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RIAA-fighting Maine Law Professor Speaks Out
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In an interview with Jon Newton of p2pnet, Prof. Deirdre Smith of the University of Maine says that 'our students are enthusiastic about being directly connected to a case with a national scope and significance'. The UM Cumberland Legal Aid Clinic is the first law school legal clinic in the U.S. to have taken on the RIAA, to have the opportunity for hands-on experience fighting the RIAA's effort to rewrite copyright law. Smith went on to say that the case is probably one of the first intellectual property cases the clinic has ever taken on, and that if it proceeds further, she expects to also 'draw on the considerable expertise in IP among members of our faculty and the Maine Center for Law and Innovation, another program of the Law School'. "
While it's debatable whether this challenge has much of a legal chance - from what the lawyer the lawyer types I've spoken to told me, it's not much of a challenge - the simple fact that this defense sets a rather important precedent - that schools shouldn't bend over without fighting it out first.
That's no more of an arbitrary way to compensate a copyright holder than the legislated way of doing it that has become disconnected from the stated purpose for the government granted limited monopoly.
By "arbitrary" I mean that copyright and patent monopolies are a creation of government. Government could very well decide that copyright no longer exists and, unlike natural rights, there would be no appeal to a universal notion of human rights. If it became too burdensome to protect copyright for, say, recorded performances, governments could rationally decide to not protect them, or to scale back protection to where infringement would be inconsequential under law. This is very different from the rights government is prohibited from infringing on, and that are presumed to exist with or without a government that is instructed to respect those rights.
So, literally, it is up to people to decide what to pay.
I wrote parts of this stuff
That is a perfect illustration of how copyright is positioned, incorrectly, as equivalent to a human right.
Antigua and Barbuda has won the right, in an international tribunal, to disregard copyright protection of U.S. recorded performances.
If, instead, they won the "right" to kill Americans, that would be different, no? In reality, no tribunal could grant such a "right." And there you have the difference between copyright and self-ownership.
The right to waive U.S. copyright isn't even as significant as, say, a letter of marque. So copyright is really pretty low on the rights food chain.
I wrote parts of this stuff
What's very interesting is that the companies that are part of the RIAA have been repeatedly charged with illegally price fixing and keeping CD's at above market value (aka they're stealing from the whole country). The MPAA broke copyright to bring you the "University toolkit" and refused to co-operate with the copyright holder. The Sony Rootkit was based on open source software that was used without permission and broke copyright. It's obviously OK to steal. It's just uncool to get caught doing it.