Jonathan Zittrain On The Spiderweb of Copyright Law

Jonathan Zittrain, director of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, takes an unusual approach to critiquing copyright in this Legal Affairs article. He explains with an analogy to the bizarre patchwork of United States tax codes a reason that (in the words of one of Zittrain's colleagues) "all the cyberprofs hate copyright." It goes beyond simple indignation that current copyright laws often grant seemingly unfair monopoly powers, and into the tangled minutia of the laws themselves.

Comments

TIme to start over, folks

[FunWithHeadlines]

"The notion of "contributory" copyright infringement--aiding and abetting copycats--was devised by judges. In conjunction with a statutory limit on creating "derivative" works of a copyrighted original, a theory of contributory infringement led a couple of courts to outlaw the production by third parties of cassette programs designed to be inserted into the belly of Teddy Ruxpin talking stuffed animals. The idea was that by pushing "Play" when a non-Teddy Ruxpin story tape was inside the creature, children would be creating a derivative, contraband "audiovisual work comprising animated plush toy bear with unique voice." Since toddlers are largely unsusceptible to cease-and-desist letters, it fell to the cassette makers to stop abetting the kids' illegal behavior. "

Time to scrap the heap of copyright laws and start over (why not begin with what the Constitution says, as a suggestion?). When laws are being created to prevent toddlers from accidentally becoming felons, simply because they want to listen to their teddy bear read them a story, you know things have gotten out of hand.

Look, here at /. we know all about the music (hello, RIAA!), movies (hello, MPAA!) and software (hello, UCITA!) examples. But here is an example that is just absurd. Fix the problem? Please, just gut the laws and start over.

Wait a minute, what am I saying?! Any laws rewritten from scratch nowadays would be far more draconian. Maybe this time they would put in provisions to haul the 3-year-olds off to prison...

A new peer to peer model ??

[maharg]

Microsoft Windows's "Network Neighborhood" feature, for example, is simply a way to swap files. Almost every software application that capitalizes on this central functionality is therefore a Kinko's of sorts, and decreeing all search-and-copy software to be illegal is simply too sweeping a move for a court to make.

Now of course, I'm not suggesting that y'all start firing up windows, but I find this point really intriguing - filesharing using the SMB protocol over port 139 a'la redmond. What (c|w)ould the RIAA do about that ?

Re:For those of you who can't read...

[silas_moeckel]

So your pretty much for enacting a tax that would give back to the movie record and software industry to compensate them for copyright infringement? This sounds ungly who gets to decide the value of the software does MS get a huge chunk because office 2005 costs $2005 a copy with Sony recods decide it's music is worth more etc etc etc. Sure you could give a fixed rate but that ruins the small expensive custom applications like say Oracle server that wont make it up in volume (assuming that the taxes get distributed by volume?) And wouldent monoply powers just play into this anyway with the recond industry cutting deals to host there realy fast servers on prem to scew the download results of top 20's garbage if they are so much faster more people will download them.

Good Ideas, But They'll Never Fly

[DesScorp]

" Add some sort of "fee" to our taxes (maybe just on ISPs, more like on everyone) that allows us, as individuals, to use any copyrighted material we want, as long as we don't try to sell it, without robbing the owners of the copyright - cause we are paying them."

Unfortunately, though this would be th easiest of solutions to implement, it would never pass...

-ISP's and their users would complain that it's a "tax", and would fight it to the end.

-Artists with big followings (U2, Garth Brooks, Pink Floyd, etc etc) would complain that this method shortchanges them in revenues. Bands and record companies fight it to the end.

We're not going to get rid of copyright, and we're not going to get rid of DRM at this point either. Instead of splitting our energies and efforts, we should be focusing on getting two things done...

-Lobbying Congress with all of our might to have copyright terms reduced to a reasonable exemption. Either a set term, like 20 years, or the lifetime of the artists. No extensions beyond that.

-Pressuring record companies through a campaign of public relations and a music boycott to get an Apple Store-like solution up for all copyrighted music at reasonable rates, like 99 cents a song. And this pressure should not include copyright violations. That destroys any moral credibility we may have.

student copyright

[jefu]

One of the author's comments is that the British patent office recommends that schoolchildren copyright (and mark as copyright) their essays.

This raises an interesting question. turnitin claims to detect plagiarism in essays turned in by students. But those essays are then stored by turnitin in order to detect future plagiarism (of course since we can't track the use of the essay, I have wondered if turnitin isn't feeding the essays out to one of the essay sales sites). If the essay is copyright by the author, this seems to me to be out of the realm of fair use. Perhaps a few students should go after turnitin in the courts.