Blogosphere Hails Tim Lee’s DMCA Paper

by on March 22, 2006 · 6 comments

Yesterday, the Cato Institute issued Tim Lee’s paper, Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Reaction has been swift and favorable.

  • Blog top-dog BoingBoing says “it takes sharp free-market types like the Cato characters to bust out elegant critiques like this one.”
  • Heavyweight SlashDot congratulates Lee and Cato for “putting into words what most of us know already.” (And the discussion threads prove that many slashdotters have trouble putting ideas into words.)
  • Our friend Instapundit quotes the money quote but does not say “read the whole thing,” as he does so often. No one ever reads the whole thing – that’s why we read blogs – so Glenn is obviously using reverse psychology.
  • Confessing to a personal relationship with the author, Julian Sanchez of Reason’s Hit and Run calls Tim’s a “sharp new paper.” Oh my, do the comments get testy quickly.
  • Mike of TechDirt gives the paper a shout. (We’re glad it wasn’t Carlo.)
  • Longtime champions EFF welcome the contribution of “free marketeers” to their effort.
  • PublicKnowledge welcomes this “voice on the right.” Only Kartoon Kato is “on the right” – Cato is neither left nor right, rather the best of both – but the welcome is welcome all the same.

These, and other examples, show that Tim’s paper, especially coming as it does from the Cato Institute, is enjoying enthusiastic appreciation. It’s a needed addition to the discussion of copyright law, protection, and business in the digital age.

I’m taking bets on when the paper is blogged on IPCentral . . . !

SHARE: 6 comments

About Jim Harper

Jim Harper is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. A Poli Sci major at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Jim served as Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly in his final year at Hastings College of the Law. Prior to becoming a policy analyst and advocate, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the U.S. House and Senate. He avoids genuine life experience by watching lots and lots of reality TV.

Read more articles by Jim Harper.

  • Steve R.

    Excellent Paper; additional thoughts. 1. There is a dollar cost involved in developing proprietry technology. The dollar cost is not just the actual cost of developing the technology, but also the cost of lost sales. The content industry has been trying to develop DRM standards for the next generation HD-DVDs for several year now. Think of all the sales (profits) they could have made if they had just released the HD-DVDs based on an open standard. 2. The paper notes the benefits of “open standards” starting on page 14. My concern is what happens to your personal computer when all this proprietary crap gets installed. Interoperability will be a joke. Additionally, what about the proverbial “dirty tricks”, one companies proprietary program disables another’s. 2a. As a follow-up, if a company wants to use DRM, they are free to use a device similar to the iPod. Under this approach, the content vendor will not be transferring the liability of protecting HIS content to ME. You may end up with a gazillion proprietary devices, don’t loose the charger, but at least your computer will be really yours.

  • Steve R.

    Excellent Paper; additional thoughts.
    1. There is a dollar cost involved in developing proprietry technology. The dollar cost is not just the actual cost of developing the technology, but also the cost of lost sales. The content industry has been trying to develop DRM standards for the next generation HD-DVDs for several year now. Think of all the sales (profits) they could have made if they had just released the HD-DVDs based on an open standard.
    2. The paper notes the benefits of “open standards” starting on page 14. My concern is what happens to your personal computer when all this proprietary crap gets installed. Interoperability will be a joke. Additionally, what about the proverbial “dirty tricks”, one companies proprietary program disables another’s.
    2a. As a follow-up, if a company wants to use DRM, they are free to use a device similar to the iPod. Under this approach, the content vendor will not be transferring the liability of protecting HIS content to ME. You may end up with a gazillion proprietary devices, don’t loose the charger, but at least your computer will be really yours.

  • Steve R.

    Addtional thought, one that keeps surfacing on a periodic basis.

    Both patent law and copyright law have finite time limits. So far I have not seen any discussion of how DRM technologies would recognize when content enters the public domain. Anyone have any ideas on this?

  • Steve R.

    Addtional thought, one that keeps surfacing on a periodic basis.

    Both patent law and copyright law have finite time limits. So far I have not seen any discussion of how DRM technologies would recognize when content enters the public domain. Anyone have any ideas on this?

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim

    Steve: given how firmly Congress is in hte pocket of Hollywood, the finiteness of the copyright time limit is make-believe anyway. So while it’s an interesting question in the abstract, it’ll probably never matter, because nothing is ever going to fall into the public domain again.

  • http://www.techliberation.com/ Tim

    Steve: given how firmly Congress is in hte pocket of Hollywood, the finiteness of the copyright time limit is make-believe anyway. So while it’s an interesting question in the abstract, it’ll probably never matter, because nothing is ever going to fall into the public domain again.

Previous post:

Next post: