1 # SOME DESCRIPTIVE TITLE
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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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\"/> by Paul Conrad, copyright Tribune "
245 "Media Services, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission."
248 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
249 #: freeculture.xml:183
251 "Diagram in <xref linkend=\"fig-1761\"/> courtesy of the office of FCC "
252 "Commissioner, Michael J. Copps."
255 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
256 #: freeculture.xml:187
257 msgid "Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data"
260 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
261 #: freeculture.xml:190
263 "Lessig, Lawrence. Free culture : how big media uses technology and the law "
264 "to lock down culture and control creativity / Lawrence Lessig."
267 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
268 #: freeculture.xml:195
272 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
273 #: freeculture.xml:198
274 msgid "Includes index."
277 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
278 #: freeculture.xml:201
279 msgid "ISBN 1-59420-006-8 (hardcover)"
282 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
283 #: freeculture.xml:205
285 "1. Intellectual property—United States. 2. Mass media—United "
289 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
290 #: freeculture.xml:208
292 "3. Technological innovations—United States. 4. Art—United "
296 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
297 #: freeculture.xml:211
301 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
302 #: freeculture.xml:214
303 msgid "343.7309'9—dc22"
306 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
307 #: freeculture.xml:217
308 msgid "This book is printed on acid-free paper."
311 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
312 #: freeculture.xml:220
313 msgid "Printed in the United States of America"
316 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
317 #: freeculture.xml:223
318 msgid "1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4"
321 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
322 #: freeculture.xml:226
323 msgid "Designed by Marysarah Quinn"
326 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
327 #: freeculture.xml:230
328 msgid "&translationblock;"
331 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
332 #: freeculture.xml:234
334 "Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this "
335 "publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval "
336 "system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, "
337 "photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission "
338 "of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book."
341 #. type: Content of: <book><colophon><para>
342 #: freeculture.xml:242
344 "The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or "
345 "via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and "
346 "punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and "
347 "do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted "
348 "materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated."
351 #. type: Content of: <book><dedication><para>
352 #: freeculture.xml:254
354 "To Eric Eldred—whose work first drew me to this cause, and for whom it "
358 #. type: Content of: <book><lot><title>
359 #: freeculture.xml:262
360 msgid "List of figures"
363 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><title>
364 #: freeculture.xml:324
368 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><indexterm><primary>
369 #: freeculture.xml:325
373 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
374 #: freeculture.xml:327
376 "<emphasis role=\"bold\">At the end</emphasis> of his review of my first "
377 "book, <citetitle>Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace</citetitle>, David "
378 "Pogue, a brilliant writer and author of countless technical and "
379 "computer-related texts, wrote this:"
382 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
383 #: freeculture.xml:338
385 "David Pogue, <quote>Don't Just Chat, Do Something,</quote> <citetitle>New "
386 "York Times</citetitle>, 30 January 2000."
389 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><blockquote><para>
390 #: freeculture.xml:334
392 "Unlike actual law, Internet software has no capacity to punish. It doesn't "
393 "affect people who aren't online (and only a tiny minority of the world "
394 "population is). And if you don't like the Internet's system, you can always "
395 "flip off the modem.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
398 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
399 #: freeculture.xml:343
401 "Pogue was skeptical of the core argument of the book—that software, or "
402 "<quote>code,</quote> functioned as a kind of law—and his review "
403 "suggested the happy thought that if life in cyberspace got bad, we could "
404 "always <quote>drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome</quote>-like simply flip a "
405 "switch and be back home. Turn off the modem, unplug the computer, and any "
406 "troubles that exist in <emphasis>that</emphasis> space wouldn't "
407 "<quote>affect</quote> us anymore."
411 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
412 #: freeculture.xml:352
414 "Pogue might have been right in 1999—I'm skeptical, but maybe. But "
415 "even if he was right then, the point is not right now: <citetitle>Free "
416 "Culture</citetitle> is about the troubles the Internet causes even after the "
417 "modem is turned off. It is an argument about how the battles that now rage "
418 "regarding life on-line have fundamentally affected <quote>people who aren't "
419 "online.</quote> There is no switch that will insulate us from the Internet's "
423 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
424 #: freeculture.xml:363
426 "But unlike <citetitle>Code</citetitle>, the argument here is not much about "
427 "the Internet itself. It is instead about the consequence of the Internet to "
428 "a part of our tradition that is much more fundamental, and, as hard as this "
429 "is for a geek-wanna-be to admit, much more important."
432 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para><footnote><para>
433 #: freeculture.xml:375
435 "Richard M. Stallman, <citetitle>Free Software, Free Societies</citetitle> 57 "
436 "(Joshua Gay, ed. 2002)."
439 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
440 #: freeculture.xml:370
442 "That tradition is the way our culture gets made. As I explain in the pages "
443 "that follow, we come from a tradition of <quote>free "
444 "culture</quote>—not <quote>free</quote> as in <quote>free beer</quote> "
445 "(to borrow a phrase from the founder of the free software "
446 "movement<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>), but <quote>free</quote> "
447 "as in <quote>free speech,</quote> <quote>free markets,</quote> <quote>free "
448 "trade,</quote> <quote>free enterprise,</quote> <quote>free will,</quote> and "
449 "<quote>free elections.</quote> A free culture supports and protects creators "
450 "and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property "
451 "rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to "
452 "guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain <emphasis>as free as "
453 "possible</emphasis> from the control of the past. A free culture is not a "
454 "culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which "
455 "everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a <quote>permission "
456 "culture</quote>—a culture in which creators get to create only with "
457 "the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past."
460 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
461 #: freeculture.xml:390
463 "If we understood this change, I believe we would resist it. Not "
464 "<quote>we</quote> on the Left or <quote>you</quote> on the Right, but we who "
465 "have no stake in the particular industries of culture that defined the "
466 "twentieth century. Whether you are on the Left or the Right, if you are in "
467 "this sense disinterested, then the story I tell here will trouble you. For "
468 "the changes I describe affect values that both sides of our political "
469 "culture deem fundamental."
472 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
473 #: freeculture.xml:398 freeculture.xml:1022
474 msgid "power, concentration of"
477 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
478 #: freeculture.xml:399 freeculture.xml:13109
479 msgid "CodePink Women in Peace"
482 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
483 #: freeculture.xml:400 freeculture.xml:421 freeculture.xml:13110
484 msgid "Safire, William"
487 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><indexterm><primary>
488 #: freeculture.xml:401
492 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
493 #: freeculture.xml:403
495 "We saw a glimpse of this bipartisan outrage in the early summer of 2003. As "
496 "the FCC considered changes in media ownership rules that would relax limits "
497 "on media concentration, an extraordinary coalition generated more than "
498 "700,000 letters to the FCC opposing the change. As William Safire described "
499 "marching <quote>uncomfortably alongside CodePink Women for Peace and the "
500 "National Rifle Association, between liberal Olympia Snowe and conservative "
501 "Ted Stevens,</quote> he formulated perhaps most simply just what was at "
502 "stake: the concentration of power. And as he asked,"
505 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
506 #: freeculture.xml:419
508 "William Safire, <quote>The Great Media Gulp,</quote> <citetitle>New York "
509 "Times</citetitle>, 22 May 2003. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
512 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><blockquote><para>
513 #: freeculture.xml:415
515 "Does that sound unconservative? Not to me. The concentration of "
516 "power—political, corporate, media, cultural—should be anathema "
517 "to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby "
518 "encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the "
519 "greatest expression of democracy.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
522 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
523 #: freeculture.xml:426
525 "This idea is an element of the argument of <citetitle>Free "
526 "Culture</citetitle>, though my focus is not just on the concentration of "
527 "power produced by concentrations in ownership, but more importantly, if "
528 "because less visibly, on the concentration of power produced by a radical "
529 "change in the effective scope of the law. The law is changing; that change "
530 "is altering the way our culture gets made; that change should worry "
531 "you—whether or not you care about the Internet, and whether you're on "
532 "Safire's left or on his right."
535 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
536 #: freeculture.xml:437
538 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">The inspiration</emphasis> for the title and for "
539 "much of the argument of this book comes from the work of Richard Stallman "
540 "and the Free Software Foundation. Indeed, as I reread Stallman's own work, "
541 "especially the essays in <citetitle>Free Software, Free Society</citetitle>, "
542 "I realize that all of the theoretical insights I develop here are insights "
543 "Stallman described decades ago. One could thus well argue that this work is "
544 "<quote>merely</quote> derivative."
548 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
549 #: freeculture.xml:446
551 "I accept that criticism, if indeed it is a criticism. The work of a lawyer "
552 "is always derivative, and I mean to do nothing more in this book than to "
553 "remind a culture about a tradition that has always been its own. Like "
554 "Stallman, I defend that tradition on the basis of values. Like Stallman, I "
555 "believe those are the values of freedom. And like Stallman, I believe those "
556 "are values of our past that will need to be defended in our future. A free "
557 "culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the "
558 "path we are on right now. Like Stallman's arguments for free software, an "
559 "argument for free culture stumbles on a confusion that is hard to avoid, and "
560 "even harder to understand. A free culture is not a culture without property; "
561 "it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without "
562 "property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not "
563 "freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here."
566 #. type: Content of: <book><preface><para>
567 #: freeculture.xml:464
569 "Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between "
570 "anarchy and control. A free culture, like a free market, is filled with "
571 "property. It is filled with rules of property and contract that get enforced "
572 "by the state. But just as a free market is perverted if its property becomes "
573 "feudal, so too can a free culture be queered by extremism in the property "
574 "rights that define it. That is what I fear about our culture today. It is "
575 "against that extremism that this book is written."
578 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
579 #: freeculture.xml:479
583 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
584 #: freeculture.xml:480 freeculture.xml:580 freeculture.xml:1011
585 msgid "Wright brothers"
588 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
589 #: freeculture.xml:482
591 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">On December 17</emphasis>, 1903, on a windy North "
592 "Carolina beach for just shy of one hundred seconds, the Wright brothers "
593 "demonstrated that a heavier-than-air, self-propelled vehicle could fly. The "
594 "moment was electric and its importance widely understood. Almost "
595 "immediately, there was an explosion of interest in this newfound technology "
596 "of manned flight, and a gaggle of innovators began to build upon it."
599 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
600 #: freeculture.xml:489
601 msgid "air traffic, land ownership vs."
604 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
605 #: freeculture.xml:490 freeculture.xml:14103
606 msgid "land ownership, air traffic and"
609 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
610 #: freeculture.xml:491 freeculture.xml:14104
611 msgid "property rights"
614 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
615 #: freeculture.xml:491 freeculture.xml:14104
616 msgid "air traffic vs."
619 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
620 #: freeculture.xml:497
622 "St. George Tucker, <citetitle>Blackstone's Commentaries</citetitle> 3 (South "
623 "Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1969), 18."
626 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
627 #: freeculture.xml:493
629 "At the time the Wright brothers invented the airplane, American law held "
630 "that a property owner presumptively owned not just the surface of his land, "
631 "but all the land below, down to the center of the earth, and all the space "
632 "above, to <quote>an indefinite extent, upwards.</quote><placeholder "
633 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> For many years, scholars had puzzled about how "
634 "best to interpret the idea that rights in land ran to the heavens. Did that "
635 "mean that you owned the stars? Could you prosecute geese for their willful "
636 "and regular trespass?"
639 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
640 #: freeculture.xml:507
642 "Then came airplanes, and for the first time, this principle of American "
643 "law—deep within the foundations of our tradition, and acknowledged by "
644 "the most important legal thinkers of our past—mattered. If my land "
645 "reaches to the heavens, what happens when United flies over my field? Do I "
646 "have the right to banish it from my property? Am I allowed to enter into an "
647 "exclusive license with Delta Airlines? Could we set up an auction to decide "
648 "how much these rights are worth?"
