Tim Lee has posted his response to Rasmus Fleischer’s proposal to ditch copyright law at Cato Unbound, making the hardly strident but accurate point that copyright law is still functional outside the digital realm.

In that domain, a reader comments on my earlier post:

I think the general consensus among folk who study this stuff is that watermarking — and a variety of schemes have been floated for years now — isn’t really going to be that helpful. The large-scale distribution content firms worry about, as on p2p networks, typically involves skilled geeks who can strip away every form of watermark yet devised with minimal trouble, so watermarking won’t stop untraceable copies from getting into circulation there (all you need is one clean copy). On the other hand, you have small-fry casually sharing a song or DVD with a couple friends, who might leave the watermark in, but are unlikely to get on the copyright enforcement radar screen.

That has probably been true in the past, but as we go forward it’s possible a new model may emerge that will be more conducive to the watermark- that of audience profit participation. In an ad-based profit model, for example, one way of incentivizing tracking and data collection in general may be to let the viewers actually get paid (or rewarded in some way) for watching films.

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