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Robin Gross and IP Justice
ethereal writes "According to this news.com article, former EFF attorney Robin Gross is starting up a new group called IP Justice in order to 'promote balance in global intellectual property law.' Her greatest fear? 'That we're too late.'"
I come not to trivialize Robin, but to celebrate her. Not to take away from her skills but to acknowledge her assets.
Lara Croft ain't got nuthin on her.
in leather, and now with more leather, and a smile.
You go gurrl!
I'm glad to see a group addresing international IP. I'd like to know more about her plans to combine efforts with other groups, such as the EFF.
I am glad someone is working on the international level. The big picture does need to be addressed.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
A fear of being too late in misplaced in this case. When it comes to issues like legistation it is never too late. Time and again throughout history different nations have had very opressive laws, often strictly against public opinion. And each time in the end they have been changed or made null and void. Or do you see the laws of the third reich still in power in Germany? Laws as biased as the DMCA simply cannot last, arguments like "we fear there is too much momentum, and that we are late" only serve the purpose of drawing more attention to the cause and bringing about the change faster, which is good in this case.
I say that her heart is in the right place, and where was this kind of commitment four years ago?
My best wishes and I will support this kind of thing with all of my soul.
Is she married?
"One is the idea that we should have the right to control our own individual experience of creative works. When we're in the privacy of our own homes, and we're using DVDs or CDs that we own on the computers that we own, that Hollywood doesn't have a right to tell us how we can use that media."
Sounds like a good attitude to me. I wonder if there would be any impact in Hollywood if this message was repeated enough many times.
"I'll start with who has the worst IP laws, because that's actually the easiest. It's the United States."
This is what happens when you grow a international monopoly on software and recorded entertainment (it isn't a monopoly yet, but bloody close). Happily enough one can see a reaction from (a non-activist) player: the European Union. Several measures are being taken to introduce open source solutions. This is being done both for the lower price, but also since the US has shown bad judgement in the use of the echelon system.
So. What sort of origins and superpowers will this Ip Justice group have?
Save your culture: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/1/16/191018/961 f o.cgi/ action
Save the Public Domain - Renaissance Now:
http://lists.infoanarchy.org/mailman/listin
Please take the time to visit and sign up for this effort. 100+ on the mailling list so far, but we need as many as we can get. It is afterall a very ambitious project, needing extraordinary efforts to succeed.
I understand what Robin Gross' group is trying to do. I'm not quite clear on how or what. Are they lobbyists, politicians. A consortium of business men and women?
And how well funded are the. Will they be able to compete with the schrill voice of the RIAA? Will they be able to do anything in D.C.?
--- have you healed your church website?
That they just won't have any impact :(
DVD Jon was a great triumph, and now there's a risk of a retrial. Lets keep our fingers crossed, but will a group like this have any real impact? Lets hope so...
What about cases where IP theft has occured, in these instances, how will they be rectified, I would love to give the small people with ideas enough clout to topple those monoliths of doom.
There is a IP lock-in!
Once patent law covers a specific area there are business interests against a change. There is no way back.
Meanwhile lawyers try to promote a European directive on computer-implemented inventions. It was written by BSA. Computer professionals ecc. try to defeat. So we need your help, do it the Amnesty International Way. Please write to EU Parliamentarians. EU patent law also affects the United States and other countries.
Sign our http://www.noepatents.org
petition or get more infomation by FFII swpat AG
http://swpat.ffii.org
We shall start before it is too late.
I think there are groups in Germany and France that are working hard
So she claims! I happen to live in this part of "Old Europe", and I cannot say these groups are very vocal. If they show up I might get involved. If something like EFF exists in France, it certainly lacks publicity.
May I use your sig please?
Mod parent up!
Robin reminds me of Erin Brockovitch. Nothing wrong with anyone flaunting their good looks (man or woman) to accomplish good deeds.
Like the original poster said, you go girl!
I also hope the Congress/courts acts quickly and decisively to protect the rights of the consumer and citizen over greedy corporations.
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Here is a link to their site:
IP Justice
Do they have a super-duper hide out, with all sorts of cool toys to play with and fight with super villians like Jack "da Tape" Valenti and Hilary "Broken Record" Rosen, while their lacky Senator Fritz "Hollywood" Hollings does their evil bidding?