651 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
652 #: freeculture.xml:515 freeculture.xml:528 freeculture.xml:559 freeculture.xml:578 freeculture.xml:992 freeculture.xml:1009 freeculture.xml:1057 freeculture.xml:9022 freeculture.xml:12478 freeculture.xml:13213
653 msgid "Causby, Thomas Lee"
656 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
657 #: freeculture.xml:516 freeculture.xml:529 freeculture.xml:560 freeculture.xml:579 freeculture.xml:993 freeculture.xml:1010 freeculture.xml:1058 freeculture.xml:9023 freeculture.xml:12479 freeculture.xml:13214
658 msgid "Causby, Tinie"
661 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
662 #: freeculture.xml:518
664 "In 1945, these questions became a federal case. When North Carolina farmers "
665 "Thomas Lee and Tinie Causby started losing chickens because of low-flying "
666 "military aircraft (the terrified chickens apparently flew into the barn "
667 "walls and died), the Causbys filed a lawsuit saying that the government was "
668 "trespassing on their land. The airplanes, of course, never touched the "
669 "surface of the Causbys' land. But if, as Blackstone, Kent, and Coke had "
670 "said, their land reached to <quote>an indefinite extent, upwards,</quote> "
671 "then the government was trespassing on their property, and the Causbys "
675 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
676 #: freeculture.xml:531
678 "The Supreme Court agreed to hear the Causbys' case. Congress had declared "
679 "the airways public, but if one's property really extended to the heavens, "
680 "then Congress's declaration could well have been an unconstitutional "
681 "<quote>taking</quote> of property without compensation. The Court "
682 "acknowledged that <quote>it is ancient doctrine that common law ownership of "
683 "the land extended to the periphery of the universe.</quote> But Justice "
684 "Douglas had no patience for ancient doctrine. In a single paragraph, "
685 "hundreds of years of property law were erased. As he wrote for the Court,"
688 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
689 #: freeculture.xml:551
691 "United States v. Causby, U.S. 328 (1946): 256, 261. The Court did find that "
692 "there could be a <quote>taking</quote> if the government's use of its land "
693 "effectively destroyed the value of the Causbys' land. This example was "
694 "suggested to me by Keith Aoki's wonderful piece, <quote>(Intellectual) "
695 "Property and Sovereignty: Notes Toward a Cultural Geography of "
696 "Authorship,</quote> <citetitle>Stanford Law Review</citetitle> 48 (1996): "
697 "1293, 1333. See also Paul Goldstein, <citetitle>Real Property</citetitle> "
698 "(Mineola, N.Y.: Foundation Press, 1984), 1112–13. <placeholder "
699 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
702 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
703 #: freeculture.xml:542
705 "[The] doctrine has no place in the modern world. The air is a public "
706 "highway, as Congress has declared. Were that not true, every "
707 "transcontinental flight would subject the operator to countless trespass "
708 "suits. Common sense revolts at the idea. To recognize such private claims to "
709 "the airspace would clog these highways, seriously interfere with their "
710 "control and development in the public interest, and transfer into private "
711 "ownership that to which only the public has a just claim.<placeholder "
712 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
715 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
716 #: freeculture.xml:565
717 msgid "<quote>Common sense revolts at the idea.</quote>"
721 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
722 #: freeculture.xml:568
724 "This is how the law usually works. Not often this abruptly or impatiently, "
725 "but eventually, this is how it works. It was Douglas's style not to "
726 "dither. Other justices would have blathered on for pages to reach the "
727 "conclusion that Douglas holds in a single line: <quote>Common sense revolts "
728 "at the idea.</quote> But whether it takes pages or a few words, it is the "
729 "special genius of a common law system, as ours is, that the law adjusts to "
730 "the technologies of the time. And as it adjusts, it changes. Ideas that were "
731 "as solid as rock in one age crumble in another."
734 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
735 #: freeculture.xml:582
737 "Or at least, this is how things happen when there's no one powerful on the "
738 "other side of the change. The Causbys were just farmers. And though there "
739 "were no doubt many like them who were upset by the growing traffic in the "
740 "air (though one hopes not many chickens flew themselves into walls), the "
741 "Causbys of the world would find it very hard to unite and stop the idea, and "
742 "the technology, that the Wright brothers had birthed. The Wright brothers "
743 "spat airplanes into the technological meme pool; the idea then spread like a "
744 "virus in a chicken coop; farmers like the Causbys found themselves "
745 "surrounded by <quote>what seemed reasonable</quote> given the technology "
746 "that the Wrights had produced. They could stand on their farms, dead "
747 "chickens in hand, and shake their fists at these newfangled technologies all "
748 "they wanted. They could call their representatives or even file a "
749 "lawsuit. But in the end, the force of what seems <quote>obvious</quote> to "
750 "everyone else—the power of <quote>common sense</quote>—would "
751 "prevail. Their <quote>private interest</quote> would not be allowed to "
752 "defeat an obvious public gain."
755 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
756 #: freeculture.xml:602 freeculture.xml:9030 freeculture.xml:9685
757 msgid "Armstrong, Edwin Howard"
760 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
761 #: freeculture.xml:603
762 msgid "Bell, Alexander Graham"
765 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
766 #: freeculture.xml:604
767 msgid "Edison, Thomas"
770 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
771 #: freeculture.xml:605
772 msgid "Faraday, Michael"
776 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
777 #: freeculture.xml:607
779 "<emphasis role='strong'>Edwin Howard Armstrong</emphasis> is one of "
780 "America's forgotten inventor geniuses. He came to the great American "
781 "inventor scene just after the titans Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham "
782 "Bell. But his work in the area of radio technology was perhaps the most "
783 "important of any single inventor in the first fifty years of radio. He was "
784 "better educated than Michael Faraday, who as a bookbinder's apprentice had "
785 "discovered electric induction in 1831. But he had the same intuition about "
786 "how the world of radio worked, and on at least three occasions, Armstrong "
787 "invented profoundly important technologies that advanced our understanding "
791 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
792 #: freeculture.xml:620
794 "On the day after Christmas, 1933, four patents were issued to Armstrong for "
795 "his most significant invention—FM radio. Until then, consumer radio "
796 "had been amplitude-modulated (AM) radio. The theorists of the day had said "
797 "that frequency-modulated (FM) radio could never work. They were right about "
798 "FM radio in a narrow band of spectrum. But Armstrong discovered that "
799 "frequency-modulated radio in a wide band of spectrum would deliver an "
800 "astonishing fidelity of sound, with much less transmitter power and static."
803 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
804 #: freeculture.xml:630
806 "On November 5, 1935, he demonstrated the technology at a meeting of the "
807 "Institute of Radio Engineers at the Empire State Building in New York "
808 "City. He tuned his radio dial across a range of AM stations, until the radio "
809 "locked on a broadcast that he had arranged from seventeen miles away. The "
810 "radio fell totally silent, as if dead, and then with a clarity no one else "
811 "in that room had ever heard from an electrical device, it produced the sound "
812 "of an announcer's voice: <quote>This is amateur station W2AG at Yonkers, New "
813 "York, operating on frequency modulation at two and a half meters.</quote>"
816 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
817 #: freeculture.xml:641
818 msgid "The audience was hearing something no one had thought possible:"
821 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
822 #: freeculture.xml:652
824 "Lawrence Lessing, <citetitle>Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard "
825 "Armstrong</citetitle> (Philadelphia: J. B. Lipincott Company, 1956), 209."
828 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
829 #: freeculture.xml:645
831 "A glass of water was poured before the microphone in Yonkers; it sounded "
832 "like a glass of water being poured. … A paper was crumpled and torn; "
833 "it sounded like paper and not like a crackling forest fire. … Sousa "
834 "marches were played from records and a piano solo and guitar number were "
835 "performed. … The music was projected with a live-ness rarely if ever "
836 "heard before from a radio <quote>music box.</quote><placeholder "
837 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
841 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
842 #: freeculture.xml:658
844 "As our own common sense tells us, Armstrong had discovered a vastly superior "
845 "radio technology. But at the time of his invention, Armstrong was working "
846 "for RCA. RCA was the dominant player in the then dominant AM radio "
847 "market. By 1935, there were a thousand radio stations across the United "
848 "States, but the stations in large cities were all owned by a handful of "
852 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
853 #: freeculture.xml:666 freeculture.xml:693
854 msgid "Sarnoff, David"
857 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
858 #: freeculture.xml:668
860 "RCA's president, David Sarnoff, a friend of Armstrong's, was eager that "
861 "Armstrong discover a way to remove static from AM radio. So Sarnoff was "
862 "quite excited when Armstrong told him he had a device that removed static "
863 "from <quote>radio.</quote> But when Armstrong demonstrated his invention, "
864 "Sarnoff was not pleased."
867 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
868 #: freeculture.xml:679
870 "See <quote>Saints: The Heroes and Geniuses of the Electronic Era,</quote> "
871 "First Electronic Church of America, at www.webstationone.com/fecha, "
872 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #1</ulink>."
875 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
876 #: freeculture.xml:676
878 "I thought Armstrong would invent some kind of a filter to remove static from "
879 "our AM radio. I didn't think he'd start a revolution— start up a whole "
880 "damn new industry to compete with RCA.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
884 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
885 #: freeculture.xml:687
886 msgid "Lessing, Lawrence"
889 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
890 #: freeculture.xml:689
892 "Armstrong's invention threatened RCA's AM empire, so the company launched a "
893 "campaign to smother FM radio. While FM may have been a superior technology, "
894 "Sarnoff was a superior tactician. As one author described, <placeholder "
895 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
898 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
899 #: freeculture.xml:702
900 msgid "Lessing, 226."
903 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
904 #: freeculture.xml:697
906 "The forces for FM, largely engineering, could not overcome the weight of "
907 "strategy devised by the sales, patent, and legal offices to subdue this "
908 "threat to corporate position. For FM, if allowed to develop unrestrained, "
909 "posed … a complete reordering of radio power … and the "
910 "eventual overthrow of the carefully restricted AM system on which RCA had "
911 "grown to power.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
914 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
915 #: freeculture.xml:707
917 "RCA at first kept the technology in house, insisting that further tests were "
918 "needed. When, after two years of testing, Armstrong grew impatient, RCA "
919 "began to use its power with the government to stall FM radio's deployment "
920 "generally. In 1936, RCA hired the former head of the FCC and assigned him "
921 "the task of assuring that the FCC assign spectrum in a way that would "
922 "castrate FM—principally by moving FM radio to a different band of "
923 "spectrum. At first, these efforts failed. But when Armstrong and the nation "
924 "were distracted by World War II, RCA's work began to be more "
925 "successful. Soon after the war ended, the FCC announced a set of policies "
926 "that would have one clear effect: FM radio would be crippled. As Lawrence "
927 "Lessing described it,"
930 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
931 #: freeculture.xml:726
932 msgid "Lessing, 256."
935 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
936 #: freeculture.xml:722
938 "The series of body blows that FM radio received right after the war, in a "
939 "series of rulings manipulated through the FCC by the big radio interests, "
940 "were almost incredible in their force and deviousness.<placeholder "
941 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
944 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
945 #: freeculture.xml:731
949 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
950 #: freeculture.xml:733
952 "To make room in the spectrum for RCA's latest gamble, television, FM radio "
953 "users were to be moved to a totally new spectrum band. The power of FM radio "
954 "stations was also cut, meaning FM could no longer be used to beam programs "
955 "from one part of the country to another. (This change was strongly "
956 "supported by AT&T, because the loss of FM relaying stations would mean "
957 "radio stations would have to buy wired links from AT&T.) The spread of "
958 "FM radio was thus choked, at least temporarily."
961 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
962 #: freeculture.xml:743
964 "Armstrong resisted RCA's efforts. In response, RCA resisted Armstrong's "
965 "patents. After incorporating FM technology into the emerging standard for "
966 "television, RCA declared the patents invalid—baselessly, and almost "
967 "fifteen years after they were issued. It thus refused to pay him "
968 "royalties. For six years, Armstrong fought an expensive war of litigation to "
969 "defend the patents. Finally, just as the patents expired, RCA offered a "
970 "settlement so low that it would not even cover Armstrong's lawyers' "
971 "fees. Defeated, broken, and now broke, in 1954 Armstrong wrote a short note "
972 "to his wife and then stepped out of a thirteenth-story window to his death."
