An IP Environmentalism for Culture and Knowledge?

An anonymous reader writes "An article by James Boyle in the FT argues that we are (slowly) moving towards a 'cultural environmentalism' that tries to protect the public domain in the way that the environmental movement tries to protect the natural ecology. Apparently there will be a (free) conference at Stanford on the subject soon, organized by Larry Lessig's Center there."

Comments

Opening a can of worms ?

[Quiberon]

It opens a can of worms, if you change the laws. It is really unlikely that you will get consensus on what to change them to.

Besides, for 'software' in these days of public Internet, the real question is 'Can I maintain the software ? Can I resolve defects, or get them resolved, as they are found'. When the answer to that becomes 'no', the software cannot be used; it gets exploited, and you get eaten by worms and viruses.

beautiful analogy...

[Daneurysm]

I've never thought of it in quite that way... It really is a wonderful analogy... the only difference being that the 'IP-ecosystem' was created by us.
 
...and indeed both sides of the issue have been polarized in nearly the same ways.... the "whacko environmental extremists" and "evil big business" who will destroy anything in the path towards profit.

Is this dichotomy a natural progression of such issues or is it truely the way things are.

I know what I believe...and I've picked my side.
 
~Dan

IP environmentalism.

[TripMaster Monkey]

Ahh...I can see it now...

• IP environmentalists chaining themselves to the doors of the Patent Office and singing 'we shall overcome'.
  
• IP environmentalists zigzagging down the street in a VW microbus, blocking an IP lawyer from getting to the Patent Office while jamming his cellphone.
  
• IP environmentalists hurling red paint at Patent Office employees while chanting 'Patents are Murder! Patents are Murder!'.

Re:IP environmentalism.

[CyricZ]

While we might see things like that, what we will likely see is innovation just end up moving outside of the US. If the patent and copyright laws really begin to take a financial toll on research and implementation, it may become economically beneficial to move such business to foreign nations with more reasonable laws.

Even though an ever-increasing copyright term benefits Disney, it concurrently causes much harm to many other (potentially far more important) fields. Soon enough companies won't want to develop products in the US due to the cost of ensuring that their products don't violate obscure patent or somebody's copyright (in the case of software). A situation like that might have to happen before truly beneficial changes start to occur in the US

Biased random walk

[tepples]

It messes with readers, if you end with a preposition.

Please transform the following disputed sentence into a sentence that ends other than with a preposition: "The public domain should be cared about."

The point is that if Congress or the Library thereof announces a study into what the law should be changed to, you'll get the haves (incumbent publishers who want more restriction on speech that competes with theirs) on one side and the have-nots (the unorganized masses and charitable organizations who wish to speak) on the other, and the money-is-speech effect will tilt the odds in favor of the haves. Legislation is like a random walk, but unequal financial bargaining power biases it: even if you make some steps, one step forward for fair use and other exempt uses will likely be more than counterbalanced by two steps back.

Re:Hopefully they'll do a better job

[darth_MALL]

It has for the makers of any product marketed as 'green friendly'

Problem: one suit can bankrupt you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the orphan works problem in a nutshell.

Say you want to make a 30-minute documentary containing 1-minute clips from a dozen different movies from way back in the 1940's. You can only find the copyright holders for 5 of the movies--for the other 7, you are either not able to figure out who holds the copyrights, or not able to track that entity down.

Now what?

If you release your documentary, there are up to 7 parties out there who could see your documentary and decide to sue you into oblivion. If any one of them does, it could easily bankrupt your small business (or your non-profit organization, or you personally--costing your family its house, car, and life savings).

The Orphan Works problem is huge. There are so many works out there. Many of them aren't labelled with their copyright holder. Some of the copyrights have been transferred and attributions might be incorrect. Most copyrights are not necessarily registered in any central place (at least until they decide to sue over them). The copyright holders might be dead or senile or might have moved to Jamaica for a few years.

Creators ought to be allowed to make use of all those copyrighted works after making *reasonable efforts* to identify and locate the copyright holders. If a copyright holder surfaces later and complains, there should be mandatory licensing at reasonable and non-discriminatory rates.

Re:How to find 'Orphans'

[bcrowell]

In many cases, works from the 20's, 30's, and 40's are in the public domain because the copyright holders didn't renew their copyrights after 28 years. You can check the records for books here. One of the most obvious, simple, and effective things we could do to reform copyright law would be to go back to requiring renewals.

Re:Buzzwords from bad analogy

[robertjw]

Ecological environmentalism seeks to prevent any human-made effects in ecological systems -- preventing any human-made changes to pristine ecologies and removing the effects of humans from sullied ecologies.

