Guardian columnist Victor Keegan recently joined a growing chorus of forward-thinking people in calling for lawmakers to roll-back or at least counter-balance the ever-tightening regime of copyright law. Keegan laments the efforts of entrenched Hollywood interests to further extend the lifespan of copyright protection and calls for lawmakers to tip the balance of copyright law in favour of users and amateur creators.

Here’s an excerpt from what Keegan had to say in the Guardian:

We are now living in a digital age of instant and cheap availability, meshing and remixing and of mass creativity, with increasing numbers of creators prepared to give their services free (as in much of the open source movement). We need fresh regulations for a new age before we cave into the demands of the producers as they try to get draconian rules put in place before the shutters come down on the old world. . .

The creative economy is vitally important, but the way to nurture it is to follow the winds of the information revolution and not the desire of existing corporations to preserve a business model that has been turned upside down by the revolution taking place in virtually every creative industry.

Keegan’s right — we need a level playing field on which new forms of co-creation and innovation can flourish. If Hollywood titans succeed in locking up their vast archives of media content for a further twenty years it would certainly be a setback for open content initiatives, but it will most certainly not be a death knell. The regulatory measures deployed by incumbents amount to temporary stopgaps, not sources of enduring competitive advantage. In any case, a more balanced approached to the way we recognize, encourage, and reward knowledge production will be driven by viable new business models that can fuel value creation in intellectual property intensive industries, not by changes in the law.

The law is a blunt instrument and, when it comes to the regulatory arena, concentrated corporate interests usually win out over the diffuse interests of users. Incumbent companies already use existing patent and copyright protections as a shield against innovation and change in their markets. And, for as long as new business models remain illusive, media behemoths will exploit the heavy hand of regulation to enforce consumer behaviours that are in fact contrary to consumer interests.

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t lobby for user-friendly copyright policies, but we shouldn’t rely on changes in the law to bring about a more decentralized, user-centric media environment either. The most effective antidote to the media industry’s political maneuvering is to demonstrate that the explosion of amateur creativity on the Web can be a source of immense social, cultural, and economic value. If media companies wish to participate in this value creation they will need to quickly come to terms with the fact that they can hold more in an open hand than they can in a closed fist, as Jim Griffin, managing director of OneHouse LLC, recently said.

Don Tapscott and I argue in Wikinomics that the reticence displayed by the media industries is not surprising, and in some cases it’s entirely rational. Publishers of media, music, software, and other digitized goods have a very legitimate business problem: they can’t reasonably adopt open approaches that would cannibalize existing revenues without a viable means to shore up their ailing income streams. Jim Griffin calls it “Tarzan economics.” “We cling to the vine that holds us off the jungle floor,” he says, “and we can’t let go of the one we’ve got until we’ve got the next vine firmly in our hand.”

The problem is that media incumbents are moving too slowly. They’re getting mired in the thick underbrush of thorny contractual agreements and outdated and costly infrastructures. What’s worse is that the economic foundation of the industry is based on a business model suited for the era of analog publishing, not for a world of user-driven creation and distribution. These institutions are powerful and deeply engrained in the industry’s social and economic contract. It’s hard for senior executives to imagine a world where their companies could lose control of the very resources that have monopolized for so long.

The dilemma media executives face is that they can’t replicate the phenomenal successes of Linux, Wikipedia, YouTube, and other collaborative communities without also accepting the radical openness with which these communities share their intellectual property. What’s more, companies that fail to connect with these communities will find themselves ever more isolated – by-passed by the networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating media content to create value.

The result is that new business models for open content will not come from traditional media establishments, but from companies such as Google and Yahoo. This new generation of companies is not burdened by the legacies that inhibit the publishing incumbents so they can be much more agile in responding to customer demands. More importantly, they understand that you don’t need to control the quantity and destiny of bits if they can provide compelling venues in which people build communities around sharing and remixing content. Free content is just the lure on which they layer revenue from advertising and premium services.

In the end, the saga unfolding in the media industries serves to illustrate a fundamental principle: Customer value, not control, is the answer in the digital economy. The media industry—and all industries for that matter—must resist the temptation to impose their will on consumers as a matter of convenience, or worse, as a result of a lack of ingenuity and agility. Rather, music labels and other media entities should develop Internet business models and offerings with the right combination of “free” goods, consumer control, versioning, and ancillary products and services. This includes new platforms for fan remixes, mash-ups, and other forms of customer participation in media creation and distribution.