976 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
977 #: freeculture.xml:756
979 "This is how the law sometimes works. Not often this tragically, and rarely "
980 "with heroic drama, but sometimes, this is how it works. From the beginning, "
981 "government and government agencies have been subject to capture. They are "
982 "more likely captured when a powerful interest is threatened by either a "
983 "legal or technical change. That powerful interest too often exerts its "
984 "influence within the government to get the government to protect it. The "
985 "rhetoric of this protection is of course always public spirited; the reality "
986 "is something different. Ideas that were as solid as rock in one age, but "
987 "that, left to themselves, would crumble in another, are sustained through "
988 "this subtle corruption of our political process. RCA had what the Causbys "
989 "did not: the power to stifle the effect of technological change."
992 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
993 #: freeculture.xml:778
995 "Amanda Lenhart, <quote>The Ever-Shifting Internet Population: A New Look at "
996 "Internet Access and the Digital Divide,</quote> Pew Internet and American "
997 "Life Project, 15 April 2003: 6, available at <ulink "
998 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #2</ulink>."
1001 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1002 #: freeculture.xml:772
1004 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">There's no</emphasis> single inventor of the "
1005 "Internet. Nor is there any good date upon which to mark its birth. Yet in a "
1006 "very short time, the Internet has become part of ordinary American "
1007 "life. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 58 percent of "
1008 "Americans had access to the Internet in 2002, up from 49 percent two years "
1009 "before.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> That number could well "
1010 "exceed two thirds of the nation by the end of 2004."
1013 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1014 #: freeculture.xml:787
1016 "As the Internet has been integrated into ordinary life, it has changed "
1017 "things. Some of these changes are technical—the Internet has made "
1018 "communication faster, it has lowered the cost of gathering data, and so "
1019 "on. These technical changes are not the focus of this book. They are "
1020 "important. They are not well understood. But they are the sort of thing that "
1021 "would simply go away if we all just switched the Internet off. They don't "
1022 "affect people who don't use the Internet, or at least they don't affect them "
1023 "directly. They are the proper subject of a book about the Internet. But this "
1024 "is not a book about the Internet."
1027 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1028 #: freeculture.xml:798
1030 "Instead, this book is about an effect of the Internet beyond the Internet "
1031 "itself: an effect upon how culture is made. My claim is that the Internet "
1032 "has induced an important and unrecognized change in that process. That "
1033 "change will radically transform a tradition that is as old as the Republic "
1034 "itself. Most, if they recognized this change, would reject it. Yet most "
1035 "don't even see the change that the Internet has introduced."
1038 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1039 #: freeculture.xml:806
1040 msgid "Barlow, Joel"
1043 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1044 #: freeculture.xml:807
1045 msgid "Webster, Noah"
1049 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1050 #: freeculture.xml:809
1052 "We can glimpse a sense of this change by distinguishing between commercial "
1053 "and noncommercial culture, and by mapping the law's regulation of each. By "
1054 "<quote>commercial culture</quote> I mean that part of our culture that is "
1055 "produced and sold or produced to be sold. By <quote>noncommercial "
1056 "culture</quote> I mean all the rest. When old men sat around parks or on "
1057 "street corners telling stories that kids and others consumed, that was "
1058 "noncommercial culture. When Noah Webster published his "
1059 "<quote>Reader,</quote> or Joel Barlow his poetry, that was commercial "
1063 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1064 #: freeculture.xml:821
1066 "At the beginning of our history, and for just about the whole of our "
1067 "tradition, noncommercial culture was essentially unregulated. Of course, if "
1068 "your stories were lewd, or if your song disturbed the peace, then the law "
1069 "might intervene. But the law was never directly concerned with the creation "
1070 "or spread of this form of culture, and it left this culture "
1071 "<quote>free.</quote> The ordinary ways in which ordinary individuals shared "
1072 "and transformed their culture—telling stories, reenacting scenes from "
1073 "plays or TV, participating in fan clubs, sharing music, making "
1074 "tapes—were left alone by the law."
1077 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1078 #: freeculture.xml:846 freeculture.xml:1880 freeculture.xml:1891
1079 msgid "Brandeis, Louis D."
1082 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1083 #: freeculture.xml:838
1085 "This is not the only purpose of copyright, though it is the overwhelmingly "
1086 "primary purpose of the copyright established in the federal constitution. "
1087 "State copyright law historically protected not just the commercial interest "
1088 "in publication, but also a privacy interest. By granting authors the "
1089 "exclusive right to first publication, state copyright law gave authors the "
1090 "power to control the spread of facts about them. See Samuel D. Warren and "
1091 "Louis D. Brandeis, <quote>The Right to Privacy,</quote> Harvard Law Review 4 "
1092 "(1890): 193, 198–200. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
1095 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1096 #: freeculture.xml:832
1098 "The focus of the law was on commercial creativity. At first slightly, then "
1099 "quite extensively, the law protected the incentives of creators by granting "
1100 "them exclusive rights to their creative work, so that they could sell those "
1101 "exclusive rights in a commercial marketplace.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
1102 "id=\"0\"/> This is also, of course, an important part of creativity and "
1103 "culture, and it has become an increasingly important part in America. But in "
1104 "no sense was it dominant within our tradition. It was instead just one part, "
1105 "a controlled part, balanced with the free."
1108 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1109 #: freeculture.xml:853
1110 msgid "free culture"
1113 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
1114 #: freeculture.xml:853
1115 msgid "permission culture vs."
1118 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1119 #: freeculture.xml:854
1120 msgid "permission culture"
1123 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
1124 #: freeculture.xml:854
1125 msgid "free culture vs."
1128 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1129 #: freeculture.xml:860 freeculture.xml:9578
1130 msgid "Litman, Jessica"
1133 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1134 #: freeculture.xml:858
1136 "See Jessica Litman, <citetitle>Digital Copyright</citetitle> (New York: "
1137 "Prometheus Books, 2001), ch. 13. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
1140 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1141 #: freeculture.xml:856
1143 "This rough divide between the free and the controlled has now been "
1144 "erased.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The Internet has set the "
1145 "stage for this erasure and, pushed by big media, the law has now affected "
1146 "it. For the first time in our tradition, the ordinary ways in which "
1147 "individuals create and share culture fall within the reach of the regulation "
1148 "of the law, which has expanded to draw within its control a vast amount of "
1149 "culture and creativity that it never reached before. The technology that "
1150 "preserved the balance of our history—between uses of our culture that "
1151 "were free and uses of our culture that were only upon permission—has "
1152 "been undone. The consequence is that we are less and less a free culture, "
1153 "more and more a permission culture."
1156 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1157 #: freeculture.xml:875
1159 "This change gets justified as necessary to protect commercial creativity. "
1160 "And indeed, protectionism is precisely its motivation. But the protectionism "
1161 "that justifies the changes that I will describe below is not the limited and "
1162 "balanced sort that has defined the law in the past. This is not a "
1163 "protectionism to protect artists. It is instead a protectionism to protect "
1164 "certain forms of business. Corporations threatened by the potential of the "
1165 "Internet to change the way both commercial and noncommercial culture are "
1166 "made and shared have united to induce lawmakers to use the law to protect "
1167 "them. It is the story of RCA and Armstrong; it is the dream of the Causbys."
1170 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1171 #: freeculture.xml:888
1173 "For the Internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility for many to "
1174 "participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that "
1175 "reaches far beyond local boundaries. That power has changed the marketplace "
1176 "for making and cultivating culture generally, and that change in turn "
1177 "threatens established content industries. The Internet is thus to the "
1178 "industries that built and distributed content in the twentieth century what "
1179 "FM radio was to AM radio, or what the truck was to the railroad industry of "
1180 "the nineteenth century: the beginning of the end, or at least a substantial "
1181 "transformation. Digital technologies, tied to the Internet, could produce a "
1182 "vastly more competitive and vibrant market for building and cultivating "
1183 "culture; that market could include a much wider and more diverse range of "
1184 "creators; those creators could produce and distribute a much more vibrant "
1185 "range of creativity; and depending upon a few important factors, those "
1186 "creators could earn more on average from this system than creators do "
1187 "today—all so long as the RCAs of our day don't use the law to protect "
1188 "themselves against this competition."
1191 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1192 #: freeculture.xml:907
1194 "Yet, as I argue in the pages that follow, that is precisely what is "
1195 "happening in our culture today. These modern-day equivalents of the early "
1196 "twentieth-century radio or nineteenth-century railroads are using their "
1197 "power to get the law to protect them against this new, more efficient, more "
1198 "vibrant technology for building culture. They are succeeding in their plan "
1199 "to remake the Internet before the Internet remakes them."
1202 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1203 #: freeculture.xml:915
1204 msgid "Valenti, Jack"
1207 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
1208 #: freeculture.xml:915
1209 msgid "on creative property rights"
1212 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1213 #: freeculture.xml:925
1215 "Amy Harmon, <quote>Black Hawk Download: Moving Beyond Music, Pirates Use New "
1216 "Tools to Turn the Net into an Illicit Video Club,</quote> <citetitle>New "
1217 "York Times</citetitle>, 17 January 2002."
1220 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1221 #: freeculture.xml:917
1223 "It doesn't seem this way to many. The battles over copyright and the "
1224 "Internet seem remote to most. To the few who follow them, they seem mainly "
1225 "about a much simpler brace of questions—whether <quote>piracy</quote> "
1226 "will be permitted, and whether <quote>property</quote> will be "
1227 "protected. The <quote>war</quote> that has been waged against the "
1228 "technologies of the Internet—what Motion Picture Association of "
1229 "America (MPAA) president Jack Valenti calls his <quote>own terrorist "
1230 "war</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>—has been framed "
1231 "as a battle about the rule of law and respect for property. To know which "
1232 "side to take in this war, most think that we need only decide whether we're "
1233 "for property or against it."
1236 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1237 #: freeculture.xml:934
1239 "If those really were the choices, then I would be with Jack Valenti and the "
1240 "content industry. I, too, am a believer in property, and especially in the "
1241 "importance of what Mr. Valenti nicely calls <quote>creative "
1242 "property.</quote> I believe that <quote>piracy</quote> is wrong, and that "
1243 "the law, properly tuned, should punish <quote>piracy,</quote> whether on or "
1247 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1248 #: freeculture.xml:942
1250 "But those simple beliefs mask a much more fundamental question and a much "
1251 "more dramatic change. My fear is that unless we come to see this change, the "
1252 "war to rid the world of Internet <quote>pirates</quote> will also rid our "
1253 "culture of values that have been integral to our tradition from the start."
1256 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1257 #: freeculture.xml:956 freeculture.xml:14501
1258 msgid "Netanel, Neil Weinstock"
1261 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1262 #: freeculture.xml:954
1264 "Neil W. Netanel, <quote>Copyright and a Democratic Civil Society,</quote> "
1265 "<citetitle>Yale Law Journal</citetitle> 106 (1996): 283. <placeholder "
1266 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
1269 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1270 #: freeculture.xml:948
1272 "These values built a tradition that, for at least the first 180 years of our "
1273 "Republic, guaranteed creators the right to build freely upon their past, and "
1274 "protected creators and innovators from either state or private control. The "
1275 "First Amendment protected creators against state control. And as Professor "
1276 "Neil Netanel powerfully argues,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
1277 "copyright law, properly balanced, protected creators against private "
1278 "control. Our tradition was thus neither Soviet nor the tradition of "
1279 "patrons. It instead carved out a wide berth within which creators could "
1280 "cultivate and extend our culture."
1283 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1284 #: freeculture.xml:964
1286 "Yet the law's response to the Internet, when tied to changes in the "
1287 "technology of the Internet itself, has massively increased the effective "
1288 "regulation of creativity in America. To build upon or critique the culture "
1289 "around us one must ask, Oliver Twist–like, for permission first. "
1290 "Permission is, of course, often granted—but it is not often granted to "
1291 "the critical or the independent. We have built a kind of cultural nobility; "
1292 "those within the noble class live easily; those outside it don't. But it is "
1293 "nobility of any form that is alien to our tradition."
1296 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1297 #: freeculture.xml:976
1299 "The story that follows is about this war. Is it not about the "
1300 "<quote>centrality of technology</quote> to ordinary life. I don't believe in "
1301 "gods, digital or otherwise. Nor is it an effort to demonize any individual "
1302 "or group, for neither do I believe in a devil, corporate or otherwise. It is "
1303 "not a morality tale. Nor is it a call to jihad against an industry."
