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fied.” My argument is about their effect. For before we get to the question
of justification, a hard question that depends a great deal upon
your values, we should first ask whether we understand the effect of the
changes the content industry wants.
Here’s the metaphor that will capture the argument to follow.
In 1873, the chemical DDT was first synthesized. In 1948, Swiss
chemist Paul Hermann Müller won the Nobel Prize for his work
demonstrating the insecticidal properties of DDT. By the 1950s, the
insecticide was widely used around the world to kill disease-carrying
pests. It was also used to increase farm production.
No one doubts that killing disease-carrying pests or increasing crop
production is a good thing. No one doubts that the work of Müller was
important and valuable and probably saved lives, possibly millions.
But in 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, which argued
that DDT, whatever its primary benefits, was also having unintended
environmental consequences. Birds were losing the ability to reproduce.
Whole chains of the ecology were being destroyed.
No one set out to destroy the environment. Paul Müller certainly
did not aim to harm any birds. But the effort to solve one set of problems
produced another set which, in the view of some, was far worse
than the problems that were originally attacked. Or more accurately,
the problems DDT caused were worse than the problems it solved, at
least when considering the other, more environmentally friendly ways
to solve the problems that DDT was meant to solve.
It is to this image precisely that Duke University law professor James
Boyle appeals when he argues that we need an “environmentalism” for
culture. 7 His point, and the point I want to develop in the balance of
this chapter, is not that the aims of copyright are flawed. Or that authors
should not be paid for their work. Or that music should be given
away “for free.” The point is that some of the ways in which we might
protect authors will have unintended consequences for the cultural environment,
much like DDT had for the natural environment. And just
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