Bibliocycle

I know I have mentioned in previous posts the fact that working at a boarding school is not a one-hat job.  Yesterday, I took 18 members of the Andover debate team, the Philomathean Society, to Loomis Chafee for a multi-school tournament sponsored by the Debate Association of New England Independent Schools (DANEIS.)  The students in both the Advanced and Novice divisions considered the resolution:

Resolved: that the United States Government should legalize the electronic duplication and transfer of copyrighted media for non-commercial use.

The tournament consisted of three rounds, during which teams of two debaters took the position of the Affirmative or Negative for the first two rounds, and then took the opposite position for the final round.  I like that format (called “switch-sides” because it keeps them honest.  They have to prepare both sides of the debate.)  Since I have been considering copyright issues during my sabbatical, I was very interested in how well the students would debate the complexities of the resolution.  Because coaches serve as judges, I heard all three rounds.  It was eye-opening.

The best round was the one in which the affirmative team defined the term “copyrighted media” as restricted to music.  In other words, their case supported the elimination of all copyright protection of music, with attendant file sharing over peer to peer networks.  The kids made excellent arguments regarding the extent to which the status quo is broken.  Billions of illegal free downloads are occurring each month.  There is little or no acknowledgment of music copyright, particularly among members of their age group.   One debater likened the situation to prohibition.  It seemed like a good idea, but it failed.  So alcohol was legalized, and taxed, and a lot of problems were eliminated.  (They’d like to see iTunes take over the free download business, because there is danger of viruses on many of the popular P2P sites.)

There is clear evidence that a new business model is needed–one in which users will be able to get what they want, easily and inexpensively (or freely.)  The students believe that the Google model of free service, with the revenue coming from ads, could work.  They contend that artists would not suffer;  rather, they would benefit from wider exposure to their work and would make money from concerts and merchandise.

The most interesting thing to me was the fact that the action called for in this resolution seemed so logical and obvious to all of them.  Even when the debate included other media. (They were totally clueless about the catastrophic impact on print publication of this change.)  I think that those of us who care about copyright need to support creative new business models in hopes that we influence the behavior of this group of kids who have grown up with P2P.  I doubt that anything that we do will be completely successful with this cohort, though.  Maybe what we really should be doing is planning a massive education program aimed at much younger kids.  By high school, it may be too late to change this entrenched behavior.