Letter to Cory Doctorow on Big Media
April 26, 2009
This letter was never actually sent to Cory Doctorow.
Written in response to article "Big Entertainment Wants to Party Like It's 1996"
Cory Doctorow is the author of several works of fiction and various essays on copyright. He's also the coeditor of Boing Boing, a famous blog. His latest essay is an informative and well-written analysis that brings a very interesting point to light.
The media companies are their own worst sources of bad publicity. They act like gangsters, and the public believes they are gangsters.
The media companies are clearly on the losing side of the war against Internet users, and as Doctorow correctly states, they are clueless to the changes that have occurred since 1996. There is absolutely no way that the entertainment industry, even with its billions of dollars, will be able to overcome the social powers of the decentralized Internet community's efforts. History has shown that even the most powerful of leaders cannot oppose a diverse opposition with no single weak point to exploit. The media companies will be defeated no matter what, eventually.
But they won't go away any time soon either. Whether we like it or not, the media companies will continue to garner high profits with which they will use to their advantage. During the Great Depression, when the rest of the economy was in shambles, the entertainment industry continued to prosper. This long- lasting struggle between Internet users and the entertainment corporations will probably drag on for a long time, leaving significant collateral damage amidst the crossfire.
While it's not the 1990's, the laws from the 1990's - "almost entirely designed by the entertainment industry" - continue to haunt us today. The No Electronic Theft (NET) Act of 1997 made noncommercial copyright infringement a crime (rather than an cause for a civil suit) by changing the definition of "commercial advantage or private financial gain." "Perpetual copyright on the installment plan," a slogan by critics of copyright extension, is most recently applicable to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998. This law has eliminated a potential public domain for future creative works by retroactively extending copyright, earning itself a nickname as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, in reference to its effect on the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons. Ironically, these same cartoons would have constituted copyright infringement had our current copyright law applied to works that the Mickey Mouse cartoons were based off, such as the 19th century fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm. The Digitial Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed in the same year, has continued to harm free speech and market competition. This law makes any non-official implementation of a DVD player in the United States illegal, including free software implementations, and provides a loophole by which media companies can expand the powers of copyright to prevent competing technologies. It also has been widely used to silence political speech, including against critics of the Church of Scientology and against official campaign videos by the McCain-Palin presidential campaign. We can't ignore the cumulative effects of these laws to date.
Despite Doctorow's examples of successful efforts against copyright expansion, there also exist a number of recent unsuccessful efforts. The Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act, which become law in October 2008, is a recent example of the success of media corporations. While critics were successful in getting the most blatantly corrupt aspects thrown out - conducting civil suits with taxpayer money on behalf of private copyright holders (i.e. media corporations) and awarding these winnings to the holders - the law nevertheless increased copyright infringement penalties and following on past work in combating drug trafficking, created a new office in the executive branch of the federal government called the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER), more commonly known as the "copyright czar." My letters to my Senators, Representative, and President were unheard; the President failed to use his veto power when he really needed it.
The entertainment companies still have the higher ground. Not only do they have the inertia of passed laws, but they also happen to have their political party of choice in the executive office as leader of America and model for the world. The President's second in command is even more representative of their interests.
Don't let me be misunderstood. I don't lack respect for President Obama. He's a great man who's managed to succeed through many obstacles. He also dedicated himself to great ideals of change, and possesses an understanding of the Internet's social power - after all, the Internet was key to his success in the election. What I find troubling, rather, is not the lack of character in our President, but the fact that a man of such great character and ideals can be so easily subverted by simple corporate interests. Somehow, he's managed to walk back on the ideals of the same movement that propelled him forward.
During the primaries, Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University served as Mr. Obama's Technology Adviser. Lessig is the leading voice of moderate copyright liberalism. He's the author of several books relating to copyright, including Free Culture, which details and opposes the political efforts of the entertainment industry. He's also the founder of the Creative Commons project, the most notable icon of the free culture movement towards copyright liberalism. And in the past year, Professor Lessig has changed his focus towards combating political corruption, specifically the efforts of corporations and their lobbyists to control politics.
This pick for a technology adviser is no coincidence. Mr. Obama knew very well what he was doing when he campaigned: he was trying to be the hero of change that people would idealize and admire. But President Obama is a different person. From the moment he picked Biden as his running mate, the tables started to turn. Senator Biden, in contrast, in contrast to Mr. Obama, was a conservative Democrat who had supported the Iraq War and incidentally - one of the greatest representatives of the American film (MPAA) and recording (RIAA) industry in Congress.
Like the public interest representatives in Doctorow's analysis, Professor Lessig has been basically cut off from the candidate he helped place on the Democratic ballot. President Obama has little connection to Lessig, neither through copyright views nor through Lessig's work on fighting political corruption. In fact, President Obama has taken a stance towards copyright worse than his predecessor, an indicator of the sad reality of corruption in America's leading liberal party.
When President Obama appointed two RIAA lawyers to top senior Justice Department positions, the Internet's political and consumerist groups grew concerned, and the RIAA applauded the decision. A number of diverse consumer interest groups, including the EFF, Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports), Internet Archive, Wikimedia Foundation (organization operating Wikipedia), and Public Knowledge, sent an open letter to President Obama about the conflict of interest. Especially considering the Justice Department's recent intervention in a civil copyright infringement case on the side of the media corporations, how could we expect impartial interpretations of copyright? Such decisions could easily be attributed to simple error, so concern died down. But then these same groups become alarmed when President Obama hired three more RIAA lawyers, sending the political equivalent to the public interest groups as "get lost!"
Last Tuesday, Vice President Biden attended a private dinner held by MPAA lobbyists as the guest speaker. First, he stated that "piracy is pure theft," a statement that is wrong both legally and morally. US law treats theft and copyright infringement as two very different actions with two different penalties. Copyright infringment can often be noncommercial, while theft by its nature never is. Morally, theft deprives the owner of something, while copyright infringement makes a second copy. If I stole your car, you would be deprived of a car and the ability to drive; if I copied your car, we could both drive. Secondly, he told the lobbyists that President Obama "will find the right person for intellectual property czar," in reference to the newly- created copyright czar position established by the PRO-IP Act late last year. When Biden's past history with the MPAA and RIAA is taken into consideration, along with the audience that he made the statement towards, "right" most likely appears to be one who is a puppet of the entertainment industry.
The United States is not alone, but it is a role model with great influence. Last week, right after the publication of Doctorow's analysis, the European Parliament retroactively extended musical copyright by 20 years, just in time to freeze the passage of early Beatles music into the public domain. Currently, Canadian media lobbyists are claiming that Canadian copyright law is lax and therefore requires the passing of laws similar to the American DMCA.
Cory Doctorow's analysis is correct. Big entertainment is clueless and their attempts to manipulate politics can easily backfire. The Internet community has advanced since 1996 to protect its interests; it's more difficult now for the entertainment industry to get "anydamnfoolthing" passed. And yes, groups like the EFF can take "the tiniest amount of funding ... leverage them with the Internet's help, and beat the hell out of huge, powerful entertainment companies." We should be proud. But we shouldn't call victory yet: Big Media is fighting back. Media corporations are managing to get their laws passed despite consumer opposition. The amount of concern outside of the Internet community towards the secretive nature of the ACTA is relatively limited. President Obama, a man who started with copyright liberalism sympathies, has taken a stand towards copyright worse than his predecessor. Protecting the Internet won't be easy; Big Media is determined to destroy it at whatever costs. We cannot afford to end our tireless efforts - we must remain vigilant.