Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Intellectual Property Law Goes Global
Representatives of "copyright holders" heavily outnumbered freedom advocates, as is typical at this kind of event, but the leadoff speaker, Michael Davis of the Progressive IP Law Association, started the session by talking about how hip-hop sampling would be killed by the Hague Convention if it is ratified in its present form, which has "fair use" provisions nearly as onerous as those contained in the DMCA.
Interestingly, Marilyn Cade of AT&T spoke out against much of the Hague Convention's intent; her company's concern, she said, is keeping global communications and ecommerce free and easy. A representative from Yahoo! was even more negative about this treaty, which would make U.S. authorities responsible for enforcing other countries' copyright and IP laws, and vice versa.
Think about this spectre, which another participant raised: a court in Moscow, Iran or China could decide something posted on a Web site based in the U.S. violated their countries' laws and, as Hague Convention signatories, demand that U.S. authorities force the Web site owner to remove the offending material. This is not a far-fetched idea; remember Yahoo! and the French government's objection to Nazi memorabilia sales?
At the other extreme, the American Society of Media Photographers loves the idea of a treaty that will help its members collect royalties from foreign media that use their images.
Not Just Speaking to the Peanut Gallery
I only counted 36 people in the audience; intellectual property issue discussions never draw mass attention. But the only audience that counted today was the U.S. Hague Convention delegation, and they were here, sitting up front, listening to every panelist's words, asking questions, and generally trying to learn what various constituencies want (and don't want) in the way of intellectual property treaties before they go off to the next negotiating session.
A Nationalized Movie Industry?
Jared Jussim of Sony Pictures talked at length about the "entrepreneurialism" of the movie business and how vigorous international copyright enforcement is needed to keep the movie business healthy. He said, "If we could have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act extended throughout the world, I would be ecstatic about it."
Jussim ranted hard about online freedom-seekers; he dumped on "professors" who "cite each others papers in a big circle" and how they are all "liars." Strong words. But that wasn't enough for the man. He directly stated that if movies or even pieces of them were distributed online or through other means not approved by the movie companies, the entire industry would eventually shut down; that "you would pay a tax" to finance government-produced movies; and that government flunkies would decide what movies got made and what you saw in theaters and on TV. Horrors!
The spectre of a government-controlled film industry obviously is enough to make any right-thinking person want to see all possible copyright protection added to every possible intellectual property treaty.
Faced with this potential evil, it is obvious that the ACLU and all those professors who yammer on about fair use, freedom of speech, constitutionality and similar silliness must be ignored.
Media Attention
The Washington Post showed up. A cameraman from TechTV shot a few moments worth of tape, without sound. One of the local tech newsletters sent a reporter. And me. These were all the "known" journalists I spotted, but others were taking notes, so who can say? Perhaps one of the quiet people in the front row was a secret representative of the Today Show, but somehow I doubt it.
The Hague Convention could make major changes in the way intellectual property and copyright laws are handled on an international scale, but "the public" probably won't hear about any of this -- and won't care if they do -- unless there is some sort of corporate aggression under the Hague Convention that affects as many people as the RIAA's anti-Napster actions. Then you'll see the big-time pundits weigh in. But at this point in the game, they are nowhere to be found.
Enter RMS, Stage Right
Richard M. Stallman, representing the League for Programming Freedom, was scheduled to take part in the afternoon session but he showed up shortly before lunch and was immediately buttonholed by the Washington Post reporter. He spent the lunch break charming a member of the trade delegation, who said she was surprised that she had not heard "strongly" before about any of the intellectual freedom concerns brought up today by Stallman and other panel members. And listen to Stallman she did, with total concentration, while eating a sandwich and drinking a soda on the front lawn of the Library of Congress's Adams Building.
Stallman was not alone in speaking about the rights of intellectual property creators and users. Laurie Racine, of the Red Hat-sponsored Center for the Public Domain, did a turn, as did representatives of the Trial Lawyers of America, a blacksuited young attorney from the MPAA, Jamie Love from the Consumer Project on Technology, people from BMI, ASCAP,AAP, and other "interested parties."
Love brought up a hypothetical situation: Cuba copyrighting the "cuban beat" and demanding 5% royalties from all American music performers who use it -- and under the terms of the proposed Hague treaty, having the legal right to force U.S. officials to help them collect.
But proceedings like this one are basically dominated by lawyers. "What if?" questions get asked and debated. Ties between copyright laws and other cross-border civil and criminal situations get discussed in detail so excruciating that it could make non-smokers want to take up the habit just to have an excuse to slip outside for a few minutes now and then.
