There were many directories. Owners of copyright too much. A “Digital Supermarket” is one. Seeing this, other companies thought “why are we worse?” And also decided to collect and sell copyrights.



They differed in terms of conditions and methods of payment, collections of goods, a list of directories working with them.



Thus, a new ecosystem of creation and sale of intangible goods was formed.



Agents represent the author's interests in the network. Negotiate with the sellers of copyright about the conditions of their sale, make sure that the works of the author did not extend illegally. An agent may be the author of the work itself, if he is not too lazy to do this.



Rights sellers provide access rights to the work to the end user and distribute income between authors. They can sell works one by one, in sets, or provide full access. Can take money or embed advertising in content. But they are not selling the work itself, but the right to receive it anywhere on the network.



Rights sellers, as a rule, agree with Internet providers on adding the cost of access rights to the account for the Internet.



Often, sellers have their own content catalogs, but users are not limited to them.



Since the seller works closely with the provider, in addition to selling the rights, he may be engaged in restricting access to the illegal download of works sold by him.



Content catalogs directly deliver the user works in one form or another. Before delivery, the catalog must ensure that the user has purchased the right to access this particular work. If the user did not do this - the catalog offers him to buy access from one of the rights sellers.



Search engines aggregators are ancillary services that collect and organize information about works, their authors, rights sellers and content catalogs. They allow:

• Agents track their work on legal and illegal sites, look for suitable content sellers.
• Sellers to find works and agents that may be of interest to them
• Catalogs organize their content and find sellers of rights to their works (even if users add content to the catalog)

An individual company does not necessarily fulfill only one of these roles. There are companies that combine them all.

Transition period

Until the system stabilized, its members tried to pull the blanket to their side.



Some agents tried to profit by selling goods only through “their” store at a price higher than they would have received from other sellers. But faced with the fact that semi-legal content catalogs did not pay attention to them, distributing works for free, and trying to put pressure on them did little to do that, because without the support of Internet providers (who protected only the content of “their” stores) leverage on such sites were not.



Sites directories tried to attract users by distributing author content for free. But since most of the Internet service providers cooperated with rights sellers and prevented illegal downloading, they quickly realized that being part of the system was easier than resisting it.



Some sellers of rights (most often concurrently Internet service providers) tried to earn more by raising prices for works for their users. But this only led to the fact that some users chose other providers, and some began to look for ways to get the same works for free.



Some users basically did not want to pay for intangible goods and used pirated sites to receive them. But as soon as the site they used became quite popular, providers paid attention to it and started filtering illegal works. As a result, most users decided that it was better to pay a small amount and use convenient legal sites than to constantly search among the mountains of rubbish where to download for free.



At first, semi-legal catalogs of content prevailed, which did not go completely out of the shadows, in order to provide users with as many works as possible, regardless of the willingness of the authors. They paid for part of the works when it was more profitable than to fight the rights of the owners, and the rest were distributed freely.



But over time, the system stabilized and became predictable for all its participants, which made it possible for catalogs to become completely legal, practically without losing the range. Of course, underground torrent trackers have been and will be, but their number is declining: they do not compete with legal trackers that are larger, more stable and more convenient, which for most users is compensated for by the need to pay.

Total

So the system still exists today, maintaining a balance between the cost of works and the desire of users to pay for them, between the greed of rights holders and the desire of other participants in the system to ignore these rights.



Over time, this division of roles in the market for intangible goods has created many consequences, including the disappearance of companies that used to be called “majors”, the spread of post-factum payment and the flourishing of recommendatory services. But read about it in other articles.



What do you think, is it possible with us? Or was the article that caught my eye from a parallel reality?