EFF Confronts World Copyright Committee (eff.org)

The EFF debated delegates on WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright this week, joking the whole week could be summarized as "proposals for a broadcasting treaty continue to edge forward, while rich countries remain at loggerheads with users and poorer countries about copyright exceptions for education and libraries."

An anonymous reader writes: The EFF continued to push for more rights for libraries, for example to preserve "orphaned" works and to lend works across national borders. But they also report that at an EFF-sponsored side-meeting, one independent recording artist made an interesting suggestion about Mycelia, an open and distributed "verified" database of music metadata that's blockchain-enabled. "Although it remains mostly a vision for now, the widespread adoption of Mycelia-enabled services could, in theory, provide better transparency to artists about how and where their works are being used, as well as enabling many new innovative uses of music, both free and paid." (One audience member even asked whether it could resurrect Napster's model of peer-to-peer music-sharing with a mechanism for artist micropayments.)
Meanwhile, the EFF characterized the music industry's stance as "Blaming online content platforms for the low returns that artists receive, and moves to target them with additional responsibilities or obligations." But they added, "As frustrating as the long-winded discussions at WIPO often are, our ability to participate in them is a key advantage that this multilateral forum has over the secretive, closed-door negotiations over copyright that take place in trade negotiations such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership."

Comments

Not Buying That

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely not going to be buying or even possessing any media which can potentially spy on me.

CAPTCHA: anathema

The Societal Value of Works

[rtb61]

P. How about a reassessment of copyright law in line with patent laws. Works must demonstrate true worth and value to society prior to achieve copyright protection, which is actually copytheft protection, the ability to steal the work of others because it is a copy of a protected work. The US constitution puts it very well, "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", should any work fail that test, it should not have copyright protection and the taxpayers most certainly should not be expected to fund that protection. It is about time that test was used as it was reasonably and soundly intended to do.

Re:The Societal Value of Works

[james_gnz]

P. How about a reassessment of copyright law in line with patent laws. Works must demonstrate true worth and value to society prior to achieve copyright protection...

Patents are supposed to be novel, non-obvious, and useful. However, as far as I know, to qualify as useful they don't actually have to be any better than, or even as good as, existing free alternatives. The Microsoft FAT patents cover a way of storing long file names that is arguably novel and non-obvious precisely because it is a needlessly convoluted way of doing something that had already been done. In any case, I don't want to see the copyright system based on the patent system, because I think the patent system is even more broken than the copyright system is.

If not for the rise of cloud computing, I would say scrap them both. The patent system only provides a net benefit in the areas of chemicals and pharmaceuticals (Bessen and Meurer, 2008), and I expect government research grants could do just as well. I'm not convinced copyright provides a net benefit at all, since for entertainment it seems to deliver form over substance, which I think we could do without, and for practical works, it takes mind share from free works. However, scrapping copyright would accelerate the shift to cloud computing, which is even worse than copyright.

Bessen, James & Meurer, Michael J. (2008) Patent failure. Princeton University Press. <http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s8634.pdf>

Re:The Societal Value of Works

[james_gnz]

The Wikipedia page on Donaldson v Beckett suggests that this is a British common law right, which, by my understanding, means it would apply in the USA also, unless expressly overridden. "The United States and most Commonwealth countries are heirs to the common law legal tradition of English law" Law of the United States.

With regard to the particular situation you've described, I see what you're saying, and I found the article The privacy in one's garbage, which may be relevant. From my reading, I think this would be covered under a right to privacy, as the writings were to be picked up for disposal from within the property. If the writings had been placed outside the property for collection, the situation might be different.

In any case, if there is an issue with privacy here, I think it would be better dealt with by reforming privacy law. Using this as an argument against the original suggestion for reforming copyright law seems a bit convoluted. I think your other argument was better.

Mycelia

[silas_moeckel]

First things thats getting stripped. Why do I want my music sending back info to the artist. It's a one time transaction I give you money you give me goods period end of story. The whole well I'll sell you another copy every time a format changes or we made a better copy from the masters is BS rent seeking. Plenty of artists have allready shown you can sell music without DRM and make money doing so. We lost sight of to promote arts and moved to how much money can we possibly leach out of the system.

Abandonware Law

[martiniturbide]

I need that Abandonware subject get finally into the law and that abandonware binaries and source code turn public domain. It is required to set a shorter timeframe for abandonware and unsupported software to be turned to public domain.

Re:WIPO irrelevant now?

[Xest]

WIPO has always been a mixed bag, it's not an inherently bad organisation, it's just forced to be bad by major players like the US.

To understand why WIPO isn't bad you have to look back at it's history and the creation of the WTO. WIPO was always effectively an entirely democratic organisation where each country equally gets a vote on measures. Back in about the 50s WIPO was trying to determine global laws regulating patent terms, and the US lobbied by large pharma was out-voted by the numerous poorer African and Asian countries on this - the US wanted long and crippling patent terms allowing it a monopoly on medicine, but the poorer countries wanted shorter more sensible terms with the goal of making sure that their people could still access patented medicine in a reasonable time frame without being priced out the market due to lack of competition caused by the over the top patent terms the US wanted.

In response to this, the US, not happy with WIPO being democratic, created the WTO as an alternative to it, but where it held all the real power without that pesky democracy that trounced it at WIPO. It's used the WTO to try and force countries into it with a carrot and stick approach - on one hand using the WTO to create rules that open up trade meaning if you're a member you're part of a trade agreement that makes it easier and cheaper to buy and sell with WTO members, but on the other using it to enforce increasingly strong rules on things like patent protection to people joining up.

WIPO has had to adapt to avoid becoming irrelevant, and yes, that meant passing things that are far from ideal, but it's still the better of all the organisations pushing IP laws, precisely because power isn't centred in the hands of the US and it's allies.

As an aside though, no, WIPO didn't give you the DMCA. The DMCA is a US only law, and yes it was introduced under the guise of implementing a WIPO treaty, but it goes way beyond what that WIPO treaty required. Were the WIPO treaty responsible for the DMCA then all countries would have the DMCA or an equivalent but they don't, only the US does.