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2 # Copyright (C) YEAR Free Software Foundation, Inc.
3 # This file is distributed under the same license as the PACKAGE package.
4 # FIRST AUTHOR <EMAIL@ADDRESS>, YEAR.
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34 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo>
36 msgid "<abbrev>\"freeculture\"</abbrev>"
39 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><subtitle>
42 "HOW BIG MEDIA USES TECHNOLOGY AND THE LAW TO LOCK DOWN CULTURE AND CONTROL "
46 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo>
48 msgid "<pubdate>2004-03-25</pubdate>"
51 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><releaseinfo>
53 msgid "Version 2004-02-10"
56 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><authorgroup><author><firstname>
61 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><authorgroup><author><surname>
66 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><subjectset><subject><subjectterm>
68 msgid "Intellectual property—United States."
71 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><subjectset><subject><subjectterm>
73 msgid "Mass media—United States."
76 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><subjectset><subject><subjectterm>
78 msgid "Technological innovations—United States."
81 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><subjectset><subject><subjectterm>
83 msgid "Art—United States."
86 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><publisher><address>
89 msgid "<city>New York</city>"
92 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo>
95 "<publisher> <publishername>The Penguin Press</publishername> <placeholder "
96 "type=\"address\" id=\"0\"/> </publisher> <copyright> <year>2004</year> "
97 "<holder>Lawrence Lessig</holder> </copyright>"
100 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><legalnotice><para><inlinemediaobject>
101 #: freeculture.xml:66
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106 "align=\"center\"/> </imageobject>"
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110 #: freeculture.xml:73
111 msgid "Creative Commons, Some rights reserved"
114 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><legalnotice><para>
115 #: freeculture.xml:65
116 msgid "<placeholder type=\"inlinemediaobject\" id=\"0\"/>"
119 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><legalnotice><para>
120 #: freeculture.xml:79
122 "This version of <citetitle>Free Culture</citetitle> is licensed under a "
123 "Creative Commons license. This license permits non-commercial use of this "
124 "work, so long as attribution is given. For more information about the "
125 "license, click the icon above, or visit <ulink "
126 "url=\"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0/\">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/1.0/</ulink>"
129 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><abstract><title>
130 #: freeculture.xml:88
131 msgid "ABOUT THE AUTHOR"
134 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo><abstract><para>
135 #: freeculture.xml:90
137 "LAWRENCE LESSIG (<ulink "
138 "url=\"http://www.lessig.org\">http://www.lessig.org</ulink>), professor of "
139 "law and a John A. Wilson Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law "
140 "School, is founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and is "
141 "chairman of the Creative Commons (<ulink "
142 "url=\"http://creativecommons.org\">http://creativecommons.org</ulink>). The "
143 "author of The Future of Ideas (Random House, 2001) and Code: And Other Laws "
144 "of Cyberspace (Basic Books, 1999), Lessig is a member of the boards of the "
145 "Public Library of Science, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public "
146 "Knowledge. He was the winner of the Free Software Foundation's Award for the "
147 "Advancement of Free Software, twice listed in BusinessWeek's <quote>e.biz "
148 "25,</quote> and named one of Scientific American's <quote>50 "
149 "visionaries.</quote> A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge "
150 "University, and Yale Law School, Lessig clerked for Judge Richard Posner of "
151 "the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals."
154 #. testing different ways to tag the cover page
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168 #: freeculture.xml:111
170 "<imageobject remap=\"lrg\" role=\"front-large\"> <imagedata "
171 "fileref=\"images/cover.png\" format=\"PNG\" width=\"444\" /> </imageobject>"
175 #. http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v3=1&DB=local&CMD=010a+2003063276&CNT=10+records+per+page
177 #. type: Content of: <book><bookinfo>
178 #: freeculture.xml:109
180 " <placeholder type=\"mediaobject\" id=\"0\"/> <biblioid "
181 "class=\"isbn\">1-59420-006-8</biblioid> <biblioid "
182 "class=\"libraryofcongress\">2003063276</biblioid>"
185 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><para>
186 #: freeculture.xml:139
187 msgid "You can buy a copy of this book by clicking on one of the links below:"
190 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
191 #: freeculture.xml:142
192 msgid "<ulink url=\"http://www.amazon.com/\">Amazon</ulink>"
195 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
196 #: freeculture.xml:143
197 msgid "<ulink url=\"http://www.barnesandnoble.com/\">B&N</ulink>"
200 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><itemizedlist><listitem><para>
201 #: freeculture.xml:144
202 msgid "<ulink url=\"http://www.penguin.com/\">Penguin</ulink>"
205 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><para>
206 #: freeculture.xml:153
207 msgid "ALSO BY LAWRENCE LESSIG"
210 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><para>
211 #: freeculture.xml:156
212 msgid "The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World"
215 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><para>
216 #: freeculture.xml:159
217 msgid "Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace"
220 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
221 #: freeculture.xml:167
223 "THE PENGUIN PRESS, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street "
227 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
228 #: freeculture.xml:171
229 msgid "Copyright © Lawrence Lessig. All rights reserved."
232 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
233 #: freeculture.xml:174
235 "Excerpt from an editorial titled <quote>The Coming of Copyright "
236 "Perpetuity,</quote> <citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle>, January 16, "
237 "2003. Copyright © 2003 by The New York Times Co. Reprinted with "
241 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
242 #: freeculture.xml:179
244 "Cartoon in <xref linkend=\"fig-1711-vcr-handgun-cartoonfig\"/> by Paul "
245 "Conrad, copyright Tribune Media Services, Inc. All rights "
246 "reserved. Reprinted with permission."
249 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
250 #: freeculture.xml:183
252 "Diagram in <xref linkend=\"fig-1761-pattern-modern-media-ownership\"/> "
253 "courtesy of the office of FCC Commissioner, Michael J. Copps."
256 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
257 #: freeculture.xml:187
258 msgid "Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data"
261 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
262 #: freeculture.xml:190
264 "Lessig, Lawrence. Free culture : how big media uses technology and the law "
265 "to lock down culture and control creativity / Lawrence Lessig."
268 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
269 #: freeculture.xml:195
273 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
274 #: freeculture.xml:198
275 msgid "Includes index."
278 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
279 #: freeculture.xml:201
280 msgid "ISBN 1-59420-006-8 (hardcover)"
283 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
284 #: freeculture.xml:205
286 "1. Intellectual property—United States. 2. Mass media—United "
290 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
291 #: freeculture.xml:208
293 "3. Technological innovations—United States. 4. Art—United "
297 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
298 #: freeculture.xml:211
302 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
303 #: freeculture.xml:214
304 msgid "343.7309'9—dc22"
307 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
308 #: freeculture.xml:217
309 msgid "This book is printed on acid-free paper."
312 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
313 #: freeculture.xml:220
314 msgid "Printed in the United States of America"
317 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
318 #: freeculture.xml:223
319 msgid "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4"
322 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
323 #: freeculture.xml:226
324 msgid "Designed by Marysarah Quinn"
327 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
328 #: freeculture.xml:230
329 msgid "&translationblock;"
332 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
333 #: freeculture.xml:234
335 "Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this "
336 "publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval "
337 "system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, "
338 "photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission "
339 "of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book."
342 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
343 #: freeculture.xml:242
345 "The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or "
346 "via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and "
347 "punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and "
348 "do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted "
349 "materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated."
352 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><para>
353 #: freeculture.xml:254
355 "To Eric Eldred—whose work first drew me to this cause, and for whom it "
359 #. type: Content of: <book><lot><title>
360 #: freeculture.xml:262
361 msgid "List of figures"
364 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><title>
365 #: freeculture.xml:324
369 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><indexterm><primary>
370 #: freeculture.xml:325
374 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
375 #: freeculture.xml:327
377 "<emphasis role=\"bold\">At the end</emphasis> of his review of my first "
378 "book, <citetitle>Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace</citetitle>, David "
379 "Pogue, a brilliant writer and author of countless technical and "
380 "computer-related texts, wrote this:"
383 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
384 #: freeculture.xml:338
386 "David Pogue, <quote>Don't Just Chat, Do Something,</quote> <citetitle>New "
387 "York Times</citetitle>, 30 January 2000."
390 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><blockquote><para>
391 #: freeculture.xml:334
393 "Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It doesn't "
394 "affect people who aren't online (and only a tiny minority of the world "
395 "population is). And if you don't like the Internet's system, you can always "
396 "flip off the modem.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
399 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
400 #: freeculture.xml:343
402 "Pogue was skeptical of the core argument of the book—that software, or "
403 "<quote>code,</quote> functioned as a kind of law—and his review "
404 "suggested the happy thought that if life in cyberspace got bad, we could "
405 "always <quote>drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome</quote>-like simply flip a "
406 "switch and be back home. Turn off the modem, unplug the computer, and any "
407 "troubles that exist in <emphasis>that</emphasis> space wouldn't "
408 "<quote>affect</quote> us anymore."
412 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
413 #: freeculture.xml:352
415 "Pogue might have been right in 1999—I'm skeptical, but maybe. But "
416 "even if he was right then, the point is not right now: <citetitle>Free "
417 "Culture</citetitle> is about the troubles the Internet causes even after the "
418 "modem is turned off. It is an argument about how the battles that now rage "
419 "regarding life on-line have fundamentally affected <quote>people who aren't "
420 "online.</quote> There is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet's "
424 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
425 #: freeculture.xml:363
427 "But unlike <citetitle>Code</citetitle>, the argument here is not much about "
428 "the Internet itself. It is instead about the consequence of the Internet to "
429 "a part of our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this "
430 "is for a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important."
433 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para><footnote><para>
434 #: freeculture.xml:375
436 "Richard M. Stallman, <citetitle>Free Software, Free Societies</citetitle> 57 "
437 "(Joshua Gay, ed. 2002)."
440 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
441 #: freeculture.xml:370
443 "That tradition is the way our culture gets made. As I explain in the pages "
444 "that follow, we come from a tradition of <quote>free "
445 "culture</quote>—not <quote>free</quote> as in <quote>free beer</quote> "
446 "(to borrow a phrase from the founder of the free software "
447 "movement<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>), but <quote>free</quote> "
448 "as in <quote>free speech,</quote> <quote>free markets,</quote> <quote>free "
449 "trade,</quote> <quote>free enterprise,</quote> <quote>free will,</quote> and "
450 "<quote>free elections.</quote> A free culture supports and protects creators "
451 "and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property "
452 "rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to "
453 "guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain <emphasis>as free as "
454 "possible</emphasis> from the control of the past. A free culture is not a "
455 "culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which "
456 "everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a <quote>permission "
457 "culture</quote>—a culture in which creators get to create only with "
458 "the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past."
461 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
462 #: freeculture.xml:390
464 "If we understood this change, I believe we would resist it. Not "
465 "<quote>we</quote> on the Left or <quote>you</quote> on the Right, but we who "
466 "have no stake in the particular industries of culture that defined the "
467 "twentieth century. Whether you are on the Left or the Right, if you are in "
468 "this sense disinterested, then the story I tell here will trouble you. For "
469 "the changes I describe affect values that both sides of our political "
470 "culture deem fundamental."
473 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
474 #: freeculture.xml:398 freeculture.xml:1022
475 msgid "power, concentration of"
478 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
479 #: freeculture.xml:399 freeculture.xml:13114
480 msgid "CodePink Women in Peace"
483 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
484 #: freeculture.xml:400 freeculture.xml:421 freeculture.xml:13115
485 msgid "Safire, William"
488 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><indexterm><primary>
489 #: freeculture.xml:401
493 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
494 #: freeculture.xml:403
496 "We saw a glimpse of this bipartisan outrage in the early summer of 2003. As "
497 "the FCC considered changes in media ownership rules that would relax limits "
498 "on media concentration, an extraordinary coalition generated more than "
499 "700,000 letters to the FCC opposing the change. As William Safire described "
500 "marching <quote>uncomfortably alongside CodePink Women for Peace and the "
501 "National Rifle Association, between liberal Olympia Snowe and conservative "
502 "Ted Stevens,</quote> he formulated perhaps most simply just what was at "
503 "stake: the concentration of power. And as he asked,"
506 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
507 #: freeculture.xml:419
509 "William Safire, <quote>The Great Media Gulp,</quote> <citetitle>New York "
510 "Times</citetitle>, 22 May 2003. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
513 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><blockquote><para>
514 #: freeculture.xml:415
516 "Does that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration of "
517 "power—political, corporate, media, cultural—should be anathema "
518 "to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby "
519 "encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the "
520 "greatest expression of democracy.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
523 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
524 #: freeculture.xml:426
526 "This idea is an element of the argument of <citetitle>Free "
527 "Culture</citetitle>, though my focus is not just on the concentration of "
528 "power produced by concentrations in ownership, but more importantly, if "
529 "because less visibly, on the concentration of power produced by a radical "
530 "change in the effective scope of the law. The law is changing; that change "
531 "is altering the way our culture gets made; that change should worry "
532 "you—whether or not you care about the Internet, and whether you're on "
533 "Safire's left or on his right."
536 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
537 #: freeculture.xml:437
539 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">The inspiration</emphasis> for the title and for "
540 "much of the argument of this book comes from the work of Richard Stallman "
541 "and the Free Software Foundation. Indeed, as I reread Stallman's own work, "
542 "especially the essays in <citetitle>Free Software, Free Society</citetitle>, "
543 "I realize that all of the theoretical insights I develop here are insights "
544 "Stallman described decades ago. One could thus well argue that this work is "
545 "<quote>merely</quote> derivative."
549 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
550 #: freeculture.xml:446
552 "I accept that criticism, if indeed it is a criticism. The work of a lawyer "
553 "is always derivative, and I mean to do nothing more in this book than to "
554 "remind a culture about a tradition that has always been its own. Like "
555 "Stallman, I defend that tradition on the basis of values. Like Stallman, I "
556 "believe those are the values of freedom. And like Stallman, I believe those "
557 "are values of our past that will need to be defended in our future. A free "
558 "culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the "
559 "path we are on right now. Like Stallman's arguments for free software, an "
560 "argument for free culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and "
561 "even harder to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; "
562 "it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without "
563 "property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not "
564 "freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here."
567 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
568 #: freeculture.xml:464
570 "Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between "
571 "anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with "
572 "property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced "
573 "by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes "
574 "feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property "
575 "rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is "
576 "against that extremism that this book is written."
579 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
580 #: freeculture.xml:479
584 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
585 #: freeculture.xml:480 freeculture.xml:580 freeculture.xml:1011
586 msgid "Wright brothers"
589 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
590 #: freeculture.xml:482
592 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">On December 17</emphasis>, 1903, on a windy North "
593 "Carolina beach for just shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers "
594 "demonstrated that a heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle could fly. The "
595 "moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost "
596 "immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology "
597 "of manned flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it."
600 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
601 #: freeculture.xml:489
602 msgid "air traffic, land ownership vs."
605 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
606 #: freeculture.xml:490 freeculture.xml:14108
607 msgid "land ownership, air traffic and"
610 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
611 #: freeculture.xml:491 freeculture.xml:14109
612 msgid "property rights"
615 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
616 #: freeculture.xml:491 freeculture.xml:14109
617 msgid "air traffic vs."
620 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
621 #: freeculture.xml:497
623 "St. George Tucker, <citetitle>Blackstone's Commentaries</citetitle> 3 (South "
624 "Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1969), 18."
627 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
628 #: freeculture.xml:493
630 "At the time the Wright brothers invented the airplane, American law held "
631 "that a property owner presumptively owned not just the surface of his land, "
632 "but all the land below, down to the center of the earth, and all the space "
633 "above, to <quote>an indefinite extent, upwards.</quote><placeholder "
634 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> For many years, scholars had puzzled about how "
635 "best to interpret the idea that rights in land ran to the heavens. Did that "
636 "mean that you owned the stars? Could you prosecute geese for their willful "
637 "and regular trespass?"
640 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
641 #: freeculture.xml:507
643 "Then came airplanes, and for the first time, this principle of American "
644 "law—deep within the foundations of our tradition, and acknowledged by "
645 "the most important legal thinkers of our past—mattered. If my land "
646 "reaches to the heavens, what happens when United flies over my field? Do I "
647 "have the right to banish it from my property? Am I allowed to enter into an "
648 "exclusive license with Delta Airlines? Could we set up an auction to decide "
649 "how much these rights are worth?"
652 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
653 #: freeculture.xml:515 freeculture.xml:528 freeculture.xml:559 freeculture.xml:578 freeculture.xml:992 freeculture.xml:1009 freeculture.xml:1057 freeculture.xml:9027 freeculture.xml:12483 freeculture.xml:13218
654 msgid "Causby, Thomas Lee"
657 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
658 #: freeculture.xml:516 freeculture.xml:529 freeculture.xml:560 freeculture.xml:579 freeculture.xml:993 freeculture.xml:1010 freeculture.xml:1058 freeculture.xml:9028 freeculture.xml:12484 freeculture.xml:13219
659 msgid "Causby, Tinie"
662 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
663 #: freeculture.xml:518
665 "In 1945, these questions became a federal case. When North Carolina farmers "
666 "Thomas Lee and Tinie Causby started losing chickens because of low-flying "
667 "military aircraft (the terrified chickens apparently flew into the barn "
668 "walls and died), the Causbys filed a lawsuit saying that the government was "
669 "trespassing on their land. The airplanes, of course, never touched the "
670 "surface of the Causbys' land. But if, as Blackstone, Kent, and Coke had "
671 "said, their land reached to <quote>an indefinite extent, upwards,</quote> "
672 "then the government was trespassing on their property, and the Causbys "
676 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
677 #: freeculture.xml:531
679 "The Supreme Court agreed to hear the Causbys' case. Congress had declared "
680 "the airways public, but if one's property really extended to the heavens, "
681 "then Congress's declaration could well have been an unconstitutional "
682 "<quote>taking</quote> of property without compensation. The Court "
683 "acknowledged that <quote>it is ancient doctrine that common law ownership of "
684 "the land extended to the periphery of the universe.</quote> But Justice "
685 "Douglas had no patience for ancient doctrine. In a single paragraph, "
686 "hundreds of years of property law were erased. As he wrote for the Court,"
689 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
690 #: freeculture.xml:551
692 "United States v. Causby, U.S. 328 (1946): 256, 261. The Court did find that "
693 "there could be a <quote>taking</quote> if the government's use of its land "
694 "effectively destroyed the value of the Causbys' land. This example was "
695 "suggested to me by Keith Aoki's wonderful piece, <quote>(Intellectual) "
696 "Property and Sovereignty: Notes Toward a Cultural Geography of "
697 "Authorship,</quote> <citetitle>Stanford Law Review</citetitle> 48 (1996): "
698 "1293, 1333. See also Paul Goldstein, <citetitle>Real Property</citetitle> "
699 "(Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1984), 1112–13. <placeholder "
700 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
703 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
704 #: freeculture.xml:542
706 "[The] doctrine has no place in the modern world. The air is a public "
707 "highway, as Congress has declared. Were that not true, every "
708 "transcontinental flight would subject the operator to countless trespass "
709 "suits. Common sense revolts at the idea. To recognize such private claims to "
710 "the airspace would clog these highways, seriously interfere with their "
711 "control and development in the public interest, and transfer into private "
712 "ownership that to which only the public has a just claim.<placeholder "
713 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
716 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
717 #: freeculture.xml:565
718 msgid "<quote>Common sense revolts at the idea.</quote>"
722 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
723 #: freeculture.xml:568
725 "This is how the law usually works. Not often this abruptly or impatiently, "
726 "but eventually, this is how it works. It was Douglas's style not to "
727 "dither. Other justices would have blathered on for pages to reach the "
728 "conclusion that Douglas holds in a single line: <quote>Common sense revolts "
729 "at the idea.</quote> But whether it takes pages or a few words, it is the "
730 "special genius of a common law system, as ours is, that the law adjusts to "
731 "the technologies of the time. And as it adjusts, it changes. Ideas that were "
732 "as solid as rock in one age crumble in another."
735 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
736 #: freeculture.xml:582
738 "Or at least, this is how things happen when there's no one powerful on the "
739 "other side of the change. The Causbys were just farmers. And though there "
740 "were no doubt many like them who were upset by the growing traffic in the "
741 "air (though one hopes not many chickens flew themselves into walls), the "
742 "Causbys of the world would find it very hard to unite and stop the idea, and "
743 "the technology, that the Wright brothers had birthed. The Wright brothers "
744 "spat airplanes into the technological meme pool; the idea then spread like a "
745 "virus in a chicken coop; farmers like the Causbys found themselves "
746 "surrounded by <quote>what seemed reasonable</quote> given the technology "
747 "that the Wrights had produced. They could stand on their farms, dead "
748 "chickens in hand, and shake their fists at these newfangled technologies all "
749 "they wanted. They could call their representatives or even file a "
750 "lawsuit. But in the end, the force of what seems <quote>obvious</quote> to "
751 "everyone else—the power of <quote>common sense</quote>—would "
752 "prevail. Their <quote>private interest</quote> would not be allowed to "
753 "defeat an obvious public gain."
756 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
757 #: freeculture.xml:602 freeculture.xml:9035 freeculture.xml:9690
758 msgid "Armstrong, Edwin Howard"
761 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
762 #: freeculture.xml:603
763 msgid "Bell, Alexander Graham"
766 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
767 #: freeculture.xml:604
768 msgid "Edison, Thomas"
771 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
772 #: freeculture.xml:605
773 msgid "Faraday, Michael"
777 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
778 #: freeculture.xml:607
780 "<emphasis role='strong'>Edwin Howard Armstrong</emphasis> is one of "
781 "America's forgotten inventor geniuses. He came to the great American "
782 "inventor scene just after the titans Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham "
783 "Bell. But his work in the area of radio technology was perhaps the most "
784 "important of any single inventor in the first fifty years of radio. He was "
785 "better educated than Michael Faraday, who as a bookbinder's apprentice had "
786 "discovered electric induction in 1831. But he had the same intuition about "
787 "how the world of radio worked, and on at least three occasions, Armstrong "
788 "invented profoundly important technologies that advanced our understanding "
792 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
793 #: freeculture.xml:620
795 "On the day after Christmas, 1933, four patents were issued to Armstrong for "
796 "his most significant invention—FM radio. Until then, consumer radio "
797 "had been amplitude-modulated (AM) radio. The theorists of the day had said "
798 "that frequency-modulated (FM) radio could never work. They were right about "
799 "FM radio in a narrow band of spectrum. But Armstrong discovered that "
800 "frequency-modulated radio in a wide band of spectrum would deliver an "
801 "astonishing fidelity of sound, with much less transmitter power and static."
804 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
805 #: freeculture.xml:630
807 "On November 5, 1935, he demonstrated the technology at a meeting of the "
808 "Institute of Radio Engineers at the Empire State Building in New York "
809 "City. He tuned his radio dial across a range of AM stations, until the radio "
810 "locked on a broadcast that he had arranged from seventeen miles away. The "
811 "radio fell totally silent, as if dead, and then with a clarity no one else "
812 "in that room had ever heard from an electrical device, it produced the sound "
813 "of an announcer's voice: <quote>This is amateur station W2AG at Yonkers, New "
814 "York, operating on frequency modulation at two and a half meters.</quote>"
817 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
818 #: freeculture.xml:641
819 msgid "The audience was hearing something no one had thought possible:"
822 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
823 #: freeculture.xml:652
825 "Lawrence Lessing, <citetitle>Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard "
826 "Armstrong</citetitle> (Philadelphia: J. B. Lipincott Company, 1956), 209."
829 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
830 #: freeculture.xml:645
832 "A glass of water was poured before the microphone in Yonkers; it sounded "
833 "like a glass of water being poured. … A paper was crumpled and torn; "
834 "it sounded like paper and not like a crackling forest fire. … Sousa "
835 "marches were played from records and a piano solo and guitar number were "
836 "performed. … The music was projected with a live-ness rarely if ever "
837 "heard before from a radio <quote>music box.</quote><placeholder "
838 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
842 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
843 #: freeculture.xml:658
845 "As our own common sense tells us, Armstrong had discovered a vastly superior "
846 "radio technology. But at the time of his invention, Armstrong was working "
847 "for RCA. RCA was the dominant player in the then dominant AM radio "
848 "market. By 1935, there were a thousand radio stations across the United "
849 "States, but the stations in large cities were all owned by a handful of "
853 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
854 #: freeculture.xml:666 freeculture.xml:693
855 msgid "Sarnoff, David"
858 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
859 #: freeculture.xml:668
861 "RCA's president, David Sarnoff, a friend of Armstrong's, was eager that "
862 "Armstrong discover a way to remove static from AM radio. So Sarnoff was "
863 "quite excited when Armstrong told him he had a device that removed static "
864 "from <quote>radio.</quote> But when Armstrong demonstrated his invention, "
865 "Sarnoff was not pleased."
868 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
869 #: freeculture.xml:679
871 "See <quote>Saints: The Heroes and Geniuses of the Electronic Era,</quote> "
872 "First Electronic Church of America, at www.webstationone.com/fecha, "
873 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #1</ulink>."
876 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
877 #: freeculture.xml:676
879 "I thought Armstrong would invent some kind of a filter to remove static from "
880 "our AM radio. I didn't think he'd start a revolution— start up a whole "
881 "damn new industry to compete with RCA.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
885 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
886 #: freeculture.xml:687
887 msgid "Lessing, Lawrence"
890 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
891 #: freeculture.xml:689
893 "Armstrong's invention threatened RCA's AM empire, so the company launched a "
894 "campaign to smother FM radio. While FM may have been a superior technology, "
895 "Sarnoff was a superior tactician. As one author described, <placeholder "
896 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
899 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
900 #: freeculture.xml:702
901 msgid "Lessing, 226."
904 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
905 #: freeculture.xml:697
907 "The forces for FM, largely engineering, could not overcome the weight of "
908 "strategy devised by the sales, patent, and legal offices to subdue this "
909 "threat to corporate position. For FM, if allowed to develop unrestrained, "
910 "posed … a complete reordering of radio power … and the "
911 "eventual overthrow of the carefully restricted AM system on which RCA had "
912 "grown to power.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
915 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
916 #: freeculture.xml:707
918 "RCA at first kept the technology in house, insisting that further tests were "
919 "needed. When, after two years of testing, Armstrong grew impatient, RCA "
920 "began to use its power with the government to stall FM radio's deployment "
921 "generally. In 1936, RCA hired the former head of the FCC and assigned him "
922 "the task of assuring that the FCC assign spectrum in a way that would "
923 "castrate FM—principally by moving FM radio to a different band of "
924 "spectrum. At first, these efforts failed. But when Armstrong and the nation "
925 "were distracted by World War II, RCA's work began to be more "
926 "successful. Soon after the war ended, the FCC announced a set of policies "
927 "that would have one clear effect: FM radio would be crippled. As Lawrence "
928 "Lessing described it,"
931 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
932 #: freeculture.xml:726
933 msgid "Lessing, 256."
936 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
937 #: freeculture.xml:722
939 "The series of body blows that FM radio received right after the war, in a "
940 "series of rulings manipulated through the FCC by the big radio interests, "
941 "were almost incredible in their force and deviousness.<placeholder "
942 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
945 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
946 #: freeculture.xml:731
950 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
951 #: freeculture.xml:733
953 "To make room in the spectrum for RCA's latest gamble, television, FM radio "
954 "users were to be moved to a totally new spectrum band. The power of FM radio "
955 "stations was also cut, meaning FM could no longer be used to beam programs "
956 "from one part of the country to another. (This change was strongly "
957 "supported by AT&T, because the loss of FM relaying stations would mean "
958 "radio stations would have to buy wired links from AT&T.) The spread of "
959 "FM radio was thus choked, at least temporarily."
962 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
963 #: freeculture.xml:743
965 "Armstrong resisted RCA's efforts. In response, RCA resisted Armstrong's "
966 "patents. After incorporating FM technology into the emerging standard for "
967 "television, RCA declared the patents invalid—baselessly, and almost "
968 "fifteen years after they were issued. It thus refused to pay him "
969 "royalties. For six years, Armstrong fought an expensive war of litigation to "
970 "defend the patents. Finally, just as the patents expired, RCA offered a "
971 "settlement so low that it would not even cover Armstrong's lawyers' "
972 "fees. Defeated, broken, and now broke, in 1954 Armstrong wrote a short note "
973 "to his wife and then stepped out of a thirteenth-story window to his death."
977 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
978 #: freeculture.xml:756
980 "This is how the law sometimes works. Not often this tragically, and rarely "
981 "with heroic drama, but sometimes, this is how it works. From the beginning, "
982 "government and government agencies have been subject to capture. They are "
983 "more likely captured when a powerful interest is threatened by either a "
984 "legal or technical change. That powerful interest too often exerts its "
985 "influence within the government to get the government to protect it. The "
986 "rhetoric of this protection is of course always public spirited; the reality "
987 "is something different. Ideas that were as solid as rock in one age, but "
988 "that, left to themselves, would crumble in another, are sustained through "
989 "this subtle corruption of our political process. RCA had what the Causbys "
990 "did not: the power to stifle the effect of technological change."
993 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
994 #: freeculture.xml:778
996 "Amanda Lenhart, <quote>The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A New Look at "
997 "Internet Access and the Digital Divide,</quote> Pew Internet and American "
998 "Life Project, 15 April 2003: 6, available at <ulink "
999 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #2</ulink>."
1002 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1003 #: freeculture.xml:772
1005 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">There's no</emphasis> single inventor of the "
1006 "Internet. Nor is there any good date upon which to mark its birth. Yet in a "
1007 "very short time, the Internet has become part of ordinary American "
1008 "life. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 58 percent of "
1009 "Americans had access to the Internet in 2002, up from 49 percent two years "
1010 "before.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> That number could well "
1011 "exceed two thirds of the nation by the end of 2004."
1014 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1015 #: freeculture.xml:787
1017 "As the Internet has been integrated into ordinary life, it has changed "
1018 "things. Some of these changes are technical—the Internet has made "
1019 "communication faster, it has lowered the cost of gathering data, and so "
1020 "on. These technical changes are not the focus of this book. They are "
1021 "important. They are not well understood. But they are the sort of thing that "
1022 "would simply go away if we all just switched the Internet off. They don't "
1023 "affect people who don't use the Internet, or at least they don't affect them "
1024 "directly. They are the proper subject of a book about the Internet. But this "
1025 "is not a book about the Internet."
1028 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1029 #: freeculture.xml:798
1031 "Instead, this book is about an effect of the Internet beyond the Internet "
1032 "itself: an effect upon how culture is made. My claim is that the Internet "
1033 "has induced an important and unrecognized change in that process. That "
1034 "change will radically transform a tradition that is as old as the Republic "
1035 "itself. Most, if they recognized this change, would reject it. Yet most "
1036 "don't even see the change that the Internet has introduced."
1039 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1040 #: freeculture.xml:806
1041 msgid "Barlow, Joel"
1044 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1045 #: freeculture.xml:807
1046 msgid "Webster, Noah"
1050 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1051 #: freeculture.xml:809
1053 "We can glimpse a sense of this change by distinguishing between commercial "
1054 "and noncommercial culture, and by mapping the law's regulation of each. By "
1055 "<quote>commercial culture</quote> I mean that part of our culture that is "
1056 "produced and sold or produced to be sold. By <quote>noncommercial "
1057 "culture</quote> I mean all the rest. When old men sat around parks or on "
1058 "street corners telling stories that kids and others consumed, that was "
1059 "noncommercial culture. When Noah Webster published his "
1060 "<quote>Reader,</quote> or Joel Barlow his poetry, that was commercial "
1064 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1065 #: freeculture.xml:821
1067 "At the beginning of our history, and for just about the whole of our "
1068 "tradition, noncommercial culture was essentially unregulated. Of course, if "
1069 "your stories were lewd, or if your song disturbed the peace, then the law "
1070 "might intervene. But the law was never directly concerned with the creation "
1071 "or spread of this form of culture, and it left this culture "
1072 "<quote>free.</quote> The ordinary ways in which ordinary individuals shared "
1073 "and transformed their culture—telling stories, reenacting scenes from "
1074 "plays or TV, participating in fan clubs, sharing music, making "
1075 "tapes—were left alone by the law."
1078 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1079 #: freeculture.xml:846 freeculture.xml:1883 freeculture.xml:1894
1080 msgid "Brandeis, Louis D."
1083 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1084 #: freeculture.xml:838
1086 "This is not the only purpose of copyright, though it is the overwhelmingly "
1087 "primary purpose of the copyright established in the federal constitution. "
1088 "State copyright law historically protected not just the commercial interest "
1089 "in publication, but also a privacy interest. By granting authors the "
1090 "exclusive right to first publication, state copyright law gave authors the "
1091 "power to control the spread of facts about them. See Samuel D. Warren and "
1092 "Louis D. Brandeis, <quote>The Right to Privacy,</quote> Harvard Law Review 4 "
1093 "(1890): 193, 198–200. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
1096 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1097 #: freeculture.xml:832
1099 "The focus of the law was on commercial creativity. At first slightly, then "
1100 "quite extensively, the law protected the incentives of creators by granting "
1101 "them exclusive rights to their creative work, so that they could sell those "
1102 "exclusive rights in a commercial marketplace.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
1103 "id=\"0\"/> This is also, of course, an important part of creativity and "
1104 "culture, and it has become an increasingly important part in America. But in "
1105 "no sense was it dominant within our tradition. It was instead just one part, "
1106 "a controlled part, balanced with the free."
1109 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1110 #: freeculture.xml:853
1111 msgid "free culture"
1114 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
1115 #: freeculture.xml:853
1116 msgid "permission culture vs."
1119 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1120 #: freeculture.xml:854
1121 msgid "permission culture"
1124 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
1125 #: freeculture.xml:854
1126 msgid "free culture vs."
1129 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1130 #: freeculture.xml:860 freeculture.xml:9583
1131 msgid "Litman, Jessica"
1134 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1135 #: freeculture.xml:858
1137 "See Jessica Litman, <citetitle>Digital Copyright</citetitle> (New York: "
1138 "Prometheus Books, 2001), ch. 13. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
1141 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1142 #: freeculture.xml:856
1144 "This rough divide between the free and the controlled has now been "
1145 "erased.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The Internet has set the "
1146 "stage for this erasure and, pushed by big media, the law has now affected "
1147 "it. For the first time in our tradition, the ordinary ways in which "
1148 "individuals create and share culture fall within the reach of the regulation "
1149 "of the law, which has expanded to draw within its control a vast amount of "
1150 "culture and creativity that it never reached before. The technology that "
1151 "preserved the balance of our history—between uses of our culture that "
1152 "were free and uses of our culture that were only upon permission—has "
1153 "been undone. The consequence is that we are less and less a free culture, "
1154 "more and more a permission culture."
1157 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1158 #: freeculture.xml:875
1160 "This change gets justified as necessary to protect commercial creativity. "
1161 "And indeed, protectionism is precisely its motivation. But the protectionism "
1162 "that justifies the changes that I will describe below is not the limited and "
1163 "balanced sort that has defined the law in the past. This is not a "
1164 "protectionism to protect artists. It is instead a protectionism to protect "
1165 "certain forms of business. Corporations threatened by the potential of the "
1166 "Internet to change the way both commercial and noncommercial culture are "
1167 "made and shared have united to induce lawmakers to use the law to protect "
1168 "them. It is the story of RCA and Armstrong; it is the dream of the Causbys."
1171 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1172 #: freeculture.xml:888
1174 "For the Internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility for many to "
1175 "participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that "
1176 "reaches far beyond local boundaries. That power has changed the marketplace "
1177 "for making and cultivating culture generally, and that change in turn "
1178 "threatens established content industries. The Internet is thus to the "
1179 "industries that built and distributed content in the twentieth century what "
1180 "FM radio was to AM radio, or what the truck was to the railroad industry of "
1181 "the nineteenth century: the beginning of the end, or at least a substantial "
1182 "transformation. Digital technologies, tied to the Internet, could produce a "
1183 "vastly more competitive and vibrant market for building and cultivating "
1184 "culture; that market could include a much wider and more diverse range of "
1185 "creators; those creators could produce and distribute a much more vibrant "
1186 "range of creativity; and depending upon a few important factors, those "
1187 "creators could earn more on average from this system than creators do "
1188 "today—all so long as the RCAs of our day don't use the law to protect "
1189 "themselves against this competition."
1192 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1193 #: freeculture.xml:907
1195 "Yet, as I argue in the pages that follow, that is precisely what is "
1196 "happening in our culture today. These modern-day equivalents of the early "
1197 "twentieth-century radio or nineteenth-century railroads are using their "
1198 "power to get the law to protect them against this new, more efficient, more "
1199 "vibrant technology for building culture. They are succeeding in their plan "
1200 "to remake the Internet before the Internet remakes them."
1203 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1204 #: freeculture.xml:915
1205 msgid "Valenti, Jack"
1208 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
1209 #: freeculture.xml:915
1210 msgid "on creative property rights"
1213 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1214 #: freeculture.xml:925
1216 "Amy Harmon, <quote>Black Hawk Download: Moving Beyond Music, Pirates Use New "
1217 "Tools to Turn the Net into an Illicit Video Club,</quote> <citetitle>New "
1218 "York Times</citetitle>, 17 January 2002."
1221 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1222 #: freeculture.xml:917
1224 "It doesn't seem this way to many. The battles over copyright and the "
1225 "Internet seem remote to most. To the few who follow them, they seem mainly "
1226 "about a much simpler brace of questions—whether <quote>piracy</quote> "
1227 "will be permitted, and whether <quote>property</quote> will be "
1228 "protected. The <quote>war</quote> that has been waged against the "
1229 "technologies of the Internet—what Motion Picture Association of "
1230 "America (MPAA) president Jack Valenti calls his <quote>own terrorist "
1231 "war</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>—has been framed "
1232 "as a battle about the rule of law and respect for property. To know which "
1233 "side to take in this war, most think that we need only decide whether we're "
1234 "for property or against it."
1237 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1238 #: freeculture.xml:934
1240 "If those really were the choices, then I would be with Jack Valenti and the "
1241 "content industry. I, too, am a believer in property, and especially in the "
1242 "importance of what Mr. Valenti nicely calls <quote>creative "
1243 "property.</quote> I believe that <quote>piracy</quote> is wrong, and that "
1244 "the law, properly tuned, should punish <quote>piracy,</quote> whether on or "
1248 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1249 #: freeculture.xml:942
1251 "But those simple beliefs mask a much more fundamental question and a much "
1252 "more dramatic change. My fear is that unless we come to see this change, the "
1253 "war to rid the world of Internet <quote>pirates</quote> will also rid our "
1254 "culture of values that have been integral to our tradition from the start."
1257 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1258 #: freeculture.xml:956 freeculture.xml:14507
1259 msgid "Netanel, Neil Weinstock"
1262 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1263 #: freeculture.xml:954
1265 "Neil W. Netanel, <quote>Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society,</quote> "
1266 "<citetitle>Yale Law Journal</citetitle> 106 (1996): 283. <placeholder "
1267 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
1270 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1271 #: freeculture.xml:948
1273 "These values built a tradition that, for at least the first 180 years of our "
1274 "Republic, guaranteed creators the right to build freely upon their past, and "
1275 "protected creators and innovators from either state or private control. The "
1276 "First Amendment protected creators against state control. And as Professor "
1277 "Neil Netanel powerfully argues,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
1278 "copyright law, properly balanced, protected creators against private "
1279 "control. Our tradition was thus neither Soviet nor the tradition of "
1280 "patrons. It instead carved out a wide berth within which creators could "
1281 "cultivate and extend our culture."
1284 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1285 #: freeculture.xml:964
1287 "Yet the law's response to the Internet, when tied to changes in the "
1288 "technology of the Internet itself, has massively increased the effective "
1289 "regulation of creativity in America. To build upon or critique the culture "
1290 "around us one must ask, Oliver Twist–like, for permission first. "
1291 "Permission is, of course, often granted—but it is not often granted to "
1292 "the critical or the independent. We have built a kind of cultural nobility; "
1293 "those within the noble class live easily; those outside it don't. But it is "
1294 "nobility of any form that is alien to our tradition."
1297 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1298 #: freeculture.xml:976
1300 "The story that follows is about this war. Is it not about the "
1301 "<quote>centrality of technology</quote> to ordinary life. I don't believe in "
1302 "gods, digital or otherwise. Nor is it an effort to demonize any individual "
1303 "or group, for neither do I believe in a devil, corporate or otherwise. It is "
1304 "not a morality tale. Nor is it a call to jihad against an industry."
1307 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1308 #: freeculture.xml:984
1310 "It is instead an effort to understand a hopelessly destructive war inspired "
1311 "by the technologies of the Internet but reaching far beyond its code. And by "
1312 "understanding this battle, it is an effort to map peace. There is no good "
1313 "reason for the current struggle around Internet technologies to "
1314 "continue. There will be great harm to our tradition and culture if it is "
1315 "allowed to continue unchecked. We must come to understand the source of this "
1316 "war. We must resolve it soon."
1319 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1320 #: freeculture.xml:995
1322 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">Like the Causbys'</emphasis> battle, this war is, "
1323 "in part, about <quote>property.</quote> The property of this war is not as "
1324 "tangible as the Causbys', and no innocent chicken has yet to lose its "
1325 "life. Yet the ideas surrounding this <quote>property</quote> are as obvious "
1326 "to most as the Causbys' claim about the sacredness of their farm was to "
1327 "them. We are the Causbys. Most of us take for granted the extraordinarily "
1328 "powerful claims that the owners of <quote>intellectual property</quote> now "
1329 "assert. Most of us, like the Causbys, treat these claims as obvious. And "
1330 "hence we, like the Causbys, object when a new technology interferes with "
1331 "this property. It is as plain to us as it was to them that the new "
1332 "technologies of the Internet are <quote>trespassing</quote> upon legitimate "
1333 "claims of <quote>property.</quote> It is as plain to us as it was to them "
1334 "that the law should intervene to stop this trespass."
1338 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1339 #: freeculture.xml:1013
1341 "And thus, when geeks and technologists defend their Armstrong or Wright "
1342 "brothers technology, most of us are simply unsympathetic. Common sense does "
1343 "not revolt. Unlike in the case of the unlucky Causbys, common sense is on "
1344 "the side of the property owners in this war. Unlike the lucky Wright "
1345 "brothers, the Internet has not inspired a revolution on its side."
1348 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1349 #: freeculture.xml:1024
1351 "My hope is to push this common sense along. I have become increasingly "
1352 "amazed by the power of this idea of intellectual property and, more "
1353 "importantly, its power to disable critical thought by policy makers and "
1354 "citizens. There has never been a time in our history when more of our "
1355 "<quote>culture</quote> was as <quote>owned</quote> as it is now. And yet "
1356 "there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the "
1357 "<emphasis>uses</emphasis> of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as "
1361 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1362 #: freeculture.xml:1034
1364 "The puzzle is, Why? Is it because we have come to understand a truth about "
1365 "the value and importance of absolute property over ideas and culture? Is it "
1366 "because we have discovered that our tradition of rejecting such an absolute "
1370 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1371 #: freeculture.xml:1040
1373 "Or is it because the idea of absolute property over ideas and culture "
1374 "benefits the RCAs of our time and fits our own unreflective intuitions?"
1377 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1378 #: freeculture.xml:1044
1380 "Is the radical shift away from our tradition of free culture an instance of "
1381 "America correcting a mistake from its past, as we did after a bloody war "
1382 "with slavery, and as we are slowly doing with inequality? Or is the radical "
1383 "shift away from our tradition of free culture yet another example of a "
1384 "political system captured by a few powerful special interests?"
1387 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1388 #: freeculture.xml:1051
1390 "Does common sense lead to the extremes on this question because common sense "
1391 "actually believes in these extremes? Or does common sense stand silent in "
1392 "the face of these extremes because, as with Armstrong versus RCA, the more "
1393 "powerful side has ensured that it has the more powerful view?"
1397 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1398 #: freeculture.xml:1060
1400 "I don't mean to be mysterious. My own views are resolved. I believe it was "
1401 "right for common sense to revolt against the extremism of the Causbys. I "
1402 "believe it would be right for common sense to revolt against the extreme "
1403 "claims made today on behalf of <quote>intellectual property.</quote> What "
1404 "the law demands today is increasingly as silly as a sheriff arresting an "
1405 "airplane for trespass. But the consequences of this silliness will be much "
1409 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1410 #: freeculture.xml:1070
1412 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">The struggle</emphasis> that rages just now "
1413 "centers on two ideas: <quote>piracy</quote> and <quote>property.</quote> My "
1414 "aim in this book's next two parts is to explore these two ideas."
1417 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1418 #: freeculture.xml:1075
1420 "My method is not the usual method of an academic. I don't want to plunge you "
1421 "into a complex argument, buttressed with references to obscure French "
1422 "theorists—however natural that is for the weird sort we academics have "
1423 "become. Instead I begin in each part with a collection of stories that set a "
1424 "context within which these apparently simple ideas can be more fully "
1428 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1429 #: freeculture.xml:1083
1431 "The two sections set up the core claim of this book: that while the Internet "
1432 "has indeed produced something fantastic and new, our government, pushed by "
1433 "big media to respond to this <quote>something new,</quote> is destroying "
1434 "something very old. Rather than understanding the changes the Internet might "
1435 "permit, and rather than taking time to let <quote>common sense</quote> "
1436 "resolve how best to respond, we are allowing those most threatened by the "
1437 "changes to use their power to change the law—and more importantly, to "
1438 "use their power to change something fundamental about who we have always "
1442 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1443 #: freeculture.xml:1094
1445 "We allow this, I believe, not because it is right, and not because most of "
1446 "us really believe in these changes. We allow it because the interests most "
1447 "threatened are among the most powerful players in our depressingly "
1448 "compromised process of making law. This book is the story of one more "
1449 "consequence of this form of corruption—a consequence to which most of "
1450 "us remain oblivious."
1453 #. type: Content of: <book><part><title>
1454 #: freeculture.xml:1104
1455 msgid "<quote>PIRACY</quote>"
1458 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><primary>
1459 #: freeculture.xml:1107
1460 msgid "Copyright law"
1463 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><secondary>
1464 #: freeculture.xml:1107
1468 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1469 #: freeculture.xml:1108 freeculture.xml:4841
1470 msgid "Mansfield, William Murray, Lord"
1473 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><primary>
1474 #: freeculture.xml:1109
1475 msgid "music publishing"
1478 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
1479 #: freeculture.xml:1110 freeculture.xml:3041
1483 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1484 #: freeculture.xml:1112
1486 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">Since the inception</emphasis> of the law "
1487 "regulating creative property, there has been a war against "
1488 "<quote>piracy.</quote> The precise contours of this concept, "
1489 "<quote>piracy,</quote> are hard to sketch, but the animating injustice is "
1490 "easy to capture. As Lord Mansfield wrote in a case that extended the reach "
1491 "of English copyright law to include sheet music,"
1495 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
1496 #: freeculture.xml:1124
1498 "<citetitle>Bach</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Longman</citetitle>, 98 "
1499 "Eng. Rep. 1274 (1777) (Mansfield)."
1502 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><blockquote><para>
1503 #: freeculture.xml:1120
1505 "A person may use the copy by playing it, but he has no right to rob the "
1506 "author of the profit, by multiplying copies and disposing of them for his "
1507 "own use.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
1511 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1512 #: freeculture.xml:1130
1514 "Today we are in the middle of another <quote>war</quote> against "
1515 "<quote>piracy.</quote> The Internet has provoked this war. The Internet "
1516 "makes possible the efficient spread of content. Peer-to-peer (p2p) file "
1517 "sharing is among the most efficient of the efficient technologies the "
1518 "Internet enables. Using distributed intelligence, p2p systems facilitate the "
1519 "easy spread of content in a way unimagined a generation ago."
1522 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1523 #: freeculture.xml:1139
1525 "This efficiency does not respect the traditional lines of copyright. The "
1526 "network doesn't discriminate between the sharing of copyrighted and "
1527 "uncopyrighted content. Thus has there been a vast amount of sharing of "
1528 "copyrighted content. That sharing in turn has excited the war, as copyright "
1529 "owners fear the sharing will <quote>rob the author of the profit.</quote>"
1532 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1533 #: freeculture.xml:1147
1535 "The warriors have turned to the courts, to the legislatures, and "
1536 "increasingly to technology to defend their <quote>property</quote> against "
1537 "this <quote>piracy.</quote> A generation of Americans, the warriors warn, is "
1538 "being raised to believe that <quote>property</quote> should be "
1539 "<quote>free.</quote> Forget tattoos, never mind body piercing—our kids "
1540 "are becoming <emphasis>thieves</emphasis>!"
1543 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1544 #: freeculture.xml:1155
1546 "There's no doubt that <quote>piracy</quote> is wrong, and that pirates "
1547 "should be punished. But before we summon the executioners, we should put "
1548 "this notion of <quote>piracy</quote> in some context. For as the concept is "
1549 "increasingly used, at its core is an extraordinary idea that is almost "
1553 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1554 #: freeculture.xml:1161
1555 msgid "The idea goes something like this:"
1558 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><blockquote><para>
1559 #: freeculture.xml:1165
1561 "Creative work has value; whenever I use, or take, or build upon the creative "
1562 "work of others, I am taking from them something of value. Whenever I take "
1563 "something of value from someone else, I should have their permission. The "
1564 "taking of something of value from someone else without permission is "
1565 "wrong. It is a form of piracy."
1568 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><primary>
1569 #: freeculture.xml:1173
1573 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><primary>
1574 #: freeculture.xml:1174
1575 msgid "Dreyfuss, Rochelle"
1578 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><primary>
1579 #: freeculture.xml:1175
1583 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1584 #: freeculture.xml:1176 freeculture.xml:2850
1585 msgid "<quote>if value, then right</quote> theory"
1589 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
1590 #: freeculture.xml:1182
1592 "See Rochelle Dreyfuss, <quote>Expressive Genericity: Trademarks as Language "
1593 "in the Pepsi Generation,</quote> <citetitle>Notre Dame Law "
1594 "Review</citetitle> 65 (1990): 397."
1597 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1598 #: freeculture.xml:1195 freeculture.xml:6996
1599 msgid "Zittrain, Jonathan"
1602 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
1603 #: freeculture.xml:1190
1605 "Lisa Bannon, <quote>The Birds May Sing, but Campers Can't Unless They Pay "
1606 "Up,</quote> <citetitle>Wall Street Journal</citetitle>, 21 August 1996, "
1607 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #3</ulink>; "
1608 "Jonathan Zittrain, <quote>Calling Off the Copyright War: In Battle of "
1609 "Property vs. Free Speech, No One Wins,</quote> <citetitle>Boston "
1610 "Globe</citetitle>, 24 November 2002. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
1614 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1615 #: freeculture.xml:1178
1617 "This view runs deep within the current debates. It is what NYU law professor "
1618 "Rochelle Dreyfuss criticizes as the <quote>if value, then right</quote> "
1619 "theory of creative property<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
1620 "—if there is value, then someone must have a right to that value. It "
1621 "is the perspective that led a composers' rights organization, ASCAP, to sue "
1622 "the Girl Scouts for failing to pay for the songs that girls sang around Girl "
1623 "Scout campfires.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> There was "
1624 "<quote>value</quote> (the songs) so there must have been a "
1625 "<quote>right</quote>—even against the Girl Scouts."
1629 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1630 #: freeculture.xml:1201
1632 "This idea is certainly a possible understanding of how creative property "
1633 "should work. It might well be a possible design for a system of law "
1634 "protecting creative property. But the <quote>if value, then right</quote> "
1635 "theory of creative property has never been America's theory of creative "
1636 "property. It has never taken hold within our law."
1639 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1640 #: freeculture.xml:1210
1642 "Instead, in our tradition, intellectual property is an instrument. It sets "
1643 "the groundwork for a richly creative society but remains subservient to the "
1644 "value of creativity. The current debate has this turned around. We have "
1645 "become so concerned with protecting the instrument that we are losing sight "
1649 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1650 #: freeculture.xml:1217
1652 "The source of this confusion is a distinction that the law no longer takes "
1653 "care to draw—the distinction between republishing someone's work on "
1654 "the one hand and building upon or transforming that work on the "
1655 "other. Copyright law at its birth had only publishing as its concern; "
1656 "copyright law today regulates both."
1659 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1660 #: freeculture.xml:1224
1662 "Before the technologies of the Internet, this conflation didn't matter all "
1663 "that much. The technologies of publishing were expensive; that meant the "
1664 "vast majority of publishing was commercial. Commercial entities could bear "
1665 "the burden of the law—even the burden of the Byzantine complexity that "
1666 "copyright law has become. It was just one more expense of doing business."
1669 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1670 #: freeculture.xml:1231 freeculture.xml:1262
1671 msgid "Florida, Richard"
1674 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1675 #: freeculture.xml:1232 freeculture.xml:1263
1676 msgid "Rise of the Creative Class, The (Florida)"
1679 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
1680 #: freeculture.xml:1254
1682 "In <citetitle>The Rise of the Creative Class</citetitle> (New York: Basic "
1683 "Books, 2002), Richard Florida documents a shift in the nature of labor "
1684 "toward a labor of creativity. His work, however, doesn't directly address "
1685 "the legal conditions under which that creativity is enabled or stifled. I "
1686 "certainly agree with him about the importance and significance of this "
1687 "change, but I also believe the conditions under which it will be enabled are "
1688 "much more tenuous. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
1689 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
1692 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1693 #: freeculture.xml:1234
1695 "But with the birth of the Internet, this natural limit to the reach of the "
1696 "law has disappeared. The law controls not just the creativity of commercial "
1697 "creators but effectively that of anyone. Although that expansion would not "
1698 "matter much if copyright law regulated only <quote>copying,</quote> when the "
1699 "law regulates as broadly and obscurely as it does, the extension matters a "
1700 "lot. The burden of this law now vastly outweighs any original "
1701 "benefit—certainly as it affects noncommercial creativity, and "
1702 "increasingly as it affects commercial creativity as well. Thus, as we'll see "
1703 "more clearly in the chapters below, the law's role is less and less to "
1704 "support creativity, and more and more to protect certain industries against "
1705 "competition. Just at the time digital technology could unleash an "
1706 "extraordinary range of commercial and noncommercial creativity, the law "
1707 "burdens this creativity with insanely complex and vague rules and with the "
1708 "threat of obscenely severe penalties. We may be seeing, as Richard Florida "
1709 "writes, the <quote>Rise of the Creative Class.</quote><placeholder "
1710 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Unfortunately, we are also seeing an "
1711 "extraordinary rise of regulation of this creative class."
1714 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1715 #: freeculture.xml:1269
1717 "These burdens make no sense in our tradition. We should begin by "
1718 "understanding that tradition a bit more and by placing in their proper "
1719 "context the current battles about behavior labeled <quote>piracy.</quote>"
1722 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
1723 #: freeculture.xml:1277
1724 msgid "CHAPTER ONE: Creators"
1727 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1728 #: freeculture.xml:1278
1729 msgid "animated cartoons"
1732 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1733 #: freeculture.xml:1279
1734 msgid "cartoon films"
1737 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1738 #: freeculture.xml:1281
1740 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">In 1928</emphasis>, a cartoon character was "
1741 "born. An early Mickey Mouse made his debut in May of that year, in a silent "
1742 "flop called <citetitle>Plane Crazy</citetitle>. In November, in New York "
1743 "City's Colony Theater, in the first widely distributed cartoon synchronized "
1744 "with sound, <citetitle>Steamboat Willie</citetitle> brought to life the "
1745 "character that would become Mickey Mouse."
1748 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1749 #: freeculture.xml:1288
1751 "Synchronized sound had been introduced to film a year earlier in the movie "
1752 "<citetitle>The Jazz Singer</citetitle>. That success led Walt Disney to copy "
1753 "the technique and mix sound with cartoons. No one knew whether it would work "
1754 "or, if it did work, whether it would win an audience. But when Disney ran a "
1755 "test in the summer of 1928, the results were unambiguous. As Disney "
1756 "describes that first experiment,"
1760 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
1761 #: freeculture.xml:1297
1763 "A couple of my boys could read music, and one of them could play a mouth "
1764 "organ. We put them in a room where they could not see the screen and "
1765 "arranged to pipe their sound into the room where our wives and friends were "
1766 "going to see the picture."
1769 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
1770 #: freeculture.xml:1304
1772 "The boys worked from a music and sound-effects score. After several false "
1773 "starts, sound and action got off with the gun. The mouth organist played the "
1774 "tune, the rest of us in the sound department bammed tin pans and blew slide "
1775 "whistles on the beat. The synchronization was pretty close."
1779 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
1780 #: freeculture.xml:1317
1782 "Leonard Maltin, <citetitle>Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated "
1783 "Cartoons</citetitle> (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 34–35."
1786 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
1787 #: freeculture.xml:1311
1789 "The effect on our little audience was nothing less than electric. They "
1790 "responded almost instinctively to this union of sound and motion. I thought "
1791 "they were kidding me. So they put me in the audience and ran the action "
1792 "again. It was terrible, but it was wonderful! And it was something "
1793 "new!<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
1796 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1797 #: freeculture.xml:1322
1801 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1802 #: freeculture.xml:1324
1804 "Disney's then partner, and one of animation's most extraordinary talents, Ub "
1805 "Iwerks, put it more strongly: <quote>I have never been so thrilled in my "
1806 "life. Nothing since has ever equaled it.</quote>"
1809 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1810 #: freeculture.xml:1329
1812 "Disney had created something very new, based upon something relatively "
1813 "new. Synchronized sound brought life to a form of creativity that had "
1814 "rarely—except in Disney's hands—been anything more than filler "
1815 "for other films. Throughout animation's early history, it was Disney's "
1816 "invention that set the standard that others struggled to match. And quite "
1817 "often, Disney's great genius, his spark of creativity, was built upon the "
1821 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1822 #: freeculture.xml:1338
1824 "This much is familiar. What you might not know is that 1928 also marks "
1825 "another important transition. In that year, a comic (as opposed to cartoon) "
1826 "genius created his last independently produced silent film. That genius was "
1827 "Buster Keaton. The film was <citetitle>Steamboat Bill, Jr</citetitle>."
1830 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1831 #: freeculture.xml:1344
1833 "Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in 1895. In the era of silent film, "
1834 "he had mastered using broad physical comedy as a way to spark uncontrollable "
1835 "laughter from his audience. <citetitle>Steamboat Bill, Jr</citetitle>. was a "
1836 "classic of this form, famous among film buffs for its incredible stunts. "
1837 "The film was classic Keaton—wildly popular and among the best of its "
1842 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1843 #: freeculture.xml:1358
1845 "I am grateful to David Gerstein and his careful history, described at <ulink "
1846 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #4</ulink>. According to Dave "
1847 "Smith of the Disney Archives, Disney paid royalties to use the music for "
1848 "five songs in <citetitle>Steamboat Willie</citetitle>: <quote>Steamboat "
1849 "Bill,</quote> <quote>The Simpleton</quote> (Delille), <quote>Mischief "
1850 "Makers</quote> (Carbonara), <quote>Joyful Hurry No. 1</quote> (Baron), and "
1851 "<quote>Gawky Rube</quote> (Lakay). A sixth song, <quote>The Turkey in the "
1852 "Straw,</quote> was already in the public domain. Letter from David Smith to "
1853 "Harry Surden, 10 July 2003, on file with author."
1856 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1857 #: freeculture.xml:1352
1859 "<citetitle>Steamboat Bill, Jr</citetitle>. appeared before Disney's cartoon "
1860 "Steamboat Willie. The coincidence of titles is not coincidental. Steamboat "
1861 "Willie is a direct cartoon parody of Steamboat Bill,<placeholder "
1862 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> and both are built upon a common song as a "
1863 "source. It is not just from the invention of synchronized sound in "
1864 "<citetitle>The Jazz Singer</citetitle> that we get <citetitle>Steamboat "
1865 "Willie</citetitle>. It is also from Buster Keaton's invention of Steamboat "
1866 "Bill, Jr., itself inspired by the song <quote>Steamboat Bill,</quote> that "
1867 "we get Steamboat Willie, and then from Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse."
1871 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1872 #: freeculture.xml:1379
1874 "He was also a fan of the public domain. See Chris Sprigman, <quote>The Mouse "
1875 "that Ate the Public Domain,</quote> Findlaw, 5 March 2002, at <ulink "
1876 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #5</ulink>."
1879 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1880 #: freeculture.xml:1375
1882 "This <quote>borrowing</quote> was nothing unique, either for Disney or for "
1883 "the industry. Disney was always parroting the feature-length mainstream "
1884 "films of his day.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> So did many "
1885 "others. Early cartoons are filled with knockoffs—slight variations on "
1886 "winning themes; retellings of ancient stories. The key to success was the "
1887 "brilliance of the differences. With Disney, it was sound that gave his "
1888 "animation its spark. Later, it was the quality of his work relative to the "
1889 "production-line cartoons with which he competed. Yet these additions were "
1890 "built upon a base that was borrowed. Disney added to the work of others "
1891 "before him, creating something new out of something just barely old."
1894 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1895 #: freeculture.xml:1394
1897 "Sometimes this borrowing was slight. Sometimes it was significant. Think "
1898 "about the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. If you're as oblivious as I "
1899 "was, you're likely to think that these tales are happy, sweet stories, "
1900 "appropriate for any child at bedtime. In fact, the Grimm fairy tales are, "
1901 "well, for us, grim. It is a rare and perhaps overly ambitious parent who "
1902 "would dare to read these bloody, moralistic stories to his or her child, at "
1903 "bedtime or anytime."
1907 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1908 #: freeculture.xml:1403
1910 "Disney took these stories and retold them in a way that carried them into a "
1911 "new age. He animated the stories, with both characters and light. Without "
1912 "removing the elements of fear and danger altogether, he made funny what was "
1913 "dark and injected a genuine emotion of compassion where before there was "
1914 "fear. And not just with the work of the Brothers Grimm. Indeed, the catalog "
1915 "of Disney work drawing upon the work of others is astonishing when set "
1916 "together: <citetitle>Snow White</citetitle> (1937), "
1917 "<citetitle>Fantasia</citetitle> (1940), <citetitle>Pinocchio</citetitle> "
1918 "(1940), <citetitle>Dumbo</citetitle> (1941), <citetitle>Bambi</citetitle> "
1919 "(1942), <citetitle>Song of the South</citetitle> (1946), "
1920 "<citetitle>Cinderella</citetitle> (1950), <citetitle>Alice in "
1921 "Wonderland</citetitle> (1951), <citetitle>Robin Hood</citetitle> (1952), "
1922 "<citetitle>Peter Pan</citetitle> (1953), <citetitle>Lady and the "
1923 "Tramp</citetitle> (1955), <citetitle>Mulan</citetitle> (1998), "
1924 "<citetitle>Sleeping Beauty</citetitle> (1959), <citetitle>101 "
1925 "Dalmatians</citetitle> (1961), <citetitle>The Sword in the Stone</citetitle> "
1926 "(1963), and <citetitle>The Jungle Book</citetitle> (1967)—not to "
1927 "mention a recent example that we should perhaps quickly forget, "
1928 "<citetitle>Treasure Planet</citetitle> (2003). In all of these cases, Disney "
1929 "(or Disney, Inc.) ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that "
1930 "creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into "
1931 "the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn."
1934 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1935 #: freeculture.xml:1426
1937 "This is a kind of creativity. It is a creativity that we should remember and "
1938 "celebrate. There are some who would say that there is no creativity except "
1939 "this kind. We don't need to go that far to recognize its importance. We "
1940 "could call this <quote>Disney creativity,</quote> though that would be a bit "
1941 "misleading. It is, more precisely, <quote>Walt Disney "
1942 "creativity</quote>—a form of expression and genius that builds upon "
1943 "the culture around us and makes it something different."
1947 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1948 #: freeculture.xml:1440
1950 "Until 1976, copyright law granted an author the possibility of two terms: an "
1951 "initial term and a renewal term. I have calculated the "
1952 "<quote>average</quote> term by determining the weighted average of total "
1953 "registrations for any particular year, and the proportion renewing. Thus, if "
1954 "100 copyrights are registered in year 1, and only 15 are renewed, and the "
1955 "renewal term is 28 years, then the average term is 32.2 years. For the "
1956 "renewal data and other relevant data, see the Web site associated with this "
1957 "book, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
1961 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1962 #: freeculture.xml:1434
1964 "In 1928, the culture that Disney was free to draw upon was relatively "
1965 "fresh. The public domain in 1928 was not very old and was therefore quite "
1966 "vibrant. The average term of copyright was just around thirty "
1967 "years—for that minority of creative work that was in fact "
1968 "copyrighted.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> That means that for "
1969 "thirty years, on average, the authors or copyright holders of a creative "
1970 "work had an <quote>exclusive right</quote> to control certain uses of the "
1971 "work. To use this copyrighted work in limited ways required the permission "
1972 "of the copyright owner."
1975 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1976 #: freeculture.xml:1457
1978 "At the end of a copyright term, a work passes into the public domain. No "
1979 "permission is then needed to draw upon or use that work. No permission and, "
1980 "hence, no lawyers. The public domain is a <quote>lawyer-free zone.</quote> "
1981 "Thus, most of the content from the nineteenth century was free for Disney to "
1982 "use and build upon in 1928. It was free for anyone— whether connected "
1983 "or not, whether rich or not, whether approved or not—to use and build "
1988 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1989 #: freeculture.xml:1466
1991 "This is the ways things always were—until quite recently. For most of "
1992 "our history, the public domain was just over the horizon. From until 1978, "
1993 "the average copyright term was never more than thirty-two years, meaning "
1994 "that most culture just a generation and a half old was free for anyone to "
1995 "build upon without the permission of anyone else. Today's equivalent would "
1996 "be for creative work from the 1960s and 1970s to now be free for the next "
1997 "Walt Disney to build upon without permission. Yet today, the public domain "
1998 "is presumptive only for content from before the Great Depression."
2001 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2002 #: freeculture.xml:1480
2004 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">Of course</emphasis>, Walt Disney had no monopoly "
2005 "on <quote>Walt Disney creativity.</quote> Nor does America. The norm of free "
2006 "culture has, until recently, and except within totalitarian nations, been "
2007 "broadly exploited and quite universal."
2010 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2011 #: freeculture.xml:1486
2013 "Consider, for example, a form of creativity that seems strange to many "
2014 "Americans but that is inescapable within Japanese culture: "
2015 "<citetitle>manga</citetitle>, or comics. The Japanese are fanatics about "
2016 "comics. Some 40 percent of publications are comics, and 30 percent of "
2017 "publication revenue derives from comics. They are everywhere in Japanese "
2018 "society, at every magazine stand, carried by a large proportion of commuters "
2019 "on Japan's extraordinary system of public transportation."
2022 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2023 #: freeculture.xml:1495
2025 "Americans tend to look down upon this form of culture. That's an "
2026 "unattractive characteristic of ours. We're likely to misunderstand much "
2027 "about manga, because few of us have ever read anything close to the stories "
2028 "that these <quote>graphic novels</quote> tell. For the Japanese, manga cover "
2029 "every aspect of social life. For us, comics are <quote>men in "
2030 "tights.</quote> And anyway, it's not as if the New York subways are filled "
2031 "with readers of Joyce or even Hemingway. People of different cultures "
2032 "distract themselves in different ways, the Japanese in this interestingly "
2036 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2037 #: freeculture.xml:1506
2039 "But my purpose here is not to understand manga. It is to describe a variant "
2040 "on manga that from a lawyer's perspective is quite odd, but from a Disney "
2041 "perspective is quite familiar."
2045 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2046 #: freeculture.xml:1511
2048 "This is the phenomenon of <citetitle>doujinshi</citetitle>. Doujinshi are "
2049 "also comics, but they are a kind of copycat comic. A rich ethic governs the "
2050 "creation of doujinshi. It is not doujinshi if it is "
2051 "<emphasis>just</emphasis> a copy; the artist must make a contribution to the "
2052 "art he copies, by transforming it either subtly or significantly. A "
2053 "doujinshi comic can thus take a mainstream comic and develop it "
2054 "differently—with a different story line. Or the comic can keep the "
2055 "character in character but change its look slightly. There is no formula for "
2056 "what makes the doujinshi sufficiently <quote>different.</quote> But they "
2057 "must be different if they are to be considered true doujinshi. Indeed, there "
2058 "are committees that review doujinshi for inclusion within shows and reject "
2059 "any copycat comic that is merely a copy."
2062 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2063 #: freeculture.xml:1526
2065 "These copycat comics are not a tiny part of the manga market. They are "
2066 "huge. More than 33,000 <quote>circles</quote> of creators from across Japan "
2067 "produce these bits of Walt Disney creativity. More than 450,000 Japanese "
2068 "come together twice a year, in the largest public gathering in the country, "
2069 "to exchange and sell them. This market exists in parallel to the mainstream "
2070 "commercial manga market. In some ways, it obviously competes with that "
2071 "market, but there is no sustained effort by those who control the commercial "
2072 "manga market to shut the doujinshi market down. It flourishes, despite the "
2073 "competition and despite the law."
2076 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2077 #: freeculture.xml:1537
2079 "The most puzzling feature of the doujinshi market, for those trained in the "
2080 "law, at least, is that it is allowed to exist at all. Under Japanese "
2081 "copyright law, which in this respect (on paper) mirrors American copyright "
2082 "law, the doujinshi market is an illegal one. Doujinshi are plainly "
2083 "<quote>derivative works.</quote> There is no general practice by doujinshi "
2084 "artists of securing the permission of the manga creators. Instead, the "
2085 "practice is simply to take and modify the creations of others, as Walt "
2086 "Disney did with <citetitle>Steamboat Bill, Jr</citetitle>. Under both "
2087 "Japanese and American law, that <quote>taking</quote> without the permission "
2088 "of the original copyright owner is illegal. It is an infringement of the "
2089 "original copyright to make a copy or a derivative work without the original "
2090 "copyright owner's permission."
2093 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2094 #: freeculture.xml:1550
2095 msgid "Winick, Judd"
2099 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2100 #: freeculture.xml:1562
2102 "For an excellent history, see Scott McCloud, <citetitle>Reinventing "
2103 "Comics</citetitle> (New York: Perennial, 2000)."
2106 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2107 #: freeculture.xml:1552
2109 "Yet this illegal market exists and indeed flourishes in Japan, and in the "
2110 "view of many, it is precisely because it exists that Japanese manga "
2111 "flourish. As American graphic novelist Judd Winick said to me, <quote>The "
2112 "early days of comics in America are very much like what's going on in Japan "
2113 "now. … American comics were born out of copying each other. … "
2114 "That's how [the artists] learn to draw—by going into comic books and "
2115 "not tracing them, but looking at them and copying them</quote> and building "
2116 "from them.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2119 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2120 #: freeculture.xml:1566
2121 msgid "Superman comics"
2124 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2125 #: freeculture.xml:1568
2127 "American comics now are quite different, Winick explains, in part because of "
2128 "the legal difficulty of adapting comics the way doujinshi are "
2129 "allowed. Speaking of Superman, Winick told me, <quote>there are these rules "
2130 "and you have to stick to them.</quote> There are things Superman "
2131 "<quote>cannot</quote> do. <quote>As a creator, it's frustrating having to "
2132 "stick to some parameters which are fifty years old.</quote>"
2136 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2137 #: freeculture.xml:1585
2139 "See Salil K. Mehra, <quote>Copyright and Comics in Japan: Does Law Explain "
2140 "Why All the Comics My Kid Watches Are Japanese Imports?</quote> "
2141 "<citetitle>Rutgers Law Review</citetitle> 55 (2002): 155, "
2142 "182. <quote>[T]here might be a collective economic rationality that would "
2143 "lead manga and anime artists to forgo bringing legal actions for "
2144 "infringement. One hypothesis is that all manga artists may be better off "
2145 "collectively if they set aside their individual self-interest and decide not "
2146 "to press their legal rights. This is essentially a prisoner's dilemma "
2150 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2151 #: freeculture.xml:1577
2153 "The norm in Japan mitigates this legal difficulty. Some say it is precisely "
2154 "the benefit accruing to the Japanese manga market that explains the "
2155 "mitigation. Temple University law professor Salil Mehra, for example, "
2156 "hypothesizes that the manga market accepts these technical violations "
2157 "because they spur the manga market to be more wealthy and "
2158 "productive. Everyone would be worse off if doujinshi were banned, so the law "
2159 "does not ban doujinshi.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2162 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2163 #: freeculture.xml:1596
2165 "The problem with this story, however, as Mehra plainly acknowledges, is that "
2166 "the mechanism producing this laissez faire response is not clear. It may "
2167 "well be that the market as a whole is better off if doujinshi are permitted "
2168 "rather than banned, but that doesn't explain why individual copyright owners "
2169 "don't sue nonetheless. If the law has no general exception for doujinshi, "
2170 "and indeed in some cases individual manga artists have sued doujinshi "
2171 "artists, why is there not a more general pattern of blocking this "
2172 "<quote>free taking</quote> by the doujinshi culture?"
2175 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2176 #: freeculture.xml:1607
2178 "I spent four wonderful months in Japan, and I asked this question as often "
2179 "as I could. Perhaps the best account in the end was offered by a friend from "
2180 "a major Japanese law firm. <quote>We don't have enough lawyers,</quote> he "
2181 "told me one afternoon. There <quote>just aren't enough resources to "
2182 "prosecute cases like this.</quote>"
2186 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2187 #: freeculture.xml:1614
2189 "This is a theme to which we will return: that regulation by law is a "
2190 "function of both the words on the books and the costs of making those words "
2191 "have effect. For now, focus on the obvious question that is begged: Would "
2192 "Japan be better off with more lawyers? Would manga be richer if doujinshi "
2193 "artists were regularly prosecuted? Would the Japanese gain something "
2194 "important if they could end this practice of uncompensated sharing? Does "
2195 "piracy here hurt the victims of the piracy, or does it help them? Would "
2196 "lawyers fighting this piracy help their clients or hurt them?"
2199 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2200 #: freeculture.xml:1626
2201 msgid "<emphasis role='strong'>Let's pause</emphasis> for a moment."
2204 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2205 #: freeculture.xml:1629
2207 "If you're like I was a decade ago, or like most people are when they first "
2208 "start thinking about these issues, then just about now you should be puzzled "
2209 "about something you hadn't thought through before."
2212 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2213 #: freeculture.xml:1639 freeculture.xml:2867 freeculture.xml:4542 freeculture.xml:4767 freeculture.xml:7380 freeculture.xml:8487
2214 msgid "Vaidhyanathan, Siva"
2217 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2218 #: freeculture.xml:1639
2220 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> The term <citetitle>intellectual "
2221 "property</citetitle> is of relatively recent origin. See Siva Vaidhyanathan, "
2222 "<citetitle>Copyrights and Copywrongs</citetitle>, 11 (New York: New York "
2223 "University Press, 2001). See also Lawrence Lessig, <citetitle>The Future of "
2224 "Ideas</citetitle> (New York: Random House, 2001), 293 n. 26. The term "
2225 "accurately describes a set of <quote>property</quote> "
2226 "rights—copyright, patents, trademark, and trade-secret—but the "
2227 "nature of those rights is very different."
2230 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2231 #: freeculture.xml:1634
2233 "We live in a world that celebrates <quote>property.</quote> I am one of "
2234 "those celebrants. I believe in the value of property in general, and I also "
2235 "believe in the value of that weird form of property that lawyers call "
2236 "<quote>intellectual property.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
2237 "id=\"0\"/> A large, diverse society cannot survive without property; a "
2238 "large, diverse, and modern society cannot flourish without intellectual "
2242 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2243 #: freeculture.xml:1653
2245 "But it takes just a second's reflection to realize that there is plenty of "
2246 "value out there that <quote>property</quote> doesn't capture. I don't mean "
2247 "<quote>money can't buy you love,</quote> but rather, value that is plainly "
2248 "part of a process of production, including commercial as well as "
2249 "noncommercial production. If Disney animators had stolen a set of pencils "
2250 "to draw Steamboat Willie, we'd have no hesitation in condemning that taking "
2251 "as wrong— even though trivial, even if unnoticed. Yet there was "
2252 "nothing wrong, at least under the law of the day, with Disney's taking from "
2253 "Buster Keaton or from the Brothers Grimm. There was nothing wrong with the "
2254 "taking from Keaton because Disney's use would have been considered "
2255 "<quote>fair.</quote> There was nothing wrong with the taking from the Grimms "
2256 "because the Grimms' work was in the public domain."
2260 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2261 #: freeculture.xml:1668
2263 "Thus, even though the things that Disney took—or more generally, the "
2264 "things taken by anyone exercising Walt Disney creativity—are valuable, "
2265 "our tradition does not treat those takings as wrong. Some things remain free "
2266 "for the taking within a free culture, and that freedom is good."
2269 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2270 #: freeculture.xml:1677
2272 "The same with the doujinshi culture. If a doujinshi artist broke into a "
2273 "publisher's office and ran off with a thousand copies of his latest "
2274 "work—or even one copy—without paying, we'd have no hesitation in "
2275 "saying the artist was wrong. In addition to having trespassed, he would have "
2276 "stolen something of value. The law bans that stealing in whatever form, "
2277 "whether large or small."
2280 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2281 #: freeculture.xml:1685
2283 "Yet there is an obvious reluctance, even among Japanese lawyers, to say that "
2284 "the copycat comic artists are <quote>stealing.</quote> This form of Walt "
2285 "Disney creativity is seen as fair and right, even if lawyers in particular "
2286 "find it hard to say why."
2289 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2290 #: freeculture.xml:1691
2292 "It's the same with a thousand examples that appear everywhere once you begin "
2293 "to look. Scientists build upon the work of other scientists without asking "
2294 "or paying for the privilege. (<quote>Excuse me, Professor Einstein, but may "
2295 "I have permission to use your theory of relativity to show that you were "
2296 "wrong about quantum physics?</quote>) Acting companies perform adaptations "
2297 "of the works of Shakespeare without securing permission from anyone. (Does "
2298 "<emphasis>anyone</emphasis> believe Shakespeare would be better spread "
2299 "within our culture if there were a central Shakespeare rights clearinghouse "
2300 "that all productions of Shakespeare must appeal to first?) And Hollywood "
2301 "goes through cycles with a certain kind of movie: five asteroid films in the "
2302 "late 1990s; two volcano disaster films in 1997."
2306 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2307 #: freeculture.xml:1705
2309 "Creators here and everywhere are always and at all times building upon the "
2310 "creativity that went before and that surrounds them now. That building is "
2311 "always and everywhere at least partially done without permission and without "
2312 "compensating the original creator. No society, free or controlled, has ever "
2313 "demanded that every use be paid for or that permission for Walt Disney "
2314 "creativity must always be sought. Instead, every society has left a certain "
2315 "bit of its culture free for the taking—free societies more fully than "
2316 "unfree, perhaps, but all societies to some degree."
2319 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2320 #: freeculture.xml:1716
2322 "The hard question is therefore not <emphasis>whether</emphasis> a culture is "
2323 "free. All cultures are free to some degree. The hard question instead is "
2324 "<quote><emphasis>How</emphasis> free is this culture?</quote> How much, and "
2325 "how broadly, is the culture free for others to take and build upon? Is that "
2326 "freedom limited to party members? To members of the royal family? To the top "
2327 "ten corporations on the New York Stock Exchange? Or is that freedom spread "
2328 "broadly? To artists generally, whether affiliated with the Met or not? To "
2329 "musicians generally, whether white or not? To filmmakers generally, whether "
2330 "affiliated with a studio or not?"
2333 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2334 #: freeculture.xml:1728
2336 "Free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build "
2337 "upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less. Ours was a free "
2338 "culture. It is becoming much less so."
2341 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
2342 #: freeculture.xml:1736
2343 msgid "CHAPTER TWO: <quote>Mere Copyists</quote>"
2346 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
2347 #: freeculture.xml:1737 freeculture.xml:1950 freeculture.xml:6416
2348 msgid "camera technology"
2351 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2352 #: freeculture.xml:1738
2356 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2357 #: freeculture.xml:1739
2358 msgid "Daguerre, Louis"
2361 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2362 #: freeculture.xml:1741
2364 "<emphasis role='strong'>In 1839</emphasis>, Louis Daguerre invented the "
2365 "first practical technology for producing what we would call "
2366 "<quote>photographs.</quote> Appropriately enough, they were called "
2367 "<quote>daguerreotypes.</quote> The process was complicated and expensive, "
2368 "and the field was thus limited to professionals and a few zealous and "
2369 "wealthy amateurs. (There was even an American Daguerre Association that "
2370 "helped regulate the industry, as do all such associations, by keeping "
2371 "competition down so as to keep prices up.)"
2374 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2375 #: freeculture.xml:1750
2376 msgid "Talbot, William"
2379 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2380 #: freeculture.xml:1752
2382 "Yet despite high prices, the demand for daguerreotypes was strong. This "
2383 "pushed inventors to find simpler and cheaper ways to make <quote>automatic "
2384 "pictures.</quote> William Talbot soon discovered a process for making "
2385 "<quote>negatives.</quote> But because the negatives were glass, and had to "
2386 "be kept wet, the process still remained expensive and cumbersome. In the "
2387 "1870s, dry plates were developed, making it easier to separate the taking of "
2388 "a picture from its developing. These were still plates of glass, and thus it "
2389 "was still not a process within reach of most amateurs."
2392 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2393 #: freeculture.xml:1762
2394 msgid "Eastman, George"
2398 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2399 #: freeculture.xml:1764
2401 "The technological change that made mass photography possible didn't happen "
2402 "until 1888, and was the creation of a single man. George Eastman, himself an "
2403 "amateur photographer, was frustrated by the technology of photographs made "
2404 "with plates. In a flash of insight (so to speak), Eastman saw that if the "
2405 "film could be made to be flexible, it could be held on a single "
2406 "spindle. That roll could then be sent to a developer, driving the costs of "
2407 "photography down substantially. By lowering the costs, Eastman expected he "
2408 "could dramatically broaden the population of photographers."
2411 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2412 #: freeculture.xml:1775
2413 msgid "Kodak Primer, The (Eastman)"
2417 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2418 #: freeculture.xml:1782
2420 "Reese V. Jenkins, <citetitle>Images and Enterprise</citetitle> (Baltimore: "
2421 "Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 112."
2424 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2425 #: freeculture.xml:1777
2427 "Eastman developed flexible, emulsion-coated paper film and placed rolls of "
2428 "it in small, simple cameras: the Kodak. The device was marketed on the basis "
2429 "of its simplicity. <quote>You press the button and we do the "
2430 "rest.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> As he described in "
2431 "<citetitle>The Kodak Primer</citetitle>:"
2434 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2435 #: freeculture.xml:1800 freeculture.xml:1824
2439 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
2440 #: freeculture.xml:1798
2442 "Brian Coe, <citetitle>The Birth of Photography</citetitle> (New York: "
2443 "Taplinger Publishing, 1977), 53. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
2446 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2447 #: freeculture.xml:1787
2449 "The principle of the Kodak system is the separation of the work that any "
2450 "person whomsoever can do in making a photograph, from the work that only an "
2451 "expert can do. … We furnish anybody, man, woman or child, who has "
2452 "sufficient intelligence to point a box straight and press a button, with an "
2453 "instrument which altogether removes from the practice of photography the "
2454 "necessity for exceptional facilities or, in fact, any special knowledge of "
2455 "the art. It can be employed without preliminary study, without a darkroom "
2456 "and without chemicals.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2460 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2461 #: freeculture.xml:1816
2462 msgid "Jenkins, 177."
2466 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2467 #: freeculture.xml:1820
2468 msgid "Based on a chart in Jenkins, p. 178."
2471 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2472 #: freeculture.xml:1805
2474 "For $25, anyone could make pictures. The camera came preloaded with film, "
2475 "and when it had been used, the camera was returned to an Eastman factory, "
2476 "where the film was developed. Over time, of course, the cost of the camera "
2477 "and the ease with which it could be used both improved. Roll film thus "
2478 "became the basis for the explosive growth of popular photography. Eastman's "
2479 "camera first went on sale in 1888; one year later, Kodak was printing more "
2480 "than six thousand negatives a day. From 1888 through 1909, while industrial "
2481 "production was rising by 4.7 percent, photographic equipment and material "
2482 "sales increased by 11 percent.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
2483 "Eastman Kodak's sales during the same period experienced an average annual "
2484 "increase of over 17 percent.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
2488 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2489 #: freeculture.xml:1839
2493 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2494 #: freeculture.xml:1828
2496 "The real significance of Eastman's invention, however, was not economic. It "
2497 "was social. Professional photography gave individuals a glimpse of places "
2498 "they would never otherwise see. Amateur photography gave them the ability to "
2499 "record their own lives in a way they had never been able to do before. As "
2500 "author Brian Coe notes, <quote>For the first time the snapshot album "
2501 "provided the man on the street with a permanent record of his family and its "
2502 "activities. … For the first time in history there exists an authentic "
2503 "visual record of the appearance and activities of the common man made "
2504 "without [literary] interpretation or bias.</quote><placeholder "
2505 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2508 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2509 #: freeculture.xml:1843
2511 "In this way, the Kodak camera and film were technologies of expression. The "
2512 "pencil or paintbrush was also a technology of expression, of course. But it "
2513 "took years of training before they could be deployed by amateurs in any "
2514 "useful or effective way. With the Kodak, expression was possible much sooner "
2515 "and more simply. The barrier to expression was lowered. Snobs would sneer at "
2516 "its <quote>quality</quote>; professionals would discount it as "
2517 "irrelevant. But watch a child study how best to frame a picture and you get "
2518 "a sense of the experience of creativity that the Kodak enabled. Democratic "
2519 "tools gave ordinary people a way to express themselves more easily than any "
2520 "tools could have before."
2524 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2525 #: freeculture.xml:1865
2527 "For illustrative cases, see, for example, <citetitle>Pavesich</citetitle> "
2528 "v. <citetitle>N.E. Life Ins. Co</citetitle>., 50 S.E. 68 (Ga. 1905); "
2529 "<citetitle>Foster-Milburn Co</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Chinn</citetitle>, "
2530 "123090 S.W. 364, 366 (Ky. 1909); <citetitle>Corliss</citetitle> "
2531 "v. <citetitle>Walker</citetitle>, 64 F. 280 (Mass. Dist. Ct. 1894)."
2534 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2535 #: freeculture.xml:1856
2537 "What was required for this technology to flourish? Obviously, Eastman's "
2538 "genius was an important part. But also important was the legal environment "
2539 "within which Eastman's invention grew. For early in the history of "
2540 "photography, there was a series of judicial decisions that could well have "
2541 "changed the course of photography substantially. Courts were asked whether "
2542 "the photographer, amateur or professional, required permission before he "
2543 "could capture and print whatever image he wanted. Their answer was "
2544 "no.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2548 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2549 #: freeculture.xml:1873
2551 "The arguments in favor of requiring permission will sound surprisingly "
2552 "familiar. The photographer was <quote>taking</quote> something from the "
2553 "person or building whose photograph he shot—pirating something of "
2554 "value. Some even thought he was taking the target's soul. Just as Disney was "
2555 "not free to take the pencils that his animators used to draw Mickey, so, "
2556 "too, should these photographers not be free to take images that they thought "
2560 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2561 #: freeculture.xml:1895
2562 msgid "Warren, Samuel D."
2565 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2566 #: freeculture.xml:1892
2568 "Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, <quote>The Right to Privacy,</quote> "
2569 "<citetitle>Harvard Law Review</citetitle> 4 (1890): 193. <placeholder "
2570 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
2573 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2574 #: freeculture.xml:1885
2576 "On the other side was an argument that should be familiar, as well. Sure, "
2577 "there may be something of value being used. But citizens should have the "
2578 "right to capture at least those images that stand in public view. (Louis "
2579 "Brandeis, who would become a Supreme Court Justice, thought the rule should "
2580 "be different for images from private spaces.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
2581 "id=\"0\"/>) It may be that this means that the photographer gets something "
2582 "for nothing. Just as Disney could take inspiration from <citetitle>Steamboat "
2583 "Bill, Jr</citetitle>. or the Brothers Grimm, the photographer should be free "
2584 "to capture an image without compensating the source."
2587 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
2588 #: freeculture.xml:1901 freeculture.xml:9177
2589 msgid "images, ownership of"
2593 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2594 #: freeculture.xml:1913
2596 "See Melville B. Nimmer, <quote>The Right of Publicity,</quote> "
2597 "<citetitle>Law and Contemporary Problems</citetitle> 19 (1954): 203; William "
2598 "L. Prosser, <quote>Privacy,</quote> <citetitle>California Law "
2599 "Review</citetitle> 48 (1960) 398–407; <citetitle>White</citetitle> "
2600 "v. <citetitle>Samsung Electronics America, Inc</citetitle>., 971 F. 2d 1395 "
2601 "(9th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 951 (1993)."
2604 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2605 #: freeculture.xml:1903
2607 "Fortunately for Mr. Eastman, and for photography in general, these early "
2608 "decisions went in favor of the pirates. In general, no permission would be "
2609 "required before an image could be captured and shared with others. Instead, "
2610 "permission was presumed. Freedom was the default. (The law would eventually "
2611 "craft an exception for famous people: commercial photographers who snap "
2612 "pictures of famous people for commercial purposes have more restrictions "
2613 "than the rest of us. But in the ordinary case, the image can be captured "
2614 "without clearing the rights to do the capturing.<placeholder "
2615 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>)"
2618 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2619 #: freeculture.xml:1921
2621 "We can only speculate about how photography would have developed had the law "
2622 "gone the other way. If the presumption had been against the photographer, "
2623 "then the photographer would have had to demonstrate permission. Perhaps "
2624 "Eastman Kodak would have had to demonstrate permission, too, before it "
2625 "developed the film upon which images were captured. After all, if permission "
2626 "were not granted, then Eastman Kodak would be benefiting from the "
2627 "<quote>theft</quote> committed by the photographer. Just as Napster "
2628 "benefited from the copyright infringements committed by Napster users, Kodak "
2629 "would be benefiting from the <quote>image-right</quote> infringement of its "
2630 "photographers. We could imagine the law then requiring that some form of "
2631 "permission be demonstrated before a company developed pictures. We could "
2632 "imagine a system developing to demonstrate that permission."
