Some random thoughts I had about two books I read recently: "Copyright's Highway" by SLS Prof. Paul Goldstein, and "The World is Flat" by Tom Friedman: -
Goldstein's book (and great insights from class mate Eric Chan) made me think about the additional value that new technology brings to media. Portability (i.e. of music, books on tape, podcasts etc) adds value to the original medium (a CD, a book, a radio broadcast). This makes the related copyright (i.e. of the music that's now on my mp3 player) more valuable than it used to be - but our current system only gives creators one chance to "sell" their copyright - only one chance to capitalize on their work. So, who is to reap the additional value of the copyright that is created by new technology - the end user? Or the creator?
While the idea is somewhat undeveloped in my head, I do think there is a lot to be said for the market forces that Goldstein touches on in the last chapter entitled "The Celestial Jukebox." If we allowed copyrights of functional ideas (or i.e., an interface), then we would not have standards on which others could build. This would result in fewer sales, less revenue, and a smaller collective pie. Eventually, despite the transaction cost, some group of people would have to collaborate to create a standard - and in doing so, fuel the ability for all the parts to inter-connect. As Goldstein mentioned, allowing other companies to make video games for the Sega game console actually turned out to be good for Sega (or was it Nintendo?) because the console became more popularized which ultimately increased sales and the collective pie (so both users and creators can reap the benefit).
Tom Friedman makes a similar point in his book "The World is Flat" - in it, he discusses the notion of open-source, and how such collaboration helped created a base standard without which the internet as we know it today may not exist. For example, most web servers out there run on Apache which is open-source software. Because the web servers run on a uniform interface (and because web browsers have been standardized), we are able to view web pages from all different sources. Without such standardization, I would only be able to view web pages from those web servers that were compatible with my browser. Or perhaps I would have to install multiple different browsers on my computer to be able to view a larger collection of web pages. The point is that without standardization, the collective market shrinks. And too much copyright pre-empts the possibility of that standardization.