Not Just the U.S.
Even if the U.S. delegation to the Hague Convention come down totally on the side of the angels, they will still be just one of many delegations, and other countries may have other ideas. A number of people here today have talked about how, when it comes to copyrights and patents, the U.S. is one of the most restrictive nations around, so American copyright holders probably have more to fear on that front from the rest of the world than the rest of the world has to fear from us.
Where ordinary Americans may lose out is on freedom of speech issues. Many countries have far more restrictive policies on libel and on what citizens may or may not say about touchy subjects like politics or religion, especially if those opinions are published on the Internet.
RMS vs. Sony
Imagine Stallman being accused of "not speaking for the public" on copyright matters by Sony's Jussim -- who also managed to get in a plug for movies being a great entertainment value compared to live theater or professional sports. Imagine Stallman calmly -- aside from a gleam in his eyes -- reminding the poor flak that more money goes to promote movies than to make them, so that more money in the studios' pockets wouldn't necessarily lead to better movies.
This was the first moment of passion in over an hour. Sadly, it only lasted a moment. Then it was back to drone, drone, drone.
"The ISP Community" and "The Content Community" were phrases that got thrown a lot. In the legal sense, we heard, the question of whether "publication" takes place on a server or on the client where it is displayed hasn't been settled yet.
And so on.
Toward the end of the day Jamie Love said, "There hasn't been a single American newspaper article about this treaty, and here you are getting ready to create the Magna Carta of cyberspace."
Love didn't blame the people on the U.S. delegation for working in comparative secret. "I've called reporter after reporter [about this] and their eyes glaze over," he said.
So Slashdot was there. And if you want to read the text of this treaty, it's online here.
And if you are a U.S. citizen who wants to get in touch with the people representing you at the next Hague Convention meeting (in June), three good people to contact are:
Jennifer Lucas at USPTO (jennifer.lucas@uspto.gov)
Jeffrey D. Kovar at U.S. Dept. of State (kovarj@ms.state.gov)
Maneesha Mithal at the Federal Trade Commission (mmithal@ftc.gov)
I'm neither promoting nor critisizing the current state of legislation, but it's useless without worldwide standardization.
Hogwash.
Put another way: for a useless piece of legislation, Copyright Law certainly has allowed some very powerful, and very wealthy, Copyright Cartels to form (RIAA, MPAA, etc.), all without the "global standardization" you seem to hold in such high regard.
One of the unwritten checks and balances on the current IP system has been the diversity of intellectual property law, which has allowed certain documents which would otherwise have been completely suppressed using one nation's laws or another to remain a part of the global information sphere. This check isn't enough to reign in the ever more draconian intellectual property regimes of the west, but it has allowed information to get out, into the public hands, where it could do some good despite efforts at outright censorship based in no small part one copyright law of one location or another.
Imagine Chinese copyright law claiming ownership of any footage containing any Chinese Officials or Uniformed troups. Tiannamen Square would never have seen the light of day. Those are the kinds of unconstitutional (in the USA) laws which the treaty will require our government to enforce. What little regard the authorities in the US have left for the constitution will be swept under the rug with the all-encompassing excuse "the Hague Convention requires us to take these actions." Yes, someone, somewhere may have the cash and be willing to put the rest of their life on the line to fight such actions, and perhaps the supreme court will even see its way past its own petty politics to uphold the constitution (although there recent track record is anything but promising in this regard), but in the meantime we will all have been very effectively stripped of what few rights we have. Ditto for every other nation on the planet.
All these freedoms, and the sacrifices of our forefathers they represent, squandered, simply to preserve the outdated business models of organizations that produce the least worthwile things in our culture: popular music and Hollywood tripe.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It's working, too. There's an annual report on compliance with the TRIPS agreement describing countries that the US is putting the screws on for not being tough enough on content piracy.
Sure they can make IP laws all over the world. What is the chance that they will be enforced everywhere? Zero. In some Asian countries practically everything you can buy is pirated. They have copyright laws, but they aren't enforced. People would see these and say "Hey another stupid unenforceable law." They would then continue selling pirated Win2k CDs.
My opinion - Don't worry too much.
... to consider that most peoples' interest are pretty narrow: The price of electricity, the price of gas, where their next paycheck will come from. Maybe they worry about taking their kids to the doctor when they get sick. Other than that, they don't really care about much.
... and when they came for me, there was no one left to complain.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.