2636 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2637 #: freeculture.xml:1938
2639 "But though we could imagine this system of permission, it would be very hard "
2640 "to see how photography could have flourished as it did if the requirement "
2641 "for permission had been built into the rules that govern it. Photography "
2642 "would have existed. It would have grown in importance over "
2643 "time. Professionals would have continued to use the technology as they "
2644 "did—since professionals could have more easily borne the burdens of "
2645 "the permission system. But the spread of photography to ordinary people "
2646 "would not have occurred. Nothing like that growth would have been "
2647 "realized. And certainly, nothing like that growth in a democratic technology "
2648 "of expression would have been realized."
2651 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2652 #: freeculture.xml:1952
2654 "<emphasis role='strong'>If you drive</emphasis> through San Francisco's "
2655 "Presidio, you might see two gaudy yellow school buses painted over with "
2656 "colorful and striking images, and the logo <quote>Just Think!</quote> in "
2657 "place of the name of a school. But there's little that's <quote>just</quote> "
2658 "cerebral in the projects that these busses enable. These buses are filled "
2659 "with technologies that teach kids to tinker with film. Not the film of "
2660 "Eastman. Not even the film of your VCR. Rather the <quote>film</quote> of "
2661 "digital cameras. Just Think! is a project that enables kids to make films, "
2662 "as a way to understand and critique the filmed culture that they find all "
2663 "around them. Each year, these busses travel to more than thirty schools and "
2664 "enable three hundred to five hundred children to learn something about media "
2665 "by doing something with media. By doing, they think. By tinkering, they "
2670 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2671 #: freeculture.xml:1976
2673 "H. Edward Goldberg, <quote>Essential Presentation Tools: Hardware and "
2674 "Software You Need to Create Digital Multimedia Presentations,</quote> "
2675 "cadalyst, February 2002, available at <ulink "
2676 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #7</ulink>."
2679 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2680 #: freeculture.xml:1970
2682 "These buses are not cheap, but the technology they carry is increasingly "
2683 "so. The cost of a high-quality digital video system has fallen "
2684 "dramatically. As one analyst puts it, <quote>Five years ago, a good "
2685 "real-time digital video editing system cost $25,000. Today you can get "
2686 "professional quality for $595.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
2687 "id=\"0\"/> These buses are filled with technology that would have cost "
2688 "hundreds of thousands just ten years ago. And it is now feasible to imagine "
2689 "not just buses like this, but classrooms across the country where kids are "
2690 "learning more and more of something teachers call <quote>media "
2694 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2695 #: freeculture.xml:1986
2696 msgid "Yanofsky, Dave"
2700 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2701 #: freeculture.xml:1989
2703 "<quote>Media literacy,</quote> as Dave Yanofsky, the executive director of "
2704 "Just Think!, puts it, <quote>is the ability … to understand, analyze, "
2705 "and deconstruct media images. Its aim is to make [kids] literate about the "
2706 "way media works, the way it's constructed, the way it's delivered, and the "
2707 "way people access it.</quote>"
2710 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2711 #: freeculture.xml:1996
2713 "This may seem like an odd way to think about <quote>literacy.</quote> For "
2714 "most people, literacy is about reading and writing. Faulkner and Hemingway "
2715 "and noticing split infinitives are the things that <quote>literate</quote> "
2716 "people know about."
2719 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2720 #: freeculture.xml:2001 freeculture.xml:2502 freeculture.xml:6415 freeculture.xml:7249 freeculture.xml:8321 freeculture.xml:8392
2725 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2726 #: freeculture.xml:2007
2728 "Judith Van Evra, <citetitle>Television and Child Development</citetitle> "
2729 "(Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990); <quote>Findings on "
2730 "Family and TV Study,</quote> <citetitle>Denver Post</citetitle>, 25 May "
2734 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2735 #: freeculture.xml:2003
2737 "Maybe. But in a world where children see on average 390 hours of television "
2738 "commercials per year, or between 20,000 and 45,000 commercials "
2739 "generally,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> it is increasingly "
2740 "important to understand the <quote>grammar</quote> of media. For just as "
2741 "there is a grammar for the written word, so, too, is there one for "
2742 "media. And just as kids learn how to write by writing lots of terrible "
2743 "prose, kids learn how to write media by constructing lots of (at least at "
2744 "first) terrible media."
2747 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2748 #: freeculture.xml:2018
2750 "A growing field of academics and activists sees this form of literacy as "
2751 "crucial to the next generation of culture. For though anyone who has written "
2752 "understands how difficult writing is—how difficult it is to sequence "
2753 "the story, to keep a reader's attention, to craft language to be "
2754 "understandable—few of us have any real sense of how difficult media "
2755 "is. Or more fundamentally, few of us have a sense of how media works, how it "
2756 "holds an audience or leads it through a story, how it triggers emotion or "
2760 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2761 #: freeculture.xml:2028
2763 "It took filmmaking a generation before it could do these things well. But "
2764 "even then, the knowledge was in the filming, not in writing about the "
2765 "film. The skill came from experiencing the making of a film, not from "
2766 "reading a book about it. One learns to write by writing and then reflecting "
2767 "upon what one has written. One learns to write with images by making them "
2768 "and then reflecting upon what one has created."
2771 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2772 #: freeculture.xml:2035
2773 msgid "Crichton, Michael"
2776 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2777 #: freeculture.xml:2049 freeculture.xml:2109 freeculture.xml:2116 freeculture.xml:2565
2778 msgid "Barish, Stephanie"
2781 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2782 #: freeculture.xml:2050
2783 msgid "Daley, Elizabeth"
2786 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2787 #: freeculture.xml:2047
2789 "Interview with Elizabeth Daley and Stephanie Barish, 13 December 2002. "
2790 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
2795 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2796 #: freeculture.xml:2061
2798 "See Scott Steinberg, <quote>Crichton Gets Medieval on PCs,</quote> E!online, "
2799 "4 November 2000, available at <ulink "
2800 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #8</ulink>; "
2801 "<quote>Timeline,</quote> 22 November 2000, available at <ulink "
2802 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #9</ulink>."
2805 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2806 #: freeculture.xml:2037
2808 "This grammar has changed as media has changed. When it was just film, as "
2809 "Elizabeth Daley, executive director of the University of Southern "
2810 "California's Annenberg Center for Communication and dean of the USC School "
2811 "of Cinema-Television, explained to me, the grammar was about <quote>the "
2812 "placement of objects, color, … rhythm, pacing, and "
2813 "texture.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> But as computers "
2814 "open up an interactive space where a story is <quote>played</quote> as well "
2815 "as experienced, that grammar changes. The simple control of narrative is "
2816 "lost, and so other techniques are necessary. Author Michael Crichton had "
2817 "mastered the narrative of science fiction. But when he tried to design a "
2818 "computer game based on one of his works, it was a new craft he had to "
2819 "learn. How to lead people through a game without their feeling they have "
2820 "been led was not obvious, even to a wildly successful author.<placeholder "
2821 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
2824 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2825 #: freeculture.xml:2068
2826 msgid "computer games"
2829 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2830 #: freeculture.xml:2070
2832 "This skill is precisely the craft a filmmaker learns. As Daley describes, "
2833 "<quote>people are very surprised about how they are led through a film. [I]t "
2834 "is perfectly constructed to keep you from seeing it, so you have no idea. If "
2835 "a filmmaker succeeds you do not know how you were led.</quote> If you know "
2836 "you were led through a film, the film has failed."
2839 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2840 #: freeculture.xml:2077
2842 "Yet the push for an expanded literacy—one that goes beyond text to "
2843 "include audio and visual elements—is not about making better film "
2844 "directors. The aim is not to improve the profession of filmmaking at all. "
2845 "Instead, as Daley explained,"
2848 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2849 #: freeculture.xml:2084
2851 "From my perspective, probably the most important digital divide is not "
2852 "access to a box. It's the ability to be empowered with the language that "
2853 "that box works in. Otherwise only a very few people can write with this "
2854 "language, and all the rest of us are reduced to being read-only."
2857 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2858 #: freeculture.xml:2092
2860 "<quote>Read-only.</quote> Passive recipients of culture produced elsewhere. "
2861 "Couch potatoes. Consumers. This is the world of media from the twentieth "
2865 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2866 #: freeculture.xml:2108
2867 msgid "Interview with Daley and Barish. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
2871 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
2872 #: freeculture.xml:2113 freeculture.xml:3893 freeculture.xml:4959 freeculture.xml:8210
2876 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2877 #: freeculture.xml:2097
2879 "The twenty-first century could be different. This is the crucial point: It "
2880 "could be both read and write. Or at least reading and better understanding "
2881 "the craft of writing. Or best, reading and understanding the tools that "
2882 "enable the writing to lead or mislead. The aim of any literacy, and this "
2883 "literacy in particular, is to <quote>empower people to choose the "
2884 "appropriate language for what they need to create or "
2885 "express.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> It is to enable "
2886 "students <quote>to communicate in the language of the twenty-first "
2887 "century.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
2890 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2891 #: freeculture.xml:2118
2893 "As with any language, this language comes more easily to some than to "
2894 "others. It doesn't necessarily come more easily to those who excel in "
2895 "written language. Daley and Stephanie Barish, director of the Institute for "
2896 "Multimedia Literacy at the Annenberg Center, describe one particularly "
2897 "poignant example of a project they ran in a high school. The high school "
2898 "was a very poor inner-city Los Angeles school. In all the traditional "
2899 "measures of success, this school was a failure. But Daley and Barish ran a "
2900 "program that gave kids an opportunity to use film to express meaning about "
2901 "something the students know something about—gun violence."
2904 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2905 #: freeculture.xml:2130
2907 "The class was held on Friday afternoons, and it created a relatively new "
2908 "problem for the school. While the challenge in most classes was getting the "
2909 "kids to come, the challenge in this class was keeping them away. The "
2910 "<quote>kids were showing up at 6 A.M. and leaving at 5 at night,</quote> "
2911 "said Barish. They were working harder than in any other class to do what "
2912 "education should be about—learning how to express themselves."
2915 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2916 #: freeculture.xml:2138
2918 "Using whatever <quote>free web stuff they could find,</quote> and relatively "
2919 "simple tools to enable the kids to mix <quote>image, sound, and "
2920 "text,</quote> Barish said this class produced a series of projects that "
2921 "showed something about gun violence that few would otherwise "
2922 "understand. This was an issue close to the lives of these students. The "
2923 "project <quote>gave them a tool and empowered them to be able to both "
2924 "understand it and talk about it,</quote> Barish explained. That tool "
2925 "succeeded in creating expression—far more successfully and powerfully "
2926 "than could have been created using only text. <quote>If you had said to "
2927 "these students, `you have to do it in text,' they would've just thrown their "
2928 "hands up and gone and done something else,</quote> Barish described, in "
2929 "part, no doubt, because expressing themselves in text is not something these "
2930 "students can do well. Yet neither is text a form in which "
2931 "<emphasis>these</emphasis> ideas can be expressed well. The power of this "
2932 "message depended upon its connection to this form of expression."
2936 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2937 #: freeculture.xml:2157
2939 "<quote>But isn't education about teaching kids to write?</quote> I asked. In "
2940 "part, of course, it is. But why are we teaching kids to write? Education, "
2941 "Daley explained, is about giving students a way of <quote>constructing "
2942 "meaning.</quote> To say that that means just writing is like saying teaching "
2943 "writing is only about teaching kids how to spell. Text is one part—and "
2944 "increasingly, not the most powerful part—of constructing meaning. As "
2945 "Daley explained in the most moving part of our interview,"
2948 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2949 #: freeculture.xml:2168
2951 "What you want is to give these students ways of constructing meaning. If all "
2952 "you give them is text, they're not going to do it. Because they can't. You "
2953 "know, you've got Johnny who can look at a video, he can play a video game, "
2954 "he can do graffiti all over your walls, he can take your car apart, and he "
2955 "can do all sorts of other things. He just can't read your text. So Johnny "
2956 "comes to school and you say, <quote>Johnny, you're illiterate. Nothing you "
2957 "can do matters.</quote> Well, Johnny then has two choices: He can dismiss "
2958 "you or he [can] dismiss himself. If his ego is healthy at all, he's going to "
2959 "dismiss you. [But i]nstead, if you say, <quote>Well, with all these things "
2960 "that you can do, let's talk about this issue. Play for me music that you "
2961 "think reflects that, or show me images that you think reflect that, or draw "
2962 "for me something that reflects that.</quote> Not by giving a kid a video "
2963 "camera and … saying, <quote>Let's go have fun with the video camera "
2964 "and make a little movie.</quote> But instead, really help you take these "
2965 "elements that you understand, that are your language, and construct meaning "
2966 "about the topic.…"
2969 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2970 #: freeculture.xml:2187
2972 "That empowers enormously. And then what happens, of course, is eventually, "
2973 "as it has happened in all these classes, they bump up against the fact, "
2974 "<quote>I need to explain this and I really need to write something.</quote> "
2975 "And as one of the teachers told Stephanie, they would rewrite a paragraph 5, "
2976 "6, 7, 8 times, till they got it right."
2980 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2981 #: freeculture.xml:2194
2983 "Because they needed to. There was a reason for doing it. They needed to say "
2984 "something, as opposed to just jumping through your hoops. They actually "
2985 "needed to use a language that they didn't speak very well. But they had come "
2986 "to understand that they had a lot of power with this language."
2989 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2990 #: freeculture.xml:2204
2991 msgid "World Trade Center"
2994 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2995 #: freeculture.xml:2206
2997 "<emphasis role='strong'>When two planes</emphasis> crashed into the World "
2998 "Trade Center, another into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a Pennsylvania "
2999 "field, all media around the world shifted to this news. Every moment of just "
3000 "about every day for that week, and for weeks after, television in "
3001 "particular, and media generally, retold the story of the events we had just "
3002 "witnessed. The telling was a retelling, because we had seen the events that "
3003 "were described. The genius of this awful act of terrorism was that the "
3004 "delayed second attack was perfectly timed to assure that the whole world "
3005 "would be watching."
3008 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3009 #: freeculture.xml:2218
3011 "These retellings had an increasingly familiar feel. There was music scored "
3012 "for the intermissions, and fancy graphics that flashed across the "
3013 "screen. There was a formula to interviews. There was <quote>balance,</quote> "
3014 "and seriousness. This was news choreographed in the way we have increasingly "
3015 "come to expect it, <quote>news as entertainment,</quote> even if the "
3016 "entertainment is tragedy."
3019 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3020 #: freeculture.xml:2225 freeculture.xml:8149 freeculture.xml:8386
3024 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3025 #: freeculture.xml:2226
3029 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3030 #: freeculture.xml:2228
3032 "But in addition to this produced news about the <quote>tragedy of September "
3033 "11,</quote> those of us tied to the Internet came to see a very different "
3034 "production as well. The Internet was filled with accounts of the same "
3035 "events. Yet these Internet accounts had a very different flavor. Some people "
3036 "constructed photo pages that captured images from around the world and "
3037 "presented them as slide shows with text. Some offered open letters. There "
3038 "were sound recordings. There was anger and frustration. There were attempts "
3039 "to provide context. There was, in short, an extraordinary worldwide barn "
3040 "raising, in the sense Mike Godwin uses the term in his book <citetitle>Cyber "
3041 "Rights</citetitle>, around a news event that had captured the attention of "
3042 "the world. There was ABC and CBS, but there was also the Internet."
3046 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3047 #: freeculture.xml:2242
3049 "I don't mean simply to praise the Internet—though I do think the "
3050 "people who supported this form of speech should be praised. I mean instead "
3051 "to point to a significance in this form of speech. For like a Kodak, the "
3052 "Internet enables people to capture images. And like in a movie by a student "
3053 "on the <quote>Just Think!</quote> bus, the visual images could be mixed with "
3057 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3058 #: freeculture.xml:2252
3060 "But unlike any technology for simply capturing images, the Internet allows "
3061 "these creations to be shared with an extraordinary number of people, "
3062 "practically instantaneously. This is something new in our "
3063 "tradition—not just that culture can be captured mechanically, and "
3064 "obviously not just that events are commented upon critically, but that this "
3065 "mix of captured images, sound, and commentary can be widely spread "
3066 "practically instantaneously."
3069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3070 #: freeculture.xml:2261
3072 "September 11 was not an aberration. It was a beginning. Around the same "
3073 "time, a form of communication that has grown dramatically was just beginning "
3074 "to come into public consciousness: the Web-log, or blog. The blog is a kind "
3075 "of public diary, and within some cultures, such as in Japan, it functions "
3076 "very much like a diary. In those cultures, it records private facts in a "
3077 "public way—it's a kind of electronic <citetitle>Jerry "
3078 "Springer</citetitle>, available anywhere in the world."
3081 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3082 #: freeculture.xml:2269 freeculture.xml:2342 freeculture.xml:2465
3083 msgid "blogs (Web-logs)"
3086 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3087 #: freeculture.xml:2271
3089 "But in the United States, blogs have taken on a very different character. "
3090 "There are some who use the space simply to talk about their private "
3091 "life. But there are many who use the space to engage in public "
3092 "discourse. Discussing matters of public import, criticizing others who are "
3093 "mistaken in their views, criticizing politicians about the decisions they "
3094 "make, offering solutions to problems we all see: blogs create the sense of a "
3095 "virtual public meeting, but one in which we don't all hope to be there at "
3096 "the same time and in which conversations are not necessarily linked. The "
3097 "best of the blog entries are relatively short; they point directly to words "
3098 "used by others, criticizing with or adding to them. They are arguably the "
3099 "most important form of unchoreographed public discourse that we have."
3103 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3104 #: freeculture.xml:2285
3106 "That's a strong statement. Yet it says as much about our democracy as it "
3107 "does about blogs. This is the part of America that is most difficult for "
3108 "those of us who love America to accept: Our democracy has atrophied. Of "
3109 "course we have elections, and most of the time the courts allow those "
3110 "elections to count. A relatively small number of people vote in those "
3111 "elections. The cycle of these elections has become totally professionalized "
3112 "and routinized. Most of us think this is democracy."
3115 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3116 #: freeculture.xml:2295
3117 msgid "Tocqueville, Alexis de"
3120 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3121 #: freeculture.xml:2296
3126 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3127 #: freeculture.xml:2313
3129 "See, for example, Alexis de Tocqueville, <citetitle>Democracy in "
3130 "America</citetitle>, bk. 1, trans. Henry Reeve (New York: Bantam Books, "
3134 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3135 #: freeculture.xml:2298
3137 "But democracy has never just been about elections. Democracy means rule by "
3138 "the people, but rule means something more than mere elections. In our "
3139 "tradition, it also means control through reasoned discourse. This was the "
3140 "idea that captured the imagination of Alexis de Tocqueville, the "
3141 "nineteenth-century French lawyer who wrote the most important account of "
3142 "early <quote>Democracy in America.</quote> It wasn't popular elections that "
3143 "fascinated him—it was the jury, an institution that gave ordinary "
3144 "people the right to choose life or death for other citizens. And most "
3145 "fascinating for him was that the jury didn't just vote about the outcome "
3146 "they would impose. They deliberated. Members argued about the "
3147 "<quote>right</quote> result; they tried to persuade each other of the "
3148 "<quote>right</quote> result, and in criminal cases at least, they had to "
3149 "agree upon a unanimous result for the process to come to an end.<placeholder "
3150 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
3154 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3155 #: freeculture.xml:2322
3157 "Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, <quote>Deliberation Day,</quote> "
3158 "<citetitle>Journal of Political Philosophy</citetitle> 10 (2) (2002): 129."
3161 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3162 #: freeculture.xml:2318
3164 "Yet even this institution flags in American life today. And in its place, "
3165 "there is no systematic effort to enable citizen deliberation. Some are "
3166 "pushing to create just such an institution.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
3167 "id=\"0\"/> And in some towns in New England, something close to deliberation "
3168 "remains. But for most of us for most of the time, there is no time or place "
3169 "for <quote>democratic deliberation</quote> to occur."
3173 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3174 #: freeculture.xml:2337
3176 "Cass Sunstein, <citetitle>Republic.com</citetitle> (Princeton: Princeton "
3177 "University Press, 2001), 65–80, 175, 182, 183, 192."
3180 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3181 #: freeculture.xml:2330
3183 "More bizarrely, there is generally not even permission for it to occur. We, "
3184 "the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm "
3185 "against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people "
3186 "you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you "
3187 "disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse "
3188 "becomes more extreme.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> We say what "
3189 "our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say."
3192 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3193 #: freeculture.xml:2343
3198 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3199 #: freeculture.xml:2345
3201 "Enter the blog. The blog's very architecture solves one part of this "
3202 "problem. People post when they want to post, and people read when they want "
3203 "to read. The most difficult time is synchronous time. Technologies that "
3204 "enable asynchronous communication, such as e-mail, increase the opportunity "
3205 "for communication. Blogs allow for public discourse without the public ever "
3206 "needing to gather in a single public place."
3209 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3210 #: freeculture.xml:2356
3212 "But beyond architecture, blogs also have solved the problem of "
3213 "norms. There's no norm (yet) in blog space not to talk about politics. "
3214 "Indeed, the space is filled with political speech, on both the right and the "
3215 "left. Some of the most popular sites are conservative or libertarian, but "
3216 "there are many of all political stripes. And even blogs that are not "
3217 "political cover political issues when the occasion merits."
3220 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3221 #: freeculture.xml:2363
3222 msgid "Dean, Howard"
3225 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3226 #: freeculture.xml:2365
3228 "The significance of these blogs is tiny now, though not so tiny. The name "
3229 "Howard Dean may well have faded from the 2004 presidential race but for "
3230 "blogs. Yet even if the number of readers is small, the reading is having an "
3234 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3235 #: freeculture.xml:2370
3239 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3240 #: freeculture.xml:2371
3241 msgid "Thurmond, Strom"
3245 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3246 #: freeculture.xml:2384
3248 "Noah Shachtman, <quote>With Incessant Postings, a Pundit Stirs the "
3249 "Pot,</quote> New York Times, 16 January 2003, G5."
3252 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3253 #: freeculture.xml:2373
3255 "One direct effect is on stories that had a different life cycle in the "
3256 "mainstream media. The Trent Lott affair is an example. When Lott "
3257 "<quote>misspoke</quote> at a party for Senator Strom Thurmond, essentially "
3258 "praising Thurmond's segregationist policies, he calculated correctly that "
3259 "this story would disappear from the mainstream press within forty-eight "
3260 "hours. It did. But he didn't calculate its life cycle in blog space. The "
3261 "bloggers kept researching the story. Over time, more and more instances of "
3262 "the same <quote>misspeaking</quote> emerged. Finally, the story broke back "
3263 "into the mainstream press. In the end, Lott was forced to resign as senate "
3264 "majority leader.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
3267 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3268 #: freeculture.xml:2389
3270 "This different cycle is possible because the same commercial pressures don't "
3271 "exist with blogs as with other ventures. Television and newspapers are "
3272 "commercial entities. They must work to keep attention. If they lose "
3273 "readers, they lose revenue. Like sharks, they must move on."
3276 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3277 #: freeculture.xml:2396
3279 "But bloggers don't have a similar constraint. They can obsess, they can "
3280 "focus, they can get serious. If a particular blogger writes a particularly "
3281 "interesting story, more and more people link to that story. And as the "
3282 "number of links to a particular story increases, it rises in the ranks of "
3283 "stories. People read what is popular; what is popular has been selected by a "
3284 "very democratic process of peer-generated rankings."
3287 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3288 #: freeculture.xml:2404
3293 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3294 #: freeculture.xml:2406
3296 "There's a second way, as well, in which blogs have a different cycle from "
3297 "the mainstream press. As Dave Winer, one of the fathers of this movement and "
3298 "a software author for many decades, told me, another difference is the "
3299 "absence of a financial <quote>conflict of interest.</quote> <quote>I think "
3300 "you have to take the conflict of interest</quote> out of journalism, Winer "
3301 "told me. <quote>An amateur journalist simply doesn't have a conflict of "
3302 "interest, or the conflict of interest is so easily disclosed that you know "
3303 "you can sort of get it out of the way.</quote>"
3306 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3307 #: freeculture.xml:2416 freeculture.xml:2462
3311 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3312 #: freeculture.xml:2417 freeculture.xml:2463 freeculture.xml:5608
3317 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3318 #: freeculture.xml:2425
3319 msgid "Telephone interview with David Winer, 16 April 2003."
3322 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3323 #: freeculture.xml:2419
3325 "These conflicts become more important as media becomes more concentrated "
3326 "(more on this below). A concentrated media can hide more from the public "
3327 "than an unconcentrated media can—as CNN admitted it did after the Iraq "
3328 "war because it was afraid of the consequences to its own "
3329 "employees.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> It also needs to sustain "
3330 "a more coherent account. (In the middle of the Iraq war, I read a post on "
3331 "the Internet from someone who was at that time listening to a satellite "
3332 "uplink with a reporter in Iraq. The New York headquarters was telling the "
3333 "reporter over and over that her account of the war was too bleak: She needed "
3334 "to offer a more optimistic story. When she told New York that wasn't "
3335 "warranted, they told her that <emphasis>they</emphasis> were writing "
3336 "<quote>the story.</quote>)"
3340 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3341 #: freeculture.xml:2443
3343 "John Schwartz, <quote>Loss of the Shuttle: The Internet; A Wealth of "
3344 "Information Online,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 2 "
3345 "February 2003, A28; Staci D. Kramer, <quote>Shuttle Disaster Coverage Mixed, "
3346 "but Strong Overall,</quote> Online Journalism Review, 2 February 2003, "
3347 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #10</ulink>."
3350 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3351 #: freeculture.xml:2435
3353 "Blog space gives amateurs a way to enter the "
3354 "debate—<quote>amateur</quote> not in the sense of inexperienced, but "
3355 "in the sense of an Olympic athlete, meaning not paid by anyone to give their "
3356 "reports. It allows for a much broader range of input into a story, as "
3357 "reporting on the Columbia disaster revealed, when hundreds from across the "
3358 "southwest United States turned to the Internet to retell what they had "
3359 "seen.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And it drives readers to read "
3360 "across the range of accounts and <quote>triangulate,</quote> as Winer puts "
3361 "it, the truth. Blogs, Winer says, are <quote>communicating directly with our "
3362 "constituency, and the middle man is out of it</quote>—with all the "
3363 "benefits, and costs, that might entail."
3366 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3367 #: freeculture.xml:2464
3368 msgid "Olafson, Steve"
3371 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3372 #: freeculture.xml:2462
3374 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
3375 "id=\"1\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> <placeholder "
3376 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/> See Michael Falcone, <quote>Does an Editor's "
3377 "Pencil Ruin a Web Log?</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 29 "
3378 "September 2003, C4. (<quote>Not all news organizations have been as "
3379 "accepting of employees who blog. Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent in Iraq "
3380 "who started a blog about his reporting of the war on March 9, stopped "
3381 "posting 12 days later at his bosses' request. Last year Steve Olafson, a "
3382 "<citetitle>Houston Chronicle</citetitle> reporter, was fired for keeping a "
3383 "personal Web log, published under a pseudonym, that dealt with some of the "
3384 "issues and people he was covering.</quote>)"
3388 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3389 #: freeculture.xml:2455
3391 "Winer is optimistic about the future of journalism infected with "
3392 "blogs. <quote>It's going to become an essential skill,</quote> Winer "
3393 "predicts, for public figures and increasingly for private figures as "
3394 "well. It's not clear that <quote>journalism</quote> is happy about "
3395 "this—some journalists have been told to curtail their "
3396 "blogging.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> But it is clear that we "
3397 "are still in transition. <quote>A lot of what we are doing now is warm-up "
3398 "exercises,</quote> Winer told me. There is a lot that must mature before "
3399 "this space has its mature effect. And as the inclusion of content in this "
3400 "space is the least infringing use of the Internet (meaning infringing on "
3401 "copyright), Winer said, <quote>we will be the last thing that gets shut "
3405 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3406 #: freeculture.xml:2485
3408 "This speech affects democracy. Winer thinks that happens because <quote>you "
3409 "don't have to work for somebody who controls, [for] a gatekeeper.</quote> "
3410 "That is true. But it affects democracy in another way as well. As more and "
3411 "more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will "
3412 "change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and "
3413 "misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be "
3414 "criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has "
3415 "been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore "
3416 "when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and "
3417 "criticism improves democracy. Today there are probably a couple of million "
3418 "blogs where such writing happens. When there are ten million, there will be "
3419 "something extraordinary to report."
3422 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3423 #: freeculture.xml:2501
3424 msgid "Brown, John Seely"
3427 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3428 #: freeculture.xml:2504
3430 "<emphasis role='strong'>John Seely Brown</emphasis> is the chief scientist "
3431 "of the Xerox Corporation. His work, as his Web site describes it, is "
3432 "<quote>human learning and … the creation of knowledge ecologies for "
3433 "creating … innovation.</quote>"
3436 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3437 #: freeculture.xml:2510
3439 "Brown thus looks at these technologies of digital creativity a bit "
3440 "differently from the perspectives I've sketched so far. I'm sure he would be "
3441 "excited about any technology that might improve democracy. But his real "
3442 "excitement comes from how these technologies affect learning."
3446 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3447 #: freeculture.xml:2517
3449 "As Brown believes, we learn by tinkering. When <quote>a lot of us grew "
3450 "up,</quote> he explains, that tinkering was done <quote>on motorcycle "
3451 "engines, lawnmower engines, automobiles, radios, and so on.</quote> But "
3452 "digital technologies enable a different kind of tinkering—with "
3453 "abstract ideas though in concrete form. The kids at Just Think! not only "
3454 "think about how a commercial portrays a politician; using digital "
3455 "technology, they can take the commercial apart and manipulate it, tinker "
3456 "with it to see how it does what it does. Digital technologies launch a kind "
3457 "of bricolage, or <quote>free collage,</quote> as Brown calls it. Many get to "
3458 "add to or transform the tinkering of many others."
3461 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3462 #: freeculture.xml:2530
3464 "The best large-scale example of this kind of tinkering so far is free "
3465 "software or open-source software (FS/OSS). FS/OSS is software whose source "
3466 "code is shared. Anyone can download the technology that makes a FS/OSS "
3467 "program run. And anyone eager to learn how a particular bit of FS/OSS "
3468 "technology works can tinker with the code."
3471 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3472 #: freeculture.xml:2537
3474 "This opportunity creates a <quote>completely new kind of learning "
3475 "platform,</quote> as Brown describes. <quote>As soon as you start doing "
3476 "that, you … unleash a free collage on the community, so that other "
3477 "people can start looking at your code, tinkering with it, trying it out, "
3478 "seeing if they can improve it.</quote> Each effort is a kind of "
3479 "apprenticeship. <quote>Open source becomes a major apprenticeship "
3483 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3484 #: freeculture.xml:2545
3486 "In this process, <quote>the concrete things you tinker with are abstract. "
3487 "They are code.</quote> Kids are <quote>shifting to the ability to tinker in "
3488 "the abstract, and this tinkering is no longer an isolated activity that "
3489 "you're doing in your garage. You are tinkering with a community "
3490 "platform. … You are tinkering with other people's stuff. The more you "
3491 "tinker the more you improve.</quote> The more you improve, the more you "
3495 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3496 #: freeculture.xml:2554
3498 "This same thing happens with content, too. And it happens in the same "
3499 "collaborative way when that content is part of the Web. As Brown puts it, "
3500 "<quote>the Web [is] the first medium that truly honors multiple forms of "
3501 "intelligence.</quote> Earlier technologies, such as the typewriter or word "
3502 "processors, helped amplify text. But the Web amplifies much more than "
3503 "text. <quote>The Web … says if you are musical, if you are artistic, "
3504 "if you are visual, if you are interested in film … [then] there is a "
3505 "lot you can start to do on this medium. [It] can now amplify and honor these "
3506 "multiple forms of intelligence.</quote>"
3510 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3511 #: freeculture.xml:2567
3513 "Brown is talking about what Elizabeth Daley, Stephanie Barish, and Just "
3514 "Think! teach: that this tinkering with culture teaches as well as "
3515 "creates. It develops talents differently, and it builds a different kind of "
3519 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3520 #: freeculture.xml:2575
3522 "Yet the freedom to tinker with these objects is not guaranteed. Indeed, as "
3523 "we'll see through the course of this book, that freedom is increasingly "
3524 "highly contested. While there's no doubt that your father had the right to "
3525 "tinker with the car engine, there's great doubt that your child will have "
3526 "the right to tinker with the images she finds all around. The law and, "
3527 "increasingly, technology interfere with a freedom that technology, and "
3528 "curiosity, would otherwise ensure."
3532 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3533 #: freeculture.xml:2591
3535 "See, for example, Edward Felten and Andrew Appel, <quote>Technological "
3536 "Access Control Interferes with Noninfringing Scholarship,</quote> "
3537 "<citetitle>Communications of the Association for Computer "
3538 "Machinery</citetitle> 43 (2000): 9."
3541 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3542 #: freeculture.xml:2584
3544 "These restrictions have become the focus of researchers and scholars. "
3545 "Professor Ed Felten of Princeton (whom we'll see more of in chapter <xref "
3546 "xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"property-i\"/>) has developed a "
3547 "powerful argument in favor of the <quote>right to tinker</quote> as it "
3548 "applies to computer science and to knowledge in general.<placeholder "
3549 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> But Brown's concern is earlier, or younger, or "
3550 "more fundamental. It is about the learning that kids can do, or can't do, "
3551 "because of the law."
3554 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3555 #: freeculture.xml:2599
3557 "<quote>This is where education in the twenty-first century is going,</quote> "
3558 "Brown explains. We need to <quote>understand how kids who grow up digital "
3559 "think and want to learn.</quote>"
3562 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3563 #: freeculture.xml:2604
3565 "<quote>Yet,</quote> as Brown continued, and as the balance of this book will "
3566 "evince, <quote>we are building a legal system that completely suppresses the "
3567 "natural tendencies of today's digital kids. … We're building an "
3568 "architecture that unleashes 60 percent of the brain [and] a legal system "
3569 "that closes down that part of the brain.</quote>"
3572 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3573 #: freeculture.xml:2612
3575 "We're building a technology that takes the magic of Kodak, mixes moving "
3576 "images and sound, and adds a space for commentary and an opportunity to "
3577 "spread that creativity everywhere. But we're building the law to close down "
3581 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3582 #: freeculture.xml:2618
3584 "<quote>No way to run a culture,</quote> as Brewster Kahle, whom we'll meet "
3585 "in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"collectors\"/>, "
3586 "quipped to me in a rare moment of despondence."
3589 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
3590 #: freeculture.xml:2625
3591 msgid "CHAPTER THREE: Catalogs"
3594 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3595 #: freeculture.xml:2626
3599 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3600 #: freeculture.xml:2626 freeculture.xml:2627
3601 msgid "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)"
3604 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3605 #: freeculture.xml:2629
3607 "<emphasis role='strong'>In the fall</emphasis> of 2002, Jesse Jordan of "
3608 "Oceanside, New York, enrolled as a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic "
3609 "Institute, in Troy, New York. His major at RPI was information "
3610 "technology. Though he is not a programmer, in October Jesse decided to begin "
3611 "to tinker with search engine technology that was available on the RPI "
3615 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3616 #: freeculture.xml:2637
3618 "RPI is one of America's foremost technological research institutions. It "
3619 "offers degrees in fields ranging from architecture and engineering to "
3620 "information sciences. More than 65 percent of its five thousand "
3621 "undergraduates finished in the top 10 percent of their high school "
3622 "class. The school is thus a perfect mix of talent and experience to imagine "
3623 "and then build, a generation for the network age."
3626 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3627 #: freeculture.xml:2645
3629 "RPI's computer network links students, faculty, and administration to one "
3630 "another. It also links RPI to the Internet. Not everything available on the "
3631 "RPI network is available on the Internet. But the network is designed to "
3632 "enable students to get access to the Internet, as well as more intimate "
3633 "access to other members of the RPI community."
3637 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3638 #: freeculture.xml:2652
3640 "Search engines are a measure of a network's intimacy. Google brought the "
3641 "Internet much closer to all of us by fantastically improving the quality of "
3642 "search on the network. Specialty search engines can do this even better. The "
3643 "idea of <quote>intranet</quote> search engines, search engines that search "
3644 "within the network of a particular institution, is to provide users of that "
3645 "institution with better access to material from that institution. "
3646 "Businesses do this all the time, enabling employees to have access to "
3647 "material that people outside the business can't get. Universities do it as "
3651 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3652 #: freeculture.xml:2664
3654 "These engines are enabled by the network technology itself. Microsoft, for "
3655 "example, has a network file system that makes it very easy for search "
3656 "engines tuned to that network to query the system for information about the "
3657 "publicly (within that network) available content. Jesse's search engine was "
3658 "built to take advantage of this technology. It used Microsoft's network file "
3659 "system to build an index of all the files available within the RPI network."
3662 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3663 #: freeculture.xml:2673
3665 "Jesse's wasn't the first search engine built for the RPI network. Indeed, "
3666 "his engine was a simple modification of engines that others had built. His "
3667 "single most important improvement over those engines was to fix a bug within "
3668 "the Microsoft file-sharing system that could cause a user's computer to "
3669 "crash. With the engines that existed before, if you tried to access a file "
3670 "through a Windows browser that was on a computer that was off-line, your "
3671 "computer could crash. Jesse modified the system a bit to fix that problem, "
3672 "by adding a button that a user could click to see if the machine holding the "
3673 "file was still on-line."
3676 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3677 #: freeculture.xml:2685
3679 "Jesse's engine went on-line in late October. Over the following six months, "
3680 "he continued to tweak it to improve its functionality. By March, the system "
3681 "was functioning quite well. Jesse had more than one million files in his "
3682 "directory, including every type of content that might be on users' "
3687 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3688 #: freeculture.xml:2692
3690 "Thus the index his search engine produced included pictures, which students "
3691 "could use to put on their own Web sites; copies of notes or research; copies "
3692 "of information pamphlets; movie clips that students might have created; "
3693 "university brochures—basically anything that users of the RPI network "
3694 "made available in a public folder of their computer."
3697 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3698 #: freeculture.xml:2701
3700 "But the index also included music files. In fact, one quarter of the files "
3701 "that Jesse's search engine listed were music files. But that means, of "
3702 "course, that three quarters were not, and—so that this point is "
3703 "absolutely clear—Jesse did nothing to induce people to put music files "
3704 "in their public folders. He did nothing to target the search engine to these "
3705 "files. He was a kid tinkering with a Google-like technology at a university "
3706 "where he was studying information science, and hence, tinkering was the "
3707 "aim. Unlike Google, or Microsoft, for that matter, he made no money from "
3708 "this tinkering; he was not connected to any business that would make any "
3709 "money from this experiment. He was a kid tinkering with technology in an "
3710 "environment where tinkering with technology was precisely what he was "
3714 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3715 #: freeculture.xml:2716
3717 "On April 3, 2003, Jesse was contacted by the dean of students at RPI. The "
3718 "dean informed Jesse that the Recording Industry Association of America, the "
3719 "RIAA, would be filing a lawsuit against him and three other students whom he "
3720 "didn't even know, two of them at other universities. A few hours later, "
3721 "Jesse was served with papers from the suit. As he read these papers and "
3722 "watched the news reports about them, he was increasingly astonished."
3725 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3726 #: freeculture.xml:2725
3728 "<quote>It was absurd,</quote> he told me. <quote>I don't think I did "
3729 "anything wrong. … I don't think there's anything wrong with the "
3730 "search engine that I ran or … what I had done to it. I mean, I hadn't "
3731 "modified it in any way that promoted or enhanced the work of pirates. I just "
3732 "modified the search engine in a way that would make it easier to "
3733 "use</quote>—again, a <emphasis>search engine</emphasis>, which Jesse "
3734 "had not himself built, using the Windows filesharing system, which Jesse had "
3735 "not himself built, to enable members of the RPI community to get access to "
3736 "content, which Jesse had not himself created or posted, and the vast "
3737 "majority of which had nothing to do with music."
3740 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3741 #: freeculture.xml:2737
3742 msgid "statutory damages"
3746 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3747 #: freeculture.xml:2739
3749 "But the RIAA branded Jesse a pirate. They claimed he operated a network and "
3750 "had therefore <quote>willfully</quote> violated copyright laws. They "
3751 "demanded that he pay them the damages for his wrong. For cases of "
3752 "<quote>willful infringement,</quote> the Copyright Act specifies something "
3753 "lawyers call <quote>statutory damages.</quote> These damages permit a "
3754 "copyright owner to claim $150,000 per infringement. As the RIAA alleged more "
3755 "than one hundred specific copyright infringements, they therefore demanded "
3756 "that Jesse pay them at least $15,000,000."
3759 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3760 #: freeculture.xml:2749
3761 msgid "Princeton University"
3764 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3765 #: freeculture.xml:2750
3766 msgid "Michigan Technical University"
3770 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3771 #: freeculture.xml:2764
3773 "Tim Goral, <quote>Recording Industry Goes After Campus P-2-P Networks: Suit "
3774 "Alleges $97.8 Billion in Damages,</quote> <citetitle>Professional Media "
3775 "Group LCC</citetitle> 6 (2003): 5, available at 2003 WL 55179443."
3778 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3779 #: freeculture.xml:2752
3781 "Similar lawsuits were brought against three other students: one other "
3782 "student at RPI, one at Michigan Technical University, and one at "
3783 "Princeton. Their situations were similar to Jesse's. Though each case was "
3784 "different in detail, the bottom line in each was exactly the same: huge "
3785 "demands for <quote>damages</quote> that the RIAA claimed it was entitled "
3786 "to. If you added up the claims, these four lawsuits were asking courts in "
3787 "the United States to award the plaintiffs close to $100 "
3788 "<emphasis>billion</emphasis>—six times the <emphasis>total</emphasis> "
3789 "profit of the film industry in 2001.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
3793 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3794 #: freeculture.xml:2771
3796 "Jesse called his parents. They were supportive but a bit frightened. An "
3797 "uncle was a lawyer. He began negotiations with the RIAA. They demanded to "
3798 "know how much money Jesse had. Jesse had saved $12,000 from summer jobs and "
3799 "other employment. They demanded $12,000 to dismiss the case."
3802 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3803 #: freeculture.xml:2777
3804 msgid "Oppenheimer, Matt"
3807 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3808 #: freeculture.xml:2779
3810 "The RIAA wanted Jesse to admit to doing something wrong. He refused. They "
3811 "wanted him to agree to an injunction that would essentially make it "
3812 "impossible for him to work in many fields of technology for the rest of his "
3813 "life. He refused. They made him understand that this process of being sued "
3814 "was not going to be pleasant. (As Jesse's father recounted to me, the chief "
3815 "lawyer on the case, Matt Oppenheimer, told Jesse, <quote>You don't want to "
3816 "pay another visit to a dentist like me.</quote>) And throughout, the RIAA "
3817 "insisted it would not settle the case until it took every penny Jesse had "
3822 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3823 #: freeculture.xml:2790
3825 "Jesse's family was outraged at these claims. They wanted to fight. But "
3826 "Jesse's uncle worked to educate the family about the nature of the American "
3827 "legal system. Jesse could fight the RIAA. He might even win. But the cost of "
3828 "fighting a lawsuit like this, Jesse was told, would be at least $250,000. If "
3829 "he won, he would not recover that money. If he won, he would have a piece of "
3830 "paper saying he had won, and a piece of paper saying he and his family were "
3834 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3835 #: freeculture.xml:2800
3837 "So Jesse faced a mafia-like choice: $250,000 and a chance at winning, or "
3838 "$12,000 and a settlement."
3841 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
3842 #: freeculture.xml:2803 freeculture.xml:3159 freeculture.xml:4094 freeculture.xml:5209 freeculture.xml:5258 freeculture.xml:9642 freeculture.xml:9740 freeculture.xml:9909 freeculture.xml:14472 freeculture.xml:14537
3846 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
3847 #: freeculture.xml:2803 freeculture.xml:3159 freeculture.xml:4094 freeculture.xml:9642 freeculture.xml:9740 freeculture.xml:9909 freeculture.xml:14472 freeculture.xml:14537
3848 msgid "recording industry payments to"
3852 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3853 #: freeculture.xml:2813
3855 "Occupational Employment Survey, U.S. Dept. of Labor (2001) "
3856 "(27–2042—Musicians and Singers). See also National Endowment for "
3857 "the Arts, <citetitle>More Than One in a Blue Moon</citetitle> (2000)."
3861 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3862 #: freeculture.xml:2821
3864 "Douglas Lichtman makes a related point in <quote>KaZaA and "
3865 "Punishment,</quote> <citetitle>Wall Street Journal</citetitle>, 10 September "
3869 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3870 #: freeculture.xml:2805
3872 "The recording industry insists this is a matter of law and morality. Let's "
3873 "put the law aside for a moment and think about the morality. Where is the "
3874 "morality in a lawsuit like this? What is the virtue in scapegoatism? The "
3875 "RIAA is an extraordinarily powerful lobby. The president of the RIAA is "
3876 "reported to make more than $1 million a year. Artists, on the other hand, "
3877 "are not well paid. The average recording artist makes $45,900.<placeholder "
3878 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> There are plenty of ways for the RIAA to affect "
3879 "and direct policy. So where is the morality in taking money from a student "
3880 "for running a search engine?<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
3883 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3884 #: freeculture.xml:2826
3886 "On June 23, Jesse wired his savings to the lawyer working for the RIAA. The "
3887 "case against him was then dismissed. And with this, this kid who had "
3888 "tinkered a computer into a $15 million lawsuit became an activist:"
3891 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
3892 #: freeculture.xml:2833
3894 "I was definitely not an activist [before]. I never really meant to be an "
3895 "activist. … [But] I've been pushed into this. In no way did I ever "
3896 "foresee anything like this, but I think it's just completely absurd what the "
3900 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3901 #: freeculture.xml:2840
3903 "Jesse's parents betray a certain pride in their reluctant activist. As his "
3904 "father told me, Jesse <quote>considers himself very conservative, and so do "
3905 "I. … He's not a tree hugger. … I think it's bizarre that they "
3906 "would pick on him. But he wants to let people know that they're sending the "
3907 "wrong message. And he wants to correct the record.</quote>"
3910 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
3911 #: freeculture.xml:2849
3912 msgid "CHAPTER FOUR: <quote>Pirates</quote>"
3915 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3916 #: freeculture.xml:2852
3918 "<emphasis role='strong'>If <quote>piracy</quote> means</emphasis> using the "
3919 "creative property of others without their permission—if <quote>if "
3920 "value, then right</quote> is true—then the history of the content "
3921 "industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of <quote>big "
3922 "media</quote> today—film, records, radio, and cable TV—was born "
3923 "of a kind of piracy so defined. The consistent story is how last "
3924 "generation's pirates join this generation's country club—until now."
3927 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
3928 #: freeculture.xml:2863
3932 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
3933 #: freeculture.xml:2867
3935 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> I am grateful to Peter DiMauro "
3936 "for pointing me to this extraordinary history. See also Siva Vaidhyanathan, "
3937 "<citetitle>Copyrights and Copywrongs</citetitle>, 87–93, which details "
3938 "Edison's <quote>adventures</quote> with copyright and patent."
3942 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
3943 #: freeculture.xml:2865
3945 "The film industry of Hollywood was built by fleeing pirates.<placeholder "
3946 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Creators and directors migrated from the East "
3947 "Coast to California in the early twentieth century in part to escape "
3948 "controls that patents granted the inventor of filmmaking, Thomas "
3949 "Edison. These controls were exercised through a monopoly "
3950 "<quote>trust,</quote> the Motion Pictures Patents Company, and were based on "
3951 "Thomas Edison's creative property—patents. Edison formed the MPPC to "
3952 "exercise the rights this creative property gave him, and the MPPC was "
3953 "serious about the control it demanded."
3956 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
3957 #: freeculture.xml:2883
3958 msgid "As one commentator tells one part of the story,"
3961 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
3962 #: freeculture.xml:2887
3964 "A January 1909 deadline was set for all companies to comply with the "
3965 "license. By February, unlicensed outlaws, who referred to themselves as "
3966 "independents protested the trust and carried on business without submitting "
3967 "to the Edison monopoly. In the summer of 1909 the independent movement was "
3968 "in full-swing, with producers and theater owners using illegal equipment and "
3969 "imported film stock to create their own underground market."
3972 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
3973 #: freeculture.xml:2895
3974 msgid "Fox, William"
3977 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
3978 #: freeculture.xml:2896
3979 msgid "General Film Company"
3982 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3983 #: freeculture.xml:2897 freeculture.xml:3177 freeculture.xml:4309 freeculture.xml:9782
3984 msgid "Picker, Randal C."
3987 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3988 #: freeculture.xml:2921 freeculture.xml:4308 freeculture.xml:9516 freeculture.xml:9637
3989 msgid "broadcast flag"
3992 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
3993 #: freeculture.xml:2910
3995 "J. A. Aberdeen, <citetitle>Hollywood Renegades: The Society of Independent "
3996 "Motion Picture Producers</citetitle> (Cobblestone Entertainment, 2000) and "
3997 "expanded texts posted at <quote>The Edison Movie Monopoly: The Motion "
3998 "Picture Patents Company vs. the Independent Outlaws,</quote> available at "
3999 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #11</ulink>. For a "
4000 "discussion of the economic motive behind both these limits and the limits "
4001 "imposed by Victor on phonographs, see Randal C. Picker, <quote>From Edison "
4002 "to the Broadcast Flag: Mechanisms of Consent and Refusal and the "
4003 "Propertization of Copyright</quote> (September 2002), University of Chicago "
4004 "Law School, James M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, Working Paper "
4005 "No. 159. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4008 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4009 #: freeculture.xml:2899
4011 "With the country experiencing a tremendous expansion in the number of "
4012 "nickelodeons, the Patents Company reacted to the independent movement by "
4013 "forming a strong-arm subsidiary known as the General Film Company to block "
4014 "the entry of non-licensed independents. With coercive tactics that have "
4015 "become legendary, General Film confiscated unlicensed equipment, "
4016 "discontinued product supply to theaters which showed unlicensed films, and "
4017 "effectively monopolized distribution with the acquisition of all U.S. film "
4018 "exchanges, except for the one owned by the independent William Fox who "
4019 "defied the Trust even after his license was revoked.<placeholder "
4020 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4024 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4025 #: freeculture.xml:2932
4027 "Marc Wanamaker, <quote>The First Studios,</quote> <citetitle>The Silents "
4028 "Majority</citetitle>, archived at <ulink "
4029 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #12</ulink>."
4032 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4033 #: freeculture.xml:2926
4035 "The Napsters of those days, the <quote>independents,</quote> were companies "
4036 "like Fox. And no less than today, these independents were vigorously "
4037 "resisted. <quote>Shooting was disrupted by machinery stolen, and "
4038 "`accidents' resulting in loss of negatives, equipment, buildings and "
4039 "sometimes life and limb frequently occurred.</quote><placeholder "
4040 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> That led the independents to flee the East "
4041 "Coast. California was remote enough from Edison's reach that filmmakers "
4042 "there could pirate his inventions without fear of the law. And the leaders "
4043 "of Hollywood filmmaking, Fox most prominently, did just that."
4047 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4048 #: freeculture.xml:2942
4050 "Of course, California grew quickly, and the effective enforcement of federal "
4051 "law eventually spread west. But because patents grant the patent holder a "
4052 "truly <quote>limited</quote> monopoly (just seventeen years at that time), "
4053 "by the time enough federal marshals appeared, the patents had expired. A new "
4054 "industry had been born, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative "
4058 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
4059 #: freeculture.xml:2953
4060 msgid "Recorded Music"
4063 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4064 #: freeculture.xml:2955
4066 "The record industry was born of another kind of piracy, though to see how "
4067 "requires a bit of detail about the way the law regulates music."
4070 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4071 #: freeculture.xml:2958
4072 msgid "Fourneaux, Henri"
4075 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4076 #: freeculture.xml:2959
4077 msgid "Russel, Phil"
4080 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4081 #: freeculture.xml:2961
4083 "At the time that Edison and Henri Fourneaux invented machines for "
4084 "reproducing music (Edison the phonograph, Fourneaux the player piano), the "
4085 "law gave composers the exclusive right to control copies of their music and "
4086 "the exclusive right to control public performances of their music. In other "
4087 "words, in 1900, if I wanted a copy of Phil Russel's 1899 hit <quote>Happy "
4088 "Mose,</quote> the law said I would have to pay for the right to get a copy "
4089 "of the musical score, and I would also have to pay for the right to perform "
4093 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4094 #: freeculture.xml:2970 freeculture.xml:3121
4098 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4099 #: freeculture.xml:2972
4101 "But what if I wanted to record <quote>Happy Mose,</quote> using Edison's "
4102 "phonograph or Fourneaux's player piano? Here the law stumbled. It was clear "
4103 "enough that I would have to buy any copy of the musical score that I "
4104 "performed in making this recording. And it was clear enough that I would "
4105 "have to pay for any public performance of the work I was recording. But it "
4106 "wasn't totally clear that I would have to pay for a <quote>public "
4107 "performance</quote> if I recorded the song in my own house (even today, you "
4108 "don't owe the Beatles anything if you sing their songs in the shower), or if "
4109 "I recorded the song from memory (copies in your brain are "
4110 "not—yet— regulated by copyright law). So if I simply sang the "
4111 "song into a recording device in the privacy of my own home, it wasn't clear "
4112 "that I owed the composer anything. And more importantly, it wasn't clear "
4113 "whether I owed the composer anything if I then made copies of those "
4114 "recordings. Because of this gap in the law, then, I could effectively "
4115 "pirate someone else's song without paying its composer anything."
4118 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4119 #: freeculture.xml:2995 freeculture.xml:3012
4120 msgid "Kittredge, Alfred"
4123 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4124 #: freeculture.xml:2991
4126 "The composers (and publishers) were none too happy about this capacity to "
4127 "pirate. As South Dakota senator Alfred Kittredge put it, <placeholder "
4128 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4131 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4132 #: freeculture.xml:3006
4134 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright: Hearings on S. 6330 "
4135 "and H.R. 19853 Before the ( Joint) Committees on Patents, 59th Cong. 59, 1st "
4136 "sess. (1906) (statement of Senator Alfred B. Kittredge, of South Dakota, "
4137 "chairman), reprinted in <citetitle>Legislative History of the Copyright "
4138 "Act</citetitle>, E. Fulton Brylawski and Abe Goldman, eds. (South "
4139 "Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1976). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
4143 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4144 #: freeculture.xml:2999
4146 "Imagine the injustice of the thing. A composer writes a song or an opera. A "
4147 "publisher buys at great expense the rights to the same and copyrights "
4148 "it. Along come the phonographic companies and companies who cut music rolls "
4149 "and deliberately steal the work of the brain of the composer and publisher "
4150 "without any regard for [their] rights.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
4154 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4155 #: freeculture.xml:3016
4156 msgid "Sousa, John Philip"
4160 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4161 #: freeculture.xml:3022
4163 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 223 (statement of "
4164 "Nathan Burkan, attorney for the Music Publishers Association)."
4168 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4169 #: freeculture.xml:3028
4171 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 226 (statement of "
4172 "Nathan Burkan, attorney for the Music Publishers Association)."
4176 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4177 #: freeculture.xml:3035
4179 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 23 (statement of "
4180 "John Philip Sousa, composer)."
4183 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4184 #: freeculture.xml:3018
4186 "The innovators who developed the technology to record other people's works "
4187 "were <quote>sponging upon the toil, the work, the talent, and genius of "
4188 "American composers,</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> and the "
4189 "<quote>music publishing industry</quote> was thereby <quote>at the complete "
4190 "mercy of this one pirate.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> "
4191 "As John Philip Sousa put it, in as direct a way as possible, <quote>When "
4192 "they make money out of my pieces, I want a share of it.</quote><placeholder "
4193 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/>"
4196 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4197 #: freeculture.xml:3039
4198 msgid "American Graphophone Company"
4201 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4202 #: freeculture.xml:3040
4203 msgid "player pianos"
4207 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4208 #: freeculture.xml:3051
4210 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 283–84 "
4211 "(statement of Albert Walker, representative of the Auto-Music Perforating "
4212 "Company of New York)."
4216 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4217 #: freeculture.xml:3062
4219 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 376 (prepared "
4220 "memorandum of Philip Mauro, general patent counsel of the American "
4221 "Graphophone Company Association)."
4224 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4225 #: freeculture.xml:3043
4227 "These arguments have familiar echoes in the wars of our day. So, too, do the "
4228 "arguments on the other side. The innovators who developed the player piano "
4229 "argued that <quote>it is perfectly demonstrable that the introduction of "
4230 "automatic music players has not deprived any composer of anything he had "
4231 "before their introduction.</quote> Rather, the machines increased the sales "
4232 "of sheet music.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> In any case, the "
4233 "innovators argued, the job of Congress was <quote>to consider first the "
4234 "interest of [the public], whom they represent, and whose servants they "
4235 "are.</quote> <quote>All talk about `theft,'</quote> the general counsel of "
4236 "the American Graphophone Company wrote, <quote>is the merest claptrap, for "
4237 "there exists no property in ideas musical, literary or artistic, except as "
4238 "defined by statute.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
4242 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4243 #: freeculture.xml:3068
4245 "The law soon resolved this battle in favor of the composer "
4246 "<emphasis>and</emphasis> the recording artist. Congress amended the law to "
4247 "make sure that composers would be paid for the <quote>mechanical "
4248 "reproductions</quote> of their music. But rather than simply granting the "
4249 "composer complete control over the right to make mechanical reproductions, "
4250 "Congress gave recording artists a right to record the music, at a price set "
4251 "by Congress, once the composer allowed it to be recorded once. This is the "
4252 "part of copyright law that makes cover songs possible. Once a composer "
4253 "authorizes a recording of his song, others are free to record the same song, "
4254 "so long as they pay the original composer a fee set by the law."
4257 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4258 #: freeculture.xml:3083
4260 "American law ordinarily calls this a <quote>compulsory license,</quote> but "
4261 "I will refer to it as a <quote>statutory license.</quote> A statutory "
4262 "license is a license whose key terms are set by law. After Congress's "
4263 "amendment of the Copyright Act in 1909, record companies were free to "
4264 "distribute copies of recordings so long as they paid the composer (or "
4265 "copyright holder) the fee set by the statute."
4268 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4269 #: freeculture.xml:3098 freeculture.xml:14168
4270 msgid "Grisham, John"
4273 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4274 #: freeculture.xml:3091
4276 "This is an exception within the law of copyright. When John Grisham writes a "
4277 "novel, a publisher is free to publish that novel only if Grisham gives the "
4278 "publisher permission. Grisham, in turn, is free to charge whatever he wants "
4279 "for that permission. The price to publish Grisham is thus set by Grisham, "
4280 "and copyright law ordinarily says you have no permission to use Grisham's "
4281 "work except with permission of Grisham. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
4286 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4287 #: freeculture.xml:3115
4289 "Copyright Law Revision: Hearings on S. 2499, S. 2900, H.R. 243, and "
4290 "H.R. 11794 Before the ( Joint) Committee on Patents, 60th Cong., 1st sess., "
4291 "217 (1908) (statement of Senator Reed Smoot, chairman), reprinted in "
4292 "<citetitle>Legislative History of the 1909 Copyright Act</citetitle>, "
4293 "E. Fulton Brylawski and Abe Goldman, eds. (South Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman "
4297 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4298 #: freeculture.xml:3101
4300 "But the law governing recordings gives recording artists less. And thus, in "
4301 "effect, the law <emphasis>subsidizes</emphasis> the recording industry "
4302 "through a kind of piracy—by giving recording artists a weaker right "
4303 "than it otherwise gives creative authors. The Beatles have less control over "
4304 "their creative work than Grisham does. And the beneficiaries of this less "
4305 "control are the recording industry and the public. The recording industry "
4306 "gets something of value for less than it otherwise would pay; the public "
4307 "gets access to a much wider range of musical creativity. Indeed, Congress "
4308 "was quite explicit about its reasons for granting this right. Its fear was "
4309 "the monopoly power of rights holders, and that that power would stifle "
4310 "follow-on creativity.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
4311 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
4314 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4315 #: freeculture.xml:3124
4317 "While the recording industry has been quite coy about this recently, "
4318 "historically it has been quite a supporter of the statutory license for "
4319 "records. As a 1967 report from the House Committee on the Judiciary relates,"
4323 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4324 #: freeculture.xml:3146
4326 "Copyright Law Revision: Report to Accompany H.R. 2512, House Committee on "
4327 "the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st sess., House Document no. 83, (8 March "
4328 "1967). I am grateful to Glenn Brown for drawing my attention to this report."
4331 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4332 #: freeculture.xml:3131
4334 "the record producers argued vigorously that the compulsory license system "
4335 "must be retained. They asserted that the record industry is a "
4336 "half-billion-dollar business of great economic importance in the United "
4337 "States and throughout the world; records today are the principal means of "
4338 "disseminating music, and this creates special problems, since performers "
4339 "need unhampered access to musical material on nondiscriminatory "
4340 "terms. Historically, the record producers pointed out, there were no "
4341 "recording rights before 1909 and the 1909 statute adopted the compulsory "
4342 "license as a deliberate anti-monopoly condition on the grant of these "
4343 "rights. They argue that the result has been an outpouring of recorded music, "
4344 "with the public being given lower prices, improved quality, and a greater "
4345 "choice.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4348 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4349 #: freeculture.xml:3153
4351 "By limiting the rights musicians have, by partially pirating their creative "
4352 "work, the record producers, and the public, benefit."
4355 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
4356 #: freeculture.xml:3158 freeculture.xml:4273
4360 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4361 #: freeculture.xml:3161
4362 msgid "Radio was also born of piracy."
4365 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4366 #: freeculture.xml:3176
4367 msgid "Hand, Learned"
4370 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4371 #: freeculture.xml:3167
4373 "See 17 <citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>, sections 106 and 110. At "
4374 "the beginning, record companies printed <quote>Not Licensed for Radio "
4375 "Broadcast</quote> and other messages purporting to restrict the ability to "
4376 "play a record on a radio station. Judge Learned Hand rejected the argument "
4377 "that a warning attached to a record might restrict the rights of the radio "
4378 "station. See <citetitle>RCA Manufacturing "
4379 "Co</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Whiteman</citetitle>, 114 F. 2d 86 (2nd "
4380 "Cir. 1940). See also Randal C. Picker, <quote>From Edison to the Broadcast "
4381 "Flag: Mechanisms of Consent and Refusal and the Propertization of "
4382 "Copyright,</quote> <citetitle>University of Chicago Law Review</citetitle> "
4383 "70 (2003): 281. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
4384 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
4387 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4388 #: freeculture.xml:3164
4390 "When a radio station plays a record on the air, that constitutes a "
4391 "<quote>public performance</quote> of the composer's work.<placeholder "
4392 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> As I described above, the law gives the "
4393 "composer (or copyright holder) an exclusive right to public performances of "
4394 "his work. The radio station thus owes the composer money for that "
4398 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
4399 #: freeculture.xml:3194 freeculture.xml:8851 freeculture.xml:9310 freeculture.xml:12297
4400 msgid "Lovett, Lyle"
4404 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4405 #: freeculture.xml:3184
4407 "But when the radio station plays a record, it is not only performing a copy "
4408 "of the <emphasis>composer's</emphasis> work. The radio station is also "
4409 "performing a copy of the <emphasis>recording artist's</emphasis> work. It's "
4410 "one thing to have <quote>Happy Birthday</quote> sung on the radio by the "
4411 "local children's choir; it's quite another to have it sung by the Rolling "
4412 "Stones or Lyle Lovett. The recording artist is adding to the value of the "
4413 "composition performed on the radio station. And if the law were perfectly "
4414 "consistent, the radio station would have to pay the recording artist for his "
4415 "work, just as it pays the composer of the music for his work. <placeholder "
4416 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4419 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4420 #: freeculture.xml:3199
4422 "But it doesn't. Under the law governing radio performances, the radio "
4423 "station does not have to pay the recording artist. The radio station need "
4424 "only pay the composer. The radio station thus gets a bit of something for "
4425 "nothing. It gets to perform the recording artist's work for free, even if it "
4426 "must pay the composer something for the privilege of playing the song."
4429 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
4430 #: freeculture.xml:3206 freeculture.xml:3711 freeculture.xml:6170
4434 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4435 #: freeculture.xml:3208
4437 "This difference can be huge. Imagine you compose a piece of music. Imagine "
4438 "it is your first. You own the exclusive right to authorize public "
4439 "performances of that music. So if Madonna wants to sing your song in public, "
4440 "she has to get your permission."
4443 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4444 #: freeculture.xml:3214
4446 "Imagine she does sing your song, and imagine she likes it a lot. She then "
4447 "decides to make a recording of your song, and it becomes a top hit. Under "
4448 "our law, every time a radio station plays your song, you get some money. But "
4449 "Madonna gets nothing, save the indirect effect on the sale of her CDs. The "
4450 "public performance of her recording is not a <quote>protected</quote> "
4451 "right. The radio station thus gets to <emphasis>pirate</emphasis> the value "
4452 "of Madonna's work without paying her anything."
4455 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4456 #: freeculture.xml:3225
4458 "No doubt, one might argue that, on balance, the recording artists "
4459 "benefit. On average, the promotion they get is worth more than the "
4460 "performance rights they give up. Maybe. But even if so, the law ordinarily "
4461 "gives the creator the right to make this choice. By making the choice for "
4462 "him or her, the law gives the radio station the right to take something for "
4466 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
4467 #: freeculture.xml:3235 freeculture.xml:4279
4471 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
4472 #: freeculture.xml:3236 freeculture.xml:4107 freeculture.xml:8046 freeculture.xml:8085 freeculture.xml:14570
4473 msgid "cable television"
4476 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4477 #: freeculture.xml:3238
4478 msgid "Cable TV was also born of a kind of piracy."
4482 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4483 #: freeculture.xml:3241
4485 "When cable entrepreneurs first started wiring communities with cable "
4486 "television in 1948, most refused to pay broadcasters for the content that "
4487 "they echoed to their customers. Even when the cable companies started "
4488 "selling access to television broadcasts, they refused to pay for what they "
4489 "sold. Cable companies were thus Napsterizing broadcasters' content, but more "
4490 "egregiously than anything Napster ever did— Napster never charged for "
4491 "the content it enabled others to give away."
4494 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4495 #: freeculture.xml:3251
4496 msgid "Anello, Douglas"
4499 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4500 #: freeculture.xml:3252
4501 msgid "Burdick, Quentin"
4504 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4505 #: freeculture.xml:3253 freeculture.xml:3264
4506 msgid "Hyde, Rosel H."
4509 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4510 #: freeculture.xml:3259
4512 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV: Hearing on S. 1006 Before the "
4513 "Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights of the Senate Committee "
4514 "on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., 2nd sess., 78 (1966) (statement of Rosel "
4515 "H. Hyde, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission). <placeholder "
4516 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4520 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4521 #: freeculture.xml:3271
4523 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 116 (statement of Douglas A. Anello, "
4524 "general counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters)."
4527 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4528 #: freeculture.xml:3255
4530 "Broadcasters and copyright owners were quick to attack this theft. Rosel "
4531 "Hyde, chairman of the FCC, viewed the practice as a kind of <quote>unfair "
4532 "and potentially destructive competition.</quote><placeholder "
4533 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> There may have been a <quote>public "
4534 "interest</quote> in spreading the reach of cable TV, but as Douglas Anello, "
4535 "general counsel to the National Association of Broadcasters, asked Senator "
4536 "Quentin Burdick during testimony, <quote>Does public interest dictate that "
4537 "you use somebody else's property?</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
4538 "id=\"1\"/> As another broadcaster put it,"
4542 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4543 #: freeculture.xml:3282
4545 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 126 (statement of Ernest W. Jennes, "
4546 "general counsel of the Association of Maximum Service Telecasters, Inc.)."
4549 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4550 #: freeculture.xml:3278
4552 "The extraordinary thing about the CATV business is that it is the only "
4553 "business I know of where the product that is being sold is not paid "
4554 "for.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4557 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4558 #: freeculture.xml:3288
4559 msgid "Again, the demand of the copyright holders seemed reasonable enough:"
4563 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4564 #: freeculture.xml:3297
4566 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 169 (joint statement of Arthur B. Krim, "
4567 "president of United Artists Corp., and John Sinn, president of United "
4568 "Artists Television, Inc.)."
4571 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4572 #: freeculture.xml:3292
4574 "All we are asking for is a very simple thing, that people who now take our "
4575 "property for nothing pay for it. We are trying to stop piracy and I don't "
4576 "think there is any lesser word to describe it. I think there are harsher "
4577 "words which would fit it.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4580 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4581 #: freeculture.xml:3303 freeculture.xml:3311
4582 msgid "Heston, Charlton"
4585 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4586 #: freeculture.xml:3309
4588 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 209 (statement of Charlton Heston, "
4589 "president of the Screen Actors Guild). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
4593 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4594 #: freeculture.xml:3305
4596 "These were <quote>free-ride[rs],</quote> Screen Actor's Guild president "
4597 "Charlton Heston said, who were <quote>depriving actors of "
4598 "compensation.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4601 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4602 #: freeculture.xml:3316
4604 "But again, there was another side to the debate. As Assistant Attorney "
4605 "General Edwin Zimmerman put it,"
4608 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><indexterm><primary>
4609 #: freeculture.xml:3332 freeculture.xml:3334
4610 msgid "Zimmerman, Edwin"
4613 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4614 #: freeculture.xml:3330
4616 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 216 (statement of Edwin M. Zimmerman, "
4617 "acting assistant attorney general). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
4621 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4622 #: freeculture.xml:3321
4624 "Our point here is that unlike the problem of whether you have any copyright "
4625 "protection at all, the problem here is whether copyright holders who are "
4626 "already compensated, who already have a monopoly, should be permitted to "
4627 "extend that monopoly. … The question here is how much compensation "
4628 "they should have and how far back they should carry their right to "
4629 "compensation.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
4630 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
4633 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4634 #: freeculture.xml:3338
4636 "Copyright owners took the cable companies to court. Twice the Supreme Court "
4637 "held that the cable companies owed the copyright owners nothing."
4640 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4641 #: freeculture.xml:3342
4643 "It took Congress almost thirty years before it resolved the question of "
4644 "whether cable companies had to pay for the content they "
4645 "<quote>pirated.</quote> In the end, Congress resolved this question in the "
4646 "same way that it resolved the question about record players and player "
4647 "pianos. Yes, cable companies would have to pay for the content that they "
4648 "broadcast; but the price they would have to pay was not set by the copyright "
4649 "owner. The price was set by law, so that the broadcasters couldn't exercise "
4650 "veto power over the emerging technologies of cable. Cable companies thus "
4651 "built their empire in part upon a <quote>piracy</quote> of the value created "
4652 "by broadcasters' content."
4656 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4657 #: freeculture.xml:3360
4659 "See, for example, National Music Publisher's Association, <citetitle>The "
4660 "Engine of Free Expression: Copyright on the Internet—The Myth of Free "
4661 "Information</citetitle>, available at <ulink "
4662 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #13</ulink>. <quote>The threat of "
4663 "piracy—the use of someone else's creative work without permission or "
4664 "compensation—has grown with the Internet.</quote>"
4667 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4668 #: freeculture.xml:3355
4670 "<emphasis role='strong'>These separate stories</emphasis> sing a common "
4671 "theme. If <quote>piracy</quote> means using value from someone else's "
4672 "creative property without permission from that creator—as it is "
4673 "increasingly described today<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
4674 "— then <emphasis>every</emphasis> industry affected by copyright today "
4675 "is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, "
4676 "radio, cable TV. … The list is long and could well be expanded. Every "
4677 "generation welcomes the pirates from the last. Every generation—until "
4681 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
4682 #: freeculture.xml:3377
4683 msgid "CHAPTER FIVE: <quote>Piracy</quote>"
4686 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
4687 #: freeculture.xml:3379
4689 "<emphasis role='strong'>There is piracy</emphasis> of copyrighted "
4690 "material. Lots of it. This piracy comes in many forms. The most significant "
4691 "is commercial piracy, the unauthorized taking of other people's content "
4692 "within a commercial context. Despite the many justifications that are "
4693 "offered in its defense, this taking is wrong. No one should condone it, and "
4694 "the law should stop it."
4698 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
4699 #: freeculture.xml:3387
4701 "But as well as copy-shop piracy, there is another kind of "
4702 "<quote>taking</quote> that is more directly related to the Internet. That "
4703 "taking, too, seems wrong to many, and it is wrong much of the time. Before "
4704 "we paint this taking <quote>piracy,</quote> however, we should understand "
4705 "its nature a bit more. For the harm of this taking is significantly more "
4706 "ambiguous than outright copying, and the law should account for that "
4707 "ambiguity, as it has so often done in the past."
4710 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
4711 #: freeculture.xml:3397
4715 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
4716 #: freeculture.xml:3398 freeculture.xml:3478 freeculture.xml:3528 freeculture.xml:14572
4717 msgid "Asia, commercial piracy in"
4720 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
4721 #: freeculture.xml:3399 freeculture.xml:3846 freeculture.xml:9311 freeculture.xml:10118 freeculture.xml:13963 freeculture.xml:14554
4725 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4726 #: freeculture.xml:3399
4727 msgid "foreign piracy of"
4731 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4732 #: freeculture.xml:3407
4734 "See IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), "
4735 "<citetitle>The Recording Industry Commercial Piracy Report 2003</citetitle>, "
4736 "July 2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
4737 "#14</ulink>. See also Ben Hunt, <quote>Companies Warned on Music Piracy "
4738 "Risk,</quote> <citetitle>Financial Times</citetitle>, 14 February 2003, 11."
4741 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4742 #: freeculture.xml:3401
4744 "All across the world, but especially in Asia and Eastern Europe, there are "
4745 "businesses that do nothing but take others people's copyrighted content, "
4746 "copy it, and sell it—all without the permission of a copyright "
4747 "owner. The recording industry estimates that it loses about $4.6 billion "
4748 "every year to physical piracy<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> (that "
4749 "works out to one in three CDs sold worldwide). The MPAA estimates that it "
4750 "loses $3 billion annually worldwide to piracy."
4753 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4754 #: freeculture.xml:3417
4756 "This is piracy plain and simple. Nothing in the argument of this book, nor "
4757 "in the argument that most people make when talking about the subject of this "
4758 "book, should draw into doubt this simple point: This piracy is wrong."
4761 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4762 #: freeculture.xml:3423
4764 "Which is not to say that excuses and justifications couldn't be made for "
4765 "it. We could, for example, remind ourselves that for the first one hundred "
4766 "years of the American Republic, America did not honor foreign copyrights. We "
4767 "were born, in this sense, a pirate nation. It might therefore seem "
4768 "hypocritical for us to insist so strongly that other developing nations "
4769 "treat as wrong what we, for the first hundred years of our existence, "
4773 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4774 #: freeculture.xml:3432
4776 "That excuse isn't terribly strong. Technically, our law did not ban the "
4777 "taking of foreign works. It explicitly limited itself to American "
4778 "works. Thus the American publishers who published foreign works without the "
4779 "permission of foreign authors were not violating any rule. The copy shops "
4780 "in Asia, by contrast, are violating Asian law. Asian law does protect "
4781 "foreign copyrights, and the actions of the copy shops violate that law. So "
4782 "the wrong of piracy that they engage in is not just a moral wrong, but a "
4783 "legal wrong, and not just an internationally legal wrong, but a locally "
4784 "legal wrong as well."
4788 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4789 #: freeculture.xml:3443
4791 "True, these local rules have, in effect, been imposed upon these "
4792 "countries. No country can be part of the world economy and choose not to "
4793 "protect copyright internationally. We may have been born a pirate nation, "
4794 "but we will not allow any other nation to have a similar childhood."
4797 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4798 #: freeculture.xml:3471
4799 msgid "agricultural patents"
4802 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4803 #: freeculture.xml:3472 freeculture.xml:12581 freeculture.xml:13034 freeculture.xml:13041
4804 msgid "Drahos, Peter"
4807 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4808 #: freeculture.xml:3456
4810 "See Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, Information Feudalism: "
4811 "<citetitle>Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?</citetitle> (New York: The New "
4812 "Press, 2003), 10–13, 209. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual "
4813 "Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement obligates member nations to create "
4814 "administrative and enforcement mechanisms for intellectual property rights, "
4815 "a costly proposition for developing countries. Additionally, patent rights "
4816 "may lead to higher prices for staple industries such as agriculture. Critics "
4817 "of TRIPS question the disparity between burdens imposed upon developing "
4818 "countries and benefits conferred to industrialized nations. TRIPS does "
4819 "permit governments to use patents for public, noncommercial uses without "
4820 "first obtaining the patent holder's permission. Developing nations may be "
4821 "able to use this to gain the benefits of foreign patents at lower "
4822 "prices. This is a promising strategy for developing nations within the TRIPS "
4823 "framework. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
4824 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
4827 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4828 #: freeculture.xml:3451
4830 "If a country is to be treated as a sovereign, however, then its laws are its "
4831 "laws regardless of their source. The international law under which these "
4832 "nations live gives them some opportunities to escape the burden of "
4833 "intellectual property law.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> In my "
4834 "view, more developing nations should take advantage of that opportunity, but "
4835 "when they don't, then their laws should be respected. And under the laws of "
4836 "these nations, this piracy is wrong."
4839 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4840 #: freeculture.xml:3493 freeculture.xml:3767 freeculture.xml:14720
4841 msgid "Liebowitz, Stan"
4844 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4845 #: freeculture.xml:3486
4847 "For an analysis of the economic impact of copying technology, see Stan "
4848 "Liebowitz, <citetitle>Rethinking the Network Economy</citetitle> (New York: "
4849 "Amacom, 2002), 144–90. <quote>In some instances … the impact of "
4850 "piracy on the copyright holder's ability to appropriate the value of the "
4851 "work will be negligible. One obvious instance is the case where the "
4852 "individual engaging in pirating would not have purchased an original even if "
4853 "pirating were not an option.</quote> Ibid., 149. <placeholder "
4854 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4857 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4858 #: freeculture.xml:3480
4860 "Alternatively, we could try to excuse this piracy by noting that in any "
4861 "case, it does no harm to the industry. The Chinese who get access to "
4862 "American CDs at 50 cents a copy are not people who would have bought those "
4863 "American CDs at $15 a copy. So no one really has any less money than they "
4864 "otherwise would have had.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4867 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4868 #: freeculture.xml:3497
4870 "This is often true (though I have friends who have purchased many thousands "
4871 "of pirated DVDs who certainly have enough money to pay for the content they "
4872 "have taken), and it does mitigate to some degree the harm caused by such "
4873 "taking. Extremists in this debate love to say, <quote>You wouldn't go into "
4874 "Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why "
4875 "should it be any different with on-line music?</quote> The difference is, of "
4876 "course, that when you take a book from Barnes & Noble, it has one less "
4877 "book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3 from a computer network, "
4878 "there is not one less CD that can be sold. The physics of piracy of the "
4879 "intangible are different from the physics of piracy of the tangible."
4883 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4884 #: freeculture.xml:3511
4886 "This argument is still very weak. However, although copyright is a property "
4887 "right of a very special sort, it <emphasis>is</emphasis> a property "
4888 "right. Like all property rights, the copyright gives the owner the right to "
4889 "decide the terms under which content is shared. If the copyright owner "
4890 "doesn't want to sell, she doesn't have to. There are exceptions: important "
4891 "statutory licenses that apply to copyrighted content regardless of the wish "
4892 "of the copyright owner. Those licenses give people the right to "
4893 "<quote>take</quote> copyrighted content whether or not the copyright owner "
4894 "wants to sell. But where the law does not give people the right to take "
4895 "content, it is wrong to take that content even if the wrong does no harm. If "
4896 "we have a property system, and that system is properly balanced to the "
4897 "technology of a time, then it is wrong to take property without the "
4898 "permission of a property owner. That is exactly what <quote>property</quote> "
4902 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
4903 #: freeculture.xml:3529 freeculture.xml:14573
4907 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
4908 #: freeculture.xml:3529 freeculture.xml:14573
4912 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4913 #: freeculture.xml:3530
4914 msgid "free software/open-source software (FS/OSS)"
4917 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4918 #: freeculture.xml:3531 freeculture.xml:3561 freeculture.xml:11385 freeculture.xml:12880 freeculture.xml:13478
4919 msgid "GNU/Linux operating system"
4922 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4923 #: freeculture.xml:3532 freeculture.xml:3562 freeculture.xml:11387 freeculture.xml:12881 freeculture.xml:13479
4924 msgid "Linux operating system"
4927 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
4928 #: freeculture.xml:3533 freeculture.xml:3535 freeculture.xml:3536 freeculture.xml:5200 freeculture.xml:7685 freeculture.xml:12933
4932 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4933 #: freeculture.xml:3533
4934 msgid "competitive strategies of"
4937 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4938 #: freeculture.xml:3534
4942 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4943 #: freeculture.xml:3535
4944 msgid "international software piracy of"
4947 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4948 #: freeculture.xml:3536
4949 msgid "Windows operating system of"
4952 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4953 #: freeculture.xml:3538
4955 "Finally, we could try to excuse this piracy with the argument that the "
4956 "piracy actually helps the copyright owner. When the Chinese "
4957 "<quote>steal</quote> Windows, that makes the Chinese dependent on "
4958 "Microsoft. Microsoft loses the value of the software that was taken. But it "
4959 "gains users who are used to life in the Microsoft world. Over time, as the "
4960 "nation grows more wealthy, more and more people will buy software rather "
4961 "than steal it. And hence over time, because that buying will benefit "
4962 "Microsoft, Microsoft benefits from the piracy. If instead of pirating "
4963 "Microsoft Windows, the Chinese used the free GNU/Linux operating system, "
4964 "then these Chinese users would not eventually be buying Microsoft. Without "
4965 "piracy, then, Microsoft would lose."
4968 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4969 #: freeculture.xml:3550
4973 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4974 #: freeculture.xml:3550
4975 msgid "databases of case reports in"
4978 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4979 #: freeculture.xml:3552
4981 "This argument, too, is somewhat true. The addiction strategy is a good "
4982 "one. Many businesses practice it. Some thrive because of it. Law students, "
4983 "for example, are given free access to the two largest legal databases. The "
4984 "companies marketing both hope the students will become so used to their "
4985 "service that they will want to use it and not the other when they become "
4986 "lawyers (and must pay high subscription fees)."
4989 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4990 #: freeculture.xml:3559
4994 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4995 #: freeculture.xml:3560
4996 msgid "Internet Explorer"
4999 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5000 #: freeculture.xml:3564
5002 "Still, the argument is not terribly persuasive. We don't give the alcoholic "
5003 "a defense when he steals his first beer, merely because that will make it "
5004 "more likely that he will buy the next three. Instead, we ordinarily allow "
5005 "businesses to decide for themselves when it is best to give their product "
5006 "away. If Microsoft fears the competition of GNU/Linux, then Microsoft can "
5007 "give its product away, as it did, for example, with Internet Explorer to "
5008 "fight Netscape. A property right means giving the property owner the right "
5009 "to say who gets access to what—at least ordinarily. And if the law "
5010 "properly balances the rights of the copyright owner with the rights of "
5011 "access, then violating the law is still wrong."
5015 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5016 #: freeculture.xml:3578
5018 "Thus, while I understand the pull of these justifications for piracy, and I "
5019 "certainly see the motivation, in my view, in the end, these efforts at "
5020 "justifying commercial piracy simply don't cut it. This kind of piracy is "
5021 "rampant and just plain wrong. It doesn't transform the content it steals; it "
5022 "doesn't transform the market it competes in. It merely gives someone access "
5023 "to something that the law says he should not have. Nothing has changed to "
5024 "draw that law into doubt. This form of piracy is flat out wrong."
5027 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5028 #: freeculture.xml:3588
5030 "But as the examples from the four chapters that introduced this part "
5031 "suggest, even if some piracy is plainly wrong, not all <quote>piracy</quote> "
5032 "is. Or at least, not all <quote>piracy</quote> is wrong if that term is "
5033 "understood in the way it is increasingly used today. Many kinds of "
5034 "<quote>piracy</quote> are useful and productive, to produce either new "
5035 "content or new ways of doing business. Neither our tradition nor any "
5036 "tradition has ever banned all <quote>piracy</quote> in that sense of the "
5040 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5041 #: freeculture.xml:3597
5043 "This doesn't mean that there are no questions raised by the latest piracy "
5044 "concern, peer-to-peer file sharing. But it does mean that we need to "
5045 "understand the harm in peer-to-peer sharing a bit more before we condemn it "
5046 "to the gallows with the charge of piracy."
5049 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5050 #: freeculture.xml:3603
5052 "For (1) like the original Hollywood, p2p sharing escapes an overly "
5053 "controlling industry; and (2) like the original recording industry, it "
5054 "simply exploits a new way to distribute content; but (3) unlike cable TV, no "
5055 "one is selling the content that is shared on p2p services."
5058 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5059 #: freeculture.xml:3609
5061 "These differences distinguish p2p sharing from true piracy. They should push "
5062 "us to find a way to protect artists while enabling this sharing to survive."
5065 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
5066 #: freeculture.xml:3615
5071 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5072 #: freeculture.xml:3620
5074 "<citetitle>Bach</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Longman</citetitle>, 98 "
5075 "Eng. Rep. 1274 (1777)."
5079 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5080 #: freeculture.xml:3617
5082 "The key to the <quote>piracy</quote> that the law aims to quash is a use "
5083 "that <quote>rob[s] the author of [his] profit.</quote><placeholder "
5084 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> This means we must determine whether and how "
5085 "much p2p sharing harms before we know how strongly the law should seek to "
5086 "either prevent it or find an alternative to assure the author of his profit."
5089 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
5090 #: freeculture.xml:3628 freeculture.xml:3636
5094 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
5095 #: freeculture.xml:3629
5096 msgid "Fanning, Shawn"
5099 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><indexterm><primary>
5100 #: freeculture.xml:3646 freeculture.xml:8279
5101 msgid "Christensen, Clayton M."
5104 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5105 #: freeculture.xml:3636
5107 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> See Clayton M. Christensen, "
5108 "<citetitle>The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary National Bestseller "
5109 "That Changed the Way We Do Business</citetitle> (New York: HarperBusiness, "
5110 "2000). Professor Christensen examines why companies that give rise to and "
5111 "dominate a product area are frequently unable to come up with the most "
5112 "creative, paradigm-shifting uses for their own products. This job usually "
5113 "falls to outside innovators, who reassemble existing technology in inventive "
5114 "ways. For a discussion of Christensen's ideas, see Lawrence Lessig, "
5115 "<citetitle>Future</citetitle>, 89–92, 139. <placeholder "
5116 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
5119 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5120 #: freeculture.xml:3631
5122 "Peer-to-peer sharing was made famous by Napster. But the inventors of the "
5123 "Napster technology had not made any major technological innovations. Like "
5124 "every great advance in innovation on the Internet (and, arguably, off the "
5125 "Internet as well<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>), Shawn Fanning "
5126 "and crew had simply put together components that had been developed "
5131 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5132 #: freeculture.xml:3656
5134 "See Carolyn Lochhead, <quote>Silicon Valley Dream, Hollywood "
5135 "Nightmare,</quote> <citetitle>San Francisco Chronicle</citetitle>, 24 "
5136 "September 2002, A1; <quote>Rock 'n' Roll Suicide,</quote> <citetitle>New "
5137 "Scientist</citetitle>, 6 July 2002, 42; Benny Evangelista, <quote>Napster "
5138 "Names CEO, Secures New Financing,</quote> <citetitle>San Francisco "
5139 "Chronicle</citetitle>, 23 May 2003, C1; <quote>Napster's Wake-Up "
5140 "Call,</quote> <citetitle>Economist</citetitle>, 24 June 2000, 23; John "
5141 "Naughton, <quote>Hollywood at War with the Internet</quote> (London) "
5142 "<citetitle>Times</citetitle>, 26 July 2002, 18."
5145 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5146 #: freeculture.xml:3651
5148 "The result was spontaneous combustion. Launched in July 1999, Napster "
5149 "amassed over 10 million users within nine months. After eighteen months, "
5150 "there were close to 80 million registered users of the system.<placeholder "
5151 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Courts quickly shut Napster down, but other "
5152 "services emerged to take its place. (Kazaa is currently the most popular p2p "
5153 "service. It boasts over 100 million members.) These services' systems are "
5154 "different architecturally, though not very different in function: Each "
5155 "enables users to make content available to any number of other users. With a "
5156 "p2p system, you can share your favorite songs with your best friend— "
5157 "or your 20,000 best friends."
5161 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5162 #: freeculture.xml:3678
5164 "See Ipsos-Insight, <citetitle>TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Online Music "
5165 "Distribution</citetitle> (September 2002), reporting that 28 percent of "
5166 "Americans aged twelve and older have downloaded music off of the Internet "
5167 "and 30 percent have listened to digital music files stored on their "
5172 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5173 #: freeculture.xml:3687
5175 "Amy Harmon, <quote>Industry Offers a Carrot in Online Music Fight,</quote> "
5176 "<citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 6 June 2003, A1."
5179 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5180 #: freeculture.xml:3672
5182 "According to a number of estimates, a huge proportion of Americans have "
5183 "tasted file-sharing technology. A study by Ipsos-Insight in September 2002 "
5184 "estimated that 60 million Americans had downloaded music—28 percent of "
5185 "Americans older than 12.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> A survey "
5186 "by the NPD group quoted in <citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle> "
5187 "estimated that 43 million citizens used file-sharing networks to exchange "
5188 "content in May 2003.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> The vast "
5189 "majority of these are not kids. Whatever the actual figure, a massive "
5190 "quantity of content is being <quote>taken</quote> on these networks. The "
5191 "ease and inexpensiveness of file-sharing networks have inspired millions to "
5192 "enjoy music in a way that they hadn't before."
5195 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5196 #: freeculture.xml:3696
5198 "Some of this enjoying involves copyright infringement. Some of it does "
5199 "not. And even among the part that is technically copyright infringement, "
5200 "calculating the actual harm to copyright owners is more complicated than one "
5201 "might think. So consider—a bit more carefully than the polarized "
5202 "voices around this debate usually do—the kinds of sharing that file "
5203 "sharing enables, and the kinds of harm it entails."
