Copyright

Adrian Johns on Piracy

by on June 22, 2010 · 1 comment

On this week’s episode of the podcast, Adrian Johns, professor in the Department of History at the University of Chicago, expert on the history of science and the history of the book, and author of the new book, Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Guttenberg to Gates, discusses the history of intellectual property and piracy.  He discusses origins of copyright law in London, the first pirates, and today’s digital piracy.  He also addresses the future of books and potential tipping points that could prompt changes in copyright law, citing the Google Books project and pharmaceuticals in the developing world.

Related Readings

Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included Clay Shirky on cognitive surplus, Nick Carr on what the internet is doing to our brains, Gina Trapani and Anil Dash on crowdsourcing, James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform, and Tyler Cowen on just about everything.

So what are you waiting for? Subscribe!

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You Might Do Not Have to Use Files

by on June 14, 2010 · 9 comments

The grandly-named Public Domain Archive, evidently a production of Osaka-based Digirock, Inc., offers a few MP3s of classical music and historical speeches. Thanks to a suggestion from Tyler Cowen, I’m enjoying a 1942 recording of Beethoven’s 9th even as I type. Am I breaking the law in so doing? The copyright notice posted on the Public Domain Archive, while quite charming, hardly reassures:

To the People
In japan, All files open to the public on this site are certainly lawful.
But, if you do not live in Japan, You might do not have to use files.
You should check the law of your country.

As proves too often true for works, like this 1942 recording, that fall under the aegis of the 1909 Copyright Act, it is not easy to figure out if the underylying work enjoys any claim to protection under U.S. law. Perhaps, after all, it was not published with the proper formalities, here, and thus fell into the public domain.

In this case, though, it looks like we can dodge those complications. U.S. copyright law affords exclusive rights only to copying, creation of derivative works, public distribution, public performance, and public display. See 17 USC § 106. So long as I listen to a MP3 solely via streaming, without saving a copy, it is hard to see how I’ve violated any of those rights. Perhaps Digirock, Inc. has violated U.S. law by offering me the MP3, but that is no concern of mine (and probably not much of a concern to Digirock, Inc.).

That legal scenario suggests an interesting conclusion: an offshore copyright-free zone—one set up by intellectual pirates or in a stubbornly independent country—might give U.S. residents ample, free, and legal access to all sorts of copyrighted works—even ones protected under U.S. law.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia and The Technology Liberation Front.]

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Leaves Lady Gaga in the Dust

by on May 11, 2010 · 9 comments

In their 2006 Cato Policy Analysis, Amateur-to-Amateur: The Rise of a New Creative Culture, Gregory Lastowka and Dan Hunter wrote about how the functions that make up the creative cycle—creation, selection, production, dissemination, promotion, sale, and use of expressive content—are undergoing revolutionary decentralization and disintermediation.

The only thing professional in the clip below was the writing of the song. It deserves its credit, but the performance itself, production of the video, its selection, dissemination, and promotion (Twitter users, YouTube) are all amateur or amateur supported by a professionally managed, ad-supported platform.

Watch it a second time to take in the reactions of the girl sitting in front of the map. If you like, compare it with the tacky, overproduced, and flat “professional” video.

This is amateur entertainment that rivals any professional production, in part because it’s amateur. Assuming this performer dedicates himself further to his craft, he can rival or surpass anything put out by yesterday’s professionals.

(And, yes, I’m waiting to learn that I’ve been duped by some clever marketing scheme, but I hope this is real.)

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Albert Gallatin and the First National Broadband Plan

by on May 10, 2010 · 8 comments

Over the weekend, I published an op-ed in The Des Moines Register encouraging the FCC to heed the lessons of the first national broadband plan, the one Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin sent to Congress in 1808.

Gallatin was a remarkable figure in the early history of the federal government, and his accomplishments include being the longest-serving Treasury secretary (1801-1812) to date. His report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals, completed at the request of Congress, remains one of the seminal documents in the history of American infrastructure. It is a masterpiece of dispassionate policy-making and clear-headed writing.

Alas, the document is available nowhere online, and the only in-print copy I can find is published by the aptly-named Dodo Press. This is indeed unfortunate given the renewed interest in network infrastructure as a form of national technology. The NBP published in March by the FCC, despite its nearly 400 pages and thousands of footnotes, makes no reference to Gallatin or his plan. Continue reading →

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What’s Yours is Mine: The Dangerous Implications of a “Right” to Free Credit Scores

by on May 4, 2010 · 12 comments

I’m recuperating today after wrist surgery #2 but I just had to say something about a hugely important proposal introduced today that would bring us one step closer to information socialism. No, I’m not talking about the discussion draft privacy bill released today by Reps. Boucher & Stearns (which Adam and I already commented on here) but about the amendment introduced today by Sen. Udall that would “require credit-rating agencies to divulge credit scores, free of charge, to consumers when they access their free annual credit report.”

Actually, there is an important analogy between the two bills: both will have populist appeal because they can claim to giving consumers a “right” to “their” information—but both would impose real costs that will ultimately be borne by consumers. On the privacy side, Adam Thierer and I have warned repeatedly that data collection is critical to the online advertising that supports the publishers of the Internet’s cornucopia of content and services. Everyone takes this for granted but few of us really think about the quid pro quo at work: users receive “free” content and services in exchange for seeing advertising and sharing data about their browsing habits, which makes advertising more relevant to them, more effective for advertisers, and therefore more profitable for publishers.

