Boyle on Webcasters and WIPO

pjones writes "It's always amazing to see an article in Financial Times that supports webcasters and open source, but James Boyle sticks it to the World Intellectual Property Organization in his latest article, "More rights are wrong for webcasters." Boyle lays it out so that "economists, political scientists and people who simply want to make money" can get what's wrong."

Comments

Beating the Right's drum: Rights vs Entitlements

[ReformedExCon]

WIPO has confused the issue, and Boyle does little to clear it up. The term "right" has been used in place of "entitlement" or "monopoly" to describe the expanded ability of a broadcaster to claim public domain works as their own for 20 years. This is not a right, this is a reduction in rights of everyone else. It is an entitlement, an entitlement to something that no one else will be allowed to have. It gives broadcasters a monopoly on works that they did not create. Boyle is correct in saying that this is bad policy. Anyone with eyes can see it as so.

But he also tackles the issue from a strange direction. He sees law and policy as a means to an end rather than the description and implementation of a general principle. Laws should reflect the general will of the people, in my opinion, rather than be used to reach a specific outcome. By requiring that laws need a specific goal (in this case to expand broadcast network infrastructure), we leave ourselves open to exactly the problem of industrial horse-trading that Boyle seeks to avoid. If Boyle really believes that these laws are wrong, why does he attack it on the effects it will have rather than on the general principle?

The problem is that by granting special "copyright" to public domain works to broadcasters, it effectively removes those works from the public domain. As a result, the freedom to access or otherwise use those works becomes infringed. This is not a matter of the new rules having no positive effect. It is a matter of reducing the amount of freedoms of everyone except a handful of quick-moving broadcasters. That is the principle at stake here, not some untestable hypothesis regarding the reduced likelihood of new networks being set up.

This is, as Boyle points out, a bad direction on the part of WIPO. It is unnecessary and harms the freedoms of almost all involved. However, fighting this encroachment of rights should not be waged on an effects basis because then we become the horse-traders that Boyle seems to despise. Instead it is necessary to confront this on the basis of first principles from which can be developed a sane and equitable intellectual property policy.

Is it that amazing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems logical that the FT would be on the side of business - and of course, they are. Virtually their entire readership would agree that making money is a good thing.

However, taken as a whole, entrenched monopolies and cartels are not good for business. Small businesses and startups are essential for the economy, especially in fast growing sectors. Economists know this. As such, it's not all that surprising that the FT will take a stance that is against that of the multinationals.

Financial Times: Digital Business & Open Sourc

[joelparker]

It's always amazing to see an article in Financial Times that supports webcasters and open source

Then be more amazed:
How open source gave power to the people
By Richard Waters, September 19 2005

The sedentary art of software development and the extreme sports of kitesurfing, sailplaning and canyoning would appear to have little in common.

However, both are examples of a new force that could eventually affect a far broader range of companies and industries: the power of users to shape how products are developed.

More...

Re:If nobody obeys the law..

[plasmacutter]

The war on drugs did accomplish something for nixon and his party.

The drug bills he rammed through congress circumvent the constitution by giving congressional/legislative authority to unaccountable fda staff.
Thanks to this law a cabal of fda hanchos are able to make any drug they please illegal to even research in direct violation of the constitution, which states affirmatively that congress and congress alone shall have the right to create permanent regulations.

FT: Szulik of RedHat, Lessig on Wikis

[joelparker]

The Financial Times has a good section called "Digital Business" with open source topics.

Currently there's an interview with Matthew Szulik of Red Hat, who says he was first inspired by the potential of open source by work undertaken by Richard Stallman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Also there's a commentary by Lawrence Lessig headlined "The march of the web-enabled amateurs" about "grand collaborative projects carried out by volunteers made possible by wikis."

See Financial Times Digital Business

Make more rights

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, I don't think there are enough monopolies, lets have more!

UPS should be able to own the packages it ships for an exclusive 50 year period.
Web-Email providers should be able to own my emails for 50 year period just because I read them over the Internet.
ISPs should be able to own everything sent over their networks for 50 years.
I should be able to setup an open WIFI hotspot and own rights over anything anyone sends through it, for 50 years.
What about supermarkets? They should be able to say how you use their produce, for example: "you shall only use this Walmart pasta sauce with official Walmart pasta".