5207 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5208 #: freeculture.xml:3706
5210 "File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different "
5211 "kinds into four types."
5215 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
5216 #: freeculture.xml:3714
5218 "There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing "
5219 "content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, "
5220 "these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who "
5221 "takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn't make it available "
5222 "for free. Most probably wouldn't have, but clearly there are some who "
5223 "would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead "
5228 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
5229 #: freeculture.xml:3724
5231 "There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing "
5232 "it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he's not heard "
5233 "of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of "
5234 "targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending "
5235 "the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect "
5236 "that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this "
5237 "sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased."
5241 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
5242 #: freeculture.xml:3735
5244 "There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content "
5245 "that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the "
5246 "transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is "
5247 "among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood "
5248 "but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the "
5249 "network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a "
5250 "solid weekend <quote>recalling</quote> old songs. She was astonished at the "
5251 "range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is "
5252 "still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright "
5253 "owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is "
5254 "zero—the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s "
5255 "45-rpm records to a local collector."
5260 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
5261 #: freeculture.xml:3752
5263 "Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content "
5264 "that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away."
5267 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5268 #: freeculture.xml:3758
5269 msgid "How do these different types of sharing balance out?"
5272 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5273 #: freeculture.xml:3766
5275 "See Liebowitz, <citetitle>Rethinking the Network Economy</citetitle>, "
5276 "148–49. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
5279 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5280 #: freeculture.xml:3761
5282 "Let's start with some simple but important points. From the perspective of "
5283 "the law, only type D sharing is clearly legal. From the perspective of "
5284 "economics, only type A sharing is clearly harmful.<placeholder "
5285 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Type B sharing is illegal but plainly "
5286 "beneficial. Type C sharing is illegal, yet good for society (since more "
5287 "exposure to music is good) and harmless to the artist (since the work is "
5288 "not otherwise available). So how sharing matters on balance is a hard "
5289 "question to answer—and certainly much more difficult than the current "
5290 "rhetoric around the issue suggests."
5293 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5294 #: freeculture.xml:3777
5296 "Whether on balance sharing is harmful depends importantly on how harmful "
5297 "type A sharing is. Just as Edison complained about Hollywood, composers "
5298 "complained about piano rolls, recording artists complained about radio, and "
5299 "broadcasters complained about cable TV, the music industry complains that "
5300 "type A sharing is a kind of <quote>theft</quote> that is "
5301 "<quote>devastating</quote> the industry."
5304 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
5305 #: freeculture.xml:3784 freeculture.xml:3793 freeculture.xml:4136 freeculture.xml:7845 freeculture.xml:7874 freeculture.xml:9572 freeculture.xml:14280
5306 msgid "cassette recording"
5309 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
5310 #: freeculture.xml:3784 freeculture.xml:4136 freeculture.xml:7845 freeculture.xml:7874 freeculture.xml:9572 freeculture.xml:9573 freeculture.xml:14280 freeculture.xml:14281
5314 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5315 #: freeculture.xml:3793
5317 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> See Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, "
5318 "<citetitle>Technology Evolution and the Music Industry's Business Model "
5319 "Crisis</citetitle> (2003), 3. This report describes the music industry's "
5320 "effort to stigmatize the budding practice of cassette taping in the 1970s, "
5321 "including an advertising campaign featuring a cassette-shape skull and the "
5322 "caption <quote>Home taping is killing music.</quote> At the time digital "
5323 "audio tape became a threat, the Office of Technical Assessment conducted a "
5324 "survey of consumer behavior. In 1988, 40 percent of consumers older than ten "
5325 "had taped music to a cassette format. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology "
5326 "Assessment, <citetitle>Copyright and Home Copying: Technology Challenges the "
5327 "Law</citetitle>, OTA-CIT-422 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing "
5328 "Office, October 1989), 145–56."
5331 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5332 #: freeculture.xml:3786
5334 "While the numbers do suggest that sharing is harmful, how harmful is harder "
5335 "to reckon. It has long been the recording industry's practice to blame "
5336 "technology for any drop in sales. The history of cassette recording is a "
5337 "good example. As a study by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young put it, "
5338 "<quote>Rather than exploiting this new, popular technology, the labels "
5339 "fought it.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The labels "
5340 "claimed that every album taped was an album unsold, and when record sales "
5341 "fell by 11.4 percent in 1981, the industry claimed that its point was "
5342 "proved. Technology was the problem, and banning or regulating technology was "
5346 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
5347 #: freeculture.xml:3811
5352 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5353 #: freeculture.xml:3821
5354 msgid "U.S. Congress, <citetitle>Copyright and Home Copying</citetitle>, 4."
5357 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5358 #: freeculture.xml:3813
5360 "Yet soon thereafter, and before Congress was given an opportunity to enact "
5361 "regulation, MTV was launched, and the industry had a record "
5362 "turnaround. <quote>In the end,</quote> Cap Gemini concludes, <quote>the "
5363 "`crisis' … was not the fault of the tapers—who did not [stop "
5364 "after MTV came into being]—but had to a large extent resulted from "
5365 "stagnation in musical innovation at the major labels.</quote><placeholder "
5366 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
5369 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5370 #: freeculture.xml:3826
5372 "But just because the industry was wrong before does not mean it is wrong "
5373 "today. To evaluate the real threat that p2p sharing presents to the industry "
5374 "in particular, and society in general—or at least the society that "
5375 "inherits the tradition that gave us the film industry, the record industry, "
5376 "the radio industry, cable TV, and the VCR—the question is not simply "
5377 "whether type A sharing is harmful. The question is also "
5378 "<emphasis>how</emphasis> harmful type A sharing is, and how beneficial the "
5379 "other types of sharing are."
5382 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5383 #: freeculture.xml:3836
5385 "We start to answer this question by focusing on the net harm, from the "
5386 "standpoint of the industry as a whole, that sharing networks cause. The "
5387 "<quote>net harm</quote> to the industry as a whole is the amount by which "
5388 "type A sharing exceeds type B. If the record companies sold more records "
5389 "through sampling than they lost through substitution, then sharing networks "
5390 "would actually benefit music companies on balance. They would therefore have "
5391 "little <emphasis>static</emphasis> reason to resist them."
5394 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
5395 #: freeculture.xml:3846
5396 msgid "sales levels of"
5399 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5400 #: freeculture.xml:3848
5402 "Could that be true? Could the industry as a whole be gaining because of file "
5403 "sharing? Odd as that might sound, the data about CD sales actually suggest "
5404 "it might be close."
5408 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5409 #: freeculture.xml:3857
5411 "See Recording Industry Association of America, <citetitle>2002 Yearend "
5412 "Statistics</citetitle>, available at <ulink "
5413 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #15</ulink>. A later report "
5414 "indicates even greater losses. See Recording Industry Association of "
5415 "America, <citetitle>Some Facts About Music Piracy</citetitle>, 25 June 2003, "
5416 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #16</ulink>: "
5417 "<quote>In the past four years, unit shipments of recorded music have fallen "
5418 "by 26 percent from 1.16 billion units in to 860 million units in 2002 in the "
5419 "United States (based on units shipped). In terms of sales, revenues are "
5420 "down 14 percent, from $14.6 billion in to $12.6 billion last year (based on "
5421 "U.S. dollar value of shipments). The music industry worldwide has gone from "
5422 "a $39 billion industry in 2000 down to a $32 billion industry in 2002 (based "
5423 "on U.S. dollar value of shipments).</quote>"
5426 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
5427 #: freeculture.xml:3884
5431 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5432 #: freeculture.xml:3881
5434 "Jane Black, <quote>Big Music's Broken Record,</quote> BusinessWeek online, "
5435 "13 February 2003, available at <ulink "
5436 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #17</ulink>. <placeholder "
5437 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
5440 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5441 #: freeculture.xml:3853
5443 "In 2002, the RIAA reported that CD sales had fallen by 8.9 percent, from 882 "
5444 "million to 803 million units; revenues fell 6.7 percent.<placeholder "
5445 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> This confirms a trend over the past few "
5446 "years. The RIAA blames Internet piracy for the trend, though there are many "
5447 "other causes that could account for this drop. SoundScan, for example, "
5448 "reports a more than 20 percent drop in the number of CDs released since "
5449 "1999. That no doubt accounts for some of the decrease in sales. Rising "
5450 "prices could account for at least some of the loss. <quote>From 1999 to "
5451 "2001, the average price of a CD rose 7.2 percent, from $13.04 to "
5452 "$14.19.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> Competition from "
5453 "other forms of media could also account for some of the decline. As Jane "
5454 "Black of <citetitle>BusinessWeek</citetitle> notes, <quote>The soundtrack to "
5455 "the film <citetitle>High Fidelity</citetitle> has a list price of "
5456 "$18.98. You could get the whole movie [on DVD] for "
5457 "$19.99.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/>"
5461 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5462 #: freeculture.xml:3899
5464 "But let's assume the RIAA is right, and all of the decline in CD sales is "
5465 "because of Internet sharing. Here's the rub: In the same period that the "
5466 "RIAA estimates that 803 million CDs were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 "
5467 "billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total "
5468 "number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 "
5472 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5473 #: freeculture.xml:3907
5475 "There are too many different things happening at the same time to explain "
5476 "these numbers definitively, but one conclusion is unavoidable: The recording "
5477 "industry constantly asks, <quote>What's the difference between downloading a "
5478 "song and stealing a CD?</quote>—but their own numbers reveal the "
5479 "difference. If I steal a CD, then there is one less CD to sell. Every taking "
5480 "is a lost sale. But on the basis of the numbers the RIAA provides, it is "
5481 "absolutely clear that the same is not true of downloads. If every download "
5482 "were a lost sale—if every use of Kazaa <quote>rob[bed] the author of "
5483 "[his] profit</quote>—then the industry would have suffered a 100 "
5484 "percent drop in sales last year, not a 7 percent drop. If 2.6 times the "
5485 "number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, and yet sales revenue dropped "
5486 "by just 6.7 percent, then there is a huge difference between "
5487 "<quote>downloading a song and stealing a CD.</quote>"
5490 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5491 #: freeculture.xml:3923
5493 "These are the harms—alleged and perhaps exaggerated but, let's assume, "
5494 "real. What of the benefits? File sharing may impose costs on the recording "
5495 "industry. What value does it produce in addition to these costs?"
5499 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5500 #: freeculture.xml:3935
5502 "By one estimate, 75 percent of the music released by the major labels is no "
5503 "longer in print. See Online Entertainment and Copyright Law—Coming "
5504 "Soon to a Digital Device Near You: Hearing Before the Senate Committee on "
5505 "the Judiciary, 107th Cong., 1st sess. (3 April 2001) (prepared statement of "
5506 "the Future of Music Coalition), available at <ulink "
5507 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #18</ulink>."
5510 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5511 #: freeculture.xml:3929
5513 "One benefit is type C sharing—making available content that is "
5514 "technically still under copyright but is no longer commercially available. "
5515 "This is not a small category of content. There are millions of tracks that "
5516 "are no longer commercially available.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
5517 "id=\"0\"/> And while it's conceivable that some of this content is not "
5518 "available because the artist producing the content doesn't want it to be "
5519 "made available, the vast majority of it is unavailable solely because the "
5520 "publisher or the distributor has decided it no longer makes economic sense "
5521 "<emphasis>to the company</emphasis> to make it available."
5524 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
5525 #: freeculture.xml:3948 freeculture.xml:3956 freeculture.xml:3978 freeculture.xml:4000 freeculture.xml:4488 freeculture.xml:5817 freeculture.xml:5822 freeculture.xml:5874 freeculture.xml:6749 freeculture.xml:6750 freeculture.xml:7090 freeculture.xml:7152 freeculture.xml:7186 freeculture.xml:7395 freeculture.xml:13666 freeculture.xml:14392 freeculture.xml:14393
5529 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
5530 #: freeculture.xml:3948 freeculture.xml:3956 freeculture.xml:6750 freeculture.xml:14393
5534 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5535 #: freeculture.xml:3956
5537 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> While there are not good "
5538 "estimates of the number of used record stores in existence, in 2002, there "
5539 "were 7,198 used book dealers in the United States, an increase of 20 percent "
5540 "since 1993. See Book Hunter Press, <citetitle>The Quiet Revolution: The "
5541 "Expansion of the Used Book Market</citetitle> (2002), available at <ulink "
5542 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #19</ulink>. Used records "
5543 "accounted for $260 million in sales in 2002. See National Association of "
5544 "Recording Merchandisers, <quote>2002 Annual Survey Results,</quote> "
5545 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #20</ulink>."
5548 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5549 #: freeculture.xml:3950
5551 "In real space—long before the Internet—the market had a simple "
5552 "response to this problem: used book and record stores. There are thousands "
5553 "of used book and used record stores in America today.<placeholder "
5554 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> These stores buy content from owners, then sell "
5555 "the content they buy. And under American copyright law, when they buy and "
5556 "sell this content, <emphasis>even if the content is still under "
5557 "copyright</emphasis>, the copyright owner doesn't get a dime. Used book and "
5558 "record stores are commercial entities; their owners make money from the "
5559 "content they sell; but as with cable companies before statutory licensing, "
5560 "they don't have to pay the copyright owner for the content they sell."
5563 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
5564 #: freeculture.xml:3977
5565 msgid "Bernstein, Leonard"
5568 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
5569 #: freeculture.xml:3978 freeculture.xml:5817 freeculture.xml:5822 freeculture.xml:6749 freeculture.xml:14392
5570 msgid "out of print"
5573 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5574 #: freeculture.xml:3980
5576 "Type C sharing, then, is very much like used book stores or used record "
5577 "stores. It is different, of course, because the person making the content "
5578 "available isn't making money from making the content available. It is also "
5579 "different, of course, because in real space, when I sell a record, I don't "
5580 "have it anymore, while in cyberspace, when someone shares my 1949 recording "
5581 "of Bernstein's <quote>Two Love Songs,</quote> I still have it. That "
5582 "difference would matter economically if the owner of the copyright were "
5583 "selling the record in competition to my sharing. But we're talking about the "
5584 "class of content that is not currently commercially available. The Internet "
5585 "is making it available, through cooperative sharing, without competing with "
5589 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5590 #: freeculture.xml:3993
5592 "It may well be, all things considered, that it would be better if the "
5593 "copyright owner got something from this trade. But just because it may well "
5594 "be better, it doesn't follow that it would be good to ban used book "
5595 "stores. Or put differently, if you think that type C sharing should be "
5596 "stopped, do you think that libraries and used book stores should be shut as "
5600 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
5601 #: freeculture.xml:4000 freeculture.xml:13666
5602 msgid "free on-line releases of"
5606 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5607 #: freeculture.xml:4002
5609 "Finally, and perhaps most importantly, file-sharing networks enable type D "
5610 "sharing to occur—the sharing of content that copyright owners want to "
5611 "have shared or for which there is no continuing copyright. This sharing "
5612 "clearly benefits authors and society. Science fiction author Cory Doctorow, "
5613 "for example, released his first novel, <citetitle>Down and Out in the Magic "
5614 "Kingdom</citetitle>, both free on-line and in bookstores on the same "
5615 "day. His (and his publisher's) thinking was that the on-line distribution "
5616 "would be a great advertisement for the <quote>real</quote> book. People "
5617 "would read part on-line, and then decide whether they liked the book or "
5618 "not. If they liked it, they would be more likely to buy it. Doctorow's "
5619 "content is type D content. If sharing networks enable his work to be spread, "
5620 "then both he and society are better off. (Actually, much better off: It is a "
5624 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5625 #: freeculture.xml:4020
5627 "Likewise for work in the public domain: This sharing benefits society with "
5628 "no legal harm to authors at all. If efforts to solve the problem of type A "
5629 "sharing destroy the opportunity for type D sharing, then we lose something "
5630 "important in order to protect type A content."
5633 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5634 #: freeculture.xml:4026
5636 "The point throughout is this: While the recording industry understandably "
5637 "says, <quote>This is how much we've lost,</quote> we must also ask, "
5638 "<quote>How much has society gained from p2p sharing? What are the "
5639 "efficiencies? What is the content that otherwise would be "
5640 "unavailable?</quote>"
5643 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5644 #: freeculture.xml:4033
5646 "For unlike the piracy I described in the first section of this chapter, much "
5647 "of the <quote>piracy</quote> that file sharing enables is plainly legal and "
5648 "good. And like the piracy I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: "
5649 "labelnumber\" linkend=\"pirates\"/>, much of this piracy is motivated by a "
5650 "new way of spreading content caused by changes in the technology of "
5651 "distribution. Thus, consistent with the tradition that gave us Hollywood, "
5652 "radio, the recording industry, and cable TV, the question we should be "
5653 "asking about file sharing is how best to preserve its benefits while "
5654 "minimizing (to the extent possible) the wrongful harm it causes artists. The "
5655 "question is one of balance. The law should seek that balance, and that "
5656 "balance will be found only with time."
5659 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5660 #: freeculture.xml:4047
5662 "<quote>But isn't the war just a war against illegal sharing? Isn't the "
5663 "target just what you call type A sharing?</quote>"
5667 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5668 #: freeculture.xml:4064
5670 "See Transcript of Proceedings, In Re: Napster Copyright Litigation at 34- 35 "
5671 "(N.D. Cal., 11 July 2001), nos. MDL-00-1369 MHP, C 99-5183 MHP, available at "
5672 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #21</ulink>. For an "
5673 "account of the litigation and its toll on Napster, see Joseph Menn, "
5674 "<citetitle>All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's "
5675 "Napster</citetitle> (New York: Crown Business, 2003), 269–82."
5678 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5679 #: freeculture.xml:4051
5681 "You would think. And we should hope. But so far, it is not. The effect of "
5682 "the war purportedly on type A sharing alone has been felt far beyond that "
5683 "one class of sharing. That much is obvious from the Napster case "
5684 "itself. When Napster told the district court that it had developed a "
5685 "technology to block the transfer of 99.4 percent of identified infringing "
5686 "material, the district court told counsel for Napster 99.4 percent was not "
5687 "good enough. Napster had to push the infringements <quote>down to "
5688 "zero.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
5691 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5692 #: freeculture.xml:4075
5694 "If 99.4 percent is not good enough, then this is a war on file-sharing "
5695 "technologies, not a war on copyright infringement. There is no way to assure "
5696 "that a p2p system is used 100 percent of the time in compliance with the "
5697 "law, any more than there is a way to assure that 100 percent of VCRs or 100 "
5698 "percent of Xerox machines or 100 percent of handguns are used in compliance "
5699 "with the law. Zero tolerance means zero p2p. The court's ruling means that "
5700 "we as a society must lose the benefits of p2p, even for the totally legal "
5701 "and beneficial uses they serve, simply to assure that there are zero "
5702 "copyright infringements caused by p2p."
5705 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5706 #: freeculture.xml:4086
5708 "Zero tolerance has not been our history. It has not produced the content "
5709 "industry that we know today. The history of American law has been a process "
5710 "of balance. As new technologies changed the way content was distributed, the "
5711 "law adjusted, after some time, to the new technology. In this adjustment, "
5712 "the law sought to ensure the legitimate rights of creators while protecting "
5713 "innovation. Sometimes this has meant more rights for creators. Sometimes "
5717 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5718 #: freeculture.xml:4096
5720 "So, as we've seen, when <quote>mechanical reproduction</quote> threatened "
5721 "the interests of composers, Congress balanced the rights of composers "
5722 "against the interests of the recording industry. It granted rights to "
5723 "composers, but also to the recording artists: Composers were to be paid, but "
5724 "at a price set by Congress. But when radio started broadcasting the "
5725 "recordings made by these recording artists, and they complained to Congress "
5726 "that their <quote>creative property</quote> was not being respected (since "
5727 "the radio station did not have to pay them for the creativity it broadcast), "
5728 "Congress rejected their claim. An indirect benefit was enough."
5731 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5732 #: freeculture.xml:4109
5734 "Cable TV followed the pattern of record albums. When the courts rejected the "
5735 "claim that cable broadcasters had to pay for the content they rebroadcast, "
5736 "Congress responded by giving broadcasters a right to compensation, but at a "
5737 "level set by the law. It likewise gave cable companies the right to the "
5738 "content, so long as they paid the statutory price."
5742 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5743 #: freeculture.xml:4119
5745 "This compromise, like the compromise affecting records and player pianos, "
5746 "served two important goals—indeed, the two central goals of any "
5747 "copyright legislation. First, the law assured that new innovators would have "
5748 "the freedom to develop new ways to deliver content. Second, the law assured "
5749 "that copyright holders would be paid for the content that was "
5750 "distributed. One fear was that if Congress simply required cable TV to pay "
5751 "copyright holders whatever they demanded for their content, then copyright "
5752 "holders associated with broadcasters would use their power to stifle this "
5753 "new technology, cable. But if Congress had permitted cable to use "
5754 "broadcasters' content for free, then it would have unfairly subsidized "
5755 "cable. Thus Congress chose a path that would assure "
5756 "<emphasis>compensation</emphasis> without giving the past (broadcasters) "
5757 "control over the future (cable)."
5760 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
5761 #: freeculture.xml:4135
5765 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5766 #: freeculture.xml:4138
5768 "In the same year that Congress struck this balance, two major producers and "
5769 "distributors of film content filed a lawsuit against another technology, the "
5770 "video tape recorder (VTR, or as we refer to them today, VCRs) that Sony had "
5771 "produced, the Betamax. Disney's and Universal's claim against Sony was "
5772 "relatively simple: Sony produced a device, Disney and Universal claimed, "
5773 "that enabled consumers to engage in copyright infringement. Because the "
5774 "device that Sony built had a <quote>record</quote> button, the device could "
5775 "be used to record copyrighted movies and shows. Sony was therefore "
5776 "benefiting from the copyright infringement of its customers. It should "
5777 "therefore, Disney and Universal claimed, be partially liable for that "
5782 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5783 #: freeculture.xml:4151
5785 "There was something to Disney's and Universal's claim. Sony did decide to "
5786 "design its machine to make it very simple to record television shows. It "
5787 "could have built the machine to block or inhibit any direct copying from a "
5788 "television broadcast. Or possibly, it could have built the machine to copy "
5789 "only if there were a special <quote>copy me</quote> signal on the line. It "
5790 "was clear that there were many television shows that did not grant anyone "
5791 "permission to copy. Indeed, if anyone had asked, no doubt the majority of "
5792 "shows would not have authorized copying. And in the face of this obvious "
5793 "preference, Sony could have designed its system to minimize the opportunity "
5794 "for copyright infringement. It did not, and for that, Disney and Universal "
5795 "wanted to hold it responsible for the architecture it chose."
5799 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5800 #: freeculture.xml:4173
5802 "Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders): Hearing on S. 1758 "
5803 "Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 1st and 2nd sess., "
5804 "459 (1982) (testimony of Jack Valenti, president, Motion Picture Association "
5805 "of America, Inc.)."
5809 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5810 #: freeculture.xml:4185
5811 msgid "Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders), 475."
5815 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5816 #: freeculture.xml:4190
5818 "<citetitle>Universal City Studios, Inc</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Sony "
5819 "Corp. of America</citetitle>, 480 F. Supp. 429, (C.D. Cal., 1979)."
5823 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5824 #: freeculture.xml:4201
5826 "Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders), 485 (testimony of Jack "
5830 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5831 #: freeculture.xml:4166
5833 "MPAA president Jack Valenti became the studios' most vocal champion. Valenti "
5834 "called VCRs <quote>tapeworms.</quote> He warned, <quote>When there are 20, "
5835 "30, 40 million of these VCRs in the land, we will be invaded by millions of "
5836 "`tapeworms,' eating away at the very heart and essence of the most precious "
5837 "asset the copyright owner has, his copyright.</quote><placeholder "
5838 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> <quote>One does not have to be trained in "
5839 "sophisticated marketing and creative judgment,</quote> he told Congress, "
5840 "<quote>to understand the devastation on the after-theater marketplace caused "
5841 "by the hundreds of millions of tapings that will adversely impact on the "
5842 "future of the creative community in this country. It is simply a question of "
5843 "basic economics and plain common sense.</quote><placeholder "
5844 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> Indeed, as surveys would later show, percent of "
5845 "VCR owners had movie libraries of ten videos or more<placeholder "
5846 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/> — a use the Court would later hold was "
5847 "not <quote>fair.</quote> By <quote>allowing VCR owners to copy freely by the "
5848 "means of an exemption from copyright infringementwithout creating a "
5849 "mechanism to compensate copyrightowners,</quote> Valenti testified, Congress "
5850 "would <quote>take from the owners the very essence of their property: the "
5851 "exclusive right to control who may use their work, that is, who may copy it "
5852 "and thereby profit from its reproduction.</quote><placeholder "
5853 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"3\"/>"
5857 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5858 #: freeculture.xml:4218
5860 "<citetitle>Universal City Studios, Inc</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Sony "
5861 "Corp. of America</citetitle>, 659 F. 2d 963 (9th Cir. 1981)."
5864 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><indexterm><primary>
5865 #: freeculture.xml:4221
5866 msgid "Kozinski, Alex"
5869 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5870 #: freeculture.xml:4206
5872 "It took eight years for this case to be resolved by the Supreme Court. In "
5873 "the interim, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Hollywood in "
5874 "its jurisdiction—leading Judge Alex Kozinski, who sits on that court, "
5875 "refers to it as the <quote>Hollywood Circuit</quote>—held that Sony "
5876 "would be liable for the copyright infringement made possible by its "
5877 "machines. Under the Ninth Circuit's rule, this totally familiar "
5878 "technology—which Jack Valenti had called <quote>the Boston Strangler "
5879 "of the American film industry</quote> (worse yet, it was a "
5880 "<emphasis>Japanese</emphasis> Boston Strangler of the American film "
5881 "industry)—was an illegal technology.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
5882 "id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
5886 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5887 #: freeculture.xml:4224
5889 "But the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Ninth Circuit. And in "
5890 "its reversal, the Court clearly articulated its understanding of when and "
5891 "whether courts should intervene in such disputes. As the Court wrote,"
5895 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
5896 #: freeculture.xml:4243
5898 "<citetitle>Sony Corp. of America</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Universal City "
5899 "Studios, Inc</citetitle>., 464 U.S. 417, 431 (1984)."
5902 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
5903 #: freeculture.xml:4233
5905 "Sound policy, as well as history, supports our consistent deference to "
5906 "Congress when major technological innovations alter the market for "
5907 "copyrighted materials. Congress has the constitutional authority and the "
5908 "institutional ability to accommodate fully the varied permutations of "
5909 "competing interests that are inevitably implicated by such new "
5910 "technology.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
5913 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5914 #: freeculture.xml:4248
5916 "Congress was asked to respond to the Supreme Court's decision. But as with "
5917 "the plea of recording artists about radio broadcasts, Congress ignored the "
5918 "request. Congress was convinced that American film got enough, this "
5919 "<quote>taking</quote> notwithstanding. If we put these cases together, a "
5923 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
5924 #: freeculture.xml:4259
5928 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
5929 #: freeculture.xml:4260
5930 msgid "WHOSE VALUE WAS <quote>PIRATED</quote>"
5933 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
5934 #: freeculture.xml:4261
5935 msgid "RESPONSE OF THE COURTS"
5938 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
5939 #: freeculture.xml:4262
5940 msgid "RESPONSE OF CONGRESS"
5943 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5944 #: freeculture.xml:4267
5948 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5949 #: freeculture.xml:4268
5953 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5954 #: freeculture.xml:4269 freeculture.xml:4281 freeculture.xml:4287
5955 msgid "No protection"
5958 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5959 #: freeculture.xml:4270 freeculture.xml:4282
5960 msgid "Statutory license"
5963 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5964 #: freeculture.xml:4274
5965 msgid "Recording artists"
5968 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5969 #: freeculture.xml:4275
5973 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5974 #: freeculture.xml:4276 freeculture.xml:4288
5978 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5979 #: freeculture.xml:4280
5980 msgid "Broadcasters"
5983 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5984 #: freeculture.xml:4285
5988 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5989 #: freeculture.xml:4286
5990 msgid "Film creators"
5993 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5994 #: freeculture.xml:4298
5996 "These are the most important instances in our history, but there are other "
5997 "cases as well. The technology of digital audio tape (DAT), for example, was "
5998 "regulated by Congress to minimize the risk of piracy. The remedy Congress "
5999 "imposed did burden DAT producers, by taxing tape sales and controlling the "
6000 "technology of DAT. See Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (Title 17 of the "
6001 "<citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>), Pub. L. No. 102-563, 106 Stat. "
6002 "4237, codified at 17 U.S.C. §1001. Again, however, this regulation did not "
6003 "eliminate the opportunity for free riding in the sense I've described. See "
6004 "Lessig, <citetitle>Future</citetitle>, 71. See also Picker, <quote>From "
6005 "Edison to the Broadcast Flag,</quote> <citetitle>University of Chicago Law "
6006 "Review</citetitle> 70 (2003): 293–96. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
6007 "id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
6010 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6011 #: freeculture.xml:4295
6013 "In each case throughout our history, a new technology changed the way "
6014 "content was distributed.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> In each "
6015 "case, throughout our history, that change meant that someone got a "
6016 "<quote>free ride</quote> on someone else's work."
6020 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6021 #: freeculture.xml:4316
6023 "In <emphasis>none</emphasis> of these cases did either the courts or "
6024 "Congress eliminate all free riding. In <emphasis>none</emphasis> of these "
6025 "cases did the courts or Congress insist that the law should assure that the "
6026 "copyright holder get all the value that his copyright created. In every "
6027 "case, the copyright owners complained of <quote>piracy.</quote> In every "
6028 "case, Congress acted to recognize some of the legitimacy in the behavior of "
6029 "the <quote>pirates.</quote> In each case, Congress allowed some new "
6030 "technology to benefit from content made before. It balanced the interests at "
6034 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6035 #: freeculture.xml:4328
6037 "When you think across these examples, and the other examples that make up "
6038 "the first four chapters of this section, this balance makes sense. Was Walt "
6039 "Disney a pirate? Would doujinshi be better if creators had to ask "
6040 "permission? Should tools that enable others to capture and spread images as "
6041 "a way to cultivate or criticize our culture be better regulated? Is it "
6042 "really right that building a search engine should expose you to $15 million "
6043 "in damages? Would it have been better if Edison had controlled film? Should "
6044 "every cover band have to hire a lawyer to get permission to record a song?"
6048 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
6049 #: freeculture.xml:4345
6051 "<citetitle>Sony Corp. of America</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Universal City "
6052 "Studios, Inc</citetitle>., 464 U.S. 417, (1984)."
6055 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6056 #: freeculture.xml:4340
6058 "We could answer yes to each of these questions, but our tradition has "
6059 "answered no. In our tradition, as the Supreme Court has stated, copyright "
6060 "<quote>has never accorded the copyright owner complete control over all "
6061 "possible uses of his work.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
6062 "Instead, the particular uses that the law regulates have been defined by "
6063 "balancing the good that comes from granting an exclusive right against the "
6064 "burdens such an exclusive right creates. And this balancing has historically "
6065 "been done <emphasis>after</emphasis> a technology has matured, or settled "
6066 "into the mix of technologies that facilitate the distribution of content."
6069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6070 #: freeculture.xml:4356
6072 "We should be doing the same thing today. The technology of the Internet is "
6073 "changing quickly. The way people connect to the Internet (wires "
6074 "vs. wireless) is changing very quickly. No doubt the network should not "
6075 "become a tool for <quote>stealing</quote> from artists. But neither should "
6076 "the law become a tool to entrench one particular way in which artists (or "
6077 "more accurately, distributors) get paid. As I describe in some detail in the "
6078 "last chapter of this book, we should be securing income to artists while we "
6079 "allow the market to secure the most efficient way to promote and distribute "
6080 "content. This will require changes in the law, at least in the "
6081 "interim. These changes should be designed to balance the protection of the "
6082 "law against the strong public interest that innovation continue."
6086 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
6087 #: freeculture.xml:4380
6089 "John Schwartz, <quote>New Economy: The Attack on Peer-to-Peer Software "
6090 "Echoes Past Efforts,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 22 "
6091 "September 2003, C3."
6094 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6095 #: freeculture.xml:4372
6097 "This is especially true when a new technology enables a vastly superior mode "
6098 "of distribution. And this p2p has done. P2p technologies can be ideally "
6099 "efficient in moving content across a widely diverse network. Left to "
6100 "develop, they could make the network vastly more efficient. Yet these "
6101 "<quote>potential public benefits,</quote> as John Schwartz writes in "
6102 "<citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle>, <quote>could be delayed in the "
6103 "P2P fight.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6106 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6107 #: freeculture.xml:4385
6109 "<emphasis role='strong'>Yet when anyone</emphasis> begins to talk about "
6110 "<quote>balance,</quote> the copyright warriors raise a different "
6111 "argument. <quote>All this hand waving about balance and incentives,</quote> "
6112 "they say, <quote>misses a fundamental point. Our content,</quote> the "
6113 "warriors insist, <quote>is our <emphasis>property</emphasis>. Why should we "
6114 "wait for Congress to `rebalance' our property rights? Do you have to wait "
6115 "before calling the police when your car has been stolen? And why should "
6116 "Congress deliberate at all about the merits of this theft? Do we ask whether "
6117 "the car thief had a good use for the car before we arrest him?</quote>"
6120 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6121 #: freeculture.xml:4397
6123 "<quote>It is <emphasis>our property</emphasis>,</quote> the warriors "
6124 "insist. <quote>And it should be protected just as any other property is "
6125 "protected.</quote>"
6128 #. type: Content of: <book><part><title>
6129 #: freeculture.xml:4406
6130 msgid "<quote>PROPERTY</quote>"
6134 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6135 #: freeculture.xml:4411
6137 "<emphasis role='strong'>The copyright warriors</emphasis> are right: A "
6138 "copyright is a kind of property. It can be owned and sold, and the law "
6139 "protects against its theft. Ordinarily, the copyright owner gets to hold out "
6140 "for any price he wants. Markets reckon the supply and demand that partially "
6141 "determine the price she can get."
6144 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6145 #: freeculture.xml:4418
6147 "But in ordinary language, to call a copyright a <quote>property</quote> "
6148 "right is a bit misleading, for the property of copyright is an odd kind of "
6149 "property. Indeed, the very idea of property in any idea or any expression "
6150 "is very odd. I understand what I am taking when I take the picnic table you "
6151 "put in your backyard. I am taking a thing, the picnic table, and after I "
6152 "take it, you don't have it. But what am I taking when I take the good "
6153 "<emphasis>idea</emphasis> you had to put a picnic table in the "
6154 "backyard—by, for example, going to Sears, buying a table, and putting "
6155 "it in my backyard? What is the thing I am taking then?"
6159 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
6160 #: freeculture.xml:4443
6162 "Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813) in "
6163 "<citetitle>The Writings of Thomas Jefferson</citetitle>, vol. 6 (Andrew "
6164 "A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., 1903), 330, 333–34."
6167 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6168 #: freeculture.xml:4430
6170 "The point is not just about the thingness of picnic tables versus ideas, "
6171 "though that's an important difference. The point instead is that in the "
6172 "ordinary case—indeed, in practically every case except for a narrow "
6173 "range of exceptions—ideas released to the world are free. I don't take "
6174 "anything from you when I copy the way you dress—though I might seem "
6175 "weird if I did it every day, and especially weird if you are a "
6176 "woman. Instead, as Thomas Jefferson said (and as is especially true when I "
6177 "copy the way someone else dresses), <quote>He who receives an idea from me, "
6178 "receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his "
6179 "taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.</quote><placeholder "
6180 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6183 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6184 #: freeculture.xml:4449
6186 "The exceptions to free use are ideas and expressions within the reach of the "
6187 "law of patent and copyright, and a few other domains that I won't discuss "
6188 "here. Here the law says you can't take my idea or expression without my "
6189 "permission: The law turns the intangible into property."
6193 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
6194 #: freeculture.xml:4462
6196 "As the legal realists taught American law, all property rights are "
6197 "intangible. A property right is simply a right that an individual has "
6198 "against the world to do or not do certain things that may or may not attach "
6199 "to a physical object. The right itself is intangible, even if the object to "
6200 "which it is (metaphorically) attached is tangible. See Adam Mossoff, "
6201 "<quote>What Is Property? Putting the Pieces Back Together,</quote> "
6202 "<citetitle>Arizona Law Review</citetitle> 45 (2003): 373, 429 n. 241."
6205 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6206 #: freeculture.xml:4457
6208 "But how, and to what extent, and in what form—the details, in other "
6209 "words—matter. To get a good sense of how this practice of turning the "
6210 "intangible into property emerged, we need to place this "
6211 "<quote>property</quote> in its proper context.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
6215 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6216 #: freeculture.xml:4472
6218 "My strategy in doing this will be the same as my strategy in the preceding "
6219 "part. I offer four stories to help put the idea of <quote>copyright material "
6220 "is property</quote> in context. Where did the idea come from? What are its "
6221 "limits? How does it function in practice? After these stories, the "
6222 "significance of this true statement—<quote>copyright material is "
6223 "property</quote>— will be a bit more clear, and its implications will "
6224 "be revealed as quite different from the implications that the copyright "
6225 "warriors would have us draw."
6228 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
6229 #: freeculture.xml:4485
6230 msgid "CHAPTER SIX: Founders"
6233 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6234 #: freeculture.xml:4486
6238 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6239 #: freeculture.xml:4487 freeculture.xml:4632
6240 msgid "Branagh, Kenneth"
6243 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
6244 #: freeculture.xml:4488
6245 msgid "English copyright law developed for"
6248 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6249 #: freeculture.xml:4490
6251 "<emphasis role='strong'>William Shakespeare</emphasis> wrote "
6252 "<citetitle>Romeo and Juliet</citetitle> in 1595. The play was first "
6253 "published in 1597. It was the eleventh major play that Shakespeare had "
6254 "written. He would continue to write plays through 1613, and the plays that "
6255 "he wrote have continued to define Anglo-American culture ever since. So "
6256 "deeply have the works of a sixteenth-century writer seeped into our culture "
6257 "that we often don't even recognize their source. I once overheard someone "
6258 "commenting on Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Henry V: <quote>I liked it, "
6259 "but Shakespeare is so full of clichés.</quote>"
6262 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
6263 #: freeculture.xml:4506
6267 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
6268 #: freeculture.xml:4507
6269 msgid "Dryden, John"
6272 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6273 #: freeculture.xml:4506
6275 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
6276 "id=\"1\"/> Jacob Tonson is typically remembered for his associations with "
6277 "prominent eighteenth-century literary figures, especially John Dryden, and "
6278 "for his handsome <quote>definitive editions</quote> of classic works. In "
6279 "addition to <citetitle>Romeo and Juliet</citetitle>, he published an "
6280 "astonishing array of works that still remain at the heart of the English "
6281 "canon, including collected works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Milton, "
6282 "and John Dryden. See Keith Walker, <quote>Jacob Tonson, Bookseller,</quote> "
6283 "<citetitle>American Scholar</citetitle> 61:3 (1992): 424–31."
6287 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6288 #: freeculture.xml:4519
6290 "Lyman Ray Patterson, <citetitle>Copyright in Historical "
6291 "Perspective</citetitle> (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), "
6296 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6297 #: freeculture.xml:4502
6299 "In 1774, almost 180 years after <citetitle>Romeo and Juliet</citetitle> was "
6300 "written, the <quote>copy-right</quote> for the work was still thought by "
6301 "many to be the exclusive right of a single London publisher, Jacob "
6302 "Tonson.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Tonson was the most "
6303 "prominent of a small group of publishers called the Conger<placeholder "
6304 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> who controlled bookselling in England during "
6305 "the eighteenth century. The Conger claimed a perpetual right to control the "
6306 "<quote>copy</quote> of books that they had acquired from authors. That "
6307 "perpetual right meant that no one else could publish copies of a book to "
6308 "which they held the copyright. Prices of the classics were thus kept high; "
6309 "competition to produce better or cheaper editions was eliminated."
6312 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6313 #: freeculture.xml:4531
6314 msgid "British Parliament"
6317 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6318 #: freeculture.xml:4542
6320 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> As Siva Vaidhyanathan nicely "
6321 "argues, it is erroneous to call this a <quote>copyright law.</quote> See "
6322 "Vaidhyanathan, <citetitle>Copyrights and Copywrongs</citetitle>, 40."
6325 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6326 #: freeculture.xml:4533
6328 "Now, there's something puzzling about the year 1774 to anyone who knows a "
6329 "little about copyright law. The better-known year in the history of "
6330 "copyright is 1710, the year that the British Parliament adopted the first "
6331 "<quote>copyright</quote> act. Known as the Statute of Anne, the act stated "
6332 "that all published works would get a copyright term of fourteen years, "
6333 "renewable once if the author was alive, and that all works already published "
6334 "by 1710 would get a single term of twenty-one additional years.<placeholder "
6335 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Under this law, <citetitle>Romeo and "
6336 "Juliet</citetitle> should have been free in 1731. So why was there any issue "
6337 "about it still being under Tonson's control in 1774?"
6340 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6341 #: freeculture.xml:4549
6342 msgid "Licensing Act (1662)"
6345 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6346 #: freeculture.xml:4551
6348 "The reason is that the English hadn't yet agreed on what a "
6349 "<quote>copyright</quote> was—indeed, no one had. At the time the "
6350 "English passed the Statute of Anne, there was no other legislation governing "
6351 "copyrights. The last law regulating publishers, the Licensing Act of 1662, "
6352 "had expired in 1695. That law gave publishers a monopoly over publishing, as "
6353 "a way to make it easier for the Crown to control what was published. But "
6354 "after it expired, there was no positive law that said that the publishers, "
6355 "or <quote>Stationers,</quote> had an exclusive right to print books."
6358 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6359 #: freeculture.xml:4562
6361 "There was no <emphasis>positive</emphasis> law, but that didn't mean that "
6362 "there was no law. The Anglo-American legal tradition looks to both the words "
6363 "of legislatures and the words of judges to know the rules that are to govern "
6364 "how people are to behave. We call the words from legislatures "
6365 "<quote>positive law.</quote> We call the words from judges <quote>common "
6366 "law.</quote> The common law sets the background against which legislatures "
6367 "legislate; the legislature, ordinarily, can trump that background only if it "
6368 "passes a law to displace it. And so the real question after the licensing "
6369 "statutes had expired was whether the common law protected a copyright, "
6370 "independent of any positive law."
6374 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6375 #: freeculture.xml:4574
6377 "This question was important to the publishers, or "
6378 "<quote>booksellers,</quote> as they were called, because there was growing "
6379 "competition from foreign publishers. The Scottish, in particular, were "
6380 "increasingly publishing and exporting books to England. That competition "
6381 "reduced the profits of the Conger, which reacted by demanding that "
6382 "Parliament pass a law to again give them exclusive control over "
6383 "publishing. That demand ultimately resulted in the Statute of Anne."
6386 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6387 #: freeculture.xml:4586
6389 "The Statute of Anne granted the author or <quote>proprietor</quote> of a "
6390 "book an exclusive right to print that book. In an important limitation, "
6391 "however, and to the horror of the booksellers, the law gave the bookseller "
6392 "that right for a limited term. At the end of that term, the copyright "
6393 "<quote>expired,</quote> and the work would then be free and could be "
6394 "published by anyone. Or so the legislature is thought to have believed."
6397 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6398 #: freeculture.xml:4595
6400 "Now, the thing to puzzle about for a moment is this: Why would Parliament "
6401 "limit the exclusive right? Not why would they limit it to the particular "
6402 "limit they set, but why would they limit the right <emphasis>at "
6406 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6407 #: freeculture.xml:4601
6409 "For the booksellers, and the authors whom they represented, had a very "
6410 "strong claim. Take <citetitle>Romeo and Juliet</citetitle> as an example: "
6411 "That play was written by Shakespeare. It was his genius that brought it into "
6412 "the world. He didn't take anybody's property when he created this play "
6413 "(that's a controversial claim, but never mind), and by his creating this "
6414 "play, he didn't make it any harder for others to craft a play. So why is it "
6415 "that the law would ever allow someone else to come along and take "
6416 "Shakespeare's play without his, or his estate's, permission? What reason is "
6417 "there to allow someone else to <quote>steal</quote> Shakespeare's work?"
6420 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6421 #: freeculture.xml:4612
6423 "The answer comes in two parts. We first need to see something special about "
6424 "the notion of <quote>copyright</quote> that existed at the time of the "
6425 "Statute of Anne. Second, we have to see something important about "
6426 "<quote>booksellers.</quote>"
6430 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6431 #: freeculture.xml:4618
6433 "First, about copyright. In the last three hundred years, we have come to "
6434 "apply the concept of <quote>copyright</quote> ever more broadly. But in "
6435 "1710, it wasn't so much a concept as it was a very particular right. The "
6436 "copyright was born as a very specific set of restrictions: It forbade others "
6437 "from reprinting a book. In 1710, the <quote>copy-right</quote> was a right "
6438 "to use a particular machine to replicate a particular work. It did not go "
6439 "beyond that very narrow right. It did not control any more generally how a "
6440 "work could be <emphasis>used</emphasis>. Today the right includes a large "
6441 "collection of restrictions on the freedom of others: It grants the author "
6442 "the exclusive right to copy, the exclusive right to distribute, the "
6443 "exclusive right to perform, and so on."
6446 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6447 #: freeculture.xml:4634
6449 "So, for example, even if the copyright to Shakespeare's works were "
6450 "perpetual, all that would have meant under the original meaning of the term "
6451 "was that no one could reprint Shakespeare's work without the permission of "
6452 "the Shakespeare estate. It would not have controlled anything, for example, "
6453 "about how the work could be performed, whether the work could be translated, "
6454 "or whether Kenneth Branagh would be allowed to make his films. The "
6455 "<quote>copy-right</quote> was only an exclusive right to print—no "
6456 "less, of course, but also no more."
6459 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6460 #: freeculture.xml:4643
6461 msgid "Henry VIII, King of England"
6464 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6465 #: freeculture.xml:4644
6466 msgid "Statute of Monopolies (1656)"
6469 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6470 #: freeculture.xml:4646
6472 "Even that limited right was viewed with skepticism by the British. They had "
6473 "had a long and ugly experience with <quote>exclusive rights,</quote> "
6474 "especially <quote>exclusive rights</quote> granted by the Crown. The English "
6475 "had fought a civil war in part about the Crown's practice of handing out "
6476 "monopolies—especially monopolies for works that already existed. King "
6477 "Henry VIII granted a patent to print the Bible and a monopoly to Darcy to "
6478 "print playing cards. The English Parliament began to fight back against this "
6479 "power of the Crown. In 1656, it passed the Statute of Monopolies, limiting "
6480 "monopolies to patents for new inventions. And by 1710, Parliament was eager "
6481 "to deal with the growing monopoly in publishing."
6484 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6485 #: freeculture.xml:4659
6487 "Thus the <quote>copy-right,</quote> when viewed as a monopoly right, was "
6488 "naturally viewed as a right that should be limited. (However convincing the "
6489 "claim that <quote>it's my property, and I should have it forever,</quote> "
6490 "try sounding convincing when uttering, <quote>It's my monopoly, and I should "
6491 "have it forever.</quote>) The state would protect the exclusive right, but "
6492 "only so long as it benefited society. The British saw the harms from "
6493 "specialinterest favors; they passed a law to stop them."
6496 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6497 #: freeculture.xml:4667
6498 msgid "booksellers, English"
6502 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6503 #: freeculture.xml:4684
6505 "Philip Wittenberg, <citetitle>The Protection and Marketing of Literary "
6506 "Property</citetitle> (New York: J. Messner, Inc., 1937), 31."
6509 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6510 #: freeculture.xml:4669
6512 "Second, about booksellers. It wasn't just that the copyright was a "
6513 "monopoly. It was also that it was a monopoly held by the booksellers. "
6514 "Booksellers sound quaint and harmless to us. They were not viewed as "
6515 "harmless in seventeenth-century England. Members of the Conger were "
6516 "increasingly seen as monopolists of the worst kind—tools of the "
6517 "Crown's repression, selling the liberty of England to guarantee themselves a "
6518 "monopoly profit. The attacks against these monopolists were harsh: Milton "
6519 "described them as <quote>old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of "
6520 "book-selling</quote>; they were <quote>men who do not therefore labour in an "
6521 "honest profession to which learning is indetted.</quote><placeholder "
6522 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6525 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6526 #: freeculture.xml:4689
6528 "Many believed the power the booksellers exercised over the spread of "
6529 "knowledge was harming that spread, just at the time the Enlightenment was "
6530 "teaching the importance of education and knowledge spread generally. The "
6531 "idea that knowledge should be free was a hallmark of the time, and these "
6532 "powerful commercial interests were interfering with that idea."
6535 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6536 #: freeculture.xml:4697
6538 "To balance this power, Parliament decided to increase competition among "
6539 "booksellers, and the simplest way to do that was to spread the wealth of "
6540 "valuable books. Parliament therefore limited the term of copyrights, and "
6541 "thereby guaranteed that valuable books would become open to any publisher to "
6542 "publish after a limited time. Thus the setting of the term for existing "
6543 "works to just twenty-one years was a compromise to fight the power of the "
6544 "booksellers. The limitation on terms was an indirect way to assure "
6545 "competition among publishers, and thus the construction and spread of "
6549 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6550 #: freeculture.xml:4709
6552 "When 1731 (1710 + 21) came along, however, the booksellers were getting "
6553 "anxious. They saw the consequences of more competition, and like every "
6554 "competitor, they didn't like them. At first booksellers simply ignored the "
6555 "Statute of Anne, continuing to insist on the perpetual right to control "
6556 "publication. But in 1735 and 1737, they tried to persuade Parliament to "
6557 "extend their terms. Twenty-one years was not enough, they said; they needed "
6561 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6562 #: freeculture.xml:4718
6564 "Parliament rejected their requests. As one pamphleteer put it, in words that "
6569 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
6570 #: freeculture.xml:4733
6572 "A Letter to a Member of Parliament concerning the Bill now depending in the "
6573 "House of Commons, for making more effectual an Act in the Eighth Year of the "
6574 "Reign of Queen Anne, entitled, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by "
6575 "Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such "
6576 "Copies, during the Times therein mentioned (London, 1735), in Brief Amici "
6577 "Curiae of Tyler T. Ochoa et al., 8, <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
6578 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01-618)."
6581 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
6582 #: freeculture.xml:4723
6584 "I see no Reason for granting a further Term now, which will not hold as well "
6585 "for granting it again and again, as often as the Old ones Expire; so that "
6586 "should this Bill pass, it will in Effect be establishing a perpetual "
6587 "Monopoly, a Thing deservedly odious in the Eye of the Law; it will be a "
6588 "great Cramp to Trade, a Discouragement to Learning, no Benefit to the "
6589 "Authors, but a general Tax on the Publick; and all this only to increase the "
6590 "private Gain of the Booksellers.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6593 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6594 #: freeculture.xml:4744
6596 "Having failed in Parliament, the publishers turned to the courts in a series "
6597 "of cases. Their argument was simple and direct: The Statute of Anne gave "
6598 "authors certain protections through positive law, but those protections were "
6599 "not intended as replacements for the common law. Instead, they were "
6600 "intended simply to supplement the common law. Under common law, it was "
6601 "already wrong to take another person's creative <quote>property</quote> and "
6602 "use it without his permission. The Statute of Anne, the booksellers argued, "
6603 "didn't change that. Therefore, just because the protections of the Statute "
6604 "of Anne expired, that didn't mean the protections of the common law expired: "
6605 "Under the common law they had the right to ban the publication of a book, "
6606 "even if its Statute of Anne copyright had expired. This, they argued, was "
6607 "the only way to protect authors."
6610 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
6611 #: freeculture.xml:4758 freeculture.xml:4766 freeculture.xml:4813
6612 msgid "Patterson, Raymond"
6615 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6616 #: freeculture.xml:4766
6618 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
6619 "id=\"1\"/> Lyman Ray Patterson, <quote>Free Speech, Copyright, and Fair "
6620 "Use,</quote> <citetitle>Vanderbilt Law Review</citetitle> 40 (1987): 28. For "
6621 "a wonderfully compelling account, see Vaidhyanathan, 37–48."
6624 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6625 #: freeculture.xml:4760
6627 "This was a clever argument, and one that had the support of some of the "
6628 "leading jurists of the day. It also displayed extraordinary chutzpah. Until "
6629 "then, as law professor Raymond Patterson has put it, <quote>The publishers "
6630 "… had as much concern for authors as a cattle rancher has for "
6631 "cattle.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The bookseller "
6632 "didn't care squat for the rights of the author. His concern was the "
6633 "monopoly profit that the author's work gave."
6637 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6638 #: freeculture.xml:4780
6640 "For a compelling account, see David Saunders, <citetitle>Authorship and "
6641 "Copyright</citetitle> (London: Routledge, 1992), 62–69."
6644 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6645 #: freeculture.xml:4776
6647 "The booksellers' argument was not accepted without a fight. The hero of "
6648 "this fight was a Scottish bookseller named Alexander Donaldson.<placeholder "
6649 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6652 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6653 #: freeculture.xml:4784
6654 msgid "Boswell, James"
6657 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6658 #: freeculture.xml:4785
6659 msgid "Erskine, Andrew"
6662 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6663 #: freeculture.xml:4794 freeculture.xml:14816
6667 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6668 #: freeculture.xml:4792
6670 "Mark Rose, <citetitle>Authors and Owners</citetitle> (Cambridge: Harvard "
6671 "University Press, 1993), 92. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
6675 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6676 #: freeculture.xml:4803
6680 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6681 #: freeculture.xml:4787
6683 "Donaldson was an outsider to the London Conger. He began his career in "
6684 "Edinburgh in 1750. The focus of his business was inexpensive reprints "
6685 "<quote>of standard works whose copyright term had expired,</quote> at least "
6686 "under the Statute of Anne.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
6687 "Donaldson's publishing house prospered and became <quote>something of a "
6688 "center for literary Scotsmen.</quote> <quote>[A]mong them,</quote> Professor "
6689 "Mark Rose writes, was <quote>the young James Boswell who, together with his "
6690 "friend Andrew Erskine, published an anthology of contemporary Scottish poems "
6691 "with Donaldson.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
6694 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6695 #: freeculture.xml:4813
6697 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Lyman Ray Patterson, "
6698 "<citetitle>Copyright in Historical Perspective</citetitle>, 167 (quoting "
6702 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6703 #: freeculture.xml:4807
6705 "When the London booksellers tried to shut down Donaldson's shop in Scotland, "
6706 "he responded by moving his shop to London, where he sold inexpensive "
6707 "editions <quote>of the most popular English books, in defiance of the "
6708 "supposed common law right of Literary Property.</quote><placeholder "
6709 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> His books undercut the Conger prices by 30 to "
6710 "50 percent, and he rested his right to compete upon the ground that, under "
6711 "the Statute of Anne, the works he was selling had passed out of protection."
6714 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6715 #: freeculture.xml:4822
6717 "The London booksellers quickly brought suit to block <quote>piracy</quote> "
6718 "like Donaldson's. A number of actions were successful against the "
6719 "<quote>pirates,</quote> the most important early victory being "
6720 "<citetitle>Millar</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Taylor</citetitle>."
6723 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6724 #: freeculture.xml:4826
6725 msgid "Seasons, The (Thomson)"
6728 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6729 #: freeculture.xml:4827
6730 msgid "Taylor, Robert"
6734 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6735 #: freeculture.xml:4836
6737 "Howard B. Abrams, <quote>The Historic Foundation of American Copyright Law: "
6738 "Exploding the Myth of Common Law Copyright,</quote> <citetitle>Wayne Law "
6739 "Review</citetitle> 29 (1983): 1152."
6742 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6743 #: freeculture.xml:4829
6745 "Millar was a bookseller who in 1729 had purchased the rights to James "
6746 "Thomson's poem <quote>The Seasons.</quote> Millar complied with the "
6747 "requirements of the Statute of Anne, and therefore received the full "
6748 "protection of the statute. After the term of copyright ended, Robert Taylor "
6749 "began printing a competing volume. Millar sued, claiming a perpetual common "
6750 "law right, the Statute of Anne notwithstanding.<placeholder "
6751 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6754 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6755 #: freeculture.xml:4843
6757 "Astonishingly to modern lawyers, one of the greatest judges in English "
6758 "history, Lord Mansfield, agreed with the booksellers. Whatever protection "
6759 "the Statute of Anne gave booksellers, it did not, he held, extinguish any "
6760 "common law right. The question was whether the common law would protect the "
6761 "author against subsequent <quote>pirates.</quote> Mansfield's answer was "
6762 "yes: The common law would bar Taylor from reprinting Thomson's poem without "
6763 "Millar's permission. That common law rule thus effectively gave the "
6764 "booksellers a perpetual right to control the publication of any book "
6769 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6770 #: freeculture.xml:4854
6772 "Considered as a matter of abstract justice—reasoning as if justice "
6773 "were just a matter of logical deduction from first "
6774 "principles—Mansfield's conclusion might make some sense. But what it "
6775 "ignored was the larger issue that Parliament had struggled with in 1710: How "
6776 "best to limit the monopoly power of publishers? Parliament's strategy was to "
6777 "offer a term for existing works that was long enough to buy peace in 1710, "
6778 "but short enough to assure that culture would pass into competition within a "
6779 "reasonable period of time. Within twenty-one years, Parliament believed, "
6780 "Britain would mature from the controlled culture that the Crown coveted to "
6781 "the free culture that we inherited."
6784 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6785 #: freeculture.xml:4869
6787 "The fight to defend the limits of the Statute of Anne was not to end there, "
6788 "however, and it is here that Donaldson enters the mix."
6791 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6792 #: freeculture.xml:4872
6793 msgid "Beckett, Thomas"
6797 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6798 #: freeculture.xml:4878
6799 msgid "Ibid., 1156."
6802 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6803 #: freeculture.xml:4874
6805 "Millar died soon after his victory, so his case was not appealed. His estate "
6806 "sold Thomson's poems to a syndicate of printers that included Thomas "
6807 "Beckett.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Donaldson then released an "
6808 "unauthorized edition of Thomson's works. Beckett, on the strength of the "
6809 "decision in <citetitle>Millar</citetitle>, got an injunction against "
6810 "Donaldson. Donaldson appealed the case to the House of Lords, which "
6811 "functioned much like our own Supreme Court. In February of 1774, that body "
6812 "had the chance to interpret the meaning of Parliament's limits from sixty "
6816 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6817 #: freeculture.xml:4888
6819 "As few legal cases ever do, <citetitle>Donaldson</citetitle> "
6820 "v. <citetitle>Beckett</citetitle> drew an enormous amount of attention "
6821 "throughout Britain. Donaldson's lawyers argued that whatever rights may have "
6822 "existed under the common law, the Statute of Anne terminated those "
6823 "rights. After passage of the Statute of Anne, the only legal protection for "
6824 "an exclusive right to control publication came from that statute. Thus, they "
6825 "argued, after the term specified in the Statute of Anne expired, works that "
6826 "had been protected by the statute were no longer protected."
6829 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6830 #: freeculture.xml:4898
6832 "The House of Lords was an odd institution. Legal questions were presented to "
6833 "the House and voted upon first by the <quote>law lords,</quote> members of "
6834 "special legal distinction who functioned much like the Justices in our "
6835 "Supreme Court. Then, after the law lords voted, the House of Lords generally "
6840 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6841 #: freeculture.xml:4905
6843 "The reports about the law lords' votes are mixed. On some counts, it looks "
6844 "as if perpetual copyright prevailed. But there is no ambiguity about how the "
6845 "House of Lords voted as whole. By a two-to-one majority (22 to 11) they "
6846 "voted to reject the idea of perpetual copyrights. Whatever one's "
6847 "understanding of the common law, now a copyright was fixed for a limited "
6848 "time, after which the work protected by copyright passed into the public "
6852 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6853 #: freeculture.xml:4923
6854 msgid "Bacon, Francis"
6857 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6858 #: freeculture.xml:4924
6859 msgid "Bunyan, John"
6862 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6863 #: freeculture.xml:4925
6864 msgid "Johnson, Samuel"
6867 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6868 #: freeculture.xml:4926
6869 msgid "Milton, John"
6872 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6873 #: freeculture.xml:4927
6874 msgid "Shakespeare, William"
6877 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6878 #: freeculture.xml:4915
6880 "<quote>The public domain.</quote> Before the case of "
6881 "<citetitle>Donaldson</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Beckett</citetitle>, there "
6882 "was no clear idea of a public domain in England. Before 1774, there was a "
6883 "strong argument that common law copyrights were perpetual. After 1774, the "
6884 "public domain was born. For the first time in Anglo-American history, the "
6885 "legal control over creative works expired, and the greatest works in English "
6886 "history—including those of Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Johnson, and "
6887 "Bunyan—were free of legal restraint. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
6888 "id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder "
6889 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/> "
6890 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"4\"/>"
6894 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6895 #: freeculture.xml:4940
6899 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6900 #: freeculture.xml:4930
6902 "It is hard for us to imagine, but this decision by the House of Lords fueled "
6903 "an extraordinarily popular and political reaction. In Scotland, where most "
6904 "of the <quote>pirate publishers</quote> did their work, people celebrated "
6905 "the decision in the streets. As the <citetitle>Edinburgh "
6906 "Advertiser</citetitle> reported, <quote>No private cause has so much "
6907 "engrossed the attention of the public, and none has been tried before the "
6908 "House of Lords in the decision of which so many individuals were "
6909 "interested.</quote> <quote>Great rejoicing in Edinburgh upon victory over "
6910 "literary property: bonfires and illuminations.</quote><placeholder "
6911 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6914 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6915 #: freeculture.xml:4944
6917 "In London, however, at least among publishers, the reaction was equally "
6918 "strong in the opposite direction. The <citetitle>Morning "
6919 "Chronicle</citetitle> reported:"
6922 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
6923 #: freeculture.xml:4950
6925 "By the above decision … near 200,000 pounds worth of what was "
6926 "honestly purchased at public sale, and which was yesterday thought property "
6927 "is now reduced to nothing. The Booksellers of London and Westminster, many "
6928 "of whom sold estates and houses to purchase Copy-right, are in a manner "
6929 "ruined, and those who after many years industry thought they had acquired a "
6930 "competency to provide for their families now find themselves without a "
6931 "shilling to devise to their successors.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
6936 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6937 #: freeculture.xml:4965
6939 "<quote>Ruined</quote> is a bit of an exaggeration. But it is not an "
6940 "exaggeration to say that the change was profound. The decision of the House "
6941 "of Lords meant that the booksellers could no longer control how culture in "
6942 "England would grow and develop. Culture in England was thereafter "
6943 "<emphasis>free</emphasis>. Not in the sense that copyrights would not be "
6944 "respected, for of course, for a limited time after a work was published, the "
6945 "bookseller had an exclusive right to control the publication of that "
6946 "book. And not in the sense that books could be stolen, for even after a "
6947 "copyright expired, you still had to buy the book from someone. But "
6948 "<emphasis>free</emphasis> in the sense that the culture and its growth would "
6949 "no longer be controlled by a small group of publishers. As every free market "
6950 "does, this free market of free culture would grow as the consumers and "
6951 "producers chose. English culture would develop as the many English readers "
6952 "chose to let it develop— chose in the books they bought and wrote; "
6953 "chose in the memes they repeated and endorsed. Chose in a "
6954 "<emphasis>competitive context</emphasis>, not a context in which the choices "
6955 "about what culture is available to people and how they get access to it are "
6956 "made by the few despite the wishes of the many."
6959 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6960 #: freeculture.xml:4987
6962 "At least, this was the rule in a world where the Parliament is antimonopoly, "
6963 "resistant to the protectionist pleas of publishers. In a world where the "
6964 "Parliament is more pliant, free culture would be less protected."
6967 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
6968 #: freeculture.xml:4997
6969 msgid "CHAPTER SEVEN: Recorders"
6972 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6973 #: freeculture.xml:4999
6975 "<emphasis role='strong'>Jon Else</emphasis> is a filmmaker. He is best known "
6976 "for his documentaries and has been very successful in spreading his art. He "
6977 "is also a teacher, and as a teacher myself, I envy the loyalty and "
6978 "admiration that his students feel for him. (I met, by accident, two of his "
6979 "students at a dinner party. He was their god.)"
6982 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6983 #: freeculture.xml:5006
6985 "Else worked on a documentary that I was involved in. At a break, he told me "
6986 "a story about the freedom to create with film in America today."
6989 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6990 #: freeculture.xml:5017 freeculture.xml:5080
6991 msgid "San Francisco Opera"
6994 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6995 #: freeculture.xml:5011
6997 "In 1990, Else was working on a documentary about Wagner's Ring Cycle. The "
6998 "focus was stagehands at the San Francisco Opera. Stagehands are a "
6999 "particularly funny and colorful element of an opera. During a show, they "
7000 "hang out below the stage in the grips' lounge and in the lighting loft. They "
7001 "make a perfect contrast to the art on the stage. <placeholder "
7002 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
7006 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7007 #: freeculture.xml:5020
7009 "During one of the performances, Else was shooting some stagehands playing "
7010 "checkers. In one corner of the room was a television set. Playing on the "
7011 "television set, while the stagehands played checkers and the opera company "
7012 "played Wagner, was <citetitle>The Simpsons</citetitle>. As Else judged it, "
7013 "this touch of cartoon helped capture the flavor of what was special about "
7017 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7018 #: freeculture.xml:5029
7020 "Years later, when he finally got funding to complete the film, Else "
7021 "attempted to clear the rights for those few seconds of <citetitle>The "
7022 "Simpsons</citetitle>. For of course, those few seconds are copyrighted; and "
7023 "of course, to use copyrighted material you need the permission of the "
7024 "copyright owner, unless <quote>fair use</quote> or some other privilege "
7028 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7029 #: freeculture.xml:5035 freeculture.xml:5043
7030 msgid "Gracie Films"
7033 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7034 #: freeculture.xml:5037
7036 "Else called <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> creator Matt Groening's office "
7037 "to get permission. Groening approved the shot. The shot was a "
7038 "four-and-a-halfsecond image on a tiny television set in the corner of the "
7039 "room. How could it hurt? Groening was happy to have it in the film, but he "
7040 "told Else to contact Gracie Films, the company that produces the program."
7043 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7044 #: freeculture.xml:5045
7046 "Gracie Films was okay with it, too, but they, like Groening, wanted to be "
7047 "careful. So they told Else to contact Fox, Gracie's parent company. Else "
7048 "called Fox and told them about the clip in the corner of the one room shot "
7049 "of the film. Matt Groening had already given permission, Else said. He was "
7050 "just confirming the permission with Fox."
7053 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7054 #: freeculture.xml:5052
7056 "Then, as Else told me, <quote>two things happened. First we discovered "
7057 "… that Matt Groening doesn't own his own creation—or at least "
7058 "that someone [at Fox] believes he doesn't own his own creation.</quote> And "
7059 "second, Fox <quote>wanted ten thousand dollars as a licensing fee for us to "
7060 "use this four-point-five seconds of … entirely unsolicited "
7061 "<citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> which was in the corner of the shot.</quote>"
7064 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7065 #: freeculture.xml:5059
7066 msgid "Herrera, Rebecca"
7069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7070 #: freeculture.xml:5061
7072 "Else was certain there was a mistake. He worked his way up to someone he "
7073 "thought was a vice president for licensing, Rebecca Herrera. He explained "
7074 "to her, <quote>There must be some mistake here. … We're asking for "
7075 "your educational rate on this.</quote> That was the educational rate, "
7076 "Herrera told Else. A day or so later, Else called again to confirm what he "
7081 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7082 #: freeculture.xml:5069
7084 "<quote>I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight,</quote> he told "
7085 "me. <quote>Yes, you have your facts straight,</quote> she said. It would "
7086 "cost $10,000 to use the clip of <citetitle>The Simpsons</citetitle> in the "
7087 "corner of a shot in a documentary film about Wagner's Ring Cycle. And then, "
7088 "astonishingly, Herrera told Else, <quote>And if you quote me, I'll turn you "
7089 "over to our attorneys.</quote> As an assistant to Herrera told Else later "
7090 "on, <quote>They don't give a shit. They just want the money.</quote>"
7093 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7094 #: freeculture.xml:5081
7095 msgid "Day After Trinity, The"
7098 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7099 #: freeculture.xml:5083
7101 "Else didn't have the money to buy the right to replay what was playing on "
7102 "the television backstage at the San Francisco Opera. To reproduce this "
7103 "reality was beyond the documentary filmmaker's budget. At the very last "
7104 "minute before the film was to be released, Else digitally replaced the shot "
7105 "with a clip from another film that he had worked on, <citetitle>The Day "
7106 "After Trinity</citetitle>, from ten years before."
7109 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7110 #: freeculture.xml:5091
7112 "There's no doubt that someone, whether Matt Groening or Fox, owns the "
7113 "copyright to <citetitle>The Simpsons</citetitle>. That copyright is their "
7114 "property. To use that copyrighted material thus sometimes requires the "
7115 "permission of the copyright owner. If the use that Else wanted to make of "
7116 "the <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> copyright were one of the uses "
7117 "restricted by the law, then he would need to get the permission of the "
7118 "copyright owner before he could use the work in that way. And in a free "
7119 "market, it is the owner of the copyright who gets to set the price for any "
7120 "use that the law says the owner gets to control."
7123 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7124 #: freeculture.xml:5102
7126 "For example, <quote>public performance</quote> is a use of <citetitle>The "
7127 "Simpsons</citetitle> that the copyright owner gets to control. If you take a "
7128 "selection of favorite episodes, rent a movie theater, and charge for tickets "
7129 "to come see <quote>My Favorite <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle>,</quote> then "
7130 "you need to get permission from the copyright owner. And the copyright owner "
7131 "(rightly, in my view) can charge whatever she wants—$10 or "
7132 "$1,000,000. That's her right, as set by the law."
7136 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7137 #: freeculture.xml:5114
7139 "For an excellent argument that such use is <quote>fair use,</quote> but that "
7140 "lawyers don't permit recognition that it is <quote>fair use,</quote> see "
7141 "Richard A. Posner with William F. Patry, <quote>Fair Use and Statutory "
7142 "Reform in the Wake of <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle></quote> (draft on file "
7143 "with author), University of Chicago Law School, 5 August 2003."
7146 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7147 #: freeculture.xml:5111
7149 "But when lawyers hear this story about Jon Else and Fox, their first thought "
7150 "is <quote>fair use.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Else's "
7151 "use of just 4.5 seconds of an indirect shot of a "
7152 "<citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> episode is clearly a fair use of "
7153 "<citetitle>The Simpsons</citetitle>—and fair use does not require the "
7154 "permission of anyone."
7158 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7159 #: freeculture.xml:5126
7161 "So I asked Else why he didn't just rely upon <quote>fair use.</quote> Here's "
7165 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7166 #: freeculture.xml:5130
7168 "The <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> fiasco was for me a great lesson in the "
7169 "gulf between what lawyers find irrelevant in some abstract sense, and what "
7170 "is crushingly relevant in practice to those of us actually trying to make "
7171 "and broadcast documentaries. I never had any doubt that it was "
7172 "<quote>clearly fair use</quote> in an absolute legal sense. But I couldn't "
7173 "rely on the concept in any concrete way. Here's why:"
7177 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><para>
7178 #: freeculture.xml:5140
7180 "Before our films can be broadcast, the network requires that we buy Errors "
7181 "and Omissions insurance. The carriers require a detailed <quote>visual cue "
7182 "sheet</quote> listing the source and licensing status of each shot in the "
7183 "film. They take a dim view of <quote>fair use,</quote> and a claim of "
7184 "<quote>fair use</quote> can grind the application process to a halt."
7187 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><indexterm><primary>
7188 #: freeculture.xml:5147
7189 msgid "<citetitle>Star Wars</citetitle>"
7192 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><indexterm><primary>
7193 #: freeculture.xml:5148
7194 msgid "Lucas, George"
7198 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><para>
7199 #: freeculture.xml:5151
7201 "I probably never should have asked Matt Groening in the first place. But I "
7202 "knew (at least from folklore) that Fox had a history of tracking down and "
7203 "stopping unlicensed <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> usage, just as George "
7204 "Lucas had a very high profile litigating <citetitle>Star Wars</citetitle> "
7205 "usage. So I decided to play by the book, thinking that we would be granted "
7206 "free or cheap license to four seconds of <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle>. As "
7207 "a documentary producer working to exhaustion on a shoestring, the last thing "
7208 "I wanted was to risk legal trouble, even nuisance legal trouble, and even to "
7209 "defend a principle."
7214 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><para>
7215 #: freeculture.xml:5163
7217 "I did, in fact, speak with one of your colleagues at Stanford Law School "
7218 "… who confirmed that it was fair use. He also confirmed that Fox "
7219 "would <quote>depose and litigate you to within an inch of your life,</quote> "
7220 "regardless of the merits of my claim. He made clear that it would boil down "
7221 "to who had the bigger legal department and the deeper pockets, me or them."
7225 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><para>
7226 #: freeculture.xml:5173
7228 "The question of fair use usually comes up at the end of the project, when we "
7229 "are up against a release deadline and out of money."
7232 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7233 #: freeculture.xml:5180
7235 "In theory, fair use means you need no permission. The theory therefore "
7236 "supports free culture and insulates against a permission culture. But in "
7237 "practice, fair use functions very differently. The fuzzy lines of the law, "
7238 "tied to the extraordinary liability if lines are crossed, means that the "
7239 "effective fair use for many types of creators is slight. The law has the "
7240 "right aim; practice has defeated the aim."
7243 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7244 #: freeculture.xml:5188
7246 "This practice shows just how far the law has come from its "
7247 "eighteenth-century roots. The law was born as a shield to protect "
7248 "publishers' profits against the unfair competition of a pirate. It has "
7249 "matured into a sword that interferes with any use, transformative or not."
7252 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
7253 #: freeculture.xml:5197
7254 msgid "CHAPTER EIGHT: Transformers"
7257 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7258 #: freeculture.xml:5198
7262 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
7263 #: freeculture.xml:5199 freeculture.xml:5259 freeculture.xml:5444 freeculture.xml:9887 freeculture.xml:14183
7267 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7268 #: freeculture.xml:5202
7270 "<emphasis role='strong'>In 1993</emphasis>, Alex Alben was a lawyer working "
7271 "at Starwave, Inc. Starwave was an innovative company founded by Microsoft "
7272 "cofounder Paul Allen to develop digital entertainment. Long before the "
7273 "Internet became popular, Starwave began investing in new technology for "
7274 "delivering entertainment in anticipation of the power of networks."
7277 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
7278 #: freeculture.xml:5209
7279 msgid "retrospective compilations on"
7282 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7283 #: freeculture.xml:5210
7284 msgid "CD-ROMs, film clips used in"
7287 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7288 #: freeculture.xml:5212
7290 "Alben had a special interest in new technology. He was intrigued by the "
7291 "emerging market for CD-ROM technology—not to distribute film, but to "
7292 "do things with film that otherwise would be very difficult. In 1993, he "
7293 "launched an initiative to develop a product to build retrospectives on the "
7294 "work of particular actors. The first actor chosen was Clint Eastwood. The "
7295 "idea was to showcase all of the work of Eastwood, with clips from his films "
7296 "and interviews with figures important to his career."
7299 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7300 #: freeculture.xml:5222
7302 "At that time, Eastwood had made more than fifty films, as an actor and as a "
7303 "director. Alben began with a series of interviews with Eastwood, asking him "
7304 "about his career. Because Starwave produced those interviews, it was free to "
7305 "include them on the CD."
7309 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7310 #: freeculture.xml:5229
7312 "That alone would not have made a very interesting product, so Starwave "
7313 "wanted to add content from the movies in Eastwood's career: posters, "
7314 "scripts, and other material relating to the films Eastwood made. Most of his "
7315 "career was spent at Warner Brothers, and so it was relatively easy to get "
7316 "permission for that content."
7319 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7320 #: freeculture.xml:5236
7322 "Then Alben and his team decided to include actual film clips. <quote>Our "
7323 "goal was that we were going to have a clip from every one of Eastwood's "
7324 "films,</quote> Alben told me. It was here that the problem arose. <quote>No "
7325 "one had ever really done this before,</quote> Alben explained. <quote>No one "
7326 "had ever tried to do this in the context of an artistic look at an actor's "
7330 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7331 #: freeculture.xml:5244
7333 "Alben brought the idea to Michael Slade, the CEO of Starwave. Slade asked, "
7334 "<quote>Well, what will it take?</quote>"
7337 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><secondary>
7338 #: freeculture.xml:5258
7339 msgid "publicity rights on images of"
7342 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7343 #: freeculture.xml:5254
7345 "Technically, the rights that Alben had to clear were mainly those of "
7346 "publicity—rights an artist has to control the commercial exploitation "
7347 "of his image. But these rights, too, burden <quote>Rip, Mix, Burn</quote> "
7348 "creativity, as this chapter evinces. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
7349 "id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
7352 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7353 #: freeculture.xml:5248
7355 "Alben replied, <quote>Well, we're going to have to clear rights from "
7356 "everyone who appears in these films, and the music and everything else that "
7357 "we want to use in these film clips.</quote> Slade said, <quote>Great! Go for "
7358 "it.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
7361 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7362 #: freeculture.xml:5263
7364 "The problem was that neither Alben nor Slade had any idea what clearing "
7365 "those rights would mean. Every actor in each of the films could have a claim "
7366 "to royalties for the reuse of that film. But CD- ROMs had not been specified "
7367 "in the contracts for the actors, so there was no clear way to know just what "
7368 "Starwave was to do."
7371 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7372 #: freeculture.xml:5270
7374 "I asked Alben how he dealt with the problem. With an obvious pride in his "
7375 "resourcefulness that obscured the obvious bizarreness of his tale, Alben "
7376 "recounted just what they did:"
7379 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7380 #: freeculture.xml:5276
7382 "So we very mechanically went about looking up the film clips. We made some "
7383 "artistic decisions about what film clips to include—of course we were "
7384 "going to use the <quote>Make my day</quote> clip from <citetitle>Dirty "
7385 "Harry</citetitle>. But you then need to get the guy on the ground who's "
7386 "wiggling under the gun and you need to get his permission. And then you "
7387 "have to decide what you are going to pay him."
7391 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7392 #: freeculture.xml:5285
7394 "We decided that it would be fair if we offered them the dayplayer rate for "
7395 "the right to reuse that performance. We're talking about a clip of less than "
7396 "a minute, but to reuse that performance in the CD-ROM the rate at the time "
7397 "was about $600. So we had to identify the people—some of them were "
7398 "hard to identify because in Eastwood movies you can't tell who's the guy "
7399 "crashing through the glass—is it the actor or is it the stuntman? And "
7400 "then we just, we put together a team, my assistant and some others, and we "
7401 "just started calling people."
7404 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7405 #: freeculture.xml:5296
7406 msgid "Sutherland, Donald"
7409 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7410 #: freeculture.xml:5298
7412 "Some actors were glad to help—Donald Sutherland, for example, followed "
7413 "up himself to be sure that the rights had been cleared. Others were "
7414 "dumbfounded at their good fortune. Alben would ask, <quote>Hey, can I pay "
7415 "you $600 or maybe if you were in two films, you know, $1,200?</quote> And "
7416 "they would say, <quote>Are you for real? Hey, I'd love to get "
7417 "$1,200.</quote> And some of course were a bit difficult (estranged ex-wives, "
7418 "in particular). But eventually, Alben and his team had cleared the rights to "
7419 "this retrospective CD-ROM on Clint Eastwood's career."
7422 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7423 #: freeculture.xml:5309
7425 "It was one <emphasis>year</emphasis> later—<quote>and even then we "
7426 "weren't sure whether we were totally in the clear.</quote>"
7429 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7430 #: freeculture.xml:5313
7432 "Alben is proud of his work. The project was the first of its kind and the "
7433 "only time he knew of that a team had undertaken such a massive project for "
7434 "the purpose of releasing a retrospective."
7437 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7438 #: freeculture.xml:5319
7440 "Everyone thought it would be too hard. Everyone just threw up their hands "
7441 "and said, <quote>Oh, my gosh, a film, it's so many copyrights, there's the "
7442 "music, there's the screenplay, there's the director, there's the "
7443 "actors.</quote> But we just broke it down. We just put it into its "
7444 "constituent parts and said, <quote>Okay, there's this many actors, this many "
7445 "directors, … this many musicians,</quote> and we just went at it very "
7446 "systematically and cleared the rights."
7450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7451 #: freeculture.xml:5331
7453 "And no doubt, the product itself was exceptionally good. Eastwood loved it, "
7454 "and it sold very well."
7457 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7458 #: freeculture.xml:5334
7459 msgid "Drucker, Peter"
7463 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7464 #: freeculture.xml:5342
7466 "U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Acquisition Management, "
7467 "<citetitle>Seven Steps to Performance-Based Services "
7468 "Acquisition</citetitle>, available at <ulink "
7469 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #22</ulink>."
7472 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7473 #: freeculture.xml:5336
7475 "But I pressed Alben about how weird it seems that it would have to take a "
7476 "year's work simply to clear rights. No doubt Alben had done this "
7477 "efficiently, but as Peter Drucker has famously quipped, <quote>There is "
7478 "nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at "
7479 "all.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Did it make sense, I "
7480 "asked Alben, that this is the way a new work has to be made?"
7483 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7484 #: freeculture.xml:5350
7486 "For, as he acknowledged, <quote>very few … have the time and "
7487 "resources, and the will to do this,</quote> and thus, very few such works "
7488 "would ever be made. Does it make sense, I asked him, from the standpoint of "
7489 "what anybody really thought they were ever giving rights for originally, "
7490 "that you would have to go clear rights for these kinds of clips?"
7493 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7494 #: freeculture.xml:5358
7496 "I don't think so. When an actor renders a performance in a movie, he or she "
7497 "gets paid very well. … And then when 30 seconds of that performance "
7498 "is used in a new product that is a retrospective of somebody's career, I "
7499 "don't think that that person … should be compensated for that."
7502 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7503 #: freeculture.xml:5366
7505 "Or at least, is this <emphasis>how</emphasis> the artist should be "
7506 "compensated? Would it make sense, I asked, for there to be some kind of "
7507 "statutory license that someone could pay and be free to make derivative use "
7508 "of clips like this? Did it really make sense that a follow-on creator would "
7509 "have to track down every artist, actor, director, musician, and get explicit "
7510 "permission from each? Wouldn't a lot more be created if the legal part of "
7511 "the creative process could be made to be more clean?"
7515 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7516 #: freeculture.xml:5377
7518 "Absolutely. I think that if there were some fair-licensing "
7519 "mechanism—where you weren't subject to hold-ups and you weren't "
7520 "subject to estranged former spouses—you'd see a lot more of this work, "
7521 "because it wouldn't be so daunting to try to put together a retrospective of "
7522 "someone's career and meaningfully illustrate it with lots of media from that "
7523 "person's career. You'd build in a cost as the producer of one of these "
7524 "things. You'd build in a cost of paying X dollars to the talent that "
7525 "performed. But it would be a known cost. That's the thing that trips "
7526 "everybody up and makes this kind of product hard to get off the ground. If "
7527 "you knew I have a hundred minutes of film in this product and it's going to "
7528 "cost me X, then you build your budget around it, and you can get investments "
7529 "and everything else that you need to produce it. But if you say, <quote>Oh, "
7530 "I want a hundred minutes of something and I have no idea what it's going to "
7531 "cost me, and a certain number of people are going to hold me up for "
7532 "money,</quote> then it becomes difficult to put one of these things "
7536 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7537 #: freeculture.xml:5397
7539 "Alben worked for a big company. His company was backed by some of the "
7540 "richest investors in the world. He therefore had authority and access that "
7541 "the average Web designer would not have. So if it took him a year, how long "
7542 "would it take someone else? And how much creativity is never made just "
7543 "because the costs of clearing the rights are so high?"
7546 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7547 #: freeculture.xml:5406
7549 "These costs are the burdens of a kind of regulation. Put on a Republican hat "
7550 "for a moment, and get angry for a bit. The government defines the scope of "
7551 "these rights, and the scope defined determines how much it's going to cost "
7552 "to negotiate them. (Remember the idea that land runs to the heavens, and "
7553 "imagine the pilot purchasing flythrough rights as he negotiates to fly from "
7554 "Los Angeles to San Francisco.) These rights might well have once made "
7555 "sense; but as circumstances change, they make no sense at all. Or at least, "
7556 "a well-trained, regulationminimizing Republican should look at the rights "
7557 "and ask, <quote>Does this still make sense?</quote>"
7561 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7562 #: freeculture.xml:5419
7564 "I've seen the flash of recognition when people get this point, but only a "
7565 "few times. The first was at a conference of federal judges in California. "
7566 "The judges were gathered to discuss the emerging topic of cyber-law. I was "
7567 "asked to be on the panel. Harvey Saferstein, a well-respected lawyer from an "
7568 "L.A. firm, introduced the panel with a video that he and a friend, Robert "
7569 "Fairbank, had produced."
7572 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7573 #: freeculture.xml:5429
7575 "The video was a brilliant collage of film from every period in the twentieth "
7576 "century, all framed around the idea of a <citetitle>60 Minutes</citetitle> "
7577 "episode. The execution was perfect, down to the sixty-minute stopwatch. The "
7578 "judges loved every minute of it."
7581 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7582 #: freeculture.xml:5434
7583 msgid "Nimmer, David"
7586 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7587 #: freeculture.xml:5436
7589 "When the lights came up, I looked over to my copanelist, David Nimmer, "
7590 "perhaps the leading copyright scholar and practitioner in the nation. He had "
7591 "an astonished look on his face, as he peered across the room of over 250 "
7592 "well-entertained judges. Taking an ominous tone, he began his talk with a "
7593 "question: <quote>Do you know how many federal laws were just violated in "
7594 "this room?</quote>"
7597 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7598 #: freeculture.xml:5443
7599 msgid "Boies, David"
7602 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7603 #: freeculture.xml:5446
7605 "For of course, the two brilliantly talented creators who made this film "
7606 "hadn't done what Alben did. They hadn't spent a year clearing the rights to "
7607 "these clips; technically, what they had done violated the law. Of course, "
7608 "it wasn't as if they or anyone were going to be prosecuted for this "
7609 "violation (the presence of 250 judges and a gaggle of federal marshals "
7610 "notwithstanding). But Nimmer was making an important point: A year before "
7611 "anyone would have heard of the word Napster, and two years before another "
7612 "member of our panel, David Boies, would defend Napster before the Ninth "
7613 "Circuit Court of Appeals, Nimmer was trying to get the judges to see that "
7614 "the law would not be friendly to the capacities that this technology would "
7615 "enable. Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you "
7616 "couldn't easily do them legally."
7619 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7620 #: freeculture.xml:5461
7622 "We live in a <quote>cut and paste</quote> culture enabled by "
7623 "technology. Anyone building a presentation knows the extraordinary freedom "
7624 "that the cut and paste architecture of the Internet created—in a "
7625 "second you can find just about any image you want; in another second, you "
7626 "can have it planted in your presentation."
7629 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7630 #: freeculture.xml:5467
7635 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7636 #: freeculture.xml:5469
7638 "But presentations are just a tiny beginning. Using the Internet and its "
7639 "archives, musicians are able to string together mixes of sound never before "
7640 "imagined; filmmakers are able to build movies out of clips on computers "
7641 "around the world. An extraordinary site in Sweden takes images of "
7642 "politicians and blends them with music to create biting political "
7643 "commentary. A site called Camp Chaos has produced some of the most biting "
7644 "criticism of the record industry that there is through the mixing of Flash! "
7648 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7649 #: freeculture.xml:5480
7651 "All of these creations are technically illegal. Even if the creators wanted "
7652 "to be <quote>legal,</quote> the cost of complying with the law is impossibly "
7653 "high. Therefore, for the law-abiding sorts, a wealth of creativity is never "
7654 "made. And for that part that is made, if it doesn't follow the clearance "
7655 "rules, it doesn't get released."
7658 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7659 #: freeculture.xml:5487
7661 "To some, these stories suggest a solution: Let's alter the mix of rights so "
7662 "that people are free to build upon our culture. Free to add or mix as they "
7663 "see fit. We could even make this change without necessarily requiring that "
7664 "the <quote>free</quote> use be free as in <quote>free beer.</quote> Instead, "
7665 "the system could simply make it easy for follow-on creators to compensate "
7666 "artists without requiring an army of lawyers to come along: a rule, for "
7667 "example, that says <quote>the royalty owed the copyright owner of an "
7668 "unregistered work for the derivative reuse of his work will be a flat 1 "
7669 "percent of net revenues, to be held in escrow for the copyright "
7670 "owner.</quote> Under this rule, the copyright owner could benefit from some "
7671 "royalty, but he would not have the benefit of a full property right (meaning "
7672 "the right to name his own price) unless he registers the work."
7675 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7676 #: freeculture.xml:5502
7678 "Who could possibly object to this? And what reason would there be for "
7679 "objecting? We're talking about work that is not now being made; which if "
7680 "made, under this plan, would produce new income for artists. What reason "
7681 "would anyone have to oppose it?"
7685 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7686 #: freeculture.xml:5508
7688 "<emphasis role='strong'>In February 2003</emphasis>, DreamWorks studios "
7689 "announced an agreement with Mike Myers, the comic genius of "
7690 "<citetitle>Saturday Night Live</citetitle> and Austin Powers. According to "
7691 "the announcement, Myers and Dream-Works would work together to form a "
7692 "<quote>unique filmmaking pact.</quote> Under the agreement, DreamWorks "
7693 "<quote>will acquire the rights to existing motion picture hits and classics, "
7694 "write new storylines and—with the use of stateof-the-art digital "
7695 "technology—insert Myers and other actors into the film, thereby "
7696 "creating an entirely new piece of entertainment.</quote>"
7699 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7700 #: freeculture.xml:5521
7702 "The announcement called this <quote>film sampling.</quote> As Myers "
7703 "explained, <quote>Film Sampling is an exciting way to put an original spin "
7704 "on existing films and allow audiences to see old movies in a new light. Rap "
7705 "artists have been doing this for years with music and now we are able to "
7706 "take that same concept and apply it to film.</quote> Steven Spielberg is "
7707 "quoted as saying, <quote>If anyone can create a way to bring old films to "
7708 "new audiences, it is Mike.</quote>"
7711 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7712 #: freeculture.xml:5530
7714 "Spielberg is right. Film sampling by Myers will be brilliant. But if you "
7715 "don't think about it, you might miss the truly astonishing point about this "
7716 "announcement. As the vast majority of our film heritage remains under "
7717 "copyright, the real meaning of the DreamWorks announcement is just this: It "
7718 "is Mike Myers and only Mike Myers who is free to sample. Any general freedom "
7719 "to build upon the film archive of our culture, a freedom in other contexts "
7720 "presumed for us all, is now a privilege reserved for the funny and "
7721 "famous—and presumably rich."
