Department of Stating the Obvious

This is war.

This is not.



The latter is merely a bitter dispute over proper compensation for copyright holders. Important, yes.

But not war.

It's tempting to describe the nip-and-tuck battle for "secure" digital media, for convenience's sake, as an "arms race." But it's not. And succumbing to the all-too-common metaphor is disrespectful to these people. And these people.

Relatively precise language is a needed first step toward 21st century copyright policies (note: on a related point, I will not, from this point forward, write or speak of "intellectual property" policies unless quoting others — the framing of ideas as "property" was the first step in the incremental movement toward the inevitable "war" over this "territory"). 21st copyright would prioritize 1) maximal public access; 2) fair compensation for composers; and 3) minimization of technological impediments to fair use.

But so long as Congress thinks it's dealing with an "arms race" in the midst of a larger "war," instead of mediating a compensation squabble, smart policy will elude us. And, as always, we do well to ask who benefits from the movement toward perpetual warfare.