We need more exclusive IP rights holders, because IP rights are the cause of Americas huge trade surplus.

Re:Make more rights

[maxwell demon]

You forgot: Every time you write or type something yourself, a secretary who could have typed it for you loses money. Therefore production of any text which is not typed by a secretary should be charged a "secretary tax" to support those poor secretaries who lose money due to the self-writing of text.

Ah, and of course there should be a public transportation tax on private cars, because owners of private cars won't use public transportation as often as non-owners. The possible results can be seen on horse-carriages. Due to all those car-owners the horse-carriage business basically broke down. Now imagine there would have been a transportation tax payed to the horse-carriage makers for every car sold, and likewise a tax on petrol payed to the coachmen, to compensate them for the loss they made due to people driving cars, imagine where the horse-carriage industry would be now. Not to mention DRM measures you could have put into cars to save the railway industry. For example a regulation that you have to buy licenses from the railway companies to drive your cars, and the cars would have mechanisms which switch off the motor if you try to drive more miles than you have payed for.

What's the Payoff?

[Quirk]

I can't remember the name of the bankrobber, but I do remember a bankrobber responding to the question: "Why do you rob banks?" The robber responded: "Because that's where the money is?"

So where's the money in this festering mess? Is it possibly in the tax base? Expanded IP expands the tax base at a loss to the public interest. IP marks a clear paper trail as to who owns what and what can be expected in terms of revenue and, in turn, tax revenue.

Big government requires big tax revenues and what better to "sell off" than the cultural and intellectual heritage of it's constituents. The infrastructure to oversee IP is minimal while the tax gain is substantial. Basically it's a big tax grab. Maybe it'll be pay raises all around for our elected representatives.

Re:WHAT about Medical WIPO

[gowen]

And how will those funds be distributed?

Via the NSF, to fund research.

Without wasting 90% of the funds?

One can't help but waste a certain amount of money spent on research. As a friend of mine wrote at the beginning of his PhD thesis:"If I knew how long it would take, how expensive it was, and what the results would be, it wouldn't be research"

RIghts About Now

[Doc Ruby]

The article doesn't discuss just "more rights" for just any "webcaster". It specifically talks about how a "US-backed initiative" is designed to turn a 30-year "exclusive right to broadcast certain content" that some broadcasters in some (non-US) countries enjoy into an 80-year worldwide right for all webcasters. That broadcaster would, apparently, mean that webcasting a song or show would entitle a single webcaster to own it for a (long) lifetime - presumably when the time will be extended. That content includes even public domain content, stealing it from the public for a single webcaster. It's insane, and it seems like it will become the global content monopoly law.

Webcasters do need more rights, just not at the very top like that insane monopoly law. At the bottom, webcasters must pay a minimum $500:year to stream copyrighted content. Per-play rates are $0.0007:listen for songs. That's $90:year for a 24/7/365 listener, so webcasters would have to stream continuously to at least 6, or more like 20-50 listeners just to afford the "blanket" rates.

Nevermind that the per-play rates are created by dividing the total purchase price of Broadcast.com by Yahoo by the number of songs in Broadcast.com's library, so per-play rates are equal to the price Yahoo paid for unlimited plays. Or that the sale was in Yahoo stock at their most hyperinflated bubble price, and the value of the rest of Broadcast.com in addition to the songs, all counted as value of the songs. Those rates are about 100x any fair price, if a fair rate could even be derived from such a transaction in unrelated terms. And again, it's $500 just to get in the game.

Then there's the "song frequency" rules which prohibit "heavy rotation" of songs, or even artists, much more strictly than on radio transmission. Or the absolute prohibition on "interactive" (requests) services. These rules are all designed to cripple the hobbyist or personal-scale webcaster, even nonprofits (like small/public colleges), and anyone producing "Internet radio" any different than the stale preprogrammed formats driving people away from radio in droves.

Webcasters have rights. These rules take them away. That repression creates rebellion. In the meantime, it creates profits for the global masters like Viacom, ClearChannel, NewsCorp, Disney. Welcome to our mickey mouse New World Order.