7724 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7725 #: freeculture.xml:5540
7727 "This privilege becomes reserved for two sorts of reasons. The first "
7728 "continues the story of the last chapter: the vagueness of <quote>fair "
7729 "use.</quote> Much of <quote>sampling</quote> should be considered "
7730 "<quote>fair use.</quote> But few would rely upon so weak a doctrine to "
7731 "create. That leads to the second reason that the privilege is reserved for "
7732 "the few: The costs of negotiating the legal rights for the creative reuse of "
7733 "content are astronomically high. These costs mirror the costs with fair "
7734 "use: You either pay a lawyer to defend your fair use rights or pay a lawyer "
7735 "to track down permissions so you don't have to rely upon fair use "
7736 "rights. Either way, the creative process is a process of paying "
7737 "lawyers—again a privilege, or perhaps a curse, reserved for the few."
7740 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
7741 #: freeculture.xml:5555
7742 msgid "CHAPTER NINE: Collectors"
7745 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7746 #: freeculture.xml:5556 freeculture.xml:8685 freeculture.xml:10898 freeculture.xml:11143
7747 msgid "archives, digital"
7750 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
7751 #: freeculture.xml:5557 freeculture.xml:7984
7755 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7756 #: freeculture.xml:5559
7758 "<emphasis role='strong'>In April 1996</emphasis>, millions of "
7759 "<quote>bots</quote>—computer codes designed to <quote>spider,</quote> "
7760 "or automatically search the Internet and copy content—began running "
7761 "across the Net. Page by page, these bots copied Internet-based information "
7762 "onto a small set of computers located in a basement in San Francisco's "
7763 "Presidio. Once the bots finished the whole of the Internet, they started "
7764 "again. Over and over again, once every two months, these bits of code took "
7765 "copies of the Internet and stored them."
7768 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7769 #: freeculture.xml:5569 freeculture.xml:5600 freeculture.xml:5662
7770 msgid "Way Back Machine"
7773 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7774 #: freeculture.xml:5571
7776 "By October 2001, the bots had collected more than five years of copies. And "
7777 "at a small announcement in Berkeley, California, the archive that these "
7778 "copies created, the Internet Archive, was opened to the world. Using a "
7779 "technology called <quote>the Way Back Machine,</quote> you could enter a Web "
7780 "page, and see all of its copies going back to 1996, as well as when those "
7784 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7785 #: freeculture.xml:5578
7786 msgid "Orwell, George"
7789 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7790 #: freeculture.xml:5580
7792 "This is the thing about the Internet that Orwell would have appreciated. In "
7793 "the dystopia described in <citetitle>1984</citetitle>, old newspapers were "
7794 "constantly updated to assure that the current view of the world, approved of "
7795 "by the government, was not contradicted by previous news reports."
7799 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7800 #: freeculture.xml:5588
7802 "Thousands of workers constantly reedited the past, meaning there was no way "
7803 "ever to know whether the story you were reading today was the story that was "
7804 "printed on the date published on the paper."
7807 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7808 #: freeculture.xml:5593
7810 "It's the same with the Internet. If you go to a Web page today, there's no "
7811 "way for you to know whether the content you are reading is the same as the "
7812 "content you read before. The page may seem the same, but the content could "
7813 "easily be different. The Internet is Orwell's library—constantly "
7814 "updated, without any reliable memory."
7817 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
7818 #: freeculture.xml:5609
7819 msgid "White House press releases"
7822 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7823 #: freeculture.xml:5608
7825 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
7826 "id=\"1\"/> The temptations remain, however. Brewster Kahle reports that the "
7827 "White House changes its own press releases without notice. A May 13, 2003, "
7828 "press release stated, <quote>Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.</quote> "
7829 "That was later changed, without notice, to <quote>Major Combat Operations in "
7830 "Iraq Have Ended.</quote> E-mail from Brewster Kahle, 1 December 2003."
7833 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7834 #: freeculture.xml:5602
7836 "Until the Way Back Machine, at least. With the Way Back Machine, and the "
7837 "Internet Archive underlying it, you can see what the Internet was. You have "
7838 "the power to see what you remember. More importantly, perhaps, you also have "
7839 "the power to find what you don't remember and what others might prefer you "
7840 "forget.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
7843 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7844 #: freeculture.xml:5617
7845 msgid "history, records of"
7848 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7849 #: freeculture.xml:5619
7851 "<emphasis role='strong'>We take it</emphasis> for granted that we can go "
7852 "back to see what we remember reading. Think about newspapers. If you wanted "
7853 "to study the reaction of your hometown newspaper to the race riots in Watts "
7854 "in 1965, or to Bull Connor's water cannon in 1963, you could go to your "
7855 "public library and look at the newspapers. Those papers probably exist on "
7856 "microfiche. If you're lucky, they exist in paper, too. Either way, you are "
7857 "free, using a library, to go back and remember—not just what it is "
7858 "convenient to remember, but remember something close to the truth."
7861 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7862 #: freeculture.xml:5630
7864 "It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat "
7865 "it. That's not quite correct. We <emphasis>all</emphasis> forget "
7866 "history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we "
7867 "forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us "
7868 "honest. Libraries help do that, by collecting content and keeping it, for "
7869 "schoolchildren, for researchers, for grandma. A free society presumes this "
7874 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7875 #: freeculture.xml:5639
7877 "The Internet was an exception to this presumption. Until the Internet "
7878 "Archive, there was no way to go back. The Internet was the quintessentially "
7879 "transitory medium. And yet, as it becomes more important in forming and "
7880 "reforming society, it becomes more and more important to maintain in some "
7881 "historical form. It's just bizarre to think that we have scads of archives "
7882 "of newspapers from tiny towns around the world, yet there is but one copy of "
7883 "the Internet—the one kept by the Internet Archive."
7886 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7887 #: freeculture.xml:5650
7889 "Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive. He was a very "
7890 "successful Internet entrepreneur after he was a successful computer "
7891 "researcher. In the 1990s, Kahle decided he had had enough business "
7892 "success. It was time to become a different kind of success. So he launched "
7893 "a series of projects designed to archive human knowledge. The Internet "
7894 "Archive was just the first of the projects of this Andrew Carnegie of the "
7895 "Internet. By December of 2002, the archive had over 10 billion pages, and it "
7896 "was growing at about a billion pages a month."
7899 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7900 #: freeculture.xml:5659 freeculture.xml:5713
7901 msgid "Library of Congress"
7904 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7905 #: freeculture.xml:5660
7906 msgid "Television Archive"
7909 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7910 #: freeculture.xml:5661
7911 msgid "Vanderbilt University"
7914 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7915 #: freeculture.xml:5663
7919 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
7920 #: freeculture.xml:5663
7921 msgid "archival function of"
7924 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7925 #: freeculture.xml:5665
7927 "The Way Back Machine is the largest archive of human knowledge in human "
7928 "history. At the end of 2002, it held <quote>two hundred and thirty terabytes "
7929 "of material</quote>—and was <quote>ten times larger than the Library "
7930 "of Congress.</quote> And this was just the first of the archives that Kahle "
7931 "set out to build. In addition to the Internet Archive, Kahle has been "
7932 "constructing the Television Archive. Television, it turns out, is even more "
7933 "ephemeral than the Internet. While much of twentieth-century culture was "
7934 "constructed through television, only a tiny proportion of that culture is "
7935 "available for anyone to see today. Three hours of news are recorded each "
7936 "evening by Vanderbilt University—thanks to a specific exemption in the "
7937 "copyright law. That content is indexed, and is available to scholars for a "
7938 "very low fee. <quote>But other than that, [television] is almost "
7939 "unavailable,</quote> Kahle told me. <quote>If you were Barbara Walters you "
7940 "could get access to [the archives], but if you are just a graduate "
7941 "student?</quote> As Kahle put it,"
7944 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
7945 #: freeculture.xml:5682
7949 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
7950 #: freeculture.xml:5683
7955 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7956 #: freeculture.xml:5685
7958 "Do you remember when Dan Quayle was interacting with Murphy Brown? Remember "
7959 "that back and forth surreal experience of a politician interacting with a "
7960 "fictional television character? If you were a graduate student wanting to "
7961 "study that, and you wanted to get those original back and forth exchanges "
7962 "between the two, the <citetitle>60 Minutes</citetitle> episode that came out "
7963 "after it … it would be almost impossible. … Those materials "
7964 "are almost unfindable. …"
7967 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7968 #: freeculture.xml:5696
7972 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
7973 #: freeculture.xml:5696
7977 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7978 #: freeculture.xml:5698
7980 "Why is that? Why is it that the part of our culture that is recorded in "
7981 "newspapers remains perpetually accessible, while the part that is recorded "
7982 "on videotape is not? How is it that we've created a world where researchers "
7983 "trying to understand the effect of media on nineteenthcentury America will "
7984 "have an easier time than researchers trying to understand the effect of "
7985 "media on twentieth-century America?"
7988 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7989 #: freeculture.xml:5706
7991 "In part, this is because of the law. Early in American copyright law, "
7992 "copyright owners were required to deposit copies of their work in "
7993 "libraries. These copies were intended both to facilitate the spread of "
7994 "knowledge and to assure that a copy of the work would be around once the "
7995 "copyright expired, so that others might access and copy the work."
7998 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7999 #: freeculture.xml:5714 freeculture.xml:5757
8003 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
8004 #: freeculture.xml:5714 freeculture.xml:5757
8009 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8010 #: freeculture.xml:5725
8012 "Doug Herrick, <quote>Toward a National Film Collection: Motion Pictures at "
8013 "the Library of Congress,</quote> <citetitle>Film Library "
8014 "Quarterly</citetitle> 13 nos. 2–3 (1980): 5; Anthony Slide, "
8015 "<citetitle>Nitrate Won't Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United "
8016 "States</citetitle> ( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1992), 36."
8019 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8020 #: freeculture.xml:5716
8022 "These rules applied to film as well. But in 1915, the Library of Congress "
8023 "made an exception for film. Film could be copyrighted so long as such "
8024 "deposits were made. But the filmmaker was then allowed to borrow back the "
8025 "deposits—for an unlimited time at no cost. In 1915 alone, there were "
8026 "more than 5,475 films deposited and <quote>borrowed back.</quote> Thus, when "
8027 "the copyrights to films expire, there is no copy held by any library. The "
8028 "copy exists—if it exists at all—in the library archive of the "
8029 "film company.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
8032 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8033 #: freeculture.xml:5733
8035 "The same is generally true about television. Television broadcasts were "
8036 "originally not copyrighted—there was no way to capture the broadcasts, "
8037 "so there was no fear of <quote>theft.</quote> But as technology enabled "
8038 "capturing, broadcasters relied increasingly upon the law. The law required "
8039 "they make a copy of each broadcast for the work to be "
8040 "<quote>copyrighted.</quote> But those copies were simply kept by the "
8041 "broadcasters. No library had any right to them; the government didn't demand "
8042 "them. The content of this part of American culture is practically invisible "
8043 "to anyone who would look."
8046 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8047 #: freeculture.xml:5743
8048 msgid "September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of"
8052 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8053 #: freeculture.xml:5745
8055 "Kahle was eager to correct this. Before September 11, 2001, he and his "
8056 "allies had started capturing television. They selected twenty stations from "
8057 "around the world and hit the Record button. After September 11, Kahle, "
8058 "working with dozens of others, selected twenty stations from around the "
8059 "world and, beginning October 11, 2001, made their coverage during the week "
8060 "of September 11 available free on-line. Anyone could see how news reports "
8061 "from around the world covered the events of that day."
8064 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8065 #: freeculture.xml:5755
8066 msgid "Movie Archive"
8069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8070 #: freeculture.xml:5756
8074 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8075 #: freeculture.xml:5756 freeculture.xml:5758
8076 msgid "Internet Archive"
8079 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8080 #: freeculture.xml:5759
8081 msgid "Duck and Cover film"
8084 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8085 #: freeculture.xml:5760
8086 msgid "ephemeral films"
8089 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8090 #: freeculture.xml:5761
8091 msgid "Prelinger, Rick"
8094 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8095 #: freeculture.xml:5763
8097 "Kahle had the same idea with film. Working with Rick Prelinger, whose "
8098 "archive of film includes close to 45,000 <quote>ephemeral films</quote> "
8099 "(meaning films other than Hollywood movies, films that were never "
8100 "copyrighted), Kahle established the Movie Archive. Prelinger let Kahle "
8101 "digitize 1,300 films in this archive and post those films on the Internet to "
8102 "be downloaded for free. Prelinger's is a for-profit company. It sells copies "
8103 "of these films as stock footage. What he has discovered is that after he "
8104 "made a significant chunk available for free, his stock footage sales went up "
8105 "dramatically. People could easily find the material they wanted to use. Some "
8106 "downloaded that material and made films on their own. Others purchased "
8107 "copies to enable other films to be made. Either way, the archive enabled "
8108 "access to this important part of our culture. Want to see a copy of the "
8109 "<quote>Duck and Cover</quote> film that instructed children how to save "
8110 "themselves in the middle of nuclear attack? Go to archive.org, and you can "
8111 "download the film in a few minutes—for free."
8114 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8115 #: freeculture.xml:5781
8117 "Here again, Kahle is providing access to a part of our culture that we "
8118 "otherwise could not get easily, if at all. It is yet another part of what "
8119 "defines the twentieth century that we have lost to history. The law doesn't "
8120 "require these copies to be kept by anyone, or to be deposited in an archive "
8121 "by anyone. Therefore, there is no simple way to find them."
8124 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8125 #: freeculture.xml:5789
8127 "The key here is access, not price. Kahle wants to enable free access to this "
8128 "content, but he also wants to enable others to sell access to it. His aim is "
8129 "to ensure competition in access to this important part of our culture. Not "
8130 "during the commercial life of a bit of creative property, but during a "
8131 "second life that all creative property has—a noncommercial life."
8135 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8136 #: freeculture.xml:5797
8138 "For here is an idea that we should more clearly recognize. Every bit of "
8139 "creative property goes through different <quote>lives.</quote> In its first "
8140 "life, if the creator is lucky, the content is sold. In such cases the "
8141 "commercial market is successful for the creator. The vast majority of "
8142 "creative property doesn't enjoy such success, but some clearly does. For "
8143 "that content, commercial life is extremely important. Without this "
8144 "commercial market, there would be, many argue, much less creativity."
8147 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8148 #: freeculture.xml:5809
8150 "After the commercial life of creative property has ended, our tradition has "
8151 "always supported a second life as well. A newspaper delivers the news every "
8152 "day to the doorsteps of America. The very next day, it is used to wrap fish "
8153 "or to fill boxes with fragile gifts or to build an archive of knowledge "
8154 "about our history. In this second life, the content can continue to inform "
8155 "even if that information is no longer sold."
8158 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8159 #: freeculture.xml:5822
8161 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Dave Barns, <quote>Fledgling "
8162 "Career in Antique Books: Woodstock Landlord, Bar Owner Starts a New Chapter "
8163 "by Adopting Business,</quote> <citetitle>Chicago Tribune</citetitle>, 5 "
8164 "September 1997, at Metro Lake 1L. Of books published between 1927 and 1946, "
8165 "only 2.2 percent were in print in 2002. R. Anthony Reese, <quote>The First "
8166 "Sale Doctrine in the Era of Digital Networks,</quote> <citetitle>Boston "
8167 "College Law Review</citetitle> 44 (2003): 593 n. 51."
8170 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8171 #: freeculture.xml:5819
8173 "The same has always been true about books. A book goes out of print very "
8174 "quickly (the average today is after about a year<placeholder "
8175 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>). After it is out of print, it can be sold in "
8176 "used book stores without the copyright owner getting anything and stored in "
8177 "libraries, where many get to read the book, also for free. Used book stores "
8178 "and libraries are thus the second life of a book. That second life is "
8179 "extremely important to the spread and stability of culture."
8182 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8183 #: freeculture.xml:5837
8185 "Yet increasingly, any assumption about a stable second life for creative "
8186 "property does not hold true with the most important components of popular "
8187 "culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For "
8188 "these—television, movies, music, radio, the Internet—there is no "
8189 "guarantee of a second life. For these sorts of culture, it is as if we've "
8190 "replaced libraries with Barnes & Noble superstores. With this culture, "
8191 "what's accessible is nothing but what a certain limited market demands. "
8192 "Beyond that, culture disappears."
8196 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8197 #: freeculture.xml:5848
8199 "<emphasis role='strong'>For most of</emphasis> the twentieth century, it was "
8200 "economics that made this so. It would have been insanely expensive to "
8201 "collect and make accessible all television and film and music: The cost of "
8202 "analog copies is extraordinarily high. So even though the law in principle "
8203 "would have restricted the ability of a Brewster Kahle to copy culture "
8204 "generally, the real restriction was economics. The market made it impossibly "
8205 "difficult to do anything about this ephemeral culture; the law had little "
8209 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8210 #: freeculture.xml:5860
8212 "Perhaps the single most important feature of the digital revolution is that "
8213 "for the first time since the Library of Alexandria, it is feasible to "
8214 "imagine constructing archives that hold all culture produced or distributed "
8215 "publicly. Technology makes it possible to imagine an archive of all books "
8216 "published, and increasingly makes it possible to imagine an archive of all "
8217 "moving images and sound."
8220 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8221 #: freeculture.xml:5868
8223 "The scale of this potential archive is something we've never imagined "
8224 "before. The Brewster Kahles of our history have dreamed about it; but we are "
8225 "for the first time at a point where that dream is possible. As Kahle "
8229 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><indexterm><secondary>
8230 #: freeculture.xml:5874
8231 msgid "total number of"
8234 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
8235 #: freeculture.xml:5876
8237 "It looks like there's about two to three million recordings of music. "
8238 "Ever. There are about a hundred thousand theatrical releases of movies, "
8239 "… and about one to two million movies [distributed] during the "
8240 "twentieth century. There are about twenty-six million different titles of "
8241 "books. All of these would fit on computers that would fit in this room and "
8242 "be able to be afforded by a small company. So we're at a turning point in "
8243 "our history. Universal access is the goal. And the opportunity of leading a "
8244 "different life, based on this, is … thrilling. It could be one of the "
8245 "things humankind would be most proud of. Up there with the Library of "
8246 "Alexandria, putting a man on the moon, and the invention of the printing "
8251 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8252 #: freeculture.xml:5890
8254 "Kahle is not the only librarian. The Internet Archive is not the only "
8255 "archive. But Kahle and the Internet Archive suggest what the future of "
8256 "libraries or archives could be. <emphasis>When</emphasis> the commercial "
8257 "life of creative property ends, I don't know. But it does. And whenever it "
8258 "does, Kahle and his archive hint at a world where this knowledge, and "
8259 "culture, remains perpetually available. Some will draw upon it to understand "
8260 "it; some to criticize it. Some will use it, as Walt Disney did, to re-create "
8261 "the past for the future. These technologies promise something that had "
8262 "become unimaginable for much of our past—a future "
8263 "<emphasis>for</emphasis> our past. The technology of digital arts could make "
8264 "the dream of the Library of Alexandria real again."
8267 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8268 #: freeculture.xml:5905
8270 "Technologists have thus removed the economic costs of building such an "
8271 "archive. But lawyers' costs remain. For as much as we might like to call "
8272 "these <quote>archives,</quote> as warm as the idea of a "
8273 "<quote>library</quote> might seem, the <quote>content</quote> that is "
8274 "collected in these digital spaces is also someone's <quote>property.</quote> "
8275 "And the law of property restricts the freedoms that Kahle and others would "
8279 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
8280 #: freeculture.xml:5916
8281 msgid "CHAPTER TEN: <quote>Property</quote>"
8284 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8285 #: freeculture.xml:5917
8286 msgid "Johnson, Lyndon"
8289 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8290 #: freeculture.xml:5918 freeculture.xml:9643
8291 msgid "Kennedy, John F."
8294 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8295 #: freeculture.xml:5920
8297 "<emphasis role='strong'>Jack Valenti</emphasis> has been the president of "
8298 "the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966. He first came to "
8299 "Washington, D.C., with Lyndon Johnson's administration—literally. The "
8300 "famous picture of Johnson's swearing-in on Air Force One after the "
8301 "assassination of President Kennedy has Valenti in the background. In his "
8302 "almost forty years of running the MPAA, Valenti has established himself as "
8303 "perhaps the most prominent and effective lobbyist in Washington."
8306 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8307 #: freeculture.xml:5929
8308 msgid "Disney, Inc."
8311 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8312 #: freeculture.xml:5930
8313 msgid "Sony Pictures Entertainment"
8316 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8317 #: freeculture.xml:5931
8321 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8322 #: freeculture.xml:5932
8323 msgid "Paramount Pictures"
8326 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8327 #: freeculture.xml:5933
8328 msgid "Twentieth Century Fox"
8331 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8332 #: freeculture.xml:5934
8333 msgid "Universal Pictures"
8336 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8337 #: freeculture.xml:5935 freeculture.xml:7361
8338 msgid "Warner Brothers"
8341 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8342 #: freeculture.xml:5937
8344 "The MPAA is the American branch of the international Motion Picture "
8345 "Association. It was formed in 1922 as a trade association whose goal was to "
8346 "defend American movies against increasing domestic criticism. The "
8347 "organization now represents not only filmmakers but producers and "
8348 "distributors of entertainment for television, video, and cable. Its board is "
8349 "made up of the chairmen and presidents of the seven major producers and "
8350 "distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States: "
8351 "Walt Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth "
8352 "Century Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers."
8356 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8357 #: freeculture.xml:5950
8359 "Valenti is only the third president of the MPAA. No president before him has "
8360 "had as much influence over that organization, or over Washington. As a "
8361 "Texan, Valenti has mastered the single most important political skill of a "
8362 "Southerner—the ability to appear simple and slow while hiding a "
8363 "lightning-fast intellect. To this day, Valenti plays the simple, humble "
8364 "man. But this Harvard MBA, and author of four books, who finished high "
8365 "school at the age of fifteen and flew more than fifty combat missions in "
8366 "World War II, is no Mr. Smith. When Valenti went to Washington, he mastered "
8367 "the city in a quintessentially Washingtonian way."
8370 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8371 #: freeculture.xml:5962
8373 "In defending artistic liberty and the freedom of speech that our culture "
8374 "depends upon, the MPAA has done important good. In crafting the MPAA rating "
8375 "system, it has probably avoided a great deal of speech-regulating harm. But "
8376 "there is an aspect to the organization's mission that is both the most "
8377 "radical and the most important. This is the organization's effort, "
8378 "epitomized in Valenti's every act, to redefine the meaning of "
8379 "<quote>creative property.</quote>"
8382 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8383 #: freeculture.xml:5971
8384 msgid "In 1982, Valenti's testimony to Congress captured the strategy perfectly:"
8388 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
8389 #: freeculture.xml:5985
8391 "Home Recording of Copyrighted Works: Hearings on H.R. 4783, H.R. 4794, "
8392 "H.R. 4808, H.R. 5250, H.R. 5488, and H.R. 5705 Before the Subcommittee on "
8393 "Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice of the Committee "
8394 "on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, 97th Cong., 2nd "
8395 "sess. (1982): 65 (testimony of Jack Valenti)."
8398 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
8399 #: freeculture.xml:5976
8401 "No matter the lengthy arguments made, no matter the charges and the "
8402 "counter-charges, no matter the tumult and the shouting, reasonable men and "
8403 "women will keep returning to the fundamental issue, the central theme which "
8404 "animates this entire debate: <emphasis>Creative property owners must be "
8405 "accorded the same rights and protection resident in all other property "
8406 "owners in the nation</emphasis>. That is the issue. That is the "
8407 "question. And that is the rostrum on which this entire hearing and the "
8408 "debates to follow must rest.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
8412 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8413 #: freeculture.xml:5995
8415 "The strategy of this rhetoric, like the strategy of most of Valenti's "
8416 "rhetoric, is brilliant and simple and brilliant because simple. The "
8417 "<quote>central theme</quote> to which <quote>reasonable men and "
8418 "women</quote> will return is this: <quote>Creative property owners must be "
8419 "accorded the same rights and protections resident in all other property "
8420 "owners in the nation.</quote> There are no second-class citizens, Valenti "
8421 "might have continued. There should be no second-class property owners."
8424 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8425 #: freeculture.xml:6006
8427 "This claim has an obvious and powerful intuitive pull. It is stated with "
8428 "such clarity as to make the idea as obvious as the notion that we use "
8429 "elections to pick presidents. But in fact, there is no more extreme a claim "
8430 "made by <emphasis>anyone</emphasis> who is serious in this debate than this "
8431 "claim of Valenti's. Jack Valenti, however sweet and however brilliant, is "
8432 "perhaps the nation's foremost extremist when it comes to the nature and "
8433 "scope of <quote>creative property.</quote> His views have "
8434 "<emphasis>no</emphasis> reasonable connection to our actual legal tradition, "
8435 "even if the subtle pull of his Texan charm has slowly redefined that "
8436 "tradition, at least in Washington."
8440 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8441 #: freeculture.xml:6021
8443 "Lawyers speak of <quote>property</quote> not as an absolute thing, but as a "
8444 "bundle of rights that are sometimes associated with a particular "
8445 "object. Thus, my <quote>property right</quote> to my car gives me the right "
8446 "to exclusive use, but not the right to drive at 150 miles an hour. For the "
8447 "best effort to connect the ordinary meaning of <quote>property</quote> to "
8448 "<quote>lawyer talk,</quote> see Bruce Ackerman, <citetitle>Private Property "
8449 "and the Constitution</citetitle> (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), "
8453 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8454 #: freeculture.xml:6018
8456 "While <quote>creative property</quote> is certainly <quote>property</quote> "
8457 "in a nerdy and precise sense that lawyers are trained to "
8458 "understand,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> it has never been the "
8459 "case, nor should it be, that <quote>creative property owners</quote> have "
8460 "been <quote>accorded the same rights and protection resident in all other "
8461 "property owners.</quote> Indeed, if creative property owners were given the "
8462 "same rights as all other property owners, that would effect a radical, and "
8463 "radically undesirable, change in our tradition."
8466 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8467 #: freeculture.xml:6036
8469 "Valenti knows this. But he speaks for an industry that cares squat for our "
8470 "tradition and the values it represents. He speaks for an industry that is "
8471 "instead fighting to restore the tradition that the British overturned in "
8472 "1710. In the world that Valenti's changes would create, a powerful few would "
8473 "exercise powerful control over how our creative culture would develop."
8477 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8478 #: freeculture.xml:6044
8480 "I have two purposes in this chapter. The first is to convince you that, "
8481 "historically, Valenti's claim is absolutely wrong. The second is to convince "
8482 "you that it would be terribly wrong for us to reject our history. We have "
8483 "always treated rights in creative property differently from the rights "
8484 "resident in all other property owners. They have never been the same. And "
8485 "they should never be the same, because, however counterintuitive this may "
8486 "seem, to make them the same would be to fundamentally weaken the opportunity "
8487 "for new creators to create. Creativity depends upon the owners of "
8488 "creativity having less than perfect control."
8491 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8492 #: freeculture.xml:6059
8494 "Organizations such as the MPAA, whose board includes the most powerful of "
8495 "the old guard, have little interest, their rhetoric notwithstanding, in "
8496 "assuring that the new can displace them. No organization does. No person "
8497 "does. (Ask me about tenure, for example.) But what's good for the MPAA is "
8498 "not necessarily good for America. A society that defends the ideals of free "
8499 "culture must preserve precisely the opportunity for new creativity to "
8503 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8504 #: freeculture.xml:6068
8506 "<emphasis role='strong'>To get</emphasis> just a hint that there is "
8507 "something fundamentally wrong in Valenti's argument, we need look no further "
8508 "than the United States Constitution itself."
8511 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8512 #: freeculture.xml:6073
8514 "The framers of our Constitution loved <quote>property.</quote> Indeed, so "
8515 "strongly did they love property that they built into the Constitution an "
8516 "important requirement. If the government takes your property—if it "
8517 "condemns your house, or acquires a slice of land from your farm—it is "
8518 "required, under the Fifth Amendment's <quote>Takings Clause,</quote> to pay "
8519 "you <quote>just compensation</quote> for that taking. The Constitution thus "
8520 "guarantees that property is, in a certain sense, sacred. It cannot "
8521 "<emphasis>ever</emphasis> be taken from the property owner unless the "
8522 "government pays for the privilege."
8526 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8527 #: freeculture.xml:6084
8529 "Yet the very same Constitution speaks very differently about what Valenti "
8530 "calls <quote>creative property.</quote> In the clause granting Congress the "
8531 "power to create <quote>creative property,</quote> the Constitution "
8532 "<emphasis>requires</emphasis> that after a <quote>limited time,</quote> "
8533 "Congress take back the rights that it has granted and set the "
8534 "<quote>creative property</quote> free to the public domain. Yet when "
8535 "Congress does this, when the expiration of a copyright term "
8536 "<quote>takes</quote> your copyright and turns it over to the public domain, "
8537 "Congress does not have any obligation to pay <quote>just "
8538 "compensation</quote> for this <quote>taking.</quote> Instead, the same "
8539 "Constitution that requires compensation for your land requires that you lose "
8540 "your <quote>creative property</quote> right without any compensation at all."
8543 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8544 #: freeculture.xml:6099
8546 "The Constitution thus on its face states that these two forms of property "
8547 "are not to be accorded the same rights. They are plainly to be treated "
8548 "differently. Valenti is therefore not just asking for a change in our "
8549 "tradition when he argues that creative-property owners should be accorded "
8550 "the same rights as every other property-right owner. He is effectively "
8551 "arguing for a change in our Constitution itself."
8554 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8555 #: freeculture.xml:6108
8557 "Arguing for a change in our Constitution is not necessarily wrong. There "
8558 "was much in our original Constitution that was plainly wrong. The "
8559 "Constitution of 1789 entrenched slavery; it left senators to be appointed "
8560 "rather than elected; it made it possible for the electoral college to "
8561 "produce a tie between the president and his own vice president (as it did in "
8562 "1800). The framers were no doubt extraordinary, but I would be the first to "
8563 "admit that they made big mistakes. We have since rejected some of those "
8564 "mistakes; no doubt there could be others that we should reject as well. So "
8565 "my argument is not simply that because Jefferson did it, we should, too."
8568 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8569 #: freeculture.xml:6120
8571 "Instead, my argument is that because Jefferson did it, we should at least "
8572 "try to understand <emphasis>why</emphasis>. Why did the framers, fanatical "
8573 "property types that they were, reject the claim that creative property be "
8574 "given the same rights as all other property? Why did they require that for "
8575 "creative property there must be a public domain?"
8578 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8579 #: freeculture.xml:6128
8581 "To answer this question, we need to get some perspective on the history of "
8582 "these <quote>creative property</quote> rights, and the control that they "
8583 "enabled. Once we see clearly how differently these rights have been "
8584 "defined, we will be in a better position to ask the question that should be "
8585 "at the core of this war: Not <emphasis>whether</emphasis> creative property "
8586 "should be protected, but how. Not <emphasis>whether</emphasis> we will "
8587 "enforce the rights the law gives to creative-property owners, but what the "
8588 "particular mix of rights ought to be. Not <emphasis>whether</emphasis> "
8589 "artists should be paid, but whether institutions designed to assure that "
8590 "artists get paid need also control how culture develops."
8594 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8595 #: freeculture.xml:6143
8597 "To answer these questions, we need a more general way to talk about how "
8598 "property is protected. More precisely, we need a more general way than the "
8599 "narrow language of the law allows. In <citetitle>Code and Other Laws of "
8600 "Cyberspace</citetitle>, I used a simple model to capture this more general "
8601 "perspective. For any particular right or regulation, this model asks how "
8602 "four different modalities of regulation interact to support or weaken the "
8603 "right or regulation. I represented it with this diagram:"
8606 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure><title>
8607 #: freeculture.xml:6152
8609 "How four different modalities of regulation interact to support or weaken "
8610 "the right or regulation."
8613 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
8614 #: freeculture.xml:6153 freeculture.xml:6337 freeculture.xml:6644
8615 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1331.png\"></graphic>"
8618 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8619 #: freeculture.xml:6156
8621 "At the center of this picture is a regulated dot: the individual or group "
8622 "that is the target of regulation, or the holder of a right. (In each case "
8623 "throughout, we can describe this either as regulation or as a right. For "
8624 "simplicity's sake, I will speak only of regulations.) The ovals represent "
8625 "four ways in which the individual or group might be regulated— either "
8626 "constrained or, alternatively, enabled. Law is the most obvious constraint "
8627 "(to lawyers, at least). It constrains by threatening punishments after the "
8628 "fact if the rules set in advance are violated. So if, for example, you "
8629 "willfully infringe Madonna's copyright by copying a song from her latest CD "
8630 "and posting it on the Web, you can be punished with a $150,000 fine. The "
8631 "fine is an ex post punishment for violating an ex ante rule. It is imposed "
8632 "by the state. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
8635 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8636 #: freeculture.xml:6172 freeculture.xml:6231 freeculture.xml:6340
8637 msgid "norms, regulatory influence of"
8640 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8641 #: freeculture.xml:6174
8643 "Norms are a different kind of constraint. They, too, punish an individual "
8644 "for violating a rule. But the punishment of a norm is imposed by a "
8645 "community, not (or not only) by the state. There may be no law against "
8646 "spitting, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished if you spit on the "
8647 "ground while standing in line at a movie. The punishment might not be harsh, "
8648 "though depending upon the community, it could easily be more harsh than many "
8649 "of the punishments imposed by the state. The mark of the difference is not "
8650 "the severity of the rule, but the source of the enforcement."
8653 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8654 #: freeculture.xml:6184 freeculture.xml:6230 freeculture.xml:6320 freeculture.xml:6339 freeculture.xml:9268 freeculture.xml:9467
8655 msgid "market constraints"
8658 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8659 #: freeculture.xml:6186
8661 "The market is a third type of constraint. Its constraint is effected through "
8662 "conditions: You can do X if you pay Y; you'll be paid M if you do N. These "
8663 "constraints are obviously not independent of law or norms—it is "
8664 "property law that defines what must be bought if it is to be taken legally; "
8665 "it is norms that say what is appropriately sold. But given a set of norms, "
8666 "and a background of property and contract law, the market imposes a "
8667 "simultaneous constraint upon how an individual or group might behave."
8670 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
8671 #: freeculture.xml:6195 freeculture.xml:6229 freeculture.xml:6278 freeculture.xml:6319
8672 msgid "architecture, constraint effected through"
8675 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8676 #: freeculture.xml:6197
8678 "Finally, and for the moment, perhaps, most mysteriously, "
8679 "<quote>architecture</quote>—the physical world as one finds "
8680 "it—is a constraint on behavior. A fallen bridge might constrain your "
8681 "ability to get across a river. Railroad tracks might constrain the ability "
8682 "of a community to integrate its social life. As with the market, "
8683 "architecture does not effect its constraint through ex post "
8684 "punishments. Instead, also as with the market, architecture effects its "
8685 "constraint through simultaneous conditions. These conditions are imposed not "
8686 "by courts enforcing contracts, or by police punishing theft, but by nature, "
8687 "by <quote>architecture.</quote> If a 500-pound boulder blocks your way, it "
8688 "is the law of gravity that enforces this constraint. If a $500 airplane "
8689 "ticket stands between you and a flight to New York, it is the market that "
8690 "enforces this constraint."
8694 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8695 #: freeculture.xml:6214
8697 "So the first point about these four modalities of regulation is obvious: "
8698 "They interact. Restrictions imposed by one might be reinforced by "
8699 "another. Or restrictions imposed by one might be undermined by another."
8702 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8703 #: freeculture.xml:6220
8705 "The second point follows directly: If we want to understand the effective "
8706 "freedom that anyone has at a given moment to do any particular thing, we "
8707 "have to consider how these four modalities interact. Whether or not there "
8708 "are other constraints (there may well be; my claim is not about "
8709 "comprehensiveness), these four are among the most significant, and any "
8710 "regulator (whether controlling or freeing) must consider how these four in "
8711 "particular interact."
8714 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8715 #: freeculture.xml:6228
8716 msgid "driving speed, constraints on"
8719 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8720 #: freeculture.xml:6233
8722 "So, for example, consider the <quote>freedom</quote> to drive a car at a "
8723 "high speed. That freedom is in part restricted by laws: speed limits that "
8724 "say how fast you can drive in particular places at particular times. It is "
8725 "in part restricted by architecture: speed bumps, for example, slow most "
8726 "rational drivers; governors in buses, as another example, set the maximum "
8727 "rate at which the driver can drive. The freedom is in part restricted by the "
8728 "market: Fuel efficiency drops as speed increases, thus the price of gasoline "
8729 "indirectly constrains speed. And finally, the norms of a community may or "
8730 "may not constrain the freedom to speed. Drive at 50 mph by a school in your "
8731 "own neighborhood and you're likely to be punished by the neighbors. The same "
8732 "norm wouldn't be as effective in a different town, or at night."
8736 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8737 #: freeculture.xml:6251
8739 "By describing the way law affects the other three modalities, I don't mean "
8740 "to suggest that the other three don't affect law. Obviously, they do. Law's "
8741 "only distinction is that it alone speaks as if it has a right "
8742 "self-consciously to change the other three. The right of the other three is "
8743 "more timidly expressed. See Lawrence Lessig, <citetitle>Code: And Other "
8744 "Laws of Cyberspace</citetitle> (New York: Basic Books, 1999): 90–95; "
8745 "Lawrence Lessig, <quote>The New Chicago School,</quote> <citetitle>Journal "
8746 "of Legal Studies</citetitle>, June 1998."
8750 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8751 #: freeculture.xml:6247
8753 "The final point about this simple model should also be fairly clear: While "
8754 "these four modalities are analytically independent, law has a special role "
8755 "in affecting the three.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The law, in "
8756 "other words, sometimes operates to increase or decrease the constraint of a "
8757 "particular modality. Thus, the law might be used to increase taxes on "
8758 "gasoline, so as to increase the incentives to drive more slowly. The law "
8759 "might be used to mandate more speed bumps, so as to increase the difficulty "
8760 "of driving rapidly. The law might be used to fund ads that stigmatize "
8761 "reckless driving. Or the law might be used to require that other laws be "
8762 "more strict—a federal requirement that states decrease the speed "
8763 "limit, for example—so as to decrease the attractiveness of fast "
8767 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure><title>
8768 #: freeculture.xml:6275
8769 msgid "Law has a special role in affecting the three."
8772 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure>
8773 #: freeculture.xml:6276
8774 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1361.png\"></graphic>"
8777 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
8778 #: freeculture.xml:6317
8779 msgid "Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)"
8782 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
8783 #: freeculture.xml:6318
8784 msgid "Commons, John R."
8787 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8788 #: freeculture.xml:6288
8790 "Some people object to this way of talking about <quote>liberty.</quote> They "
8791 "object because their focus when considering the constraints that exist at "
8792 "any particular moment are constraints imposed exclusively by the "
8793 "government. For instance, if a storm destroys a bridge, these people think "
8794 "it is meaningless to say that one's liberty has been restrained. A bridge "
8795 "has washed out, and it's harder to get from one place to another. To talk "
8796 "about this as a loss of freedom, they say, is to confuse the stuff of "
8797 "politics with the vagaries of ordinary life. I don't mean to deny the value "
8798 "in this narrower view, which depends upon the context of the inquiry. I do, "
8799 "however, mean to argue against any insistence that this narrower view is the "
8800 "only proper view of liberty. As I argued in <citetitle>Code</citetitle>, we "
8801 "come from a long tradition of political thought with a broader focus than "
8802 "the narrow question of what the government did when. John Stuart Mill "
8803 "defended freedom of speech, for example, from the tyranny of narrow minds, "
8804 "not from the fear of government prosecution; John Stuart Mill, <citetitle>On "
8805 "Liberty</citetitle> (Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), 19. John "
8806 "R. Commons famously defended the economic freedom of labor from constraints "
8807 "imposed by the market; John R. Commons, <quote>The Right to Work,</quote> in "
8808 "Malcom Rutherford and Warren J. Samuels, eds., <citetitle>John R. Commons: "
8809 "Selected Essays</citetitle> (London: Routledge: 1997), 62. The Americans "
8810 "with Disabilities Act increases the liberty of people with physical "
8811 "disabilities by changing the architecture of certain public places, thereby "
8812 "making access to those places easier; 42 <citetitle>United States "
8813 "Code</citetitle>, section 12101 (2000). Each of these interventions to "
8814 "change existing conditions changes the liberty of a particular group. The "
8815 "effect of those interventions should be accounted for in order to understand "
8816 "the effective liberty that each of these groups might face. <placeholder "
8817 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> "
8818 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
8822 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8823 #: freeculture.xml:6280
8825 "These constraints can thus change, and they can be changed. To understand "
8826 "the effective protection of liberty or protection of property at any "
8827 "particular moment, we must track these changes over time. A restriction "
8828 "imposed by one modality might be erased by another. A freedom enabled by one "
8829 "modality might be displaced by another.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
8833 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
8834 #: freeculture.xml:6324
8835 msgid "Why Hollywood Is Right"
8838 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8839 #: freeculture.xml:6326
8841 "The most obvious point that this model reveals is just why, or just how, "
8842 "Hollywood is right. The copyright warriors have rallied Congress and the "
8843 "courts to defend copyright. This model helps us see why that rallying makes "
8847 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8848 #: freeculture.xml:6332
8849 msgid "Let's say this is the picture of copyright's regulation before the Internet:"
8852 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
8853 #: freeculture.xml:6336 freeculture.xml:6643
8854 msgid "Copyright's regulation before the Internet."
8858 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8859 #: freeculture.xml:6343
8861 "There is balance between law, norms, market, and architecture. The law "
8862 "limits the ability to copy and share content, by imposing penalties on those "
8863 "who copy and share content. Those penalties are reinforced by technologies "
8864 "that make it hard to copy and share content (architecture) and expensive to "
8865 "copy and share content (market). Finally, those penalties are mitigated by "
8866 "norms we all recognize—kids, for example, taping other kids' "
8867 "records. These uses of copyrighted material may well be infringement, but "
8868 "the norms of our society (before the Internet, at least) had no problem with "
8869 "this form of infringement."
8872 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8873 #: freeculture.xml:6355
8875 "Enter the Internet, or, more precisely, technologies such as MP3s and p2p "
8876 "sharing. Now the constraint of architecture changes dramatically, as does "
8877 "the constraint of the market. And as both the market and architecture relax "
8878 "the regulation of copyright, norms pile on. The happy balance (for the "
8879 "warriors, at least) of life before the Internet becomes an effective state "
8880 "of anarchy after the Internet."
8884 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8885 #: freeculture.xml:6363
8887 "Thus the sense of, and justification for, the warriors' response. "
8888 "Technology has changed, the warriors say, and the effect of this change, "
8889 "when ramified through the market and norms, is that a balance of protection "
8890 "for the copyright owners' rights has been lost. This is Iraq after the fall "
8891 "of Saddam, but this time no government is justifying the looting that "
8895 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
8896 #: freeculture.xml:6373
8897 msgid "effective state of anarchy after the Internet."
8900 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
8901 #: freeculture.xml:6374
8902 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1381.png\"></graphic>"
8905 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8906 #: freeculture.xml:6377
8908 "Neither this analysis nor the conclusions that follow are new to the "
8909 "warriors. Indeed, in a <quote>White Paper</quote> prepared by the Commerce "
8910 "Department (one heavily influenced by the copyright warriors) in 1995, this "
8911 "mix of regulatory modalities had already been identified and the strategy to "
8912 "respond already mapped. In response to the changes the Internet had "
8913 "effected, the White Paper argued (1) Congress should strengthen intellectual "
8914 "property law, (2) businesses should adopt innovative marketing techniques, "
8915 "(3) technologists should push to develop code to protect copyrighted "
8916 "material, and (4) educators should educate kids to better protect copyright."
8919 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8920 #: freeculture.xml:6388
8921 msgid "steel industry"
8925 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8926 #: freeculture.xml:6390
8928 "This mixed strategy is just what copyright needed—if it was to "
8929 "preserve the particular balance that existed before the change induced by "
8930 "the Internet. And it's just what we should expect the content industry to "
8931 "push for. It is as American as apple pie to consider the happy life you have "
8932 "as an entitlement, and to look to the law to protect it if something comes "
8933 "along to change that happy life. Homeowners living in a flood plain have no "
8934 "hesitation appealing to the government to rebuild (and rebuild again) when a "
8935 "flood (architecture) wipes away their property (law). Farmers have no "
8936 "hesitation appealing to the government to bail them out when a virus "
8937 "(architecture) devastates their crop. Unions have no hesitation appealing to "
8938 "the government to bail them out when imports (market) wipe out the "
8939 "U.S. steel industry."
8942 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8943 #: freeculture.xml:6407
8945 "Thus, there's nothing wrong or surprising in the content industry's campaign "
8946 "to protect itself from the harmful consequences of a technological "
8947 "innovation. And I would be the last person to argue that the changing "
8948 "technology of the Internet has not had a profound effect on the content "
8949 "industry's way of doing business, or as John Seely Brown describes it, its "
8950 "<quote>architecture of revenue.</quote>"
8953 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8954 #: freeculture.xml:6414
8955 msgid "railroad industry"
8959 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
8960 #: freeculture.xml:6426
8962 "See Geoffrey Smith, <quote>Film vs. Digital: Can Kodak Build a "
8963 "Bridge?</quote> BusinessWeek online, 2 August 1999, available at <ulink "
8964 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #23</ulink>. For a more recent "
8965 "analysis of Kodak's place in the market, see Chana R. Schoenberger, "
8966 "<quote>Can Kodak Make Up for Lost Moments?</quote> Forbes.com, 6 October "
8967 "2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
8971 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8972 #: freeculture.xml:6418
8974 "But just because a particular interest asks for government support, it "
8975 "doesn't follow that support should be granted. And just because technology "
8976 "has weakened a particular way of doing business, it doesn't follow that the "
8977 "government should intervene to support that old way of doing "
8978 "business. Kodak, for example, has lost perhaps as much as 20 percent of "
8979 "their traditional film market to the emerging technologies of digital "
8980 "cameras.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Does anyone believe the "
8981 "government should ban digital cameras just to support Kodak? Highways have "
8982 "weakened the freight business for railroads. Does anyone think we should ban "
8983 "trucks from roads <emphasis>for the purpose of</emphasis> protecting the "
8984 "railroads? Closer to the subject of this book, remote channel changers have "
8985 "weakened the <quote>stickiness</quote> of television advertising (if a "
8986 "boring commercial comes on the TV, the remote makes it easy to surf ), and "
8987 "it may well be that this change has weakened the television advertising "
8988 "market. But does anyone believe we should regulate remotes to reinforce "
8989 "commercial television? (Maybe by limiting them to function only once a "
8990 "second, or to switch to only ten channels within an hour?)"
8993 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
8994 #: freeculture.xml:6447 freeculture.xml:14759
8995 msgid "Brezhnev, Leonid"
8998 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8999 #: freeculture.xml:6448 freeculture.xml:12995
9004 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9005 #: freeculture.xml:6460
9007 "Fred Warshofsky, <citetitle>The Patent Wars</citetitle> (New York: Wiley, "
9008 "1994), 170–71."
9011 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9012 #: freeculture.xml:6450
9014 "The obvious answer to these obviously rhetorical questions is no. In a free "
9015 "society, with a free market, supported by free enterprise and free trade, "
9016 "the government's role is not to support one way of doing business against "
9017 "others. Its role is not to pick winners and protect them against loss. If "
9018 "the government did this generally, then we would never have any progress. As "
9019 "Microsoft chairman Bill Gates wrote in 1991, in a memo criticizing software "
9020 "patents, <quote>established companies have an interest in excluding future "
9021 "competitors.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And relative "
9022 "to a startup, established companies also have the means. (Think RCA and FM "
9023 "radio.) A world in which competitors with new ideas must fight not only the "
9024 "market but also the government is a world in which competitors with new "
9025 "ideas will not succeed. It is a world of stasis and increasingly "
9026 "concentrated stagnation. It is the Soviet Union under Brezhnev."
9029 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9030 #: freeculture.xml:6471
9032 "Thus, while it is understandable for industries threatened with new "
9033 "technologies that change the way they do business to look to the government "
9034 "for protection, it is the special duty of policy makers to guarantee that "
9035 "that protection not become a deterrent to progress. It is the duty of policy "
9036 "makers, in other words, to assure that the changes they create, in response "
9037 "to the request of those hurt by changing technology, are changes that "
9038 "preserve the incentives and opportunities for innovation and change."
9041 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9042 #: freeculture.xml:6481
9044 "In the context of laws regulating speech—which include, obviously, "
9045 "copyright law—that duty is even stronger. When the industry "
9046 "complaining about changing technologies is asking Congress to respond in a "
9047 "way that burdens speech and creativity, policy makers should be especially "
9048 "wary of the request. It is always a bad deal for the government to get into "
9049 "the business of regulating speech markets. The risks and dangers of that "
9050 "game are precisely why our framers created the First Amendment to our "
9051 "Constitution: <quote>Congress shall make no law … abridging the "
9052 "freedom of speech.</quote> So when Congress is being asked to pass laws that "
9053 "would <quote>abridge</quote> the freedom of speech, it should ask— "
9054 "carefully—whether such regulation is justified."
9058 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9059 #: freeculture.xml:6495
9061 "My argument just now, however, has nothing to do with whether the changes "
9062 "that are being pushed by the copyright warriors are "
9063 "<quote>justified.</quote> My argument is about their effect. For before we "
9064 "get to the question of justification, a hard question that depends a great "
9065 "deal upon your values, we should first ask whether we understand the effect "
9066 "of the changes the content industry wants."
9069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9070 #: freeculture.xml:6504
9071 msgid "Here's the metaphor that will capture the argument to follow."
9074 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9075 #: freeculture.xml:6506
9079 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9080 #: freeculture.xml:6507
9081 msgid "Müller, Paul Hermann"
9084 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9085 #: freeculture.xml:6509
9087 "In 1873, the chemical DDT was first synthesized. In 1948, Swiss chemist Paul "
9088 "Hermann Müller won the Nobel Prize for his work demonstrating the "
9089 "insecticidal properties of DDT. By the 1950s, the insecticide was widely "
9090 "used around the world to kill disease-carrying pests. It was also used to "
9091 "increase farm production."
9094 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9095 #: freeculture.xml:6516
9097 "No one doubts that killing disease-carrying pests or increasing crop "
9098 "production is a good thing. No one doubts that the work of Müller was "
9099 "important and valuable and probably saved lives, possibly millions."
9102 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9103 #: freeculture.xml:6520
9104 msgid "Carson, Rachel"
9107 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9108 #: freeculture.xml:6521
9109 msgid "Silent Sprint (Carson)"
9112 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9113 #: freeculture.xml:6523
9115 "But in 1962, Rachel Carson published <citetitle>Silent Spring</citetitle>, "
9116 "which argued that DDT, whatever its primary benefits, was also having "
9117 "unintended environmental consequences. Birds were losing the ability to "
9118 "reproduce. Whole chains of the ecology were being destroyed."
9121 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9122 #: freeculture.xml:6529
9124 "No one set out to destroy the environment. Paul Müller certainly did not aim "
9125 "to harm any birds. But the effort to solve one set of problems produced "
9126 "another set which, in the view of some, was far worse than the problems that "
9127 "were originally attacked. Or more accurately, the problems DDT caused were "
9128 "worse than the problems it solved, at least when considering the other, more "
9129 "environmentally friendly ways to solve the problems that DDT was meant to "
9133 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9134 #: freeculture.xml:6537
9135 msgid "Boyle, James"
9139 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9140 #: freeculture.xml:6543
9142 "See, for example, James Boyle, <quote>A Politics of Intellectual Property: "
9143 "Environmentalism for the Net?</quote> <citetitle>Duke Law "
9144 "Journal</citetitle> 47 (1997): 87."
9148 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9149 #: freeculture.xml:6539
9151 "It is to this image precisely that Duke University law professor James Boyle "
9152 "appeals when he argues that we need an <quote>environmentalism</quote> for "
9153 "culture.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> His point, and the point I "
9154 "want to develop in the balance of this chapter, is not that the aims of "
9155 "copyright are flawed. Or that authors should not be paid for their work. Or "
9156 "that music should be given away <quote>for free.</quote> The point is that "
9157 "some of the ways in which we might protect authors will have unintended "
9158 "consequences for the cultural environment, much like DDT had for the natural "
9159 "environment. And just as criticism of DDT is not an endorsement of malaria "
9160 "or an attack on farmers, so, too, is criticism of one particular set of "
9161 "regulations protecting copyright not an endorsement of anarchy or an attack "
9162 "on authors. It is an environment of creativity that we seek, and we should "
9163 "be aware of our actions' effects on the environment."
9166 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9167 #: freeculture.xml:6560
9169 "My argument, in the balance of this chapter, tries to map exactly this "
9170 "effect. No doubt the technology of the Internet has had a dramatic effect on "
9171 "the ability of copyright owners to protect their content. But there should "
9172 "also be little doubt that when you add together the changes in copyright law "
9173 "over time, plus the change in technology that the Internet is undergoing "
9174 "just now, the net effect of these changes will not be only that copyrighted "
9175 "work is effectively protected. Also, and generally missed, the net effect of "
9176 "this massive increase in protection will be devastating to the environment "
9180 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9181 #: freeculture.xml:6571
9183 "In a line: To kill a gnat, we are spraying DDT with consequences for free "
9184 "culture that will be far more devastating than that this gnat will be lost."
9187 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
9188 #: freeculture.xml:6578
9192 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9193 #: freeculture.xml:6580
9195 "America copied English copyright law. Actually, we copied and improved "
9196 "English copyright law. Our Constitution makes the purpose of <quote>creative "
9197 "property</quote> rights clear; its express limitations reinforce the English "
9198 "aim to avoid overly powerful publishers."
9201 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9202 #: freeculture.xml:6586
9204 "The power to establish <quote>creative property</quote> rights is granted to "
9205 "Congress in a way that, for our Constitution, at least, is very odd. Article "
9206 "I, section 8, clause 8 of our Constitution states that:"
9210 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9211 #: freeculture.xml:6591
9213 "Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, "
9214 "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right "
9215 "to their respective Writings and Discoveries. We can call this the "
9216 "<quote>Progress Clause,</quote> for notice what this clause does not say. It "
9217 "does not say Congress has the power to grant <quote>creative property "
9218 "rights.</quote> It says that Congress has the power <emphasis>to promote "
9219 "progress</emphasis>. The grant of power is its purpose, and its purpose is a "
9220 "public one, not the purpose of enriching publishers, nor even primarily the "
9221 "purpose of rewarding authors."
9224 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9225 #: freeculture.xml:6604
9227 "The Progress Clause expressly limits the term of copyrights. As we saw in "
9228 "chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"founders\"/>, the "
9229 "English limited the term of copyright so as to assure that a few would not "
9230 "exercise disproportionate control over culture by exercising "
9231 "disproportionate control over publishing. We can assume the framers followed "
9232 "the English for a similar purpose. Indeed, unlike the English, the framers "
9233 "reinforced that objective, by requiring that copyrights extend <quote>to "
9234 "Authors</quote> only."
9237 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9238 #: freeculture.xml:6614
9240 "The design of the Progress Clause reflects something about the "
9241 "Constitution's design in general. To avoid a problem, the framers built "
9242 "structure. To prevent the concentrated power of publishers, they built a "
9243 "structure that kept copyrights away from publishers and kept them short. To "
9244 "prevent the concentrated power of a church, they banned the federal "
9245 "government from establishing a church. To prevent concentrating power in the "
9246 "federal government, they built structures to reinforce the power of the "
9247 "states—including the Senate, whose members were at the time selected "
9248 "by the states, and an electoral college, also selected by the states, to "
9249 "select the president. In each case, a <emphasis>structure</emphasis> built "
9250 "checks and balances into the constitutional frame, structured to prevent "
9251 "otherwise inevitable concentrations of power."
9254 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9255 #: freeculture.xml:6629
9257 "I doubt the framers would recognize the regulation we call "
9258 "<quote>copyright</quote> today. The scope of that regulation is far beyond "
9259 "anything they ever considered. To begin to understand what they did, we need "
9260 "to put our <quote>copyright</quote> in context: We need to see how it has "
9261 "changed in the 210 years since they first struck its design."
9265 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9266 #: freeculture.xml:6636
9268 "Some of these changes come from the law: some in light of changes in "
9269 "technology, and some in light of changes in technology given a particular "
9270 "concentration of market power. In terms of our model, we started here:"
9273 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9274 #: freeculture.xml:6647
9275 msgid "We will end here:"
9278 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9279 #: freeculture.xml:6650
9280 msgid "<quote>Copyright</quote> today."
9283 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9284 #: freeculture.xml:6651
9285 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1442.png\"></graphic>"
9289 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9290 #: freeculture.xml:6654
9291 msgid "Let me explain how."
9294 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
9295 #: freeculture.xml:6659
9296 msgid "Law: Duration"
9299 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
9300 #: freeculture.xml:6675
9301 msgid "Crosskey, William W."
9304 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9305 #: freeculture.xml:6669
9307 "William W. Crosskey, <citetitle>Politics and the Constitution in the History "
9308 "of the United States</citetitle> (London: Cambridge University Press, 1953), "
9309 "vol. 1, 485–86: <quote>extinguish[ing], by plain implication of `the "
9310 "supreme Law of the Land,' <emphasis>the perpetual rights which authors had, "
9311 "or were supposed by some to have, under the Common Law</emphasis></quote> "
9312 "(emphasis added). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
9315 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9316 #: freeculture.xml:6661
9318 "When the first Congress enacted laws to protect creative property, it faced "
9319 "the same uncertainty about the status of creative property that the English "
9320 "had confronted in 1774. Many states had passed laws protecting creative "
9321 "property, and some believed that these laws simply supplemented common law "
9322 "rights that already protected creative authorship.<placeholder "
9323 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> This meant that there was no guaranteed public "
9324 "domain in the United States in 1790. If copyrights were protected by the "
9325 "common law, then there was no simple way to know whether a work published in "
9326 "the United States was controlled or free. Just as in England, this lingering "
9327 "uncertainty would make it hard for publishers to rely upon a public domain "
9328 "to reprint and distribute works."
9331 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9332 #: freeculture.xml:6685
9334 "That uncertainty ended after Congress passed legislation granting "
9335 "copyrights. Because federal law overrides any contrary state law, federal "
9336 "protections for copyrighted works displaced any state law protections. Just "
9337 "as in England the Statute of Anne eventually meant that the copyrights for "
9338 "all English works expired, a federal statute meant that any state copyrights "
9342 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9343 #: freeculture.xml:6693
9345 "In 1790, Congress enacted the first copyright law. It created a federal "
9346 "copyright and secured that copyright for fourteen years. If the author was "
9347 "alive at the end of that fourteen years, then he could opt to renew the "
9348 "copyright for another fourteen years. If he did not renew the copyright, his "
9349 "work passed into the public domain."
9353 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9354 #: freeculture.xml:6708
9356 "Although 13,000 titles were published in the United States from 1790 to "
9357 "1799, only 556 copyright registrations were filed; John Tebbel, <citetitle>A "
9358 "History of Book Publishing in the United States</citetitle>, vol. 1, "
9359 "<citetitle>The Creation of an Industry, 1630–1865</citetitle> (New "
9360 "York: Bowker, 1972), 141. Of the 21,000 imprints recorded before 1790, only "
9361 "twelve were copyrighted under the 1790 act; William J. Maher, "
9362 "<citetitle>Copyright Term, Retrospective Extension and the Copyright Law of "
9363 "1790 in Historical Context</citetitle>, 7–10 (2002), available at "
9364 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #25</ulink>. Thus, the "
9365 "overwhelming majority of works fell immediately into the public domain. Even "
9366 "those works that were copyrighted fell into the public domain quickly, "
9367 "because the term of copyright was short. The initial term of copyright was "
9368 "fourteen years, with the option of renewal for an additional fourteen "
9369 "years. Copyright Act of May 31, 1790, §1, 1 stat. 124."
9372 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9373 #: freeculture.xml:6700
9375 "While there were many works created in the United States in the first ten "
9376 "years of the Republic, only 5 percent of the works were actually registered "
9377 "under the federal copyright regime. Of all the work created in the United "
9378 "States both before 1790 and from 1790 through 1800, 95 percent immediately "
9379 "passed into the public domain; the balance would pass into the pubic domain "
9380 "within twenty-eight years at most, and more likely within fourteen "
9381 "years.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
9385 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9386 #: freeculture.xml:6724
9388 "This system of renewal was a crucial part of the American system of "
9389 "copyright. It assured that the maximum terms of copyright would be granted "
9390 "only for works where they were wanted. After the initial term of fourteen "
9391 "years, if it wasn't worth it to an author to renew his copyright, then it "
9392 "wasn't worth it to society to insist on the copyright, either."
9396 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9397 #: freeculture.xml:6739
9399 "Few copyright holders ever chose to renew their copyrights. For instance, of "
9400 "the 25,006 copyrights registered in 1883, only 894 were renewed in 1910. For "
9401 "a year-by-year analysis of copyright renewal rates, see Barbara A. Ringer, "
9402 "<quote>Study No. 31: Renewal of Copyright,</quote> <citetitle>Studies on "
9403 "Copyright</citetitle>, vol. 1 (New York: Practicing Law Institute, 1963), "
9404 "618. For a more recent and comprehensive analysis, see William M. Landes and "
9405 "Richard A. Posner, <quote>Indefinitely Renewable Copyright,</quote> "
9406 "<citetitle>University of Chicago Law Review</citetitle> 70 (2003): 471, "
9407 "498–501, and accompanying figures."
9410 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9411 #: freeculture.xml:6733
9413 "Fourteen years may not seem long to us, but for the vast majority of "
9414 "copyright owners at that time, it was long enough: Only a small minority of "
9415 "them renewed their copyright after fourteen years; the balance allowed their "
9416 "work to pass into the public domain.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
9421 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9422 #: freeculture.xml:6756
9423 msgid "See Ringer, ch. 9, n. 2."
9426 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9427 #: freeculture.xml:6752
9429 "Even today, this structure would make sense. Most creative work has an "
9430 "actual commercial life of just a couple of years. Most books fall out of "
9431 "print after one year.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> When that "
9432 "happens, the used books are traded free of copyright regulation. Thus the "
9433 "books are no longer <emphasis>effectively</emphasis> controlled by "
9434 "copyright. The only practical commercial use of the books at that time is to "
9435 "sell the books as used books; that use—because it does not involve "
9436 "publication—is effectively free."
9439 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9440 #: freeculture.xml:6764
9442 "In the first hundred years of the Republic, the term of copyright was "
9443 "changed once. In 1831, the term was increased from a maximum of 28 years to "
9444 "a maximum of 42 by increasing the initial term of copyright from 14 years to "
9445 "28 years. In the next fifty years of the Republic, the term increased once "
9446 "again. In 1909, Congress extended the renewal term of 14 years to 28 years, "
9447 "setting a maximum term of 56 years."
9450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9451 #: freeculture.xml:6772
9453 "Then, beginning in 1962, Congress started a practice that has defined "
9454 "copyright law since. Eleven times in the last forty years, Congress has "
9455 "extended the terms of existing copyrights; twice in those forty years, "
9456 "Congress extended the term of future copyrights. Initially, the extensions "
9457 "of existing copyrights were short, a mere one to two years. In 1976, "
9458 "Congress extended all existing copyrights by nineteen years. And in 1998, "
9459 "in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Congress extended the term "
9460 "of existing and future copyrights by twenty years."
9464 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9465 #: freeculture.xml:6782
9467 "The effect of these extensions is simply to toll, or delay, the passing of "
9468 "works into the public domain. This latest extension means that the public "
9469 "domain will have been tolled for thirty-nine out of fifty-five years, or 70 "
9470 "percent of the time since 1962. Thus, in the twenty years after the Sonny "
9471 "Bono Act, while one million patents will pass into the public domain, zero "
9472 "copyrights will pass into the public domain by virtue of the expiration of a "
9476 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9477 #: freeculture.xml:6793
9479 "The effect of these extensions has been exacerbated by another, "
9480 "little-noticed change in the copyright law. Remember I said that the framers "
9481 "established a two-part copyright regime, requiring a copyright owner to "
9482 "renew his copyright after an initial term. The requirement of renewal meant "
9483 "that works that no longer needed copyright protection would pass more "
9484 "quickly into the public domain. The works remaining under protection would "
9485 "be those that had some continuing commercial value."
9488 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9489 #: freeculture.xml:6803
9491 "The United States abandoned this sensible system in 1976. For all works "
9492 "created after 1978, there was only one copyright term—the maximum "
9493 "term. For <quote>natural</quote> authors, that term was life plus fifty "
9494 "years. For corporations, the term was seventy-five years. Then, in 1992, "
9495 "Congress abandoned the renewal requirement for all works created before "
9496 "1978. All works still under copyright would be accorded the maximum term "
9497 "then available. After the Sonny Bono Act, that term was ninety-five years."
9500 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9501 #: freeculture.xml:6813
9503 "This change meant that American law no longer had an automatic way to assure "
9504 "that works that were no longer exploited passed into the public domain. And "
9505 "indeed, after these changes, it is unclear whether it is even possible to "
9506 "put works into the public domain. The public domain is orphaned by these "
9507 "changes in copyright law. Despite the requirement that terms be "
9508 "<quote>limited,</quote> we have no evidence that anything will limit them."
9512 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9513 #: freeculture.xml:6830
9515 "These statistics are understated. Between the years 1910 and 1962 (the first "
9516 "year the renewal term was extended), the average term was never more than "
9517 "thirty-two years, and averaged thirty years. See Landes and Posner, "
9518 "<quote>Indefinitely Renewable Copyright,</quote> loc. cit."
9521 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9522 #: freeculture.xml:6822
9524 "The effect of these changes on the average duration of copyright is "
9525 "dramatic. In 1973, more than 85 percent of copyright owners failed to renew "
9526 "their copyright. That meant that the average term of copyright in 1973 was "
9527 "just 32.2 years. Because of the elimination of the renewal requirement, the "
9528 "average term of copyright is now the maximum term. In thirty years, then, "
9529 "the average term has tripled, from 32.2 years to 95 years.<placeholder "
9530 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
9533 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
9534 #: freeculture.xml:6839
9538 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9539 #: freeculture.xml:6841
9541 "The <quote>scope</quote> of a copyright is the range of rights granted by "
9542 "the law. The scope of American copyright has changed dramatically. Those "
9543 "changes are not necessarily bad. But we should understand the extent of the "
9544 "changes if we're to keep this debate in context."
9547 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9548 #: freeculture.xml:6847
9550 "In 1790, that scope was very narrow. Copyright covered only <quote>maps, "
9551 "charts, and books.</quote> That means it didn't cover, for example, music or "
9552 "architecture. More significantly, the right granted by a copyright gave the "
9553 "author the exclusive right to <quote>publish</quote> copyrighted works. That "
9554 "means someone else violated the copyright only if he republished the work "
9555 "without the copyright owner's permission. Finally, the right granted by a "
9556 "copyright was an exclusive right to that particular book. The right did not "
9557 "extend to what lawyers call <quote>derivative works.</quote> It would not, "
9558 "therefore, interfere with the right of someone other than the author to "
9559 "translate a copyrighted book, or to adapt the story to a different form "
9560 "(such as a drama based on a published book)."
9563 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9564 #: freeculture.xml:6860
9566 "This, too, has changed dramatically. While the contours of copyright today "
9567 "are extremely hard to describe simply, in general terms, the right covers "
9568 "practically any creative work that is reduced to a tangible form. It covers "
9569 "music as well as architecture, drama as well as computer programs. It gives "
9570 "the copyright owner of that creative work not only the exclusive right to "
9571 "<quote>publish</quote> the work, but also the exclusive right of control "
9572 "over any <quote>copies</quote> of that work. And most significant for our "
9573 "purposes here, the right gives the copyright owner control over not only his "
9574 "or her particular work, but also any <quote>derivative work</quote> that "
9575 "might grow out of the original work. In this way, the right covers more "
9576 "creative work, protects the creative work more broadly, and protects works "
9577 "that are based in a significant way on the initial creative work."
9581 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9582 #: freeculture.xml:6875
9584 "At the same time that the scope of copyright has expanded, procedural "
9585 "limitations on the right have been relaxed. I've already described the "
9586 "complete removal of the renewal requirement in 1992. In addition to the "
9587 "renewal requirement, for most of the history of American copyright law, "
9588 "there was a requirement that a work be registered before it could receive "
9589 "the protection of a copyright. There was also a requirement that any "
9590 "copyrighted work be marked either with that famous © or the word "
9591 "<emphasis>copyright</emphasis>. And for most of the history of American "
9592 "copyright law, there was a requirement that works be deposited with the "
9593 "government before a copyright could be secured."
9596 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9597 #: freeculture.xml:6889
9599 "The reason for the registration requirement was the sensible understanding "
9600 "that for most works, no copyright was required. Again, in the first ten "
9601 "years of the Republic, 95 percent of works eligible for copyright were never "
9602 "copyrighted. Thus, the rule reflected the norm: Most works apparently didn't "
9603 "need copyright, so registration narrowed the regulation of the law to the "
9604 "few that did. The same reasoning justified the requirement that a work be "
9605 "marked as copyrighted—that way it was easy to know whether a copyright "
9606 "was being claimed. The requirement that works be deposited was to assure "
9607 "that after the copyright expired, there would be a copy of the work "
9608 "somewhere so that it could be copied by others without locating the original "
9612 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9613 #: freeculture.xml:6903
9615 "All of these <quote>formalities</quote> were abolished in the American "
9616 "system when we decided to follow European copyright law. There is no "
9617 "requirement that you register a work to get a copyright; the copyright now "
9618 "is automatic; the copyright exists whether or not you mark your work with a "
9619 "©; and the copyright exists whether or not you actually make a copy "
9620 "available for others to copy."
9623 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9624 #: freeculture.xml:6911
9625 msgid "Consider a practical example to understand the scope of these differences."
9629 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9630 #: freeculture.xml:6922
9632 "See Thomas Bender and David Sampliner, <quote>Poets, Pirates, and the "
9633 "Creation of American Literature,</quote> 29 <citetitle>New York University "
9634 "Journal of International Law and Politics</citetitle> 255 (1997), and James "
9635 "Gilraeth, ed., Federal Copyright Records, 1790–1800 (U.S. G.P.O., "
9639 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9640 #: freeculture.xml:6915
9642 "If, in 1790, you wrote a book and you were one of the 5 percent who actually "
9643 "copyrighted that book, then the copyright law protected you against another "
9644 "publisher's taking your book and republishing it without your "
9645 "permission. The aim of the act was to regulate publishers so as to prevent "
9646 "that kind of unfair competition. In 1790, there were 174 publishers in the "
9647 "United States.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The Copyright Act "
9648 "was thus a tiny regulation of a tiny proportion of a tiny part of the "
9649 "creative market in the United States—publishers."
9653 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9654 #: freeculture.xml:6934
9656 "The act left other creators totally unregulated. If I copied your poem by "
9657 "hand, over and over again, as a way to learn it by heart, my act was totally "
9658 "unregulated by the 1790 act. If I took your novel and made a play based upon "
9659 "it, or if I translated it or abridged it, none of those activities were "
9660 "regulated by the original copyright act. These creative activities remained "
9661 "free, while the activities of publishers were restrained."
9664 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9665 #: freeculture.xml:6943
9667 "Today the story is very different: If you write a book, your book is "
9668 "automatically protected. Indeed, not just your book. Every e-mail, every "
9669 "note to your spouse, every doodle, <emphasis>every</emphasis> creative act "
9670 "that's reduced to a tangible form—all of this is automatically "
9671 "copyrighted. There is no need to register or mark your work. The protection "
9672 "follows the creation, not the steps you take to protect it."
9675 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9676 #: freeculture.xml:6952
9678 "That protection gives you the right (subject to a narrow range of fair use "
9679 "exceptions) to control how others copy the work, whether they copy it to "
9680 "republish it or to share an excerpt."
9683 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9684 #: freeculture.xml:6957
9686 "That much is the obvious part. Any system of copyright would control "
9687 "competing publishing. But there's a second part to the copyright of today "
9688 "that is not at all obvious. This is the protection of <quote>derivative "
9689 "rights.</quote> If you write a book, no one can make a movie out of your "
9690 "book without permission. No one can translate it without permission. "
9691 "CliffsNotes can't make an abridgment unless permission is granted. All of "
9692 "these derivative uses of your original work are controlled by the copyright "
9693 "holder. The copyright, in other words, is now not just an exclusive right to "
9694 "your writings, but an exclusive right to your writings and a large "
9695 "proportion of the writings inspired by them."
9698 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9699 #: freeculture.xml:6971
9701 "It is this derivative right that would seem most bizarre to our framers, "
9702 "though it has become second nature to us. Initially, this expansion was "
9703 "created to deal with obvious evasions of a narrower copyright. If I write a "
9704 "book, can you change one word and then claim a copyright in a new and "
9705 "different book? Obviously that would make a joke of the copyright, so the "
9706 "law was properly expanded to include those slight modifications as well as "
9707 "the verbatim original work."
9710 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9711 #: freeculture.xml:6993
9713 "Jonathan Zittrain, <quote>The Copyright Cage,</quote> <citetitle>Legal "
9714 "Affairs</citetitle>, July/August 2003, available at <ulink "
9715 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #26</ulink>. <placeholder "
9716 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
9719 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9720 #: freeculture.xml:6983
9722 "In preventing that joke, the law created an astonishing power within a free "
9723 "culture—at least, it's astonishing when you understand that the law "
9724 "applies not just to the commercial publisher but to anyone with a "
9725 "computer. I understand the wrong in duplicating and selling someone else's "
9726 "work. But whatever <emphasis>that</emphasis> wrong is, transforming someone "
9727 "else's work is a different wrong. Some view transformation as no wrong at "
9728 "all—they believe that our law, as the framers penned it, should not "
9729 "protect derivative rights at all.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
9730 "Whether or not you go that far, it seems plain that whatever wrong is "
9731 "involved is fundamentally different from the wrong of direct piracy."
9734 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
9735 #: freeculture.xml:7015
9736 msgid "Rubenfeld, Jeb"
9739 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9740 #: freeculture.xml:7008
9742 "Professor Rubenfeld has presented a powerful constitutional argument about "
9743 "the difference that copyright law should draw (from the perspective of the "
9744 "First Amendment) between mere <quote>copies</quote> and derivative "
9745 "works. See Jed Rubenfeld, <quote>The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright's "
9746 "Constitutionality,</quote> <citetitle>Yale Law Journal</citetitle> 112 "
9747 "(2002): 1–60 (see especially pp. 53–59). <placeholder "
9748 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
9751 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9752 #: freeculture.xml:7003
9754 "Yet copyright law treats these two different wrongs in the same way. I can "
9755 "go to court and get an injunction against your pirating my book. I can go to "
9756 "court and get an injunction against your transformative use of my "
9757 "book.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> These two different uses of "
9758 "my creative work are treated the same."
9761 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9762 #: freeculture.xml:7020
9764 "This again may seem right to you. If I wrote a book, then why should you be "
9765 "able to write a movie that takes my story and makes money from it without "
9766 "paying me or crediting me? Or if Disney creates a creature called "
9767 "<quote>Mickey Mouse,</quote> why should you be able to make Mickey Mouse "
9768 "toys and be the one to trade on the value that Disney originally created?"
9771 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9772 #: freeculture.xml:7028
9774 "These are good arguments, and, in general, my point is not that the "
9775 "derivative right is unjustified. My aim just now is much narrower: simply to "
9776 "make clear that this expansion is a significant change from the rights "
9777 "originally granted."
9780 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
9781 #: freeculture.xml:7035
9782 msgid "Law and Architecture: Reach"
9786 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9787 #: freeculture.xml:7042
9789 "This is a simplification of the law, but not much of one. The law certainly "
9790 "regulates more than <quote>copies</quote>—a public performance of a "
9791 "copyrighted song, for example, is regulated even though performance per se "
9792 "doesn't make a copy; 17 <citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>, section "
9793 "106(4). And it certainly sometimes doesn't regulate a <quote>copy</quote>; "
9794 "17 <citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>, section 112(a). But the "
9795 "presumption under the existing law (which regulates <quote>copies;</quote> "
9796 "17 <citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>, section 102) is that if there "
9797 "is a copy, there is a right."
9800 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9801 #: freeculture.xml:7037
9803 "Whereas originally the law regulated only publishers, the change in "
9804 "copyright's scope means that the law today regulates publishers, users, and "
9805 "authors. It regulates them because all three are capable of making copies, "
9806 "and the core of the regulation of copyright law is copies.<placeholder "
9807 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
9811 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9812 #: freeculture.xml:7054
9814 "<quote>Copies.</quote> That certainly sounds like the obvious thing for "
9815 "<emphasis>copy</emphasis>right law to regulate. But as with Jack Valenti's "
9816 "argument at the start of this chapter, that <quote>creative property</quote> "
9817 "deserves the <quote>same rights</quote> as all other property, it is the "
9818 "<emphasis>obvious</emphasis> that we need to be most careful about. For "
9819 "while it may be obvious that in the world before the Internet, copies were "
9820 "the obvious trigger for copyright law, upon reflection, it should be obvious "
9821 "that in the world with the Internet, copies should <emphasis>not</emphasis> "
9822 "be the trigger for copyright law. More precisely, they should not "
9823 "<emphasis>always</emphasis> be the trigger for copyright law."
9827 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9828 #: freeculture.xml:7072
9830 "Thus, my argument is not that in each place that copyright law extends, we "
9831 "should repeal it. It is instead that we should have a good argument for its "
9832 "extending where it does, and should not determine its reach on the basis of "
9833 "arbitrary and automatic changes caused by technology."
9836 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9837 #: freeculture.xml:7067
9839 "This is perhaps the central claim of this book, so let me take this very "
9840 "slowly so that the point is not easily missed. My claim is that the Internet "
9841 "should at least force us to rethink the conditions under which the law of "
9842 "copyright automatically applies,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
9843 "because it is clear that the current reach of copyright was never "
9844 "contemplated, much less chosen, by the legislators who enacted copyright "
9848 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9849 #: freeculture.xml:7083
9851 "We can see this point abstractly by beginning with this largely empty "
9855 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9856 #: freeculture.xml:7087
9857 msgid "All potential uses of a book."
9860 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9861 #: freeculture.xml:7088
9862 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1521.png\"></graphic>"
9865 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
9866 #: freeculture.xml:7090
9867 msgid "three types of uses of"
9871 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9872 #: freeculture.xml:7093
9874 "Think about a book in real space, and imagine this circle to represent all "
9875 "its potential <emphasis>uses</emphasis>. Most of these uses are unregulated "
9876 "by copyright law, because the uses don't create a copy. If you read a book, "
9877 "that act is not regulated by copyright law. If you give someone the book, "
9878 "that act is not regulated by copyright law. If you resell a book, that act "
9879 "is not regulated (copyright law expressly states that after the first sale "
9880 "of a book, the copyright owner can impose no further conditions on the "
9881 "disposition of the book). If you sleep on the book or use it to hold up a "
9882 "lamp or let your puppy chew it up, those acts are not regulated by copyright "
9883 "law, because those acts do not make a copy."
9886 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9887 #: freeculture.xml:7106
9888 msgid "Examples of unregulated uses of a book."
9891 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9892 #: freeculture.xml:7107
9893 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1531.png\"></graphic>"
9896 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9897 #: freeculture.xml:7110
9899 "Obviously, however, some uses of a copyrighted book are regulated by "
9900 "copyright law. Republishing the book, for example, makes a copy. It is "
9901 "therefore regulated by copyright law. Indeed, this particular use stands at "
9902 "the core of this circle of possible uses of a copyrighted work. It is the "
9903 "paradigmatic use properly regulated by copyright regulation (see first "
9904 "diagram on next page)."
9907 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9908 #: freeculture.xml:7118
9910 "Finally, there is a tiny sliver of otherwise regulated copying uses that "
9911 "remain unregulated because the law considers these <quote>fair uses.</quote>"
9914 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9915 #: freeculture.xml:7123
9917 "Republishing stands at the core of this circle of possible uses of a "
9921 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9922 #: freeculture.xml:7124
9923 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1541.png\"></graphic>"
9926 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9927 #: freeculture.xml:7127
9929 "These are uses that themselves involve copying, but which the law treats as "
9930 "unregulated because public policy demands that they remain unregulated. You "
9931 "are free to quote from this book, even in a review that is quite negative, "
9932 "without my permission, even though that quoting makes a copy. That copy "
9933 "would ordinarily give the copyright owner the exclusive right to say whether "
9934 "the copy is allowed or not, but the law denies the owner any exclusive right "
9935 "over such <quote>fair uses</quote> for public policy (and possibly First "
9936 "Amendment) reasons."
9939 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9940 #: freeculture.xml:7137
9941 msgid "Unregulated copying considered <quote>fair uses.</quote>"
9944 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9945 #: freeculture.xml:7138
9946 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1542.png\"></graphic>"
9949 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9950 #: freeculture.xml:7142
9952 "Uses that before were presumptively unregulated are now presumptively "
9956 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9957 #: freeculture.xml:7143
9958 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1551.png\"></graphic>"
9962 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9963 #: freeculture.xml:7147
9965 "In real space, then, the possible uses of a book are divided into three "
9966 "sorts: (1) unregulated uses, (2) regulated uses, and (3) regulated uses that "
9967 "are nonetheless deemed <quote>fair</quote> regardless of the copyright "
9971 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
9972 #: freeculture.xml:7152 freeculture.xml:7186 freeculture.xml:7395
9977 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9978 #: freeculture.xml:7157
9980 "I don't mean <quote>nature</quote> in the sense that it couldn't be "
9981 "different, but rather that its present instantiation entails a copy. Optical "
9982 "networks need not make copies of content they transmit, and a digital "
9983 "network could be designed to delete anything it copies so that the same "
9984 "number of copies remain."
9987 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9988 #: freeculture.xml:7154
9990 "Enter the Internet—a distributed, digital network where every use of a "
9991 "copyrighted work produces a copy.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
9992 "And because of this single, arbitrary feature of the design of a digital "
9993 "network, the scope of category 1 changes dramatically. Uses that before were "
9994 "presumptively unregulated are now presumptively regulated. No longer is "
9995 "there a set of presumptively unregulated uses that define a freedom "
9996 "associated with a copyrighted work. Instead, each use is now subject to the "
9997 "copyright, because each use also makes a copy—category 1 gets sucked "
9998 "into category 2. And those who would defend the unregulated uses of "
9999 "copyrighted work must look exclusively to category 3, fair uses, to bear the "
10000 "burden of this shift."
10004 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10005 #: freeculture.xml:7175
10007 "So let's be very specific to make this general point clear. Before the "
10008 "Internet, if you purchased a book and read it ten times, there would be no "
10009 "plausible <emphasis>copyright</emphasis>-related argument that the copyright "
10010 "owner could make to control that use of her book. Copyright law would have "
10011 "nothing to say about whether you read the book once, ten times, or every "
10012 "night before you went to bed. None of those instances of "
10013 "use—reading— could be regulated by copyright law because none of "
10014 "those uses produced a copy."
10017 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10018 #: freeculture.xml:7188
10020 "But the same book as an e-book is effectively governed by a different set of "
10021 "rules. Now if the copyright owner says you may read the book only once or "
10022 "only once a month, then <emphasis>copyright law</emphasis> would aid the "
10023 "copyright owner in exercising this degree of control, because of the "
10024 "accidental feature of copyright law that triggers its application upon there "
10025 "being a copy. Now if you read the book ten times and the license says you "
10026 "may read it only five times, then whenever you read the book (or any portion "
10027 "of it) beyond the fifth time, you are making a copy of the book contrary to "
10028 "the copyright owner's wish."
10031 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10032 #: freeculture.xml:7200
10034 "There are some people who think this makes perfect sense. My aim just now is "
10035 "not to argue about whether it makes sense or not. My aim is only to make "
10036 "clear the change. Once you see this point, a few other points also become "
10040 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10041 #: freeculture.xml:7206
10043 "First, making category 1 disappear is not anything any policy maker ever "
10044 "intended. Congress did not think through the collapse of the presumptively "
10045 "unregulated uses of copyrighted works. There is no evidence at all that "
10046 "policy makers had this idea in mind when they allowed our policy here to "
10047 "shift. Unregulated uses were an important part of free culture before the "
10051 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10052 #: freeculture.xml:7214
10054 "Second, this shift is especially troubling in the context of transformative "
10055 "uses of creative content. Again, we can all understand the wrong in "
10056 "commercial piracy. But the law now purports to regulate "
10057 "<emphasis>any</emphasis> transformation you make of creative work using a "
10058 "machine. <quote>Copy and paste</quote> and <quote>cut and paste</quote> "
10059 "become crimes. Tinkering with a story and releasing it to others exposes the "
10060 "tinkerer to at least a requirement of justification. However troubling the "
10061 "expansion with respect to copying a particular work, it is extraordinarily "
10062 "troubling with respect to transformative uses of creative work."
10066 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10067 #: freeculture.xml:7226
10069 "Third, this shift from category 1 to category 2 puts an extraordinary burden "
10070 "on category 3 (<quote>fair use</quote>) that fair use never before had to "
10071 "bear. If a copyright owner now tried to control how many times I could read "
10072 "a book on-line, the natural response would be to argue that this is a "
10073 "violation of my fair use rights. But there has never been any litigation "
10074 "about whether I have a fair use right to read, because before the Internet, "
10075 "reading did not trigger the application of copyright law and hence the need "
10076 "for a fair use defense. The right to read was effectively protected before "
10077 "because reading was not regulated."
10080 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10081 #: freeculture.xml:7240
10083 "This point about fair use is totally ignored, even by advocates for free "
10084 "culture. We have been cornered into arguing that our rights depend upon fair "
10085 "use—never even addressing the earlier question about the expansion in "
10086 "effective regulation. A thin protection grounded in fair use makes sense "
10087 "when the vast majority of uses are <emphasis>unregulated</emphasis>. But "
10088 "when everything becomes presumptively regulated, then the protections of "
10089 "fair use are not enough."
10092 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10093 #: freeculture.xml:7251
10095 "The case of Video Pipeline is a good example. Video Pipeline was in the "
10096 "business of making <quote>trailer</quote> advertisements for movies "
10097 "available to video stores. The video stores displayed the trailers as a way "
10098 "to sell videos. Video Pipeline got the trailers from the film distributors, "
10099 "put the trailers on tape, and sold the tapes to the retail stores."
10102 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
10103 #: freeculture.xml:7257 freeculture.xml:7317 freeculture.xml:13346
10107 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10108 #: freeculture.xml:7259
10110 "The company did this for about fifteen years. Then, in 1997, it began to "
10111 "think about the Internet as another way to distribute these previews. The "
10112 "idea was to expand their <quote>selling by sampling</quote> technique by "
10113 "giving on-line stores the same ability to enable <quote>browsing.</quote> "
10114 "Just as in a bookstore you can read a few pages of a book before you buy the "
10115 "book, so, too, you would be able to sample a bit from the movie on-line "
10116 "before you bought it."
10120 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10121 #: freeculture.xml:7268
10123 "In 1998, Video Pipeline informed Disney and other film distributors that it "
10124 "intended to distribute the trailers through the Internet (rather than "
10125 "sending the tapes) to distributors of their videos. Two years later, Disney "
10126 "told Video Pipeline to stop. The owner of Video Pipeline asked Disney to "
10127 "talk about the matter—he had built a business on distributing this "
10128 "content as a way to help sell Disney films; he had customers who depended "
10129 "upon his delivering this content. Disney would agree to talk only if Video "
10130 "Pipeline stopped the distribution immediately. Video Pipeline thought it "
10131 "was within their <quote>fair use</quote> rights to distribute the clips as "
10132 "they had. So they filed a lawsuit to ask the court to declare that these "
10133 "rights were in fact their rights."
10136 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10137 #: freeculture.xml:7283
10139 "Disney countersued—for $100 million in damages. Those damages were "
10140 "predicated upon a claim that Video Pipeline had <quote>willfully "
10141 "infringed</quote> on Disney's copyright. When a court makes a finding of "
10142 "willful infringement, it can award damages not on the basis of the actual "
10143 "harm to the copyright owner, but on the basis of an amount set in the "
10144 "statute. Because Video Pipeline had distributed seven hundred clips of "
10145 "Disney movies to enable video stores to sell copies of those movies, Disney "
10146 "was now suing Video Pipeline for $100 million."
10149 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10150 #: freeculture.xml:7293
10152 "Disney has the right to control its property, of course. But the video "
10153 "stores that were selling Disney's films also had some sort of right to be "
10154 "able to sell the films that they had bought from Disney. Disney's claim in "
10155 "court was that the stores were allowed to sell the films and they were "
10156 "permitted to list the titles of the films they were selling, but they were "
10157 "not allowed to show clips of the films as a way of selling them without "
10158 "Disney's permission."
10161 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10162 #: freeculture.xml:7303
10164 "Now, you might think this is a close case, and I think the courts would "
10165 "consider it a close case. My point here is to map the change that gives "
10166 "Disney this power. Before the Internet, Disney couldn't really control how "
10167 "people got access to their content. Once a video was in the marketplace, the "
10168 "<quote>first-sale doctrine</quote> would free the seller to use the video as "
10169 "he wished, including showing portions of it in order to engender sales of "
10170 "the entire movie video. But with the Internet, it becomes possible for "
10171 "Disney to centralize control over access to this content. Because each use "
10172 "of the Internet produces a copy, use on the Internet becomes subject to the "
10173 "copyright owner's control. The technology expands the scope of effective "
10174 "control, because the technology builds a copy into every transaction."
