Coble-Berman Bill Would Restrict Fair Use

Amazing Quantum Man writes "News.com is reporting on the new Berman-Coble copyright bill. This bill is a two-edged sword. It would make life easier for webcasters, but it would restrict fair use. Interestingly, according to the article, Berman allegedly opposes the bill that has his name on it as a sponsor! I don't think it's on Thomas yet, but Politech has a copy of the bill (2.1M PDF)." The report which the memorandum attached to the bill refers to is online. Congress is making an effort to reconcile traditional copyright law with the realities of digital copying; there's no telling whether the end product will be something tolerable or not.

Comments

Not "destructive", "disruptive"

[dpilot]

You hit a key term here, but slightly off. It should be 'disruptive' instead of 'destructive' and then you not only get right to the truth, but you enlist years of sociological research behind legislation like this and other recording-industry abominations are bad.

The common opinion on /. and the geek community in general is that Internet, file sharing, and the like are bad for some current business models, but in the long run good for society. We point to examples like VCRs, for instance. The problem has been one of convincing the mainstream non-geek population that this is true.

Enter the term, "disruptive."

There is a sizable body of mainstream economic literature (sorry, no URLs handy, ran across this in dead-tree pre-URL days) that focuses on "disruptive technologies" - how they are bad for some businesses and business models, but good for society as a whole. This is non-geek literature.

Our problem is to cast the free and open nature of the Internet as a mainstream distruptive technology as important to society as the telephone, automobile, airplane, etc. Take a look at the international nature of Linux (or *BSD) and tell me that the Internet hasn't done something immensely valuable for mankind. Letter-writing and co-operative journals are old, so is travel, but this is international collaboration of an unprecedented scale by common people. Not only do we take it for granted, we're about to throw it away in exchange for an outmoded and defective business model. (I know, there are no words about shutting down the Internet, but the sum chilling effect of DRM effectively does so by turning it into radio/television.)

This needs to become a mainstream issue, not a geek one.

(IMHO, the most socially disruptive technology of recent history has been the sanitary napkin.)

simple choices, biased voices

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, whatever PR firm you work for, they did a great job of making you seem to be an actual person. I know you won't be persuaded unless RMS somehow manages to outbid whatever industry association hired you, so I'll focus my comments on pointing out your bias.

First, by the very fact that this legislation is being submitted, we know that the "established laws and traditions" which are being challenged by "emerging ways of the digital revolution" (btw, "digital revolution" is a dead giveaway, nobody who isn't on the industry dole would say that) is in fact the institution of copyright, which is being challenged by what I will call the Even Fairer Use practice of modern free information sharing. Thus the whole premise of your post is backward: you suggest that technology has somehow threatened our ability to take advantage of the Fair Use rights granted to us under current law, which couldn't be further from the truth. Of course, as a PR industry representative, your goal is not discussion but confusion, so such consistency would not interest you.

Your framing of the issue also makes your bias blatantly obvious: you suggest that Fair Use rights are in dispute, while tacitly assuming that copyright is necessary. To illustrate this point, let me rephrase one of your paragraphs: "What is copyright? Did God intend for us to have copyrights? Do animals have copyrights? Clearly, reasoning on this level leads quickly to absurdity." By your own "reasoning," this suggests that copyrights are as open to question (i.e., not inalienable) as are Fair Use rights, and you make no effort to show why one is preferable to another. In fact, copyright is the institutionalized restriction of the right to free speech, which you call inalienable; sounds like we should question the "conventional wisdom" about keeping copyright.

Next, you betray your insider knowledge that your industry trade group plans to continue purchasing this kind of offensive legislation until it succeeds. Gotta be careful about that. And you engage in some Western jingoism about technology, which is implicitly equated with copyright. Unfortunately, you fail to point out that much of this technology (e.g., the Internet) was created by government and university research which would have been impossible if intellectual property law was written the way industry wants it to be.

Then you suggest that we abandon common sense, suggesting that it has happened before without giving a single specific example, again for "technology" (and another slice of jingoism), which you again fail to link to copyright.

Your last paragraph, though, is by far the most obviously industry-funded. You dismiss "Fair Use" as an "anachronism" and an "antiquated ideal," without mentioning a single thing which might be wrong with it. I would suggest that it is copyright which is the antiquated anachronism in an age when digital copying allows us to benefit huge numbers of people for almost no cost. Surely that would accomplish "the improvement of the society of Man." You suggest that this bill and others like it will somehow result in improved technology, again without specifying how; in fact, it will not do this in any way. Finally, you attempt to flatter and browbeat the reader by suggesting that he is elite, and that elite people ought to favor this type of legislation, again without any sort of explanation why. Of course, this is because your reason for favoring this legislation is that it will either preserve or increase the profits that your employer makes from restricting the rights of others to distribute information.

Finally, your presentation is not credible. Your post contains zero grammar or spelling errors, no technological jargon or acronyms, and multiple marketing buzzwords. You are obviously not a programmer or a sysadmin; your background is clearly marketing and public relations.

I am very concerned that this post was moderated to 5. This means one of two things: either PR people are not just posting to Slashdot but also moderating, or the average Slashdot moderator is unable to recognize PR rhetoric when they see it. I submit this message in the hopes of helping to fix the latter if it is the case.