The IP Justice League- Fighting for Truth, Justice, and the Amer... uh-oh, it appears that my lawyer is telling me that the rest of that statement is copyrighted.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Global IP is being umm... 'forced' on the world through the back door.
Maybe us western countries have had strong IP for a while, but what about the majority of the world that is having western ideoligies 'forced' upon it. China, India, Africa, the middle east etc....
Now if we can get mass linux adoption in China, India and Africa we've started to slam the door shut in international IP.
SFAIK
China is making there own Linux variant.
India is adopting Linux etc....
But there are the 'charities' that distribute 'free' software and computer equipnment to Africa
King Faisal Charity Foundation
computers for charities
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Bad photos, but all that google can find. If you are right next to her, that stretching in your pants will notify you otherwise.
It might be. In many ways we are already governed , policed, and punished, by industry. It's nothing unique, just a rolling back to the bad old days when a mining company could make a phone call and have the national guard eliminate problem employees. Stuff like that happened a lot in the old days. Companies passing their own laws is not a good sign for what the near future holds for us.
Call IP Justice!
If the US will ultimately be a service economy producing nothing but music, software, movies and pr0n, obviously the RIAA makes the biggest noise. The US can only protect its content by enforcing its IP across the world. And, as more and more output is derivative (because increasingly everything has been done before) the rules will have to become increasingly twisted. How long before some studio lawyer tries to claim copyright over the Odyssey and the Iliad ("Homer - that's our trademarked name")? On this model, OSS is fscked along with all free content because it would destroy the new US economy. Meanwhile, the Koreans and the Chinese can make all the boxes they like but they will only do anything with the permission of the US.
If the US believes that the future lies with technology, then OSS and free content mean that people around the world will want that technology. It doesn't matter if some Chinese film maker gets ripped off by pirate DVDs if it means that the Chinese consumer is buying a better DVD and HDTV every year or so. Yes, I'm simplifying.
Now, as recent events are telling us, technology is dangerous, but mostly if you don't have it. (Anyone who is surprised that Saddam is trying to build serious weapons must be incredibly stupid. Would you want the US (in the form of Israel and Sa'udi) on your doorstep and no shotgun in the hall? If he doesn't have such weapons, he should be got rid of for neglecting the interests of his own country.) And...well, that applies to the US as well. Letting other people who may not like you take control of the technology you need is...unwise. Churning out boy bands and anorexic junkie singers won't protect anyone in the day when the Chinese can deploy nanoscale weapons.
So how to protect technology? Well, once military tech led consumer tech but now it's the other way round. A dynamic consumer/medical/vehicular sector drives technological advance. So how to keep it dynamic?
Now the historical analogy. The Roman Empire was built on military technology and excellent logistics. What grew out of it was the Catholic Church, which was based on IP (share our core beliefs and pay us money or you go to Hell - bet the RIAA would love that sanction.) And what happened? The barbarians had better military tech.
If I was that Congressman, I'd be thinking about my grandchildren, and how a protected CD doesn't offer much in the way of security against someone with an Uzi.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I am glad someone is working on the international level. The big picture does need to be addressed.
This is a fine idea, and I commend them for it. Nonetheless, no single organization has the money, power, and influence to really win the hearts and minds of lawmakers on a global scale. We're talking about fighting huge names in tech and entertainment industries both here and abroad. It's not going to do much good. Unless of course this group focuses on inspiring and organizing the world-wide network of geeks already in place. Most however, are inert and don't really care one way or another about IP issues (and a lot even agree with nonsense like patents).
Why bother.
n/t = Not bad looking, plus she's smarT
No, you probably liked the movie enough that your reality picture is making everyone around you appear similar to Erin Brockovitch. Those are the risks of keeping your fiction and reality jars too close together.
This whole situation makes me think of that scene in Life of Brian, where the People's front of Judea accuse the Judean people's front and all the other variants of being splitters. Just like System V/BSD wars, and the Linux/Windows/BSD splits, it seems that geeks can't form a single contiguous organisation.
So, we now have spearate groups, with the same goal, but no shared consensus. We have the EFF, Digital Consumer, and now IP justice, as well as Lessig and Eldred battling in their corner, as well as the European organisations.
The result is that we have several groups all treading on each other's toes, fighting against a single unified enemy. The MPAA is the same organisation under all its names in various countries, and represents all the studios. What to we do to defeat it? We form another split!
*ducks*
That's good. Now I will have a way to unload all those used MBs and HDDs in the closet once this comes into effect.