1306 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1307 #: freeculture.xml:984
1309 "It is instead an effort to understand a hopelessly destructive war inspired "
1310 "by the technologies of the Internet but reaching far beyond its code. And by "
1311 "understanding this battle, it is an effort to map peace. There is no good "
1312 "reason for the current struggle around Internet technologies to "
1313 "continue. There will be great harm to our tradition and culture if it is "
1314 "allowed to continue unchecked. We must come to understand the source of this "
1315 "war. We must resolve it soon."
1318 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1319 #: freeculture.xml:995
1321 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">Like the Causbys'</emphasis> battle, this war is, "
1322 "in part, about <quote>property.</quote> The property of this war is not as "
1323 "tangible as the Causbys', and no innocent chicken has yet to lose its "
1324 "life. Yet the ideas surrounding this <quote>property</quote> are as obvious "
1325 "to most as the Causbys' claim about the sacredness of their farm was to "
1326 "them. We are the Causbys. Most of us take for granted the extraordinarily "
1327 "powerful claims that the owners of <quote>intellectual property</quote> now "
1328 "assert. Most of us, like the Causbys, treat these claims as obvious. And "
1329 "hence we, like the Causbys, object when a new technology interferes with "
1330 "this property. It is as plain to us as it was to them that the new "
1331 "technologies of the Internet are <quote>trespassing</quote> upon legitimate "
1332 "claims of <quote>property.</quote> It is as plain to us as it was to them "
1333 "that the law should intervene to stop this trespass."
1337 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1338 #: freeculture.xml:1013
1340 "And thus, when geeks and technologists defend their Armstrong or Wright "
1341 "brothers technology, most of us are simply unsympathetic. Common sense does "
1342 "not revolt. Unlike in the case of the unlucky Causbys, common sense is on "
1343 "the side of the property owners in this war. Unlike the lucky Wright "
1344 "brothers, the Internet has not inspired a revolution on its side."
1347 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1348 #: freeculture.xml:1024
1350 "My hope is to push this common sense along. I have become increasingly "
1351 "amazed by the power of this idea of intellectual property and, more "
1352 "importantly, its power to disable critical thought by policy makers and "
1353 "citizens. There has never been a time in our history when more of our "
1354 "<quote>culture</quote> was as <quote>owned</quote> as it is now. And yet "
1355 "there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the "
1356 "<emphasis>uses</emphasis> of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as "
1360 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1361 #: freeculture.xml:1034
1363 "The puzzle is, Why? Is it because we have come to understand a truth about "
1364 "the value and importance of absolute property over ideas and culture? Is it "
1365 "because we have discovered that our tradition of rejecting such an absolute "
1369 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1370 #: freeculture.xml:1040
1372 "Or is it because the idea of absolute property over ideas and culture "
1373 "benefits the RCAs of our time and fits our own unreflective intuitions?"
1376 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1377 #: freeculture.xml:1044
1379 "Is the radical shift away from our tradition of free culture an instance of "
1380 "America correcting a mistake from its past, as we did after a bloody war "
1381 "with slavery, and as we are slowly doing with inequality? Or is the radical "
1382 "shift away from our tradition of free culture yet another example of a "
1383 "political system captured by a few powerful special interests?"
1386 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1387 #: freeculture.xml:1051
1389 "Does common sense lead to the extremes on this question because common sense "
1390 "actually believes in these extremes? Or does common sense stand silent in "
1391 "the face of these extremes because, as with Armstrong versus RCA, the more "
1392 "powerful side has ensured that it has the more powerful view?"
1396 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1397 #: freeculture.xml:1060
1399 "I don't mean to be mysterious. My own views are resolved. I believe it was "
1400 "right for common sense to revolt against the extremism of the Causbys. I "
1401 "believe it would be right for common sense to revolt against the extreme "
1402 "claims made today on behalf of <quote>intellectual property.</quote> What "
1403 "the law demands today is increasingly as silly as a sheriff arresting an "
1404 "airplane for trespass. But the consequences of this silliness will be much "
1408 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1409 #: freeculture.xml:1070
1411 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">The struggle</emphasis> that rages just now "
1412 "centers on two ideas: <quote>piracy</quote> and <quote>property.</quote> My "
1413 "aim in this book's next two parts is to explore these two ideas."
1416 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1417 #: freeculture.xml:1075
1419 "My method is not the usual method of an academic. I don't want to plunge you "
1420 "into a complex argument, buttressed with references to obscure French "
1421 "theorists—however natural that is for the weird sort we academics have "
1422 "become. Instead I begin in each part with a collection of stories that set a "
1423 "context within which these apparently simple ideas can be more fully "
1427 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1428 #: freeculture.xml:1083
1430 "The two sections set up the core claim of this book: that while the Internet "
1431 "has indeed produced something fantastic and new, our government, pushed by "
1432 "big media to respond to this <quote>something new,</quote> is destroying "
1433 "something very old. Rather than understanding the changes the Internet might "
1434 "permit, and rather than taking time to let <quote>common sense</quote> "
1435 "resolve how best to respond, we are allowing those most threatened by the "
1436 "changes to use their power to change the law—and more importantly, to "
1437 "use their power to change something fundamental about who we have always "
1441 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
1442 #: freeculture.xml:1094
1444 "We allow this, I believe, not because it is right, and not because most of "
1445 "us really believe in these changes. We allow it because the interests most "
1446 "threatened are among the most powerful players in our depressingly "
1447 "compromised process of making law. This book is the story of one more "
1448 "consequence of this form of corruption—a consequence to which most of "
1449 "us remain oblivious."
1452 #. type: Content of: <book><part><title>
1453 #: freeculture.xml:1104
1454 msgid "<quote>PIRACY</quote>"
1457 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1458 #: freeculture.xml:1107 freeculture.xml:4836
1459 msgid "Mansfield, William Murray, Lord"
1462 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1463 #: freeculture.xml:1109
1465 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">Since the inception</emphasis> of the law "
1466 "regulating creative property, there has been a war against "
1467 "<quote>piracy.</quote> The precise contours of this concept, "
1468 "<quote>piracy,</quote> are hard to sketch, but the animating injustice is "
1469 "easy to capture. As Lord Mansfield wrote in a case that extended the reach "
1470 "of English copyright law to include sheet music,"
1474 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
1475 #: freeculture.xml:1121
1477 "<citetitle>Bach</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Longman</citetitle>, 98 "
1478 "Eng. Rep. 1274 (1777) (Mansfield)."
1481 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><blockquote><para>
1482 #: freeculture.xml:1117
1484 "A person may use the copy by playing it, but he has no right to rob the "
1485 "author of the profit, by multiplying copies and disposing of them for his "
1486 "own use.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
1490 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1491 #: freeculture.xml:1127
1493 "Today we are in the middle of another <quote>war</quote> against "
1494 "<quote>piracy.</quote> The Internet has provoked this war. The Internet "
1495 "makes possible the efficient spread of content. Peer-to-peer (p2p) file "
1496 "sharing is among the most efficient of the efficient technologies the "
1497 "Internet enables. Using distributed intelligence, p2p systems facilitate the "
1498 "easy spread of content in a way unimagined a generation ago."
1501 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1502 #: freeculture.xml:1136
1504 "This efficiency does not respect the traditional lines of copyright. The "
1505 "network doesn't discriminate between the sharing of copyrighted and "
1506 "uncopyrighted content. Thus has there been a vast amount of sharing of "
1507 "copyrighted content. That sharing in turn has excited the war, as copyright "
1508 "owners fear the sharing will <quote>rob the author of the profit.</quote>"
1511 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1512 #: freeculture.xml:1144
1514 "The warriors have turned to the courts, to the legislatures, and "
1515 "increasingly to technology to defend their <quote>property</quote> against "
1516 "this <quote>piracy.</quote> A generation of Americans, the warriors warn, is "
1517 "being raised to believe that <quote>property</quote> should be "
1518 "<quote>free.</quote> Forget tattoos, never mind body piercing—our kids "
1519 "are becoming <emphasis>thieves</emphasis>!"
1522 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1523 #: freeculture.xml:1152
1525 "There's no doubt that <quote>piracy</quote> is wrong, and that pirates "
1526 "should be punished. But before we summon the executioners, we should put "
1527 "this notion of <quote>piracy</quote> in some context. For as the concept is "
1528 "increasingly used, at its core is an extraordinary idea that is almost "
1532 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1533 #: freeculture.xml:1158
1534 msgid "The idea goes something like this:"
1537 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><blockquote><para>
1538 #: freeculture.xml:1162
1540 "Creative work has value; whenever I use, or take, or build upon the creative "
1541 "work of others, I am taking from them something of value. Whenever I take "
1542 "something of value from someone else, I should have their permission. The "
1543 "taking of something of value from someone else without permission is "
1544 "wrong. It is a form of piracy."
1547 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><primary>
1548 #: freeculture.xml:1170
1552 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><primary>
1553 #: freeculture.xml:1171
1554 msgid "Dreyfuss, Rochelle"
1557 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><indexterm><primary>
1558 #: freeculture.xml:1172
1562 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1563 #: freeculture.xml:1173 freeculture.xml:2847
1564 msgid "<quote>if value, then right</quote> theory"
1568 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
1569 #: freeculture.xml:1179
1571 "See Rochelle Dreyfuss, <quote>Expressive Genericity: Trademarks as Language "
1572 "in the Pepsi Generation,</quote> <citetitle>Notre Dame Law "
1573 "Review</citetitle> 65 (1990): 397."
1576 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1577 #: freeculture.xml:1192 freeculture.xml:6991
1578 msgid "Zittrain, Jonathan"
1581 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
1582 #: freeculture.xml:1187
1584 "Lisa Bannon, <quote>The Birds May Sing, but Campers Can't Unless They Pay "
1585 "Up,</quote> <citetitle>Wall Street Journal</citetitle>, 21 August 1996, "
1586 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #3</ulink>; "
1587 "Jonathan Zittrain, <quote>Calling Off the Copyright War: In Battle of "
1588 "Property vs. Free Speech, No One Wins,</quote> <citetitle>Boston "
1589 "Globe</citetitle>, 24 November 2002. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
1593 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1594 #: freeculture.xml:1175
1596 "This view runs deep within the current debates. It is what NYU law professor "
1597 "Rochelle Dreyfuss criticizes as the <quote>if value, then right</quote> "
1598 "theory of creative property<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
1599 "—if there is value, then someone must have a right to that value. It "
1600 "is the perspective that led a composers' rights organization, ASCAP, to sue "
1601 "the Girl Scouts for failing to pay for the songs that girls sang around Girl "
1602 "Scout campfires.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> There was "
1603 "<quote>value</quote> (the songs) so there must have been a "
1604 "<quote>right</quote>—even against the Girl Scouts."
1608 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1609 #: freeculture.xml:1198
1611 "This idea is certainly a possible understanding of how creative property "
1612 "should work. It might well be a possible design for a system of law "
1613 "protecting creative property. But the <quote>if value, then right</quote> "
1614 "theory of creative property has never been America's theory of creative "
1615 "property. It has never taken hold within our law."
1618 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1619 #: freeculture.xml:1207
1621 "Instead, in our tradition, intellectual property is an instrument. It sets "
1622 "the groundwork for a richly creative society but remains subservient to the "
1623 "value of creativity. The current debate has this turned around. We have "
1624 "become so concerned with protecting the instrument that we are losing sight "
1628 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1629 #: freeculture.xml:1214
1631 "The source of this confusion is a distinction that the law no longer takes "
1632 "care to draw—the distinction between republishing someone's work on "
1633 "the one hand and building upon or transforming that work on the "
1634 "other. Copyright law at its birth had only publishing as its concern; "
1635 "copyright law today regulates both."
1638 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1639 #: freeculture.xml:1221
1641 "Before the technologies of the Internet, this conflation didn't matter all "
1642 "that much. The technologies of publishing were expensive; that meant the "
1643 "vast majority of publishing was commercial. Commercial entities could bear "
1644 "the burden of the law—even the burden of the Byzantine complexity that "
1645 "copyright law has become. It was just one more expense of doing business."
