CATO Institute Releases Paper Criticizing DMCA

flanksteak writes "The CATO institute has published a paper criticizing the DMCA entitled 'The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' From the article: 'The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders--and the technology companies that distribute their content--the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates.'" A report worth taking a look at that puts into words what most of us know already.

Comments

All aboard.

[killjoe]

I am glad the right wing is getting on board in the fight against DMCA. Organizations like Cato are very big players in the right wing movement and this will certainly have an impact on the republicans who control all branches of the govt and the supreme court.

Re:All aboard.

[stewie's deuce]

Its http://www.cato.org/about/about.html actually more of a libertarian group. And libertarians favor less goverment control (more so than republicans.)

Re:All aboard.

[bhirsch]

You do realize who signed the DMCA into law don't you? It was a very non-partisan law.

Re:All aboard.

[jcr]

Libertarianism has about as much credibility as Communism.

Among ACs on slashdot, perhaps. To the rest of the world, the tens of millions of people killed by the commies tends to put them quite a ways into the negative category.

Thanks for playing, pinkbot.

-jcr

Re:All aboard.

[RsG]

The basic principal libertarians tend to apply when it comes to people hurting each other is "my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins". Essentially, the assumption is that an ideal government would still have law and order (based on protection people's rights), but would be expected not to interfere in people's live beyond that.

Now, if you meant that a libertarian government wouldn't be able to control things like corporate misbehavior, or that small, low-tax government wouldn't be able to provide policing as well as it can now, then perhaps you're right. But if you seriously thing that mist libertarians want zero government at all, then you need to check your facts. Like the other posters said libertarian =! anarchist.

Re:All aboard.

[AJWM]

If more libertarians were honest with themselves, they'd recognize that corporations are a government construct that shouldn't ought to exist in a true libertarian state. It's the government-granted limitation on corporate liability that helps cause what you call predatory behaviour.

If shareholders were as liable for the company's actions as the partners in a partnership are, they'd be a bit more concientious about said company's behaviour. At least after a few stockholders or fund managers went to jail or had their life savings sued out from under them.

Libertarianism is about personal responsibility -- the opposite of what a limited liability corporation is about.

Re:All aboard.

[utlemming]

That is the problem with modern politics. The poltical parties have blurred the lines between what a conservative and liberal is, requiring them to align with a political party. When in fact, the politcal parties fluctuate so much, move left and right, that depending on where your politcal ideology actually lies, you might be more in line with the democrats on presidental term and the republicans the next. With each election the politcal parties attempt to capture the magical middle of the political spectrum, while at the same time pushing forward their left or right wing agendas. However, since it is all politics, the pure ideology of being a conservative or a liberal is usually lost. In the case of the current administration, Pres. Bush has pushed the country more towards the right, while pursuing a course that a lot of conservatives disagree with (for example, conservatitves are for less government, less regulation, and less government in their lives). Pres. Bush has done more to put the government in people's lifes than what a true conservative would have done. So when all is said and done, a politiian may claim to be a conservative to capture that voting base, but then abuse them and actually pursue a course that runs counter that ideology. The same holds true for a liberals and the democrats. And what we think of being oxymoronic, you can actually be a conservative democrat. The conservative and liberal are all just titles of the ideology. While the political parties are the method and the means to implementing that ideology. American politics are somewhat of an enigma in the world. With a two party system, somehow we loose the fact that the vast majority of Americans do not fit neatly in two parties. However, since third parties have proven to be ineffective and are ignored by the two other parties, then most American's simply say Democrat, Republican or Independant.

My personal feeling is that the politcal landscaping is going to start changing soon so that the Democrats and Republicans are going to have to acknowledge the independants. They are going to have to change their platform to be flexiable. The difference between a Republican and Democrat is so minimial that the rest of the world largely laughs at America. In other countries you have poltical parties that run from Communist to straight out facsist. But in the US you have two groups that are so close to the middle that they actually fight over capturing the middle ground.

Another interesting thing is that many self-labeled conservates and liberals may not actually be such. For example a conservative may actually be an economic or neoliberal and be a social conservative. Or libertarians for the most part are economic and social liberals. Or what many democratic politicans tend to be, which is economic conservatives and social liberals. The problem with the parties is that they mix and blur what the issues really are and they don't have clear policy statements about their parties positions.

