Slashdot Mirror
Q & A With Canada's Michael Geist
Torrentz writes "P2PNet is running a question and answer session with Canada's Michael Geist, a leading Internet and copyright expert. Geist discusses P2P, the music business, and the future direction of
copyright law." From the interview: "My focus has traditionally been on Internet issues and I'm very active on privacy, spam, Internet governance issues. The growing attention to copyright merely reflects its critical importance to the Internet and to creativity and culture more generally."
Then voice it.
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
He's a law professor and holds a chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law. How much more of an expert do you want?
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Saturday morning in Kuwait :/
Making you think you're crazy is a billion dollar industry.
"a person with special knowledge or ability who performs skillfully" is what defines an expert. Of course, I think the question he is asking... who determine how good of one you are. In this guy's case.. he has a spiffy resume to back it all up, so he must have better opinions than me (haha).
...
Nobody says he has better opinions than you. But being a law professor and with his CV, he probably does have special knowledge, and he apparently performs quite skillfully. So his opinions might not be better, but his facts are likely to be a lot better, and he probably knows a lot more about the entire legal aspect than you (and most people) do.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
his opinions might not be better, but his facts are likely to be a lot better, and he probably knows a lot more about the entire legal aspect than you (and most people) do
His opinion has a lot more value than yours or mine, because, like you point out, whatever he based his opinion on doesn't come from his arse.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
and it is even a subject I have an opinion on... sigh.
Good, you shouldn't be modding this thread anyways.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Friday Night at 4AM and TFA is slashdotted :( .
Geist actually holds a prestigious Canada Research Chair.
These are national research chairs, and very hard to get.
I don't know about you. But as another poster notes, the CRCs are very hard to get. I've read some of Geist's stuff, and he's not stupid. He does know what he's talking about, he just talks about it from a legal perspective, (he does commentary), and his own perspective. and do you know what? I'd be really, really surprised if he DOESN'T know everything you laid out. He does work with the technology. He does understand how it can be used. But he is, first and formost, a lawyer and a commentator, not a techie. And if you can't get the fact that maybe he's just as smart as you are, but coming at it from a different angle through your head, you're too stupid to complain that he should shut his mouth. I'd ask you to do the same, but your foot is already in it.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Mr. Geist, your expertise with Internet Copyright Law seems to have the momentum of a runaway frieght train. Why are you so popular?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Prof. Geist,
From a naive perspective, it would seem that copyright and patent laws have become ludicrously one-sided (its seems the public interest would usually be best served by breaking them). I would like to hear your perspective on the state of balance in these laws. Which countries, if any, are best/worst for keeping the public interest. Is corruption playing a role in making copyright and patent legislation?
Reading the article, I am struck by the common sense he exhibits. I have to say this whole P2P thing really needs to be sorted out - it is consuming far too many resources.
;-).
As I think back to when I was younger, the way those of use with little disposable income got our music was to record it off the radio. I would wait anxiously for the Thursday night countdown so I could try to get a recording of my favorite songs. Of course we didn't have nonlinear digital editing tools (or even crude analog editing tools) so invariably there would be a DJ yammering (and sometimes other room sounds) on my recorded music. And I became the master of the 70's fadeout, turning down the volume of the radio near the end of the song, trying to end the recording gracefully before the DJ chimed in. Anyhow, it strikes me that the big difference between then and now was that, while I could get (inferior quality) free music, I couldn't easily share it with others, though occassionally I would get together with friends and let them copy my recordings (and vice versa). Oh, and when I got a few sheckles together I would buy the 45 of my favorite songs, and over time built a decent collection (decent in size, not quality
So this makes me wonder if we need to change the P2P universe somehow. I just don't think the current system is sustainable over the long-term. To me the "problem" is massive sharing. I personally believe this goes beyond the concept of "fair use". I don't think there are many people who consider it a crime for me to loan a friend a CD (or a book or a DVD for that matter). If we could extend that model somehow to P2P, keeping it easy to share with people we have "direct contact" with, but more difficult to share with people on another continent, I think that would be a more balanced approach. And of course there would be nothing stopping artists from distributing their stuff broadly if they so chose. I could almost imagine "content-playing machines" exchanging some sort of key or token via some non-remotable physical interface, thereby allowing those machines to share content with each other. Sounds Orwellian, I know, but it would maintain the "fair use" aspects while inhibiting massive sharing.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
In spite of his "expertise", I see a fairly clear flaw in his premise, which is quoted in the Slashdot blurb:
"The growing attention to copyright merely reflects its critical importance to the Internet and to creativity and culture more generally."
The reality of things, I think, is that attention paid to copyright reflects its importance to media *corporations* who are afraid of changing times, as well as to the corrupt politicians (e.g. Orrin Hatch) who have staked out careers based on selling out their constituents to said corporations.
The issue is also important to Mr. Geist, since he gets to validate his prestigious degree in "e-commerce" and write about it for money.
On the other hand, the "Internet" couldn't care less. Creativity and culture don't need copyright, and the hundreds of millions of people who actually engage in cultural exchange (of both copyrighted and non-copyrighted culture) on the Internet were probably blissfully aware of any copyright issues when they started swapping mix tapes, taping television, ripping CDs, writing fan fiction, singing "Happy Birthday", photographing tourist attractions, playing DVDs under Linux, and so on. Many of them are still totally in the dark; it's not a natural impulse to ask yourself when you want to listen to a song, "oh, I wonder if the author's life-plus-300 year copyright term has expired yet; I might be stealing from the pockets of his impoverished great-grandchildren".
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
That like picking on grammar,while ignoring what the poster said.
Or ignoring someone with a screename like 294283443.
Maybe he doesnt intend to be a member of slashdot or comes in rarely enough to not justify membership.
Dear Mr. Geist, I am currently a student at U of O. I first want to congratulate you for giving our university such a positive image in online community. I have recently learnt through a reliable source at the University that services like SASS (Student Academic Success Service) send records by email containing psychological and academic profiles tied with the student's name and student number. As you are probably aware, email is not encrypted and system personnel who manage those email accounts have access to potentially damaging information that could compromise the student's reputation. Furthermore, many SASS services promote the illusion of confidentiality and anonymity. Students are not made aware that such information is recorded and kept on them for an indefinite period of time. My question: What is the point of fighting the online privacy war when their is already a war to be fought at home?
Not only that, but our Mike Geist is willing to post as other than an Anonymous Coward. ;)
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
OK, I can name at least one thing wrong with that statement. (Hint: there's no Canadian association of anything American).
My name is Joe ... oops
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Handsup everybody who streams radio while online. I suspect there is a hole in the data and it will turn out that radio listeners have just gone online not gone away.