1648 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1649 #: freeculture.xml:1228 freeculture.xml:1259
1650 msgid "Florida, Richard"
1653 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
1654 #: freeculture.xml:1229 freeculture.xml:1260
1655 msgid "Rise of the Creative Class, The (Florida)"
1658 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
1659 #: freeculture.xml:1251
1661 "In <citetitle>The Rise of the Creative Class</citetitle> (New York: Basic "
1662 "Books, 2002), Richard Florida documents a shift in the nature of labor "
1663 "toward a labor of creativity. His work, however, doesn't directly address "
1664 "the legal conditions under which that creativity is enabled or stifled. I "
1665 "certainly agree with him about the importance and significance of this "
1666 "change, but I also believe the conditions under which it will be enabled are "
1667 "much more tenuous. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
1668 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
1671 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1672 #: freeculture.xml:1231
1674 "But with the birth of the Internet, this natural limit to the reach of the "
1675 "law has disappeared. The law controls not just the creativity of commercial "
1676 "creators but effectively that of anyone. Although that expansion would not "
1677 "matter much if copyright law regulated only <quote>copying,</quote> when the "
1678 "law regulates as broadly and obscurely as it does, the extension matters a "
1679 "lot. The burden of this law now vastly outweighs any original "
1680 "benefit—certainly as it affects noncommercial creativity, and "
1681 "increasingly as it affects commercial creativity as well. Thus, as we'll see "
1682 "more clearly in the chapters below, the law's role is less and less to "
1683 "support creativity, and more and more to protect certain industries against "
1684 "competition. Just at the time digital technology could unleash an "
1685 "extraordinary range of commercial and noncommercial creativity, the law "
1686 "burdens this creativity with insanely complex and vague rules and with the "
1687 "threat of obscenely severe penalties. We may be seeing, as Richard Florida "
1688 "writes, the <quote>Rise of the Creative Class.</quote><placeholder "
1689 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Unfortunately, we are also seeing an "
1690 "extraordinary rise of regulation of this creative class."
1693 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
1694 #: freeculture.xml:1266
1696 "These burdens make no sense in our tradition. We should begin by "
1697 "understanding that tradition a bit more and by placing in their proper "
1698 "context the current battles about behavior labeled <quote>piracy.</quote>"
1701 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
1702 #: freeculture.xml:1274
1703 msgid "CHAPTER ONE: Creators"
1706 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1707 #: freeculture.xml:1275
1708 msgid "animated cartoons"
1711 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1712 #: freeculture.xml:1276
1713 msgid "cartoon films"
1716 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1717 #: freeculture.xml:1278
1719 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">In 1928</emphasis>, a cartoon character was "
1720 "born. An early Mickey Mouse made his debut in May of that year, in a silent "
1721 "flop called <citetitle>Plane Crazy</citetitle>. In November, in New York "
1722 "City's Colony Theater, in the first widely distributed cartoon synchronized "
1723 "with sound, <citetitle>Steamboat Willie</citetitle> brought to life the "
1724 "character that would become Mickey Mouse."
1727 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1728 #: freeculture.xml:1285
1730 "Synchronized sound had been introduced to film a year earlier in the movie "
1731 "<citetitle>The Jazz Singer</citetitle>. That success led Walt Disney to copy "
1732 "the technique and mix sound with cartoons. No one knew whether it would work "
1733 "or, if it did work, whether it would win an audience. But when Disney ran a "
1734 "test in the summer of 1928, the results were unambiguous. As Disney "
1735 "describes that first experiment,"
1739 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
1740 #: freeculture.xml:1294
1742 "A couple of my boys could read music, and one of them could play a mouth "
1743 "organ. We put them in a room where they could not see the screen and "
1744 "arranged to pipe their sound into the room where our wives and friends were "
1745 "going to see the picture."
1748 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
1749 #: freeculture.xml:1301
1751 "The boys worked from a music and sound-effects score. After several false "
1752 "starts, sound and action got off with the gun. The mouth organist played the "
1753 "tune, the rest of us in the sound department bammed tin pans and blew slide "
1754 "whistles on the beat. The synchronization was pretty close."
1758 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
1759 #: freeculture.xml:1314
1761 "Leonard Maltin, <citetitle>Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated "
1762 "Cartoons</citetitle> (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 34–35."
1765 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
1766 #: freeculture.xml:1308
1768 "The effect on our little audience was nothing less than electric. They "
1769 "responded almost instinctively to this union of sound and motion. I thought "
1770 "they were kidding me. So they put me in the audience and ran the action "
1771 "again. It was terrible, but it was wonderful! And it was something "
1772 "new!<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
1775 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
1776 #: freeculture.xml:1319
1780 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1781 #: freeculture.xml:1321
1783 "Disney's then partner, and one of animation's most extraordinary talents, Ub "
1784 "Iwerks, put it more strongly: <quote>I have never been so thrilled in my "
1785 "life. Nothing since has ever equaled it.</quote>"
1788 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1789 #: freeculture.xml:1326
1791 "Disney had created something very new, based upon something relatively "
1792 "new. Synchronized sound brought life to a form of creativity that had "
1793 "rarely—except in Disney's hands—been anything more than filler "
1794 "for other films. Throughout animation's early history, it was Disney's "
1795 "invention that set the standard that others struggled to match. And quite "
1796 "often, Disney's great genius, his spark of creativity, was built upon the "
1800 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1801 #: freeculture.xml:1335
1803 "This much is familiar. What you might not know is that 1928 also marks "
1804 "another important transition. In that year, a comic (as opposed to cartoon) "
1805 "genius created his last independently produced silent film. That genius was "
1806 "Buster Keaton. The film was <citetitle>Steamboat Bill, Jr</citetitle>."
1809 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1810 #: freeculture.xml:1341
1812 "Keaton was born into a vaudeville family in 1895. In the era of silent film, "
1813 "he had mastered using broad physical comedy as a way to spark uncontrollable "
1814 "laughter from his audience. <citetitle>Steamboat Bill, Jr</citetitle>. was a "
1815 "classic of this form, famous among film buffs for its incredible stunts. "
1816 "The film was classic Keaton—wildly popular and among the best of its "
1821 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1822 #: freeculture.xml:1355
1824 "I am grateful to David Gerstein and his careful history, described at <ulink "
1825 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #4</ulink>. According to Dave "
1826 "Smith of the Disney Archives, Disney paid royalties to use the music for "
1827 "five songs in <citetitle>Steamboat Willie</citetitle>: <quote>Steamboat "
1828 "Bill,</quote> <quote>The Simpleton</quote> (Delille), <quote>Mischief "
1829 "Makers</quote> (Carbonara), <quote>Joyful Hurry No. 1</quote> (Baron), and "
1830 "<quote>Gawky Rube</quote> (Lakay). A sixth song, <quote>The Turkey in the "
1831 "Straw,</quote> was already in the public domain. Letter from David Smith to "
1832 "Harry Surden, 10 July 2003, on file with author."
1835 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1836 #: freeculture.xml:1349
1838 "<citetitle>Steamboat Bill, Jr</citetitle>. appeared before Disney's cartoon "
1839 "Steamboat Willie. The coincidence of titles is not coincidental. Steamboat "
1840 "Willie is a direct cartoon parody of Steamboat Bill,<placeholder "
1841 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> and both are built upon a common song as a "
1842 "source. It is not just from the invention of synchronized sound in "
1843 "<citetitle>The Jazz Singer</citetitle> that we get <citetitle>Steamboat "
1844 "Willie</citetitle>. It is also from Buster Keaton's invention of Steamboat "
1845 "Bill, Jr., itself inspired by the song <quote>Steamboat Bill,</quote> that "
1846 "we get Steamboat Willie, and then from Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse."
1850 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1851 #: freeculture.xml:1376
1853 "He was also a fan of the public domain. See Chris Sprigman, <quote>The Mouse "
1854 "that Ate the Public Domain,</quote> Findlaw, 5 March 2002, at <ulink "
1855 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #5</ulink>."
1858 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1859 #: freeculture.xml:1372
1861 "This <quote>borrowing</quote> was nothing unique, either for Disney or for "
1862 "the industry. Disney was always parroting the feature-length mainstream "
1863 "films of his day.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> So did many "
1864 "others. Early cartoons are filled with knockoffs—slight variations on "
1865 "winning themes; retellings of ancient stories. The key to success was the "
1866 "brilliance of the differences. With Disney, it was sound that gave his "
1867 "animation its spark. Later, it was the quality of his work relative to the "
1868 "production-line cartoons with which he competed. Yet these additions were "
1869 "built upon a base that was borrowed. Disney added to the work of others "
1870 "before him, creating something new out of something just barely old."
1873 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1874 #: freeculture.xml:1391
1876 "Sometimes this borrowing was slight. Sometimes it was significant. Think "
1877 "about the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. If you're as oblivious as I "
1878 "was, you're likely to think that these tales are happy, sweet stories, "
1879 "appropriate for any child at bedtime. In fact, the Grimm fairy tales are, "
1880 "well, for us, grim. It is a rare and perhaps overly ambitious parent who "
1881 "would dare to read these bloody, moralistic stories to his or her child, at "
1882 "bedtime or anytime."
1886 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1887 #: freeculture.xml:1400
1889 "Disney took these stories and retold them in a way that carried them into a "
1890 "new age. He animated the stories, with both characters and light. Without "
1891 "removing the elements of fear and danger altogether, he made funny what was "
1892 "dark and injected a genuine emotion of compassion where before there was "
1893 "fear. And not just with the work of the Brothers Grimm. Indeed, the catalog "
1894 "of Disney work drawing upon the work of others is astonishing when set "
1895 "together: <citetitle>Snow White</citetitle> (1937), "
1896 "<citetitle>Fantasia</citetitle> (1940), <citetitle>Pinocchio</citetitle> "
1897 "(1940), <citetitle>Dumbo</citetitle> (1941), <citetitle>Bambi</citetitle> "
1898 "(1942), <citetitle>Song of the South</citetitle> (1946), "
1899 "<citetitle>Cinderella</citetitle> (1950), <citetitle>Alice in "
1900 "Wonderland</citetitle> (1951), <citetitle>Robin Hood</citetitle> (1952), "
1901 "<citetitle>Peter Pan</citetitle> (1953), <citetitle>Lady and the "
1902 "Tramp</citetitle> (1955), <citetitle>Mulan</citetitle> (1998), "
1903 "<citetitle>Sleeping Beauty</citetitle> (1959), <citetitle>101 "
1904 "Dalmatians</citetitle> (1961), <citetitle>The Sword in the Stone</citetitle> "
1905 "(1963), and <citetitle>The Jungle Book</citetitle> (1967)—not to "
1906 "mention a recent example that we should perhaps quickly forget, "
1907 "<citetitle>Treasure Planet</citetitle> (2003). In all of these cases, Disney "
1908 "(or Disney, Inc.) ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that "
1909 "creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into "
1910 "the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn."
1913 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1914 #: freeculture.xml:1423
1916 "This is a kind of creativity. It is a creativity that we should remember and "
1917 "celebrate. There are some who would say that there is no creativity except "
1918 "this kind. We don't need to go that far to recognize its importance. We "
1919 "could call this <quote>Disney creativity,</quote> though that would be a bit "
1920 "misleading. It is, more precisely, <quote>Walt Disney "
1921 "creativity</quote>—a form of expression and genius that builds upon "
1922 "the culture around us and makes it something different."
1926 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
1927 #: freeculture.xml:1437
1929 "Until 1976, copyright law granted an author the possibility of two terms: an "
1930 "initial term and a renewal term. I have calculated the "
1931 "<quote>average</quote> term by determining the weighted average of total "
1932 "registrations for any particular year, and the proportion renewing. Thus, if "
1933 "100 copyrights are registered in year 1, and only 15 are renewed, and the "
1934 "renewal term is 28 years, then the average term is 32.2 years. For the "
1935 "renewal data and other relevant data, see the Web site associated with this "
1936 "book, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
1940 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1941 #: freeculture.xml:1431
1943 "In 1928, the culture that Disney was free to draw upon was relatively "
1944 "fresh. The public domain in 1928 was not very old and was therefore quite "
1945 "vibrant. The average term of copyright was just around thirty "
1946 "years—for that minority of creative work that was in fact "
1947 "copyrighted.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> That means that for "
1948 "thirty years, on average, the authors or copyright holders of a creative "
1949 "work had an <quote>exclusive right</quote> to control certain uses of the "
1950 "work. To use this copyrighted work in limited ways required the permission "
1951 "of the copyright owner."