Let see, 1K reserves should be easy to reach!
"The avalanche has already started. It's too late for the pebbles to vote." - Kosh
It's truly ironic that the United States has such an international reputation as being the leader in freedom of speech, but when it comes to intellectual property, it's actually one of the most restrictive regimes in terms of what people can do with their intellectual property.
This is, unfortunately, blatant nonsense. Americans like to think the US has an international reputation of being "land of the free". However, the international reputation is almost the opposite -- few non-Americans regard America as particularly free. It was maybe true in the 1800s, but not today.
To pick just one item, an international journalist organization ranked countries for relative freedom of press; the US came in... where? First or second, you'd expect; not so. Rank twenty-six. Practically all of the western hemisphere had better freedom of press.
American is only the land of the free in the eyes of Americans themselves, so spare me references to "international reputation".
Dont forget to support fsf! Join now!
Since the Supremes upheld the constitutionality of the Sonny Bono copyright extention, all existing copyrights would have to be grandfathered.
There seem to be three sides to the IP debate: big corporations representing huge IP interests, vocal activists representing themselves in the name of the common good, and the man in the street who doesn't really care.
Corporate interest, unfortunately, is focused on complete control. The activists tend to focus on maintaining the status quo as it was a decade ago, or on the abolition of IP rights. And the man in the street still doesn't care, because he still wants the content, and doesn't care about the public domain as it will exist after he is dead.
And everyone is missing the point. Protecting a work for 14 years, 50 years, 70 years or 100 years doesn't damage the public domain much, if at all. This is also within range of the time during which the creator can benefit from the work. Placing arbitrary time limits on the rights a creator enjoys will always be a difficult subject: some works will never do well, others are popular for many decades, and yet others are "ahead of their time" and may only realise their value decades after they are created.
What damages the public domain is the growth of Copyright to cover derivative works, and the right to withhold licensing after first publication. Preventing derivatives is the most destructive, preventing creators from building on the work of others. Withholding licensing means that a work can be published initially, then withdrawn (usually because it is not profitable) and never seen for the next 70+ years.
If we adjust Copyright law to allow the creation of derivative works after a short time (say 5 years), and force a use-it-or-lose-it scenario (where creators are forced to license published works no longer under publication to third parties on reasonable terms), we can claim back a lot of the benefit that Copyright offers to the public domain, without completely trampling over the rights of creators to the specific content that they created.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
I say this has been a long time coming. Who knows, this might even lead to greater adoption of IPv6 and we'll finally solve that IP shortage that everyone is talking about.
Robin illuminated the important notion that IP laws were developed *for the good of society*. That's an important item to keep in mind as we struggle back and forth with arguments about whether IP laws are supposed to protect individual inventors or big companies. In fact, they're to help the well-being of society as a whole.
I'm glad to see that Robin has started this group, and I expect that she'll draw some talented and smart people with her.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You're a jackass. I don't know if she's a lesbian or not, and I don't give a damn if she is.
Your comment is way more offensive than funny.
Okay, this is a dumb question, but why does not someone create a computer program that puts every word combination from a-zyrian (but not in order for dictionary copyright reasons) until all 2 word combinations are found. After that 3 word combinations etcetera. As the sentences become larger, the combinations of words goes up exponentially, but then so does computer power. With distributed computing and daily copyright updates, you might be able to make the English langue public domain the same time that Aol Time Warner release the happy birthday song. If a sentence is found to be already under copy right it could be immediately removed. leaving insignificant holes, because they would be under copyright. Although this would not directly affect the computer code, It would make writing it's manual difficult. Because it would need to be a community effort, the licensing should allow reproduction for non commercial purposes only. At least, it would be a neat art project.
But one of her biggest problems is that she is too vague. Unless she's willing to try to defend all users of P2P, then her arguement is way too sketchy. Where do you draw the line?
Oh, how appropriate.
Well, to answer that, I point you here
I just bought something on ebay. While I waited for escrow to go through, the price climbed 5%. Need I say more?
BTW... the barbarians did not have better tech. The story of the fall of Rome was one of corruption. The barbarians were Germanic tribes driven from their homelands by war, and looking for food. They stopped north of Italy, and sent a plea for help. The Roman senate voted to give them food, and said "come on down; we'll feed you." Then they gave a contract for providing that food to a Senator who was expected to embezzle most of the value of the contract.
