January 2007

Charlie Brown Needs to Bulk Up

by on January 2, 2007

Larry Lessig is frustrated by the Democratic Congress’s apparent lack of interest in serious copyright reform:

“Radical” changes in Washington always have this Charlie Brown/Lucy-like character (remember Lucy holding the football?): it doesn’t take long before you realize how little really ever changes in DC. The latest example is the Dems and IP issues as they affect the Net. Message to the Net from the newly Democratic House? Go to hell…

The Dems have looked at the potential “return” from the activists on the Net. They’ve considered the kids being sued by the industry (including the kids running MySpace, and maybe soon, YouTube), and the kids creating amazing new (but presumptively illegal) mashups and remixes, and they have compared that value to the party with the value promised by Hollywood. Result: the 20th Century continues to rule.

Dems to the Net: “Thanks for the blogs. And please continue to get outraged by MoveOn messages. But don’t think for a second we’re interested in hearing anything beyond the charming wisdom of Jack Valenti. We appreciate your support. We appreciate your money. But come on–you’re all criminals. Don’t expect your criminal ways to be taken seriously by an institution as respected as the US Congress.”

I share Lessig’s frustration, but I don’t know why he’s surprised. The Democrats have never been appreciably better than the Republicans on copyright issues. Two of the best Reps on copyright issues are Democrats–Boucher and Lofgren. But on the Republican side, Doolittle and Barton have been equally helpful. This has never been an issue that’s broken down along partisan lines.

Frankly, I think the vast majority of Democrats in Congress are only vaguely aware that the “activists on the Net” even exist, and they have no idea what they want and why. There are a few Reps who understand our arguments and support them and a few others who have considered our arguments but side with Hollywood. But my sense is that the vast majority have sided with Hollywood without giving the subject a second thought. After all, everyone’s in favor of artists, right?

Instead of getting angry at the Democrats for not doing the right thing, we should be building a movement that’s broad enough that both parties feel compelled to take our concerns seriously. Lucy’s not going to stop pulling the football away until Charlie Brown develops the political clout to clobber her for it.

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More on Vaidhyanathan and “You”

by on January 2, 2007 · 6 comments

Prof. Vaidhyanathan has left a gracious comment in response to my post last week about his MSNBC article. He rightly takes issue with my characterization of his position as “knee-jerk leftist and old fogeyism.”

As I point out in a subsequent comment, think his article illustrates a couple of interesting ideological divides. One divide is that Prof. Vaidhyanathan is more concerned than I am about the impact of corporate control over the means of communications. But the more interesting divide, in my estimation, is an individualist/communalist divide. Prof. Vaidhyanathan seems to feel that it’s only a revolution if people are able to “forge collective consciousnesses” and tackle big social problems. I’m more inclined to think that individual, incremental, spontaneous social organizations are at least as important.

What’s most fascinating about this is that it doesn’t seem to have any correlation with the traditional left-right divide. Vaidhyanathan clearly hails from the left-hand side of the political spectrum, as does Seth Finkelstein, but you can see similar sentiments from Nick Carr, who I’ve never thought of as a left-winger, and from our friends at the libertarian-leaning Progress and Freedom Foundation.

And of course, there’s yet another axis concerning copyright and patent law, in which Seth, Prof. Vaidhyanathan, and I would generally find ourselves on the same side, with PFF and most of the Washington establishment on the other side.

This is one of the things that makes writing about tech policy so interesting. On most issues, there is a distinctively “conservative” position and a distinctively “liberal” one, with libertarians usually lining up squarely with one side or the other, depending on the particular issue. But in tech policy, the battle lines seem to be more fluid.

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Judge Posner’s Avatar in Second Life

by on January 2, 2007

This transcript, or just the excerpt, is well worth a visit.

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