1954 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1955 #: freeculture.xml:1454
1957 "At the end of a copyright term, a work passes into the public domain. No "
1958 "permission is then needed to draw upon or use that work. No permission and, "
1959 "hence, no lawyers. The public domain is a <quote>lawyer-free zone.</quote> "
1960 "Thus, most of the content from the nineteenth century was free for Disney to "
1961 "use and build upon in 1928. It was free for anyone— whether connected "
1962 "or not, whether rich or not, whether approved or not—to use and build "
1967 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1968 #: freeculture.xml:1463
1970 "This is the ways things always were—until quite recently. For most of "
1971 "our history, the public domain was just over the horizon. From until 1978, "
1972 "the average copyright term was never more than thirty-two years, meaning "
1973 "that most culture just a generation and a half old was free for anyone to "
1974 "build upon without the permission of anyone else. Today's equivalent would "
1975 "be for creative work from the 1960s and 1970s to now be free for the next "
1976 "Walt Disney to build upon without permission. Yet today, the public domain "
1977 "is presumptive only for content from before the Great Depression."
1980 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1981 #: freeculture.xml:1477
1983 "<emphasis role=\"strong\">Of course</emphasis>, Walt Disney had no monopoly "
1984 "on <quote>Walt Disney creativity.</quote> Nor does America. The norm of free "
1985 "culture has, until recently, and except within totalitarian nations, been "
1986 "broadly exploited and quite universal."
1989 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
1990 #: freeculture.xml:1483
1992 "Consider, for example, a form of creativity that seems strange to many "
1993 "Americans but that is inescapable within Japanese culture: "
1994 "<citetitle>manga</citetitle>, or comics. The Japanese are fanatics about "
1995 "comics. Some 40 percent of publications are comics, and 30 percent of "
1996 "publication revenue derives from comics. They are everywhere in Japanese "
1997 "society, at every magazine stand, carried by a large proportion of commuters "
1998 "on Japan's extraordinary system of public transportation."
2001 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2002 #: freeculture.xml:1492
2004 "Americans tend to look down upon this form of culture. That's an "
2005 "unattractive characteristic of ours. We're likely to misunderstand much "
2006 "about manga, because few of us have ever read anything close to the stories "
2007 "that these <quote>graphic novels</quote> tell. For the Japanese, manga cover "
2008 "every aspect of social life. For us, comics are <quote>men in "
2009 "tights.</quote> And anyway, it's not as if the New York subways are filled "
2010 "with readers of Joyce or even Hemingway. People of different cultures "
2011 "distract themselves in different ways, the Japanese in this interestingly "
2015 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2016 #: freeculture.xml:1503
2018 "But my purpose here is not to understand manga. It is to describe a variant "
2019 "on manga that from a lawyer's perspective is quite odd, but from a Disney "
2020 "perspective is quite familiar."
2024 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2025 #: freeculture.xml:1508
2027 "This is the phenomenon of <citetitle>doujinshi</citetitle>. Doujinshi are "
2028 "also comics, but they are a kind of copycat comic. A rich ethic governs the "
2029 "creation of doujinshi. It is not doujinshi if it is "
2030 "<emphasis>just</emphasis> a copy; the artist must make a contribution to the "
2031 "art he copies, by transforming it either subtly or significantly. A "
2032 "doujinshi comic can thus take a mainstream comic and develop it "
2033 "differently—with a different story line. Or the comic can keep the "
2034 "character in character but change its look slightly. There is no formula for "
2035 "what makes the doujinshi sufficiently <quote>different.</quote> But they "
2036 "must be different if they are to be considered true doujinshi. Indeed, there "
2037 "are committees that review doujinshi for inclusion within shows and reject "
2038 "any copycat comic that is merely a copy."
2041 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2042 #: freeculture.xml:1523
2044 "These copycat comics are not a tiny part of the manga market. They are "
2045 "huge. More than 33,000 <quote>circles</quote> of creators from across Japan "
2046 "produce these bits of Walt Disney creativity. More than 450,000 Japanese "
2047 "come together twice a year, in the largest public gathering in the country, "
2048 "to exchange and sell them. This market exists in parallel to the mainstream "
2049 "commercial manga market. In some ways, it obviously competes with that "
2050 "market, but there is no sustained effort by those who control the commercial "
2051 "manga market to shut the doujinshi market down. It flourishes, despite the "
2052 "competition and despite the law."
2055 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2056 #: freeculture.xml:1534
2058 "The most puzzling feature of the doujinshi market, for those trained in the "
2059 "law, at least, is that it is allowed to exist at all. Under Japanese "
2060 "copyright law, which in this respect (on paper) mirrors American copyright "
2061 "law, the doujinshi market is an illegal one. Doujinshi are plainly "
2062 "<quote>derivative works.</quote> There is no general practice by doujinshi "
2063 "artists of securing the permission of the manga creators. Instead, the "
2064 "practice is simply to take and modify the creations of others, as Walt "
2065 "Disney did with <citetitle>Steamboat Bill, Jr</citetitle>. Under both "
2066 "Japanese and American law, that <quote>taking</quote> without the permission "
2067 "of the original copyright owner is illegal. It is an infringement of the "
2068 "original copyright to make a copy or a derivative work without the original "
2069 "copyright owner's permission."
2072 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2073 #: freeculture.xml:1547
2074 msgid "Winick, Judd"
2078 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2079 #: freeculture.xml:1559
2081 "For an excellent history, see Scott McCloud, <citetitle>Reinventing "
2082 "Comics</citetitle> (New York: Perennial, 2000)."
2085 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2086 #: freeculture.xml:1549
2088 "Yet this illegal market exists and indeed flourishes in Japan, and in the "
2089 "view of many, it is precisely because it exists that Japanese manga "
2090 "flourish. As American graphic novelist Judd Winick said to me, <quote>The "
2091 "early days of comics in America are very much like what's going on in Japan "
2092 "now. … American comics were born out of copying each other. … "
2093 "That's how [the artists] learn to draw—by going into comic books and "
2094 "not tracing them, but looking at them and copying them</quote> and building "
2095 "from them.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2098 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2099 #: freeculture.xml:1563
2100 msgid "Superman comics"
2103 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2104 #: freeculture.xml:1565
2106 "American comics now are quite different, Winick explains, in part because of "
2107 "the legal difficulty of adapting comics the way doujinshi are "
2108 "allowed. Speaking of Superman, Winick told me, <quote>there are these rules "
2109 "and you have to stick to them.</quote> There are things Superman "
2110 "<quote>cannot</quote> do. <quote>As a creator, it's frustrating having to "
2111 "stick to some parameters which are fifty years old.</quote>"
2115 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2116 #: freeculture.xml:1582
2118 "See Salil K. Mehra, <quote>Copyright and Comics in Japan: Does Law Explain "
2119 "Why All the Comics My Kid Watches Are Japanese Imports?</quote> "
2120 "<citetitle>Rutgers Law Review</citetitle> 55 (2002): 155, "
2121 "182. <quote>[T]here might be a collective economic rationality that would "
2122 "lead manga and anime artists to forgo bringing legal actions for "
2123 "infringement. One hypothesis is that all manga artists may be better off "
2124 "collectively if they set aside their individual self-interest and decide not "
2125 "to press their legal rights. This is essentially a prisoner's dilemma "
2129 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2130 #: freeculture.xml:1574
2132 "The norm in Japan mitigates this legal difficulty. Some say it is precisely "
2133 "the benefit accruing to the Japanese manga market that explains the "
2134 "mitigation. Temple University law professor Salil Mehra, for example, "
2135 "hypothesizes that the manga market accepts these technical violations "
2136 "because they spur the manga market to be more wealthy and "
2137 "productive. Everyone would be worse off if doujinshi were banned, so the law "
2138 "does not ban doujinshi.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2141 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2142 #: freeculture.xml:1593
2144 "The problem with this story, however, as Mehra plainly acknowledges, is that "
2145 "the mechanism producing this laissez faire response is not clear. It may "
2146 "well be that the market as a whole is better off if doujinshi are permitted "
2147 "rather than banned, but that doesn't explain why individual copyright owners "
2148 "don't sue nonetheless. If the law has no general exception for doujinshi, "
2149 "and indeed in some cases individual manga artists have sued doujinshi "
2150 "artists, why is there not a more general pattern of blocking this "
2151 "<quote>free taking</quote> by the doujinshi culture?"
2154 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2155 #: freeculture.xml:1604
2157 "I spent four wonderful months in Japan, and I asked this question as often "
2158 "as I could. Perhaps the best account in the end was offered by a friend from "
2159 "a major Japanese law firm. <quote>We don't have enough lawyers,</quote> he "
2160 "told me one afternoon. There <quote>just aren't enough resources to "
2161 "prosecute cases like this.</quote>"
2165 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2166 #: freeculture.xml:1611
2168 "This is a theme to which we will return: that regulation by law is a "
2169 "function of both the words on the books and the costs of making those words "
2170 "have effect. For now, focus on the obvious question that is begged: Would "
2171 "Japan be better off with more lawyers? Would manga be richer if doujinshi "
2172 "artists were regularly prosecuted? Would the Japanese gain something "
2173 "important if they could end this practice of uncompensated sharing? Does "
2174 "piracy here hurt the victims of the piracy, or does it help them? Would "
2175 "lawyers fighting this piracy help their clients or hurt them?"
2178 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2179 #: freeculture.xml:1623
2180 msgid "<emphasis role='strong'>Let's pause</emphasis> for a moment."
2183 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2184 #: freeculture.xml:1626
2186 "If you're like I was a decade ago, or like most people are when they first "
2187 "start thinking about these issues, then just about now you should be puzzled "
2188 "about something you hadn't thought through before."
2191 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2192 #: freeculture.xml:1636 freeculture.xml:2864 freeculture.xml:4537 freeculture.xml:4762 freeculture.xml:7375 freeculture.xml:8482
2193 msgid "Vaidhyanathan, Siva"
2196 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2197 #: freeculture.xml:1636
2199 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> The term <citetitle>intellectual "
2200 "property</citetitle> is of relatively recent origin. See Siva Vaidhyanathan, "
2201 "<citetitle>Copyrights and Copywrongs</citetitle>, 11 (New York: New York "
2202 "University Press, 2001). See also Lawrence Lessig, <citetitle>The Future of "
2203 "Ideas</citetitle> (New York: Random House, 2001), 293 n. 26. The term "
2204 "accurately describes a set of <quote>property</quote> "
2205 "rights—copyright, patents, trademark, and trade-secret—but the "
2206 "nature of those rights is very different."
2209 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2210 #: freeculture.xml:1631
2212 "We live in a world that celebrates <quote>property.</quote> I am one of "
2213 "those celebrants. I believe in the value of property in general, and I also "
2214 "believe in the value of that weird form of property that lawyers call "
2215 "<quote>intellectual property.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
2216 "id=\"0\"/> A large, diverse society cannot survive without property; a "
2217 "large, diverse, and modern society cannot flourish without intellectual "
2221 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2222 #: freeculture.xml:1650
2224 "But it takes just a second's reflection to realize that there is plenty of "
2225 "value out there that <quote>property</quote> doesn't capture. I don't mean "
2226 "<quote>money can't buy you love,</quote> but rather, value that is plainly "
2227 "part of a process of production, including commercial as well as "
2228 "noncommercial production. If Disney animators had stolen a set of pencils "
2229 "to draw Steamboat Willie, we'd have no hesitation in condemning that taking "
2230 "as wrong— even though trivial, even if unnoticed. Yet there was "
2231 "nothing wrong, at least under the law of the day, with Disney's taking from "
2232 "Buster Keaton or from the Brothers Grimm. There was nothing wrong with the "
2233 "taking from Keaton because Disney's use would have been considered "
2234 "<quote>fair.</quote> There was nothing wrong with the taking from the Grimms "
2235 "because the Grimms' work was in the public domain."