He was not as inefficient as they expected, though; he embezzled it all. So they came through, and ate all the food (picked up some gold in the process). The slaves said "No food? We know who starves first." and joined the barbarians in their sweep out of Italy in search of food. So in less than a year, Rome was cleared out of all its slaves. What remained were patricians who didn't know how to lift a fork to their lips. Thus fell Rome.
Oh, and the Germanic tribes weren't defeated by better technology, as much as by better tactics.
Specifically, the tactic was to defeat one tribe, and then allow them a choice: slavery, or freedom without land, if you fight the next tribe over as our front lines.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Quick rundown: Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Netherlands tied for 1st place. Slovenia (14) and Costa Rica (15) also beat the United States (17). China (138) and North Korea (139) finish up the list.
I hate call waitin`~+~~~
NO CARRIER
I've already patented the application of the public relations process in Luxemborg under their somewhat unique patent laws to the novel idea of resisting intellectual property laws. Because of WIPO and several international agreements, Robin and the rest of IP Justice will have to pay royalties to engage in any of the following:
* Releasing a press release or bulletin.
* Announcing and holding a press conference that is seen by more that the person speaking.
* Hosting seminars and workshops for
* Posting a internet website that uses the HTTP (our patent was applied for in 1978) protocol.
Anyone who attempts to use these clearly new and novel ideas will need to fill out our "Anti IP Law Business Process Licensing Request" and submit it. The application fee of $10,171.17 is non-refundable, and we reserve the right to decline any application for any reason. Because we thought of it first! (sticks out toungue and raspberries the world)
IP laws are unjust to begin with. It's prima facia impossible to own and idea.
$G
-- $G
Thats my idea, you cant use it. Look at my patent. Ill sic my lawyers on you!!!
Our poster left out the recently formed Alliance for Digital Progress with giants like MS, Intel, Cisco, etc. that also aims to fight anti-piracy policy initiatives in the name of protecting innovation. Here's the recent news on the ADP. They have no site yet, it appears...
Prohibition left its mark on US law, though. In its attempt to give law enforcement the tools it needed to deal with a poorly written law, the Supreme Court expanded search and seizure, let wire tapping go through, and set the grounds for much of modern day rug enforcement behavior.
Just about the only good thing that came out of it was the definition of entrapment.
(IANAL, just an interested amateur historian).
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
Yeah, but why assume that a copyright, patent, or trademark is private property for 5th Amendment purposes? If it were, it would be pretty stupid that it must ultimately expire, or could be revoked under certain circumstances, or that "easements" of a sort can be imposed on it.
I don't think that a retroactive revocation would qualify as a taking.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Passwordqwerty suggests creating an program to automatically generate copywritten works for the benefit of the public domain.
As much as I like the idea, I don't think it's even marginally feasible.
The claim is: As the sentences become larger, the combinations of words goes up exponentially, but then so does computer power.
The exponent on the number of words in English is much bigger than the exponent for computer power. You wouldn't be able to copyright anything on the scale of even a short slashdot post, let alone anything like Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Here's why:
Suppose that there were only 1,000 words in English, and that we only want to store works the size of a small slashdot posting. I count 146 words in the parent post. That gives us 10^(3*146) = 10 ^ 438 combinations of words to store.
In many countries (mine included), you need to "fix" a work in a reproducable medium to claim copyright on it. This implies that we need to store every generated work somehow, to prove our title to it, so that we can put in the public domain for everyone to enjoy.
Let's say everyone on earth (10^10 people) helps out with one computer each. We divide by 10^10: everyone must store 10^428 combinations. We'll ignore encoding words into bits, and say that we have 10^428 bits to store.
Suppose that everyone today can afford 100 gb of storage, and that the cost of storage halves each year. Therefore, everyone on earth will need the equivalent of 10 ^ 428 / 10 ^12 = 10 ^ 416 modern 100 gb disk drives.
When can we afford this? Every ten years, we get about 10^3 times more storage. Dividing 416 by 3, we find that in about 138 decades, or 1,380 years, we'll finally have enough.
To recap, in over thousand years time, with 100% worldwide pariticipation, we could place all works the size of a short paragraph, written in a tiny subset of English, into the public domain.
This totally ignores the time it takes to generate these works, and the lawsuits that could occur if
a work was automatically generated that infringed copyright.
I submit that we'll have better luck trying to re-write the copyright laws within our own lifetimes.
--
Ytrew