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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.'"
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?
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.
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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.
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!
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".