Yours is a very simplistic - ideal definition. I have seen, met, read about every type of ecological environmentalist possible. Many of them may want to prevent human-made changes and remove the effects of humans, but many others support things like putting out forest fires or stopping erosion. Some are against man-made projects and others support the man-made projects for the new environments that are created. I think that's the biggest reason they never really get anything done. No one can agree on exactly what should be done.

The true parallel that could be considered "cultural environmentalism" might include splitting or censoring the internet to prevent the flow of "deleterious" culture from one country to another.

Wouldn't it also be a parallel if the "environmentalists" decided that the Internet was an environment unto itself and should be kept in a pristine, wild state - untouched by the evils of governments, regulations, laws and politics?

Collective licensing

[tepples]

while most of us behave in a contradictory way - 'I want artists to get paid, but I like free downloads'

How about "I want artists to be paid, but I don't want to pay inflated marginal costs for works, nor do I want to be shut out of works completely." Thinking like this is what let collective licensing programs such as those offered by BMI and ASCAP take off, and the EFF has expressed interest in extending collective licensing to other media.

It is good

[roman_mir]

that there are these discussions about freedom and so forth. We are now at the point when DRM is coming towards a definite reality and we need these discussions to make sure that the DRM technologies do not in themselves violate the law.

I am pro-DRM in principle, it is obviously not a popular point of view here but this is a public forum and we can be civilized about it (hopefully.) I am pro-DRM in the following sense: I want an ability to create a document (text/music/video/CAD drawing/object code/etc.) that I could trust to be moved around in the world as a limited resource. I could send this document to anyone I wanted (whether money is involved or not is actually irrelevant,) and they couldn't make copies of it, or could make the preset number of copies. I would like the ability to have the document lock itself after certain amount of time has passed or after certain number of viewing/usages whatever. This also could be used for legal documents, and other sensitive data. Basically this would make the document into almost a real thing.

Now, I am still in favour of the discussions on these issues from point of view of public domain rights etc. People are not willing to accept the fact that some producers want their data to be really their data forever. Well, we could implement a standard, that would unlock the DRMed document, that is meant to go to public domain after the copyright period expires.

Say you are buying a CD (for example,) on this CD you have your DRMed files that can be plaid by your CD player. It is possible that the outcome of these discussions would be a standard, which would allow the original buyer to copy this music file a specific number of times onto his/her other CD players/computer/backup/whatever. Maybe there would be a way to make a backup copy, and then make say 2 or 3 copies that could be moved around from your portable MP3 player to your computer HD. When I say 'moved around' I literally mean moved, not just copied. Thus we could satisfy the laws regarding fair-use. On the other hand this file that you have in your possession must become public domain at some point, so the DRM must probably take care of that by unlocking the restriction part of the DRM after the copyright expires.

I think DRM can be actually an incredible tool for real file sharing, not the what they call file 'sharing' today. You could actually share a file but in a sense, in which you could share your CD or your watch. DRM can also be used for protection of sensitive data. But we need discussions about the rights of the public to the public domain, and so DRM could also be the tool that guaranteed the public domain safety by implementing time unlocking mechanisms.

Just a thought.

Re:It is good

[plasmacutter]

As an economist I have to say what you are proposing is scary, not just scary scary but truly chilling.

You want to take the most efficient information distribution mechanism ever seen, practically an economist's wet dream, and do everything possible to hinder or destroy the features which make it great.

Face it, copyright was designed in an age when corporate muscle and physical copies were REQUIRED in order to distribute information. Now distribution on the same or even greater scale can be achieved on a $50 a month boradband line with bit torrent.

I understand about legal documents and keeping them private, but that's not about DRM, that's about using point to point encryption and only passing it to people you trust. It's not as if you pass your social security documents to random people over the internet, youre sending it to a specific person. Well encryption of emails is NOT drm, it is encryption.

DRM stands for the corporate spun term "digital rights management" which involves some external party controlling the products you bought. It's not document protection like is achieved with pgp encryption.

the whole point of DRM is to exploit the lack of technical knowledge of both consumers and lawmakers to rob them of their god given right to personal property, and to undermine the advancement of the internet and its tremendous promise of greater efficiency just to line your own pockets on an outdated model.

no, It is Not good.

You raise good points, and yet...

[tkrotchko]

I think you've got the germ of truth here, and yet I can't help think that while producers should have every right to DRM their files, I don't see why it's the FBI's job to make sure people don't crack it. The trouble with the scheme is that it effectively extends copyrights forever.

You say:

"People are not willing to accept the fact that some producers want their data to be really their data forever. "

But that's backwards. I'd say some people are not willing to accept that fact that they have no legal rights to hold onto their data forever. It's supposed to go into the public domain after a limited time.

Companies extending copyright this way is the moral equivalent of people just downloading stuff from P2P. Neither of them likes the rules, so they figure out a way around it.