10177 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10178 #: freeculture.xml:7316
10179 msgid "Barnes & Noble"
10183 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10184 #: freeculture.xml:7320
10186 "No doubt, a potential is not yet an abuse, and so the potential for control "
10187 "is not yet the abuse of control. Barnes & Noble has the right to say you "
10188 "can't touch a book in their store; property law gives them that right. But "
10189 "the market effectively protects against that abuse. If Barnes & Noble "
10190 "banned browsing, then consumers would choose other bookstores. Competition "
10191 "protects against the extremes. And it may well be (my argument so far does "
10192 "not even question this) that competition would prevent any similar danger "
10193 "when it comes to copyright. Sure, publishers exercising the rights that "
10194 "authors have assigned to them might try to regulate how many times you read "
10195 "a book, or try to stop you from sharing the book with anyone. But in a "
10196 "competitive market such as the book market, the dangers of this happening "
10197 "are quite slight."
10200 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10201 #: freeculture.xml:7335
10203 "Again, my aim so far is simply to map the changes that this changed "
10204 "architecture enables. Enabling technology to enforce the control of "
10205 "copyright means that the control of copyright is no longer defined by "
10206 "balanced policy. The control of copyright is simply what private owners "
10207 "choose. In some contexts, at least, that fact is harmless. But in some "
10208 "contexts it is a recipe for disaster."
10211 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
10212 #: freeculture.xml:7344
10213 msgid "Architecture and Law: Force"
10216 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10217 #: freeculture.xml:7346
10219 "The disappearance of unregulated uses would be change enough, but a second "
10220 "important change brought about by the Internet magnifies its "
10221 "significance. This second change does not affect the reach of copyright "
10222 "regulation; it affects how such regulation is enforced."
10225 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10226 #: freeculture.xml:7352
10228 "In the world before digital technology, it was generally the law that "
10229 "controlled whether and how someone was regulated by copyright law. The law, "
10230 "meaning a court, meaning a judge: In the end, it was a human, trained in the "
10231 "tradition of the law and cognizant of the balances that tradition embraced, "
10232 "who said whether and how the law would restrict your freedom."
10235 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10236 #: freeculture.xml:7359
10240 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10241 #: freeculture.xml:7360 freeculture.xml:7529
10242 msgid "Marx Brothers"
10246 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
10247 #: freeculture.xml:7371
10249 "See David Lange, <quote>Recognizing the Public Domain,</quote> "
10250 "<citetitle>Law and Contemporary Problems</citetitle> 44 (1981): "
10254 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10255 #: freeculture.xml:7363
10257 "There's a famous story about a battle between the Marx Brothers and Warner "
10258 "Brothers. The Marxes intended to make a parody of "
10259 "<citetitle>Casablanca</citetitle>. Warner Brothers objected. They wrote a "
10260 "nasty letter to the Marxes, warning them that there would be serious legal "
10261 "consequences if they went forward with their plan.<placeholder "
10262 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
10265 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
10266 #: freeculture.xml:7380
10268 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Ibid. See also Vaidhyanathan, "
10269 "<citetitle>Copyrights and Copywrongs</citetitle>, 1–3."
10272 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10273 #: freeculture.xml:7376
10275 "This led the Marx Brothers to respond in kind. They warned Warner Brothers "
10276 "that the Marx Brothers <quote>were brothers long before you "
10277 "were.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The Marx Brothers "
10278 "therefore owned the word <citetitle>brothers</citetitle>, and if Warner "
10279 "Brothers insisted on trying to control <citetitle>Casablanca</citetitle>, "
10280 "then the Marx Brothers would insist on control over "
10281 "<citetitle>brothers</citetitle>."
10284 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10285 #: freeculture.xml:7390
10287 "An absurd and hollow threat, of course, because Warner Brothers, like the "
10288 "Marx Brothers, knew that no court would ever enforce such a silly "
10289 "claim. This extremism was irrelevant to the real freedoms anyone (including "
10290 "Warner Brothers) enjoyed."
10293 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10294 #: freeculture.xml:7397
10296 "On the Internet, however, there is no check on silly rules, because on the "
10297 "Internet, increasingly, rules are enforced not by a human but by a machine: "
10298 "Increasingly, the rules of copyright law, as interpreted by the copyright "
10299 "owner, get built into the technology that delivers copyrighted content. It "
10300 "is code, rather than law, that rules. And the problem with code regulations "
10301 "is that, unlike law, code has no shame. Code would not get the humor of the "
10302 "Marx Brothers. The consequence of that is not at all funny."
10305 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10306 #: freeculture.xml:7409
10307 msgid "Adobe eBook Reader"
10310 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10311 #: freeculture.xml:7411
10312 msgid "Consider the life of my Adobe eBook Reader."
10315 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10316 #: freeculture.xml:7414
10318 "An e-book is a book delivered in electronic form. An Adobe eBook is not a "
10319 "book that Adobe has published; Adobe simply produces the software that "
10320 "publishers use to deliver e-books. It provides the technology, and the "
10321 "publisher delivers the content by using the technology."
10324 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10325 #: freeculture.xml:7421
10326 msgid "On the next page is a picture of an old version of my Adobe eBook Reader."
10330 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10331 #: freeculture.xml:7425
10333 "As you can see, I have a small collection of e-books within this e-book "
10334 "library. Some of these books reproduce content that is in the public domain: "
10335 "<citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle>, for example, is in the public domain. "
10336 "Some of them reproduce content that is not in the public domain: My own book "
10337 "<citetitle>The Future of Ideas</citetitle> is not yet within the public "
10338 "domain. Consider <citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle> first. If you click on "
10339 "my e-book copy of <citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle>, you'll see a fancy "
10340 "cover, and then a button at the bottom called Permissions."
10343 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10344 #: freeculture.xml:7438
10345 msgid "Picture of an old version of Adobe eBook Reader"
10348 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10349 #: freeculture.xml:7439
10350 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1611.png\"></graphic>"
10353 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10354 #: freeculture.xml:7442
10356 "If you click on the Permissions button, you'll see a list of the permissions "
10357 "that the publisher purports to grant with this book."
10360 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10361 #: freeculture.xml:7446
10362 msgid "List of the permissions that the publisher purports to grant."
10365 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10366 #: freeculture.xml:7447
10367 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1612.png\"></graphic>"
10371 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10372 #: freeculture.xml:7451
10374 "According to my eBook Reader, I have the permission to copy to the clipboard "
10375 "of the computer ten text selections every ten days. (So far, I've copied no "
10376 "text to the clipboard.) I also have the permission to print ten pages from "
10377 "the book every ten days. Lastly, I have the permission to use the Read Aloud "
10378 "button to hear <citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle> read aloud through the "
10382 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10383 #: freeculture.xml:7458
10387 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10388 #: freeculture.xml:7459
10389 msgid "<citetitle>Politics</citetitle>, (Aristotle)"
10392 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10393 #: freeculture.xml:7461
10395 "Here's the e-book for another work in the public domain (including the "
10396 "translation): Aristotle's <citetitle>Politics</citetitle>."
10399 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10400 #: freeculture.xml:7465
10401 msgid "E-book of Aristotle;s <quote>Politics</quote>"
10404 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10405 #: freeculture.xml:7466
10406 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1621.png\"></graphic>"
10409 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10410 #: freeculture.xml:7469
10412 "According to its permissions, no printing or copying is permitted at "
10413 "all. But fortunately, you can use the Read Aloud button to hear the book."
10416 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10417 #: freeculture.xml:7474
10418 msgid "List of the permissions for Aristotle;s <quote>Politics</quote>."
10421 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10422 #: freeculture.xml:7475
10423 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1622.png\"></graphic>"
10426 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10427 #: freeculture.xml:7478
10429 "Finally (and most embarrassingly), here are the permissions for the original "
10430 "e-book version of my last book, <citetitle>The Future of Ideas</citetitle>:"
10433 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10434 #: freeculture.xml:7484
10435 msgid "List of the permissions for <quote>The Future of Ideas</quote>."
10438 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10439 #: freeculture.xml:7485
10440 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1631.png\"></graphic>"
10443 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10444 #: freeculture.xml:7488
10445 msgid "No copying, no printing, and don't you dare try to listen to this book!"
10449 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
10450 #: freeculture.xml:7498
10452 "In principle, a contract might impose a requirement on me. I might, for "
10453 "example, buy a book from you that includes a contract that says I will read "
10454 "it only three times, or that I promise to read it three times. But that "
10455 "obligation (and the limits for creating that obligation) would come from the "
10456 "contract, not from copyright law, and the obligations of contract would not "
10457 "necessarily pass to anyone who subsequently acquired the book."
10460 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10461 #: freeculture.xml:7491
10463 "Now, the Adobe eBook Reader calls these controls "
10464 "<quote>permissions</quote>— as if the publisher has the power to "
10465 "control how you use these works. For works under copyright, the copyright "
10466 "owner certainly does have the power—up to the limits of the copyright "
10467 "law. But for work not under copyright, there is no such copyright "
10468 "power.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> When my e-book of "
10469 "<citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle> says I have the permission to copy only "
10470 "ten text selections into the memory every ten days, what that really means "
10471 "is that the eBook Reader has enabled the publisher to control how I use the "
10472 "book on my computer, far beyond the control that the law would enable."
10475 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10476 #: freeculture.xml:7513
10478 "The control comes instead from the code—from the technology within "
10479 "which the e-book <quote>lives.</quote> Though the e-book says that these are "
10480 "permissions, they are not the sort of <quote>permissions</quote> that most "
10481 "of us deal with. When a teenager gets <quote>permission</quote> to stay out "
10482 "till midnight, she knows (unless she's Cinderella) that she can stay out "
10483 "till 2 A.M., but will suffer a punishment if she's caught. But when the "
10484 "Adobe eBook Reader says I have the permission to make ten copies of the text "
10485 "into the computer's memory, that means that after I've made ten copies, the "
10486 "computer will not make any more. The same with the printing restrictions: "
10487 "After ten pages, the eBook Reader will not print any more pages. It's the "
10488 "same with the silly restriction that says that you can't use the Read Aloud "
10489 "button to read my book aloud—it's not that the company will sue you if "
10490 "you do; instead, if you push the Read Aloud button with my book, the machine "
10491 "simply won't read aloud."
10495 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10496 #: freeculture.xml:7532
10498 "These are <emphasis>controls</emphasis>, not permissions. Imagine a world "
10499 "where the Marx Brothers sold word processing software that, when you tried "
10500 "to type <quote>Warner Brothers,</quote> erased <quote>Brothers</quote> from "
10504 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10505 #: freeculture.xml:7538
10507 "This is the future of copyright law: not so much copyright "
10508 "<emphasis>law</emphasis> as copyright <emphasis>code</emphasis>. The "
10509 "controls over access to content will not be controls that are ratified by "
10510 "courts; the controls over access to content will be controls that are coded "
10511 "by programmers. And whereas the controls that are built into the law are "
10512 "always to be checked by a judge, the controls that are built into the "
10513 "technology have no similar built-in check."
10516 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10517 #: freeculture.xml:7547
10519 "How significant is this? Isn't it always possible to get around the controls "
10520 "built into the technology? Software used to be sold with technologies that "
10521 "limited the ability of users to copy the software, but those were trivial "
10522 "protections to defeat. Why won't it be trivial to defeat these protections "
10526 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10527 #: freeculture.xml:7554
10529 "We've only scratched the surface of this story. Return to the Adobe eBook "
10533 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10534 #: freeculture.xml:7557
10535 msgid "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)"
10538 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10539 #: freeculture.xml:7559
10541 "Early in the life of the Adobe eBook Reader, Adobe suffered a public "
10542 "relations nightmare. Among the books that you could download for free on the "
10543 "Adobe site was a copy of <citetitle>Alice's Adventures in "
10544 "Wonderland</citetitle>. This wonderful book is in the public domain. Yet "
10545 "when you clicked on Permissions for that book, you got the following report:"
10548 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10549 #: freeculture.xml:7567
10550 msgid "List of the permissions for <quote>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</quote>."
10553 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10554 #: freeculture.xml:7569
10555 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1641.png\"></graphic>"
10558 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10559 #: freeculture.xml:7573
10561 "Here was a public domain children's book that you were not allowed to copy, "
10562 "not allowed to lend, not allowed to give, and, as the "
10563 "<quote>permissions</quote> indicated, not allowed to <quote>read "
10567 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10568 #: freeculture.xml:7578
10570 "The public relations nightmare attached to that final permission. For the "
10571 "text did not say that you were not permitted to use the Read Aloud button; "
10572 "it said you did not have the permission to read the book aloud. That led "
10573 "some people to think that Adobe was restricting the right of parents, for "
10574 "example, to read the book to their children, which seemed, to say the least, "
10578 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10579 #: freeculture.xml:7586
10581 "Adobe responded quickly that it was absurd to think that it was trying to "
10582 "restrict the right to read a book aloud. Obviously it was only restricting "
10583 "the ability to use the Read Aloud button to have the book read aloud. But "
10584 "the question Adobe never did answer is this: Would Adobe thus agree that a "
10585 "consumer was free to use software to hack around the restrictions built into "
10586 "the eBook Reader? If some company (call it Elcomsoft) developed a program to "
10587 "disable the technological protection built into an Adobe eBook so that a "
10588 "blind person, say, could use a computer to read the book aloud, would Adobe "
10589 "agree that such a use of an eBook Reader was fair? Adobe didn't answer "
10590 "because the answer, however absurd it might seem, is no."
10593 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10594 #: freeculture.xml:7599
10596 "The point is not to blame Adobe. Indeed, Adobe is among the most innovative "
10597 "companies developing strategies to balance open access to content with "
10598 "incentives for companies to innovate. But Adobe's technology enables "
10599 "control, and Adobe has an incentive to defend this control. That incentive "
10600 "is understandable, yet what it creates is often crazy."
10603 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10604 #: freeculture.xml:7609
10606 "To see the point in a particularly absurd context, consider a favorite story "
10607 "of mine that makes the same point."
10610 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10611 #: freeculture.xml:7612 freeculture.xml:7756 freeculture.xml:7821 freeculture.xml:7929
10612 msgid "Aibo robotic dog"
10615 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10616 #: freeculture.xml:7613 freeculture.xml:7757 freeculture.xml:7822 freeculture.xml:7930
10617 msgid "robotic dog"
10620 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10621 #: freeculture.xml:7614 freeculture.xml:7758 freeculture.xml:7823 freeculture.xml:7931
10625 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
10626 #: freeculture.xml:7614 freeculture.xml:7758 freeculture.xml:7823 freeculture.xml:7931
10627 msgid "Aibo robotic dog produced by"
10630 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10631 #: freeculture.xml:7616
10633 "Consider the robotic dog made by Sony named <quote>Aibo.</quote> The Aibo "
10634 "learns tricks, cuddles, and follows you around. It eats only electricity and "
10635 "that doesn't leave that much of a mess (at least in your house)."
10639 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10640 #: freeculture.xml:7621
10642 "The Aibo is expensive and popular. Fans from around the world have set up "
10643 "clubs to trade stories. One fan in particular set up a Web site to enable "
10644 "information about the Aibo dog to be shared. This fan set up aibopet.com "
10645 "(and aibohack.com, but that resolves to the same site), and on that site he "
10646 "provided information about how to teach an Aibo to do tricks in addition to "
10647 "the ones Sony had taught it."
10650 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10651 #: freeculture.xml:7630
10653 "<quote>Teach</quote> here has a special meaning. Aibos are just cute "
10654 "computers. You teach a computer how to do something by programming it "
10655 "differently. So to say that aibopet.com was giving information about how to "
10656 "teach the dog to do new tricks is just to say that aibopet.com was giving "
10657 "information to users of the Aibo pet about how to hack their computer "
10658 "<quote>dog</quote> to make it do new tricks (thus, aibohack.com)."
10661 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10662 #: freeculture.xml:7637
10666 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10667 #: freeculture.xml:7639
10669 "If you're not a programmer or don't know many programmers, the word "
10670 "<citetitle>hack</citetitle> has a particularly unfriendly "
10671 "connotation. Nonprogrammers hack bushes or weeds. Nonprogrammers in horror "
10672 "movies do even worse. But to programmers, or coders, as I call them, "
10673 "<citetitle>hack</citetitle> is a much more positive "
10674 "term. <citetitle>Hack</citetitle> just means code that enables the program "
10675 "to do something it wasn't originally intended or enabled to do. If you buy a "
10676 "new printer for an old computer, you might find the old computer doesn't "
10677 "run, or <quote>drive,</quote> the printer. If you discovered that, you'd "
10678 "later be happy to discover a hack on the Net by someone who has written a "
10679 "driver to enable the computer to drive the printer you just bought."
10682 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10683 #: freeculture.xml:7653
10685 "Some hacks are easy. Some are unbelievably hard. Hackers as a community like "
10686 "to challenge themselves and others with increasingly difficult "
10687 "tasks. There's a certain respect that goes with the talent to hack "
10688 "well. There's a well-deserved respect that goes with the talent to hack "
10692 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10693 #: freeculture.xml:7660
10695 "The Aibo fan was displaying a bit of both when he hacked the program and "
10696 "offered to the world a bit of code that would enable the Aibo to dance "
10697 "jazz. The dog wasn't programmed to dance jazz. It was a clever bit of "
10698 "tinkering that turned the dog into a more talented creature than Sony had "
10703 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10704 #: freeculture.xml:7670
10706 "I've told this story in many contexts, both inside and outside the United "
10707 "States. Once I was asked by a puzzled member of the audience, is it "
10708 "permissible for a dog to dance jazz in the United States? We forget that "
10709 "stories about the backcountry still flow across much of the world. So let's "
10710 "just be clear before we continue: It's not a crime anywhere (anymore) to "
10711 "dance jazz. Nor is it a crime to teach your dog to dance jazz. Nor should it "
10712 "be a crime (though we don't have a lot to go on here) to teach your robot "
10713 "dog to dance jazz. Dancing jazz is a completely legal activity. One imagines "
10714 "that the owner of aibopet.com thought, <emphasis>What possible problem could "
10715 "there be with teaching a robot dog to dance?</emphasis>"
10718 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
10719 #: freeculture.xml:7685
10720 msgid "government case against"
10723 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10724 #: freeculture.xml:7687
10726 "Let's put the dog to sleep for a minute, and turn to a pony show— not "
10727 "literally a pony show, but rather a paper that a Princeton academic named Ed "
10728 "Felten prepared for a conference. This Princeton academic is well known and "
10729 "respected. He was hired by the government in the Microsoft case to test "
10730 "Microsoft's claims about what could and could not be done with its own "
10731 "code. In that trial, he demonstrated both his brilliance and his "
10732 "coolness. Under heavy badgering by Microsoft lawyers, Ed Felten stood his "
10733 "ground. He was not about to be bullied into being silent about something he "
10737 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10738 #: freeculture.xml:7710 freeculture.xml:10199
10739 msgid "Electronic Frontier Foundation"
10742 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
10743 #: freeculture.xml:7700
10745 "See Pamela Samuelson, <quote>Anticircumvention Rules: Threat to "
10746 "Science,</quote> <citetitle>Science</citetitle> 293 (2001): 2028; Brendan "
10747 "I. Koerner, <quote>Play Dead: Sony Muzzles the Techies Who Teach a Robot Dog "
10748 "New Tricks,</quote> <citetitle>American Prospect</citetitle>, January 2002; "
10749 "<quote>Court Dismisses Computer Scientists' Challenge to DMCA,</quote> "
10750 "<citetitle>Intellectual Property Litigation Reporter</citetitle>, 11 "
10751 "December 2001; Bill Holland, <quote>Copyright Act Raising Free-Speech "
10752 "Concerns,</quote> <citetitle>Billboard</citetitle>, May 2001; Janelle Brown, "
10753 "<quote>Is the RIAA Running Scared?</quote> Salon.com, April 2001; Electronic "
10754 "Frontier Foundation, <quote>Frequently Asked Questions about "
10755 "<citetitle>Felten and USENIX</citetitle> v. <citetitle>RIAA</citetitle> "
10756 "Legal Case,</quote> available at <ulink "
10757 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #27</ulink>. <placeholder "
10758 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
10761 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10762 #: freeculture.xml:7698
10764 "But Felten's bravery was really tested in April 2001.<placeholder "
10765 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> He and a group of colleagues were working on a "
10766 "paper to be submitted at conference. The paper was intended to describe the "
10767 "weakness in an encryption system being developed by the Secure Digital Music "
10768 "Initiative as a technique to control the distribution of music."
10771 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10772 #: freeculture.xml:7718
10774 "The SDMI coalition had as its goal a technology to enable content owners to "
10775 "exercise much better control over their content than the Internet, as it "
10776 "originally stood, granted them. Using encryption, SDMI hoped to develop a "
10777 "standard that would allow the content owner to say <quote>this music cannot "
10778 "be copied,</quote> and have a computer respect that command. The technology "
10779 "was to be part of a <quote>trusted system</quote> of control that would get "
10780 "content owners to trust the system of the Internet much more."
10783 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10784 #: freeculture.xml:7728
10786 "When SDMI thought it was close to a standard, it set up a competition. In "
10787 "exchange for providing contestants with the code to an SDMI-encrypted bit of "
10788 "content, contestants were to try to crack it and, if they did, report the "
10789 "problems to the consortium."
10793 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10794 #: freeculture.xml:7735
10796 "Felten and his team figured out the encryption system quickly. He and the "
10797 "team saw the weakness of this system as a type: Many encryption systems "
10798 "would suffer the same weakness, and Felten and his team thought it "
10799 "worthwhile to point this out to those who study encryption."
10802 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10803 #: freeculture.xml:7741
10805 "Let's review just what Felten was doing. Again, this is the United "
10806 "States. We have a principle of free speech. We have this principle not just "
10807 "because it is the law, but also because it is a really great idea. A "
10808 "strongly protected tradition of free speech is likely to encourage a wide "
10809 "range of criticism. That criticism is likely, in turn, to improve the "
10810 "systems or people or ideas criticized."
10813 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10814 #: freeculture.xml:7749
10816 "What Felten and his colleagues were doing was publishing a paper describing "
10817 "the weakness in a technology. They were not spreading free music, or "
10818 "building and deploying this technology. The paper was an academic essay, "
10819 "unintelligible to most people. But it clearly showed the weakness in the "
10820 "SDMI system, and why SDMI would not, as presently constituted, succeed."
10823 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10824 #: freeculture.xml:7760
10826 "What links these two, aibopet.com and Felten, is the letters they then "
10827 "received. Aibopet.com received a letter from Sony about the aibopet.com "
10828 "hack. Though a jazz-dancing dog is perfectly legal, Sony wrote:"
10831 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
10832 #: freeculture.xml:7767
10834 "Your site contains information providing the means to circumvent AIBO-ware's "
10835 "copy protection protocol constituting a violation of the anti-circumvention "
10836 "provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
10839 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10840 #: freeculture.xml:7776
10842 "And though an academic paper describing the weakness in a system of "
10843 "encryption should also be perfectly legal, Felten received a letter from an "
10844 "RIAA lawyer that read:"
10848 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
10849 #: freeculture.xml:7782
10851 "Any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public "
10852 "Challenge would be outside the scope of activities permitted by the "
10853 "Agreement and could subject you and your research team to actions under the "
10854 "Digital Millennium Copyright Act (<quote>DMCA</quote>)."
10857 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10858 #: freeculture.xml:7790
10860 "In both cases, this weirdly Orwellian law was invoked to control the spread "
10861 "of information. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made spreading such "
10862 "information an offense."
10865 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10866 #: freeculture.xml:7795
10868 "The DMCA was enacted as a response to copyright owners' first fear about "
10869 "cyberspace. The fear was that copyright control was effectively dead; the "
10870 "response was to find technologies that might compensate. These new "
10871 "technologies would be copyright protection technologies— technologies "
10872 "to control the replication and distribution of copyrighted material. They "
10873 "were designed as <emphasis>code</emphasis> to modify the original "
10874 "<emphasis>code</emphasis> of the Internet, to reestablish some protection "
10875 "for copyright owners."
10878 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10879 #: freeculture.xml:7806
10881 "The DMCA was a bit of law intended to back up the protection of this code "
10882 "designed to protect copyrighted material. It was, we could say, "
10883 "<emphasis>legal code</emphasis> intended to buttress <emphasis>software "
10884 "code</emphasis> which itself was intended to support the <emphasis>legal "
10885 "code of copyright</emphasis>."
10888 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10889 #: freeculture.xml:7813
10891 "But the DMCA was not designed merely to protect copyrighted works to the "
10892 "extent copyright law protected them. Its protection, that is, did not end at "
10893 "the line that copyright law drew. The DMCA regulated devices that were "
10894 "designed to circumvent copyright protection measures. It was designed to ban "
10895 "those devices, whether or not the use of the copyrighted material made "
10896 "possible by that circumvention would have been a copyright violation."
10900 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10901 #: freeculture.xml:7825
10903 "Aibopet.com and Felten make the point. The Aibo hack circumvented a "
10904 "copyright protection system for the purpose of enabling the dog to dance "
10905 "jazz. That enablement no doubt involved the use of copyrighted material. But "
10906 "as aibopet.com's site was noncommercial, and the use did not enable "
10907 "subsequent copyright infringements, there's no doubt that aibopet.com's hack "
10908 "was fair use of Sony's copyrighted material. Yet fair use is not a defense "
10909 "to the DMCA. The question is not whether the use of the copyrighted material "
10910 "was a copyright violation. The question is whether a copyright protection "
10911 "system was circumvented."
10914 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10915 #: freeculture.xml:7837
10917 "The threat against Felten was more attenuated, but it followed the same line "
10918 "of reasoning. By publishing a paper describing how a copyright protection "
10919 "system could be circumvented, the RIAA lawyer suggested, Felten himself was "
10920 "distributing a circumvention technology. Thus, even though he was not "
10921 "himself infringing anyone's copyright, his academic paper was enabling "
10922 "others to infringe others' copyright."
10925 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
10926 #: freeculture.xml:7844 freeculture.xml:7879
10927 msgid "Rogers, Fred"
10930 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10931 #: freeculture.xml:7855 freeculture.xml:7892 freeculture.xml:7918
10932 msgid "Conrad, Paul"
10935 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10936 #: freeculture.xml:7847
10938 "The bizarreness of these arguments is captured in a cartoon drawn in 1981 by "
10939 "Paul Conrad. At that time, a court in California had held that the VCR could "
10940 "be banned because it was a copyright-infringing technology: It enabled "
10941 "consumers to copy films without the permission of the copyright owner. No "
10942 "doubt there were uses of the technology that were legal: Fred Rogers, aka "
10943 "<quote><citetitle>Mr. Rogers</citetitle>,</quote> for example, had testified "
10944 "in that case that he wanted people to feel free to tape Mr. Rogers' "
10945 "Neighborhood. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
10948 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
10949 #: freeculture.xml:7874
10951 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <citetitle>Sony Corporation of "
10952 "America</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Universal City Studios, Inc</citetitle>., "
10953 "464 U.S. 417, 455 fn. 27 (1984). Rogers never changed his view about the "
10954 "VCR. See James Lardner, <citetitle>Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, "
10955 "and the Onslaught of the VCR</citetitle> (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), "
10956 "270–71. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
10959 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
10960 #: freeculture.xml:7859
10962 "Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "
10963 "<quote>Neighborhood</quote> at hours when some children cannot use it. I "
10964 "think that it's a real service to families to be able to record such "
10965 "programs and show them at appropriate times. I have always felt that with "
10966 "the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the "
10967 "<quote>Neighborhood</quote> off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "
10968 "<quote>Neighborhood</quote> because that's what I produce, that they then "
10969 "become much more active in the programming of their family's television "
10970 "life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My "
10971 "whole approach in broadcasting has always been <quote>You are an important "
10972 "person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.</quote> Maybe "
10973 "I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to "
10974 "be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is "
10975 "important.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
10979 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10980 #: freeculture.xml:7885
10982 "Even though there were uses that were legal, because there were some uses "
10983 "that were illegal, the court held the companies producing the VCR "
10987 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10988 #: freeculture.xml:7890
10990 "This led Conrad to draw the cartoon below, which we can adopt to the DMCA. "
10991 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
10994 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10995 #: freeculture.xml:7895
10996 msgid "No argument I have can top this picture, but let me try to get close."
10999 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11000 #: freeculture.xml:7898
11002 "The anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA target copyright circumvention "
11003 "technologies. Circumvention technologies can be used for different "
11004 "ends. They can be used, for example, to enable massive pirating of "
11005 "copyrighted material—a bad end. Or they can be used to enable the use "
11006 "of particular copyrighted materials in ways that would be considered fair "
11007 "use—a good end."
11010 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11011 #: freeculture.xml:7905
11016 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11017 #: freeculture.xml:7907
11019 "A handgun can be used to shoot a police officer or a child. Most would agree "
11020 "such a use is bad. Or a handgun can be used for target practice or to "
11021 "protect against an intruder. At least some would say that such a use would "
11022 "be good. It, too, is a technology that has both good and bad uses."
11025 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
11026 #: freeculture.xml:7915
11027 msgid "VCR/handgun cartoon."
11030 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
11031 #: freeculture.xml:7916
11032 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1711.png\"></graphic>"
11035 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11036 #: freeculture.xml:7920
11038 "The obvious point of Conrad's cartoon is the weirdness of a world where guns "
11039 "are legal, despite the harm they can do, while VCRs (and circumvention "
11040 "technologies) are illegal. Flash: <emphasis>No one ever died from copyright "
11041 "circumvention</emphasis>. Yet the law bans circumvention technologies "
11042 "absolutely, despite the potential that they might do some good, but permits "
11043 "guns, despite the obvious and tragic harm they do."
11046 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11047 #: freeculture.xml:7933
11049 "The Aibo and RIAA examples demonstrate how copyright owners are changing the "
11050 "balance that copyright law grants. Using code, copyright owners restrict "
11051 "fair use; using the DMCA, they punish those who would attempt to evade the "
11052 "restrictions on fair use that they impose through code. Technology becomes a "
11053 "means by which fair use can be erased; the law of the DMCA backs up that "
11057 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11058 #: freeculture.xml:7941
11060 "This is how <emphasis>code</emphasis> becomes <emphasis>law</emphasis>. The "
11061 "controls built into the technology of copy and access protection become "
11062 "rules the violation of which is also a violation of the law. In this way, "
11063 "the code extends the law—increasing its regulation, even if the "
11064 "subject it regulates (activities that would otherwise plainly constitute "
11065 "fair use) is beyond the reach of the law. Code becomes law; code extends the "
11066 "law; code thus extends the control that copyright owners effect—at "
11067 "least for those copyright holders with the lawyers who can write the nasty "
11068 "letters that Felten and aibopet.com received."
11071 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11072 #: freeculture.xml:7953
11074 "There is one final aspect of the interaction between architecture and law "
11075 "that contributes to the force of copyright's regulation. This is the ease "
11076 "with which infringements of the law can be detected. For contrary to the "
11077 "rhetoric common at the birth of cyberspace that on the Internet, no one "
11078 "knows you're a dog, increasingly, given changing technologies deployed on "
11079 "the Internet, it is easy to find the dog who committed a legal wrong. The "
11080 "technologies of the Internet are open to snoops as well as sharers, and the "
11081 "snoops are increasingly good at tracking down the identity of those who "
11082 "violate the rules."
11086 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11087 #: freeculture.xml:7972
11089 "For an early and prescient analysis, see Rebecca Tushnet, <quote>Legal "
11090 "Fictions, Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law,</quote> "
11091 "<citetitle>Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal</citetitle> 17 "
11095 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11096 #: freeculture.xml:7966
11098 "For example, imagine you were part of a <citetitle>Star Trek</citetitle> fan "
11099 "club. You gathered every month to share trivia, and maybe to enact a kind of "
11100 "fan fiction about the show. One person would play Spock, another, Captain "
11101 "Kirk. The characters would begin with a plot from a real story, then simply "
11102 "continue it.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11105 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11106 #: freeculture.xml:7978
11108 "Before the Internet, this was, in effect, a totally unregulated activity. "
11109 "No matter what happened inside your club room, you would never be interfered "
11110 "with by the copyright police. You were free in that space to do as you "
11111 "wished with this part of our culture. You were allowed to build on it as you "
11112 "wished without fear of legal control."
11115 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11116 #: freeculture.xml:7986
11118 "But if you moved your club onto the Internet, and made it generally "
11119 "available for others to join, the story would be very different. Bots "
11120 "scouring the Net for trademark and copyright infringement would quickly find "
11121 "your site. Your posting of fan fiction, depending upon the ownership of the "
11122 "series that you're depicting, could well inspire a lawyer's threat. And "
11123 "ignoring the lawyer's threat would be extremely costly indeed. The law of "
11124 "copyright is extremely efficient. The penalties are severe, and the process "
11128 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11129 #: freeculture.xml:7996
11131 "This change in the effective force of the law is caused by a change in the "
11132 "ease with which the law can be enforced. That change too shifts the law's "
11133 "balance radically. It is as if your car transmitted the speed at which you "
11134 "traveled at every moment that you drove; that would be just one step before "
11135 "the state started issuing tickets based upon the data you transmitted. That "
11136 "is, in effect, what is happening here."
11139 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
11140 #: freeculture.xml:8005
11141 msgid "Market: Concentration"
11145 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11146 #: freeculture.xml:8007
11148 "So copyright's duration has increased dramatically—tripled in the past "
11149 "thirty years. And copyright's scope has increased as well—from "
11150 "regulating only publishers to now regulating just about everyone. And "
11151 "copyright's reach has changed, as every action becomes a copy and hence "
11152 "presumptively regulated. And as technologists find better ways to control "
11153 "the use of content, and as copyright is increasingly enforced through "
11154 "technology, copyright's force changes, too. Misuse is easier to find and "
11155 "easier to control. This regulation of the creative process, which began as a "
11156 "tiny regulation governing a tiny part of the market for creative work, has "
11157 "become the single most important regulator of creativity there is. It is a "
11158 "massive expansion in the scope of the government's control over innovation "
11159 "and creativity; it would be totally unrecognizable to those who gave birth "
11160 "to copyright's control."
11163 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11164 #: freeculture.xml:8025
11166 "Still, in my view, all of these changes would not matter much if it weren't "
11167 "for one more change that we must also consider. This is a change that is in "
11168 "some sense the most familiar, though its significance and scope are not well "
11169 "understood. It is the one that creates precisely the reason to be concerned "
11170 "about all the other changes I have described."
11173 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11174 #: freeculture.xml:8032
11176 "This is the change in the concentration and integration of the media. In "
11177 "the past twenty years, the nature of media ownership has undergone a radical "
11178 "alteration, caused by changes in legal rules governing the media. Before "
11179 "this change happened, the different forms of media were owned by separate "
11180 "media companies. Now, the media is increasingly owned by only a few "
11181 "companies. Indeed, after the changes that the FCC announced in June 2003, "
11182 "most expect that within a few years, we will live in a world where just "
11183 "three companies control more than percent of the media."
11186 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11187 #: freeculture.xml:8043
11188 msgid "These changes are of two sorts: the scope of concentration, and its nature."
11191 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11192 #: freeculture.xml:8047
11196 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11197 #: freeculture.xml:8048 freeculture.xml:9392
11201 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11202 #: freeculture.xml:8049
11203 msgid "McCain, John"
11206 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11207 #: freeculture.xml:8050 freeculture.xml:9393
11208 msgid "Universal Music Group"
11211 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11212 #: freeculture.xml:8051
11213 msgid "Warner Music Group"
11217 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11218 #: freeculture.xml:8057
11220 "FCC Oversight: Hearing Before the Senate Commerce, Science and "
11221 "Transportation Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (22 May 2003) (statement "
11222 "of Senator John McCain)."
11226 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11227 #: freeculture.xml:8064
11229 "Lynette Holloway, <quote>Despite a Marketing Blitz, CD Sales Continue to "
11230 "Slide,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 23 December 2002."
11234 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11235 #: freeculture.xml:8070
11237 "Molly Ivins, <quote>Media Consolidation Must Be Stopped,</quote> "
11238 "<citetitle>Charleston Gazette</citetitle>, 31 May 2003."
11241 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11242 #: freeculture.xml:8053
11244 "Changes in scope are the easier ones to describe. As Senator John McCain "
11245 "summarized the data produced in the FCC's review of media ownership, "
11246 "<quote>five companies control 85 percent of our media "
11247 "sources.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The five recording "
11248 "labels of Universal Music Group, BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music "
11249 "Group, and EMI control 84.8 percent of the U.S. music market.<placeholder "
11250 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> The <quote>five largest cable companies pipe "
11251 "programming to 74 percent of the cable subscribers "
11252 "nationwide.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/>"
11256 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11257 #: freeculture.xml:8075
11259 "The story with radio is even more dramatic. Before deregulation, the "
11260 "nation's largest radio broadcasting conglomerate owned fewer than "
11261 "seventy-five stations. Today <emphasis>one</emphasis> company owns more than "
11262 "1,200 stations. During that period of consolidation, the total number of "
11263 "radio owners dropped by 34 percent. Today, in most markets, the two largest "
11264 "broadcasters control 74 percent of that market's revenues. Overall, just "
11265 "four companies control 90 percent of the nation's radio advertising "
11269 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11270 #: freeculture.xml:8087
11272 "Newspaper ownership is becoming more concentrated as well. Today, there are "
11273 "six hundred fewer daily newspapers in the United States than there were "
11274 "eighty years ago, and ten companies control half of the nation's "
11275 "circulation. There are twenty major newspaper publishers in the United "
11276 "States. The top ten film studios receive 99 percent of all film revenue. The "
11277 "ten largest cable companies account for 85 percent of all cable "
11278 "revenue. This is a market far from the free press the framers sought to "
11279 "protect. Indeed, it is a market that is quite well protected— by the "
11283 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11284 #: freeculture.xml:8101 freeculture.xml:8118
11285 msgid "Fallows, James"
11288 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11289 #: freeculture.xml:8098
11291 "Concentration in size alone is one thing. The more invidious change is in "
11292 "the nature of that concentration. As author James Fallows put it in a recent "
11293 "article about Rupert Murdoch, <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
11296 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
11297 #: freeculture.xml:8116
11299 "James Fallows, <quote>The Age of Murdoch,</quote> <citetitle>Atlantic "
11300 "Monthly</citetitle> (September 2003): 89. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
11304 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
11305 #: freeculture.xml:8105
11307 "Murdoch's companies now constitute a production system unmatched in its "
11308 "integration. They supply content—Fox movies … Fox TV shows "
11309 "… Fox-controlled sports broadcasts, plus newspapers and books. They "
11310 "sell the content to the public and to advertisers—in newspapers, on "
11311 "the broadcast network, on the cable channels. And they operate the physical "
11312 "distribution system through which the content reaches the "
11313 "customers. Murdoch's satellite systems now distribute News Corp. content in "
11314 "Europe and Asia; if Murdoch becomes DirecTV's largest single owner, that "
11315 "system will serve the same function in the United States.<placeholder "
11316 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11319 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11320 #: freeculture.xml:8123
11322 "The pattern with Murdoch is the pattern of modern media. Not just large "
11323 "companies owning many radio stations, but a few companies owning as many "
11324 "outlets of media as possible. A picture describes this pattern better than a "
11325 "thousand words could do:"
11328 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
11329 #: freeculture.xml:8129
11330 msgid "Pattern of modern media ownership."
11333 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
11334 #: freeculture.xml:8130
11335 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1761.png\"></graphic>"
11339 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11340 #: freeculture.xml:8134
11342 "Does this concentration matter? Will it affect what is made, or what is "
11343 "distributed? Or is it merely a more efficient way to produce and distribute "
11347 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11348 #: freeculture.xml:8139
11350 "My view was that concentration wouldn't matter. I thought it was nothing "
11351 "more than a more efficient financial structure. But now, after reading and "
11352 "listening to a barrage of creators try to convince me to the contrary, I am "
11353 "beginning to change my mind."
11356 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11357 #: freeculture.xml:8145
11359 "Here's a representative story that begins to suggest how this integration "
11363 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11364 #: freeculture.xml:8148
11365 msgid "Lear, Norman"
11368 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11369 #: freeculture.xml:8150 freeculture.xml:8213
11370 msgid "All in the Family"
11373 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11374 #: freeculture.xml:8152
11376 "In 1969, Norman Lear created a pilot for <citetitle>All in the "
11377 "Family</citetitle>. He took the pilot to ABC. The network didn't like it. It "
11378 "was too edgy, they told Lear. Make it again. Lear made a second pilot, more "
11379 "edgy than the first. ABC was exasperated. You're missing the point, they "
11380 "told Lear. We wanted less edgy, not more."
11384 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11385 #: freeculture.xml:8164
11387 "Leonard Hill, <quote>The Axis of Access,</quote> remarks before Weidenbaum "
11388 "Center Forum, <quote>Entertainment Economics: The Movie Industry,</quote> "
11389 "St. Louis, Missouri, 3 April 2003 (transcript of prepared remarks available "
11390 "at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #28</ulink>; for the "
11391 "Lear story, not included in the prepared remarks, see <ulink "
11392 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #29</ulink>)."
11395 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11396 #: freeculture.xml:8159
11398 "Rather than comply, Lear simply took the show elsewhere. CBS was happy to "
11399 "have the series; ABC could not stop Lear from walking. The copyrights that "
11400 "Lear held assured an independence from network control.<placeholder "
11401 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11405 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11406 #: freeculture.xml:8175
11408 "The network did not control those copyrights because the law forbade the "
11409 "networks from controlling the content they syndicated. The law required a "
11410 "separation between the networks and the content producers; that separation "
11411 "would guarantee Lear freedom. And as late as 1992, because of these rules, "
11412 "the vast majority of prime time television—75 percent of it—was "
11413 "<quote>independent</quote> of the networks."
11417 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11418 #: freeculture.xml:8194
11420 "NewsCorp./DirecTV Merger and Media Consolidation: Hearings on Media "
11421 "Ownership Before the Senate Commerce Committee, 108th Cong., 1st "
11422 "sess. (2003) (testimony of Gene Kimmelman on behalf of Consumers Union and "
11423 "the Consumer Federation of America), available at <ulink "
11424 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #30</ulink>. Kimmelman quotes "
11425 "Victoria Riskin, president of Writers Guild of America, West, in her Remarks "
11426 "at FCC En Banc Hearing, Richmond, Virginia, 27 February 2003."
11429 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11430 #: freeculture.xml:8184
11432 "In 1994, the FCC abandoned the rules that required this independence. After "
11433 "that change, the networks quickly changed the balance. In 1985, there were "
11434 "twenty-five independent television production studios; in 2002, only five "
11435 "independent television studios remained. <quote>In 1992, only 15 percent of "
11436 "new series were produced for a network by a company it controlled. Last "
11437 "year, the percentage of shows produced by controlled companies more than "
11438 "quintupled to 77 percent.</quote> <quote>In 1992, 16 new series were "
11439 "produced independently of conglomerate control, last year there was "
11440 "one.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> In 2002, 75 percent of "
11441 "prime time television was owned by the networks that ran it. <quote>In the "
11442 "ten-year period between 1992 and 2002, the number of prime time television "
11443 "hours per week produced by network studios increased over 200%, whereas the "
11444 "number of prime time television hours per week produced by independent "
11445 "studios decreased 63%.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
11448 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11449 #: freeculture.xml:8215
11451 "Today, another Norman Lear with another <citetitle>All in the "
11452 "Family</citetitle> would find that he had the choice either to make the show "
11453 "less edgy or to be fired: The content of any show developed for a network is "
11454 "increasingly owned by the network."
11457 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11458 #: freeculture.xml:8220
11459 msgid "Diller, Barry"
11462 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11463 #: freeculture.xml:8221
11464 msgid "Moyers, Bill"
11467 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11468 #: freeculture.xml:8223
11470 "While the number of channels has increased dramatically, the ownership of "
11471 "those channels has narrowed to an ever smaller and smaller few. As Barry "
11472 "Diller said to Bill Moyers,"
11476 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
11477 #: freeculture.xml:8238
11479 "<quote>Barry Diller Takes on Media Deregulation,</quote> <citetitle>Now with "
11480 "Bill Moyers</citetitle>, Bill Moyers, 25 April 2003, edited transcript "
11481 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #31</ulink>."
11484 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
11485 #: freeculture.xml:8229
11487 "Well, if you have companies that produce, that finance, that air on their "
11488 "channel and then distribute worldwide everything that goes through their "
11489 "controlled distribution system, then what you get is fewer and fewer actual "
11490 "voices participating in the process. [We u]sed to have dozens and dozens of "
11491 "thriving independent production companies producing television programs. Now "
11492 "you have less than a handful.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11495 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11496 #: freeculture.xml:8245
11498 "This narrowing has an effect on what is produced. The product of such large "
11499 "and concentrated networks is increasingly homogenous. Increasingly "
11500 "safe. Increasingly sterile. The product of news shows from networks like "
11501 "this is increasingly tailored to the message the network wants to "
11502 "convey. This is not the communist party, though from the inside, it must "
11503 "feel a bit like the communist party. No one can question without risk of "
11504 "consequence—not necessarily banishment to Siberia, but punishment "
11505 "nonetheless. Independent, critical, different views are quashed. This is not "
11506 "the environment for a democracy."
11509 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11510 #: freeculture.xml:8256
11511 msgid "Clark, Kim B."
11515 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11516 #: freeculture.xml:8265
11518 "Clayton M. Christensen, <citetitle>The Innovator's Dilemma: The "
11519 "Revolutionary National Bestseller that Changed the Way We Do "
11520 "Business</citetitle> (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, "
11521 "1997). Christensen acknowledges that the idea was first suggested by Dean "
11522 "Kim Clark. See Kim B. Clark, <quote>The Interaction of Design Hierarchies "
11523 "and Market Concepts in Technological Evolution,</quote> <citetitle>Research "
11524 "Policy</citetitle> 14 (1985): 235–51. For a more recent study, see "
11525 "Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan, <citetitle>Creative Destruction: Why "
11526 "Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market—and How to "
11527 "Successfully Transform Them</citetitle> (New York: Currency/Doubleday, "
11531 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11532 #: freeculture.xml:8258
11534 "Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration "
11535 "affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the "
11536 "<quote>Innovator's Dilemma</quote>: the fact that large traditional firms "
11537 "find it rational to ignore new, breakthrough technologies that compete with "
11538 "their core business. The same analysis could help explain why large, "
11539 "traditional media companies would find it rational to ignore new cultural "
11540 "trends.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Lumbering giants not only "
11541 "don't, but should not, sprint. Yet if the field is only open to the giants, "
11542 "there will be far too little sprinting. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
11546 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11547 #: freeculture.xml:8282
11549 "I don't think we know enough about the economics of the media market to say "
11550 "with certainty what concentration and integration will do. The efficiencies "
11551 "are important, and the effect on culture is hard to measure."
11554 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11555 #: freeculture.xml:8288
11557 "But there is a quintessentially obvious example that does strongly suggest "
11561 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11562 #: freeculture.xml:8292
11564 "In addition to the copyright wars, we're in the middle of the drug "
11565 "wars. Government policy is strongly directed against the drug cartels; "
11566 "criminal and civil courts are filled with the consequences of this battle."
11570 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11571 #: freeculture.xml:8297
11573 "Let me hereby disqualify myself from any possible appointment to any "
11574 "position in government by saying I believe this war is a profound mistake. I "
11575 "am not pro drugs. Indeed, I come from a family once wrecked by "
11576 "drugs—though the drugs that wrecked my family were all quite legal. I "
11577 "believe this war is a profound mistake because the collateral damage from it "
11578 "is so great as to make waging the war insane. When you add together the "
11579 "burdens on the criminal justice system, the desperation of generations of "
11580 "kids whose only real economic opportunities are as drug warriors, the "
11581 "queering of constitutional protections because of the constant surveillance "
11582 "this war requires, and, most profoundly, the total destruction of the legal "
11583 "systems of many South American nations because of the power of the local "
11584 "drug cartels, I find it impossible to believe that the marginal benefit in "
11585 "reduced drug consumption by Americans could possibly outweigh these costs."
11588 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11589 #: freeculture.xml:8316
11591 "You may not be convinced. That's fine. We live in a democracy, and it is "
11592 "through votes that we are to choose policy. But to do that, we depend "
11593 "fundamentally upon the press to help inform Americans about these issues."
11596 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11597 #: freeculture.xml:8323
11599 "Beginning in 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy launched a "
11600 "media campaign as part of the <quote>war on drugs.</quote> The campaign "
11601 "produced scores of short film clips about issues related to illegal "
11602 "drugs. In one series (the Nick and Norm series) two men are in a bar, "
11603 "discussing the idea of legalizing drugs as a way to avoid some of the "
11604 "collateral damage from the war. One advances an argument in favor of drug "
11605 "legalization. The other responds in a powerful and effective way against the "
11606 "argument of the first. In the end, the first guy changes his mind (hey, it's "
11607 "television). The plug at the end is a damning attack on the pro-legalization "
11611 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11612 #: freeculture.xml:8335
11614 "Fair enough. It's a good ad. Not terribly misleading. It delivers its "
11615 "message well. It's a fair and reasonable message."
11618 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11619 #: freeculture.xml:8339
11621 "But let's say you think it is a wrong message, and you'd like to run a "
11622 "countercommercial. Say you want to run a series of ads that try to "
11623 "demonstrate the extraordinary collateral harm that comes from the drug "
11624 "war. Can you do it?"
11628 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11629 #: freeculture.xml:8345
11631 "Well, obviously, these ads cost lots of money. Assume you raise the "
11632 "money. Assume a group of concerned citizens donates all the money in the "
11633 "world to help you get your message out. Can you be sure your message will be "
11637 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11638 #: freeculture.xml:8387
11642 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11643 #: freeculture.xml:8388
11644 msgid "Marijuana Policy Project"
11647 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11648 #: freeculture.xml:8389
11652 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11653 #: freeculture.xml:8390
11657 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11658 #: freeculture.xml:8391
11662 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11663 #: freeculture.xml:8362
11665 "The Marijuana Policy Project, in February 2003, sought to place ads that "
11666 "directly responded to the Nick and Norm series on stations within the "
11667 "Washington, D.C., area. Comcast rejected the ads as <quote>against [their] "
11668 "policy.</quote> The local NBC affiliate, WRC, rejected the ads without "
11669 "reviewing them. The local ABC affiliate, WJOA, originally agreed to run the "
11670 "ads and accepted payment to do so, but later decided not to run the ads and "
11671 "returned the collected fees. Interview with Neal Levine, 15 October 2003. "
11672 "These restrictions are, of course, not limited to drug policy. See, for "
11673 "example, Nat Ives, <quote>On the Issue of an Iraq War, Advocacy Ads Meet "
11674 "with Rejection from TV Networks,</quote> <citetitle>New York "
11675 "Times</citetitle>, 13 March 2003, C4. Outside of election-related air time "
11676 "there is very little that the FCC or the courts are willing to do to even "
11677 "the playing field. For a general overview, see Rhonda Brown, <quote>Ad Hoc "
11678 "Access: The Regulation of Editorial Advertising on Television and "
11679 "Radio,</quote> <citetitle>Yale Law and Policy Review</citetitle> 6 (1988): "
11680 "449–79, and for a more recent summary of the stance of the FCC and the "
11681 "courts, see <citetitle>Radio-Television News Directors "
11682 "Association</citetitle> v. <citetitle>FCC</citetitle>, 184 F. 3d 872 "
11683 "(D.C. Cir. 1999). Municipal authorities exercise the same authority as the "
11684 "networks. In a recent example from San Francisco, the San Francisco transit "
11685 "authority rejected an ad that criticized its Muni diesel buses. Phillip "
11686 "Matier and Andrew Ross, <quote>Antidiesel Group Fuming After Muni Rejects "
11687 "Ad,</quote> SFGate.com, 16 June 2003, available at <ulink "
11688 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #32</ulink>. The ground was that "
11689 "the criticism was <quote>too controversial.</quote> <placeholder "
11690 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> "
11691 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
11692 "id=\"3\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"4\"/> <placeholder "
11693 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"5\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"6\"/>"
11696 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11697 #: freeculture.xml:8352
11699 "No. You cannot. Television stations have a general policy of avoiding "
11700 "<quote>controversial</quote> ads. Ads sponsored by the government are deemed "
11701 "uncontroversial; ads disagreeing with the government are controversial. "
11702 "This selectivity might be thought inconsistent with the First Amendment, but "
11703 "the Supreme Court has held that stations have the right to choose what they "
11704 "run. Thus, the major channels of commercial media will refuse one side of a "
11705 "crucial debate the opportunity to present its case. And the courts will "
11706 "defend the rights of the stations to be this biased.<placeholder "
11707 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11710 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11711 #: freeculture.xml:8396
11713 "I'd be happy to defend the networks' rights, as well—if we lived in a "
11714 "media market that was truly diverse. But concentration in the media throws "
11715 "that condition into doubt. If a handful of companies control access to the "
11716 "media, and that handful of companies gets to decide which political "
11717 "positions it will allow to be promoted on its channels, then in an obvious "
11718 "and important way, concentration matters. You might like the positions the "
11719 "handful of companies selects. But you should not like a world in which a "
11720 "mere few get to decide which issues the rest of us get to know about."
11723 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
11724 #: freeculture.xml:8409
11728 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11729 #: freeculture.xml:8411
11731 "There is something innocent and obvious about the claim of the copyright "
11732 "warriors that the government should <quote>protect my property.</quote> In "
11733 "the abstract, it is obviously true and, ordinarily, totally harmless. No "
11734 "sane sort who is not an anarchist could disagree."
11738 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11739 #: freeculture.xml:8417
11741 "But when we see how dramatically this <quote>property</quote> has "
11742 "changed— when we recognize how it might now interact with both "
11743 "technology and markets to mean that the effective constraint on the liberty "
11744 "to cultivate our culture is dramatically different—the claim begins to "
11745 "seem less innocent and obvious. Given (1) the power of technology to "
11746 "supplement the law's control, and (2) the power of concentrated markets to "
11747 "weaken the opportunity for dissent, if strictly enforcing the massively "
11748 "expanded <quote>property</quote> rights granted by copyright fundamentally "
11749 "changes the freedom within this culture to cultivate and build upon our "
11750 "past, then we have to ask whether this property should be redefined."
11753 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11754 #: freeculture.xml:8433
11756 "Not starkly. Or absolutely. My point is not that we should abolish copyright "
11757 "or go back to the eighteenth century. That would be a total mistake, "
11758 "disastrous for the most important creative enterprises within our culture "
11762 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11763 #: freeculture.xml:8439
11765 "But there is a space between zero and one, Internet culture "
11766 "notwithstanding. And these massive shifts in the effective power of "
11767 "copyright regulation, tied to increased concentration of the content "
11768 "industry and resting in the hands of technology that will increasingly "
11769 "enable control over the use of culture, should drive us to consider whether "
11770 "another adjustment is called for. Not an adjustment that increases "
11771 "copyright's power. Not an adjustment that increases its term. Rather, an "
11772 "adjustment to restore the balance that has traditionally defined copyright's "
11773 "regulation—a weakening of that regulation, to strengthen creativity."
11776 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11777 #: freeculture.xml:8451
11779 "Copyright law has not been a rock of Gibraltar. It's not a set of constant "
11780 "commitments that, for some mysterious reason, teenagers and geeks now "
11781 "flout. Instead, copyright power has grown dramatically in a short period of "
11782 "time, as the technologies of distribution and creation have changed and as "
11783 "lobbyists have pushed for more control by copyright holders. Changes in the "
11784 "past in response to changes in technology suggest that we may well need "
11785 "similar changes in the future. And these changes have to be "
11786 "<emphasis>reductions</emphasis> in the scope of copyright, in response to "
11787 "the extraordinary increase in control that technology and the market enable."
11791 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11792 #: freeculture.xml:8463
11794 "For the single point that is lost in this war on pirates is a point that we "
11795 "see only after surveying the range of these changes. When you add together "
11796 "the effect of changing law, concentrated markets, and changing technology, "
11797 "together they produce an astonishing conclusion: <emphasis>Never in our "
11798 "history have fewer had a legal right to control more of the development of "
11799 "our culture than now</emphasis>."
11802 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11803 #: freeculture.xml:8487
11805 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Siva Vaidhyanathan captures a "
11806 "similar point in his <quote>four surrenders</quote> of copyright law in the "
11807 "digital age. See Vaidhyanathan, 159–60."
11810 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11811 #: freeculture.xml:8472
11813 "Not when copyrights were perpetual, for when copyrights were perpetual, they "
11814 "affected only that precise creative work. Not when only publishers had the "
11815 "tools to publish, for the market then was much more diverse. Not when there "
11816 "were only three television networks, for even then, newspapers, film "
11817 "studios, radio stations, and publishers were independent of the "
11818 "networks. <emphasis>Never</emphasis> has copyright protected such a wide "
11819 "range of rights, against as broad a range of actors, for a term that was "
11820 "remotely as long. This form of regulation—a tiny regulation of a tiny "
11821 "part of the creative energy of a nation at the founding—is now a "
11822 "massive regulation of the overall creative process. Law plus technology plus "
11823 "the market now interact to turn this historically benign regulation into the "
11824 "most significant regulation of culture that our free society has "
11825 "known.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11828 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11829 #: freeculture.xml:8493
11831 "<emphasis role='strong'>This has been</emphasis> a long chapter. Its point "
11832 "can now be briefly stated."
11835 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11836 #: freeculture.xml:8497
11838 "At the start of this book, I distinguished between commercial and "
11839 "noncommercial culture. In the course of this chapter, I have distinguished "
11840 "between copying a work and transforming it. We can now combine these two "
11841 "distinctions and draw a clear map of the changes that copyright law has "
11842 "undergone. In 1790, the law looked like this:"
11845 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
11846 #: freeculture.xml:8509 freeculture.xml:8546
11850 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
11851 #: freeculture.xml:8510 freeculture.xml:8547 freeculture.xml:8585 freeculture.xml:8617
11855 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11856 #: freeculture.xml:8515 freeculture.xml:8552 freeculture.xml:8590 freeculture.xml:8622
11860 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11861 #: freeculture.xml:8516 freeculture.xml:8553 freeculture.xml:8554 freeculture.xml:8591 freeculture.xml:8592 freeculture.xml:8623 freeculture.xml:8624 freeculture.xml:8628 freeculture.xml:8629
11865 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11866 #: freeculture.xml:8517 freeculture.xml:8521 freeculture.xml:8522 freeculture.xml:8558 freeculture.xml:8559 freeculture.xml:8597
11870 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11871 #: freeculture.xml:8520 freeculture.xml:8557 freeculture.xml:8595 freeculture.xml:8627
11872 msgid "Noncommercial"
11876 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11877 #: freeculture.xml:8529
11879 "The act of publishing a map, chart, and book was regulated by copyright "
11880 "law. Nothing else was. Transformations were free. And as copyright attached "
11881 "only with registration, and only those who intended to benefit commercially "
11882 "would register, copying through publishing of noncommercial work was also "
11886 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11887 #: freeculture.xml:8538
11888 msgid "By the end of the nineteenth century, the law had changed to this:"
11891 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11892 #: freeculture.xml:8566
11894 "Derivative works were now regulated by copyright law—if published, "
11895 "which again, given the economics of publishing at the time, means if offered "
11896 "commercially. But noncommercial publishing and transformation were still "
11897 "essentially free."
11900 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11901 #: freeculture.xml:8572
11903 "In 1909 the law changed to regulate copies, not publishing, and after this "
11904 "change, the scope of the law was tied to technology. As the technology of "
11905 "copying became more prevalent, the reach of the law expanded. Thus by 1975, "
11906 "as photocopying machines became more common, we could say the law began to "
11910 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
11911 #: freeculture.xml:8584 freeculture.xml:8616
11915 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11916 #: freeculture.xml:8596
11917 msgid "©/Free"
11920 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11921 #: freeculture.xml:8604
11923 "The law was interpreted to reach noncommercial copying through, say, copy "
11924 "machines, but still much of copying outside of the commercial market "
11925 "remained free. But the consequence of the emergence of digital technologies, "
11926 "especially in the context of a digital network, means that the law now looks "
11931 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11932 #: freeculture.xml:8636
11934 "Every realm is governed by copyright law, whereas before most creativity was "
11935 "not. The law now regulates the full range of creativity— commercial or "
11936 "not, transformative or not—with the same rules designed to regulate "
11937 "commercial publishers."
11940 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11941 #: freeculture.xml:8644
11943 "Obviously, copyright law is not the enemy. The enemy is regulation that does "
11944 "no good. So the question that we should be asking just now is whether "
11945 "extending the regulations of copyright law into each of these domains "
11946 "actually does any good."
11949 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11950 #: freeculture.xml:8650
11952 "I have no doubt that it does good in regulating commercial copying. But I "
11953 "also have no doubt that it does more harm than good when regulating (as it "
11954 "regulates just now) noncommercial copying and, especially, noncommercial "
11955 "transformation. And increasingly, for the reasons sketched especially in "
11956 "chapters <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"recorders\"/> and "
11957 "<xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"transformers\"/>, one "
11958 "might well wonder whether it does more harm than good for commercial "
11959 "transformation. More commercial transformative work would be created if "
11960 "derivative rights were more sharply restricted."
11963 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11964 #: freeculture.xml:8674
11965 msgid "legal realist movement"
11968 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11969 #: freeculture.xml:8668
11971 "It was the single most important contribution of the legal realist movement "
11972 "to demonstrate that all property rights are always crafted to balance public "
11973 "and private interests. See Thomas C. Grey, <quote>The Disintegration of "
11974 "Property,</quote> in <citetitle>Nomos XXII: Property</citetitle>, J. Roland "
11975 "Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds. (New York: New York University Press, "
11976 "1980). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
11979 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11980 #: freeculture.xml:8662
11982 "The issue is therefore not simply whether copyright is property. Of course "
11983 "copyright is a kind of <quote>property,</quote> and of course, as with any "
11984 "property, the state ought to protect it. But first impressions "
11985 "notwithstanding, historically, this property right (as with all property "
11986 "rights<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>) has been crafted to "
11987 "balance the important need to give authors and artists incentives with the "
11988 "equally important need to assure access to creative work. This balance has "
11989 "always been struck in light of new technologies. And for almost half of our "
11990 "tradition, the <quote>copyright</quote> did not control <emphasis>at "
11991 "all</emphasis> the freedom of others to build upon or transform a creative "
11992 "work. American culture was born free, and for almost 180 years our country "
11993 "consistently protected a vibrant and rich free culture."
11997 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11998 #: freeculture.xml:8687
12000 "We achieved that free culture because our law respected important limits on "
12001 "the scope of the interests protected by <quote>property.</quote> The very "
12002 "birth of <quote>copyright</quote> as a statutory right recognized those "
12003 "limits, by granting copyright owners protection for a limited time only (the "
12004 "story of chapter 6). The tradition of <quote>fair use</quote> is animated by "
12005 "a similar concern that is increasingly under strain as the costs of "
12006 "exercising any fair use right become unavoidably high (the story of chapter "
12007 "7). Adding statutory rights where markets might stifle innovation is another "
12008 "familiar limit on the property right that copyright is (chapter 8). And "
12009 "granting archives and libraries a broad freedom to collect, claims of "
12010 "property notwithstanding, is a crucial part of guaranteeing the soul of a "
12011 "culture (chapter 9). Free cultures, like free markets, are built with "
12012 "property. But the nature of the property that builds a free culture is very "
12013 "different from the extremist vision that dominates the debate today."
12016 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12017 #: freeculture.xml:8706
12019 "Free culture is increasingly the casualty in this war on piracy. In response "
12020 "to a real, if not yet quantified, threat that the technologies of the "
12021 "Internet present to twentieth-century business models for producing and "
12022 "distributing culture, the law and technology are being transformed in a way "
12023 "that will undermine our tradition of free culture. The property right that "
12024 "is copyright is no longer the balanced right that it was, or was intended to "
12025 "be. The property right that is copyright has become unbalanced, tilted "
12026 "toward an extreme. The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened "
12027 "in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check "
12031 #. type: Content of: <book><part><title>
12032 #: freeculture.xml:8723
12036 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
12037 #: freeculture.xml:8727
12038 msgid "CHAPTER ELEVEN: Chimera"
12041 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
12042 #: freeculture.xml:8728
12046 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
12047 #: freeculture.xml:8729
12048 msgid "Wells, H. G."
12051 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
12052 #: freeculture.xml:8730
12053 msgid "<quote>Country of the Blind, The</quote> (Wells)"
12057 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
12058 #: freeculture.xml:8738
12060 "H. G. Wells, <quote>The Country of the Blind</quote> (1904, 1911). See "
12061 "H. G. Wells, <citetitle>The Country of the Blind and Other "
12062 "Stories</citetitle>, Michael Sherborne, ed. (New York: Oxford University "
12066 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12067 #: freeculture.xml:8733
12069 "<emphasis role='strong'>In a well-known</emphasis> short story by "
12070 "H. G. Wells, a mountain climber named Nunez trips (literally, down an ice "
12071 "slope) into an unknown and isolated valley in the Peruvian "
12072 "Andes.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The valley is "
12073 "extraordinarily beautiful, with <quote>sweet water, pasture, an even "
12074 "climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an "
12075 "excellent fruit.</quote> But the villagers are all blind. Nunez takes this "
12076 "as an opportunity. <quote>In the Country of the Blind,</quote> he tells "
12077 "himself, <quote>the One-Eyed Man is King.</quote> So he resolves to live "
12078 "with the villagers to explore life as a king."
12081 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12082 #: freeculture.xml:8750
12084 "Things don't go quite as he planned. He tries to explain the idea of sight "
12085 "to the villagers. They don't understand. He tells them they are "
12086 "<quote>blind.</quote> They don't have the word "
12087 "<citetitle>blind</citetitle>. They think he's just thick. Indeed, as they "
12088 "increasingly notice the things he can't do (hear the sound of grass being "
12089 "stepped on, for example), they increasingly try to control him. He, in turn, "
12090 "becomes increasingly frustrated. <quote>`You don't understand,' he cried, in "
12091 "a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke. `You are "
12092 "blind and I can see. Leave me alone!'</quote>"
12096 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12097 #: freeculture.xml:8762
12099 "The villagers don't leave him alone. Nor do they see (so to speak) the "
12100 "virtue of his special power. Not even the ultimate target of his affection, "
12101 "a young woman who to him seems <quote>the most beautiful thing in the whole "
12102 "of creation,</quote> understands the beauty of sight. Nunez's description of "
12103 "what he sees <quote>seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she "
12104 "listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet "
12105 "white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence.</quote> <quote>She "
12106 "did not believe,</quote> Wells tells us, and <quote>she could only half "
12107 "understand, but she was mysteriously delighted.</quote>"
12110 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12111 #: freeculture.xml:8773
12113 "When Nunez announces his desire to marry his <quote>mysteriously "
12114 "delighted</quote> love, the father and the village object. <quote>You see, "
12115 "my dear,</quote> her father instructs, <quote>he's an idiot. He has "
12116 "delusions. He can't do anything right.</quote> They take Nunez to the "
12120 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12121 #: freeculture.xml:8779
12123 "After a careful examination, the doctor gives his opinion. <quote>His brain "
12124 "is affected,</quote> he reports."
12127 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12128 #: freeculture.xml:8783
12130 "<quote>What affects it?</quote> the father asks. <quote>Those queer things "
12131 "that are called the eyes … are diseased … in such a way as to "
12132 "affect his brain.</quote>"
12135 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12136 #: freeculture.xml:8788
12138 "The doctor continues: <quote>I think I may say with reasonable certainty "
12139 "that in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple and "
12140 "easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies [the "
12144 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12145 #: freeculture.xml:8794
12147 "<quote>Thank Heaven for science!</quote> says the father to the doctor. They "
12148 "inform Nunez of this condition necessary for him to be allowed his bride. "
12149 "(You'll have to read the original to learn what happens in the end. I "
12150 "believe in free culture, but never in giving away the end of a story.)"
12154 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12155 #: freeculture.xml:8800
12157 "<emphasis role='strong'>It sometimes</emphasis> happens that the eggs of "
12158 "twins fuse in the mother's womb. That fusion produces a "
12159 "<quote>chimera.</quote> A chimera is a single creature with two sets of "
12160 "DNA. The DNA in the blood, for example, might be different from the DNA of "
12161 "the skin. This possibility is an underused plot for murder "
12162 "mysteries. <quote>But the DNA shows with 100 percent certainty that she was "
12163 "not the person whose blood was at the scene. …</quote>"
12166 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12167 #: freeculture.xml:8814
12169 "Before I had read about chimeras, I would have said they were impossible. A "
12170 "single person can't have two sets of DNA. The very idea of DNA is that it is "
12171 "the code of an individual. Yet in fact, not only can two individuals have "
12172 "the same set of DNA (identical twins), but one person can have two different "
12173 "sets of DNA (a chimera). Our understanding of a <quote>person</quote> should "
12174 "reflect this reality."
12177 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12178 #: freeculture.xml:8822
12180 "The more I work to understand the current struggle over copyright and "
12181 "culture, which I've sometimes called unfairly, and sometimes not unfairly "
12182 "enough, <quote>the copyright wars,</quote> the more I think we're dealing "
12183 "with a chimera. For example, in the battle over the question <quote>What is "
12184 "p2p file sharing?</quote> both sides have it right, and both sides have it "
12185 "wrong. One side says, <quote>File sharing is just like two kids taping each "
12186 "others' records—the sort of thing we've been doing for the last thirty "
12187 "years without any question at all.</quote> That's true, at least in "
12188 "part. When I tell my best friend to try out a new CD that I've bought, but "
12189 "rather than just send the CD, I point him to my p2p server, that is, in all "
12190 "relevant respects, just like what every executive in every recording company "
12191 "no doubt did as a kid: sharing music."
12194 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12195 #: freeculture.xml:8836
12197 "But the description is also false in part. For when my p2p server is on a "
12198 "p2p network through which anyone can get access to my music, then sure, my "
12199 "friends can get access, but it stretches the meaning of "
12200 "<quote>friends</quote> beyond recognition to say <quote>my ten thousand best "
12201 "friends</quote> can get access. Whether or not sharing my music with my best "
12202 "friend is what <quote>we have always been allowed to do,</quote> we have not "
12203 "always been allowed to share music with <quote>our ten thousand best "
12207 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12208 #: freeculture.xml:8845
12210 "Likewise, when the other side says, <quote>File sharing is just like walking "
12211 "into a Tower Records and taking a CD off the shelf and walking out with "
12212 "it,</quote> that's true, at least in part. If, after Lyle Lovett (finally) "
12213 "releases a new album, rather than buying it, I go to Kazaa and find a free "
12214 "copy to take, that is very much like stealing a copy from Tower. "
12215 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
12219 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12220 #: freeculture.xml:8856
12222 "But it is not quite stealing from Tower. After all, when I take a CD from "
12223 "Tower Records, Tower has one less CD to sell. And when I take a CD from "
12224 "Tower Records, I get a bit of plastic and a cover, and something to show on "
12225 "my shelves. (And, while we're at it, we could also note that when I take a "
12226 "CD from Tower Records, the maximum fine that might be imposed on me, under "
12227 "California law, at least, is $1,000. According to the RIAA, by contrast, if "
12228 "I download a ten-song CD, I'm liable for $1,500,000 in damages.)"
12231 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12232 #: freeculture.xml:8866
12234 "The point is not that it is as neither side describes. The point is that it "
12235 "is both—both as the RIAA describes it and as Kazaa describes it. It is "
12236 "a chimera. And rather than simply denying what the other side asserts, we "
12237 "need to begin to think about how we should respond to this chimera. What "
12238 "rules should govern it?"
12241 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12242 #: freeculture.xml:8882 freeculture.xml:9164 freeculture.xml:10200
12243 msgid "ISPs (Internet service providers), user identities revealed by"
12246 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12247 #: freeculture.xml:8913
12248 msgid "Conyers, John, Jr."
12251 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12252 #: freeculture.xml:8914 freeculture.xml:9635
12253 msgid "Berman, Howard L."
12256 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
12257 #: freeculture.xml:8882
12259 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> For an excellent summary, see the "
12260 "report prepared by GartnerG2 and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society "
12261 "at Harvard Law School, <quote>Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster "
12262 "World,</quote> 27 June 2003, available at <ulink "
12263 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #33</ulink>. Reps. John Conyers "
12264 "Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) have introduced a bill that "
12265 "would treat unauthorized on-line copying as a felony offense with "
12266 "punishments ranging as high as five years imprisonment; see Jon Healey, "
12267 "<quote>House Bill Aims to Up Stakes on Piracy,</quote> <citetitle>Los "
12268 "Angeles Times</citetitle>, 17 July 2003, available at <ulink "
12269 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #34</ulink>. Civil penalties are "
12270 "currently set at $150,000 per copied song. For a recent (and unsuccessful) "
12271 "legal challenge to the RIAA's demand that an ISP reveal the identity of a "
12272 "user accused of sharing more than 600 songs through a family computer, see "
12273 "<citetitle>RIAA</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Verizon Internet Services (In "
12274 "re. Verizon Internet Services)</citetitle>, 240 F. Supp. 2d 24 "
12275 "(D.D.C. 2003). Such a user could face liability ranging as high as $90 "
12276 "million. Such astronomical figures furnish the RIAA with a powerful arsenal "
12277 "in its prosecution of file sharers. Settlements ranging from $12,000 to "
12278 "$17,500 for four students accused of heavy file sharing on university "
12279 "networks must have seemed a mere pittance next to the $98 billion the RIAA "
12280 "could seek should the matter proceed to court. See Elizabeth Young, "
12281 "<quote>Downloading Could Lead to Fines,</quote> redandblack.com, August "
12282 "2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
12283 "#35</ulink>. For an example of the RIAA's targeting of student file sharing, "
12284 "and of the subpoenas issued to universities to reveal student file-sharer "
12285 "identities, see James Collins, <quote>RIAA Steps Up Bid to Force BC, MIT to "
12286 "Name Students,</quote> <citetitle>Boston Globe</citetitle>, 8 August 2003, "
12287 "D3, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
12288 "#36</ulink>. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder "
12289 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/>"
12292 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12293 #: freeculture.xml:8873
12295 "We could respond by simply pretending that it is not a chimera. We could, "
12296 "with the RIAA, decide that every act of file sharing should be a felony. We "
12297 "could prosecute families for millions of dollars in damages just because "
12298 "file sharing occurred on a family computer. And we can get universities to "
12299 "monitor all computer traffic to make sure that no computer is used to commit "
12300 "this crime. These responses might be extreme, but each of them has either "
12301 "been proposed or actually implemented.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
12305 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12306 #: freeculture.xml:8920
12308 "Alternatively, we could respond to file sharing the way many kids act as "
12309 "though we've responded. We could totally legalize it. Let there be no "
12310 "copyright liability, either civil or criminal, for making copyrighted "
12311 "content available on the Net. Make file sharing like gossip: regulated, if "
12312 "at all, by social norms but not by law."
12315 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12316 #: freeculture.xml:8927
12318 "Either response is possible. I think either would be a mistake. Rather than "
12319 "embrace one of these two extremes, we should embrace something that "
12320 "recognizes the truth in both. And while I end this book with a sketch of a "
12321 "system that does just that, my aim in the next chapter is to show just how "
12322 "awful it would be for us to adopt the zero-tolerance extreme. I believe "
12323 "<emphasis>either</emphasis> extreme would be worse than a reasonable "
12324 "alternative. But I believe the zero-tolerance solution would be the worse "
12325 "of the two extremes."
12329 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12330 #: freeculture.xml:8939
12332 "Yet zero tolerance is increasingly our government's policy. In the middle of "
12333 "the chaos that the Internet has created, an extraordinary land grab is "
12334 "occurring. The law and technology are being shifted to give content holders "
12335 "a kind of control over our culture that they have never had before. And in "
12336 "this extremism, many an opportunity for new innovation and new creativity "
12340 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12341 #: freeculture.xml:8947
12343 "I'm not talking about the opportunities for kids to <quote>steal</quote> "
12344 "music. My focus instead is the commercial and cultural innovation that this "
12345 "war will also kill. We have never seen the power to innovate spread so "
12346 "broadly among our citizens, and we have just begun to see the innovation "
12347 "that this power will unleash. Yet the Internet has already seen the passing "
12348 "of one cycle of innovation around technologies to distribute content. The "
12349 "law is responsible for this passing. As the vice president for global public "
12350 "policy at one of these new innovators, eMusic.com, put it when criticizing "
12351 "the DMCA's added protection for copyrighted material,"
12354 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
12355 #: freeculture.xml:8960
12357 "eMusic opposes music piracy. We are a distributor of copyrighted material, "
12358 "and we want to protect those rights."
12361 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
12362 #: freeculture.xml:8964
12364 "But building a technology fortress that locks in the clout of the major "
12365 "labels is by no means the only way to protect copyright interests, nor is it "
12366 "necessarily the best. It is simply too early to answer that question. Market "
12367 "forces operating naturally may very well produce a totally different "
12372 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
12373 #: freeculture.xml:8981
12375 "WIPO and the DMCA One Year Later: Assessing Consumer Access to Digital "
12376 "Entertainment on the Internet and Other Media: Hearing Before the "
12377 "Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection, House "
12378 "Committee on Commerce, 106th Cong. 29 (1999) (statement of Peter Harter, "
12379 "vice president, Global Public Policy and Standards, EMusic.com), available "
12380 "in LEXIS, Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony File."
12383 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
12384 #: freeculture.xml:8971
12386 "This is a critical point. The choices that industry sectors make with "
12387 "respect to these systems will in many ways directly shape the market for "
12388 "digital media and the manner in which digital media are distributed. This in "
12389 "turn will directly influence the options that are available to consumers, "
12390 "both in terms of the ease with which they will be able to access digital "
12391 "media and the equipment that they will require to do so. Poor choices made "
12392 "this early in the game will retard the growth of this market, hurting "
12393 "everyone's interests.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
12396 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12397 #: freeculture.xml:8995 freeculture.xml:9353
12398 msgid "Vivendi Universal"
12401 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12402 #: freeculture.xml:8992
12404 "In April 2001, eMusic.com was purchased by Vivendi Universal, one of "
12405 "<quote>the major labels.</quote> Its position on these matters has now "
12406 "changed. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
12409 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12410 #: freeculture.xml:8998
12412 "Reversing our tradition of tolerance now will not merely quash piracy. It "
12413 "will sacrifice values that are important to this culture, and will kill "
12414 "opportunities that could be extraordinarily valuable."
12417 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
12418 #: freeculture.xml:9006
12419 msgid "CHAPTER TWELVE: Harms"
12422 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12423 #: freeculture.xml:9008
12425 "<emphasis role='strong'>To fight</emphasis> <quote>piracy,</quote> to "
12426 "protect <quote>property,</quote> the content industry has launched a "
12427 "war. Lobbying and lots of campaign contributions have now brought the "
12428 "government into this war. As with any war, this one will have both direct "
12429 "and collateral damage. As with any war of prohibition, these damages will be "
12430 "suffered most by our own people."
12433 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12434 #: freeculture.xml:9016
12436 "My aim so far has been to describe the consequences of this war, in "
12437 "particular, the consequences for <quote>free culture.</quote> But my aim now "
12438 "is to extend this description of consequences into an argument. Is this war "
12442 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12443 #: freeculture.xml:9022
12445 "In my view, it is not. There is no good reason why this time, for the first "
12446 "time, the law should defend the old against the new, just when the power of "
12447 "the property called <quote>intellectual property</quote> is at its greatest "
12451 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12452 #: freeculture.xml:9030
12454 "Yet <quote>common sense</quote> does not see it this way. Common sense is "
12455 "still on the side of the Causbys and the content industry. The extreme "
12456 "claims of control in the name of property still resonate; the uncritical "
12457 "rejection of <quote>piracy</quote> still has play."
12461 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12462 #: freeculture.xml:9038
12464 "There will be many consequences of continuing this war. I want to describe "
12465 "just three. All three might be said to be unintended. I am quite confident "
12466 "the third is unintended. I'm less sure about the first two. The first two "
12467 "protect modern RCAs, but there is no Howard Armstrong in the wings to fight "
12468 "today's monopolists of culture."
12471 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
12472 #: freeculture.xml:9045
12473 msgid "Constraining Creators"
12476 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12477 #: freeculture.xml:9047
12479 "In the next ten years we will see an explosion of digital technologies. "
12480 "These technologies will enable almost anyone to capture and share "
12481 "content. Capturing and sharing content, of course, is what humans have done "
12482 "since the dawn of man. It is how we learn and communicate. But capturing and "
12483 "sharing through digital technology is different. The fidelity and power are "
12484 "different. You could send an e-mail telling someone about a joke you saw on "
12485 "Comedy Central, or you could send the clip. You could write an essay about "
12486 "the inconsistencies in the arguments of the politician you most love to "
12487 "hate, or you could make a short film that puts statement against "
12488 "statement. You could write a poem to express your love, or you could weave "
12489 "together a string—a mash-up— of songs from your favorite artists "
12490 "in a collage and make it available on the Net."
12493 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12494 #: freeculture.xml:9062
12496 "This digital <quote>capturing and sharing</quote> is in part an extension of "
12497 "the capturing and sharing that has always been integral to our culture, and "
12498 "in part it is something new. It is continuous with the Kodak, but it "
12499 "explodes the boundaries of Kodak-like technologies. The technology of "
12500 "digital <quote>capturing and sharing</quote> promises a world of "
12501 "extraordinarily diverse creativity that can be easily and broadly "
12502 "shared. And as that creativity is applied to democracy, it will enable a "
12503 "broad range of citizens to use technology to express and criticize and "
12504 "contribute to the culture all around."
12508 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12509 #: freeculture.xml:9073
12511 "Technology has thus given us an opportunity to do something with culture "
12512 "that has only ever been possible for individuals in small groups, isolated "
12513 "from others. Think about an old man telling a story to a collection of "
12514 "neighbors in a small town. Now imagine that same storytelling extended "
12515 "across the globe."
12518 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12519 #: freeculture.xml:9083
12521 "Yet all this is possible only if the activity is presumptively legal. In the "
12522 "current regime of legal regulation, it is not. Forget file sharing for a "
12523 "moment. Think about your favorite amazing sites on the Net. Web sites that "
12524 "offer plot summaries from forgotten television shows; sites that catalog "
12525 "cartoons from the 1960s; sites that mix images and sound to criticize "
12526 "politicians or businesses; sites that gather newspaper articles on remote "
12527 "topics of science or culture. There is a vast amount of creative work spread "
12528 "across the Internet. But as the law is currently crafted, this work is "
12529 "presumptively illegal."
12532 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12533 #: freeculture.xml:9093 freeculture.xml:9112
12537 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
12538 #: freeculture.xml:9107
12540 "See Lynne W. Jeter, <citetitle>Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at "
12541 "WorldCom</citetitle> (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 176, 204; "
12542 "for details of the settlement, see MCI press release, <quote>MCI Wins "
12543 "U.S. District Court Approval for SEC Settlement</quote> (7 July 2003), "
12544 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #37</ulink>. "
12545 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
12548 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12549 #: freeculture.xml:9128
12550 msgid "Bush, George W."
12553 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
12554 #: freeculture.xml:9119
12556 "The bill, modeled after California's tort reform model, was passed in the "
12557 "House of Representatives but defeated in a Senate vote in July 2003. For an "
12558 "overview, see Tanya Albert, <quote>Measure Stalls in Senate: `We'll Be "
12559 "Back,' Say Tort Reformers,</quote> amednews.com, 28 July 2003, available at "
12560 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #38</ulink>, and "
12561 "<quote>Senate Turns Back Malpractice Caps,</quote> CBSNews.com, 9 July 2003, "
12562 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
12563 "#39</ulink>. President Bush has continued to urge tort reform in recent "
12564 "months. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
12567 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12568 #: freeculture.xml:9095
12570 "That presumption will increasingly chill creativity, as the examples of "
12571 "extreme penalties for vague infringements continue to proliferate. It is "
12572 "impossible to get a clear sense of what's allowed and what's not, and at the "
12573 "same time, the penalties for crossing the line are astonishingly harsh. The "
12574 "four students who were threatened by the RIAA ( Jesse Jordan of chapter 3 "
12575 "was just one) were threatened with a $98 billion lawsuit for building search "
12576 "engines that permitted songs to be copied. Yet World-Com—which "
12577 "defrauded investors of $11 billion, resulting in a loss to investors in "
12578 "market capitalization of over $200 billion—received a fine of a mere "
12579 "$750 million.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And under legislation "
12580 "being pushed in Congress right now, a doctor who negligently removes the "
12581 "wrong leg in an operation would be liable for no more than $250,000 in "
12582 "damages for pain and suffering.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> Can "
12583 "common sense recognize the absurdity in a world where the maximum fine for "
12584 "downloading two songs off the Internet is more than the fine for a doctor's "
12585 "negligently butchering a patient?"
12588 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12589 #: freeculture.xml:9134
12590 msgid "art, underground"
12594 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
12595 #: freeculture.xml:9155
12597 "See Danit Lidor, <quote>Artists Just Wanna Be Free,</quote> "
12598 "<citetitle>Wired</citetitle>, 7 July 2003, available at <ulink "
12599 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #40</ulink>. For an overview of "
12600 "the exhibition, see <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
12604 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12605 #: freeculture.xml:9136
12607 "The consequence of this legal uncertainty, tied to these extremely high "
12608 "penalties, is that an extraordinary amount of creativity will either never "
12609 "be exercised, or never be exercised in the open. We drive this creative "
12610 "process underground by branding the modern-day Walt Disneys "
12611 "<quote>pirates.</quote> We make it impossible for businesses to rely upon a "
12612 "public domain, because the boundaries of the public domain are designed to "
12613 "be unclear. It never pays to do anything except pay for the right to create, "
12614 "and hence only those who can pay are allowed to create. As was the case in "
12615 "the Soviet Union, though for very different reasons, we will begin to see a "
12616 "world of underground art—not because the message is necessarily "
12617 "political, or because the subject is controversial, but because the very act "
12618 "of creating the art is legally fraught. Already, exhibits of <quote>illegal "
12619 "art</quote> tour the United States.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
12620 "In what does their <quote>illegality</quote> consist? In the act of mixing "
12621 "the culture around us with an expression that is critical or reflective."
12624 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12625 #: freeculture.xml:9166
12627 "Part of the reason for this fear of illegality has to do with the changing "
12628 "law. I described that change in detail in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: "
12629 "labelnumber\" linkend=\"property-i\"/>. But an even bigger part has to do "
12630 "with the increasing ease with which infractions can be tracked. As users of "
12631 "file-sharing systems discovered in 2002, it is a trivial matter for "
12632 "copyright owners to get courts to order Internet service providers to reveal "
12633 "who has what content. It is as if your cassette tape player transmitted a "
12634 "list of the songs that you played in the privacy of your own home that "
12635 "anyone could tune into for whatever reason they chose."
12638 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12639 #: freeculture.xml:9179
12641 "Never in our history has a painter had to worry about whether his painting "
12642 "infringed on someone else's work; but the modern-day painter, using the "
12643 "tools of Photoshop, sharing content on the Web, must worry all the "
12644 "time. Images are all around, but the only safe images to use in the act of "
12645 "creation are those purchased from Corbis or another image farm. And in "
12646 "purchasing, censoring happens. There is a free market in pencils; we needn't "
12647 "worry about its effect on creativity. But there is a highly regulated, "
12648 "monopolized market in cultural icons; the right to cultivate and transform "
12649 "them is not similarly free."
12652 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12653 #: freeculture.xml:9190
12655 "Lawyers rarely see this because lawyers are rarely empirical. As I described "
12656 "in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"recorders\"/>, "
12657 "in response to the story about documentary filmmaker Jon Else, I have been "
12658 "lectured again and again by lawyers who insist Else's use was fair use, and "
12659 "hence I am wrong to say that the law regulates such a use."
12663 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12664 #: freeculture.xml:9201
12666 "But fair use in America simply means the right to hire a lawyer to defend "
12667 "your right to create. And as lawyers love to forget, our system for "
12668 "defending rights such as fair use is astonishingly bad—in practically "
12669 "every context, but especially here. It costs too much, it delivers too "
12670 "slowly, and what it delivers often has little connection to the justice "
12671 "underlying the claim. The legal system may be tolerable for the very rich. "
12672 "For everyone else, it is an embarrassment to a tradition that prides itself "
12673 "on the rule of law."
12676 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12677 #: freeculture.xml:9211
12679 "Judges and lawyers can tell themselves that fair use provides adequate "
12680 "<quote>breathing room</quote> between regulation by the law and the access "
12681 "the law should allow. But it is a measure of how out of touch our legal "
12682 "system has become that anyone actually believes this. The rules that "
12683 "publishers impose upon writers, the rules that film distributors impose upon "
12684 "filmmakers, the rules that newspapers impose upon journalists— these "
12685 "are the real laws governing creativity. And these rules have little "
12686 "relationship to the <quote>law</quote> with which judges comfort themselves."
12689 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12690 #: freeculture.xml:9222
12692 "For in a world that threatens $150,000 for a single willful infringement of "
12693 "a copyright, and which demands tens of thousands of dollars to even defend "
12694 "against a copyright infringement claim, and which would never return to the "
12695 "wrongfully accused defendant anything of the costs she suffered to defend "
12696 "her right to speak—in that world, the astonishingly broad regulations "
12697 "that pass under the name <quote>copyright</quote> silence speech and "
12698 "creativity. And in that world, it takes a studied blindness for people to "
12699 "continue to believe they live in a culture that is free."
12702 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12703 #: freeculture.xml:9233
12704 msgid "As Jed Horovitz, the businessman behind Video Pipeline, said to me,"
12708 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
12709 #: freeculture.xml:9237
12711 "We're losing [creative] opportunities right and left. Creative people are "
12712 "being forced not to express themselves. Thoughts are not being "
12713 "expressed. And while a lot of stuff may [still] be created, it still won't "
12714 "get distributed. Even if the stuff gets made … you're not going to "
12715 "get it distributed in the mainstream media unless you've got a little note "
12716 "from a lawyer saying, <quote>This has been cleared.</quote> You're not even "
12717 "going to get it on PBS without that kind of permission. That's the point at "
12718 "which they control it."