2239 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2240 #: freeculture.xml:1665
2242 "Thus, even though the things that Disney took—or more generally, the "
2243 "things taken by anyone exercising Walt Disney creativity—are valuable, "
2244 "our tradition does not treat those takings as wrong. Some things remain free "
2245 "for the taking within a free culture, and that freedom is good."
2248 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2249 #: freeculture.xml:1674
2251 "The same with the doujinshi culture. If a doujinshi artist broke into a "
2252 "publisher's office and ran off with a thousand copies of his latest "
2253 "work—or even one copy—without paying, we'd have no hesitation in "
2254 "saying the artist was wrong. In addition to having trespassed, he would have "
2255 "stolen something of value. The law bans that stealing in whatever form, "
2256 "whether large or small."
2259 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2260 #: freeculture.xml:1682
2262 "Yet there is an obvious reluctance, even among Japanese lawyers, to say that "
2263 "the copycat comic artists are <quote>stealing.</quote> This form of Walt "
2264 "Disney creativity is seen as fair and right, even if lawyers in particular "
2265 "find it hard to say why."
2268 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2269 #: freeculture.xml:1688
2271 "It's the same with a thousand examples that appear everywhere once you begin "
2272 "to look. Scientists build upon the work of other scientists without asking "
2273 "or paying for the privilege. (<quote>Excuse me, Professor Einstein, but may "
2274 "I have permission to use your theory of relativity to show that you were "
2275 "wrong about quantum physics?</quote>) Acting companies perform adaptations "
2276 "of the works of Shakespeare without securing permission from anyone. (Does "
2277 "<emphasis>anyone</emphasis> believe Shakespeare would be better spread "
2278 "within our culture if there were a central Shakespeare rights clearinghouse "
2279 "that all productions of Shakespeare must appeal to first?) And Hollywood "
2280 "goes through cycles with a certain kind of movie: five asteroid films in the "
2281 "late 1990s; two volcano disaster films in 1997."
2285 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2286 #: freeculture.xml:1702
2288 "Creators here and everywhere are always and at all times building upon the "
2289 "creativity that went before and that surrounds them now. That building is "
2290 "always and everywhere at least partially done without permission and without "
2291 "compensating the original creator. No society, free or controlled, has ever "
2292 "demanded that every use be paid for or that permission for Walt Disney "
2293 "creativity must always be sought. Instead, every society has left a certain "
2294 "bit of its culture free for the taking—free societies more fully than "
2295 "unfree, perhaps, but all societies to some degree."
2298 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2299 #: freeculture.xml:1713
2301 "The hard question is therefore not <emphasis>whether</emphasis> a culture is "
2302 "free. All cultures are free to some degree. The hard question instead is "
2303 "<quote><emphasis>How</emphasis> free is this culture?</quote> How much, and "
2304 "how broadly, is the culture free for others to take and build upon? Is that "
2305 "freedom limited to party members? To members of the royal family? To the top "
2306 "ten corporations on the New York Stock Exchange? Or is that freedom spread "
2307 "broadly? To artists generally, whether affiliated with the Met or not? To "
2308 "musicians generally, whether white or not? To filmmakers generally, whether "
2309 "affiliated with a studio or not?"
2312 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2313 #: freeculture.xml:1725
2315 "Free cultures are cultures that leave a great deal open for others to build "
2316 "upon; unfree, or permission, cultures leave much less. Ours was a free "
2317 "culture. It is becoming much less so."
2320 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
2321 #: freeculture.xml:1733
2322 msgid "CHAPTER TWO: <quote>Mere Copyists</quote>"
2325 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
2326 #: freeculture.xml:1734 freeculture.xml:1947 freeculture.xml:6411
2327 msgid "camera technology"
2330 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2331 #: freeculture.xml:1735
2335 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2336 #: freeculture.xml:1736
2337 msgid "Daguerre, Louis"
2340 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2341 #: freeculture.xml:1738
2343 "<emphasis role='strong'>In 1839</emphasis>, Louis Daguerre invented the "
2344 "first practical technology for producing what we would call "
2345 "<quote>photographs.</quote> Appropriately enough, they were called "
2346 "<quote>daguerreotypes.</quote> The process was complicated and expensive, "
2347 "and the field was thus limited to professionals and a few zealous and "
2348 "wealthy amateurs. (There was even an American Daguerre Association that "
2349 "helped regulate the industry, as do all such associations, by keeping "
2350 "competition down so as to keep prices up.)"
2353 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2354 #: freeculture.xml:1747
2355 msgid "Talbot, William"
2358 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2359 #: freeculture.xml:1749
2361 "Yet despite high prices, the demand for daguerreotypes was strong. This "
2362 "pushed inventors to find simpler and cheaper ways to make <quote>automatic "
2363 "pictures.</quote> William Talbot soon discovered a process for making "
2364 "<quote>negatives.</quote> But because the negatives were glass, and had to "
2365 "be kept wet, the process still remained expensive and cumbersome. In the "
2366 "1870s, dry plates were developed, making it easier to separate the taking of "
2367 "a picture from its developing. These were still plates of glass, and thus it "
2368 "was still not a process within reach of most amateurs."
2371 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2372 #: freeculture.xml:1759
2373 msgid "Eastman, George"
2377 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2378 #: freeculture.xml:1761
2380 "The technological change that made mass photography possible didn't happen "
2381 "until 1888, and was the creation of a single man. George Eastman, himself an "
2382 "amateur photographer, was frustrated by the technology of photographs made "
2383 "with plates. In a flash of insight (so to speak), Eastman saw that if the "
2384 "film could be made to be flexible, it could be held on a single "
2385 "spindle. That roll could then be sent to a developer, driving the costs of "
2386 "photography down substantially. By lowering the costs, Eastman expected he "
2387 "could dramatically broaden the population of photographers."
2390 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2391 #: freeculture.xml:1772
2392 msgid "Kodak Primer, The (Eastman)"
2396 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2397 #: freeculture.xml:1779
2399 "Reese V. Jenkins, <citetitle>Images and Enterprise</citetitle> (Baltimore: "
2400 "Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 112."
2403 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2404 #: freeculture.xml:1774
2406 "Eastman developed flexible, emulsion-coated paper film and placed rolls of "
2407 "it in small, simple cameras: the Kodak. The device was marketed on the basis "
2408 "of its simplicity. <quote>You press the button and we do the "
2409 "rest.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> As he described in "
2410 "<citetitle>The Kodak Primer</citetitle>:"
2413 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2414 #: freeculture.xml:1797 freeculture.xml:1821
2418 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
2419 #: freeculture.xml:1795
2421 "Brian Coe, <citetitle>The Birth of Photography</citetitle> (New York: "
2422 "Taplinger Publishing, 1977), 53. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
2425 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2426 #: freeculture.xml:1784
2428 "The principle of the Kodak system is the separation of the work that any "
2429 "person whomsoever can do in making a photograph, from the work that only an "
2430 "expert can do. … We furnish anybody, man, woman or child, who has "
2431 "sufficient intelligence to point a box straight and press a button, with an "
2432 "instrument which altogether removes from the practice of photography the "
2433 "necessity for exceptional facilities or, in fact, any special knowledge of "
2434 "the art. It can be employed without preliminary study, without a darkroom "
2435 "and without chemicals.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2439 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2440 #: freeculture.xml:1813
2441 msgid "Jenkins, 177."
2445 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2446 #: freeculture.xml:1817
2447 msgid "Based on a chart in Jenkins, p. 178."
2450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2451 #: freeculture.xml:1802
2453 "For $25, anyone could make pictures. The camera came preloaded with film, "
2454 "and when it had been used, the camera was returned to an Eastman factory, "
2455 "where the film was developed. Over time, of course, the cost of the camera "
2456 "and the ease with which it could be used both improved. Roll film thus "
2457 "became the basis for the explosive growth of popular photography. Eastman's "
2458 "camera first went on sale in 1888; one year later, Kodak was printing more "
2459 "than six thousand negatives a day. From 1888 through 1909, while industrial "
2460 "production was rising by 4.7 percent, photographic equipment and material "
2461 "sales increased by 11 percent.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
2462 "Eastman Kodak's sales during the same period experienced an average annual "
2463 "increase of over 17 percent.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
2467 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2468 #: freeculture.xml:1836
2472 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2473 #: freeculture.xml:1825
2475 "The real significance of Eastman's invention, however, was not economic. It "
2476 "was social. Professional photography gave individuals a glimpse of places "
2477 "they would never otherwise see. Amateur photography gave them the ability to "
2478 "record their own lives in a way they had never been able to do before. As "
2479 "author Brian Coe notes, <quote>For the first time the snapshot album "
2480 "provided the man on the street with a permanent record of his family and its "
2481 "activities. … For the first time in history there exists an authentic "
2482 "visual record of the appearance and activities of the common man made "
2483 "without [literary] interpretation or bias.</quote><placeholder "
2484 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2487 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2488 #: freeculture.xml:1840
2490 "In this way, the Kodak camera and film were technologies of expression. The "
2491 "pencil or paintbrush was also a technology of expression, of course. But it "
2492 "took years of training before they could be deployed by amateurs in any "
2493 "useful or effective way. With the Kodak, expression was possible much sooner "
2494 "and more simply. The barrier to expression was lowered. Snobs would sneer at "
2495 "its <quote>quality</quote>; professionals would discount it as "
2496 "irrelevant. But watch a child study how best to frame a picture and you get "
2497 "a sense of the experience of creativity that the Kodak enabled. Democratic "
2498 "tools gave ordinary people a way to express themselves more easily than any "
2499 "tools could have before."
2503 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2504 #: freeculture.xml:1862
2506 "For illustrative cases, see, for example, <citetitle>Pavesich</citetitle> "
2507 "v. <citetitle>N.E. Life Ins. Co</citetitle>., 50 S.E. 68 (Ga. 1905); "
2508 "<citetitle>Foster-Milburn Co</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Chinn</citetitle>, "
2509 "123090 S.W. 364, 366 (Ky. 1909); <citetitle>Corliss</citetitle> "
2510 "v. <citetitle>Walker</citetitle>, 64 F. 280 (Mass. Dist. Ct. 1894)."
2513 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2514 #: freeculture.xml:1853
2516 "What was required for this technology to flourish? Obviously, Eastman's "
2517 "genius was an important part. But also important was the legal environment "
2518 "within which Eastman's invention grew. For early in the history of "
2519 "photography, there was a series of judicial decisions that could well have "
2520 "changed the course of photography substantially. Courts were asked whether "
2521 "the photographer, amateur or professional, required permission before he "
2522 "could capture and print whatever image he wanted. Their answer was "
2523 "no.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
2527 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2528 #: freeculture.xml:1870
2530 "The arguments in favor of requiring permission will sound surprisingly "
2531 "familiar. The photographer was <quote>taking</quote> something from the "
2532 "person or building whose photograph he shot—pirating something of "
2533 "value. Some even thought he was taking the target's soul. Just as Disney was "
2534 "not free to take the pencils that his animators used to draw Mickey, so, "
2535 "too, should these photographers not be free to take images that they thought "
2539 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2540 #: freeculture.xml:1892
2541 msgid "Warren, Samuel D."
2544 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2545 #: freeculture.xml:1889
2547 "Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, <quote>The Right to Privacy,</quote> "
2548 "<citetitle>Harvard Law Review</citetitle> 4 (1890): 193. <placeholder "
2549 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
2552 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2553 #: freeculture.xml:1882
2555 "On the other side was an argument that should be familiar, as well. Sure, "
2556 "there may be something of value being used. But citizens should have the "
2557 "right to capture at least those images that stand in public view. (Louis "
2558 "Brandeis, who would become a Supreme Court Justice, thought the rule should "
2559 "be different for images from private spaces.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
2560 "id=\"0\"/>) It may be that this means that the photographer gets something "
2561 "for nothing. Just as Disney could take inspiration from <citetitle>Steamboat "
2562 "Bill, Jr</citetitle>. or the Brothers Grimm, the photographer should be free "
2563 "to capture an image without compensating the source."