Re:All aboard.

[chudnall]

Its actually more of a libertarian group.

Translation: I like what they're saying, so I don't want to associate them with conservatism.

I've talked to a lot of libertarians, to try to figure out what really motivates them, and found that by and large each of them is enthusiastic about one particular piece of the libertarian platform, and willing to go along with the rest of it. Some want smaller government, some want more privacy, some want legalized drugs, etc. My conclusion is that libertarians are made up of: 1) conservatives who don't want to call themselves conservative, and 2) liberals who don't want to call themselves liberal, in about equal numbers.

Re:All aboard.

[takeya]

The Cato people really are bonafide libertarians actually.

Anti-government, pro-consensual society.
As economists, they dislike the root causes for inflation, and the fact that the fed has one private bank print all our money.

Conservatives tend to love it when the government controls things like money and marriage and drugs.

CATO?

[Umbral Blot]

Exactlty how important is CATO in the scheme of things. Will this report reach the ears of politicians / mass media, or will it go largely unnoticed except by slashdot? I don't think we are going to see the DMCA revoked unless the public cares enough to put pressure on their representatives, and honestly the public isn't informed enough to care. So will this report help mobize people or are they just preaching to the choir?

Re:CATO?

[centie]

Well, according to http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42525-20 05Feb21?language=printer

Nowadays, Cato alumni are everywhere in the Bush administration and in groups advancing the president's Social Security initiative. Former Cato analyst Andrew G. Biggs is an associate commissioner of the Social Security Administration. The director of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, Derrick A. Max, previously worked for Abdnor (when she was at Cato) and for Weaver (when she was at the American Enterprise Institute)...

..and theres several more. So I'd think this is at least likely to be noticed by politicians and the media, if they take any notice or not is a different matter though..

Re:CATO?

[hotdiggitydawg]

Cato is very important. He attacks when you least expect it, to keep your defences sharp. Unfortunately he usually winds up being beaten into submission.

In related news, the CEO of Disney started channeling Peter Sellers earlier today, and was heard to say "Cato! You imbecile! Not now!" and "Cato... Cato... Where are you my little yellow friend?"

Re:hehe

[InfiniteWisdom]

The CATO institute is a libertarian think tank. Libertarianism falls into the left wing of the traditional classification of politial thought in some ways and right wing in others.

In the end, it won't make much difference

[tkrotchko]

In the end, this won't make a bit of difference in the U.S. until it costs corporations money.

Look at patents. People knowledgable about patents and software have almost universally criticized software & business method patents, but the only reason congress and the patent office is starting to look at it is because its costing big corporations money.

You see, the trouble is, when you have people like Alan Greespan saying more copyrights and patents are vital to the U.S.'s economic growth, when congress perceives the entertainment industry as being the growth engine for the U.S. economy, then its tough for congress to vote against these kinds of laws.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/BoardDocs/Speeches/2 003/20030404/default.htm
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2004/march3/ greenspan-33.html

Until these same companies feel a pinch from the DMCA, it doesn't matter what the real impact of the law is, it's the message that's carried by the press, by the fed chairman, by the heads of industry such as Bill Gates that will determine the fate of the DMCA.

Re:In the end, it won't make much difference

[mdielmann]

I have to say, I read both pages you linked to (at least where they started talking about intellectual property), and I can't say I disagree with him, at least from an economic standpoint. If you have a moral objection to IP, he probably won't sway you much. Let's look at a few of his statements.

"Whether we protect intellectual property as an inalienable right or as a privilege vouchsafed by the sovereign, such protection inevitably entails making some choices that have crucial implications for the balance we strike between the interests of those who innovate and those who would benefit from innovation." A balance between the benefit of society and the benefit of the inventor? I can live with that. I have no problem with giving someone enough time to make good on their idea before all the me-toos jump on the bandwagon. Where that balance lies is the crucial thing, though.