12721 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
12722 #: freeculture.xml:9250
12723 msgid "Constraining Innovators"
12726 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12727 #: freeculture.xml:9252
12729 "The story of the last section was a crunchy-lefty story—creativity "
12730 "quashed, artists who can't speak, yada yada yada. Maybe that doesn't get you "
12731 "going. Maybe you think there's enough weird art out there, and enough "
12732 "expression that is critical of what seems to be just about everything. And "
12733 "if you think that, you might think there's little in this story to worry "
12737 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12738 #: freeculture.xml:9260
12740 "But there's an aspect of this story that is not lefty in any sense. Indeed, "
12741 "it is an aspect that could be written by the most extreme promarket "
12742 "ideologue. And if you're one of these sorts (and a special one at that, 188 "
12743 "pages into a book like this), then you can see this other aspect by "
12744 "substituting <quote>free market</quote> every place I've spoken of "
12745 "<quote>free culture.</quote> The point is the same, even if the interests "
12746 "affecting culture are more fundamental."
12749 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12750 #: freeculture.xml:9270
12752 "The charge I've been making about the regulation of culture is the same "
12753 "charge free marketers make about regulating markets. Everyone, of course, "
12754 "concedes that some regulation of markets is necessary—at a minimum, we "
12755 "need rules of property and contract, and courts to enforce both. Likewise, "
12756 "in this culture debate, everyone concedes that at least some framework of "
12757 "copyright is also required. But both perspectives vehemently insist that "
12758 "just because some regulation is good, it doesn't follow that more regulation "
12759 "is better. And both perspectives are constantly attuned to the ways in which "
12760 "regulation simply enables the powerful industries of today to protect "
12761 "themselves against the competitors of tomorrow."
12764 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12765 #: freeculture.xml:9282 freeculture.xml:9390
12766 msgid "Barry, Hank"
12770 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12771 #: freeculture.xml:9284
12773 "This is the single most dramatic effect of the shift in regulatory strategy "
12774 "that I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
12775 "linkend=\"property-i\"/>. The consequence of this massive threat of "
12776 "liability tied to the murky boundaries of copyright law is that innovators "
12777 "who want to innovate in this space can safely innovate only if they have the "
12778 "sign-off from last generation's dominant industries. That lesson has been "
12779 "taught through a series of cases that were designed and executed to teach "
12780 "venture capitalists a lesson. That lesson—what former Napster CEO Hank "
12781 "Barry calls a <quote>nuclear pall</quote> that has fallen over the "
12782 "Valley—has been learned."
12785 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12786 #: freeculture.xml:9297
12788 "Consider one example to make the point, a story whose beginning I told in "
12789 "<citetitle>The Future of Ideas</citetitle> and which has progressed in a way "
12790 "that even I (pessimist extraordinaire) would never have predicted."
12793 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12794 #: freeculture.xml:9301
12795 msgid "Roberts, Michael"
12798 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12799 #: freeculture.xml:9303
12801 "In 1997, Michael Roberts launched a company called MP3.com. MP3.com was "
12802 "keen to remake the music business. Their goal was not just to facilitate new "
12803 "ways to get access to content. Their goal was also to facilitate new ways to "
12804 "create content. Unlike the major labels, MP3.com offered creators a venue to "
12805 "distribute their creativity, without demanding an exclusive engagement from "
12809 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
12810 #: freeculture.xml:9311
12811 msgid "preference data on"
12814 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12815 #: freeculture.xml:9313
12817 "To make this system work, however, MP3.com needed a reliable way to "
12818 "recommend music to its users. The idea behind this alternative was to "
12819 "leverage the revealed preferences of music listeners to recommend new "
12820 "artists. If you like Lyle Lovett, you're likely to enjoy Bonnie Raitt. And "
12824 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12825 #: freeculture.xml:9320
12827 "This idea required a simple way to gather data about user preferences. "
12828 "MP3.com came up with an extraordinarily clever way to gather this preference "
12829 "data. In January 2000, the company launched a service called "
12830 "my.mp3.com. Using software provided by MP3.com, a user would sign into an "
12831 "account and then insert into her computer a CD. The software would identify "
12832 "the CD, and then give the user access to that content. So, for example, if "
12833 "you inserted a CD by Jill Sobule, then wherever you were—at work or at "
12834 "home—you could get access to that music once you signed into your "
12835 "account. The system was therefore a kind of music-lockbox."
12839 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12840 #: freeculture.xml:9332
12842 "No doubt some could use this system to illegally copy content. But that "
12843 "opportunity existed with or without MP3.com. The aim of the my.mp3.com "
12844 "service was to give users access to their own content, and as a by-product, "
12845 "by seeing the content they already owned, to discover the kind of content "
12849 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12850 #: freeculture.xml:9342
12852 "To make this system function, however, MP3.com needed to copy 50,000 CDs to "
12853 "a server. (In principle, it could have been the user who uploaded the music, "
12854 "but that would have taken a great deal of time, and would have produced a "
12855 "product of questionable quality.) It therefore purchased 50,000 CDs from a "
12856 "store, and started the process of making copies of those CDs. Again, it "
12857 "would not serve the content from those copies to anyone except those who "
12858 "authenticated that they had a copy of the CD they wanted to access. So while "
12859 "this was 50,000 copies, it was 50,000 copies directed at giving customers "
12860 "something they had already bought."
12863 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12864 #: freeculture.xml:9355
12866 "Nine days after MP3.com launched its service, the five major labels, headed "
12867 "by the RIAA, brought a lawsuit against MP3.com. MP3.com settled with four of "
12868 "the five. Nine months later, a federal judge found MP3.com to have been "
12869 "guilty of willful infringement with respect to the fifth. Applying the law "
12870 "as it is, the judge imposed a fine against MP3.com of $118 million. MP3.com "
12871 "then settled with the remaining plaintiff, Vivendi Universal, paying over "
12872 "$54 million. Vivendi purchased MP3.com just about a year later."
12875 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12876 #: freeculture.xml:9365
12877 msgid "That part of the story I have told before. Now consider its conclusion."
12880 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12881 #: freeculture.xml:9368
12883 "After Vivendi purchased MP3.com, Vivendi turned around and filed a "
12884 "malpractice lawsuit against the lawyers who had advised it that they had a "
12885 "good faith claim that the service they wanted to offer would be considered "
12886 "legal under copyright law. This lawsuit alleged that it should have been "
12887 "obvious that the courts would find this behavior illegal; therefore, this "
12888 "lawsuit sought to punish any lawyer who had dared to suggest that the law "
12889 "was less restrictive than the labels demanded."
12893 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12894 #: freeculture.xml:9378
12896 "The clear purpose of this lawsuit (which was settled for an unspecified "
12897 "amount shortly after the story was no longer covered in the press) was to "
12898 "send an unequivocal message to lawyers advising clients in this space: It is "
12899 "not just your clients who might suffer if the content industry directs its "
12900 "guns against them. It is also you. So those of you who believe the law "
12901 "should be less restrictive should realize that such a view of the law will "
12902 "cost you and your firm dearly."
12905 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12906 #: freeculture.xml:9389
12907 msgid "Hummer, John"
12910 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12911 #: freeculture.xml:9391
12912 msgid "Hummer Winblad"
12916 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
12917 #: freeculture.xml:9401
12919 "See Joseph Menn, <quote>Universal, EMI Sue Napster Investor,</quote> "
12920 "<citetitle>Los Angeles Times</citetitle>, 23 April 2003. For a parallel "
12921 "argument about the effects on innovation in the distribution of music, see "
12922 "Janelle Brown, <quote>The Music Revolution Will Not Be Digitized,</quote> "
12923 "Salon.com, 1 June 2001, available at <ulink "
12924 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #42</ulink>. See also Jon "
12925 "Healey, <quote>Online Music Services Besieged,</quote> <citetitle>Los "
12926 "Angeles Times</citetitle>, 28 May 2001."
12929 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12930 #: freeculture.xml:9395
12932 "This strategy is not just limited to the lawyers. In April 2003, Universal "
12933 "and EMI brought a lawsuit against Hummer Winblad, the venture capital firm "
12934 "(VC) that had funded Napster at a certain stage of its development, its "
12935 "cofounder ( John Hummer), and general partner (Hank Barry).<placeholder "
12936 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The claim here, as well, was that the VC should "
12937 "have recognized the right of the content industry to control how the "
12938 "industry should develop. They should be held personally liable for funding a "
12939 "company whose business turned out to be beyond the law. Here again, the aim "
12940 "of the lawsuit is transparent: Any VC now recognizes that if you fund a "
12941 "company whose business is not approved of by the dinosaurs, you are at risk "
12942 "not just in the marketplace, but in the courtroom as well. Your investment "
12943 "buys you not only a company, it also buys you a lawsuit. So extreme has the "
12944 "environment become that even car manufacturers are afraid of technologies "
12945 "that touch content. In an article in <citetitle>Business 2.0</citetitle>, "
12946 "Rafe Needleman describes a discussion with BMW:"
12949 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
12950 #: freeculture.xml:9423
12954 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
12955 #: freeculture.xml:9424
12956 msgid "cars, MP3 sound system in"
12959 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12960 #: freeculture.xml:9439
12961 msgid "Needleman, Rafe"
12964 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
12965 #: freeculture.xml:9435
12967 "Rafe Needleman, <quote>Driving in Cars with MP3s,</quote> "
12968 "<citetitle>Business 2.0</citetitle>, 16 June 2003, available at <ulink "
12969 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #43</ulink>. I am grateful to "
12970 "Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli for this example. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
12974 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
12975 #: freeculture.xml:9426
12977 "I asked why, with all the storage capacity and computer power in the car, "
12978 "there was no way to play MP3 files. I was told that BMW engineers in Germany "
12979 "had rigged a new vehicle to play MP3s via the car's built-in sound system, "
12980 "but that the company's marketing and legal departments weren't comfortable "
12981 "with pushing this forward for release stateside. Even today, no new cars are "
12982 "sold in the United States with bona fide MP3 players. … <placeholder "
12983 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
12986 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12987 #: freeculture.xml:9444
12989 "This is the world of the mafia—filled with <quote>your money or your "
12990 "life</quote> offers, governed in the end not by courts but by the threats "
12991 "that the law empowers copyright holders to exercise. It is a system that "
12992 "will obviously and necessarily stifle new innovation. It is hard enough to "
12993 "start a company. It is impossibly hard if that company is constantly "
12994 "threatened by litigation."
12998 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12999 #: freeculture.xml:9454
13001 "The point is not that businesses should have a right to start illegal "
13002 "enterprises. The point is the definition of <quote>illegal.</quote> The law "
13003 "is a mess of uncertainty. We have no good way to know how it should apply to "
13004 "new technologies. Yet by reversing our tradition of judicial deference, and "
13005 "by embracing the astonishingly high penalties that copyright law imposes, "
13006 "that uncertainty now yields a reality which is far more conservative than is "
13007 "right. If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not "
13008 "only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving. The same "
13009 "principle applies to innovation. If innovation is constantly checked by this "
13010 "uncertain and unlimited liability, we will have much less vibrant innovation "
13011 "and much less creativity."
13014 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13015 #: freeculture.xml:9469
13017 "The point is directly parallel to the crunchy-lefty point about fair "
13018 "use. Whatever the <quote>real</quote> law is, realism about the effect of "
13019 "law in both contexts is the same. This wildly punitive system of regulation "
13020 "will systematically stifle creativity and innovation. It will protect some "
13021 "industries and some creators, but it will harm industry and creativity "
13022 "generally. Free market and free culture depend upon vibrant competition. "
13023 "Yet the effect of the law today is to stifle just this kind of competition. "
13024 "The effect is to produce an overregulated culture, just as the effect of too "
13025 "much control in the market is to produce an overregulatedregulated market."
13029 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13030 #: freeculture.xml:9481
13032 "The building of a permission culture, rather than a free culture, is the "
13033 "first important way in which the changes I have described will burden "
13034 "innovation. A permission culture means a lawyer's culture—a culture in "
13035 "which the ability to create requires a call to your lawyer. Again, I am not "
13036 "antilawyer, at least when they're kept in their proper place. I am certainly "
13037 "not antilaw. But our profession has lost the sense of its limits. And "
13038 "leaders in our profession have lost an appreciation of the high costs that "
13039 "our profession imposes upon others. The inefficiency of the law is an "
13040 "embarrassment to our tradition. And while I believe our profession should "
13041 "therefore do everything it can to make the law more efficient, it should at "
13042 "least do everything it can to limit the reach of the law where the law is "
13043 "not doing any good. The transaction costs buried within a permission culture "
13044 "are enough to bury a wide range of creativity. Someone needs to do a lot of "
13045 "justifying to justify that result."
13048 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13049 #: freeculture.xml:9500
13051 "<emphasis role='strong'>The uncertainty</emphasis> of the law is one burden "
13052 "on innovation. There is a second burden that operates more directly. This is "
13053 "the effort by many in the content industry to use the law to directly "
13054 "regulate the technology of the Internet so that it better protects their "
13058 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13059 #: freeculture.xml:9507
13061 "The motivation for this response is obvious. The Internet enables the "
13062 "efficient spread of content. That efficiency is a feature of the Internet's "
13063 "design. But from the perspective of the content industry, this feature is a "
13064 "<quote>bug.</quote> The efficient spread of content means that content "
13065 "distributors have a harder time controlling the distribution of content. "
13066 "One obvious response to this efficiency is thus to make the Internet less "
13067 "efficient. If the Internet enables <quote>piracy,</quote> then, this "
13068 "response says, we should break the kneecaps of the Internet."
13072 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13073 #: freeculture.xml:9522
13075 "<quote>Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World,</quote> "
13076 "GartnerG2 and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law "
13077 "School (2003), 33–35, available at <ulink "
13078 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #44</ulink>."
13082 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13083 #: freeculture.xml:9535
13084 msgid "GartnerG2, 26–27."
13087 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13088 #: freeculture.xml:9518
13090 "The examples of this form of legislation are many. At the urging of the "
13091 "content industry, some in Congress have threatened legislation that would "
13092 "require computers to determine whether the content they access is protected "
13093 "or not, and to disable the spread of protected content.<placeholder "
13094 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Congress has already launched proceedings to "
13095 "explore a mandatory <quote>broadcast flag</quote> that would be required on "
13096 "any device capable of transmitting digital video (i.e., a computer), and "
13097 "that would disable the copying of any content that is marked with a "
13098 "broadcast flag. Other members of Congress have proposed immunizing content "
13099 "providers from liability for technology they might deploy that would hunt "
13100 "down copyright violators and disable their machines.<placeholder "
13101 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
13105 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13106 #: freeculture.xml:9539
13108 "In one sense, these solutions seem sensible. If the problem is the code, why "
13109 "not regulate the code to remove the problem. But any regulation of technical "
13110 "infrastructure will always be tuned to the particular technology of the "
13111 "day. It will impose significant burdens and costs on the technology, but "
13112 "will likely be eclipsed by advances around exactly those requirements."
13115 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
13116 #: freeculture.xml:9548 freeculture.xml:11386
13121 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13122 #: freeculture.xml:9554
13124 "See David McGuire, <quote>Tech Execs Square Off Over Piracy,</quote> "
13125 "Newsbytes, February 2002 (Entertainment)."
13128 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13129 #: freeculture.xml:9550
13131 "In March 2002, a broad coalition of technology companies, led by Intel, "
13132 "tried to get Congress to see the harm that such legislation would "
13133 "impose.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Their argument was "
13134 "obviously not that copyright should not be protected. Instead, they argued, "
13135 "any protection should not do more harm than good."
13138 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13139 #: freeculture.xml:9562
13141 "<emphasis role='strong'>There is one</emphasis> more obvious way in which "
13142 "this war has harmed innovation—again, a story that will be quite "
13143 "familiar to the free market crowd."
13146 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13147 #: freeculture.xml:9567
13149 "Copyright may be property, but like all property, it is also a form of "
13150 "regulation. It is a regulation that benefits some and harms others. When "
13151 "done right, it benefits creators and harms leeches. When done wrong, it is "
13152 "regulation the powerful use to defeat competitors."
13155 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13156 #: freeculture.xml:9581
13158 "Jessica Litman, <citetitle>Digital Copyright</citetitle> (Amherst, N.Y.: "
13159 "Prometheus Books, 2001). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
13162 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13163 #: freeculture.xml:9575
13165 "As I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
13166 "linkend=\"property-i\"/>, despite this feature of copyright as regulation, "
13167 "and subject to important qualifications outlined by Jessica Litman in her "
13168 "book <citetitle>Digital Copyright</citetitle>,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
13169 "id=\"0\"/> overall this history of copyright is not bad. As chapter 10 "
13170 "details, when new technologies have come along, Congress has struck a "
13171 "balance to assure that the new is protected from the old. Compulsory, or "
13172 "statutory, licenses have been one part of that strategy. Free use (as in the "
13173 "case of the VCR) has been another."
13176 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13177 #: freeculture.xml:9592
13179 "But that pattern of deference to new technologies has now changed with the "
13180 "rise of the Internet. Rather than striking a balance between the claims of a "
13181 "new technology and the legitimate rights of content creators, both the "
13182 "courts and Congress have imposed legal restrictions that will have the "
13183 "effect of smothering the new to benefit the old."
13186 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
13187 #: freeculture.xml:9601
13188 msgid "Grokster, Ltd."
13191 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13192 #: freeculture.xml:9601
13194 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> The only circuit court exception "
13195 "is found in <citetitle>Recording Industry Association of America "
13196 "(RIAA)</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Diamond Multimedia Systems</citetitle>, 180 "
13197 "F. 3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999). There the court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit "
13198 "reasoned that makers of a portable MP3 player were not liable for "
13199 "contributory copyright infringement for a device that is unable to record or "
13200 "redistribute music (a device whose only copying function is to render "
13201 "portable a music file already stored on a user's hard drive). At the "
13202 "district court level, the only exception is found in "
13203 "<citetitle>Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, "
13204 "Inc</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Grokster, Ltd</citetitle>., 259 F. Supp. 2d "
13205 "1029 (C.D. Cal., 2003), where the court found the link between the "
13206 "distributor and any given user's conduct too attenuated to make the "
13207 "distributor liable for contributory or vicarious infringement liability."
13210 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
13211 #: freeculture.xml:9620
13212 msgid "Tauzin, Billy"
13215 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
13216 #: freeculture.xml:9636
13217 msgid "Hollings, Fritz"
13220 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13221 #: freeculture.xml:9620
13223 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> For example, in July 2002, "
13224 "Representative Howard Berman introduced the Peer-to-Peer Piracy Prevention "
13225 "Act (H.R. 5211), which would immunize copyright holders from liability for "
13226 "damage done to computers when the copyright holders use technology to stop "
13227 "copyright infringement. In August 2002, Representative Billy Tauzin "
13228 "introduced a bill to mandate that technologies capable of rebroadcasting "
13229 "digital copies of films broadcast on TV (i.e., computers) respect a "
13230 "<quote>broadcast flag</quote> that would disable copying of that "
13231 "content. And in March of the same year, Senator Fritz Hollings introduced "
13232 "the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, which mandated "
13233 "copyright protection technology in all digital media devices. See GartnerG2, "
13234 "<quote>Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World,</quote> 27 June "
13235 "2003, 33–34, available at <ulink "
13236 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #44</ulink>. <placeholder "
13237 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> "
13238 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/>"
13241 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13242 #: freeculture.xml:9599
13244 "The response by the courts has been fairly universal.<placeholder "
13245 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> It has been mirrored in the responses "
13246 "threatened and actually implemented by Congress. I won't catalog all of "
13247 "those responses here.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> But there is "
13248 "one example that captures the flavor of them all. This is the story of the "
13249 "demise of Internet radio."
13253 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13254 #: freeculture.xml:9647
13256 "As I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
13257 "linkend=\"pirates\"/>, when a radio station plays a song, the recording "
13258 "artist doesn't get paid for that <quote>radio performance</quote> unless he "
13259 "or she is also the composer. So, for example if Marilyn Monroe had recorded "
13260 "a version of <quote>Happy Birthday</quote>—to memorialize her famous "
13261 "performance before President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden— then "
13262 "whenever that recording was played on the radio, the current copyright "
13263 "owners of <quote>Happy Birthday</quote> would get some money, whereas "
13264 "Marilyn Monroe would not."
13267 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13268 #: freeculture.xml:9658
13270 "The reasoning behind this balance struck by Congress makes some sense. The "
13271 "justification was that radio was a kind of advertising. The recording artist "
13272 "thus benefited because by playing her music, the radio station was making it "
13273 "more likely that her records would be purchased. Thus, the recording artist "
13274 "got something, even if only indirectly. Probably this reasoning had less to "
13275 "do with the result than with the power of radio stations: Their lobbyists "
13276 "were quite good at stopping any efforts to get Congress to require "
13277 "compensation to the recording artists."
13280 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13281 #: freeculture.xml:9669
13283 "Enter Internet radio. Like regular radio, Internet radio is a technology to "
13284 "stream content from a broadcaster to a listener. The broadcast travels "
13285 "across the Internet, not across the ether of radio spectrum. Thus, I can "
13286 "<quote>tune in</quote> to an Internet radio station in Berlin while sitting "
13287 "in San Francisco, even though there's no way for me to tune in to a regular "
13288 "radio station much beyond the San Francisco metropolitan area."
13291 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13292 #: freeculture.xml:9678
13294 "This feature of the architecture of Internet radio means that there are "
13295 "potentially an unlimited number of radio stations that a user could tune in "
13296 "to using her computer, whereas under the existing architecture for broadcast "
13297 "radio, there is an obvious limit to the number of broadcasters and clear "
13298 "broadcast frequencies. Internet radio could therefore be more competitive "
13299 "than regular radio; it could provide a wider range of selections. And "
13300 "because the potential audience for Internet radio is the whole world, niche "
13301 "stations could easily develop and market their content to a relatively large "
13302 "number of users worldwide. According to some estimates, more than eighty "
13303 "million users worldwide have tuned in to this new form of radio."
13307 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13308 #: freeculture.xml:9694
13310 "Internet radio is thus to radio what FM was to AM. It is an improvement "
13311 "potentially vastly more significant than the FM improvement over AM, since "
13312 "not only is the technology better, so, too, is the competition. Indeed, "
13313 "there is a direct parallel between the fight to establish FM radio and the "
13314 "fight to protect Internet radio. As one author describes Howard Armstrong's "
13315 "struggle to enable FM radio,"
13319 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
13320 #: freeculture.xml:9718
13321 msgid "Lessing, 239."
13324 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
13325 #: freeculture.xml:9704
13327 "An almost unlimited number of FM stations was possible in the shortwaves, "
13328 "thus ending the unnatural restrictions imposed on radio in the crowded "
13329 "longwaves. If FM were freely developed, the number of stations would be "
13330 "limited only by economics and competition rather than by technical "
13331 "restrictions. … Armstrong likened the situation that had grown up in "
13332 "radio to that following the invention of the printing press, when "
13333 "governments and ruling interests attempted to control this new instrument of "
13334 "mass communications by imposing restrictive licenses on it. This tyranny was "
13335 "broken only when it became possible for men freely to acquire printing "
13336 "presses and freely to run them. FM in this sense was as great an invention "
13337 "as the printing presses, for it gave radio the opportunity to strike off its "
13338 "shackles.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
13342 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13343 #: freeculture.xml:9728
13344 msgid "Ibid., 229."
13347 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13348 #: freeculture.xml:9723
13350 "This potential for FM radio was never realized—not because Armstrong "
13351 "was wrong about the technology, but because he underestimated the power of "
13352 "<quote>vested interests, habits, customs and legislation</quote><placeholder "
13353 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> to retard the growth of this competing "
13357 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13358 #: freeculture.xml:9733
13360 "Now the very same claim could be made about Internet radio. For again, there "
13361 "is no technical limitation that could restrict the number of Internet radio "
13362 "stations. The only restrictions on Internet radio are those imposed by the "
13363 "law. Copyright law is one such law. So the first question we should ask is, "
13364 "what copyright rules would govern Internet radio?"
13368 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13369 #: freeculture.xml:9742
13371 "But here the power of the lobbyists is reversed. Internet radio is a new "
13372 "industry. The recording artists, on the other hand, have a very powerful "
13373 "lobby, the RIAA. Thus when Congress considered the phenomenon of Internet "
13374 "radio in 1995, the lobbyists had primed Congress to adopt a different rule "
13375 "for Internet radio than the rule that applies to terrestrial radio. While "
13376 "terrestrial radio does not have to pay our hypothetical Marilyn Monroe when "
13377 "it plays her hypothetical recording of <quote>Happy Birthday</quote> on the "
13378 "air, <emphasis>Internet radio does</emphasis>. Not only is the law not "
13379 "neutral toward Internet radio—the law actually burdens Internet radio "
13380 "more than it burdens terrestrial radio."
13383 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
13384 #: freeculture.xml:9781
13385 msgid "CARP (Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel)"
13388 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13389 #: freeculture.xml:9764
13391 "This example was derived from fees set by the original Copyright Arbitration "
13392 "Royalty Panel (CARP) proceedings, and is drawn from an example offered by "
13393 "Professor William Fisher. Conference Proceedings, iLaw (Stanford), 3 July "
13394 "2003, on file with author. Professors Fisher and Zittrain submitted "
13395 "testimony in the CARP proceeding that was ultimately rejected. See Jonathan "
13396 "Zittrain, Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings and Ephemeral "
13397 "Recordings, Docket No. 2000-9, CARP DTRA 1 and 2, available at <ulink "
13398 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #45</ulink>. For an excellent "
13399 "analysis making a similar point, see Randal C. Picker, <quote>Copyright as "
13400 "Entry Policy: The Case of Digital Distribution,</quote> <citetitle>Antitrust "
13401 "Bulletin</citetitle> (Summer/Fall 2002): 461: <quote>This was not confusion, "
13402 "these are just old-fashioned entry barriers. Analog radio stations are "
13403 "protected from digital entrants, reducing entry in radio and diversity. Yes, "
13404 "this is done in the name of getting royalties to copyright holders, but, "
13405 "absent the play of powerful interests, that could have been done in a "
13406 "media-neutral way.</quote> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> "
13407 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
13410 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13411 #: freeculture.xml:9757
13413 "This financial burden is not slight. As Harvard law professor William Fisher "
13414 "estimates, if an Internet radio station distributed adfree popular music to "
13415 "(on average) ten thousand listeners, twenty-four hours a day, the total "
13416 "artist fees that radio station would owe would be over $1 million a "
13417 "year.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> A regular radio station "
13418 "broadcasting the same content would pay no equivalent fee."
13421 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13422 #: freeculture.xml:9789
13424 "The burden is not financial only. Under the original rules that were "
13425 "proposed, an Internet radio station (but not a terrestrial radio station) "
13426 "would have to collect the following data from <emphasis>every listening "
13427 "transaction</emphasis>:"
13430 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13431 #: freeculture.xml:9797
13432 msgid "name of the service;"
13435 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13436 #: freeculture.xml:9800
13437 msgid "channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station ID);"
13440 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13441 #: freeculture.xml:9803
13442 msgid "type of program (archived/looped/live);"
13445 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13446 #: freeculture.xml:9806
13447 msgid "date of transmission;"
13450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13451 #: freeculture.xml:9809
13452 msgid "time of transmission;"
13455 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13456 #: freeculture.xml:9812
13457 msgid "time zone of origination of transmission;"
13460 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13461 #: freeculture.xml:9815
13462 msgid "numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program;"
13465 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13466 #: freeculture.xml:9818
13467 msgid "duration of transmission (to nearest second);"
13470 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13471 #: freeculture.xml:9821
13472 msgid "sound recording title;"
13475 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13476 #: freeculture.xml:9824
13477 msgid "ISRC code of the recording;"
13480 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13481 #: freeculture.xml:9827
13483 "release year of the album per copyright notice and in the case of "
13484 "compilation albums, the release year of the album and copy- right date of "
13488 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13489 #: freeculture.xml:9830
13490 msgid "featured recording artist;"
13493 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13494 #: freeculture.xml:9833
13495 msgid "retail album title;"
13498 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13499 #: freeculture.xml:9836
13500 msgid "recording label;"
13503 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13504 #: freeculture.xml:9839
13505 msgid "UPC code of the retail album;"
13508 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13509 #: freeculture.xml:9842
13510 msgid "catalog number;"
13513 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13514 #: freeculture.xml:9845
13515 msgid "copyright owner information;"
13518 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13519 #: freeculture.xml:9848
13520 msgid "musical genre of the channel or program (station format);"
13523 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13524 #: freeculture.xml:9851
13525 msgid "name of the service or entity;"
13528 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13529 #: freeculture.xml:9854
13530 msgid "channel or program;"
13533 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13534 #: freeculture.xml:9857
13535 msgid "date and time that the user logged in (in the user's time zone);"
13538 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13539 #: freeculture.xml:9860
13540 msgid "date and time that the user logged out (in the user's time zone);"
13543 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13544 #: freeculture.xml:9863
13545 msgid "time zone where the signal was received (user);"
13548 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13549 #: freeculture.xml:9866
13550 msgid "unique user identifier;"
13553 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13554 #: freeculture.xml:9869
13555 msgid "the country in which the user received the transmissions."
13558 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13559 #: freeculture.xml:9874
13561 "The Librarian of Congress eventually suspended these reporting requirements, "
13562 "pending further study. And he also changed the original rates set by the "
13563 "arbitration panel charged with setting rates. But the basic difference "
13564 "between Internet radio and terrestrial radio remains: Internet radio has to "
13565 "pay a <emphasis>type of copyright fee</emphasis> that terrestrial radio does "
13569 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13570 #: freeculture.xml:9882
13572 "Why? What justifies this difference? Was there any study of the economic "
13573 "consequences from Internet radio that would justify these differences? Was "
13574 "the motive to protect artists against piracy?"
13577 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
13578 #: freeculture.xml:9886 freeculture.xml:14553
13579 msgid "Real Networks"
13582 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13583 #: freeculture.xml:9889
13585 "In a rare bit of candor, one RIAA expert admitted what seemed obvious to "
13586 "everyone at the time. As Alex Alben, vice president for Public Policy at "
13587 "Real Networks, told me,"
13591 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
13592 #: freeculture.xml:9895
13594 "The RIAA, which was representing the record labels, presented some testimony "
13595 "about what they thought a willing buyer would pay to a willing seller, and "
13596 "it was much higher. It was ten times higher than what radio stations pay to "
13597 "perform the same songs for the same period of time. And so the attorneys "
13598 "representing the webcasters asked the RIAA, … <quote>How do you come "
13599 "up with a rate that's so much higher? Why is it worth more than radio? "
13600 "Because here we have hundreds of thousands of webcasters who want to pay, "
13601 "and that should establish the market rate, and if you set the rate so high, "
13602 "you're going to drive the small webcasters out of business. …</quote>"
13605 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
13606 #: freeculture.xml:9911
13608 "And the RIAA experts said, <quote>Well, we don't really model this as an "
13609 "industry with thousands of webcasters, <emphasis>we think it should be an "
13610 "industry with, you know, five or seven big players who can pay a high rate "
13611 "and it's a stable, predictable market</emphasis>.</quote> (Emphasis added.)"
13614 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13615 #: freeculture.xml:9920
13617 "Translation: The aim is to use the law to eliminate competition, so that "
13618 "this platform of potentially immense competition, which would cause the "
13619 "diversity and range of content available to explode, would not cause pain to "
13620 "the dinosaurs of old. There is no one, on either the right or the left, who "
13621 "should endorse this use of the law. And yet there is practically no one, on "
13622 "either the right or the left, who is doing anything effective to prevent it."
13625 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
13626 #: freeculture.xml:9930
13627 msgid "Corrupting Citizens"
13630 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13631 #: freeculture.xml:9932
13633 "Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives "
13634 "dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity "
13635 "for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables."
13638 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13639 #: freeculture.xml:9938
13641 "In addition to these important harms, there is one more that was important "
13642 "to our forebears, but seems forgotten today. Overregulation corrupts "
13643 "citizens and weakens the rule of law."
13647 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13648 #: freeculture.xml:9947
13650 "Mike Graziano and Lee Rainie, <quote>The Music Downloading Deluge,</quote> "
13651 "Pew Internet and American Life Project (24 April 2001), available at <ulink "
13652 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #46</ulink>. The Pew Internet "
13653 "and American Life Project reported that 37 million Americans had downloaded "
13654 "music files from the Internet by early 2001."
13658 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13659 #: freeculture.xml:9943
13661 "The war that is being waged today is a war of prohibition. As with every war "
13662 "of prohibition, it is targeted against the behavior of a very large number "
13663 "of citizens. According to <citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle>, 43 "
13664 "million Americans downloaded music in May 2002.<placeholder "
13665 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> According to the RIAA, the behavior of those 43 "
13666 "million Americans is a felony. We thus have a set of rules that transform 20 "
13667 "percent of America into criminals. As the RIAA launches lawsuits against not "
13668 "only the Napsters and Kazaas of the world, but against students building "
13669 "search engines, and increasingly against ordinary users downloading content, "
13670 "the technologies for sharing will advance to further protect and hide "
13671 "illegal use. It is an arms race or a civil war, with the extremes of one "
13672 "side inviting a more extreme response by the other."
13676 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13677 #: freeculture.xml:9981
13679 "Alex Pham, <quote>The Labels Strike Back: N.Y. Girl Settles RIAA "
13680 "Case,</quote> <citetitle>Los Angeles Times</citetitle>, 10 September 2003, "
13684 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13685 #: freeculture.xml:9968
13687 "The content industry's tactics exploit the failings of the American legal "
13688 "system. When the RIAA brought suit against Jesse Jordan, it knew that in "
13689 "Jordan it had found a scapegoat, not a defendant. The threat of having to "
13690 "pay either all the money in the world in damages ($15,000,000) or almost all "
13691 "the money in the world to defend against paying all the money in the world "
13692 "in damages ($250,000 in legal fees) led Jordan to choose to pay all the "
13693 "money he had in the world ($12,000) to make the suit go away. The same "
13694 "strategy animates the RIAA's suits against individual users. In September "
13695 "2003, the RIAA sued 261 individuals—including a twelve-year-old girl "
13696 "living in public housing and a seventy-year-old man who had no idea what "
13697 "file sharing was.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> As these "
13698 "scapegoats discovered, it will always cost more to defend against these "
13699 "suits than it would cost to simply settle. (The twelve year old, for "
13700 "example, like Jesse Jordan, paid her life savings of $2,000 to settle the "
13701 "case.) Our law is an awful system for defending rights. It is an "
13702 "embarrassment to our tradition. And the consequence of our law as it is, is "
13703 "that those with the power can use the law to quash any rights they oppose."
13706 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
13707 #: freeculture.xml:9992
13708 msgid "alcohol prohibition"
13712 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13713 #: freeculture.xml:10004
13715 "Jeffrey A. Miron and Jeffrey Zwiebel, <quote>Alcohol Consumption During "
13716 "Prohibition,</quote> <citetitle>American Economic Review</citetitle> 81, "
13717 "no. 2 (1991): 242."
13721 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13722 #: freeculture.xml:10012
13724 "National Drug Control Policy: Hearing Before the House Government Reform "
13725 "Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (5 March 2003) (statement of John "
13726 "P. Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy)."
13730 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13731 #: freeculture.xml:10022
13733 "See James Andreoni, Brian Erard, and Jonathon Feinstein, <quote>Tax "
13734 "Compliance,</quote> <citetitle>Journal of Economic Literature</citetitle> 36 "
13735 "(1998): 818 (survey of compliance literature)."
13738 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13739 #: freeculture.xml:9994
13741 "Wars of prohibition are nothing new in America. This one is just something "
13742 "more extreme than anything we've seen before. We experimented with alcohol "
13743 "prohibition, at a time when the per capita consumption of alcohol was 1.5 "
13744 "gallons per capita per year. The war against drinking initially reduced that "
13745 "consumption to just 30 percent of its preprohibition levels, but by the end "
13746 "of prohibition, consumption was up to 70 percent of the preprohibition "
13747 "level. Americans were drinking just about as much, but now, a vast number "
13748 "were criminals.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> We have launched a "
13749 "war on drugs aimed at reducing the consumption of regulated narcotics that 7 "
13750 "percent (or 16 million) Americans now use.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
13751 "id=\"1\"/> That is a drop from the high (so to speak) in 1979 of 14 percent "
13752 "of the population. We regulate automobiles to the point where the vast "
13753 "majority of Americans violate the law every day. We run such a complex tax "
13754 "system that a majority of cash businesses regularly cheat.<placeholder "
13755 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/> We pride ourselves on our <quote>free "
13756 "society,</quote> but an endless array of ordinary behavior is regulated "
13757 "within our society. And as a result, a huge proportion of Americans "
13758 "regularly violate at least some law."
13761 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
13762 #: freeculture.xml:10030
13763 msgid "law schools"
13766 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13767 #: freeculture.xml:10032
13769 "This state of affairs is not without consequence. It is a particularly "
13770 "salient issue for teachers like me, whose job it is to teach law students "
13771 "about the importance of <quote>ethics.</quote> As my colleague Charlie "
13772 "Nesson told a class at Stanford, each year law schools admit thousands of "
13773 "students who have illegally downloaded music, illegally consumed alcohol and "
13774 "sometimes drugs, illegally worked without paying taxes, illegally driven "
13775 "cars. These are kids for whom behaving illegally is increasingly the "
13776 "norm. And then we, as law professors, are supposed to teach them how to "
13777 "behave ethically—how to say no to bribes, or keep client funds "
13778 "separate, or honor a demand to disclose a document that will mean that your "
13779 "case is over. Generations of Americans—more significantly in some "
13780 "parts of America than in others, but still, everywhere in America "
13781 "today—can't live their lives both normally and legally, since "
13782 "<quote>normally</quote> entails a certain degree of illegality."
13785 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13786 #: freeculture.xml:10049
13788 "The response to this general illegality is either to enforce the law more "
13789 "severely or to change the law. We, as a society, have to learn how to make "
13790 "that choice more rationally. Whether a law makes sense depends, in part, at "
13791 "least, upon whether the costs of the law, both intended and collateral, "
13792 "outweigh the benefits. If the costs, intended and collateral, do outweigh "
13793 "the benefits, then the law ought to be changed. Alternatively, if the costs "
13794 "of the existing system are much greater than the costs of an alternative, "
13795 "then we have a good reason to consider the alternative."
13799 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13800 #: freeculture.xml:10062
13802 "My point is not the idiotic one: Just because people violate a law, we "
13803 "should therefore repeal it. Obviously, we could reduce murder statistics "
13804 "dramatically by legalizing murder on Wednesdays and Fridays. But that "
13805 "wouldn't make any sense, since murder is wrong every day of the week. A "
13806 "society is right to ban murder always and everywhere."
13809 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13810 #: freeculture.xml:10069
13812 "My point is instead one that democracies understood for generations, but "
13813 "that we recently have learned to forget. The rule of law depends upon people "
13814 "obeying the law. The more often, and more repeatedly, we as citizens "
13815 "experience violating the law, the less we respect the law. Obviously, in "
13816 "most cases, the important issue is the law, not respect for the law. I don't "
13817 "care whether the rapist respects the law or not; I want to catch and "
13818 "incarcerate the rapist. But I do care whether my students respect the "
13819 "law. And I do care if the rules of law sow increasing disrespect because of "
13820 "the extreme of regulation they impose. Twenty million Americans have come "
13821 "of age since the Internet introduced this different idea of "
13822 "<quote>sharing.</quote> We need to be able to call these twenty million "
13823 "Americans <quote>citizens,</quote> not <quote>felons.</quote>"
13826 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13827 #: freeculture.xml:10083
13829 "When at least forty-three million citizens download content from the "
13830 "Internet, and when they use tools to combine that content in ways "
13831 "unauthorized by copyright holders, the first question we should be asking is "
13832 "not how best to involve the FBI. The first question should be whether this "
13833 "particular prohibition is really necessary in order to achieve the proper "
13834 "ends that copyright law serves. Is there another way to assure that artists "
13835 "get paid without transforming forty-three million Americans into felons? "
13836 "Does it make sense if there are other ways to assure that artists get paid "
13837 "without transforming America into a nation of felons?"
13840 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13841 #: freeculture.xml:10095
13842 msgid "This abstract point can be made more clear with a particular example."
13846 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13847 #: freeculture.xml:10098
13849 "We all own CDs. Many of us still own phonograph records. These pieces of "
13850 "plastic encode music that in a certain sense we have bought. The law "
13851 "protects our right to buy and sell that plastic: It is not a copyright "
13852 "infringement for me to sell all my classical records at a used record store "
13853 "and buy jazz records to replace them. That <quote>use</quote> of the "
13854 "recordings is free."
13857 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13858 #: freeculture.xml:10109
13860 "But as the MP3 craze has demonstrated, there is another use of phonograph "
13861 "records that is effectively free. Because these recordings were made without "
13862 "copy-protection technologies, I am <quote>free</quote> to copy, or "
13863 "<quote>rip,</quote> music from my records onto a computer hard disk. Indeed, "
13864 "Apple Corporation went so far as to suggest that <quote>freedom</quote> was "
13865 "a right: In a series of commercials, Apple endorsed the <quote>Rip, Mix, "
13866 "Burn</quote> capacities of digital technologies."
13869 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
13870 #: freeculture.xml:10117
13874 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
13875 #: freeculture.xml:10118
13876 msgid "mix technology and"
13879 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13880 #: freeculture.xml:10120
13882 "This <quote>use</quote> of my records is certainly valuable. I have begun a "
13883 "large process at home of ripping all of my and my wife's CDs, and storing "
13884 "them in one archive. Then, using Apple's iTunes, or a wonderful program "
13885 "called Andromeda, we can build different play lists of our music: Bach, "
13886 "Baroque, Love Songs, Love Songs of Significant Others—the potential is "
13887 "endless. And by reducing the costs of mixing play lists, these technologies "
13888 "help build a creativity with play lists that is itself independently "
13889 "valuable. Compilations of songs are creative and meaningful in their own "
13893 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13894 #: freeculture.xml:10131
13896 "This use is enabled by unprotected media—either CDs or records. But "
13897 "unprotected media also enable file sharing. File sharing threatens (or so "
13898 "the content industry believes) the ability of creators to earn a fair return "
13899 "from their creativity. And thus, many are beginning to experiment with "
13900 "technologies to eliminate unprotected media. These technologies, for "
13901 "example, would enable CDs that could not be ripped. Or they might enable spy "
13902 "programs to identify ripped content on people's machines."
13906 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13907 #: freeculture.xml:10141
13909 "If these technologies took off, then the building of large archives of your "
13910 "own music would become quite difficult. You might hang in hacker circles, "
13911 "and get technology to disable the technologies that protect the "
13912 "content. Trading in those technologies is illegal, but maybe that doesn't "
13913 "bother you much. In any case, for the vast majority of people, these "
13914 "protection technologies would effectively destroy the archiving use of "
13915 "CDs. The technology, in other words, would force us all back to the world "
13916 "where we either listened to music by manipulating pieces of plastic or were "
13917 "part of a massively complex <quote>digital rights management</quote> system."
13920 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13921 #: freeculture.xml:10156
13923 "If the only way to assure that artists get paid were the elimination of the "
13924 "ability to freely move content, then these technologies to interfere with "
13925 "the freedom to move content would be justifiable. But what if there were "
13926 "another way to assure that artists are paid, without locking down any "
13927 "content? What if, in other words, a different system could assure "
13928 "compensation to artists while also preserving the freedom to move content "
13932 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13933 #: freeculture.xml:10165
13935 "My point just now is not to prove that there is such a system. I offer a "
13936 "version of such a system in the last chapter of this book. For now, the only "
13937 "point is the relatively uncontroversial one: If a different system achieved "
13938 "the same legitimate objectives that the existing copyright system achieved, "
13939 "but left consumers and creators much more free, then we'd have a very good "
13940 "reason to pursue this alternative—namely, freedom. The choice, in "
13941 "other words, would not be between property and piracy; the choice would be "
13942 "between different property systems and the freedoms each allowed."
13945 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13946 #: freeculture.xml:10176
13948 "I believe there is a way to assure that artists are paid without turning "
13949 "forty-three million Americans into felons. But the salient feature of this "
13950 "alternative is that it would lead to a very different market for producing "
13951 "and distributing creativity. The dominant few, who today control the vast "
13952 "majority of the distribution of content in the world, would no longer "
13953 "exercise this extreme of control. Rather, they would go the way of the "
13954 "horse-drawn buggy."
13957 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13958 #: freeculture.xml:10185
13960 "Except that this generation's buggy manufacturers have already saddled "
13961 "Congress, and are riding the law to protect themselves against this new form "
13962 "of competition. For them the choice is between fortythree million Americans "
13963 "as criminals and their own survival."
13967 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13968 #: freeculture.xml:10191
13970 "It is understandable why they choose as they do. It is not understandable "
13971 "why we as a democracy continue to choose as we do. Jack Valenti is charming; "
13972 "but not so charming as to justify giving up a tradition as deep and "
13973 "important as our tradition of free culture."
13976 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13977 #: freeculture.xml:10202
13979 "<emphasis role='strong'>There's one more</emphasis> aspect to this "
13980 "corruption that is particularly important to civil liberties, and follows "
13981 "directly from any war of prohibition. As Electronic Frontier Foundation "
13982 "attorney Fred von Lohmann describes, this is the <quote>collateral "
13983 "damage</quote> that <quote>arises whenever you turn a very large percentage "
13984 "of the population into criminals.</quote> This is the collateral damage to "
13985 "civil liberties generally."
13988 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
13989 #: freeculture.xml:10210 freeculture.xml:10310
13990 msgid "von Lohmann, Fred"
13993 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13994 #: freeculture.xml:10212
13996 "<quote>If you can treat someone as a putative lawbreaker,</quote> von "
13997 "Lohmann explains,"
14000 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
14001 #: freeculture.xml:10217
14003 "then all of a sudden a lot of basic civil liberty protections evaporate to "
14004 "one degree or another. … If you're a copyright infringer, how can you "
14005 "hope to have any privacy rights? If you're a copyright infringer, how can "
14006 "you hope to be secure against seizures of your computer? How can you hope to "
14007 "continue to receive Internet access? … Our sensibilities change as "
14008 "soon as we think, <quote>Oh, well, but that person's a criminal, a "
14009 "lawbreaker.</quote> Well, what this campaign against file sharing has done "
14010 "is turn a remarkable percentage of the American Internet-using population "
14011 "into <quote>lawbreakers.</quote>"
14014 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14015 #: freeculture.xml:10229
14017 "And the consequence of this transformation of the American public into "
14018 "criminals is that it becomes trivial, as a matter of due process, to "
14019 "effectively erase much of the privacy most would presume."
14022 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14023 #: freeculture.xml:10234
14025 "Users of the Internet began to see this generally in 2003 as the RIAA "
14026 "launched its campaign to force Internet service providers to turn over the "
14027 "names of customers who the RIAA believed were violating copyright "
14028 "law. Verizon fought that demand and lost. With a simple request to a judge, "
14029 "and without any notice to the customer at all, the identity of an Internet "
14030 "user is revealed."
14034 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
14035 #: freeculture.xml:10252
14037 "See Frank Ahrens, <quote>RIAA's Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets; Single "
14038 "Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl in N.Y. Among Defendants,</quote> "
14039 "<citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, 10 September 2003, E1; Chris Cobbs, "
14040 "<quote>Worried Parents Pull Plug on File `Stealing'; With the Music Industry "
14041 "Cracking Down on File Swapping, Parents are Yanking Software from Home PCs "
14042 "to Avoid Being Sued,</quote> <citetitle>Orlando Sentinel "
14043 "Tribune</citetitle>, 30 August 2003, C1; Jefferson Graham, <quote>Recording "
14044 "Industry Sues Parents,</quote> <citetitle>USA Today</citetitle>, 15 "
14045 "September 2003, 4D; John Schwartz, <quote>She Says She's No Music Pirate. No "
14046 "Snoop Fan, Either,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 25 "
14047 "September 2003, C1; Margo Varadi, <quote>Is Brianna a Criminal?</quote> "
14048 "<citetitle>Toronto Star</citetitle>, 18 September 2003, P7."
14051 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14052 #: freeculture.xml:10243
14054 "The RIAA then expanded this campaign, by announcing a general strategy to "
14055 "sue individual users of the Internet who are alleged to have downloaded "
14056 "copyrighted music from file-sharing systems. But as we've seen, the "
14057 "potential damages from these suits are astronomical: If a family's computer "
14058 "is used to download a single CD's worth of music, the family could be liable "
14059 "for $2 million in damages. That didn't stop the RIAA from suing a number of "
14060 "these families, just as they had sued Jesse Jordan.<placeholder "
14061 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14065 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
14066 #: freeculture.xml:10270
14068 "See <quote>Revealed: How RIAA Tracks Downloaders: Music Industry Discloses "
14069 "Some Methods Used,</quote> CNN.com, available at <ulink "
14070 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #47</ulink>."
14073 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14074 #: freeculture.xml:10266
14076 "Even this understates the espionage that is being waged by the RIAA. A "
14077 "report from CNN late last summer described a strategy the RIAA had adopted "
14078 "to track Napster users.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Using a "
14079 "sophisticated hashing algorithm, the RIAA took what is in effect a "
14080 "fingerprint of every song in the Napster catalog. Any copy of one of those "
14081 "MP3s will have the same <quote>fingerprint.</quote>"
14085 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
14086 #: freeculture.xml:10291
14088 "See Jeff Adler, <quote>Cambridge: On Campus, Pirates Are Not "
14089 "Penitent,</quote> <citetitle>Boston Globe</citetitle>, 18 May 2003, City "
14090 "Weekly, 1; Frank Ahrens, <quote>Four Students Sued over Music Sites; "
14091 "Industry Group Targets File Sharing at Colleges,</quote> "
14092 "<citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, 4 April 2003, E1; Elizabeth "
14093 "Armstrong, <quote>Students `Rip, Mix, Burn' at Their Own Risk,</quote> "
14094 "<citetitle>Christian Science Monitor</citetitle>, 2 September 2003, 20; "
14095 "Robert Becker and Angela Rozas, <quote>Music Pirate Hunt Turns to Loyola; "
14096 "Two Students Names Are Handed Over; Lawsuit Possible,</quote> "
14097 "<citetitle>Chicago Tribune</citetitle>, 16 July 2003, 1C; Beth Cox, "
14098 "<quote>RIAA Trains Antipiracy Guns on Universities,</quote> "
14099 "<citetitle>Internet News</citetitle>, 30 January 2003, available at <ulink "
14100 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #48</ulink>; Benny Evangelista, "
14101 "<quote>Download Warning 101: Freshman Orientation This Fall to Include "
14102 "Record Industry Warnings Against File Sharing,</quote> <citetitle>San "
14103 "Francisco Chronicle</citetitle>, 11 August 2003, E11; <quote>Raid, Letters "
14104 "Are Weapons at Universities,</quote> <citetitle>USA Today</citetitle>, 26 "
14105 "September 2000, 3D."
14108 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14109 #: freeculture.xml:10279
14111 "So imagine the following not-implausible scenario: Imagine a friend gives a "
14112 "CD to your daughter—a collection of songs just like the cassettes you "
14113 "used to make as a kid. You don't know, and neither does your daughter, where "
14114 "these songs came from. But she copies these songs onto her computer. She "
14115 "then takes her computer to college and connects it to a college network, and "
14116 "if the college network is <quote>cooperating</quote> with the RIAA's "
14117 "espionage, and she hasn't properly protected her content from the network "
14118 "(do you know how to do that yourself ?), then the RIAA will be able to "
14119 "identify your daughter as a <quote>criminal.</quote> And under the rules "
14120 "that universities are beginning to deploy,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
14121 "id=\"0\"/> your daughter can lose the right to use the university's computer "
14122 "network. She can, in some cases, be expelled."
14126 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14127 #: freeculture.xml:10312
14129 "Now, of course, she'll have the right to defend herself. You can hire a "
14130 "lawyer for her (at $300 per hour, if you're lucky), and she can plead that "
14131 "she didn't know anything about the source of the songs or that they came "
14132 "from Napster. And it may well be that the university believes her. But the "
14133 "university might not believe her. It might treat this "
14134 "<quote>contraband</quote> as presumptive of guilt. And as any number of "
14135 "college students have already learned, our presumptions about innocence "
14136 "disappear in the middle of wars of prohibition. This war is no different. "
14137 "Says von Lohmann,"
14140 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
14141 #: freeculture.xml:10327
14143 "So when we're talking about numbers like forty to sixty million Americans "
14144 "that are essentially copyright infringers, you create a situation where the "
14145 "civil liberties of those people are very much in peril in a general "
14146 "matter. [I don't] think [there is any] analog where you could randomly "
14147 "choose any person off the street and be confident that they were committing "
14148 "an unlawful act that could put them on the hook for potential felony "
14149 "liability or hundreds of millions of dollars of civil liability. Certainly "
14150 "we all speed, but speeding isn't the kind of an act for which we routinely "
14151 "forfeit civil liberties. Some people use drugs, and I think that's the "
14152 "closest analog, [but] many have noted that the war against drugs has eroded "
14153 "all of our civil liberties because it's treated so many Americans as "
14154 "criminals. Well, I think it's fair to say that file sharing is an order of "
14155 "magnitude larger number of Americans than drug use. … If forty to "
14156 "sixty million Americans have become lawbreakers, then we're really on a "
14157 "slippery slope to lose a lot of civil liberties for all forty to sixty "
14161 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14162 #: freeculture.xml:10347
14164 "When forty to sixty million Americans are considered "
14165 "<quote>criminals</quote> under the law, and when the law could achieve the "
14166 "same objective— securing rights to authors—without these "
14167 "millions being considered <quote>criminals,</quote> who is the villain? "
14168 "Americans or the law? Which is American, a constant war on our own people or "
14169 "a concerted effort through our democracy to change our law?"
14172 #. type: Content of: <book><part><title>
14173 #: freeculture.xml:10360
14177 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14178 #: freeculture.xml:10365
14180 "<emphasis role='strong'>So here's</emphasis> the picture: You're standing at "
14181 "the side of the road. Your car is on fire. You are angry and upset because "
14182 "in part you helped start the fire. Now you don't know how to put it "
14183 "out. Next to you is a bucket, filled with gasoline. Obviously, gasoline "
14184 "won't put the fire out."
14187 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14188 #: freeculture.xml:10372
14190 "As you ponder the mess, someone else comes along. In a panic, she grabs the "
14191 "bucket. Before you have a chance to tell her to stop—or before she "
14192 "understands just why she should stop—the bucket is in the air. The "
14193 "gasoline is about to hit the blazing car. And the fire that gasoline will "
14194 "ignite is about to ignite everything around."
14197 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14198 #: freeculture.xml:10380
14200 "<emphasis role='strong'>A war</emphasis> about copyright rages all "
14201 "around—and we're all focusing on the wrong thing. No doubt, current "
14202 "technologies threaten existing businesses. No doubt they may threaten "
14203 "artists. But technologies change. The industry and technologists have "
14204 "plenty of ways to use technology to protect themselves against the current "
14205 "threats of the Internet. This is a fire that if let alone would burn itself "
14210 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14211 #: freeculture.xml:10390
14213 "Yet policy makers are not willing to leave this fire to itself. Primed with "
14214 "plenty of lobbyists' money, they are keen to intervene to eliminate the "
14215 "problem they perceive. But the problem they perceive is not the real threat "
14216 "this culture faces. For while we watch this small fire in the corner, there "
14217 "is a massive change in the way culture is made that is happening all around."
14220 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14221 #: freeculture.xml:10398
14223 "Somehow we have to find a way to turn attention to this more important and "
14224 "fundamental issue. Somehow we have to find a way to avoid pouring gasoline "
14228 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14229 #: freeculture.xml:10403
14231 "We have not found that way yet. Instead, we seem trapped in a simpler, "
14232 "binary view. However much many people push to frame this debate more "
14233 "broadly, it is the simple, binary view that remains. We rubberneck to look "
14234 "at the fire when we should be keeping our eyes on the road."
14237 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14238 #: freeculture.xml:10409
14240 "This challenge has been my life these last few years. It has also been my "
14241 "failure. In the two chapters that follow, I describe one small brace of "
14242 "efforts, so far failed, to find a way to refocus this debate. We must "
14243 "understand these failures if we're to understand what success will require."
14246 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
14247 #: freeculture.xml:10419
14248 msgid "CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Eldred"
14251 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14252 #: freeculture.xml:10420
14253 msgid "Hawthorne, Nathaniel"
14256 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14257 #: freeculture.xml:10422
14259 "<emphasis role='strong'>In 1995</emphasis>, a father was frustrated that his "
14260 "daughters didn't seem to like Hawthorne. No doubt there was more than one "
14261 "such father, but at least one did something about it. Eric Eldred, a retired "
14262 "computer programmer living in New Hampshire, decided to put Hawthorne on the "
14263 "Web. An electronic version, Eldred thought, with links to pictures and "
14264 "explanatory text, would make this nineteenth-century author's work come "
14268 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14269 #: freeculture.xml:10431
14271 "It didn't work—at least for his daughters. They didn't find Hawthorne "
14272 "any more interesting than before. But Eldred's experiment gave birth to a "
14273 "hobby, and his hobby begat a cause: Eldred would build a library of public "
14274 "domain works by scanning these works and making them available for free."
14278 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14279 #: freeculture.xml:10438
14281 "Eldred's library was not simply a copy of certain public domain works, "
14282 "though even a copy would have been of great value to people across the world "
14283 "who can't get access to printed versions of these works. Instead, Eldred was "
14284 "producing derivative works from these public domain works. Just as Disney "
14285 "turned Grimm into stories more accessible to the twentieth century, Eldred "
14286 "transformed Hawthorne, and many others, into a form more "
14287 "accessible—technically accessible—today."
14290 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14291 #: freeculture.xml:10449
14293 "Eldred's freedom to do this with Hawthorne's work grew from the same source "
14294 "as Disney's. Hawthorne's <citetitle>Scarlet Letter</citetitle> had passed "
14295 "into the public domain in 1907. It was free for anyone to take without the "
14296 "permission of the Hawthorne estate or anyone else. Some, such as Dover Press "
14297 "and Penguin Classics, take works from the public domain and produce printed "
14298 "editions, which they sell in bookstores across the country. Others, such as "
14299 "Disney, take these stories and turn them into animated cartoons, sometimes "
14300 "successfully (<citetitle>Cinderella</citetitle>), sometimes not "
14301 "(<citetitle>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</citetitle>, <citetitle>Treasure "
14302 "Planet</citetitle>). These are all commercial publications of public domain "
14307 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14308 #: freeculture.xml:10473
14310 "There's a parallel here with pornography that is a bit hard to describe, but "
14311 "it's a strong one. One phenomenon that the Internet created was a world of "
14312 "noncommercial pornographers—people who were distributing porn but were "
14313 "not making money directly or indirectly from that distribution. Such a "
14314 "class didn't exist before the Internet came into being because the costs of "
14315 "distributing porn were so high. Yet this new class of distributors got "
14316 "special attention in the Supreme Court, when the Court struck down the "
14317 "Communications Decency Act of 1996. It was partly because of the burden on "
14318 "noncommercial speakers that the statute was found to exceed Congress's "
14319 "power. The same point could have been made about noncommercial publishers "
14320 "after the advent of the Internet. The Eric Eldreds of the world before the "
14321 "Internet were extremely few. Yet one would think it at least as important to "
14322 "protect the Eldreds of the world as to protect noncommercial pornographers."
14325 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14326 #: freeculture.xml:10462
14328 "The Internet created the possibility of noncommercial publications of public "
14329 "domain works. Eldred's is just one example. There are literally thousands of "
14330 "others. Hundreds of thousands from across the world have discovered this "
14331 "platform of expression and now use it to share works that are, by law, free "
14332 "for the taking. This has produced what we might call the "
14333 "<quote>noncommercial publishing industry,</quote> which before the Internet "
14334 "was limited to people with large egos or with political or social "
14335 "causes. But with the Internet, it includes a wide range of individuals and "
14336 "groups dedicated to spreading culture generally.<placeholder "
14337 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14340 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14341 #: freeculture.xml:10490
14343 "As I said, Eldred lives in New Hampshire. In 1998, Robert Frost's collection "
14344 "of poems <citetitle>New Hampshire</citetitle> was slated to pass into the "
14345 "public domain. Eldred wanted to post that collection in his free public "
14346 "library. But Congress got in the way. As I described in chapter <xref "
14347 "xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"property-i\"/>, in 1998, for the "
14348 "eleventh time in forty years, Congress extended the terms of existing "
14349 "copyrights—this time by twenty years. Eldred would not be free to add "
14350 "any works more recent than 1923 to his collection until 2019. Indeed, no "
14351 "copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until that year (and not "
14352 "even then, if Congress extends the term again). By contrast, in the same "
14353 "period, more than 1 million patents will pass into the public domain."
14356 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
14357 #: freeculture.xml:10503 freeculture.xml:10513
14361 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
14362 #: freeculture.xml:10504 freeculture.xml:10514
14363 msgid "Bono, Sonny"
14366 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14367 #: freeculture.xml:10513
14369 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
14370 "id=\"1\"/> The full text is: <quote>Sonny [Bono] wanted the term of "
14371 "copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a "
14372 "change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me "
14373 "to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you "
14374 "know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for a term to last forever less "
14375 "one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress,</quote> 144 "
14376 "Cong. Rec. H9946, 9951-2 (October 7, 1998)."
14379 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14380 #: freeculture.xml:10508
14382 "This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), enacted in "
14383 "memory of the congressman and former musician Sonny Bono, who, his widow, "
14384 "Mary Bono, says, believed that <quote>copyrights should be "
14385 "forever.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14388 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14389 #: freeculture.xml:10526
14391 "Eldred decided to fight this law. He first resolved to fight it through "
14392 "civil disobedience. In a series of interviews, Eldred announced that he "
14393 "would publish as planned, CTEA notwithstanding. But because of a second law "
14394 "passed in 1998, the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act, his act of publishing "
14395 "would make Eldred a felon—whether or not anyone complained. This was a "
14396 "dangerous strategy for a disabled programmer to undertake."
14399 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14400 #: freeculture.xml:10535
14402 "It was here that I became involved in Eldred's battle. I was a "
14403 "constitutional scholar whose first passion was constitutional "
14404 "interpretation. And though constitutional law courses never focus upon the "
14405 "Progress Clause of the Constitution, it had always struck me as importantly "
14406 "different. As you know, the Constitution says,"
14409 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
14410 #: freeculture.xml:10546
14412 "Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science … by "
14413 "securing for limited Times to Authors … exclusive Right to their "
14414 "… Writings. …"
14417 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14418 #: freeculture.xml:10552
14420 "As I've described, this clause is unique within the power-granting clause of "
14421 "Article I, section 8 of our Constitution. Every other clause granting power "
14422 "to Congress simply says Congress has the power to do something—for "
14423 "example, to regulate <quote>commerce among the several states</quote> or "
14424 "<quote>declare War.</quote> But here, the <quote>something</quote> is "
14425 "something quite specific—to <quote>promote … "
14426 "Progress</quote>—through means that are also specific— by "
14427 "<quote>securing</quote> <quote>exclusive Rights</quote> (i.e., copyrights) "
14428 "<quote>for limited Times.</quote>"
14431 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14432 #: freeculture.xml:10561 freeculture.xml:12043
14433 msgid "Jaszi, Peter"
14437 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14438 #: freeculture.xml:10563
14440 "In the past forty years, Congress has gotten into the practice of extending "
14441 "existing terms of copyright protection. What puzzled me about this was, if "
14442 "Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then the Constitution's "
14443 "requirement that terms be <quote>limited</quote> will have no practical "
14444 "effect. If every time a copyright is about to expire, Congress has the power "
14445 "to extend its term, then Congress can achieve what the Constitution plainly "
14446 "forbids—perpetual terms <quote>on the installment plan,</quote> as "
14447 "Professor Peter Jaszi so nicely put it."
14450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14451 #: freeculture.xml:10574
14453 "As an academic, my first response was to hit the books. I remember sitting "
14454 "late at the office, scouring on-line databases for any serious consideration "
14455 "of the question. No one had ever challenged Congress's practice of extending "
14456 "existing terms. That failure may in part be why Congress seemed so "
14457 "untroubled in its habit. That, and the fact that the practice had become so "
14458 "lucrative for Congress. Congress knows that copyright owners will be willing "
14459 "to pay a great deal of money to see their copyright terms extended. And so "
14460 "Congress is quite happy to keep this gravy train going."
14463 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14464 #: freeculture.xml:10585
14466 "For this is the core of the corruption in our present system of "
14467 "government. <quote>Corruption</quote> not in the sense that representatives "
14468 "are bribed. Rather, <quote>corruption</quote> in the sense that the system "
14469 "induces the beneficiaries of Congress's acts to raise and give money to "
14470 "Congress to induce it to act. There's only so much time; there's only so "
14471 "much Congress can do. Why not limit its actions to those things it must "
14472 "do—and those things that pay? Extending copyright terms pays."
14475 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14476 #: freeculture.xml:10594
14478 "If that's not obvious to you, consider the following: Say you're one of the "
14479 "very few lucky copyright owners whose copyright continues to make money one "
14480 "hundred years after it was created. The Estate of Robert Frost is a good "
14481 "example. Frost died in 1963. His poetry continues to be extraordinarily "
14482 "valuable. Thus the Robert Frost estate benefits greatly from any extension "
14483 "of copyright, since no publisher would pay the estate any money if the poems "
14484 "Frost wrote could be published by anyone for free."
14487 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14488 #: freeculture.xml:10604
14490 "So imagine the Robert Frost estate is earning $100,000 a year from three of "
14491 "Frost's poems. And imagine the copyright for those poems is about to "
14492 "expire. You sit on the board of the Robert Frost estate. Your financial "
14493 "adviser comes to your board meeting with a very grim report:"
14497 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14498 #: freeculture.xml:10611
14500 "<quote>Next year,</quote> the adviser announces, <quote>our copyrights in "
14501 "works A, B, and C will expire. That means that after next year, we will no "
14502 "longer be receiving the annual royalty check of $100,000 from the publishers "
14503 "of those works.</quote>"
14506 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14507 #: freeculture.xml:10619
14509 "<quote>There's a proposal in Congress, however,</quote> she continues, "
14510 "<quote>that could change this. A few congressmen are floating a bill to "
14511 "extend the terms of copyright by twenty years. That bill would be "
14512 "extraordinarily valuable to us. So we should hope this bill passes.</quote>"
14515 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14516 #: freeculture.xml:10625
14518 "<quote>Hope?</quote> a fellow board member says. <quote>Can't we be doing "
14519 "something about it?</quote>"
14522 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14523 #: freeculture.xml:10629
14525 "<quote>Well, obviously, yes,</quote> the adviser responds. <quote>We could "
14526 "contribute to the campaigns of a number of representatives to try to assure "
14527 "that they support the bill.</quote>"
14530 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14531 #: freeculture.xml:10634
14533 "You hate politics. You hate contributing to campaigns. So you want to know "
14534 "whether this disgusting practice is worth it. <quote>How much would we get "
14535 "if this extension were passed?</quote> you ask the adviser. <quote>How much "
14536 "is it worth?</quote>"
14539 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14540 #: freeculture.xml:10640
14542 "<quote>Well,</quote> the adviser says, <quote>if you're confident that you "
14543 "will continue to get at least $100,000 a year from these copyrights, and you "
14544 "use the `discount rate' that we use to evaluate estate investments (6 "
14545 "percent), then this law would be worth $1,146,000 to the estate.</quote>"
14548 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14549 #: freeculture.xml:10646
14551 "You're a bit shocked by the number, but you quickly come to the correct "
14555 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14556 #: freeculture.xml:10650
14558 "<quote>So you're saying it would be worth it for us to pay more than "
14559 "$1,000,000 in campaign contributions if we were confident those "
14560 "contributions would assure that the bill was passed?</quote>"
14563 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14564 #: freeculture.xml:10656
14566 "<quote>Absolutely,</quote> the adviser responds. <quote>It is worth it to "
14567 "you to contribute up to the `present value' of the income you expect from "
14568 "these copyrights. Which for us means over $1,000,000.</quote>"
14572 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14573 #: freeculture.xml:10662
14575 "You quickly get the point—you as the member of the board and, I trust, "
14576 "you the reader. Each time copyrights are about to expire, every beneficiary "
14577 "in the position of the Robert Frost estate faces the same choice: If they "
14578 "can contribute to get a law passed to extend copyrights, they will benefit "
14579 "greatly from that extension. And so each time copyrights are about to "
14580 "expire, there is a massive amount of lobbying to get the copyright term "
14584 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14585 #: freeculture.xml:10673
14587 "Thus a congressional perpetual motion machine: So long as legislation can be "
14588 "bought (albeit indirectly), there will be all the incentive in the world to "
14589 "buy further extensions of copyright."
14593 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14594 #: freeculture.xml:10685
14596 "Associated Press, <quote>Disney Lobbying for Copyright Extension No Mickey "
14597 "Mouse Effort; Congress OKs Bill Granting Creators 20 More Years,</quote> "
14598 "<citetitle>Chicago Tribune</citetitle>, 17 October 1998, 22."
14602 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14603 #: freeculture.xml:10692
14605 "See Nick Brown, <quote>Fair Use No More?: Copyright in the Information "
14606 "Age,</quote> available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
14611 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14612 #: freeculture.xml:10700
14614 "Alan K. Ota, <quote>Disney in Washington: The Mouse That Roars,</quote> "
14615 "<citetitle>Congressional Quarterly This Week</citetitle>, 8 August 1990, "
14616 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #50</ulink>."
14619 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14620 #: freeculture.xml:10678
14622 "In the lobbying that led to the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term "
14623 "Extension Act, this <quote>theory</quote> about incentives was proved "
14624 "real. Ten of the thirteen original sponsors of the act in the House received "
14625 "the maximum contribution from Disney's political action committee; in the "
14626 "Senate, eight of the twelve sponsors received contributions.<placeholder "
14627 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The RIAA and the MPAA are estimated to have "
14628 "spent over $1.5 million lobbying in the 1998 election cycle. They paid out "
14629 "more than $200,000 in campaign contributions.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
14630 "id=\"1\"/> Disney is estimated to have contributed more than $800,000 to "
14631 "reelection campaigns in the cycle.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/>"
14634 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14635 #: freeculture.xml:10707
14637 "<emphasis role='strong'>Constitutional law</emphasis> is not oblivious to "
14638 "the obvious. Or at least, it need not be. So when I was considering Eldred's "
14639 "complaint, this reality about the never-ending incentives to increase the "
14640 "copyright term was central to my thinking. In my view, a pragmatic court "
14641 "committed to interpreting and applying the Constitution of our framers would "
14642 "see that if Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then there "
14643 "would be no effective constitutional requirement that terms be "
14644 "<quote>limited.</quote> If they could extend it once, they would extend it "
14645 "again and again and again."
14649 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14650 #: freeculture.xml:10719
14652 "It was also my judgment that <emphasis>this</emphasis> Supreme Court would "
14653 "not allow Congress to extend existing terms. As anyone close to the Supreme "
14654 "Court's work knows, this Court has increasingly restricted the power of "
14655 "Congress when it has viewed Congress's actions as exceeding the power "
14656 "granted to it by the Constitution. Among constitutional scholars, the most "
14657 "famous example of this trend was the Supreme Court's decision in 1995 to "
14658 "strike down a law that banned the possession of guns near schools."
14661 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14662 #: freeculture.xml:10732
14664 "Since 1937, the Supreme Court had interpreted Congress's granted powers very "
14665 "broadly; so, while the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate "
14666 "only <quote>commerce among the several states</quote> (aka <quote>interstate "
14667 "commerce</quote>), the Supreme Court had interpreted that power to include "
14668 "the power to regulate any activity that merely affected interstate commerce."
14671 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14672 #: freeculture.xml:10742
14674 "As the economy grew, this standard increasingly meant that there was no "
14675 "limit to Congress's power to regulate, since just about every activity, when "
14676 "considered on a national scale, affects interstate commerce. A Constitution "
14677 "designed to limit Congress's power was instead interpreted to impose no "
14681 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14682 #: freeculture.xml:10748 freeculture.xml:11530
14683 msgid "Rehnquist, William H."
14686 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14687 #: freeculture.xml:10750
14689 "The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Rehnquist's command, changed that in "
14690 "<citetitle>United States</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>. The "
14691 "government had argued that possessing guns near schools affected interstate "
14692 "commerce. Guns near schools increase crime, crime lowers property values, "
14693 "and so on. In the oral argument, the Chief Justice asked the government "
14694 "whether there was any activity that would not affect interstate commerce "
14695 "under the reasoning the government advanced. The government said there was "
14696 "not; if Congress says an activity affects interstate commerce, then that "
14697 "activity affects interstate commerce. The Supreme Court, the government "
14698 "said, was not in the position to second-guess Congress."
14702 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14703 #: freeculture.xml:10765
14705 "<citetitle>United States</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>, 514 "
14706 "U.S. 549, 564 (1995)."
14710 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14711 #: freeculture.xml:10772
14713 "<citetitle>United States</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Morrison</citetitle>, 529 "
14717 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14718 #: freeculture.xml:10763
14720 "<quote>We pause to consider the implications of the government's "
14721 "arguments,</quote> the Chief Justice wrote.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
14722 "id=\"0\"/> If anything Congress says is interstate commerce must therefore "
14723 "be considered interstate commerce, then there would be no limit to "
14724 "Congress's power. The decision in <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> was "
14725 "reaffirmed five years later in <citetitle>United States</citetitle> "
14726 "v. <citetitle>Morrison</citetitle>.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
14730 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14731 #: freeculture.xml:10779
14733 "If it is a principle about enumerated powers, then the principle carries "
14734 "from one enumerated power to another. The animating point in the context of "
14735 "the Commerce Clause was that the interpretation offered by the government "
14736 "would allow the government unending power to regulate commerce—the "
14737 "limitation to interstate commerce notwithstanding. The same point is true in "
14738 "the context of the Copyright Clause. Here, too, the government's "
14739 "interpretation would allow the government unending power to regulate "
14740 "copyrights—the limitation to <quote>limited times</quote> "
14745 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14746 #: freeculture.xml:10776
14748 "If a principle were at work here, then it should apply to the Progress "
14749 "Clause as much as the Commerce Clause.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
14750 "id=\"0\"/> And if it is applied to the Progress Clause, the principle should "
14751 "yield the conclusion that Congress can't extend an existing term. If "
14752 "Congress could extend an existing term, then there would be no "
14753 "<quote>stopping point</quote> to Congress's power over terms, though the "
14754 "Constitution expressly states that there is such a limit. Thus, the same "
14755 "principle applied to the power to grant copyrights should entail that "
14756 "Congress is not allowed to extend the term of existing copyrights."
14759 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14760 #: freeculture.xml:10800
14762 "<emphasis>If</emphasis>, that is, the principle announced in "
14763 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> stood for a principle. Many believed the "
14764 "decision in <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> stood for politics—a "
14765 "conservative Supreme Court, which believed in states' rights, using its "
14766 "power over Congress to advance its own personal political preferences. But I "
14767 "rejected that view of the Supreme Court's decision. Indeed, shortly after "
14768 "the decision, I wrote an article demonstrating the <quote>fidelity</quote> "
14769 "in such an interpretation of the Constitution. The idea that the Supreme "
14770 "Court decides cases based upon its politics struck me as extraordinarily "
14771 "boring. I was not going to devote my life to teaching constitutional law if "
14772 "these nine Justices were going to be petty politicians."
14775 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14776 #: freeculture.xml:10813
14778 "<emphasis role='strong'>Now let's pause</emphasis> for a moment to make sure "
14779 "we understand what the argument in <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> was not "
14780 "about. By insisting on the Constitution's limits to copyright, obviously "
14781 "Eldred was not endorsing piracy. Indeed, in an obvious sense, he was "
14782 "fighting a kind of piracy—piracy of the public domain. When Robert "
14783 "Frost wrote his work and when Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, the maximum "
14784 "copyright term was just fifty-six years. Because of interim changes, Frost "
14785 "and Disney had already enjoyed a seventy-five-year monopoly for their "
14786 "work. They had gotten the benefit of the bargain that the Constitution "
14787 "envisions: In exchange for a monopoly protected for fifty-six years, they "
14788 "created new work. But now these entities were using their "
14789 "power—expressed through the power of lobbyists' money—to get "
14790 "another twenty-year dollop of monopoly. That twenty-year dollop would be "
14791 "taken from the public domain. Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects "
14795 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14796 #: freeculture.xml:10830
14797 msgid "Nashville Songwriters Association"
14801 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14802 #: freeculture.xml:10838
14804 "Brief of the Nashville Songwriters Association, "
14805 "<citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 537 U.S. "
14806 "186 (2003) (No. 01-618), n.10, available at <ulink "
14807 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #51</ulink>."
14810 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14811 #: freeculture.xml:10832
14813 "Some people view the public domain with contempt. In their brief before the "
14814 "Supreme Court, the Nashville Songwriters Association wrote that the public "
14815 "domain is nothing more than <quote>legal piracy.</quote><placeholder "
14816 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> But it is not piracy when the law allows it; "
14817 "and in our constitutional system, our law requires it. Some may not like the "
14818 "Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a "
14819 "pirate's charter."
14822 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14823 #: freeculture.xml:10848
14825 "As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a "
14826 "way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the "
14827 "development and distribution of our culture. Yet, as Eric Eldred discovered, "
14828 "we have set up a system that assures that copyright terms will be repeatedly "
14829 "extended, and extended, and extended. We have created the perfect storm for "
14830 "the public domain. Copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long "
14831 "as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again."
14834 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14835 #: freeculture.xml:10860
14837 "<emphasis role='strong'>It is valuable</emphasis> copyrights that are "
14838 "responsible for terms being extended. Mickey Mouse and <quote>Rhapsody in "
14839 "Blue.</quote> These works are too valuable for copyright owners to "
14840 "ignore. But the real harm to our society from copyright extensions is not "
14841 "that Mickey Mouse remains Disney's. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert "
14842 "Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that have continuing "
14843 "commercial value. The real harm of term extension comes not from these "
14844 "famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not "
14845 "commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result."
14849 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14850 #: freeculture.xml:10878
14852 "The figure of 2 percent is an extrapolation from the study by the "
14853 "Congressional Research Service, in light of the estimated renewal "
14854 "ranges. See Brief of Petitioners, <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
14855 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 7, available at <ulink "
14856 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #52</ulink>."
14859 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14860 #: freeculture.xml:10872
14862 "If you look at the work created in the first twenty years (1923 to 1942) "
14863 "affected by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 2 percent of that "
14864 "work has any continuing commercial value. It was the copyright holders for "
14865 "that 2 percent who pushed the CTEA through. But the law and its effect were "
14866 "not limited to that 2 percent. The law extended the terms of copyright "
14867 "generally.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14871 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14872 #: freeculture.xml:10887
14874 "Think practically about the consequence of this extension—practically, "
14875 "as a businessperson, and not as a lawyer eager for more legal work. In 1930, "
14876 "10,047 books were published. In 2000, 174 of those books were still in "
14877 "print. Let's say you were Brewster Kahle, and you wanted to make available "
14878 "to the world in your iArchive project the remaining 9,873. What would you "
14882 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14883 #: freeculture.xml:10900
14885 "Well, first, you'd have to determine which of the 9,873 books were still "
14886 "under copyright. That requires going to a library (these data are not "
14887 "on-line) and paging through tomes of books, cross-checking the titles and "
14888 "authors of the 9,873 books with the copyright registration and renewal "
14889 "records for works published in 1930. That will produce a list of books still "
14893 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14894 #: freeculture.xml:10908
14896 "Then for the books still under copyright, you would need to locate the "
14897 "current copyright owners. How would you do that?"
14900 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14901 #: freeculture.xml:10912
14903 "Most people think that there must be a list of these copyright owners "
14904 "somewhere. Practical people think this way. How could there be thousands and "
14905 "thousands of government monopolies without there being at least a list?"
14908 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14909 #: freeculture.xml:10919
14911 "But there is no list. There may be a name from 1930, and then in 1959, of "
14912 "the person who registered the copyright. But just think practically about "
14913 "how impossibly difficult it would be to track down thousands of such "
14914 "records—especially since the person who registered is not necessarily "
14915 "the current owner. And we're just talking about 1930!"
14918 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14919 #: freeculture.xml:10928
14921 "<quote>But there isn't a list of who owns property generally,</quote> the "
14922 "apologists for the system respond. <quote>Why should there be a list of "
14923 "copyright owners?</quote>"
14926 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14927 #: freeculture.xml:10933
14929 "Well, actually, if you think about it, there <emphasis>are</emphasis> plenty "
14930 "of lists of who owns what property. Think about deeds on houses, or titles "
14931 "to cars. And where there isn't a list, the code of real space is pretty "
14932 "good at suggesting who the owner of a bit of property is. (A swing set in "
14933 "your backyard is probably yours.) So formally or informally, we have a "
14934 "pretty good way to know who owns what tangible property."
14938 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14939 #: freeculture.xml:10942
14941 "So: You walk down a street and see a house. You can know who owns the house "
14942 "by looking it up in the courthouse registry. If you see a car, there is "
14943 "ordinarily a license plate that will link the owner to the car. If you see a "
14944 "bunch of children's toys sitting on the front lawn of a house, it's fairly "
14945 "easy to determine who owns the toys. And if you happen to see a baseball "
14946 "lying in a gutter on the side of the road, look around for a second for some "
14947 "kids playing ball. If you don't see any kids, then okay: Here's a bit of "
14948 "property whose owner we can't easily determine. It is the exception that "
14949 "proves the rule: that we ordinarily know quite well who owns what property."
14952 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14953 #: freeculture.xml:10957
14955 "Compare this story to intangible property. You go into a library. The "
14956 "library owns the books. But who owns the copyrights? As I've already "
14957 "described, there's no list of copyright owners. There are authors' names, of "
14958 "course, but their copyrights could have been assigned, or passed down in an "
14959 "estate like Grandma's old jewelry. To know who owns what, you would have to "
14960 "hire a private detective. The bottom line: The owner cannot easily be "
14961 "located. And in a regime like ours, in which it is a felony to use such "
14962 "property without the property owner's permission, the property isn't going "
14966 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14967 #: freeculture.xml:10969
14969 "The consequence with respect to old books is that they won't be digitized, "
14970 "and hence will simply rot away on shelves. But the consequence for other "
14971 "creative works is much more dire."
14974 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14975 #: freeculture.xml:10974
14976 msgid "Agee, Michael"
14979 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14980 #: freeculture.xml:10975 freeculture.xml:11410
14981 msgid "Hal Roach Studios"
14984 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14985 #: freeculture.xml:10976
14986 msgid "Laurel and Hardy Films"
14989 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14990 #: freeculture.xml:10977
14991 msgid "Lucky Dog, The"
14995 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14996 #: freeculture.xml:10990
14998 "See David G. Savage, <quote>High Court Scene of Showdown on Copyright "
14999 "Law,</quote> <citetitle>Los Angeles Times</citetitle>, 6 October 2002; David "
15000 "Streitfeld, <quote>Classic Movies, Songs, Books at Stake; Supreme Court "
15001 "Hears Arguments Today on Striking Down Copyright Extension,</quote> "
15002 "<citetitle>Orlando Sentinel Tribune</citetitle>, 9 October 2002."
15005 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15006 #: freeculture.xml:10979
15008 "Consider the story of Michael Agee, chairman of Hal Roach Studios, which "
15009 "owns the copyrights for the Laurel and Hardy films. Agee is a direct "
15010 "beneficiary of the Bono Act. The Laurel and Hardy films were made between "
15011 "1921 and 1951. Only one of these films, <citetitle>The Lucky "
15012 "Dog</citetitle>, is currently out of copyright. But for the CTEA, films made "
15013 "after 1923 would have begun entering the public domain. Because Agee "
15014 "controls the exclusive rights for these popular films, he makes a great deal "
15015 "of money. According to one estimate, <quote>Roach has sold about 60,000 "
15016 "videocassettes and 50,000 DVDs of the duo's silent "
15017 "films.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
15020 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15021 #: freeculture.xml:10997
15023 "Yet Agee opposed the CTEA. His reasons demonstrate a rare virtue in this "
15024 "culture: selflessness. He argued in a brief before the Supreme Court that "
15025 "the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will, if left standing, destroy "
15026 "a whole generation of American film."
15030 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15031 #: freeculture.xml:11003
15033 "His argument is straightforward. A tiny fraction of this work has any "
15034 "continuing commercial value. The rest—to the extent it survives at "
15035 "all—sits in vaults gathering dust. It may be that some of this work "
15036 "not now commercially valuable will be deemed to be valuable by the owners of "
15037 "the vaults. For this to occur, however, the commercial benefit from the work "
15038 "must exceed the costs of making the work available for distribution."
15042 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
15043 #: freeculture.xml:11021
15045 "Brief of Hal Roach Studios and Michael Agee as Amicus Curiae Supporting the "
15046 "Petitoners, <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
15047 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01- 618), "
15048 "12. See also Brief of Amicus Curiae filed on behalf of Petitioners by the "
15049 "Internet Archive, <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
15050 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, available at <ulink "
15051 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #53</ulink>."
15054 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15055 #: freeculture.xml:11014
15057 "We can't know the benefits, but we do know a lot about the costs. For most "
15058 "of the history of film, the costs of restoring film were very high; digital "
15059 "technology has lowered these costs substantially. While it cost more than "
15060 "$10,000 to restore a ninety-minute black-and-white film in 1993, it can now "
15061 "cost as little as $100 to digitize one hour of mm film.<placeholder "
15062 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
15065 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15066 #: freeculture.xml:11031
15068 "Restoration technology is not the only cost, nor the most important. "
15069 "Lawyers, too, are a cost, and increasingly, a very important one. In "
15070 "addition to preserving the film, a distributor needs to secure the rights. "
15071 "And to secure the rights for a film that is under copyright, you need to "
15072 "locate the copyright owner."
15075 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15076 #: freeculture.xml:11039
15078 "Or more accurately, <emphasis>owners</emphasis>. As we've seen, there isn't "
15079 "only a single copyright associated with a film; there are many. There isn't "
15080 "a single person whom you can contact about those copyrights; there are as "
15081 "many as can hold the rights, which turns out to be an extremely large "
15082 "number. Thus the costs of clearing the rights to these films is "
15083 "exceptionally high."
15086 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15087 #: freeculture.xml:11047
15089 "<quote>But can't you just restore the film, distribute it, and then pay the "
15090 "copyright owner when she shows up?</quote> Sure, if you want to commit a "
15091 "felony. And even if you're not worried about committing a felony, when she "
15092 "does show up, she'll have the right to sue you for all the profits you have "
15093 "made. So, if you're successful, you can be fairly confident you'll be "
15094 "getting a call from someone's lawyer. And if you're not successful, you "
15095 "won't make enough to cover the costs of your own lawyer. Either way, you "
15096 "have to talk to a lawyer. And as is too often the case, saying you have to "
15097 "talk to a lawyer is the same as saying you won't make any money."
15101 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15102 #: freeculture.xml:11058
15104 "For some films, the benefit of releasing the film may well exceed these "
15105 "costs. But for the vast majority of them, there is no way the benefit would "
15106 "outweigh the legal costs. Thus, for the vast majority of old films, Agee "
15107 "argued, the film will not be restored and distributed until the copyright "
15111 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15112 #: freeculture.xml:11069
15114 "But by the time the copyright for these films expires, the film will have "
15115 "expired. These films were produced on nitrate-based stock, and nitrate stock "
15116 "dissolves over time. They will be gone, and the metal canisters in which "
15117 "they are now stored will be filled with nothing more than dust."
15120 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15121 #: freeculture.xml:11077
15123 "<emphasis role='strong'>Of all the</emphasis> creative work produced by "
15124 "humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that "
15125 "tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. For that "
15126 "tiny fraction, the copyright creates incentives to produce and distribute "
15127 "the creative work. For that tiny fraction, the copyright acts as an "
15128 "<quote>engine of free expression.</quote>"
15131 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15132 #: freeculture.xml:11085
15134 "But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative "
15135 "work has a commercial life is extremely short. As I've indicated, most books "
15136 "go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and "
15137 "film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a "
15138 "creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the "
15139 "commercial life ends."
15142 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15143 #: freeculture.xml:11095
15145 "Yet that doesn't mean the life of the creative work ends. We don't keep "
15146 "libraries of books in order to compete with Barnes & Noble, and we don't "
15147 "have archives of films because we expect people to choose between spending "
15148 "Friday night watching new movies and spending Friday night watching a 1930 "
15149 "news documentary. The noncommercial life of culture is important and "
15150 "valuable—for entertainment but also, and more importantly, for "
15151 "knowledge. To understand who we are, and where we came from, and how we have "
15152 "made the mistakes that we have, we need to have access to this history."
15156 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15157 #: freeculture.xml:11108
15159 "Copyrights in this context do not drive an engine of free expression. In "
15160 "this context, there is no need for an exclusive right. Copyrights in this "
15161 "context do no good."
15164 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15165 #: freeculture.xml:11115
15167 "Yet, for most of our history, they also did little harm. For most of our "
15168 "history, when a work ended its commercial life, there was no "
15169 "<emphasis>copyright-related use</emphasis> that would be inhibited by an "
15170 "exclusive right. When a book went out of print, you could not buy it from a "
15171 "publisher. But you could still buy it from a used book store, and when a "
15172 "used book store sells it, in America, at least, there is no need to pay the "
15173 "copyright owner anything. Thus, the ordinary use of a book after its "
15174 "commercial life ended was a use that was independent of copyright law."
15177 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15178 #: freeculture.xml:11126
15180 "The same was effectively true of film. Because the costs of restoring a "
15181 "film—the real economic costs, not the lawyer costs—were so high, "
15182 "it was never at all feasible to preserve or restore film. Like the remains "
15183 "of a great dinner, when it's over, it's over. Once a film passed out of its "
15184 "commercial life, it may have been archived for a bit, but that was the end "
15185 "of its life so long as the market didn't have more to offer."