Unfortunately, a similar free lunch mentality is at work with credit scores. If we think about them at all, most of us probably resent and/or fear them. Yet credit scores, and the entire credit reporting system, are truly one of the wonders of information capitalism and a boon for consumers. Before they developed, lending decisions were far riskier because lenders didn’t really know whom to trust with their money. Thus they had to build in a risk premium into their interest rates to account for the fact that some users might default or fall behind on payments. This punished good borrowers and rewarded bad ones. Getting a loan was difficult, often required special connections, and was often arbitrary and thus sometimes downright discriminatory.

This situation was bad for everyone. While nobody likes being in debt, we often forget how radically empowering credit can be in allowing us to expand our opportunities in life. Continue reading →

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Wendy Seltzer on delegated censorship, copyright, and the DMCA

by on May 4, 2010 · 0 comments

In this week’s episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk to Wendy Seltzer, fellow at the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. We discuss copyright infringement and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as the relationship between copyright law and free speech protected by the First Amendment.

Do check out the interview, and consider subscribing to the show on iTunes. Past guests have included James Grimmelman on online harassment and the Google Books case, Michael Geist on ACTA, and Tom Hazlett on spectrum reform.

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PFF Announces Summer Events Calendar: 8 Policy Events in DC to Replace Sundance Summit

by on April 23, 2010 · 4 comments

We at The Progress & Freedom Foundation announced a series of eight upcoming policy events today, taking the place of our previously scheduled Sundance Summit. Beginning this month, the events will run through the summer in the nation’s capital. By moving these events closer to home in this manner, PFF will be better positioned to speak to legislators, policymakers, and tech policy press before Washington turns its attention to the midterm elections.

The series of events (which you can add to your calendar here) will include several breakfast and luncheon panel presentations and two half-day conferences. Covering such areas as communications and competition policy, digital property, digital media freedom and Internet freedom, the events will include:

  • Tuesday, April 27: “Cable, Broadcast & the First Amendment: Will the Supreme Court End Must-Carry?” — A panel of experts will debate the future of “must carry” rules in the wake of a new challenge to their constitutionality by Cablevision, and what this decision could mean for other media. (RSVP here)
  • Friday, May 7: “What Should the Next Communications Act Look Like?” — A discussion with key industry stakeholders about the future of the Telecom Act in the wake of the Comcast v. FCC decision and the looming battle over Title II reclassification of broadband. (RSVP here)
  • Thursday, May 20: “Can Government Help Save the Press?” — This conference will discuss the FCC’s new “Future of Media” proceeding and debate what role government should play in subsidizing the press or bailing out failing media enterprises. (RSVP here)
  • Monday, June 7: “The Future of Speech on the Borderless Internet” — A panel of leading cyberlawyers will discuss trans-national regulation and litigation of defamation, hate speech, indecency and political dissent. (RSVP here)
  • Monday, June 21: “Sports Programming & the Challenges of Digital Piracy“— A discussion of the challenges that digital piracy, including unauthorized streaming, poses to professional and collegiate sports that have traditionally earned revenues from telecasts of games, bouts, etc. Continue reading →

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Hitler Accuses Google of Appeasement

by on April 22, 2010 · 0 comments

Check out the Volokh post and the clip to which it links. The post is titled “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Meta.”

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The NewsHour on Neutrality Regulation

by on April 12, 2010 · 6 comments

I sometimes enjoy picking nits with or lampooning our friend Scott Cleland, but today write to point out what an excellent job he did of advocating against net neutrality regulation last week on the NewsHour.

The set-up piece is interesting because of its government-centric take. Net neutrality, it says, is “a set of principles adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2005 that limits the ability of Internet providers to treat sites differently.”

The better view, I think, is that neutrality is one of “a set of technical principles that have been implicit in [the Internet’s] design since it began life.” Hey, NewsHour, giving the FCC credit for the neutral engineering of the Internet is like giving the rooster credit for the sunrise.

There’s a telling omission in the NewsHour’s telling of the Comcast Kerfuffle. See if you catch it:

The case began with actions by Comcast in 2007 to interfere with an online service called BitTorrent, a file-swapping site that allows consumers to swap movies and other material over the Internet, files that use a great deal of bandwidth. The FCC then told Comcast it could not block subscribers from using BitTorrent under the commission’s net neutrality rules.

Left out: Comcast had ceased interfering with BitTorrent before the FCC acted due to a variety of market pressures.

But take a look at the piece and Scott’s good advocacy in the discussion that follows the set-up:

Gigi Sohn, who I personally respect and who I agree with on many issues, reaches a bit far when she argues that Comcast degraded BitTorrent because it was a file-sharing site “unpopular with some folks in Congress and some folks elsewhere.” Collapsing net neutrality regulation and intellectual property issues may be good for Public Knowledge’s base, but it confuses many issues and weakens Public Knowledge’s arguments and support.

I think the record is pretty clear that Comcast degraded BitTorrent because of a conflict between the BitTorrent protocol and the DOCSIS protocol running on Comcast’s cable plant. (I know I can rely on comments to correct me or bring nuance to this claim.)

Neutrality was not a gift from government, and I don’t think making a mandate of a good engineering principle will improve the functioning of the Internet or the Internet ecosystem.

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Michael Geist on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

by on March 29, 2010 · 2 comments

Last week there was another leak of the secretly negotiated Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). This time it was a copy of the of the entire latest draft. It seems to dispel some of the initial worries bloggers had written about, including customs searches of your iPod at the border, but also stokes other concerns. For one thing, the U.S. seems to be pushing for protocols to cut off copyright violators from their internet access.

In the most recent episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk with Prof. Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa, who has been following ACTA more closely than anyone else. He explains that not only is the content of ACTA troubling, but the fact that it’s being negotiated in such secrecy.

Listen to other episodes and remember to subscribe to the podcast using RSS or iTunes.

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