"Of particular current relevance to our economy overall is the application of property right protection to information technology. A noticeable component of the surge in the trend growth of the economy in recent years arguably reflects the synergy of laser and fiber optic technologies in the 1960s and 1970s." Uh oh, he's talking about IP in the IT world, almost sounds scary. But his next statement is about hardware, and highly technical hardware no less. This is the closest he gets to talking about software patents. I'd love to hear him address that issue specifically, but so far, I can't disagree. IT has often piggy-backed on the IP of other areas, most notably because it's usually implemented as an abstract (virtual, if you prefer) version of a physical object. Other times it's because of the improvements of physical items that has increased the capacity of equipment used in the IT world.

"The dramatic gains in information technology have markedly improved the ability of businesses to identify and address incipient economic imbalances before they inflict significant damage. These gains reflect new advances in both the physical and the conceptual realms. It is imperative to find the appropriate intellectual property regime for each." That sounds suspiciously like "IP needs different protections for physical inventions versus conceptual inventions, and different rules may apply" to me. Again, an astute observation, and more obvious from an economic standpoint than most others. The IT world behaves differently than much of the physical world - why would we expect treating them the same to work without problems?

That's just a few of the things he has to say. I strongly recommend anyone who is concerned about IP, especially the economic impact of IP, read that speech. He's pointing the way to both criteria to test if IP law is effective, and means to formulate a solution to any problems found in IP law. If you can't get rid of IP law altogether (and I'm not sure I want to), at least arguments like his could guide us towards a more rational implementation. And all in an economic fashion, which matters far more to government than opinions, feelings, or ideals these days.

Re:Pirates

[InfiniteWisdom]

I wish people would stop calling people who share software, pirates.
I agree. In fact, while we're busy insisting that words can't take on new meaning or have multiple meanings, I wish they'd stop referring to "executing" software unless they were killing it, or "running" it unless the softwere grew legs and ran away.

CATO conservative? Right-wing?

[Anonymous Coward]

CATO is libertarian. CATO's consistent criticism against interventionism and the drug war hardly puts them in the mainstream of right-wing conservatism.

Re:more paper

[wiggles]

If you hold cordial discourse and publish papers, those in power will be more inclined to listen to you, especially if those in power have agreed with you in the past. If you arm yourself and demonstrate in the streets, you're branded a nut and hauled off to jail for weapons violations, and noone pays any attention to you.

The important thing with this story here is that we have a significant victory. We, the DMCA opposing people of the country, have succeeded in convincing an organization with considerable influence with those who disagree with us that we're right. Now, this gives our lobbiests, such as the EFF and FSF, some significant ammuntion when trying to convince congress that the DMCA is a bad thing. Maybe there's some hope after all.

Hurting Consumers in more ways than one

[Geekbot]

The DMCA hurts consumers in more than one way.

First, it hurts the end user or consumer by imposing government restrictions on how we use things that we "own". Or more to the point, we no longer own things that we buy.

It also hurts us that we don't see competition. This means higher prices, collusion, price gouging, and all the other nasties that come along with pseudo-monopolies.

We are further harmed by the lack of new jobs and opportunities. Real growth for our country is not in the 1000+ employee multinational corporations, but in the small companies employing 25 or less employees. The DMCA seriously harms innovation and prohibits companies that are more truly American companies from growing, making money, paying taxes, and employing more workers.

And we get the short end of the stick when these companies no longer need to innovate from the unnatural monopoly caused by the DMCA protects them from newer, more competent competitors. Not only do we not see the innovative, improved, products from fresher companies, we also see outdated technology from the companies that have lost the need to improve in a free market system.

"Left versus right."

[Captain Scurvy]

Cato is to the right. Cato promotes free market (i.e., classical) liberalism. Main stream conservatism, otherwise known as neoconservatism, is a mish-mash of collectivism with some vague lip-service to (classical) liberalism thrown in. Have a look at some of the writings by F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, et al. These are your right-wingers. Compare these writings to the writings of Irving Kristol, who started the neoconservative movement. They are ideologically incompatible.

Re:"Left versus right."

[eris23007]

Mod Scurvy's post up. It's about time more people understood that "conservative" is not a swear word. I suspect a whole lot more of you slashdotters lean for more libertarian than you realize. That has been the case frequently over conversations I've had with a number of liberal friends, once they actually started listening to my arguments instead of blindly reacting against the conservative bogeyman.