15188 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15189 #: freeculture.xml:11135
15191 "In other words, though copyright has been relatively short for most of our "
15192 "history, long copyrights wouldn't have mattered for the works that lost "
15193 "their commercial value. Long copyrights for these works would not have "
15194 "interfered with anything."
15197 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15198 #: freeculture.xml:11141
15199 msgid "But this situation has now changed."
15202 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15203 #: freeculture.xml:11145
15205 "One crucially important consequence of the emergence of digital technologies "
15206 "is to enable the archive that Brewster Kahle dreams of. Digital "
15207 "technologies now make it possible to preserve and give access to all sorts "
15208 "of knowledge. Once a book goes out of print, we can now imagine digitizing "
15209 "it and making it available to everyone, forever. Once a film goes out of "
15210 "distribution, we could digitize it and make it available to everyone, "
15211 "forever. Digital technologies give new life to copyrighted material after it "
15212 "passes out of its commercial life. It is now possible to preserve and assure "
15213 "universal access to this knowledge and culture, whereas before it was not."
15217 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15218 #: freeculture.xml:11158
15220 "And now copyright law does get in the way. Every step of producing this "
15221 "digital archive of our culture infringes on the exclusive right of "
15222 "copyright. To digitize a book is to copy it. To do that requires permission "
15223 "of the copyright owner. The same with music, film, or any other aspect of "
15224 "our culture protected by copyright. The effort to make these things "
15225 "available to history, or to researchers, or to those who just want to "
15226 "explore, is now inhibited by a set of rules that were written for a "
15227 "radically different context."
15230 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15231 #: freeculture.xml:11168
15233 "Here is the core of the harm that comes from extending terms: Now that "
15234 "technology enables us to rebuild the library of Alexandria, the law gets in "
15235 "the way. And it doesn't get in the way for any useful "
15236 "<emphasis>copyright</emphasis> purpose, for the purpose of copyright is to "
15237 "enable the commercial market that spreads culture. No, we are talking about "
15238 "culture after it has lived its commercial life. In this context, copyright "
15239 "is serving no purpose <emphasis>at all</emphasis> related to the spread of "
15240 "knowledge. In this context, copyright is not an engine of free "
15241 "expression. Copyright is a brake."
15244 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15245 #: freeculture.xml:11179
15247 "You may well ask, <quote>But if digital technologies lower the costs for "
15248 "Brewster Kahle, then they will lower the costs for Random House, too. So "
15249 "won't Random House do as well as Brewster Kahle in spreading culture "
15253 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15254 #: freeculture.xml:11185
15256 "Maybe. Someday. But there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that "
15257 "publishers would be as complete as libraries. If Barnes & Noble offered "
15258 "to lend books from its stores for a low price, would that eliminate the need "
15259 "for libraries? Only if you think that the only role of a library is to serve "
15260 "what <quote>the market</quote> would demand. But if you think the role of a "
15261 "library is bigger than this—if you think its role is to archive "
15262 "culture, whether there's a demand for any particular bit of that culture or "
15263 "not—then we can't count on the commercial market to do our library "
15268 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
15269 #: freeculture.xml:11209
15271 "Jason Schultz, <quote>The Myth of the 1976 Copyright `Chaos' Theory,</quote> "
15272 "20 December 2002, available at <ulink "
15273 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #54</ulink>."
15276 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15277 #: freeculture.xml:11197
15279 "I would be the first to agree that it should do as much as it can: We should "
15280 "rely upon the market as much as possible to spread and enable culture. My "
15281 "message is absolutely not antimarket. But where we see the market is not "
15282 "doing the job, then we should allow nonmarket forces the freedom to fill the "
15283 "gaps. As one researcher calculated for American culture, 94 percent of the "
15284 "films, books, and music produced between and 1946 is not commercially "
15285 "available. However much you love the commercial market, if access is a "
15286 "value, then 6 percent is a failure to provide that value.<placeholder "
15287 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
15290 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15291 #: freeculture.xml:11216
15293 "<emphasis role='strong'>In January 1999</emphasis>, we filed a lawsuit on "
15294 "Eric Eldred's behalf in federal district court in Washington, D.C., asking "
15295 "the court to declare the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act "
15296 "unconstitutional. The two central claims that we made were (1) that "
15297 "extending existing terms violated the Constitution's <quote>limited "
15298 "Times</quote> requirement, and (2) that extending terms by another twenty "
15299 "years violated the First Amendment."
15302 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15303 #: freeculture.xml:11225
15305 "The district court dismissed our claims without even hearing an argument. A "
15306 "panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also dismissed our "
15307 "claims, though after hearing an extensive argument. But that decision at "
15308 "least had a dissent, by one of the most conservative judges on that "
15309 "court. That dissent gave our claims life."
15312 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15313 #: freeculture.xml:11232
15315 "Judge David Sentelle said the CTEA violated the requirement that copyrights "
15316 "be for <quote>limited Times</quote> only. His argument was as elegant as it "
15317 "was simple: If Congress can extend existing terms, then there is no "
15318 "<quote>stopping point</quote> to Congress's power under the Copyright "
15319 "Clause. The power to extend existing terms means Congress is not required to "
15320 "grant terms that are <quote>limited.</quote> Thus, Judge Sentelle argued, "
15321 "the court had to interpret the term <quote>limited Times</quote> to give it "
15322 "meaning. And the best interpretation, Judge Sentelle argued, would be to "
15323 "deny Congress the power to extend existing terms."
15326 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15327 #: freeculture.xml:11243
15329 "We asked the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as a whole to hear the "
15330 "case. Cases are ordinarily heard in panels of three, except for important "
15331 "cases or cases that raise issues specific to the circuit as a whole, where "
15332 "the court will sit <quote>en banc</quote> to hear the case."
15335 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15336 #: freeculture.xml:11248
15337 msgid "Tatel, David"
15341 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15342 #: freeculture.xml:11250
15344 "The Court of Appeals rejected our request to hear the case en banc. This "
15345 "time, Judge Sentelle was joined by the most liberal member of the "
15346 "D.C. Circuit, Judge David Tatel. Both the most conservative and the most "
15347 "liberal judges in the D.C. Circuit believed Congress had overstepped its "
15351 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15352 #: freeculture.xml:11259
15354 "It was here that most expected Eldred v. Ashcroft would die, for the Supreme "
15355 "Court rarely reviews any decision by a court of appeals. (It hears about one "
15356 "hundred cases a year, out of more than five thousand appeals.) And it "
15357 "practically never reviews a decision that upholds a statute when no other "
15358 "court has yet reviewed the statute."
15361 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15362 #: freeculture.xml:11266
15364 "But in February 2002, the Supreme Court surprised the world by granting our "
15365 "petition to review the D.C. Circuit opinion. Argument was set for October of "
15366 "2002. The summer would be spent writing briefs and preparing for argument."
15369 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15370 #: freeculture.xml:11272
15372 "<emphasis role='strong'>It is over</emphasis> a year later as I write these "
15373 "words. It is still astonishingly hard. If you know anything at all about "
15374 "this story, you know that we lost the appeal. And if you know something more "
15375 "than just the minimum, you probably think there was no way this case could "
15376 "have been won. After our defeat, I received literally thousands of missives "
15377 "by well-wishers and supporters, thanking me for my work on behalf of this "
15378 "noble but doomed cause. And none from this pile was more significant to me "
15379 "than the e-mail from my client, Eric Eldred."
15382 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15383 #: freeculture.xml:11283
15385 "But my client and these friends were wrong. This case could have been "
15386 "won. It should have been won. And no matter how hard I try to retell this "
15387 "story to myself, I can never escape believing that my own mistake lost it."
15390 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15391 #: freeculture.xml:11288 freeculture.xml:11302
15392 msgid "Steward, Geoffrey"
15396 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15397 #: freeculture.xml:11290
15399 "<emphasis role='strong'>The mistake</emphasis> was made early, though it "
15400 "became obvious only at the very end. Our case had been supported from the "
15401 "very beginning by an extraordinary lawyer, Geoffrey Stewart, and by the law "
15402 "firm he had moved to, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. Jones Day took a great "
15403 "deal of heat from its copyright-protectionist clients for supporting "
15404 "us. They ignored this pressure (something that few law firms today would "
15405 "ever do), and throughout the case, they gave it everything they could."
15408 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15409 #: freeculture.xml:11300 freeculture.xml:11659 freeculture.xml:11675 freeculture.xml:11772 freeculture.xml:11992 freeculture.xml:12023 freeculture.xml:12121
15413 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15414 #: freeculture.xml:11301
15415 msgid "Bromberg, Dan"
15418 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15419 #: freeculture.xml:11304
15421 "There were three key lawyers on the case from Jones Day. Geoff Stewart was "
15422 "the first, but then Dan Bromberg and Don Ayer became quite "
15423 "involved. Bromberg and Ayer in particular had a common view about how this "
15424 "case would be won: We would only win, they repeatedly told me, if we could "
15425 "make the issue seem <quote>important</quote> to the Supreme Court. It had to "
15426 "seem as if dramatic harm were being done to free speech and free culture; "
15427 "otherwise, they would never vote against <quote>the most powerful media "
15428 "companies in the world.</quote>"
15431 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15432 #: freeculture.xml:11314
15434 "I hate this view of the law. Of course I thought the Sonny Bono Act was a "
15435 "dramatic harm to free speech and free culture. Of course I still think it "
15436 "is. But the idea that the Supreme Court decides the law based on how "
15437 "important they believe the issues are is just wrong. It might be "
15438 "<quote>right</quote> as in <quote>true,</quote> I thought, but it is "
15439 "<quote>wrong</quote> as in <quote>it just shouldn't be that way.</quote> As "
15440 "I believed that any faithful interpretation of what the framers of our "
15441 "Constitution did would yield the conclusion that the CTEA was "
15442 "unconstitutional, and as I believed that any faithful interpretation of what "
15443 "the First Amendment means would yield the conclusion that the power to "
15444 "extend existing copyright terms is unconstitutional, I was not persuaded "
15445 "that we had to sell our case like soap. Just as a law that bans the "
15446 "swastika is unconstitutional not because the Court likes Nazis but because "
15447 "such a law would violate the Constitution, so too, in my view, would the "
15448 "Court decide whether Congress's law was constitutional based on the "
15449 "Constitution, not based on whether they liked the values that the framers "
15450 "put in the Constitution."
15453 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15454 #: freeculture.xml:11335
15456 "In any case, I thought, the Court must already see the danger and the harm "
15457 "caused by this sort of law. Why else would they grant review? There was no "
15458 "reason to hear the case in the Supreme Court if they weren't convinced that "
15459 "this regulation was harmful. So in my view, we didn't need to persuade them "
15460 "that this law was bad, we needed to show why it was unconstitutional."
15464 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15465 #: freeculture.xml:11343
15467 "There was one way, however, in which I felt politics would matter and in "
15468 "which I thought a response was appropriate. I was convinced that the Court "
15469 "would not hear our arguments if it thought these were just the arguments of "
15470 "a group of lefty loons. This Supreme Court was not about to launch into a "
15471 "new field of judicial review if it seemed that this field of review was "
15472 "simply the preference of a small political minority. Although my focus in "
15473 "the case was not to demonstrate how bad the Sonny Bono Act was but to "
15474 "demonstrate that it was unconstitutional, my hope was to make this argument "
15475 "against a background of briefs that covered the full range of political "
15476 "views. To show that this claim against the CTEA was grounded in "
15477 "<emphasis>law</emphasis> and not politics, then, we tried to gather the "
15478 "widest range of credible critics—credible not because they were rich "
15479 "and famous, but because they, in the aggregate, demonstrated that this law "
15480 "was unconstitutional regardless of one's politics."
15483 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15484 #: freeculture.xml:11361 freeculture.xml:11388
15485 msgid "Eagle Forum"
15488 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15489 #: freeculture.xml:11362
15490 msgid "Schlafly, Phyllis"
15493 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15494 #: freeculture.xml:11364
15496 "The first step happened all by itself. Phyllis Schlafly's organization, "
15497 "Eagle Forum, had been an opponent of the CTEA from the very beginning. "
15498 "Mrs. Schlafly viewed the CTEA as a sellout by Congress. In November 1998, "
15499 "she wrote a stinging editorial attacking the Republican Congress for "
15500 "allowing the law to pass. As she wrote, <quote>Do you sometimes wonder why "
15501 "bills that create a financial windfall to narrow special interests slide "
15502 "easily through the intricate legislative process, while bills that benefit "
15503 "the general public seem to get bogged down?</quote> The answer, as the "
15504 "editorial documented, was the power of money. Schlafly enumerated Disney's "
15505 "contributions to the key players on the committees. It was money, not "
15506 "justice, that gave Mickey Mouse twenty more years in Disney's control, "
15510 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15511 #: freeculture.xml:11378
15513 "In the Court of Appeals, Eagle Forum was eager to file a brief supporting "
15514 "our position. Their brief made the argument that became the core claim in "
15515 "the Supreme Court: If Congress can extend the term of existing copyrights, "
15516 "there is no limit to Congress's power to set terms. That strong "
15517 "conservative argument persuaded a strong conservative judge, Judge Sentelle."
15521 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15522 #: freeculture.xml:11390
15524 "In the Supreme Court, the briefs on our side were about as diverse as it "
15525 "gets. They included an extraordinary historical brief by the Free Software "
15526 "Foundation (home of the GNU project that made GNU/ Linux possible). They "
15527 "included a powerful brief about the costs of uncertainty by Intel. There "
15528 "were two law professors' briefs, one by copyright scholars and one by First "
15529 "Amendment scholars. There was an exhaustive and uncontroverted brief by the "
15530 "world's experts in the history of the Progress Clause. And of course, there "
15531 "was a new brief by Eagle Forum, repeating and strengthening its arguments."
15534 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15535 #: freeculture.xml:11402
15536 msgid "American Association of Law Libraries"
15539 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15540 #: freeculture.xml:11403
15541 msgid "National Writers Union"
15544 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15545 #: freeculture.xml:11405
15547 "Those briefs framed a legal argument. Then to support the legal argument, "
15548 "there were a number of powerful briefs by libraries and archives, including "
15549 "the Internet Archive, the American Association of Law Libraries, and the "
15550 "National Writers Union."
15553 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15554 #: freeculture.xml:11412
15556 "But two briefs captured the policy argument best. One made the argument I've "
15557 "already described: A brief by Hal Roach Studios argued that unless the law "
15558 "was struck, a whole generation of American film would disappear. The other "
15559 "made the economic argument absolutely clear."
15562 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15563 #: freeculture.xml:11418
15564 msgid "Akerlof, George"
15567 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15568 #: freeculture.xml:11419
15569 msgid "Arrow, Kenneth"
15572 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15573 #: freeculture.xml:11420
15574 msgid "Buchanan, James"
15577 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15578 #: freeculture.xml:11421
15579 msgid "Coase, Ronald"
15582 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15583 #: freeculture.xml:11422
15584 msgid "Friedman, Milton"
15587 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15588 #: freeculture.xml:11424
15590 "This economists' brief was signed by seventeen economists, including five "
15591 "Nobel Prize winners, including Ronald Coase, James Buchanan, Milton "
15592 "Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, and George Akerlof. The economists, as the list of "
15593 "Nobel winners demonstrates, spanned the political spectrum. Their "
15594 "conclusions were powerful: There was no plausible claim that extending the "
15595 "terms of existing copyrights would do anything to increase incentives to "
15596 "create. Such extensions were nothing more than "
15597 "<quote>rent-seeking</quote>—the fancy term economists use to describe "
15598 "special-interest legislation gone wild."
15601 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15602 #: freeculture.xml:11434 freeculture.xml:11452 freeculture.xml:11661 freeculture.xml:12024
15603 msgid "Fried, Charles"
15606 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15607 #: freeculture.xml:11435
15608 msgid "Morrison, Alan"
15611 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15612 #: freeculture.xml:11436
15613 msgid "Public Citizen"
15616 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15617 #: freeculture.xml:11437 freeculture.xml:11660 freeculture.xml:12780
15618 msgid "Reagan, Ronald"
15622 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15623 #: freeculture.xml:11439
15625 "The same effort at balance was reflected in the legal team we gathered to "
15626 "write our briefs in the case. The Jones Day lawyers had been with us from "
15627 "the start. But when the case got to the Supreme Court, we added three "
15628 "lawyers to help us frame this argument to this Court: Alan Morrison, a "
15629 "lawyer from Public Citizen, a Washington group that had made constitutional "
15630 "history with a series of seminal victories in the Supreme Court defending "
15631 "individual rights; my colleague and dean, Kathleen Sullivan, who had argued "
15632 "many cases in the Court, and who had advised us early on about a First "
15633 "Amendment strategy; and finally, former solicitor general Charles Fried."
15636 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15637 #: freeculture.xml:11454
15639 "Fried was a special victory for our side. Every other former solicitor "
15640 "general was hired by the other side to defend Congress's power to give media "
15641 "companies the special favor of extended copyright terms. Fried was the only "
15642 "one who turned down that lucrative assignment to stand up for something he "
15643 "believed in. He had been Ronald Reagan's chief lawyer in the Supreme "
15644 "Court. He had helped craft the line of cases that limited Congress's power "
15645 "in the context of the Commerce Clause. And while he had argued many "
15646 "positions in the Supreme Court that I personally disagreed with, his joining "
15647 "the cause was a vote of confidence in our argument."
15650 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15651 #: freeculture.xml:11466
15653 "The government, in defending the statute, had its collection of friends, as "
15654 "well. Significantly, however, none of these <quote>friends</quote> included "
15655 "historians or economists. The briefs on the other side of the case were "
15656 "written exclusively by major media companies, congressmen, and copyright "
15660 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15661 #: freeculture.xml:11473
15663 "The media companies were not surprising. They had the most to gain from the "
15664 "law. The congressmen were not surprising either—they were defending "
15665 "their power and, indirectly, the gravy train of contributions such power "
15666 "induced. And of course it was not surprising that the copyright holders "
15667 "would defend the idea that they should continue to have the right to control "
15668 "who did what with content they wanted to control."
15671 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15672 #: freeculture.xml:11481
15673 msgid "Gershwin, George"
15677 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
15678 #: freeculture.xml:11490
15680 "Brief of Amici Dr. Seuss Enterprise et al., <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
15681 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 537 U.S. (2003) (No. 01-618), 19."
15685 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
15686 #: freeculture.xml:11498
15688 "Dinitia Smith, <quote>Immortal Words, Immortal Royalties? Even Mickey Mouse "
15689 "Joins the Fray,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 28 March "
15694 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15695 #: freeculture.xml:11483
15697 "Dr. Seuss's representatives, for example, argued that it was better for the "
15698 "Dr. Seuss estate to control what happened to Dr. Seuss's work— better "
15699 "than allowing it to fall into the public domain—because if this "
15700 "creativity were in the public domain, then people could use it to "
15701 "<quote>glorify drugs or to create pornography.</quote><placeholder "
15702 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> That was also the motive of the Gershwin "
15703 "estate, which defended its <quote>protection</quote> of the work of George "
15704 "Gershwin. They refuse, for example, to license <citetitle>Porgy and "
15705 "Bess</citetitle> to anyone who refuses to use African Americans in the "
15706 "cast.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> That's their view of how this "
15707 "part of American culture should be controlled, and they wanted this law to "
15708 "help them effect that control."
15711 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15712 #: freeculture.xml:11507
15714 "This argument made clear a theme that is rarely noticed in this debate. "
15715 "When Congress decides to extend the term of existing copyrights, Congress is "
15716 "making a choice about which speakers it will favor. Famous and beloved "
15717 "copyright owners, such as the Gershwin estate and Dr. Seuss, come to "
15718 "Congress and say, <quote>Give us twenty years to control the speech about "
15719 "these icons of American culture. We'll do better with them than anyone "
15720 "else.</quote> Congress of course likes to reward the popular and famous by "
15721 "giving them what they want. But when Congress gives people an exclusive "
15722 "right to speak in a certain way, that's just what the First Amendment is "
15723 "traditionally meant to block."
15726 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15727 #: freeculture.xml:11519
15729 "We argued as much in a final brief. Not only would upholding the CTEA mean "
15730 "that there was no limit to the power of Congress to extend "
15731 "copyrights—extensions that would further concentrate the market; it "
15732 "would also mean that there was no limit to Congress's power to play "
15733 "favorites, through copyright, with who has the right to speak."
15736 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15737 #: freeculture.xml:11526
15739 "<emphasis role='strong'>Between February</emphasis> and October, there was "
15740 "little I did beyond preparing for this case. Early on, as I said, I set the "
15744 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15745 #: freeculture.xml:11531 freeculture.xml:11717
15746 msgid "O'Connor, Sandra Day"
15749 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15750 #: freeculture.xml:11533
15752 "The Supreme Court was divided into two important camps. One camp we called "
15753 "<quote>the Conservatives.</quote> The other we called <quote>the "
15754 "Rest.</quote> The Conservatives included Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice "
15755 "O'Connor, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas. These five "
15756 "had been the most consistent in limiting Congress's power. They were the "
15757 "five who had supported the <citetitle>Lopez/Morrison</citetitle> line of "
15758 "cases that said that an enumerated power had to be interpreted to assure "
15759 "that Congress's powers had limits."
15762 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15763 #: freeculture.xml:11542 freeculture.xml:11567 freeculture.xml:11919 freeculture.xml:11931
15764 msgid "Breyer, Stephen"
15767 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15768 #: freeculture.xml:11543 freeculture.xml:11883
15769 msgid "Ginsburg, Ruth Bader"
15773 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15774 #: freeculture.xml:11545
15776 "The Rest were the four Justices who had strongly opposed limits on "
15777 "Congress's power. These four—Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, Justice "
15778 "Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer—had repeatedly argued that the "
15779 "Constitution gives Congress broad discretion to decide how best to implement "
15780 "its powers. In case after case, these justices had argued that the Court's "
15781 "role should be one of deference. Though the votes of these four justices "
15782 "were the votes that I personally had most consistently agreed with, they "
15783 "were also the votes that we were least likely to get."
15786 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15787 #: freeculture.xml:11557
15789 "In particular, the least likely was Justice Ginsburg's. In addition to her "
15790 "general view about deference to Congress (except where issues of gender are "
15791 "involved), she had been particularly deferential in the context of "
15792 "intellectual property protections. She and her daughter (an excellent and "
15793 "well-known intellectual property scholar) were cut from the same "
15794 "intellectual property cloth. We expected she would agree with the writings "
15795 "of her daughter: that Congress had the power in this context to do as it "
15796 "wished, even if what Congress wished made little sense."
15799 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15800 #: freeculture.xml:11569
15802 "Close behind Justice Ginsburg were two justices whom we also viewed as "
15803 "unlikely allies, though possible surprises. Justice Souter strongly favored "
15804 "deference to Congress, as did Justice Breyer. But both were also very "
15805 "sensitive to free speech concerns. And as we strongly believed, there was a "
15806 "very important free speech argument against these retrospective extensions."
15809 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15810 #: freeculture.xml:11578
15812 "The only vote we could be confident about was that of Justice "
15813 "Stevens. History will record Justice Stevens as one of the greatest judges "
15814 "on this Court. His votes are consistently eclectic, which just means that no "
15815 "simple ideology explains where he will stand. But he had consistently argued "
15816 "for limits in the context of intellectual property generally. We were fairly "
15817 "confident he would recognize limits here."
15820 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15821 #: freeculture.xml:11586
15823 "This analysis of <quote>the Rest</quote> showed most clearly where our focus "
15824 "had to be: on the Conservatives. To win this case, we had to crack open "
15825 "these five and get at least a majority to go our way. Thus, the single "
15826 "overriding argument that animated our claim rested on the Conservatives' "
15827 "most important jurisprudential innovation—the argument that Judge "
15828 "Sentelle had relied upon in the Court of Appeals, that Congress's power must "
15829 "be interpreted so that its enumerated powers have limits."
15833 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15834 #: freeculture.xml:11596
15836 "This then was the core of our strategy—a strategy for which I am "
15837 "responsible. We would get the Court to see that just as with the "
15838 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> case, under the government's argument here, "
15839 "Congress would always have unlimited power to extend existing terms. If "
15840 "anything was plain about Congress's power under the Progress Clause, it was "
15841 "that this power was supposed to be <quote>limited.</quote> Our aim would be "
15842 "to get the Court to reconcile <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> with "
15843 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>: If Congress's power to regulate commerce was "
15844 "limited, then so, too, must Congress's power to regulate copyright be "
15848 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15849 #: freeculture.xml:11610
15851 "<emphasis role='strong'>The argument</emphasis> on the government's side "
15852 "came down to this: Congress has done it before. It should be allowed to do "
15853 "it again. The government claimed that from the very beginning, Congress has "
15854 "been extending the term of existing copyrights. So, the government argued, "
15855 "the Court should not now say that practice is unconstitutional."
15858 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15859 #: freeculture.xml:11618
15861 "There was some truth to the government's claim, but not much. We certainly "
15862 "agreed that Congress had extended existing terms in 1831 and in 1909. And of "
15863 "course, in 1962, Congress began extending existing terms "
15864 "regularly—eleven times in forty years."
15867 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15868 #: freeculture.xml:11625
15870 "But this <quote>consistency</quote> should be kept in perspective. Congress "
15871 "extended existing terms once in the first hundred years of the Republic. It "
15872 "then extended existing terms once again in the next fifty. Those rare "
15873 "extensions are in contrast to the now regular practice of extending existing "
15874 "terms. Whatever restraint Congress had had in the past, that restraint was "
15875 "now gone. Congress was now in a cycle of extensions; there was no reason to "
15876 "expect that cycle would end. This Court had not hesitated to intervene where "
15877 "Congress was in a similar cycle of extension. There was no reason it "
15878 "couldn't intervene here."
15882 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15883 #: freeculture.xml:11640
15885 "<emphasis role='strong'>Oral argument</emphasis> was scheduled for the first "
15886 "week in October. I arrived in D.C. two weeks before the argument. During "
15887 "those two weeks, I was repeatedly <quote>mooted</quote> by lawyers who had "
15888 "volunteered to help in the case. Such <quote>moots</quote> are basically "
15889 "practice rounds, where wannabe justices fire questions at wannabe winners."
15892 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15893 #: freeculture.xml:11650
15895 "I was convinced that to win, I had to keep the Court focused on a single "
15896 "point: that if this extension is permitted, then there is no limit to the "
15897 "power to set terms. Going with the government would mean that terms would be "
15898 "effectively unlimited; going with us would give Congress a clear line to "
15899 "follow: Don't extend existing terms. The moots were an effective practice; I "
15900 "found ways to take every question back to this central idea."
15903 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15904 #: freeculture.xml:11663
15906 "One moot was before the lawyers at Jones Day. Don Ayer was the skeptic. He "
15907 "had served in the Reagan Justice Department with Solicitor General Charles "
15908 "Fried. He had argued many cases before the Supreme Court. And in his review "
15909 "of the moot, he let his concern speak:"
15912 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15913 #: freeculture.xml:11669
15915 "<quote>I'm just afraid that unless they really see the harm, they won't be "
15916 "willing to upset this practice that the government says has been a "
15917 "consistent practice for two hundred years. You have to make them see the "
15918 "harm—passionately get them to see the harm. For if they don't see "
15919 "that, then we haven't any chance of winning.</quote>"
15922 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15923 #: freeculture.xml:11677
15925 "He may have argued many cases before this Court, I thought, but he didn't "
15926 "understand its soul. As a clerk, I had seen the Justices do the right "
15927 "thing—not because of politics but because it was right. As a law "
15928 "professor, I had spent my life teaching my students that this Court does the "
15929 "right thing—not because of politics but because it is right. As I "
15930 "listened to Ayer's plea for passion in pressing politics, I understood his "
15931 "point, and I rejected it. Our argument was right. That was enough. Let the "
15932 "politicians learn to see that it was also good."
15936 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15937 #: freeculture.xml:11687
15939 "<emphasis role='strong'>The night before</emphasis> the argument, a line of "
15940 "people began to form in front of the Supreme Court. The case had become a "
15941 "focus of the press and of the movement to free culture. Hundreds stood in "
15942 "line for the chance to see the proceedings. Scores spent the night on the "
15943 "Supreme Court steps so that they would be assured a seat."
15946 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15947 #: freeculture.xml:11697
15949 "Not everyone has to wait in line. People who know the Justices can ask for "
15950 "seats they control. (I asked Justice Scalia's chambers for seats for my "
15951 "parents, for example.) Members of the Supreme Court bar can get a seat in a "
15952 "special section reserved for them. And senators and congressmen have a "
15953 "special place where they get to sit, too. And finally, of course, the press "
15954 "has a gallery, as do clerks working for the Justices on the Court. As we "
15955 "entered that morning, there was no place that was not taken. This was an "
15956 "argument about intellectual property law, yet the halls were filled. As I "
15957 "walked in to take my seat at the front of the Court, I saw my parents "
15958 "sitting on the left. As I sat down at the table, I saw Jack Valenti sitting "
15959 "in the special section ordinarily reserved for family of the Justices."
15962 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15963 #: freeculture.xml:11712
15965 "When the Chief Justice called me to begin my argument, I began where I "
15966 "intended to stay: on the question of the limits on Congress's power. This "
15967 "was a case about enumerated powers, I said, and whether those enumerated "
15968 "powers had any limit."
15971 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15972 #: freeculture.xml:11719
15974 "Justice O'Connor stopped me within one minute of my opening. The history "
15975 "was bothering her."
15978 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
15979 #: freeculture.xml:11724
15981 "justice o'connor: Congress has extended the term so often through the years, "
15982 "and if you are right, don't we run the risk of upsetting previous extensions "
15983 "of time? I mean, this seems to be a practice that began with the very first "
15987 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15988 #: freeculture.xml:11731
15990 "She was quite willing to concede <quote>that this flies directly in the face "
15991 "of what the framers had in mind.</quote> But my response again and again was "
15992 "to emphasize limits on Congress's power."
15996 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
15997 #: freeculture.xml:11737
15999 "mr. lessig: Well, if it flies in the face of what the framers had in mind, "
16000 "then the question is, is there a way of interpreting their words that gives "
16001 "effect to what they had in mind, and the answer is yes."
16004 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16005 #: freeculture.xml:11745
16007 "There were two points in this argument when I should have seen where the "
16008 "Court was going. The first was a question by Justice Kennedy, who observed,"
16011 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16012 #: freeculture.xml:11751
16014 "justice kennedy: Well, I suppose implicit in the argument that the '76 act, "
16015 "too, should have been declared void, and that we might leave it alone "
16016 "because of the disruption, is that for all these years the act has impeded "
16017 "progress in science and the useful arts. I just don't see any empirical "
16018 "evidence for that."
16021 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16022 #: freeculture.xml:11759
16024 "Here follows my clear mistake. Like a professor correcting a student, I "
16028 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16029 #: freeculture.xml:11765
16031 "mr. lessig: Justice, we are not making an empirical claim at all. Nothing "
16032 "in our Copyright Clause claim hangs upon the empirical assertion about "
16033 "impeding progress. Our only argument is this is a structural limit necessary "
16034 "to assure that what would be an effectively perpetual term not be permitted "
16035 "under the copyright laws."
16038 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16039 #: freeculture.xml:11774
16041 "That was a correct answer, but it wasn't the right answer. The right answer "
16042 "was instead that there was an obvious and profound harm. Any number of "
16043 "briefs had been written about it. He wanted to hear it. And here was the "
16044 "place Don Ayer's advice should have mattered. This was a softball; my answer "
16045 "was a swing and a miss."
16048 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16049 #: freeculture.xml:11781
16051 "The second came from the Chief, for whom the whole case had been "
16052 "crafted. For the Chief Justice had crafted the <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> "
16053 "ruling, and we hoped that he would see this case as its second cousin."
16057 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16058 #: freeculture.xml:11786
16060 "It was clear a second into his question that he wasn't at all sympathetic. "
16061 "To him, we were a bunch of anarchists. As he asked:"
16064 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16065 #: freeculture.xml:11793
16067 "chief justice: Well, but you want more than that. You want the right to copy "
16068 "verbatim other people's books, don't you?"
16071 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16072 #: freeculture.xml:11797
16074 "mr. lessig: We want the right to copy verbatim works that should be in the "
16075 "public domain and would be in the public domain but for a statute that "
16076 "cannot be justified under ordinary First Amendment analysis or under a "
16077 "proper reading of the limits built into the Copyright Clause."
16080 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16081 #: freeculture.xml:11805
16082 msgid "Olson, Theodore B."
16085 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16086 #: freeculture.xml:11807
16088 "Things went better for us when the government gave its argument; for now the "
16089 "Court picked up on the core of our claim. As Justice Scalia asked Solicitor "
16093 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16094 #: freeculture.xml:11813
16096 "justice scalia: You say that the functional equivalent of an unlimited time "
16097 "would be a violation [of the Constitution], but that's precisely the "
16098 "argument that's being made by petitioners here, that a limited time which is "
16099 "extendable is the functional equivalent of an unlimited time."
16102 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16103 #: freeculture.xml:11821
16105 "When Olson was finished, it was my turn to give a closing rebuttal. Olson's "
16106 "flailing had revived my anger. But my anger still was directed to the "
16107 "academic, not the practical. The government was arguing as if this were the "
16108 "first case ever to consider limits on Congress's Copyright and Patent Clause "
16109 "power. Ever the professor and not the advocate, I closed by pointing out the "
16110 "long history of the Court imposing limits on Congress's power in the name of "
16111 "the Copyright and Patent Clause— indeed, the very first case striking "
16112 "a law of Congress as exceeding a specific enumerated power was based upon "
16113 "the Copyright and Patent Clause. All true. But it wasn't going to move the "
16114 "Court to my side."
16118 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16119 #: freeculture.xml:11834
16121 "<emphasis role='strong'>As I left</emphasis> the court that day, I knew "
16122 "there were a hundred points I wished I could remake. There were a hundred "
16123 "questions I wished I had answered differently. But one way of thinking about "
16124 "this case left me optimistic."
16127 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16128 #: freeculture.xml:11843
16130 "The government had been asked over and over again, what is the limit? Over "
16131 "and over again, it had answered there is no limit. This was precisely the "
16132 "answer I wanted the Court to hear. For I could not imagine how the Court "
16133 "could understand that the government believed Congress's power was unlimited "
16134 "under the terms of the Copyright Clause, and sustain the government's "
16135 "argument. The solicitor general had made my argument for me. No matter how "
16136 "often I tried, I could not understand how the Court could find that "
16137 "Congress's power under the Commerce Clause was limited, but under the "
16138 "Copyright Clause, unlimited. In those rare moments when I let myself believe "
16139 "that we may have prevailed, it was because I felt this Court—in "
16140 "particular, the Conservatives—would feel itself constrained by the "
16141 "rule of law that it had established elsewhere."
16144 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16145 #: freeculture.xml:11858
16147 "<emphasis role='strong'>The morning</emphasis> of January 15, 2003, I was "
16148 "five minutes late to the office and missed the 7:00 A.M. call from the "
16149 "Supreme Court clerk. Listening to the message, I could tell in an instant "
16150 "that she had bad news to report.The Supreme Court had affirmed the decision "
16151 "of the Court of Appeals. Seven justices had voted in the majority. There "
16152 "were two dissents."
16155 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16156 #: freeculture.xml:11866
16158 "A few seconds later, the opinions arrived by e-mail. I took the phone off "
16159 "the hook, posted an announcement to our blog, and sat down to see where I "
16160 "had been wrong in my reasoning."
16163 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16164 #: freeculture.xml:11871
16166 "My <emphasis>reasoning</emphasis>. Here was a case that pitted all the money "
16167 "in the world against <emphasis>reasoning</emphasis>. And here was the last "
16168 "naïve law professor, scouring the pages, looking for reasoning."
16171 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16172 #: freeculture.xml:11877
16174 "I first scoured the opinion, looking for how the Court would distinguish the "
16175 "principle in this case from the principle in "
16176 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>. The argument was nowhere to be found. The case "
16177 "was not even cited. The argument that was the core argument of our case did "
16178 "not even appear in the Court's opinion."
16182 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16183 #: freeculture.xml:11887
16185 "Justice Ginsburg simply ignored the enumerated powers argument. Consistent "
16186 "with her view that Congress's power was not limited generally, she had found "
16187 "Congress's power not limited here."
16190 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16191 #: freeculture.xml:11892
16193 "Her opinion was perfectly reasonable—for her, and for Justice "
16194 "Souter. Neither believes in <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>. It would be too "
16195 "much to expect them to write an opinion that recognized, much less "
16196 "explained, the doctrine they had worked so hard to defeat."
16199 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16200 #: freeculture.xml:11898
16202 "But as I realized what had happened, I couldn't quite believe what I was "
16203 "reading. I had said there was no way this Court could reconcile limited "
16204 "powers with the Commerce Clause and unlimited powers with the Progress "
16205 "Clause. It had never even occurred to me that they could reconcile the two "
16206 "simply <emphasis>by not addressing the argument</emphasis>. There was no "
16207 "inconsistency because they would not talk about the two together. There was "
16208 "therefore no principle that followed from the <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> "
16209 "case: In that context, Congress's power would be limited, but in this "
16210 "context it would not."
16213 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16214 #: freeculture.xml:11909
16216 "Yet by what right did they get to choose which of the framers' values they "
16217 "would respect? By what right did they—the silent five—get to "
16218 "select the part of the Constitution they would enforce based on the values "
16219 "they thought important? We were right back to the argument that I said I "
16220 "hated at the start: I had failed to convince them that the issue here was "
16221 "important, and I had failed to recognize that however much I might hate a "
16222 "system in which the Court gets to pick the constitutional values that it "
16223 "will respect, that is the system we have."
16226 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16227 #: freeculture.xml:11921
16229 "Justices Breyer and Stevens wrote very strong dissents. Stevens's opinion "
16230 "was crafted internal to the law: He argued that the tradition of "
16231 "intellectual property law should not support this unjustified extension of "
16232 "terms. He based his argument on a parallel analysis that had governed in the "
16233 "context of patents (so had we). But the rest of the Court discounted the "
16234 "parallel—without explaining how the very same words in the Progress "
16235 "Clause could come to mean totally different things depending upon whether "
16236 "the words were about patents or copyrights. The Court let Justice Stevens's "
16237 "charge go unanswered."
16241 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16242 #: freeculture.xml:11934
16244 "Justice Breyer's opinion, perhaps the best opinion he has ever written, was "
16245 "external to the Constitution. He argued that the term of copyrights has "
16246 "become so long as to be effectively unlimited. We had said that under the "
16247 "current term, a copyright gave an author 99.8 percent of the value of a "
16248 "perpetual term. Breyer said we were wrong, that the actual number was "
16249 "99.9997 percent of a perpetual term. Either way, the point was clear: If the "
16250 "Constitution said a term had to be <quote>limited,</quote> and the existing "
16251 "term was so long as to be effectively unlimited, then it was "
16252 "unconstitutional."
16255 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16256 #: freeculture.xml:11945
16258 "These two justices understood all the arguments we had made. But because "
16259 "neither believed in the <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> case, neither was "
16260 "willing to push it as a reason to reject this extension. The case was "
16261 "decided without anyone having addressed the argument that we had carried "
16262 "from Judge Sentelle. It was <citetitle>Hamlet</citetitle> without the "
16266 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16267 #: freeculture.xml:11952
16269 "<emphasis role='strong'>Defeat brings depression</emphasis>. They say it is "
16270 "a sign of health when depression gives way to anger. My anger came quickly, "
16271 "but it didn't cure the depression. This anger was of two sorts."
16274 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16275 #: freeculture.xml:11957
16276 msgid "originalism"
16279 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16280 #: freeculture.xml:11959
16282 "It was first anger with the five <quote>Conservatives.</quote> It would have "
16283 "been one thing for them to have explained why the principle of "
16284 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> didn't apply in this case. That wouldn't have "
16285 "been a very convincing argument, I don't believe, having read it made by "
16286 "others, and having tried to make it myself. But it at least would have been "
16287 "an act of integrity. These justices in particular have repeatedly said that "
16288 "the proper mode of interpreting the Constitution is "
16289 "<quote>originalism</quote>—to first understand the framers' text, "
16290 "interpreted in their context, in light of the structure of the "
16291 "Constitution. That method had produced <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> and many "
16292 "other <quote>originalist</quote> rulings. Where was their "
16293 "<quote>originalism</quote> now?"
16297 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16298 #: freeculture.xml:11972
16300 "Here, they had joined an opinion that never once tried to explain what the "
16301 "framers had meant by crafting the Progress Clause as they did; they joined "
16302 "an opinion that never once tried to explain how the structure of that clause "
16303 "would affect the interpretation of Congress's power. And they joined an "
16304 "opinion that didn't even try to explain why this grant of power could be "
16305 "unlimited, whereas the Commerce Clause would be limited. In short, they had "
16306 "joined an opinion that did not apply to, and was inconsistent with, their "
16307 "own method for interpreting the Constitution. This opinion may well have "
16308 "yielded a result that they liked. It did not produce a reason that was "
16309 "consistent with their own principles."
16312 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16313 #: freeculture.xml:11987
16315 "My anger with the Conservatives quickly yielded to anger with myself. For I "
16316 "had let a view of the law that I liked interfere with a view of the law as "
16320 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16321 #: freeculture.xml:11994
16323 "Most lawyers, and most law professors, have little patience for idealism "
16324 "about courts in general and this Supreme Court in particular. Most have a "
16325 "much more pragmatic view. When Don Ayer said that this case would be won "
16326 "based on whether I could convince the Justices that the framers' values were "
16327 "important, I fought the idea, because I didn't want to believe that that is "
16328 "how this Court decides. I insisted on arguing this case as if it were a "
16329 "simple application of a set of principles. I had an argument that followed "
16330 "in logic. I didn't need to waste my time showing it should also follow in "
16335 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16336 #: freeculture.xml:12005
16338 "As I read back over the transcript from that argument in October, I can see "
16339 "a hundred places where the answers could have taken the conversation in "
16340 "different directions, where the truth about the harm that this unchecked "
16341 "power will cause could have been made clear to this Court. Justice Kennedy "
16342 "in good faith wanted to be shown. I, idiotically, corrected his "
16343 "question. Justice Souter in good faith wanted to be shown the First "
16344 "Amendment harms. I, like a math teacher, reframed the question to make the "
16345 "logical point. I had shown them how they could strike this law of Congress "
16346 "if they wanted to. There were a hundred places where I could have helped "
16347 "them want to, yet my stubbornness, my refusal to give in, stopped me. I have "
16348 "stood before hundreds of audiences trying to persuade; I have used passion "
16349 "in that effort to persuade; but I refused to stand before this audience and "
16350 "try to persuade with the passion I had used elsewhere. It was not the basis "
16351 "on which a court should decide the issue."
16354 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16355 #: freeculture.xml:12026
16357 "Would it have been different if I had argued it differently? Would it have "
16358 "been different if Don Ayer had argued it? Or Charles Fried? Or Kathleen "
16362 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16363 #: freeculture.xml:12031
16365 "My friends huddled around me to insist it would not. The Court was not "
16366 "ready, my friends insisted. This was a loss that was destined. It would take "
16367 "a great deal more to show our society why our framers were right. And when "
16368 "we do that, we will be able to show that Court."
16371 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16372 #: freeculture.xml:12037
16374 "Maybe, but I doubt it. These Justices have no financial interest in doing "
16375 "anything except the right thing. They are not lobbied. They have little "
16376 "reason to resist doing right. I can't help but think that if I had stepped "
16377 "down from this pretty picture of dispassionate justice, I could have "
16381 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16382 #: freeculture.xml:12045
16384 "And even if I couldn't, then that doesn't excuse what happened in "
16385 "January. For at the start of this case, one of America's leading "
16386 "intellectual property professors stated publicly that my bringing this case "
16387 "was a mistake. <quote>The Court is not ready,</quote> Peter Jaszi said; this "
16388 "issue should not be raised until it is."
16391 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16392 #: freeculture.xml:12052
16394 "After the argument and after the decision, Peter said to me, and publicly, "
16395 "that he was wrong. But if indeed that Court could not have been persuaded, "
16396 "then that is all the evidence that's needed to know that here again Peter "
16397 "was right. Either I was not ready to argue this case in a way that would do "
16398 "some good or they were not ready to hear this case in a way that would do "
16399 "some good. Either way, the decision to bring this case—a decision I "
16400 "had made four years before—was wrong."
16404 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16405 #: freeculture.xml:12061
16407 "<emphasis role='strong'>While the reaction</emphasis> to the Sonny Bono Act "
16408 "itself was almost unanimously negative, the reaction to the Court's decision "
16409 "was mixed. No one, at least in the press, tried to say that extending the "
16410 "term of copyright was a good idea. We had won that battle over ideas. Where "
16411 "the decision was praised, it was praised by papers that had been skeptical "
16412 "of the Court's activism in other cases. Deference was a good thing, even if "
16413 "it left standing a silly law. But where the decision was attacked, it was "
16414 "attacked because it left standing a silly and harmful law. <citetitle>The "
16415 "New York Times</citetitle> wrote in its editorial,"
16418 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16419 #: freeculture.xml:12076
16421 "In effect, the Supreme Court's decision makes it likely that we are seeing "
16422 "the beginning of the end of public domain and the birth of copyright "
16423 "perpetuity. The public domain has been a grand experiment, one that should "
16424 "not be allowed to die. The ability to draw freely on the entire creative "
16425 "output of humanity is one of the reasons we live in a time of such fruitful "
16426 "creative ferment."
16429 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure><indexterm><primary>
16430 #: freeculture.xml:12090 freeculture.xml:12095
16431 msgid "Bolling, Ruben"
16434 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16435 #: freeculture.xml:12085
16437 "The best responses were in the cartoons. There was a gaggle of hilarious "
16438 "images—of Mickey in jail and the like. The best, from my view of the "
16439 "case, was Ruben Bolling's, reproduced on the next page (<xref "
16440 "linkend=\"fig-18\"/>). The <quote>powerful and wealthy</quote> line is a bit "
16441 "unfair. But the punch in the face felt exactly like that. <placeholder "
16442 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
16445 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure><title>
16446 #: freeculture.xml:12093
16447 msgid "Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon"
16450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure>
16451 #: freeculture.xml:12094
16453 "<graphic fileref=\"images/18.png\"></graphic> <placeholder "
16454 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
16457 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16458 #: freeculture.xml:12098
16460 "The image that will always stick in my head is that evoked by the quote from "
16461 "<citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle>. That <quote>grand "
16462 "experiment</quote> we call the <quote>public domain</quote> is over? When I "
16463 "can make light of it, I think, <quote>Honey, I shrunk the "
16464 "Constitution.</quote> But I can rarely make light of it. We had in our "
16465 "Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the "
16466 "Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment. A better lawyer would "
16467 "have made them see differently."
16470 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
16471 #: freeculture.xml:12109
16472 msgid "CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Eldred II"
16475 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16476 #: freeculture.xml:12111
16478 "<emphasis role='strong'>The day</emphasis> <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> was "
16479 "decided, fate would have it that I was to travel to Washington, D.C. (The "
16480 "day the rehearing petition in <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> was "
16481 "denied—meaning the case was really finally over—fate would have "
16482 "it that I was giving a speech to technologists at Disney World.) This was a "
16483 "particularly long flight to my least favorite city. The drive into the city "
16484 "from Dulles was delayed because of traffic, so I opened up my computer and "
16485 "wrote an op-ed piece."
16488 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16489 #: freeculture.xml:12123
16491 "It was an act of contrition. During the whole of the flight from San "
16492 "Francisco to Washington, I had heard over and over again in my head the same "
16493 "advice from Don Ayer: You need to make them see why it is important. And "
16494 "alternating with that command was the question of Justice Kennedy: "
16495 "<quote>For all these years the act has impeded progress in science and the "
16496 "useful arts. I just don't see any empirical evidence for that.</quote> And "
16497 "so, having failed in the argument of constitutional principle, finally, I "
16498 "turned to an argument of politics."
16502 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16503 #: freeculture.xml:12133
16505 "<citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle> published the piece. In it, I "
16506 "proposed a simple fix: Fifty years after a work has been published, the "
16507 "copyright owner would be required to register the work and pay a small "
16508 "fee. If he paid the fee, he got the benefit of the full term of "
16509 "copyright. If he did not, the work passed into the public domain."
16512 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16513 #: freeculture.xml:12141
16515 "We called this the Eldred Act, but that was just to give it a name. Eric "
16516 "Eldred was kind enough to let his name be used once again, but as he said "
16517 "early on, it won't get passed unless it has another name."
16520 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16521 #: freeculture.xml:12146
16523 "Or another two names. For depending upon your perspective, this is either "
16524 "the <quote>Public Domain Enhancement Act</quote> or the <quote>Copyright "
16525 "Term Deregulation Act.</quote> Either way, the essence of the idea is clear "
16526 "and obvious: Remove copyright where it is doing nothing except blocking "
16527 "access and the spread of knowledge. Leave it for as long as Congress allows "
16528 "for those works where its worth is at least $1. But for everything else, let "
16532 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16533 #: freeculture.xml:12154 freeculture.xml:12355
16534 msgid "Forbes, Steve"
16537 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16538 #: freeculture.xml:12156
16540 "The reaction to this idea was amazingly strong. Steve Forbes endorsed it in "
16541 "an editorial. I received an avalanche of e-mail and letters expressing "
16542 "support. When you focus the issue on lost creativity, people can see the "
16543 "copyright system makes no sense. As a good Republican might say, here "
16544 "government regulation is simply getting in the way of innovation and "
16545 "creativity. And as a good Democrat might say, here the government is "
16546 "blocking access and the spread of knowledge for no good reason. Indeed, "
16547 "there is no real difference between Democrats and Republicans on this "
16548 "issue. Anyone can recognize the stupid harm of the present system."
16551 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16552 #: freeculture.xml:12168
16554 "Indeed, many recognized the obvious benefit of the registration "
16555 "requirement. For one of the hardest things about the current system for "
16556 "people who want to license content is that there is no obvious place to look "
16557 "for the current copyright owners. Since registration is not required, since "
16558 "marking content is not required, since no formality at all is required, it "
16559 "is often impossibly hard to locate copyright owners to ask permission to use "
16560 "or license their work. This system would lower these costs, by establishing "
16561 "at least one registry where copyright owners could be identified."
16564 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16565 #: freeculture.xml:12178
16566 msgid "Berlin Act (1908)"
16569 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16570 #: freeculture.xml:12179 freeculture.xml:12220
16571 msgid "Berne Convention (1908)"
16574 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
16575 #: freeculture.xml:12187
16576 msgid "German copyright law"
16579 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
16580 #: freeculture.xml:12187
16582 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Until the 1908 Berlin Act of the "
16583 "Berne Convention, national copyright legislation sometimes made protection "
16584 "depend upon compliance with formalities such as registration, deposit, and "
16585 "affixation of notice of the author's claim of copyright. However, starting "
16586 "with the 1908 act, every text of the Convention has provided that <quote>the "
16587 "enjoyment and the exercise</quote> of rights guaranteed by the Convention "
16588 "<quote>shall not be subject to any formality.</quote> The prohibition "
16589 "against formalities is presently embodied in Article 5(2) of the Paris Text "
16590 "of the Berne Convention. Many countries continue to impose some form of "
16591 "deposit or registration requirement, albeit not as a condition of "
16592 "copyright. French law, for example, requires the deposit of copies of works "
16593 "in national repositories, principally the National Museum. Copies of books "
16594 "published in the United Kingdom must be deposited in the British "
16595 "Library. The German Copyright Act provides for a Registrar of Authors where "
16596 "the author's true name can be filed in the case of anonymous or pseudonymous "
16597 "works. Paul Goldstein, <citetitle>International Intellectual Property Law, "
16598 "Cases and Materials</citetitle> (New York: Foundation Press, 2001), "
16602 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16603 #: freeculture.xml:12182
16605 "As I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
16606 "linkend=\"property-i\"/>, formalities in copyright law were removed in 1976, "
16607 "when Congress followed the Europeans by abandoning any formal requirement "
16608 "before a copyright is granted.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The "
16609 "Europeans are said to view copyright as a <quote>natural right.</quote> "
16610 "Natural rights don't need forms to exist. Traditions, like the "
16611 "Anglo-American tradition that required copyright owners to follow form if "
16612 "their rights were to be protected, did not, the Europeans thought, properly "
16613 "respect the dignity of the author. My right as a creator turns on my "
16614 "creativity, not upon the special favor of the government."
16617 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16618 #: freeculture.xml:12214
16620 "That's great rhetoric. It sounds wonderfully romantic. But it is absurd "
16621 "copyright policy. It is absurd especially for authors, because a world "
16622 "without formalities harms the creator. The ability to spread <quote>Walt "
16623 "Disney creativity</quote> is destroyed when there is no simple way to know "
16624 "what's protected and what's not."
16627 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16628 #: freeculture.xml:12222
16630 "The fight against formalities achieved its first real victory in Berlin in "
16631 "1908. International copyright lawyers amended the Berne Convention in 1908, "
16632 "to require copyright terms of life plus fifty years, as well as the "
16633 "abolition of copyright formalities. The formalities were hated because the "
16634 "stories of inadvertent loss were increasingly common. It was as if a Charles "
16635 "Dickens character ran all copyright offices, and the failure to dot an "
16636 "<citetitle>i</citetitle> or cross a <citetitle>t</citetitle> resulted in the "
16637 "loss of widows' only income."
16640 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16641 #: freeculture.xml:12232
16643 "These complaints were real and sensible. And the strictness of the "
16644 "formalities, especially in the United States, was absurd. The law should "
16645 "always have ways of forgiving innocent mistakes. There is no reason "
16646 "copyright law couldn't, as well. Rather than abandoning formalities totally, "
16647 "the response in Berlin should have been to embrace a more equitable system "
16651 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16652 #: freeculture.xml:12240
16654 "Even that would have been resisted, however, because registration in the "
16655 "nineteenth and twentieth centuries was still expensive. It was also a "
16656 "hassle. The abolishment of formalities promised not only to save the "
16657 "starving widows, but also to lighten an unnecessary regulatory burden "
16658 "imposed upon creators."
16662 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16663 #: freeculture.xml:12248
16665 "In addition to the practical complaint of authors in 1908, there was a moral "
16666 "claim as well. There was no reason that creative property should be a "
16667 "second-class form of property. If a carpenter builds a table, his rights "
16668 "over the table don't depend upon filing a form with the government. He has "
16669 "a property right over the table <quote>naturally,</quote> and he can assert "
16670 "that right against anyone who would steal the table, whether or not he has "
16671 "informed the government of his ownership of the table."
16674 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16675 #: freeculture.xml:12260
16677 "This argument is correct, but its implications are misleading. For the "
16678 "argument in favor of formalities does not depend upon creative property "
16679 "being second-class property. The argument in favor of formalities turns upon "
16680 "the special problems that creative property presents. The law of "
16681 "formalities responds to the special physics of creative property, to assure "
16682 "that it can be efficiently and fairly spread."
16685 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16686 #: freeculture.xml:12269
16688 "No one thinks, for example, that land is second-class property just because "
16689 "you have to register a deed with a court if your sale of land is to be "
16690 "effective. And few would think a car is second-class property just because "
16691 "you must register the car with the state and tag it with a license. In both "
16692 "of those cases, everyone sees that there is an important reason to secure "
16693 "registration—both because it makes the markets more efficient and "
16694 "because it better secures the rights of the owner. Without a registration "
16695 "system for land, landowners would perpetually have to guard their "
16696 "property. With registration, they can simply point the police to a "
16697 "deed. Without a registration system for cars, auto theft would be much "
16698 "easier. With a registration system, the thief has a high burden to sell a "
16699 "stolen car. A slight burden is placed on the property owner, but those "
16700 "burdens produce a much better system of protection for property generally."
16703 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16704 #: freeculture.xml:12285
16706 "It is similarly special physics that makes formalities important in "
16707 "copyright law. Unlike a carpenter's table, there's nothing in nature that "
16708 "makes it relatively obvious who might own a particular bit of creative "
16709 "property. A recording of Lyle Lovett's latest album can exist in a billion "
16710 "places without anything necessarily linking it back to a particular "
16711 "owner. And like a car, there's no way to buy and sell creative property with "
16712 "confidence unless there is some simple way to authenticate who is the author "
16713 "and what rights he has. Simple transactions are destroyed in a world without "
16714 "formalities. Complex, expensive, <emphasis>lawyer</emphasis> transactions "
16715 "take their place. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
16718 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16719 #: freeculture.xml:12300
16721 "This was the understanding of the problem with the Sonny Bono Act that we "
16722 "tried to demonstrate to the Court. This was the part it didn't "
16723 "<quote>get.</quote> Because we live in a system without formalities, there "
16724 "is no way easily to build upon or use culture from our past. If copyright "
16725 "terms were, as Justice Story said they would be, <quote>short,</quote> then "
16726 "this wouldn't matter much. For fourteen years, under the framers' system, a "
16727 "work would be presumptively controlled. After fourteen years, it would be "
16728 "presumptively uncontrolled."
16731 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16732 #: freeculture.xml:12310
16734 "But now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to "
16735 "know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious "
16736 "burden on the creative process. If the only way a library can offer an "
16737 "Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights "
16738 "to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity "
16739 "in a way that has never been seen before <emphasis>because there are no "
16740 "formalities</emphasis>."
16743 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16744 #: freeculture.xml:12319
16746 "The Eldred Act was designed to respond to exactly this problem. If it is "
16747 "worth $1 to you, then register your work and you can get the longer "
16748 "term. Others will know how to contact you and, therefore, how to get your "
16749 "permission if they want to use your work. And you will get the benefit of an "
16750 "extended copyright term."
16753 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16754 #: freeculture.xml:12326
16756 "If it isn't worth it to you to register to get the benefit of an extended "
16757 "term, then it shouldn't be worth it for the government to defend your "
16758 "monopoly over that work either. The work should pass into the public domain "
16759 "where anyone can copy it, or build archives with it, or create a movie based "
16760 "on it. It should become free if it is not worth $1 to you."
16763 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16764 #: freeculture.xml:12333
16766 "Some worry about the burden on authors. Won't the burden of registering the "
16767 "work mean that the $1 is really misleading? Isn't the hassle worth more than "
16768 "$1? Isn't that the real problem with registration?"
16772 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16773 #: freeculture.xml:12339
16775 "It is. The hassle is terrible. The system that exists now is awful. I "
16776 "completely agree that the Copyright Office has done a terrible job (no doubt "
16777 "because they are terribly funded) in enabling simple and cheap "
16778 "registrations. Any real solution to the problem of formalities must address "
16779 "the real problem of <emphasis>governments</emphasis> standing at the core of "
16780 "any system of formalities. In this book, I offer such a solution. That "
16781 "solution essentially remakes the Copyright Office. For now, assume it was "
16782 "Amazon that ran the registration system. Assume it was one-click "
16783 "registration. The Eldred Act would propose a simple, one-click registration "
16784 "fifty years after a work was published. Based upon historical data, that "
16785 "system would move up to 98 percent of commercial work, commercial work that "
16786 "no longer had a commercial life, into the public domain within fifty "
16787 "years. What do you think?"
16790 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16791 #: freeculture.xml:12357
16793 "<emphasis role='strong'>When Steve Forbes</emphasis> endorsed the idea, some "
16794 "in Washington began to pay attention. Many people contacted me pointing to "
16795 "representatives who might be willing to introduce the Eldred Act. And I had "
16796 "a few who directly suggested that they might be willing to take the first "
16800 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16801 #: freeculture.xml:12363
16802 msgid "Lofgren, Zoe"
16805 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16806 #: freeculture.xml:12365
16808 "One representative, Zoe Lofgren of California, went so far as to get the "
16809 "bill drafted. The draft solved any problem with international law. It "
16810 "imposed the simplest requirement upon copyright owners possible. In May "
16811 "2003, it looked as if the bill would be introduced. On May 16, I posted on "
16812 "the Eldred Act blog, <quote>we are close.</quote> There was a general "
16813 "reaction in the blog community that something good might happen here."
16816 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16817 #: freeculture.xml:12374
16819 "But at this stage, the lobbyists began to intervene. Jack Valenti and the "
16820 "MPAA general counsel came to the congresswoman's office to give the view of "
16821 "the MPAA. Aided by his lawyer, as Valenti told me, Valenti informed the "
16822 "congresswoman that the MPAA would oppose the Eldred Act. The reasons are "
16823 "embarrassingly thin. More importantly, their thinness shows something clear "
16824 "about what this debate is really about."
16828 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16829 #: freeculture.xml:12382
16831 "The MPAA argued first that Congress had <quote>firmly rejected the central "
16832 "concept in the proposed bill</quote>—that copyrights be renewed. That "
16833 "was true, but irrelevant, as Congress's <quote>firm rejection</quote> had "
16834 "occurred long before the Internet made subsequent uses much more likely. "
16835 "Second, they argued that the proposal would harm poor copyright "
16836 "owners—apparently those who could not afford the $1 fee. Third, they "
16837 "argued that Congress had determined that extending a copyright term would "
16838 "encourage restoration work. Maybe in the case of the small percentage of "
16839 "work covered by copyright law that is still commercially valuable, but again "
16840 "this was irrelevant, as the proposal would not cut off the extended term "
16841 "unless the $1 fee was not paid. Fourth, the MPAA argued that the bill would "
16842 "impose <quote>enormous</quote> costs, since a registration system is not "
16843 "free. True enough, but those costs are certainly less than the costs of "
16844 "clearing the rights for a copyright whose owner is not known. Fifth, they "
16845 "worried about the risks if the copyright to a story underlying a film were "
16846 "to pass into the public domain. But what risk is that? If it is in the "
16847 "public domain, then the film is a valid derivative use."
16850 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16851 #: freeculture.xml:12403
16853 "Finally, the MPAA argued that existing law enabled copyright owners to do "
16854 "this if they wanted. But the whole point is that there are thousands of "
16855 "copyright owners who don't even know they have a copyright to give. Whether "
16856 "they are free to give away their copyright or not—a controversial "
16857 "claim in any case—unless they know about a copyright, they're not "
16861 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16862 #: freeculture.xml:12411
16864 "<emphasis role='strong'>At the beginning</emphasis> of this book, I told two "
16865 "stories about the law reacting to changes in technology. In the one, common "
16866 "sense prevailed. In the other, common sense was delayed. The difference "
16867 "between the two stories was the power of the opposition—the power of "
16868 "the side that fought to defend the status quo. In both cases, a new "
16869 "technology threatened old interests. But in only one case did those "
16870 "interest's have the power to protect themselves against this new competitive "
16874 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16875 #: freeculture.xml:12421
16877 "I used these two cases as a way to frame the war that this book has been "
16878 "about. For here, too, a new technology is forcing the law to react. And "
16879 "here, too, we should ask, is the law following or resisting common sense? If "
16880 "common sense supports the law, what explains this common sense?"
16884 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16885 #: freeculture.xml:12430
16887 "When the issue is piracy, it is right for the law to back the copyright "
16888 "owners. The commercial piracy that I described is wrong and harmful, and the "
16889 "law should work to eliminate it. When the issue is p2p sharing, it is easy "
16890 "to understand why the law backs the owners still: Much of this sharing is "
16891 "wrong, even if much is harmless. When the issue is copyright terms for the "
16892 "Mickey Mouses of the world, it is possible still to understand why the law "
16893 "favors Hollywood: Most people don't recognize the reasons for limiting "
16894 "copyright terms; it is thus still possible to see good faith within the "
16898 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16899 #: freeculture.xml:12440
16900 msgid "Kelly, Kevin"
16903 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16904 #: freeculture.xml:12442
16906 "But when the copyright owners oppose a proposal such as the Eldred Act, "
16907 "then, finally, there is an example that lays bare the naked selfinterest "
16908 "driving this war. This act would free an extraordinary range of content that "
16909 "is otherwise unused. It wouldn't interfere with any copyright owner's desire "
16910 "to exercise continued control over his content. It would simply liberate "
16911 "what Kevin Kelly calls the <quote>Dark Content</quote> that fills archives "
16912 "around the world. So when the warriors oppose a change like this, we should "
16913 "ask one simple question:"
16916 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16917 #: freeculture.xml:12452
16918 msgid "What does this industry really want?"
16921 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16922 #: freeculture.xml:12455
16924 "With very little effort, the warriors could protect their content. So the "
16925 "effort to block something like the Eldred Act is not really about protecting "
16926 "<emphasis>their</emphasis> content. The effort to block the Eldred Act is an "
16927 "effort to assure that nothing more passes into the public domain. It is "
16928 "another step to assure that the public domain will never compete, that there "
16929 "will be no use of content that is not commercially controlled, and that "
16930 "there will be no commercial use of content that doesn't require "
16931 "<emphasis>their</emphasis> permission first."
16934 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16935 #: freeculture.xml:12466
16937 "The opposition to the Eldred Act reveals how extreme the other side is. The "
16938 "most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has as its aim not "
16939 "the protection of <quote>property</quote> but the rejection of a tradition. "
16940 "Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. <emphasis>Their aim is to "
16941 "assure that all there is is what is theirs</emphasis>."
16945 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16946 #: freeculture.xml:12474
16948 "It is not hard to understand why the warriors take this view. It is not hard "
16949 "to see why it would benefit them if the competition of the public domain "
16950 "tied to the Internet could somehow be quashed. Just as RCA feared the "
16951 "competition of FM, they fear the competition of a public domain connected to "
16952 "a public that now has the means to create with it and to share its own "
16956 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16957 #: freeculture.xml:12486
16959 "What is hard to understand is why the public takes this view. It is as if "
16960 "the law made airplanes trespassers. The MPAA stands with the Causbys and "
16961 "demands that their remote and useless property rights be respected, so that "
16962 "these remote and forgotten copyright holders might block the progress of "
16966 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16967 #: freeculture.xml:12493
16969 "All this seems to follow easily from this untroubled acceptance of the "
16970 "<quote>property</quote> in intellectual property. Common sense supports it, "
16971 "and so long as it does, the assaults will rain down upon the technologies of "
16972 "the Internet. The consequence will be an increasing <quote>permission "
16973 "society.</quote> The past can be cultivated only if you can identify the "
16974 "owner and gain permission to build upon his work. The future will be "
16975 "controlled by this dead (and often unfindable) hand of the past."
16978 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
16979 #: freeculture.xml:12505
16983 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16984 #: freeculture.xml:12506
16985 msgid "antiretroviral drugs"
16988 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16989 #: freeculture.xml:12507
16990 msgid "HIV/AIDS therapies"
16993 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16994 #: freeculture.xml:12508
16995 msgid "Africa, medications for HIV patients in"
16998 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
16999 #: freeculture.xml:12510
17001 "<emphasis role='strong'>There are more</emphasis> than 35 million people "
17002 "with the AIDS virus worldwide. Twenty-five million of them live in "
17003 "sub-Saharan Africa. Seventeen million have already died. Seventeen million "
17004 "Africans is proportional percentage-wise to seven million Americans. More "
17005 "importantly, it is seventeen million Africans."
17008 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17009 #: freeculture.xml:12517
17011 "There is no cure for AIDS, but there are drugs to slow its progression. "
17012 "These antiretroviral therapies are still experimental, but they have already "
17013 "had a dramatic effect. In the United States, AIDS patients who regularly "
17014 "take a cocktail of these drugs increase their life expectancy by ten to "
17015 "twenty years. For some, the drugs make the disease almost invisible."
17019 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17020 #: freeculture.xml:12532
17022 "Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, <quote>Final Report: Integrating "
17023 "Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy</quote> (London, 2002), "
17024 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
17025 "#55</ulink>. According to a World Health Organization press release issued 9 "
17026 "July 2002, only 230,000 of the 6 million who need drugs in the developing "
17027 "world receive them—and half of them are in Brazil."
17030 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17031 #: freeculture.xml:12525
17033 "These drugs are expensive. When they were first introduced in the United "
17034 "States, they cost between $10,000 and $15,000 per person per year. Today, "
17035 "some cost $25,000 per year. At these prices, of course, no African nation "
17036 "can afford the drugs for the vast majority of its population: $15,000 is "
17037 "thirty times the per capita gross national product of Zimbabwe. At these "
17038 "prices, the drugs are totally unavailable.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
17043 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17044 #: freeculture.xml:12543
17046 "These prices are not high because the ingredients of the drugs are "
17047 "expensive. These prices are high because the drugs are protected by "
17048 "patents. The drug companies that produced these life-saving mixes enjoy at "
17049 "least a twenty-year monopoly for their inventions. They use that monopoly "
17050 "power to extract the most they can from the market. That power is in turn "
17051 "used to keep the prices high."
17054 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17055 #: freeculture.xml:12551
17057 "There are many who are skeptical of patents, especially drug patents. I am "
17058 "not. Indeed, of all the areas of research that might be supported by "
17059 "patents, drug research is, in my view, the clearest case where patents are "
17060 "needed. The patent gives the drug company some assurance that if it is "
17061 "successful in inventing a new drug to treat a disease, it will be able to "
17062 "earn back its investment and more. This is socially an extremely valuable "
17063 "incentive. I am the last person who would argue that the law should abolish "
17064 "it, at least without other changes."
17067 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17068 #: freeculture.xml:12562
17070 "But it is one thing to support patents, even drug patents. It is another "
17071 "thing to determine how best to deal with a crisis. And as African leaders "
17072 "began to recognize the devastation that AIDS was bringing, they started "
17073 "looking for ways to import HIV treatments at costs significantly below the "
17077 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17078 #: freeculture.xml:12580 freeculture.xml:13035
17079 msgid "Braithwaite, John"
17082 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17083 #: freeculture.xml:12578
17085 "See Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, <citetitle>Information Feudalism: "
17086 "Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?</citetitle> (New York: The New Press, 2003), "
17087 "37. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
17088 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
17091 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17092 #: freeculture.xml:12569
17094 "In 1997, South Africa tried one tack. It passed a law to allow the "
17095 "importation of patented medicines that had been produced or sold in another "
17096 "nation's market with the consent of the patent owner. For example, if the "
17097 "drug was sold in India, it could be imported into Africa from India. This is "
17098 "called <quote>parallel importation,</quote> and it is generally permitted "
17099 "under international trade law and is specifically permitted within the "
17100 "European Union.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
17104 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17105 #: freeculture.xml:12591
17107 "International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), <citetitle>Patent "
17108 "Protection and Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals in Sub-Saharan Africa, a "
17109 "Report Prepared for the World Intellectual Property Organization</citetitle> "
17110 "(Washington, D.C., 2000), 14, available at <ulink "
17111 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #56</ulink>. For a firsthand "
17112 "account of the struggle over South Africa, see Hearing Before the "
17113 "Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, House "
17114 "Committee on Government Reform, H. Rep., 1st sess., Ser. No. 106-126 (22 "
17115 "July 1999), 150–57 (statement of James Love)."
17119 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17120 #: freeculture.xml:12618
17122 "International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), <citetitle>Patent "
17123 "Protection and Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals in Sub-Saharan Africa, a "
17124 "Report Prepared for the World Intellectual Property Organization</citetitle> "
17125 "(Washington, D.C., 2000), 15."
17128 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17129 #: freeculture.xml:12585
17131 "However, the United States government opposed the bill. Indeed, more than "
17132 "opposed. As the International Intellectual Property Association "
17133 "characterized it, <quote>The U.S. government pressured South Africa … "
17134 "not to permit compulsory licensing or parallel imports.</quote><placeholder "
17135 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Through the Office of the United States Trade "
17136 "Representative, the government asked South Africa to change the "
17137 "law—and to add pressure to that request, in 1998, the USTR listed "
17138 "South Africa for possible trade sanctions. That same year, more than forty "
17139 "pharmaceutical companies began proceedings in the South African courts to "
17140 "challenge the government's actions. The United States was then joined by "
17141 "other governments from the EU. Their claim, and the claim of the "
17142 "pharmaceutical companies, was that South Africa was violating its "
17143 "obligations under international law by discriminating against a particular "
17144 "kind of patent— pharmaceutical patents. The demand of these "
17145 "governments, with the United States in the lead, was that South Africa "
17146 "respect these patents as it respects any other patent, regardless of any "
17147 "effect on the treatment of AIDS within South Africa.<placeholder "
17148 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
17151 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17152 #: freeculture.xml:12624
17154 "We should place the intervention by the United States in context. No doubt "
17155 "patents are not the most important reason that Africans don't have access to "
17156 "drugs. Poverty and the total absence of an effective health care "
17157 "infrastructure matter more. But whether patents are the most important "
17158 "reason or not, the price of drugs has an effect on their demand, and patents "
17159 "affect price. And so, whether massive or marginal, there was an effect from "
17160 "our government's intervention to stop the flow of medications into Africa."
17163 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17164 #: freeculture.xml:12634
17166 "By stopping the flow of HIV treatment into Africa, the United States "
17167 "government was not saving drugs for United States citizens. This is not "
17168 "like wheat (if they eat it, we can't); instead, the flow that the United "
17169 "States intervened to stop was, in effect, a flow of knowledge: information "
17170 "about how to take chemicals that exist within Africa, and turn those "
17171 "chemicals into drugs that would save 15 to 30 million lives."
17174 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17175 #: freeculture.xml:12642
17177 "Nor was the intervention by the United States going to protect the profits "
17178 "of United States drug companies—at least, not substantially. It was "
17179 "not as if these countries were in the position to buy the drugs for the "
17180 "prices the drug companies were charging. Again, the Africans are wildly too "
17181 "poor to afford these drugs at the offered prices. Stopping the parallel "
17182 "import of these drugs would not substantially increase the sales by "
17188 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17189 #: freeculture.xml:12657
17191 "See Sabin Russell, <quote>New Crusade to Lower AIDS Drug Costs: Africa's "
17192 "Needs at Odds with Firms' Profit Motive,</quote> <citetitle>San Francisco "
17193 "Chronicle</citetitle>, 24 May 1999, A1, available at <ulink "
17194 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #57</ulink> (<quote>compulsory "
17195 "licenses and gray markets pose a threat to the entire system of intellectual "
17196 "property protection</quote>); Robert Weissman, <quote>AIDS and Developing "
17197 "Countries: Democratizing Access to Essential Medicines,</quote> "
17198 "<citetitle>Foreign Policy in Focus</citetitle> 4:23 (August 1999), available "
17199 "at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #58</ulink> (describing "
17200 "U.S. policy); John A. Harrelson, <quote>TRIPS, Pharmaceutical Patents, and "
17201 "the HIV/AIDS Crisis: Finding the Proper Balance Between Intellectual "
17202 "Property Rights and Compassion, a Synopsis,</quote> <citetitle>Widener Law "
17203 "Symposium Journal</citetitle> (Spring 2001): 175."
17206 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17207 #: freeculture.xml:12651
17209 "Instead, the argument in favor of restricting this flow of information, "
17210 "which was needed to save the lives of millions, was an argument about the "
17211 "sanctity of property.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> It was "
17212 "because <quote>intellectual property</quote> would be violated that these "
17213 "drugs should not flow into Africa. It was a principle about the importance "
17214 "of <quote>intellectual property</quote> that led these government actors to "
17215 "intervene against the South African response to AIDS."
17218 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17219 #: freeculture.xml:12678
17221 "Now just step back for a moment. There will be a time thirty years from now "
17222 "when our children look back at us and ask, how could we have let this "
17223 "happen? How could we allow a policy to be pursued whose direct cost would be "
17224 "to speed the death of 15 to 30 million Africans, and whose only real benefit "
17225 "would be to uphold the <quote>sanctity</quote> of an idea? What possible "
17226 "justification could there ever be for a policy that results in so many "
17227 "deaths? What exactly is the insanity that would allow so many to die for "
17228 "such an abstraction?"
17231 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17232 #: freeculture.xml:12688
17234 "Some blame the drug companies. I don't. They are corporations. Their "
17235 "managers are ordered by law to make money for the corporation. They push a "
17236 "certain patent policy not because of ideals, but because it is the policy "
17237 "that makes them the most money. And it only makes them the most money "
17238 "because of a certain corruption within our political system— a "
17239 "corruption the drug companies are certainly not responsible for."
17242 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17243 #: freeculture.xml:12696
17245 "The corruption is our own politicians' failure of integrity. For the drug "
17246 "companies would love—they say, and I believe them—to sell their "
17247 "drugs as cheaply as they can to countries in Africa and elsewhere. There "
17248 "are issues they'd have to resolve to make sure the drugs didn't get back "
17249 "into the United States, but those are mere problems of technology. They "
17250 "could be overcome."
17254 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17255 #: freeculture.xml:12704
17257 "A different problem, however, could not be overcome. This is the fear of the "
17258 "grandstanding politician who would call the presidents of the drug companies "
17259 "before a Senate or House hearing, and ask, <quote>How is it you can sell "
17260 "this HIV drug in Africa for only $1 a pill, but the same drug would cost an "
17261 "American $1,500?</quote> Because there is no <quote>sound bite</quote> "
17262 "answer to that question, its effect would be to induce regulation of prices "
17263 "in America. The drug companies thus avoid this spiral by avoiding the first "
17264 "step. They reinforce the idea that property should be sacred. They adopt a "
17265 "rational strategy in an irrational context, with the unintended consequence "
17266 "that perhaps millions die. And that rational strategy thus becomes framed in "
17267 "terms of this ideal—the sanctity of an idea called <quote>intellectual "
17268 "property.</quote>"
17271 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17272 #: freeculture.xml:12719
17274 "So when the common sense of your child confronts you, what will you say? "
17275 "When the common sense of a generation finally revolts against what we have "
17276 "done, how will we justify what we have done? What is the argument?"
17279 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17280 #: freeculture.xml:12725
17282 "A sensible patent policy could endorse and strongly support the patent "
17283 "system without having to reach everyone everywhere in exactly the same "
17284 "way. Just as a sensible copyright policy could endorse and strongly support "
17285 "a copyright system without having to regulate the spread of culture "
17286 "perfectly and forever, a sensible patent policy could endorse and strongly "
17287 "support a patent system without having to block the spread of drugs to a "
17288 "country not rich enough to afford market prices in any case. A sensible "
17289 "policy, in other words, could be a balanced policy. For most of our history, "
17290 "both copyright and patent policies were balanced in just this sense."
17293 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17294 #: freeculture.xml:12737
17296 "But we as a culture have lost this sense of balance. We have lost the "
17297 "critical eye that helps us see the difference between truth and extremism. "
17298 "A certain property fundamentalism, having no connection to our tradition, "
17299 "now reigns in this culture—bizarrely, and with consequences more grave "
17300 "to the spread of ideas and culture than almost any other single policy "
17301 "decision that we as a democracy will make."
17305 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17306 #: freeculture.xml:12748
17308 "<emphasis role='strong'>A simple idea</emphasis> blinds us, and under the "
17309 "cover of darkness, much happens that most of us would reject if any of us "
17310 "looked. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we "
17311 "don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are "
17312 "dying without them. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in "
17313 "culture that we don't even question when the control of that property "
17314 "removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture "
17315 "democratically. Blindness becomes our common sense. And the challenge for "
17316 "anyone who would reclaim the right to cultivate our culture is to find a way "
17317 "to make this common sense open its eyes."
17320 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17321 #: freeculture.xml:12762
17323 "So far, common sense sleeps. There is no revolt. Common sense does not yet "
17324 "see what there could be to revolt about. The extremism that now dominates "
17325 "this debate fits with ideas that seem natural, and that fit is reinforced by "
17326 "the RCAs of our day. They wage a frantic war to fight <quote>piracy,</quote> "
17327 "and devastate a culture for creativity. They defend the idea of "
17328 "<quote>creative property,</quote> while transforming real creators into "
17329 "modern-day sharecroppers. They are insulted by the idea that rights should "
17330 "be balanced, even though each of the major players in this content war was "
17331 "itself a beneficiary of a more balanced ideal. The hypocrisy reeks. Yet in a "
17332 "city like Washington, hypocrisy is not even noticed. Powerful lobbies, "
17333 "complex issues, and MTV attention spans produce the <quote>perfect "
17334 "storm</quote> for free culture."
17337 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17338 #: freeculture.xml:12775
17339 msgid "public domain"
17342 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
17343 #: freeculture.xml:12775
17344 msgid "public projects in"
17347 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17348 #: freeculture.xml:12776
17349 msgid "single nucleotied polymorphisms (SNPs)"
17352 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17353 #: freeculture.xml:12777
17354 msgid "Wellcome Trust"
17357 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17358 #: freeculture.xml:12778
17359 msgid "World Wide Web"
17362 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17363 #: freeculture.xml:12779
17364 msgid "Global Positioning System"
17367 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17368 #: freeculture.xml:12781
17369 msgid "biomedical research"
17373 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17374 #: freeculture.xml:12786
17376 "Jonathan Krim, <quote>The Quiet War over Open-Source,</quote> "
17377 "<citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, August 2003, E1, available at <ulink "
17378 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #59</ulink>; William New, "
17379 "<quote>Global Group's Shift on `Open Source' Meeting Spurs Stir,</quote> "
17380 "<citetitle>National Journal's Technology Daily</citetitle>, 19 August 2003, "
17381 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #60</ulink>; "
17382 "William New, <quote>U.S. Official Opposes `Open Source' Talks at "
17383 "WIPO,</quote> <citetitle>National Journal's Technology Daily</citetitle>, 19 "
17384 "August 2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
17388 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
17389 #: freeculture.xml:12814 freeculture.xml:13505
17390 msgid "academic journals"
17393 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
17394 #: freeculture.xml:12815 freeculture.xml:12882 freeculture.xml:13431
17398 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
17399 #: freeculture.xml:12816 freeculture.xml:13568
17400 msgid "PLoS (Public Library of Science)"
17403 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17404 #: freeculture.xml:12783
17406 "<emphasis role='strong'>In August 2003</emphasis>, a fight broke out in the "
17407 "United States about a decision by the World Intellectual Property "
17408 "Organization to cancel a meeting.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
17409 "At the request of a wide range of interests, WIPO had decided to hold a "
17410 "meeting to discuss <quote>open and collaborative projects to create public "
17411 "goods.</quote> These are projects that have been successful in producing "
17412 "public goods without relying exclusively upon a proprietary use of "
17413 "intellectual property. Examples include the Internet and the World Wide Web, "
17414 "both of which were developed on the basis of protocols in the public "
17415 "domain. It included an emerging trend to support open academic journals, "
17416 "including the Public Library of Science project that I describe in the "
17417 "Afterword. It included a project to develop single nucleotide polymorphisms "
17418 "(SNPs), which are thought to have great significance in biomedical "
17419 "research. (That nonprofit project comprised a consortium of the Wellcome "
17420 "Trust and pharmaceutical and technological companies, including Amersham "
17421 "Biosciences, AstraZeneca, Aventis, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hoffmann-La "
17422 "Roche, Glaxo-SmithKline, IBM, Motorola, Novartis, Pfizer, and Searle.) It "
17423 "included the Global Positioning System, which Ronald Reagan set free in the "
17424 "early 1980s. And it included <quote>open source and free software.</quote> "
17425 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
17426 "id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/>"
17429 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17430 #: freeculture.xml:12820
17432 "The aim of the meeting was to consider this wide range of projects from one "
17433 "common perspective: that none of these projects relied upon intellectual "
17434 "property extremism. Instead, in all of them, intellectual property was "
17435 "balanced by agreements to keep access open or to impose limitations on the "
17436 "way in which proprietary claims might be used."
17440 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17441 #: freeculture.xml:12828
17443 "I should disclose that I was one of the people who asked WIPO for the "
17447 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17448 #: freeculture.xml:12827
17450 "From the perspective of this book, then, the conference was "
17451 "ideal.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The projects within its "
17452 "scope included both commercial and noncommercial work. They primarily "
17453 "involved science, but from many perspectives. And WIPO was an ideal venue "
17454 "for this discussion, since WIPO is the preeminent international body dealing "
17455 "with intellectual property issues."
17459 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17460 #: freeculture.xml:12838
17462 "Indeed, I was once publicly scolded for not recognizing this fact about "
17463 "WIPO. In February 2003, I delivered a keynote address to a preparatory "
17464 "conference for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). At a "
17465 "press conference before the address, I was asked what I would say. I "
17466 "responded that I would be talking a little about the importance of balance "
17467 "in intellectual property for the development of an information society. The "
17468 "moderator for the event then promptly interrupted to inform me and the "
17469 "assembled reporters that no question about intellectual property would be "
17470 "discussed by WSIS, since those questions were the exclusive domain of "
17471 "WIPO. In the talk that I had prepared, I had actually made the issue of "
17472 "intellectual property relatively minor. But after this astonishing "
17473 "statement, I made intellectual property the sole focus of my talk. There was "
17474 "no way to talk about an <quote>Information Society</quote> unless one also "
17475 "talked about the range of information and culture that would be free. My "
17476 "talk did not make my immoderate moderator very happy. And she was no doubt "
17477 "correct that the scope of intellectual property protections was ordinarily "
17478 "the stuff of WIPO. But in my view, there couldn't be too much of a "
17479 "conversation about how much intellectual property is needed, since in my "
17480 "view, the very idea of balance in intellectual property had been lost."
17483 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17484 #: freeculture.xml:12862
17486 "So whether or not WSIS can discuss balance in intellectual property, I had "
17487 "thought it was taken for granted that WIPO could and should. And thus the "
17488 "meeting about <quote>open and collaborative projects to create public "
17489 "goods</quote> seemed perfectly appropriate within the WIPO agenda."
17492 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
17493 #: freeculture.xml:12867 freeculture.xml:14551
17494 msgid "Apple Corporation"
17497 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17498 #: freeculture.xml:12869
17500 "But there is one project within that list that is highly controversial, at "
17501 "least among lobbyists. That project is <quote>open source and free "
17502 "software.</quote> Microsoft in particular is wary of discussion of the "
17503 "subject. From its perspective, a conference to discuss open source and free "
17504 "software would be like a conference to discuss Apple's operating "
17505 "system. Both open source and free software compete with Microsoft's "
17506 "software. And internationally, many governments have begun to explore "
17507 "requirements that they use open source or free software, rather than "
17508 "<quote>proprietary software,</quote> for their own internal uses."
17511 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17512 #: freeculture.xml:12879
17513 msgid "<quote>copyleft</quote> licenses"
17517 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17518 #: freeculture.xml:12895
17520 "Microsoft's position about free and open source software is more "
17521 "sophisticated. As it has repeatedly asserted, it has no problem with "
17522 "<quote>open source</quote> software or software in the public "
17523 "domain. Microsoft's principal opposition is to <quote>free software</quote> "
17524 "licensed under a <quote>copyleft</quote> license, meaning a license that "
17525 "requires the licensee to adopt the same terms on any derivative work. See "
17526 "Bradford L. Smith, <quote>The Future of Software: Enabling the Marketplace "
17527 "to Decide,</quote> <citetitle>Government Policy Toward Open Source "
17528 "Software</citetitle> (Washington, D.C.: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for "
17529 "Regulatory Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy "
17530 "Research, 2002), 69, available at <ulink "
17531 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #62</ulink>. See also Craig "
17532 "Mundie, Microsoft senior vice president, <citetitle>The Commercial Software "
17533 "Model</citetitle>, discussion at New York University Stern School of "
17534 "Business (3 May 2001), available at <ulink "
17535 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #63</ulink>."
17538 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17539 #: freeculture.xml:12884
17541 "I don't mean to enter that debate here. It is important only to make clear "
17542 "that the distinction is not between commercial and noncommercial "
17543 "software. There are many important companies that depend fundamentally upon "
17544 "open source and free software, IBM being the most prominent. IBM is "
17545 "increasingly shifting its focus to the GNU/Linux operating system, the most "
17546 "famous bit of <quote>free software</quote>—and IBM is emphatically a "
17547 "commercial entity. Thus, to support <quote>open source and free "
17548 "software</quote> is not to oppose commercial entities. It is, instead, to "
17549 "support a mode of software development that is different from "
17550 "Microsoft's.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
17553 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17554 #: freeculture.xml:12912
17555 msgid "General Public License (GPL)"
17558 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17559 #: freeculture.xml:12913
17560 msgid "GPL (General Public License)"
17564 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17565 #: freeculture.xml:12915
17567 "More important for our purposes, to support <quote>open source and free "
17568 "software</quote> is not to oppose copyright. <quote>Open source and free "
17569 "software</quote> is not software in the public domain. Instead, like "
17570 "Microsoft's software, the copyright owners of free and open source software "
17571 "insist quite strongly that the terms of their software license be respected "
17572 "by adopters of free and open source software. The terms of that license are "
17573 "no doubt different from the terms of a proprietary software license. Free "
17574 "software licensed under the General Public License (GPL), for example, "
17575 "requires that the source code for the software be made available by anyone "
17576 "who modifies and redistributes the software. But that requirement is "
17577 "effective only if copyright governs software. If copyright did not govern "
17578 "software, then free software could not impose the same kind of requirements "
17579 "on its adopters. It thus depends upon copyright law just as Microsoft does."
17582 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17583 #: freeculture.xml:12932
17584 msgid "Krim, Jonathan"
17587 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
17588 #: freeculture.xml:12933
17589 msgid "WIPO meeting opposed by"
17593 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17594 #: freeculture.xml:12943
17596 "Krim, <quote>The Quiet War over Open-Source,</quote> available at <ulink "
17597 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #64</ulink>."
17600 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17601 #: freeculture.xml:12935
17603 "It is therefore understandable that as a proprietary software developer, "
17604 "Microsoft would oppose this WIPO meeting, and understandable that it would "
17605 "use its lobbyists to get the United States government to oppose it, as "
17606 "well. And indeed, that is just what was reported to have happened. According "
17607 "to Jonathan Krim of the <citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, Microsoft's "
17608 "lobbyists succeeded in getting the United States government to veto the "
17609 "meeting.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And without U.S. backing, "
17610 "the meeting was canceled."
17613 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17614 #: freeculture.xml:12949
17616 "I don't blame Microsoft for doing what it can to advance its own interests, "
17617 "consistent with the law. And lobbying governments is plainly consistent with "
17618 "the law. There was nothing surprising about its lobbying here, and nothing "
17619 "terribly surprising about the most powerful software producer in the United "
17620 "States having succeeded in its lobbying efforts."