Incidentally, Cato is far more pragmatic and realistic than the Libertarian party. I know a number of folks who are trying to make the LP more Cato-like in its platform (as opposed to anarcho-capitalist), and if they are successful, the LP could very well become an intriguing, influential 3rd party in this country. Keep an eye on this, as it may turn out to be a tremendous way to escape the current domination of the Democans and the Republicrats.

One such individual is the guy I voted for Congress in 2004 when I used to live in Silicon Valley. Interesting fellow, software engineer at Yahoo. Holds a set of viewpoints broadly compatible with my own, despite a few disagreements over specifics. This is the guy who bet voters $2 that they could read his website and still decide they didn't want to vote for him or somesuch. He's pretty active in the Libertarian Party of CA trying to get them to come up with a platform that's somewhat practical, as opposed to purely ideological and idealistic. His website (a great read): http://marketliberal.org/ - go check it out.

Re:Pirates

[MicktheMech]

While we're at it, I hear there are people out there who spell things "colour" and "tyres". And the japanese use funny squiggles to spell those words!

Human language: it's unambiguous and somewhat inefficient. Get over it.

That joke doesn't work when you use the right spelling. Remember, it's called "English", not "American".

Re:hehe

[stlhawkeye]

The CATO institute is a libertarian think tank. Libertarianism falls into the left wing of the traditional classification of politial thought in some ways and right wing in others.

The libertarians, on balance, have far more in common with the Republican part of the mid 1990's than any other major American political idealogy. The only major thinks they have in common with Democrats is they oppose having our military involved overseas and are generally pro-choice. And frankly the Democrats are only anti-Iraq because they're the opposition party and the opposition party traditionally opposes the leadership party's foreign policy. Foreign policies are almost necessarily interventionalist, even the most hands-off of foreign policies must sometimes be interventionalist (e.g., President Clinton), and such manuevers are easy targets for the opposition party. So you can take that one away and you're basically left with the pro-choice issue. Libertarians are also more likely to support gay marriage, but neither party wants to go anywhere near that one, uncharacteristically deferring it to state courts.

If you do a run-down on the issues you get a group of people who are intensely dedicated to private property and individual freedom issues, and other than gay marriage and abortion, Republicans overwhelming want the government out of people's lives and everyday decision making as much as possible. Well, in theory anyway. In practice they spend just as much money on pointless and worthless government programs that don't solve anything.

Re:hehe

[MyNymWasTaken]

Libertarianism falls into the left wing [...] in some ways and right wing in others.

Or better put, it's completely tangential to both. Left (Liberal) vs. right (Conservative) isn't useful, much less accurate, when talking about the border case Libertarian & Statist philosophies. More appropriate is a 4-point diamond with Libertarian & Statist opposite of each other and perpendicular to Liberal & Conservative; with Centrists in the middle.

Take the World's Smallest Political Quiz.

Quiz & explanation (PDF file)

Libertarians support a great deal of liberty and freedom of choice in both personal and economic matters. They believe government's only purpose is to protect people from coercion and violence. They value individual responsibility, and tolerate economic and social diversity.

Left-Liberals generally embrace freedom of choice in personal matters, but support central decision-making in economics. They want the government to help the disadvantaged in the name of fairness. Leftists tolerate social diversity, but work for what they might describe as "economic equality."

Right-Conservatives favor freedom of choice on economic issues, but want official standards in personal matters. They tend to support the free market, but frequently want the government to defend the community from what they see as threats to morality or to the traditional family structure.

Centrists favor selective government intervention and emphasize what they commonly describe as "practical solutions" to current problems. They tend to keep an open mind on political issues. Many centrists feel that government serves as a check on excessive liberty.

Statists want government to have a great deal of control over individuals and society. They support centralized planning, and often doubt whether liberty and freedom of choice are practical options. At the very bottom of the chart, left-authoritarians are usually called socialists, while right-authoritarians are generally called fascists.

It's not CATO...

[posterlogo]

It's "The Cato Institute" http://www.cato.org/about/about.html. CATO doesn't spell out anything. It's "Cato", named after "Cato's Letters" -- used as anonymous treatises pro-American Revolution by some founding fathers, named after an ancient Roman "Cato", who wrote against tyranny and oppression in his day and age.