17623 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17624 #: freeculture.xml:12956 freeculture.xml:13009
17625 msgid "Boland, Lois"
17628 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17629 #: freeculture.xml:12958
17631 "What was surprising was the United States government's reason for opposing "
17632 "the meeting. Again, as reported by Krim, Lois Boland, acting director of "
17633 "international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, explained "
17634 "that <quote>open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which "
17635 "is to promote intellectual-property rights.</quote> She is quoted as saying, "
17636 "<quote>To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such "
17637 "rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO.</quote>"
17640 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17641 #: freeculture.xml:12968
17642 msgid "These statements are astonishing on a number of levels."
17645 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17646 #: freeculture.xml:12972
17648 "First, they are just flat wrong. As I described, most open source and free "
17649 "software relies fundamentally upon the intellectual property right called "
17650 "<quote>copyright</quote>. Without it, restrictions imposed by those "
17651 "licenses wouldn't work. Thus, to say it <quote>runs counter</quote> to the "
17652 "mission of promoting intellectual property rights reveals an extraordinary "
17653 "gap in understanding—the sort of mistake that is excusable in a "
17654 "first-year law student, but an embarrassment from a high government official "
17655 "dealing with intellectual property issues."
17658 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17659 #: freeculture.xml:12981
17660 msgid "generic drugs"
17663 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17664 #: freeculture.xml:12983
17666 "Second, who ever said that WIPO's exclusive aim was to "
17667 "<quote>promote</quote> intellectual property maximally? As I had been "
17668 "scolded at the preparatory conference of WSIS, WIPO is to consider not only "
17669 "how best to protect intellectual property, but also what the best balance of "
17670 "intellectual property is. As every economist and lawyer knows, the hard "
17671 "question in intellectual property law is to find that balance. But that "
17672 "there should be limits is, I had thought, uncontested. One wants to ask "
17673 "Ms. Boland, are generic drugs (drugs based on drugs whose patent has "
17674 "expired) contrary to the WIPO mission? Does the public domain weaken "
17675 "intellectual property? Would it have been better if the protocols of the "
17676 "Internet had been patented?"
17679 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17680 #: freeculture.xml:12997
17682 "Third, even if one believed that the purpose of WIPO was to maximize "
17683 "intellectual property rights, in our tradition, intellectual property rights "
17684 "are held by individuals and corporations. They get to decide what to do with "
17685 "those rights because, again, they are <emphasis>their</emphasis> rights. If "
17686 "they want to <quote>waive</quote> or <quote>disclaim</quote> their rights, "
17687 "that is, within our tradition, totally appropriate. When Bill Gates gives "
17688 "away more than $20 billion to do good in the world, that is not inconsistent "
17689 "with the objectives of the property system. That is, on the contrary, just "
17690 "what a property system is supposed to be about: giving individuals the right "
17691 "to decide what to do with <emphasis>their</emphasis> property."
17695 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17696 #: freeculture.xml:13011
17698 "When Ms. Boland says that there is something wrong with a meeting "
17699 "<quote>which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights,</quote> "
17700 "she's saying that WIPO has an interest in interfering with the choices of "
17701 "the individuals who own intellectual property rights. That somehow, WIPO's "
17702 "objective should be to stop an individual from <quote>waiving</quote> or "
17703 "<quote>disclaiming</quote> an intellectual property right. That the interest "
17704 "of WIPO is not just that intellectual property rights be maximized, but that "
17705 "they also should be exercised in the most extreme and restrictive way "
17709 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17710 #: freeculture.xml:13023
17712 "There is a history of just such a property system that is well known in the "
17713 "Anglo-American tradition. It is called <quote>feudalism.</quote> Under "
17714 "feudalism, not only was property held by a relatively small number of "
17715 "individuals and entities. And not only were the rights that ran with that "
17716 "property powerful and extensive. But the feudal system had a strong interest "
17717 "in assuring that property holders within that system not weaken feudalism by "
17718 "liberating people or property within their control to the free "
17719 "market. Feudalism depended upon maximum control and concentration. It fought "
17720 "any freedom that might interfere with that control."
17723 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17724 #: freeculture.xml:13040
17726 "See Drahos with Braithwaite, <citetitle>Information Feudalism</citetitle>, "
17727 "210–20. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
17730 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17731 #: freeculture.xml:13037
17733 "As Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite relate, this is precisely the choice we "
17734 "are now making about intellectual property.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
17735 "id=\"0\"/> We will have an information society. That much is certain. Our "
17736 "only choice now is whether that information society will be "
17737 "<emphasis>free</emphasis> or <emphasis>feudal</emphasis>. The trend is "
17738 "toward the feudal."
17741 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17742 #: freeculture.xml:13049
17744 "When this battle broke, I blogged it. A spirited debate within the comment "
17745 "section ensued. Ms. Boland had a number of supporters who tried to show why "
17746 "her comments made sense. But there was one comment that was particularly "
17747 "depressing for me. An anonymous poster wrote,"
17751 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
17752 #: freeculture.xml:13056
17754 "George, you misunderstand Lessig: He's only talking about the world as it "
17755 "should be (<quote>the goal of WIPO, and the goal of any government, should "
17756 "be to promote the right balance of intellectual property rights, not simply "
17757 "to promote intellectual property rights</quote>), not as it is. If we were "
17758 "talking about the world as it is, then of course Boland didn't say anything "
17759 "wrong. But in the world as Lessig would have it, then of course she "
17760 "did. Always pay attention to the distinction between Lessig's world and "
17764 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17765 #: freeculture.xml:13068
17767 "I missed the irony the first time I read it. I read it quickly and thought "
17768 "the poster was supporting the idea that seeking balance was what our "
17769 "government should be doing. (Of course, my criticism of Ms. Boland was not "
17770 "about whether she was seeking balance or not; my criticism was that her "
17771 "comments betrayed a first-year law student's mistake. I have no illusion "
17772 "about the extremism of our government, whether Republican or Democrat. My "
17773 "only illusion apparently is about whether our government should speak the "
17777 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17778 #: freeculture.xml:13079
17780 "Obviously, however, the poster was not supporting that idea. Instead, the "
17781 "poster was ridiculing the very idea that in the real world, the "
17782 "<quote>goal</quote> of a government should be <quote>to promote the right "
17783 "balance</quote> of intellectual property. That was obviously silly to "
17784 "him. And it obviously betrayed, he believed, my own silly "
17785 "utopianism. <quote>Typical for an academic,</quote> the poster might well "
17789 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17790 #: freeculture.xml:13087
17792 "I understand criticism of academic utopianism. I think utopianism is silly, "
17793 "too, and I'd be the first to poke fun at the absurdly unrealistic ideals of "
17794 "academics throughout history (and not just in our own country's history)."
17797 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17798 #: freeculture.xml:13093
17800 "But when it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government "
17801 "should be to <quote>seek balance,</quote> then count me with the silly, for "
17802 "that means that this has become quite serious indeed. If it should be "
17803 "obvious to everyone that the government does not seek balance, that the "
17804 "government is simply the tool of the most powerful lobbyists, that the idea "
17805 "of holding the government to a different standard is absurd, that the idea "
17806 "of demanding of the government that it speak truth and not lies is just "
17807 "naïve, then who have we, the most powerful democracy in the world, "
17812 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17813 #: freeculture.xml:13104
17815 "It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the "
17816 "truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something "
17817 "more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy "
17818 "to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our "
17819 "tradition for most of our history—free culture."
17822 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17823 #: freeculture.xml:13112
17824 msgid "If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon."
17827 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17828 #: freeculture.xml:13116
17829 msgid "Turner, Ted"
17832 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17833 #: freeculture.xml:13118
17835 "<emphasis role='strong'>There are moments</emphasis> of hope in this "
17836 "struggle. And moments that surprise. When the FCC was considering relaxing "
17837 "ownership rules, which would thereby further increase the concentration in "
17838 "media ownership, an extraordinary bipartisan coalition formed to fight this "
17839 "change. For perhaps the first time in history, interests as diverse as the "
17840 "NRA, the ACLU, Moveon.org, William Safire, Ted Turner, and CodePink Women "
17841 "for Peace organized to oppose this change in FCC policy. An astonishing "
17842 "700,000 letters were sent to the FCC, demanding more hearings and a "
17843 "different result."
17846 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17847 #: freeculture.xml:13129
17849 "This activism did not stop the FCC, but soon after, a broad coalition in the "
17850 "Senate voted to reverse the FCC decision. The hostile hearings leading up to "
17851 "that vote revealed just how powerful this movement had become. There was no "
17852 "substantial support for the FCC's decision, and there was broad and "
17853 "sustained support for fighting further concentration in the media."
17856 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17857 #: freeculture.xml:13137
17859 "But even this movement misses an important piece of the puzzle. Largeness "
17860 "as such is not bad. Freedom is not threatened just because some become very "
17861 "rich, or because there are only a handful of big players. The poor quality "
17862 "of Big Macs or Quarter Pounders does not mean that you can't get a good "
17863 "hamburger from somewhere else."
17866 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17867 #: freeculture.xml:13144
17869 "The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but "
17870 "instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in "
17871 "copyright, produces. It is not just that there are a few powerful companies "
17872 "that control an ever expanding slice of the media. It is that this "
17873 "concentration can call upon an equally bloated range of "
17874 "rights—property rights of a historically extreme form—that makes "
17875 "their bigness bad."
17878 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17879 #: freeculture.xml:13154
17881 "It is therefore significant that so many would rally to demand competition "
17882 "and increased diversity. Still, if the rally is understood as being about "
17883 "bigness alone, it is not terribly surprising. We Americans have a long "
17884 "history of fighting <quote>big,</quote> wisely or not. That we could be "
17885 "motivated to fight <quote>big</quote> again is not something new."
17888 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17889 #: freeculture.xml:13161
17891 "It would be something new, and something very important, if an equal number "
17892 "could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built within the idea of "
17893 "<quote>intellectual property.</quote> Not because balance is alien to our "
17894 "tradition; indeed, as I've argued, balance is our tradition. But because the "
17895 "muscle to think critically about the scope of anything called "
17896 "<quote>property</quote> is not well exercised within this tradition anymore."
17899 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17900 #: freeculture.xml:13169
17902 "If we were Achilles, this would be our heel. This would be the place of our "
17906 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17907 #: freeculture.xml:13172
17912 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17913 #: freeculture.xml:13178
17915 "John Borland, <quote>RIAA Sues 261 File Swappers,</quote> CNET News.com, "
17916 "September 2003, available at <ulink "
17917 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #65</ulink>; Paul R. La Monica, "
17918 "<quote>Music Industry Sues Swappers,</quote> CNN/Money, 8 September 2003, "
17919 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #66</ulink>; "
17920 "Soni Sangha and Phyllis Furman with Robert Gearty, <quote>Sued for a Song, "
17921 "N.Y.C. 12-Yr-Old Among 261 Cited as Sharers,</quote> <citetitle>New York "
17922 "Daily News</citetitle>, 9 September 2003, 3; Frank Ahrens, <quote>RIAA's "
17923 "Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets; Single Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl "
17924 "in N.Y. Among Defendants,</quote> <citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, 10 "
17925 "September 2003, E1; Katie Dean, <quote>Schoolgirl Settles with RIAA,</quote> "
17926 "<citetitle>Wired News</citetitle>, 10 September 2003, available at <ulink "
17927 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #67</ulink>."
17931 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17932 #: freeculture.xml:13196
17934 "Jon Wiederhorn, <quote>Eminem Gets Sued … by a Little Old "
17935 "Lady,</quote> mtv.com, 17 September 2003, available at <ulink "
17936 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #68</ulink>."
17941 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17942 #: freeculture.xml:13203
17944 "Kenji Hall, Associated Press, <quote>Japanese Book May Be Inspiration for "
17945 "Dylan Songs,</quote> Kansascity.com, 9 July 2003, available at <ulink "
17946 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #69</ulink>."
17949 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17950 #: freeculture.xml:13174
17952 "<emphasis role='strong'>As I write</emphasis> these final words, the news is "
17953 "filled with stories about the RIAA lawsuits against almost three hundred "
17954 "individuals.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Eminem has just been "
17955 "sued for <quote>sampling</quote> someone else's music.<placeholder "
17956 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> The story about Bob Dylan "
17957 "<quote>stealing</quote> from a Japanese author has just finished making the "
17958 "rounds.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/> An insider from "
17959 "Hollywood—who insists he must remain anonymous—reports <quote>an "
17960 "amazing conversation with these studio guys. They've got extraordinary [old] "
17961 "content that they'd love to use but can't because they can't begin to clear "
17962 "the rights. They've got scores of kids who could do amazing things with the "
17963 "content, but it would take scores of lawyers to clean it first.</quote> "
17964 "Congressmen are talking about deputizing computer viruses to bring down "
17965 "computers thought to violate the law. Universities are threatening expulsion "
17966 "for kids who use a computer to share content."
17969 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17970 #: freeculture.xml:13220
17974 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17975 #: freeculture.xml:13221
17976 msgid "Brazil, free culture in"
17979 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
17980 #: freeculture.xml:13222 freeculture.xml:13584
17981 msgid "Creative Commons"
17984 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17985 #: freeculture.xml:13223
17986 msgid "Gil, Gilberto"
17989 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17990 #: freeculture.xml:13224
17991 msgid "United Kingdom"
17994 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
17995 #: freeculture.xml:13224
17996 msgid "public creative archive in"
18000 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
18001 #: freeculture.xml:13229
18003 "<quote>BBC Plans to Open Up Its Archive to the Public,</quote> BBC press "
18004 "release, 24 August 2003, available at <ulink "
18005 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #70</ulink>."
18009 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
18010 #: freeculture.xml:13238
18012 "<quote>Creative Commons and Brazil,</quote> Creative Commons Weblog, 6 "
18013 "August 2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
18018 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18019 #: freeculture.xml:13226
18021 "Yet on the other side of the Atlantic, the BBC has just announced that it "
18022 "will build a <quote>Creative Archive,</quote> from which British citizens "
18023 "can download BBC content, and rip, mix, and burn it.<placeholder "
18024 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And in Brazil, the culture minister, Gilberto "
18025 "Gil, himself a folk hero of Brazilian music, has joined with Creative "
18026 "Commons to release content and free licenses in that Latin American "
18027 "country.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> I've told a dark "
18028 "story. The truth is more mixed. A technology has given us a new "
18029 "freedom. Slowly, some begin to understand that this freedom need not mean "
18030 "anarchy. We can carry a free culture into the twenty-first century, without "
18031 "artists losing and without the potential of digital technology being "
18032 "destroyed. It will take some thought, and more importantly, it will take "
18033 "some will to transform the RCAs of our day into the Causbys."
18037 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18038 #: freeculture.xml:13252
18040 "Common sense must revolt. It must act to free culture. Soon, if this "
18041 "potential is ever to be realized."
18044 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
18045 #: freeculture.xml:13260
18050 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18051 #: freeculture.xml:13264
18053 "<emphasis role='strong'>At least some</emphasis> who have read this far will "
18054 "agree with me that something must be done to change where we are "
18055 "heading. The balance of this book maps what might be done."
18058 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18059 #: freeculture.xml:13269
18061 "I divide this map into two parts: that which anyone can do now, and that "
18062 "which requires the help of lawmakers. If there is one lesson that we can "
18063 "draw from the history of remaking common sense, it is that it requires "
18064 "remaking how many people think about the very same issue."
18067 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18068 #: freeculture.xml:13275
18070 "That means this movement must begin in the streets. It must recruit a "
18071 "significant number of parents, teachers, librarians, creators, authors, "
18072 "musicians, filmmakers, scientists—all to tell this story in their own "
18073 "words, and to tell their neighbors why this battle is so important."
18076 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18077 #: freeculture.xml:13282
18079 "Once this movement has its effect in the streets, it has some hope of having "
18080 "an effect in Washington. We are still a democracy. What people think "
18081 "matters. Not as much as it should, at least when an RCA stands opposed, but "
18082 "still, it matters. And thus, in the second part below, I sketch changes that "
18083 "Congress could make to better secure a free culture."
18086 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><title>
18087 #: freeculture.xml:13291
18091 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18092 #: freeculture.xml:13293
18094 "<emphasis role='strong'>Common sense</emphasis> is with the copyright "
18095 "warriors because the debate so far has been framed at the extremes—as "
18096 "a grand either/or: either property or anarchy, either total control or "
18097 "artists won't be paid. If that really is the choice, then the warriors "
18101 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18102 #: freeculture.xml:13300
18104 "The mistake here is the error of the excluded middle. There are extremes in "
18105 "this debate, but the extremes are not all that there is. There are those who "
18106 "believe in maximal copyright—<quote>All Rights Reserved</quote>— "
18107 "and those who reject copyright—<quote>No Rights Reserved.</quote> The "
18108 "<quote>All Rights Reserved</quote> sorts believe that you should ask "
18109 "permission before you <quote>use</quote> a copyrighted work in any way. The "
18110 "<quote>No Rights Reserved</quote> sorts believe you should be able to do "
18111 "with content as you wish, regardless of whether you have permission or not."
18115 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18116 #: freeculture.xml:13310
18118 "When the Internet was first born, its initial architecture effectively "
18119 "tilted in the <quote>no rights reserved</quote> direction. Content could be "
18120 "copied perfectly and cheaply; rights could not easily be controlled. Thus, "
18121 "regardless of anyone's desire, the effective regime of copyright under the "
18122 "original design of the Internet was <quote>no rights reserved.</quote> "
18123 "Content was <quote>taken</quote> regardless of the rights. Any rights were "
18124 "effectively unprotected."
18127 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18128 #: freeculture.xml:13322
18130 "This initial character produced a reaction (opposite, but not quite equal) "
18131 "by copyright owners. That reaction has been the topic of this book. Through "
18132 "legislation, litigation, and changes to the network's design, copyright "
18133 "holders have been able to change the essential character of the environment "
18134 "of the original Internet. If the original architecture made the effective "
18135 "default <quote>no rights reserved,</quote> the future architecture will make "
18136 "the effective default <quote>all rights reserved.</quote> The architecture "
18137 "and law that surround the Internet's design will increasingly produce an "
18138 "environment where all use of content requires permission. The <quote>cut "
18139 "and paste</quote> world that defines the Internet today will become a "
18140 "<quote>get permission to cut and paste</quote> world that is a creator's "
18144 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18145 #: freeculture.xml:13336
18147 "What's needed is a way to say something in the middle—neither "
18148 "<quote>all rights reserved</quote> nor <quote>no rights reserved</quote> but "
18149 "<quote>some rights reserved</quote>— and thus a way to respect "
18150 "copyrights but enable creators to free content as they see fit. In other "
18151 "words, we need a way to restore a set of freedoms that we could just take "
18152 "for granted before."
18155 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
18156 #: freeculture.xml:13345
18157 msgid "Rebuilding Freedoms Previously Presumed: Examples"
18160 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18161 #: freeculture.xml:13348
18163 "If you step back from the battle I've been describing here, you will "
18164 "recognize this problem from other contexts. Think about privacy. Before the "
18165 "Internet, most of us didn't have to worry much about data about our lives "
18166 "that we broadcast to the world. If you walked into a bookstore and browsed "
18167 "through some of the works of Karl Marx, you didn't need to worry about "
18168 "explaining your browsing habits to your neighbors or boss. The "
18169 "<quote>privacy</quote> of your browsing habits was assured."
18172 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18173 #: freeculture.xml:13358
18174 msgid "What made it assured?"
18177 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18178 #: freeculture.xml:13362
18180 "Well, if we think in terms of the modalities I described in chapter <xref "
18181 "xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"property-i\"/>, your privacy was "
18182 "assured because of an inefficient architecture for gathering data and hence "
18183 "a market constraint (cost) on anyone who wanted to gather that data. If you "
18184 "were a suspected spy for North Korea, working for the CIA, no doubt your "
18185 "privacy would not be assured. But that's because the CIA would (we hope) "
18186 "find it valuable enough to spend the thousands required to track you. But "
18187 "for most of us (again, we can hope), spying doesn't pay. The highly "
18188 "inefficient architecture of real space means we all enjoy a fairly robust "
18189 "amount of privacy. That privacy is guaranteed to us by friction. Not by law "
18190 "(there is no law protecting <quote>privacy</quote> in public places), and in "
18191 "many places, not by norms (snooping and gossip are just fun), but instead, "
18192 "by the costs that friction imposes on anyone who would want to spy."
18195 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18196 #: freeculture.xml:13377
18200 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18201 #: freeculture.xml:13378
18202 msgid "cookies, Internet"
18205 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18206 #: freeculture.xml:13380
18208 "Enter the Internet, where the cost of tracking browsing in particular has "
18209 "become quite tiny. If you're a customer at Amazon, then as you browse the "
18210 "pages, Amazon collects the data about what you've looked at. You know this "
18211 "because at the side of the page, there's a list of <quote>recently "
18212 "viewed</quote> pages. Now, because of the architecture of the Net and the "
18213 "function of cookies on the Net, it is easier to collect the data than "
18214 "not. The friction has disappeared, and hence any <quote>privacy</quote> "
18215 "protected by the friction disappears, too."
18218 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18219 #: freeculture.xml:13390
18221 "Amazon, of course, is not the problem. But we might begin to worry about "
18222 "libraries. If you're one of those crazy lefties who thinks that people "
18223 "should have the <quote>right</quote> to browse in a library without the "
18224 "government knowing which books you look at (I'm one of those lefties, too), "
18225 "then this change in the technology of monitoring might concern you. If it "
18226 "becomes simple to gather and sort who does what in electronic spaces, then "
18227 "the friction-induced privacy of yesterday disappears."
18231 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
18232 #: freeculture.xml:13407
18234 "See, for example, Marc Rotenberg, <quote>Fair Information Practices and the "
18235 "Architecture of Privacy (What Larry Doesn't Get),</quote> "
18236 "<citetitle>Stanford Technology Law Review</citetitle> 1 (2001): "
18237 "par. 6–18, available at <ulink "
18238 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #72</ulink> (describing examples "
18239 "in which technology defines privacy policy). See also Jeffrey Rosen, "
18240 "<citetitle>The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious "
18241 "Age</citetitle> (New York: Random House, 2004) (mapping tradeoffs between "
18242 "technology and privacy)."
18246 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18247 #: freeculture.xml:13401
18249 "It is this reality that explains the push of many to define "
18250 "<quote>privacy</quote> on the Internet. It is the recognition that "
18251 "technology can remove what friction before gave us that leads many to push "
18252 "for laws to do what friction did.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
18253 "And whether you're in favor of those laws or not, it is the pattern that is "
18254 "important here. We must take affirmative steps to secure a kind of freedom "
18255 "that was passively provided before. A change in technology now forces those "
18256 "who believe in privacy to affirmatively act where, before, privacy was given "
18260 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18261 #: freeculture.xml:13425
18263 "A similar story could be told about the birth of the free software "
18264 "movement. When computers with software were first made available "
18265 "commercially, the software—both the source code and the "
18266 "binaries— was free. You couldn't run a program written for a Data "
18267 "General machine on an IBM machine, so Data General and IBM didn't care much "
18268 "about controlling their software. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
18272 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18273 #: freeculture.xml:13433
18274 msgid "Stallman, Richard"
18277 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18278 #: freeculture.xml:13435
18280 "That was the world Richard Stallman was born into, and while he was a "
18281 "researcher at MIT, he grew to love the community that developed when one was "
18282 "free to explore and tinker with the software that ran on machines. Being a "
18283 "smart sort himself, and a talented programmer, Stallman grew to depend upon "
18284 "the freedom to add to or modify other people's work."
18287 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18288 #: freeculture.xml:13443
18290 "In an academic setting, at least, that's not a terribly radical idea. In a "
18291 "math department, anyone would be free to tinker with a proof that someone "
18292 "offered. If you thought you had a better way to prove a theorem, you could "
18293 "take what someone else did and change it. In a classics department, if you "
18294 "believed a colleague's translation of a recently discovered text was flawed, "
18295 "you were free to improve it. Thus, to Stallman, it seemed obvious that you "
18296 "should be free to tinker with and improve the code that ran a machine. This, "
18297 "too, was knowledge. Why shouldn't it be open for criticism like anything "
18301 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18302 #: freeculture.xml:13455
18304 "No one answered that question. Instead, the architecture of revenue for "
18305 "computing changed. As it became possible to import programs from one system "
18306 "to another, it became economically attractive (at least in the view of some) "
18307 "to hide the code of your program. So, too, as companies started selling "
18308 "peripherals for mainframe systems. If I could just take your printer driver "
18309 "and copy it, then that would make it easier for me to sell a printer to the "
18310 "market than it was for you."
18314 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18315 #: freeculture.xml:13464
18317 "Thus, the practice of proprietary code began to spread, and by the early "
18318 "1980s, Stallman found himself surrounded by proprietary code. The world of "
18319 "free software had been erased by a change in the economics of computing. And "
18320 "as he believed, if he did nothing about it, then the freedom to change and "
18321 "share software would be fundamentally weakened."
18324 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18325 #: freeculture.xml:13472
18326 msgid "Torvalds, Linus"
18329 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18330 #: freeculture.xml:13474
18332 "Therefore, in 1984, Stallman began a project to build a free operating "
18333 "system, so that at least a strain of free software would survive. That was "
18334 "the birth of the GNU project, into which Linus Torvalds's "
18335 "<quote>Linux</quote> kernel was added to produce the GNU/Linux operating "
18336 "system. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
18337 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
18340 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18341 #: freeculture.xml:13482
18343 "Stallman's technique was to use copyright law to build a world of software "
18344 "that must be kept free. Software licensed under the Free Software "
18345 "Foundation's GPL cannot be modified and distributed unless the source code "
18346 "for that software is made available as well. Thus, anyone building upon "
18347 "GPL'd software would have to make their buildings free as well. This would "
18348 "assure, Stallman believed, that an ecology of code would develop that "
18349 "remained free for others to build upon. His fundamental goal was freedom; "
18350 "innovative creative code was a byproduct."
18353 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18354 #: freeculture.xml:13493
18356 "Stallman was thus doing for software what privacy advocates now do for "
18357 "privacy. He was seeking a way to rebuild a kind of freedom that was taken "
18358 "for granted before. Through the affirmative use of licenses that bind "
18359 "copyrighted code, Stallman was affirmatively reclaiming a space where free "
18360 "software would survive. He was actively protecting what before had been "
18361 "passively guaranteed."
18364 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18365 #: freeculture.xml:13501
18367 "Finally, consider a very recent example that more directly resonates with "
18368 "the story of this book. This is the shift in the way academic and scientific "
18369 "journals are produced."
18373 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18374 #: freeculture.xml:13507
18376 "As digital technologies develop, it is becoming obvious to many that "
18377 "printing thousands of copies of journals every month and sending them to "
18378 "libraries is perhaps not the most efficient way to distribute "
18379 "knowledge. Instead, journals are increasingly becoming electronic, and "
18380 "libraries and their users are given access to these electronic journals "
18381 "through password-protected sites. Something similar to this has been "
18382 "happening in law for almost thirty years: Lexis and Westlaw have had "
18383 "electronic versions of case reports available to subscribers to their "
18384 "service. Although a Supreme Court opinion is not copyrighted, and anyone is "
18385 "free to go to a library and read it, Lexis and Westlaw are also free to "
18386 "charge users for the privilege of gaining access to that Supreme Court "
18387 "opinion through their respective services."
18390 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18391 #: freeculture.xml:13523
18393 "There's nothing wrong in general with this, and indeed, the ability to "
18394 "charge for access to even public domain materials is a good incentive for "
18395 "people to develop new and innovative ways to spread knowledge. The law has "
18396 "agreed, which is why Lexis and Westlaw have been allowed to flourish. And if "
18397 "there's nothing wrong with selling the public domain, then there could be "
18398 "nothing wrong, in principle, with selling access to material that is not in "
18399 "the public domain."
18402 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18403 #: freeculture.xml:13532
18405 "But what if the only way to get access to social and scientific data was "
18406 "through proprietary services? What if no one had the ability to browse this "
18407 "data except by paying for a subscription?"
18410 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18411 #: freeculture.xml:13537
18413 "As many are beginning to notice, this is increasingly the reality with "
18414 "scientific journals. When these journals were distributed in paper form, "
18415 "libraries could make the journals available to anyone who had access to the "
18416 "library. Thus, patients with cancer could become cancer experts because the "
18417 "library gave them access. Or patients trying to understand the risks of a "
18418 "certain treatment could research those risks by reading all available "
18419 "articles about that treatment. This freedom was therefore a function of the "
18420 "institution of libraries (norms) and the technology of paper journals "
18421 "(architecture)—namely, that it was very hard to control access to a "
18425 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18426 #: freeculture.xml:13549
18428 "As journals become electronic, however, the publishers are demanding that "
18429 "libraries not give the general public access to the journals. This means "
18430 "that the freedoms provided by print journals in public libraries begin to "
18431 "disappear. Thus, as with privacy and with software, a changing technology "
18432 "and market shrink a freedom taken for granted before."
18435 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18436 #: freeculture.xml:13557
18438 "This shrinking freedom has led many to take affirmative steps to restore the "
18439 "freedom that has been lost. The Public Library of Science (PLoS), for "
18440 "example, is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making scientific research "
18441 "available to anyone with a Web connection. Authors of scientific work submit "
18442 "that work to the Public Library of Science. That work is then subject to "
18443 "peer review. If accepted, the work is then deposited in a public, electronic "
18444 "archive and made permanently available for free. PLoS also sells a print "
18445 "version of its work, but the copyright for the print journal does not "
18446 "inhibit the right of anyone to redistribute the work for free. <placeholder "
18447 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
18450 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18451 #: freeculture.xml:13571
18453 "This is one of many such efforts to restore a freedom taken for granted "
18454 "before, but now threatened by changing technology and markets. There's no "
18455 "doubt that this alternative competes with the traditional publishers and "
18456 "their efforts to make money from the exclusive distribution of content. But "
18457 "competition in our tradition is presumptively a good—especially when "
18458 "it helps spread knowledge and science."
18461 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
18462 #: freeculture.xml:13583
18463 msgid "Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea"
18466 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18467 #: freeculture.xml:13586
18469 "The same strategy could be applied to culture, as a response to the "
18470 "increasing control effected through law and technology."
18473 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18474 #: freeculture.xml:13589
18475 msgid "Stanford University"
18478 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18479 #: freeculture.xml:13591
18481 "Enter the Creative Commons. The Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation "
18482 "established in Massachusetts, but with its home at Stanford University. Its "
18483 "aim is to build a layer of <emphasis>reasonable</emphasis> copyright on top "
18484 "of the extremes that now reign. It does this by making it easy for people to "
18485 "build upon other people's work, by making it simple for creators to express "
18486 "the freedom for others to take and build upon their work. Simple tags, tied "
18487 "to human-readable descriptions, tied to bulletproof licenses, make this "
18492 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18493 #: freeculture.xml:13602
18495 "<emphasis>Simple</emphasis>—which means without a middleman, or "
18496 "without a lawyer. By developing a free set of licenses that people can "
18497 "attach to their content, Creative Commons aims to mark a range of content "
18498 "that can easily, and reliably, be built upon. These tags are then linked to "
18499 "machine-readable versions of the license that enable computers automatically "
18500 "to identify content that can easily be shared. These three expressions "
18501 "together—a legal license, a human-readable description, and "
18502 "machine-readable tags—constitute a Creative Commons license. A "
18503 "Creative Commons license constitutes a grant of freedom to anyone who "
18504 "accesses the license, and more importantly, an expression of the ideal that "
18505 "the person associated with the license believes in something different than "
18506 "the <quote>All</quote> or <quote>No</quote> extremes. Content is marked with "
18507 "the CC mark, which does not mean that copyright is waived, but that certain "
18508 "freedoms are given."
18511 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18512 #: freeculture.xml:13620
18514 "These freedoms are beyond the freedoms promised by fair use. Their precise "
18515 "contours depend upon the choices the creator makes. The creator can choose a "
18516 "license that permits any use, so long as attribution is given. She can "
18517 "choose a license that permits only noncommercial use. She can choose a "
18518 "license that permits any use so long as the same freedoms are given to other "
18519 "uses (<quote>share and share alike</quote>). Or any use so long as no "
18520 "derivative use is made. Or any use at all within developing nations. Or any "
18521 "sampling use, so long as full copies are not made. Or lastly, any "
18525 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18526 #: freeculture.xml:13631
18528 "These choices thus establish a range of freedoms beyond the default of "
18529 "copyright law. They also enable freedoms that go beyond traditional fair "
18530 "use. And most importantly, they express these freedoms in a way that "
18531 "subsequent users can use and rely upon without the need to hire a "
18532 "lawyer. Creative Commons thus aims to build a layer of content, governed by "
18533 "a layer of reasonable copyright law, that others can build upon. Voluntary "
18534 "choice of individuals and creators will make this content available. And "
18535 "that content will in turn enable us to rebuild a public domain."
18538 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18539 #: freeculture.xml:13641
18540 msgid "Garlick, Mia"
18544 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18545 #: freeculture.xml:13643
18547 "This is just one project among many within the Creative Commons. And of "
18548 "course, Creative Commons is not the only organization pursuing such "
18549 "freedoms. But the point that distinguishes the Creative Commons from many is "
18550 "that we are not interested only in talking about a public domain or in "
18551 "getting legislators to help build a public domain. Our aim is to build a "
18552 "movement of consumers and producers of content (<quote>content "
18553 "conducers,</quote> as attorney Mia Garlick calls them) who help build the "
18554 "public domain and, by their work, demonstrate the importance of the public "
18555 "domain to other creativity."
18558 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18559 #: freeculture.xml:13655
18561 "The aim is not to fight the <quote>All Rights Reserved</quote> sorts. The "
18562 "aim is to complement them. The problems that the law creates for us as a "
18563 "culture are produced by insane and unintended consequences of laws written "
18564 "centuries ago, applied to a technology that only Jefferson could have "
18565 "imagined. The rules may well have made sense against a background of "
18566 "technologies from centuries ago, but they do not make sense against the "
18567 "background of digital technologies. New rules—with different freedoms, "
18568 "expressed in ways so that humans without lawyers can use them—are "
18569 "needed. Creative Commons gives people a way effectively to begin to build "
18573 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18574 #: freeculture.xml:13668
18576 "Why would creators participate in giving up total control? Some participate "
18577 "to better spread their content. Cory Doctorow, for example, is a science "
18578 "fiction author. His first novel, <citetitle>Down and Out in the Magic "
18579 "Kingdom</citetitle>, was released on-line and for free, under a Creative "
18580 "Commons license, on the same day that it went on sale in bookstores."
18583 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18584 #: freeculture.xml:13675
18586 "Why would a publisher ever agree to this? I suspect his publisher reasoned "
18587 "like this: There are two groups of people out there: (1) those who will buy "
18588 "Cory's book whether or not it's on the Internet, and (2) those who may never "
18589 "hear of Cory's book, if it isn't made available for free on the "
18590 "Internet. Some part of (1) will download Cory's book instead of buying "
18591 "it. Call them bad-(1)s. Some part of (2) will download Cory's book, like "
18592 "it, and then decide to buy it. Call them (2)-goods. If there are more "
18593 "(2)-goods than bad-(1)s, the strategy of releasing Cory's book free on-line "
18594 "will probably <emphasis>increase</emphasis> sales of Cory's book."
18597 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18598 #: freeculture.xml:13687
18600 "Indeed, the experience of his publisher clearly supports that conclusion. "
18601 "The book's first printing was exhausted months before the publisher had "
18602 "expected. This first novel of a science fiction author was a total success."
18605 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18606 #: freeculture.xml:13692
18607 msgid "Free for All (Wayner)"
18610 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18611 #: freeculture.xml:13693
18612 msgid "Wayner, Peter"
18616 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18617 #: freeculture.xml:13695
18619 "The idea that free content might increase the value of nonfree content was "
18620 "confirmed by the experience of another author. Peter Wayner, who wrote a "
18621 "book about the free software movement titled <citetitle>Free for "
18622 "All</citetitle>, made an electronic version of his book free on-line under a "
18623 "Creative Commons license after the book went out of print. He then monitored "
18624 "used book store prices for the book. As predicted, as the number of "
18625 "downloads increased, the used book price for his book increased, as well."
18628 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18629 #: freeculture.xml:13706
18630 msgid "Public Enemy"
18633 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18634 #: freeculture.xml:13707
18638 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18639 #: freeculture.xml:13708
18640 msgid "Leaphart, Walter"
18644 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
18645 #: freeculture.xml:13725
18647 "<citetitle>Willful Infringement: A Report from the Front Lines of the Real "
18648 "Culture Wars</citetitle> (2003), produced by Jed Horovitz, directed by Greg "
18649 "Hittelman, a Fiat Lucre production, available at <ulink "
18650 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #72</ulink>."
18653 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18654 #: freeculture.xml:13710
18656 "These are examples of using the Commons to better spread proprietary "
18657 "content. I believe that is a wonderful and common use of the Commons. There "
18658 "are others who use Creative Commons licenses for other reasons. Many who use "
18659 "the <quote>sampling license</quote> do so because anything else would be "
18660 "hypocritical. The sampling license says that others are free, for commercial "
18661 "or noncommercial purposes, to sample content from the licensed work; they "
18662 "are just not free to make full copies of the licensed work available to "
18663 "others. This is consistent with their own art—they, too, sample from "
18664 "others. Because the <emphasis>legal</emphasis> costs of sampling are so high "
18665 "(Walter Leaphart, manager of the rap group Public Enemy, which was born "
18666 "sampling the music of others, has stated that he does not "
18667 "<quote>allow</quote> Public Enemy to sample anymore, because the legal costs "
18668 "are so high<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>), these artists release "
18669 "into the creative environment content that others can build upon, so that "
18670 "their form of creativity might grow."
18673 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18674 #: freeculture.xml:13734
18676 "Finally, there are many who mark their content with a Creative Commons "
18677 "license just because they want to express to others the importance of "
18678 "balance in this debate. If you just go along with the system as it is, you "
18679 "are effectively saying you believe in the <quote>All Rights Reserved</quote> "
18680 "model. Good for you, but many do not. Many believe that however appropriate "
18681 "that rule is for Hollywood and freaks, it is not an appropriate description "
18682 "of how most creators view the rights associated with their content. The "
18683 "Creative Commons license expresses this notion of <quote>Some Rights "
18684 "Reserved,</quote> and gives many the chance to say it to others."
18688 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18689 #: freeculture.xml:13746
18691 "In the first six months of the Creative Commons experiment, over 1 million "
18692 "objects were licensed with these free-culture licenses. The next step is "
18693 "partnerships with middleware content providers to help them build into their "
18694 "technologies simple ways for users to mark their content with Creative "
18695 "Commons freedoms. Then the next step is to watch and celebrate creators who "
18696 "build content based upon content set free."
18699 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18700 #: freeculture.xml:13756
18702 "These are first steps to rebuilding a public domain. They are not mere "
18703 "arguments; they are action. Building a public domain is the first step to "
18704 "showing people how important that domain is to creativity and "
18705 "innovation. Creative Commons relies upon voluntary steps to achieve this "
18706 "rebuilding. They will lead to a world in which more than voluntary steps are "
18710 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18711 #: freeculture.xml:13764
18713 "Creative Commons is just one example of voluntary efforts by individuals and "
18714 "creators to change the mix of rights that now govern the creative field. The "
18715 "project does not compete with copyright; it complements it. Its aim is not "
18716 "to defeat the rights of authors, but to make it easier for authors and "
18717 "creators to exercise their rights more flexibly and cheaply. That "
18718 "difference, we believe, will enable creativity to spread more easily."
18721 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><title>
18722 #: freeculture.xml:13778
18726 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18727 #: freeculture.xml:13780
18729 "<emphasis role='strong'>We will</emphasis> not reclaim a free culture by "
18730 "individual action alone. It will also take important reforms of laws. We "
18731 "have a long way to go before the politicians will listen to these ideas and "
18732 "implement these reforms. But that also means that we have time to build "
18733 "awareness around the changes that we need."
18736 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18737 #: freeculture.xml:13787
18739 "In this chapter, I outline five kinds of changes: four that are general, and "
18740 "one that's specific to the most heated battle of the day, music. Each is a "
18741 "step, not an end. But any of these steps would carry us a long way to our "
18745 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
18746 #: freeculture.xml:13794
18747 msgid "1. More Formalities"
18750 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18751 #: freeculture.xml:13796
18753 "If you buy a house, you have to record the sale in a deed. If you buy land "
18754 "upon which to build a house, you have to record the purchase in a deed. If "
18755 "you buy a car, you get a bill of sale and register the car. If you buy an "
18756 "airplane ticket, it has your name on it."
18760 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18761 #: freeculture.xml:13803
18763 "These are all formalities associated with property. They are requirements "
18764 "that we all must bear if we want our property to be protected."
18767 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18768 #: freeculture.xml:13808
18770 "In contrast, under current copyright law, you automatically get a copyright, "
18771 "regardless of whether you comply with any formality. You don't have to "
18772 "register. You don't even have to mark your content. The default is control, "
18773 "and <quote>formalities</quote> are banished."
18776 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18777 #: freeculture.xml:13814
18781 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18782 #: freeculture.xml:13817
18784 "As I suggested in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
18785 "linkend=\"property-i\"/>, the motivation to abolish formalities was a good "
18786 "one. In the world before digital technologies, formalities imposed a burden "
18787 "on copyright holders without much benefit. Thus, it was progress when the "
18788 "law relaxed the formal requirements that a copyright owner must bear to "
18789 "protect and secure his work. Those formalities were getting in the way."
18792 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18793 #: freeculture.xml:13826
18795 "But the Internet changes all this. Formalities today need not be a "
18796 "burden. Rather, the world without formalities is the world that burdens "
18797 "creativity. Today, there is no simple way to know who owns what, or with "
18798 "whom one must deal in order to use or build upon the creative work of "
18799 "others. There are no records, there is no system to trace— there is no "
18800 "simple way to know how to get permission. Yet given the massive increase in "
18801 "the scope of copyright's rule, getting permission is a necessary step for "
18802 "any work that builds upon our past. And thus, the <emphasis>lack</emphasis> "
18803 "of formalities forces many into silence where they otherwise could speak."
18807 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
18808 #: freeculture.xml:13840
18810 "The proposal I am advancing here would apply to American works only. "
18811 "Obviously, I believe it would be beneficial for the same idea to be adopted "
18812 "by other countries as well."
18815 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18816 #: freeculture.xml:13838
18818 "The law should therefore change this requirement<placeholder "
18819 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>—but it should not change it by going back "
18820 "to the old, broken system. We should require formalities, but we should "
18821 "establish a system that will create the incentives to minimize the burden of "
18822 "these formalities."
18825 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18826 #: freeculture.xml:13848
18828 "The important formalities are three: marking copyrighted work, registering "
18829 "copyrights, and renewing the claim to copyright. Traditionally, the first of "
18830 "these three was something the copyright owner did; the second two were "
18831 "something the government did. But a revised system of formalities would "
18832 "banish the government from the process, except for the sole purpose of "
18833 "approving standards developed by others."
18836 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><title>
18837 #: freeculture.xml:13860
18838 msgid "REGISTRATION AND RENEWAL"
18841 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18842 #: freeculture.xml:13862
18844 "Under the old system, a copyright owner had to file a registration with the "
18845 "Copyright Office to register or renew a copyright. When filing that "
18846 "registration, the copyright owner paid a fee. As with most government "
18847 "agencies, the Copyright Office had little incentive to minimize the burden "
18848 "of registration; it also had little incentive to minimize the fee. And as "
18849 "the Copyright Office is not a main target of government policymaking, the "
18850 "office has historically been terribly underfunded. Thus, when people who "
18851 "know something about the process hear this idea about formalities, their "
18852 "first reaction is panic—nothing could be worse than forcing people to "
18853 "deal with the mess that is the Copyright Office."
18856 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18857 #: freeculture.xml:13875
18859 "Yet it is always astonishing to me that we, who come from a tradition of "
18860 "extraordinary innovation in governmental design, can no longer think "
18861 "innovatively about how governmental functions can be designed. Just because "
18862 "there is a public purpose to a government role, it doesn't follow that the "
18863 "government must actually administer the role. Instead, we should be creating "
18864 "incentives for private parties to serve the public, subject to standards "
18865 "that the government sets."
18868 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18869 #: freeculture.xml:13884
18871 "In the context of registration, one obvious model is the Internet. There "
18872 "are at least 32 million Web sites registered around the world. Domain name "
18873 "owners for these Web sites have to pay a fee to keep their registration "
18874 "alive. In the main top-level domains (.com, .org, .net), there is a central "
18875 "registry. The actual registrations are, however, performed by many competing "
18876 "registrars. That competition drives the cost of registering down, and more "
18877 "importantly, it drives the ease with which registration occurs up."
18881 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18882 #: freeculture.xml:13894
18884 "We should adopt a similar model for the registration and renewal of "
18885 "copyrights. The Copyright Office may well serve as the central registry, but "
18886 "it should not be in the registrar business. Instead, it should establish a "
18887 "database, and a set of standards for registrars. It should approve "
18888 "registrars that meet its standards. Those registrars would then compete with "
18889 "one another to deliver the cheapest and simplest systems for registering and "
18890 "renewing copyrights. That competition would substantially lower the burden "
18891 "of this formality—while producing a database of registrations that "
18892 "would facilitate the licensing of content."
18895 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><title>
18896 #: freeculture.xml:13909
18900 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18901 #: freeculture.xml:13911
18903 "It used to be that the failure to include a copyright notice on a creative "
18904 "work meant that the copyright was forfeited. That was a harsh punishment for "
18905 "failing to comply with a regulatory rule—akin to imposing the death "
18906 "penalty for a parking ticket in the world of creative rights. Here again, "
18907 "there is no reason that a marking requirement needs to be enforced in this "
18908 "way. And more importantly, there is no reason a marking requirement needs to "
18909 "be enforced uniformly across all media."
18912 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18913 #: freeculture.xml:13921
18915 "The aim of marking is to signal to the public that this work is copyrighted "
18916 "and that the author wants to enforce his rights. The mark also makes it easy "
18917 "to locate a copyright owner to secure permission to use the work."
18920 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18921 #: freeculture.xml:13927
18923 "One of the problems the copyright system confronted early on was that "
18924 "different copyrighted works had to be differently marked. It wasn't clear "
18925 "how or where a statue was to be marked, or a record, or a film. A new "
18926 "marking requirement could solve these problems by recognizing the "
18927 "differences in media, and by allowing the system of marking to evolve as "
18928 "technologies enable it to. The system could enable a special signal from the "
18929 "failure to mark—not the loss of the copyright, but the loss of the "
18930 "right to punish someone for failing to get permission first."
18934 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para><footnote><para>
18935 #: freeculture.xml:13944
18937 "There would be a complication with derivative works that I have not solved "
18938 "here. In my view, the law of derivatives creates a more complicated system "
18939 "than is justified by the marginal incentive it creates."
18943 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18944 #: freeculture.xml:13937
18946 "Let's start with the last point. If a copyright owner allows his work to be "
18947 "published without a copyright notice, the consequence of that failure need "
18948 "not be that the copyright is lost. The consequence could instead be that "
18949 "anyone has the right to use this work, until the copyright owner complains "
18950 "and demonstrates that it is his work and he doesn't give "
18951 "permission.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The meaning of an "
18952 "unmarked work would therefore be <quote>use unless someone "
18953 "complains.</quote> If someone does complain, then the obligation would be to "
18954 "stop using the work in any new work from then on though no penalty would "
18955 "attach for existing uses. This would create a strong incentive for "
18956 "copyright owners to mark their work."
18959 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18960 #: freeculture.xml:13957
18962 "That in turn raises the question about how work should best be marked. Here "
18963 "again, the system needs to adjust as the technologies evolve. The best way "
18964 "to ensure that the system evolves is to limit the Copyright Office's role to "
18965 "that of approving standards for marking content that have been crafted "
18969 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
18970 #: freeculture.xml:13963
18971 msgid "copyright marking of"
18974 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18975 #: freeculture.xml:13965
18977 "For example, if a recording industry association devises a method for "
18978 "marking CDs, it would propose that to the Copyright Office. The Copyright "
18979 "Office would hold a hearing, at which other proposals could be made. The "
18980 "Copyright Office would then select the proposal that it judged preferable, "
18981 "and it would base that choice <emphasis>solely</emphasis> upon the "
18982 "consideration of which method could best be integrated into the registration "
18983 "and renewal system. We would not count on the government to innovate; but we "
18984 "would count on the government to keep the product of innovation in line with "
18985 "its other important functions."
18988 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18989 #: freeculture.xml:13977
18991 "Finally, marking content clearly would simplify registration requirements. "
18992 "If photographs were marked by author and year, there would be little reason "
18993 "not to allow a photographer to reregister, for example, all photographs "
18994 "taken in a particular year in one quick step. The aim of the formality is "
18995 "not to burden the creator; the system itself should be kept as simple as "
18999 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
19000 #: freeculture.xml:13985
19002 "The objective of formalities is to make things clear. The existing system "
19003 "does nothing to make things clear. Indeed, it seems designed to make things "
19007 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
19008 #: freeculture.xml:13990
19010 "If formalities such as registration were reinstated, one of the most "
19011 "difficult aspects of relying upon the public domain would be removed. It "
19012 "would be simple to identify what content is presumptively free; it would be "
19013 "simple to identify who controls the rights for a particular kind of content; "
19014 "it would be simple to assert those rights, and to renew that assertion at "
19015 "the appropriate time."
19018 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
19019 #: freeculture.xml:14002
19020 msgid "2. Shorter Terms"
19023 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19024 #: freeculture.xml:14004
19026 "The term of copyright has gone from fourteen years to ninety-five years for "
19027 "corporate authors, and life of the author plus seventy years for natural "
19032 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19033 #: freeculture.xml:14017
19035 "<quote>A Radical Rethink,</quote> <citetitle>Economist</citetitle>, 366:8308 "
19036 "(25 January 2003): 15, available at <ulink "
19037 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #74</ulink>."
19040 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19041 #: freeculture.xml:14009
19043 "In <citetitle>The Future of Ideas</citetitle>, I proposed a "
19044 "seventy-five-year term, granted in five-year increments with a requirement "
19045 "of renewal every five years. That seemed radical enough at the time. But "
19046 "after we lost <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
19047 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, the proposals became even more "
19048 "radical. <citetitle>The Economist</citetitle> endorsed a proposal for a "
19049 "fourteen-year copyright term.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
19050 "Others have proposed tying the term to the term for patents."
19053 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19054 #: freeculture.xml:14024
19056 "I agree with those who believe that we need a radical change in copyright's "
19057 "term. But whether fourteen years or seventy-five, there are four principles "
19058 "that are important to keep in mind about copyright terms."
19062 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19063 #: freeculture.xml:14032
19065 "<emphasis>Keep it short:</emphasis> The term should be as long as necessary "
19066 "to give incentives to create, but no longer. If it were tied to very strong "
19067 "protections for authors (so authors were able to reclaim rights from "
19068 "publishers), rights to the same work (not derivative works) might be "
19069 "extended further. The key is not to tie the work up with legal regulations "
19070 "when it no longer benefits an author."
19075 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19076 #: freeculture.xml:14041
19078 "<emphasis>Keep it simple:</emphasis> The line between the public domain and "
19079 "protected content must be kept clear. Lawyers like the fuzziness of "
19080 "<quote>fair use,</quote> and the distinction between <quote>ideas</quote> "
19081 "and <quote>expression.</quote> That kind of law gives them lots of work. But "
19082 "our framers had a simpler idea in mind: protected versus unprotected. The "
19083 "value of short terms is that there is little need to build exceptions into "
19084 "copyright when the term itself is kept short. A clear and active "
19085 "<quote>lawyer-free zone</quote> makes the complexities of <quote>fair "
19086 "use</quote> and <quote>idea/expression</quote> less necessary to navigate."
19089 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><indexterm><primary>
19090 #: freeculture.xml:14053
19091 msgid "veterans' pensions"
19095 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para><footnote><para>
19096 #: freeculture.xml:14064
19098 "Department of Veterans Affairs, Veteran's Application for Compensation "
19099 "and/or Pension, VA Form 21-526 (OMB Approved No. 2900-0001), available at "
19100 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #75</ulink>."
19103 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19104 #: freeculture.xml:14056
19106 "<emphasis>Keep it alive:</emphasis> Copyright should have to be renewed. "
19107 "Especially if the maximum term is long, the copyright owner should be "
19108 "required to signal periodically that he wants the protection continued. This "
19109 "need not be an onerous burden, but there is no reason this monopoly "
19110 "protection has to be granted for free. On average, it takes ninety minutes "
19111 "for a veteran to apply for a pension.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
19112 "id=\"0\"/> If we make veterans suffer that burden, I don't see why we "
19113 "couldn't require authors to spend ten minutes every fifty years to file a "
19118 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19119 #: freeculture.xml:14075
19121 "<emphasis>Keep it prospective:</emphasis> Whatever the term of copyright "
19122 "should be, the clearest lesson that economists teach is that a term once "
19123 "given should not be extended. It might have been a mistake in 1923 for the "
19124 "law to offer authors only a fifty-six-year term. I don't think so, but it's "
19125 "possible. If it was a mistake, then the consequence was that we got fewer "
19126 "authors to create in 1923 than we otherwise would have. But we can't correct "
19127 "that mistake today by increasing the term. No matter what we do today, we "
19128 "will not increase the number of authors who wrote in 1923. Of course, we can "
19129 "increase the reward that those who write now get (or alternatively, increase "
19130 "the copyright burden that smothers many works that are today invisible). But "
19131 "increasing their reward will not increase their creativity in 1923. What's "
19132 "not done is not done, and there's nothing we can do about that now."
19135 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19136 #: freeculture.xml:14091
19138 "These changes together should produce an <emphasis>average</emphasis> "
19139 "copyright term that is much shorter than the current term. Until 1976, the "
19140 "average term was just 32.2 years. We should be aiming for the same."
19143 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19144 #: freeculture.xml:14097
19146 "No doubt the extremists will call these ideas <quote>radical.</quote> (After "
19147 "all, I call them <quote>extremists.</quote>) But again, the term I "
19148 "recommended was longer than the term under Richard Nixon. How "
19149 "<quote>radical</quote> can it be to ask for a more generous copyright law "
19150 "than Richard Nixon presided over?"
19153 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
19154 #: freeculture.xml:14107
19155 msgid "3. Free Use Vs. Fair Use"
19158 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19159 #: freeculture.xml:14111
19161 "As I observed at the beginning of this book, property law originally granted "
19162 "property owners the right to control their property from the ground to the "
19163 "heavens. The airplane came along. The scope of property rights quickly "
19164 "changed. There was no fuss, no constitutional challenge. It made no sense "
19165 "anymore to grant that much control, given the emergence of that new "
19169 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19170 #: freeculture.xml:14119
19172 "Our Constitution gives Congress the power to give authors <quote>exclusive "
19173 "right</quote> to <quote>their writings.</quote> Congress has given authors "
19174 "an exclusive right to <quote>their writings</quote> plus any derivative "
19175 "writings (made by others) that are sufficiently close to the author's "
19176 "original work. Thus, if I write a book, and you base a movie on that book, I "
19177 "have the power to deny you the right to release that movie, even though that "
19178 "movie is not <quote>my writing.</quote>"
19181 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19182 #: freeculture.xml:14127
19183 msgid "Kaplan, Benjamin"
19187 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19188 #: freeculture.xml:14133
19190 "Benjamin Kaplan, <citetitle>An Unhurried View of Copyright</citetitle> (New "
19191 "York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 32."
19194 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19195 #: freeculture.xml:14129
19197 "Congress granted the beginnings of this right in 1870, when it expanded the "
19198 "exclusive right of copyright to include a right to control translations and "
19199 "dramatizations of a work.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The "
19200 "courts have expanded it slowly through judicial interpretation ever "
19201 "since. This expansion has been commented upon by one of the law's greatest "
19202 "judges, Judge Benjamin Kaplan."
19206 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
19207 #: freeculture.xml:14146
19211 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><blockquote><para>
19212 #: freeculture.xml:14142
19214 "So inured have we become to the extension of the monopoly to a large range "
19215 "of so-called derivative works, that we no longer sense the oddity of "
19216 "accepting such an enlargement of copyright while yet intoning the "
19217 "abracadabra of idea and expression.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
19220 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19221 #: freeculture.xml:14151
19223 "I think it's time to recognize that there are airplanes in this field and "
19224 "the expansiveness of these rights of derivative use no longer make "
19225 "sense. More precisely, they don't make sense for the period of time that a "
19226 "copyright runs. And they don't make sense as an amorphous grant. Consider "
19227 "each limitation in turn."
19230 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19231 #: freeculture.xml:14158
19233 "<emphasis>Term:</emphasis> If Congress wants to grant a derivative right, "
19234 "then that right should be for a much shorter term. It makes sense to protect "
19235 "John Grisham's right to sell the movie rights to his latest novel (or at "
19236 "least I'm willing to assume it does); but it does not make sense for that "
19237 "right to run for the same term as the underlying copyright. The derivative "
19238 "right could be important in inducing creativity; it is not important long "
19239 "after the creative work is done. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
19242 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19243 #: freeculture.xml:14171
19245 "<emphasis>Scope:</emphasis> Likewise should the scope of derivative rights "
19246 "be narrowed. Again, there are some cases in which derivative rights are "
19247 "important. Those should be specified. But the law should draw clear lines "
19248 "around regulated and unregulated uses of copyrighted material. When all "
19249 "<quote>reuse</quote> of creative material was within the control of "
19250 "businesses, perhaps it made sense to require lawyers to negotiate the "
19251 "lines. It no longer makes sense for lawyers to negotiate the lines. Think "
19252 "about all the creative possibilities that digital technologies enable; now "
19253 "imagine pouring molasses into the machines. That's what this general "
19254 "requirement of permission does to the creative process. Smothers it."
19257 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19258 #: freeculture.xml:14185
19260 "This was the point that Alben made when describing the making of the Clint "
19261 "Eastwood CD. While it makes sense to require negotiation for foreseeable "
19262 "derivative rights—turning a book into a movie, or a poem into a "
19263 "musical score—it doesn't make sense to require negotiation for the "
19264 "unforeseeable. Here, a statutory right would make much more sense."
19267 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
19268 #: freeculture.xml:14201
19269 msgid "Goldstein, Paul"
19272 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19273 #: freeculture.xml:14199
19275 "Paul Goldstein, <citetitle>Copyright's Highway: From Gutenberg to the "
19276 "Celestial Jukebox</citetitle> (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), "
19277 "187–216. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
19280 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19281 #: freeculture.xml:14193
19283 "In each of these cases, the law should mark the uses that are protected, and "
19284 "the presumption should be that other uses are not protected. This is the "
19285 "reverse of the recommendation of my colleague Paul Goldstein.<placeholder "
19286 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> His view is that the law should be written so "
19287 "that expanded protections follow expanded uses."
19290 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19291 #: freeculture.xml:14207
19293 "Goldstein's analysis would make perfect sense if the cost of the legal "
19294 "system were small. But as we are currently seeing in the context of the "
19295 "Internet, the uncertainty about the scope of protection, and the incentives "
19296 "to protect existing architectures of revenue, combined with a strong "
19297 "copyright, weaken the process of innovation."
19301 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19302 #: freeculture.xml:14214
19304 "The law could remedy this problem either by removing protection beyond the "
19305 "part explicitly drawn or by granting reuse rights upon certain statutory "
19306 "conditions. Either way, the effect would be to free a great deal of culture "
19307 "to others to cultivate. And under a statutory rights regime, that reuse "
19308 "would earn artists more income."
19311 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
19312 #: freeculture.xml:14224
19313 msgid "4. Liberate the Music—Again"
19316 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19317 #: freeculture.xml:14226
19319 "The battle that got this whole war going was about music, so it wouldn't be "
19320 "fair to end this book without addressing the issue that is, to most people, "
19321 "most pressing—music. There is no other policy issue that better "
19322 "teaches the lessons of this book than the battles around the sharing of "
19326 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19327 #: freeculture.xml:14233
19329 "The appeal of file-sharing music was the crack cocaine of the Internet's "
19330 "growth. It drove demand for access to the Internet more powerfully than any "
19331 "other single application. It was the Internet's killer app—possibly in "
19332 "two senses of that word. It no doubt was the application that drove demand "
19333 "for bandwidth. It may well be the application that drives demand for "
19334 "regulations that in the end kill innovation on the network."
19337 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19338 #: freeculture.xml:14242
19340 "The aim of copyright, with respect to content in general and music in "
19341 "particular, is to create the incentives for music to be composed, performed, "
19342 "and, most importantly, spread. The law does this by giving an exclusive "
19343 "right to a composer to control public performances of his work, and to a "
19344 "performing artist to control copies of her performance."
19347 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19348 #: freeculture.xml:14249
19350 "File-sharing networks complicate this model by enabling the spread of "
19351 "content for which the performer has not been paid. But of course, that's not "
19352 "all the file-sharing networks do. As I described in chapter <xref "
19353 "xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"piracy\"/>, they enable four "
19354 "different kinds of sharing:"
19358 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19359 #: freeculture.xml:14258
19361 "There are some who are using sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing "
19366 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19367 #: freeculture.xml:14263
19369 "There are also some who are using sharing networks to sample, on the way to "
19375 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19376 #: freeculture.xml:14269
19378 "There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content "
19379 "that is no longer sold but is still under copyright or that would have been "
19380 "too cumbersome to buy off the Net."
19384 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19385 #: freeculture.xml:14275
19387 "There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content "
19388 "that is not copyrighted or to get access that the copyright owner plainly "
19392 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19393 #: freeculture.xml:14283
19395 "Any reform of the law needs to keep these different uses in focus. It must "
19396 "avoid burdening type D even if it aims to eliminate type A. The eagerness "
19397 "with which the law aims to eliminate type A, moreover, should depend upon "
19398 "the magnitude of type B. As with VCRs, if the net effect of sharing is "
19399 "actually not very harmful, the need for regulation is significantly "
19403 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19404 #: freeculture.xml:14291
19406 "As I said in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
19407 "linkend=\"piracy\"/>, the actual harm caused by sharing is controversial. "
19408 "For the purposes of this chapter, however, I assume the harm is real. I "
19409 "assume, in other words, that type A sharing is significantly greater than "
19410 "type B, and is the dominant use of sharing networks."
19413 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19414 #: freeculture.xml:14299
19416 "Nonetheless, there is a crucial fact about the current technological context "
19417 "that we must keep in mind if we are to understand how the law should "
19421 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19422 #: freeculture.xml:14304
19424 "Today, file sharing is addictive. In ten years, it won't be. It is addictive "
19425 "today because it is the easiest way to gain access to a broad range of "
19426 "content. It won't be the easiest way to get access to a broad range of "
19427 "content in ten years. Today, access to the Internet is cumbersome and "
19428 "slow—we in the United States are lucky to have broadband service at "
19429 "1.5 MBs, and very rarely do we get service at that speed both up and "
19430 "down. Although wireless access is growing, most of us still get access "
19431 "across wires. Most only gain access through a machine with a keyboard. The "
19432 "idea of the always on, always connected Internet is mainly just an idea."
19436 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19437 #: freeculture.xml:14316
19439 "But it will become a reality, and that means the way we get access to the "
19440 "Internet today is a technology in transition. Policy makers should not make "
19441 "policy on the basis of technology in transition. They should make policy on "
19442 "the basis of where the technology is going. The question should not be, how "
19443 "should the law regulate sharing in this world? The question should be, what "
19444 "law will we require when the network becomes the network it is clearly "
19445 "becoming? That network is one in which every machine with electricity is "
19446 "essentially on the Net; where everywhere you are—except maybe the "
19447 "desert or the Rockies—you can instantaneously be connected to the "
19448 "Internet. Imagine the Internet as ubiquitous as the best cell-phone service, "
19449 "where with the flip of a device, you are connected."
19452 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19453 #: freeculture.xml:14330
19454 msgid "cell phones, music streamed over"
19458 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19459 #: freeculture.xml:14350
19461 "See, for example, <quote>Music Media Watch,</quote> The J@pan "
19462 "Inc. Newsletter, 3 April 2002, available at <ulink "
19463 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #76</ulink>."
19466 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19467 #: freeculture.xml:14332
19469 "In that world, it will be extremely easy to connect to services that give "
19470 "you access to content on the fly—such as Internet radio, content that "
19471 "is streamed to the user when the user demands. Here, then, is the critical "
19472 "point: When it is <emphasis>extremely</emphasis> easy to connect to services "
19473 "that give access to content, it will be <emphasis>easier</emphasis> to "
19474 "connect to services that give you access to content than it will be to "
19475 "download and store content <emphasis>on the many devices you will have for "
19476 "playing content</emphasis>. It will be easier, in other words, to subscribe "
19477 "than it will be to be a database manager, as everyone in the "
19478 "download-sharing world of Napster-like technologies essentially is. Content "
19479 "services will compete with content sharing, even if the services charge "
19480 "money for the content they give access to. Already cell-phone services in "
19481 "Japan offer music (for a fee) streamed over cell phones (enhanced with plugs "
19482 "for headphones). The Japanese are paying for this content even though "
19483 "<quote>free</quote> content is available in the form of MP3s across the "
19484 "Web.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
19488 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19489 #: freeculture.xml:14357
19491 "This point about the future is meant to suggest a perspective on the "
19492 "present: It is emphatically temporary. The <quote>problem</quote> with file "
19493 "sharing—to the extent there is a real problem—is a problem that "
19494 "will increasingly disappear as it becomes easier to connect to the "
19495 "Internet. And thus it is an extraordinary mistake for policy makers today "
19496 "to be <quote>solving</quote> this problem in light of a technology that will "
19497 "be gone tomorrow. The question should not be how to regulate the Internet "
19498 "to eliminate file sharing (the Net will evolve that problem away). The "
19499 "question instead should be how to assure that artists get paid, during this "
19500 "transition between twentieth-century models for doing business and "
19501 "twenty-first-century technologies."
19504 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19505 #: freeculture.xml:14373
19507 "The answer begins with recognizing that there are different "
19508 "<quote>problems</quote> here to solve. Let's start with type D "
19509 "content—uncopyrighted content or copyrighted content that the artist "
19510 "wants shared. The <quote>problem</quote> with this content is to make sure "
19511 "that the technology that would enable this kind of sharing is not rendered "
19512 "illegal. You can think of it this way: Pay phones are used to deliver ransom "
19513 "demands, no doubt. But there are many who need to use pay phones who have "
19514 "nothing to do with ransoms. It would be wrong to ban pay phones in order to "
19515 "eliminate kidnapping."
19518 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19519 #: freeculture.xml:14384
19521 "Type C content raises a different <quote>problem.</quote> This is content "
19522 "that was, at one time, published and is no longer available. It may be "
19523 "unavailable because the artist is no longer valuable enough for the record "
19524 "label he signed with to carry his work. Or it may be unavailable because the "
19525 "work is forgotten. Either way, the aim of the law should be to facilitate "
19526 "the access to this content, ideally in a way that returns something to the "
19530 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19531 #: freeculture.xml:14395
19533 "Again, the model here is the used book store. Once a book goes out of print, "
19534 "it may still be available in libraries and used book stores. But libraries "
19535 "and used book stores don't pay the copyright owner when someone reads or "
19536 "buys an out-of-print book. That makes total sense, of course, since any "
19537 "other system would be so burdensome as to eliminate the possibility of used "
19538 "book stores' existing. But from the author's perspective, this "
19539 "<quote>sharing</quote> of his content without his being compensated is less "
19543 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19544 #: freeculture.xml:14405
19546 "The model of used book stores suggests that the law could simply deem "
19547 "out-of-print music fair game. If the publisher does not make copies of the "
19548 "music available for sale, then commercial and noncommercial providers would "
19549 "be free, under this rule, to <quote>share</quote> that content, even though "
19550 "the sharing involved making a copy. The copy here would be incidental to the "
19551 "trade; in a context where commercial publishing has ended, trading music "
19552 "should be as free as trading books."
19556 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19557 #: freeculture.xml:14416
19559 "Alternatively, the law could create a statutory license that would ensure "
19560 "that artists get something from the trade of their work. For example, if the "
19561 "law set a low statutory rate for the commercial sharing of content that was "
19562 "not offered for sale by a commercial publisher, and if that rate were "
19563 "automatically transferred to a trust for the benefit of the artist, then "
19564 "businesses could develop around the idea of trading this content, and "
19565 "artists would benefit from this trade."
19568 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19569 #: freeculture.xml:14426
19571 "This system would also create an incentive for publishers to keep works "
19572 "available commercially. Works that are available commercially would not be "
19573 "subject to this license. Thus, publishers could protect the right to charge "
19574 "whatever they want for content if they kept the work commercially "
19575 "available. But if they don't keep it available, and instead, the computer "
19576 "hard disks of fans around the world keep it alive, then any royalty owed for "
19577 "such copying should be much less than the amount owed a commercial "
19581 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19582 #: freeculture.xml:14436
19584 "The hard case is content of types A and B, and again, this case is hard only "
19585 "because the extent of the problem will change over time, as the technologies "
19586 "for gaining access to content change. The law's solution should be as "
19587 "flexible as the problem is, understanding that we are in the middle of a "
19588 "radical transformation in the technology for delivering and accessing "
19592 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19593 #: freeculture.xml:14444
19595 "So here's a solution that will at first seem very strange to both sides in "
19596 "this war, but which upon reflection, I suggest, should make some sense."
19599 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19600 #: freeculture.xml:14448
19602 "Stripped of the rhetoric about the sanctity of property, the basic claim of "
19603 "the content industry is this: A new technology (the Internet) has harmed a "
19604 "set of rights that secure copyright. If those rights are to be protected, "
19605 "then the content industry should be compensated for that harm. Just as the "
19606 "technology of tobacco harmed the health of millions of Americans, or the "
19607 "technology of asbestos caused grave illness to thousands of miners, so, too, "
19608 "has the technology of digital networks harmed the interests of the content "
19613 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19614 #: freeculture.xml:14459
19616 "I love the Internet, and so I don't like likening it to tobacco or "
19617 "asbestos. But the analogy is a fair one from the perspective of the law. "
19618 "And it suggests a fair response: Rather than seeking to destroy the "
19619 "Internet, or the p2p technologies that are currently harming content "
19620 "providers on the Internet, we should find a relatively simple way to "
19621 "compensate those who are harmed."
19624 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
19625 #: freeculture.xml:14466 freeculture.xml:14508
19626 msgid "Promises to Keep (Fisher)"
19629 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
19630 #: freeculture.xml:14506
19631 msgid "Fisher, William"
19634 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19635 #: freeculture.xml:14472
19637 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> William Fisher, "
19638 "<citetitle>Digital Music: Problems and Possibilities</citetitle> (last "
19639 "revised: 10 October 2000), available at <ulink "
19640 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #77</ulink>; William Fisher, "
19641 "<citetitle>Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of "
19642 "Entertainment</citetitle> (forthcoming) (Stanford: Stanford University "
19643 "Press, 2004), ch. 6, available at <ulink "
19644 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #78</ulink>. Professor Netanel "
19645 "has proposed a related idea that would exempt noncommercial sharing from the "
19646 "reach of copyright and would establish compensation to artists to balance "
19647 "any loss. See Neil Weinstock Netanel, <quote>Impose a Noncommercial Use Levy "
19648 "to Allow Free P2P File Sharing,</quote> available at <ulink "
19649 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #79</ulink>. For other proposals, "
19650 "see Lawrence Lessig, <quote>Who's Holding Back Broadband?</quote> "
19651 "<citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, 8 January 2002, A17; Philip "
19652 "S. Corwin on behalf of Sharman Networks, A Letter to Senator Joseph "
19653 "R. Biden, Jr., Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 26 "
19654 "February 2002, available at <ulink "
19655 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #80</ulink>; Serguei Osokine, "
19656 "<citetitle>A Quick Case for Intellectual Property Use Fee "
19657 "(IPUF)</citetitle>, 3 March 2002, available at <ulink "
19658 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #81</ulink>; Jefferson Graham, "
19659 "<quote>Kazaa, Verizon Propose to Pay Artists Directly,</quote> "
19660 "<citetitle>USA Today</citetitle>, 13 May 2002, available at <ulink "
19661 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #82</ulink>; Steven M. Cherry, "
19662 "<quote>Getting Copyright Right,</quote> IEEE Spectrum Online, 1 July 2002, "
19663 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #83</ulink>; "
19664 "Declan McCullagh, <quote>Verizon's Copyright Campaign,</quote> CNET "
19665 "News.com, 27 August 2002, available at <ulink "
19666 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #84</ulink>. Fisher's proposal "
19667 "is very similar to Richard Stallman's proposal for DAT. Unlike Fisher's, "
19668 "Stallman's proposal would not pay artists directly proportionally, though "
19669 "more popular artists would get more than the less popular. As is typical "
19670 "with Stallman, his proposal predates the current debate by about a "
19671 "decade. See <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #85</ulink>. "
19672 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
19673 "id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/>"
19676 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19677 #: freeculture.xml:14468
19679 "The idea would be a modification of a proposal that has been floated by "
19680 "Harvard law professor William Fisher.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
19681 "id=\"0\"/> Fisher suggests a very clever way around the current impasse of "
19682 "the Internet. Under his plan, all content capable of digital transmission "
19683 "would (1) be marked with a digital watermark (don't worry about how easy it "
19684 "is to evade these marks; as you'll see, there's no incentive to evade "
19685 "them). Once the content is marked, then entrepreneurs would develop (2) "
19686 "systems to monitor how many items of each content were distributed. On the "
19687 "basis of those numbers, then (3) artists would be compensated. The "
19688 "compensation would be paid for by (4) an appropriate tax."
19691 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19692 #: freeculture.xml:14522
19694 "Fisher's proposal is careful and comprehensive. It raises a million "
19695 "questions, most of which he answers well in his upcoming book, "
19696 "<citetitle>Promises to Keep</citetitle>. The modification that I would make "
19697 "is relatively simple: Fisher imagines his proposal replacing the existing "
19698 "copyright system. I imagine it complementing the existing system. The aim "
19699 "of the proposal would be to facilitate compensation to the extent that harm "
19700 "could be shown. This compensation would be temporary, aimed at facilitating "
19701 "a transition between regimes. And it would require renewal after a period of "
19702 "years. If it continues to make sense to facilitate free exchange of content, "
19703 "supported through a taxation system, then it can be continued. If this form "
19704 "of protection is no longer necessary, then the system could lapse into the "
19705 "old system of controlling access."
19709 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19710 #: freeculture.xml:14539
19712 "Fisher would balk at the idea of allowing the system to lapse. His aim is "
19713 "not just to ensure that artists are paid, but also to ensure that the system "
19714 "supports the widest range of <quote>semiotic democracy</quote> possible. But "
19715 "the aims of semiotic democracy would be satisfied if the other changes I "
19716 "described were accomplished—in particular, the limits on derivative "
19717 "uses. A system that simply charges for access would not greatly burden "
19718 "semiotic democracy if there were few limitations on what one was allowed to "
19719 "do with the content itself."
19722 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19723 #: freeculture.xml:14552
19727 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
19728 #: freeculture.xml:14554
19732 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19733 #: freeculture.xml:14556
19735 "No doubt it would be difficult to calculate the proper measure of "
19736 "<quote>harm</quote> to an industry. But the difficulty of making that "
19737 "calculation would be outweighed by the benefit of facilitating "
19738 "innovation. This background system to compensate would also not need to "
19739 "interfere with innovative proposals such as Apple's MusicStore. As experts "
19740 "predicted when Apple launched the MusicStore, it could beat "
19741 "<quote>free</quote> by being easier than free is. This has proven correct: "
19742 "Apple has sold millions of songs at even the very high price of 99 cents a "
19743 "song. (At 99 cents, the cost is the equivalent of a per-song CD price, "
19744 "though the labels have none of the costs of a CD to pay.) Apple's move was "
19745 "countered by Real Networks, offering music at just 79 cents a song. And no "
19746 "doubt there will be a great deal of competition to offer and sell music "
19750 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19751 #: freeculture.xml:14571
19755 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
19756 #: freeculture.xml:14571
19757 msgid "cable vs. broadcast"
19760 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19761 #: freeculture.xml:14574
19762 msgid "film industry"
19765 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
19766 #: freeculture.xml:14574
19767 msgid "luxury theatres vs. video piracy in"
19770 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19771 #: freeculture.xml:14576
19773 "This competition has already occurred against the background of "
19774 "<quote>free</quote> music from p2p systems. As the sellers of cable "
19775 "television have known for thirty years, and the sellers of bottled water for "
19776 "much more than that, there is nothing impossible at all about "
19777 "<quote>competing with free.</quote> Indeed, if anything, the competition "
19778 "spurs the competitors to offer new and better products. This is precisely "
19779 "what the competitive market was to be about. Thus in Singapore, though "
19780 "piracy is rampant, movie theaters are often luxurious—with "
19781 "<quote>first class</quote> seats, and meals served while you watch a "
19782 "movie—as they struggle and succeed in finding ways to compete with "
19783 "<quote>free.</quote>"
19786 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19787 #: freeculture.xml:14588
19789 "This regime of competition, with a backstop to assure that artists don't "
19790 "lose, would facilitate a great deal of innovation in the delivery of "
19791 "content. That competition would continue to shrink type A sharing. It would "
19792 "inspire an extraordinary range of new innovators—ones who would have a "
19793 "right to the content, and would no longer fear the uncertain and "
19794 "barbarically severe punishments of the law."
19797 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19798 #: freeculture.xml:14597
19799 msgid "In summary, then, my proposal is this:"
19803 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19804 #: freeculture.xml:14602
19806 "The Internet is in transition. We should not be regulating a technology in "
19807 "transition. We should instead be regulating to minimize the harm to "
19808 "interests affected by this technological change, while enabling, and "
19809 "encouraging, the most efficient technology we can create."
19812 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19813 #: freeculture.xml:14609
19814 msgid "We can minimize that harm while maximizing the benefit to innovation by"
19818 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19819 #: freeculture.xml:14615
19820 msgid "guaranteeing the right to engage in type D sharing;"
19824 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19825 #: freeculture.xml:14619
19827 "permitting noncommercial type C sharing without liability, and commercial "
19828 "type C sharing at a low and fixed rate set by statute;"
19832 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19833 #: freeculture.xml:14625
19835 "while in this transition, taxing and compensating for type A sharing, to the "
19836 "extent actual harm is demonstrated."
19839 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19840 #: freeculture.xml:14630
19842 "But what if <quote>piracy</quote> doesn't disappear? What if there is a "
19843 "competitive market providing content at a low cost, but a significant number "
19844 "of consumers continue to <quote>take</quote> content for nothing? Should the "
19845 "law do something then?"
19848 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19849 #: freeculture.xml:14636
19851 "Yes, it should. But, again, what it should do depends upon how the facts "
19852 "develop. These changes may not eliminate type A sharing. But the real issue "
19853 "is not whether it eliminates sharing in the abstract. The real issue is its "
19854 "effect on the market. Is it better (a) to have a technology that is 95 "
19855 "percent secure and produces a market of size <citetitle>x</citetitle>, or "
19856 "(b) to have a technology that is 50 percent secure but produces a market of "
19857 "five times <citetitle>x</citetitle>? Less secure might produce more "
19858 "unauthorized sharing, but it is likely to also produce a much bigger market "
19859 "in authorized sharing. The most important thing is to assure artists' "
19860 "compensation without breaking the Internet. Once that's assured, then it may "
19861 "well be appropriate to find ways to track down the petty pirates."
19865 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19866 #: freeculture.xml:14650
19868 "But we're a long way away from whittling the problem down to this subset of "
19869 "type A sharers. And our focus until we're there should not be on finding "
19870 "ways to break the Internet. Our focus until we're there should be on how to "
19871 "make sure the artists are paid, while protecting the space for innovation "
19872 "and creativity that the Internet is."
19875 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
19876 #: freeculture.xml:14661
19877 msgid "5. Fire Lots of Lawyers"
19880 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19881 #: freeculture.xml:14663
19883 "I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living. I believe in the law. I believe "
19884 "in the law of copyright. Indeed, I have devoted my life to working in law, "
19885 "not because there are big bucks at the end but because there are ideals at "
19886 "the end that I would love to live."
19889 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19890 #: freeculture.xml:14669
19892 "Yet much of this book has been a criticism of lawyers, or the role lawyers "
19893 "have played in this debate. The law speaks to ideals, but it is my view that "
19894 "our profession has become too attuned to the client. And in a world where "
19895 "the rich clients have one strong view, the unwillingness of the profession "
19896 "to question or counter that one strong view queers the law."
19899 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19900 #: freeculture.xml:14676
19901 msgid "Nimmer, Melville"
19904 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19905 #: freeculture.xml:14677
19906 msgid "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998)"
19909 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
19910 #: freeculture.xml:14677
19911 msgid "Supreme Court challenge of"
19915 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19916 #: freeculture.xml:14688
19918 "Lawrence Lessig, <quote>Copyright's First Amendment</quote> (Melville "
19919 "B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture), <citetitle>UCLA Law Review</citetitle> 48 "
19920 "(2001): 1057, 1069–70."
19923 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19924 #: freeculture.xml:14679
19926 "The evidence of this bending is compelling. I'm attacked as a "
19927 "<quote>radical</quote> by many within the profession, yet the positions that "
19928 "I am advocating are precisely the positions of some of the most moderate and "
19929 "significant figures in the history of this branch of the law. Many, for "
19930 "example, thought crazy the challenge that we brought to the Copyright Term "
19931 "Extension Act. Yet just thirty years ago, the dominant scholar and "
19932 "practitioner in the field of copyright, Melville Nimmer, thought it "
19933 "obvious.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
19936 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19937 #: freeculture.xml:14694
19939 "However, my criticism of the role that lawyers have played in this debate is "
19940 "not just about a professional bias. It is more importantly about our failure "
19941 "to actually reckon the costs of the law."
19944 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19945 #: freeculture.xml:14704
19947 "A good example is the work of Professor Stan Liebowitz. Liebowitz is to be "
19948 "commended for his careful review of data about infringement, leading him to "
19949 "question his own publicly stated position—twice. He initially "
19950 "predicted that downloading would substantially harm the industry. He then "
19951 "revised his view in light of the data, and he has since revised his view "
19952 "again. Compare Stan J. Liebowitz, <citetitle>Rethinking the Network "
19953 "Economy: The True Forces That Drive the Digital Marketplace</citetitle> (New "
19954 "York: Amacom, 2002), (reviewing his original view but expressing skepticism) "
19955 "with Stan J. Liebowitz, <quote>Will MP3s Annihilate the Record "
19956 "Industry?</quote> working paper, June 2003, available at <ulink "
19957 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #86</ulink>. Liebowitz's careful "
19958 "analysis is extremely valuable in estimating the effect of file-sharing "
19959 "technology. In my view, however, he underestimates the costs of the legal "
19960 "system. See, for example, <citetitle>Rethinking</citetitle>, 174–76. "
19961 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
19964 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19965 #: freeculture.xml:14699
19967 "Economists are supposed to be good at reckoning costs and benefits. But "
19968 "more often than not, economists, with no clue about how the legal system "
19969 "actually functions, simply assume that the transaction costs of the legal "
19970 "system are slight.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> They see a "
19971 "system that has been around for hundreds of years, and they assume it works "
19972 "the way their elementary school civics class taught them it works."
19976 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19977 #: freeculture.xml:14728
19979 "But the legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for "
19980 "anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is "
19981 "corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is "
19982 "at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so "
19983 "astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done."
19986 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19987 #: freeculture.xml:14736
19989 "These costs distort free culture in many ways. A lawyer's time is billed at "
19990 "the largest firms at more than $400 per hour. How much time should such a "
19991 "lawyer spend reading cases carefully, or researching obscure strands of "
19992 "authority? The answer is the increasing reality: very little. The law "
19993 "depended upon the careful articulation and development of doctrine, but the "
19994 "careful articulation and development of legal doctrine depends upon careful "
19995 "work. Yet that careful work costs too much, except in the most high-profile "
19996 "and costly cases."
19999 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
20000 #: freeculture.xml:14746
20002 "The costliness and clumsiness and randomness of this system mock our "
20003 "tradition. And lawyers, as well as academics, should consider it their duty "
20004 "to change the way the law works—or better, to change the law so that "
20005 "it works. It is wrong that the system works well only for the top 1 percent "
20006 "of the clients. It could be made radically more efficient, and inexpensive, "
20007 "and hence radically more just."
20010 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
20011 #: freeculture.xml:14754
20013 "But until that reform is complete, we as a society should keep the law away "
20014 "from areas that we know it will only harm. And that is precisely what the "
20015 "law will too often do if too much of our culture is left to its review."
20018 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
20019 #: freeculture.xml:14761
20021 "Think about the amazing things your kid could do or make with digital "
20022 "technology—the film, the music, the Web page, the blog. Or think about "
20023 "the amazing things your community could facilitate with digital "
20024 "technology—a wiki, a barn raising, activism to change something. "
20025 "Think about all those creative things, and then imagine cold molasses poured "
20026 "onto the machines. This is what any regime that requires permission "
20027 "produces. Again, this is the reality of Brezhnev's Russia."
20031 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
20032 #: freeculture.xml:14770
20034 "The law should regulate in certain areas of culture—but it should "
20035 "regulate culture only where that regulation does good. Yet lawyers rarely "
20036 "test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic "
20037 "question: <quote>Will it do good?</quote> When challenged about the "
20038 "expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, <quote>Why not?</quote>"
20041 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
20042 #: freeculture.xml:14779
20044 "We should ask, <quote>Why?</quote> Show me why your regulation of culture is "
20045 "needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your "
20049 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
20050 #: freeculture.xml:14788
20054 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20055 #: freeculture.xml:14790
20057 "Throughout this text, there are references to links on the World Wide "
20058 "Web. As anyone who has tried to use the Web knows, these links can be highly "
20059 "unstable. I have tried to remedy the instability by redirecting readers to "
20060 "the original source through the Web site associated with this book. For each "
20061 "link below, you can go to http://free-culture.cc/notes and locate the "
20062 "original source by clicking on the number after the # sign. If the original "
20063 "link remains alive, you will be redirected to that link. If the original "
20064 "link has disappeared, you will be redirected to an appropriate reference for "
20068 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
20069 #: freeculture.xml:14809
20070 msgid "ACKNOWLEDGMENTS"
20073 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20074 #: freeculture.xml:14811
20076 "This book is the product of a long and as yet unsuccessful struggle that "
20077 "began when I read of Eric Eldred's war to keep books free. Eldred's work "
20078 "helped launch a movement, the free culture movement, and it is to him that "
20079 "this book is dedicated."
20082 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20083 #: freeculture.xml:14818
20085 "I received guidance in various places from friends and academics, including "
20086 "Glenn Brown, Peter DiCola, Jennifer Mnookin, Richard Posner, Mark Rose, and "
20087 "Kathleen Sullivan. And I received correction and guidance from many amazing "
20088 "students at Stanford Law School and Stanford University. They included "
20089 "Andrew B. Coan, John Eden, James P. Fellers, Christopher Guzelian, Erica "
20090 "Goldberg, Robert Hallman, Andrew Harris, Matthew Kahn, Brian Link, Ohad "
20091 "Mayblum, Alina Ng, and Erica Platt. I am particularly grateful to Catherine "
20092 "Crump and Harry Surden, who helped direct their research, and to Laura "
20093 "Lynch, who brilliantly managed the army that they assembled, and provided "
20094 "her own critical eye on much of this."
20098 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20099 #: freeculture.xml:14831
20101 "Yuko Noguchi helped me to understand the laws of Japan as well as its "
20102 "culture. I am thankful to her, and to the many in Japan who helped me "
20103 "prepare this book: Joi Ito, Takayuki Matsutani, Naoto Misaki, Michihiro "
20104 "Sasaki, Hiromichi Tanaka, Hiroo Yamagata, and Yoshihiro Yonezawa. I am "
20105 "thankful as well as to Professor Nobuhiro Nakayama, and the Tokyo University "
20106 "Business Law Center, for giving me the chance to spend time in Japan, and to "
20107 "Tadashi Shiraishi and Kiyokazu Yamagami for their generous help while I was "
20111 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20112 #: freeculture.xml:14842
20114 "These are the traditional sorts of help that academics regularly draw "
20115 "upon. But in addition to them, the Internet has made it possible to receive "
20116 "advice and correction from many whom I have never even met. Among those who "
20117 "have responded with extremely helpful advice to requests on my blog about "
20118 "the book are Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, David Gerstein, and Peter DiMauro, as "
20119 "well as a long list of those who had specific ideas about ways to develop my "
20120 "argument. They included Richard Bondi, Steven Cherry, David Coe, Nik "
20121 "Cubrilovic, Bob Devine, Charles Eicher, Thomas Guida, Elihu M. Gerson, "
20122 "Jeremy Hunsinger, Vaughn Iverson, John Karabaic, Jeff Keltner, James "
20123 "Lindenschmidt, K. L. Mann, Mark Manning, Nora McCauley, Jeffrey McHugh, Evan "
20124 "McMullen, Fred Norton, John Pormann, Pedro A. D. Rezende, Shabbir Safdar, "
20125 "Saul Schleimer, Clay Shirky, Adam Shostack, Kragen Sitaker, Chris Smith, "
20126 "Bruce Steinberg, Andrzej Jan Taramina, Sean Walsh, Matt Wasserman, Miljenko "
20127 "Williams, <quote>Wink,</quote> Roger Wood, <quote>Ximmbo da Jazz,</quote> "
20128 "and Richard Yanco. (I apologize if I have missed anyone; with computers come "
20129 "glitches, and a crash of my e-mail system meant I lost a bunch of great "
20133 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20134 #: freeculture.xml:14862
20136 "Richard Stallman and Michael Carroll each read the whole book in draft, and "
20137 "each provided extremely helpful correction and advice. Michael helped me to "
20138 "see more clearly the significance of the regulation of derivitive works. And "
20139 "Richard corrected an embarrassingly large number of errors. While my work is "
20140 "in part inspired by Stallman's, he does not agree with me in important "
20141 "places throughout this book."
20144 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20145 #: freeculture.xml:14871
20147 "Finally, and forever, I am thankful to Bettina, who has always insisted that "
20148 "there would be unending happiness away from these battles, and who has "
20149 "always been right. This slow learner is, as ever, grateful for her perpetual "
20150 "patience and love."