Read the 28 page report

[Tsunayoshi]

To all you people screaming about how stupid CATO is, what is their political intent, etc, I suggest you read through the entire 28 page report. A lot of facts and examples are presented where the DMCA has been the trump card preventing a number of legitimate fair uses of copyrighted/DRM'd stuff.

Hell, there are even 2 or 3 reference to things like building LEGAL software DVD players for linux, or how Alan Cox resigned from an association because he didn't want to face the possibility of being arrested if he ever visited the US for a conference, since his kernel work sometimes involves reverse engineering.

Regardless of who wrote it or what the hell the political bent of the authors are, it all but says the the DMCA is a stupid act that was not needed since there were already legal means and precedents in existence to cover what the DMCA blanketly prohibits.

Re:Pirates

[Haeleth]

I wish people would stop calling people who share software, pirates.

People don't call people who share software "pirates". Nobody accuses RMS or Linus Torvalds of piracy. The people we call pirates are the people who make unlicensed copies of other people's software, which is not exactly "sharing" in the neighbourly sense.

As for calling people who make unlicensed copies of other people's work "pirates", well, according to the SOED in front of me, people have been using the noun "pirate" to mean "someone who infringes on the copyright of another" since 1701, and the verb "pirate" to mean "to appropriate or reproduce the work or invention of another without authority" since at least 1706. So, no - given that we've been using the word that way for at least 300 years, I rather doubt we're going to stop now.

Don't underestimate David Koch's money

[Valdrax]

Don't underestimate the political pull of the Cato Institute and other lobbying institutions founded by the Koch family. They are very influential to the other business-friendly, anti-regulation political think-tanks including those followed by more Republican than Liberatarian politicians. In addition, the David Koch donates an awful lot of money to Republicans. If his think tank gets involved against the DMCA, we might see to chance of progress here.

DRM Technology?

[rnd()]

First off, I am a huge fan of Cato, and I subscribe to several of its publications.

But, the blurb is misleading. The DMCA isn't DRM technology it's simply regulation.

I do not like the DMCA, but I do like legitimate DRM technology. If someone engineers a product to make it difficult to copy, that is their business. If you copy it and violate copyright, that's their business, but we don't need an intermediate law saying it's illegal to even attempt to crack the DRM scheme.

In other words, the technology should stand on its own.

Re:CATO == dorks

[Steve B]

Ever since I heard a CATO "expert" explain that gas prices were so high because a lot of people were topping off their tanks at the gas station, I kinda take whatever they say with a grain of salt.

You slept through the Economics 101 class where they explained "supply and demand", right?

Not really

[Gorimek]

Actually, Libertarians are less trusting of people than others, but in ways you may be unaccustomed to.

For example, we assume people are no more trustworthy because they've been elected or appointed to a government position. So having government officials overseeing some area to guard against crooked companies is not seen as a solution, since the officials are just as likely to be crooked - and if they are they can cause a lot more damage.

This perspective of deep distrust and cynicism is confusing to many, and can lead to the misunderstanding of the parent article, but once you get used to it, it can be quite productive and enlightening.

Re:Pirates

[NeutronCowboy]

You missed the point of the original poster. Too bad. Otherwise you'd understand that insisting on calling copyright infringement "copyright infringement" and not "piracy" is so that the RIAA/MPAA can't create the emotional response of "hang 'em high!" when they ask what should be done with P2P downloaders.

This is not some academic exercise in language purity. This is a fight to keep the debate about copyright infringement right where it belongs - in the realm of copyright law, not violent takeover of personal property.

France's recent bill

[Submarine]

I note that France's National assembly recently adopted a bill that balanced criminal and civil penalties for circumventing systems deemed to implement DRMs with a clause saying that publishers of DRM systems should be ready to give out specifications of these DRMs to anybody willing to implement a compatible player.

This move was derided in the US as some "anti-iPod law".

Well, the motivation for this was that the criminal and civil penalties initially envisioned by the DADVSI law would have de facto created a new kind of intellectual property around DRMs, with DRM companies potentially being able to prosecute competitors for making compatible players (which can be easily construed as facilitating the weakening of the protection).

The law was then balanced so as to avoid this.