2566 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
2567 #: freeculture.xml:1898 freeculture.xml:9172
2568 msgid "images, ownership of"
2572 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2573 #: freeculture.xml:1910
2575 "See Melville B. Nimmer, <quote>The Right of Publicity,</quote> "
2576 "<citetitle>Law and Contemporary Problems</citetitle> 19 (1954): 203; William "
2577 "L. Prosser, <quote>Privacy,</quote> <citetitle>California Law "
2578 "Review</citetitle> 48 (1960) 398–407; <citetitle>White</citetitle> "
2579 "v. <citetitle>Samsung Electronics America, Inc</citetitle>., 971 F. 2d 1395 "
2580 "(9th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 951 (1993)."
2583 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2584 #: freeculture.xml:1900
2586 "Fortunately for Mr. Eastman, and for photography in general, these early "
2587 "decisions went in favor of the pirates. In general, no permission would be "
2588 "required before an image could be captured and shared with others. Instead, "
2589 "permission was presumed. Freedom was the default. (The law would eventually "
2590 "craft an exception for famous people: commercial photographers who snap "
2591 "pictures of famous people for commercial purposes have more restrictions "
2592 "than the rest of us. But in the ordinary case, the image can be captured "
2593 "without clearing the rights to do the capturing.<placeholder "
2594 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>)"
2597 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2598 #: freeculture.xml:1918
2600 "We can only speculate about how photography would have developed had the law "
2601 "gone the other way. If the presumption had been against the photographer, "
2602 "then the photographer would have had to demonstrate permission. Perhaps "
2603 "Eastman Kodak would have had to demonstrate permission, too, before it "
2604 "developed the film upon which images were captured. After all, if permission "
2605 "were not granted, then Eastman Kodak would be benefiting from the "
2606 "<quote>theft</quote> committed by the photographer. Just as Napster "
2607 "benefited from the copyright infringements committed by Napster users, Kodak "
2608 "would be benefiting from the <quote>image-right</quote> infringement of its "
2609 "photographers. We could imagine the law then requiring that some form of "
2610 "permission be demonstrated before a company developed pictures. We could "
2611 "imagine a system developing to demonstrate that permission."
2615 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2616 #: freeculture.xml:1935
2618 "But though we could imagine this system of permission, it would be very hard "
2619 "to see how photography could have flourished as it did if the requirement "
2620 "for permission had been built into the rules that govern it. Photography "
2621 "would have existed. It would have grown in importance over "
2622 "time. Professionals would have continued to use the technology as they "
2623 "did—since professionals could have more easily borne the burdens of "
2624 "the permission system. But the spread of photography to ordinary people "
2625 "would not have occurred. Nothing like that growth would have been "
2626 "realized. And certainly, nothing like that growth in a democratic technology "
2627 "of expression would have been realized."
2630 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2631 #: freeculture.xml:1949
2633 "<emphasis role='strong'>If you drive</emphasis> through San Francisco's "
2634 "Presidio, you might see two gaudy yellow school buses painted over with "
2635 "colorful and striking images, and the logo <quote>Just Think!</quote> in "
2636 "place of the name of a school. But there's little that's <quote>just</quote> "
2637 "cerebral in the projects that these busses enable. These buses are filled "
2638 "with technologies that teach kids to tinker with film. Not the film of "
2639 "Eastman. Not even the film of your VCR. Rather the <quote>film</quote> of "
2640 "digital cameras. Just Think! is a project that enables kids to make films, "
2641 "as a way to understand and critique the filmed culture that they find all "
2642 "around them. Each year, these busses travel to more than thirty schools and "
2643 "enable three hundred to five hundred children to learn something about media "
2644 "by doing something with media. By doing, they think. By tinkering, they "
2649 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2650 #: freeculture.xml:1973
2652 "H. Edward Goldberg, <quote>Essential Presentation Tools: Hardware and "
2653 "Software You Need to Create Digital Multimedia Presentations,</quote> "
2654 "cadalyst, February 2002, available at <ulink "
2655 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #7</ulink>."
2658 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2659 #: freeculture.xml:1967
2661 "These buses are not cheap, but the technology they carry is increasingly "
2662 "so. The cost of a high-quality digital video system has fallen "
2663 "dramatically. As one analyst puts it, <quote>Five years ago, a good "
2664 "real-time digital video editing system cost $25,000. Today you can get "
2665 "professional quality for $595.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
2666 "id=\"0\"/> These buses are filled with technology that would have cost "
2667 "hundreds of thousands just ten years ago. And it is now feasible to imagine "
2668 "not just buses like this, but classrooms across the country where kids are "
2669 "learning more and more of something teachers call <quote>media "
2673 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2674 #: freeculture.xml:1983
2675 msgid "Yanofsky, Dave"
2679 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2680 #: freeculture.xml:1986
2682 "<quote>Media literacy,</quote> as Dave Yanofsky, the executive director of "
2683 "Just Think!, puts it, <quote>is the ability … to understand, analyze, "
2684 "and deconstruct media images. Its aim is to make [kids] literate about the "
2685 "way media works, the way it's constructed, the way it's delivered, and the "
2686 "way people access it.</quote>"
2689 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2690 #: freeculture.xml:1993
2692 "This may seem like an odd way to think about <quote>literacy.</quote> For "
2693 "most people, literacy is about reading and writing. Faulkner and Hemingway "
2694 "and noticing split infinitives are the things that <quote>literate</quote> "
2695 "people know about."
2698 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2699 #: freeculture.xml:1998 freeculture.xml:2499 freeculture.xml:6410 freeculture.xml:7244 freeculture.xml:8316 freeculture.xml:8387
2704 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2705 #: freeculture.xml:2004
2707 "Judith Van Evra, <citetitle>Television and Child Development</citetitle> "
2708 "(Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1990); <quote>Findings on "
2709 "Family and TV Study,</quote> <citetitle>Denver Post</citetitle>, 25 May "
2713 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2714 #: freeculture.xml:2000
2716 "Maybe. But in a world where children see on average 390 hours of television "
2717 "commercials per year, or between 20,000 and 45,000 commercials "
2718 "generally,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> it is increasingly "
2719 "important to understand the <quote>grammar</quote> of media. For just as "
2720 "there is a grammar for the written word, so, too, is there one for "
2721 "media. And just as kids learn how to write by writing lots of terrible "
2722 "prose, kids learn how to write media by constructing lots of (at least at "
2723 "first) terrible media."
2726 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2727 #: freeculture.xml:2015
2729 "A growing field of academics and activists sees this form of literacy as "
2730 "crucial to the next generation of culture. For though anyone who has written "
2731 "understands how difficult writing is—how difficult it is to sequence "
2732 "the story, to keep a reader's attention, to craft language to be "
2733 "understandable—few of us have any real sense of how difficult media "
2734 "is. Or more fundamentally, few of us have a sense of how media works, how it "
2735 "holds an audience or leads it through a story, how it triggers emotion or "
2739 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2740 #: freeculture.xml:2025
2742 "It took filmmaking a generation before it could do these things well. But "
2743 "even then, the knowledge was in the filming, not in writing about the "
2744 "film. The skill came from experiencing the making of a film, not from "
2745 "reading a book about it. One learns to write by writing and then reflecting "
2746 "upon what one has written. One learns to write with images by making them "
2747 "and then reflecting upon what one has created."
2750 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2751 #: freeculture.xml:2032
2752 msgid "Crichton, Michael"
2755 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2756 #: freeculture.xml:2046 freeculture.xml:2106 freeculture.xml:2113 freeculture.xml:2562
2757 msgid "Barish, Stephanie"
2760 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2761 #: freeculture.xml:2047
2762 msgid "Daley, Elizabeth"
2765 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2766 #: freeculture.xml:2044
2768 "Interview with Elizabeth Daley and Stephanie Barish, 13 December 2002. "
2769 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
2774 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2775 #: freeculture.xml:2058
2777 "See Scott Steinberg, <quote>Crichton Gets Medieval on PCs,</quote> E!online, "
2778 "4 November 2000, available at <ulink "
2779 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #8</ulink>; "
2780 "<quote>Timeline,</quote> 22 November 2000, available at <ulink "
2781 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #9</ulink>."
2784 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2785 #: freeculture.xml:2034
2787 "This grammar has changed as media has changed. When it was just film, as "
2788 "Elizabeth Daley, executive director of the University of Southern "
2789 "California's Annenberg Center for Communication and dean of the USC School "
2790 "of Cinema-Television, explained to me, the grammar was about <quote>the "
2791 "placement of objects, color, … rhythm, pacing, and "
2792 "texture.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> But as computers "
2793 "open up an interactive space where a story is <quote>played</quote> as well "
2794 "as experienced, that grammar changes. The simple control of narrative is "
2795 "lost, and so other techniques are necessary. Author Michael Crichton had "
2796 "mastered the narrative of science fiction. But when he tried to design a "
2797 "computer game based on one of his works, it was a new craft he had to "
2798 "learn. How to lead people through a game without their feeling they have "
2799 "been led was not obvious, even to a wildly successful author.<placeholder "
2800 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
2803 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2804 #: freeculture.xml:2065
2805 msgid "computer games"
2808 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2809 #: freeculture.xml:2067
2811 "This skill is precisely the craft a filmmaker learns. As Daley describes, "
2812 "<quote>people are very surprised about how they are led through a film. [I]t "
2813 "is perfectly constructed to keep you from seeing it, so you have no idea. If "
2814 "a filmmaker succeeds you do not know how you were led.</quote> If you know "
2815 "you were led through a film, the film has failed."
2818 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2819 #: freeculture.xml:2074
2821 "Yet the push for an expanded literacy—one that goes beyond text to "
2822 "include audio and visual elements—is not about making better film "
2823 "directors. The aim is not to improve the profession of filmmaking at all. "
2824 "Instead, as Daley explained,"
2827 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2828 #: freeculture.xml:2081
2830 "From my perspective, probably the most important digital divide is not "
2831 "access to a box. It's the ability to be empowered with the language that "
2832 "that box works in. Otherwise only a very few people can write with this "
2833 "language, and all the rest of us are reduced to being read-only."
2836 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2837 #: freeculture.xml:2089
2839 "<quote>Read-only.</quote> Passive recipients of culture produced elsewhere. "
2840 "Couch potatoes. Consumers. This is the world of media from the twentieth "
2844 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
2845 #: freeculture.xml:2105
2846 msgid "Interview with Daley and Barish. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
2850 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
2851 #: freeculture.xml:2110 freeculture.xml:3888 freeculture.xml:4954 freeculture.xml:8205
2855 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2856 #: freeculture.xml:2094
2858 "The twenty-first century could be different. This is the crucial point: It "
2859 "could be both read and write. Or at least reading and better understanding "
2860 "the craft of writing. Or best, reading and understanding the tools that "
2861 "enable the writing to lead or mislead. The aim of any literacy, and this "
2862 "literacy in particular, is to <quote>empower people to choose the "
2863 "appropriate language for what they need to create or "
2864 "express.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> It is to enable "
2865 "students <quote>to communicate in the language of the twenty-first "
2866 "century.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
2869 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2870 #: freeculture.xml:2115
2872 "As with any language, this language comes more easily to some than to "
2873 "others. It doesn't necessarily come more easily to those who excel in "
2874 "written language. Daley and Stephanie Barish, director of the Institute for "
2875 "Multimedia Literacy at the Annenberg Center, describe one particularly "
2876 "poignant example of a project they ran in a high school. The high school "
2877 "was a very poor inner-city Los Angeles school. In all the traditional "
2878 "measures of success, this school was a failure. But Daley and Barish ran a "
2879 "program that gave kids an opportunity to use film to express meaning about "
2880 "something the students know something about—gun violence."
2883 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2884 #: freeculture.xml:2127
2886 "The class was held on Friday afternoons, and it created a relatively new "
2887 "problem for the school. While the challenge in most classes was getting the "
2888 "kids to come, the challenge in this class was keeping them away. The "
2889 "<quote>kids were showing up at 6 A.M. and leaving at 5 at night,</quote> "
2890 "said Barish. They were working harder than in any other class to do what "
2891 "education should be about—learning how to express themselves."
2894 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2895 #: freeculture.xml:2135
2897 "Using whatever <quote>free web stuff they could find,</quote> and relatively "
2898 "simple tools to enable the kids to mix <quote>image, sound, and "
2899 "text,</quote> Barish said this class produced a series of projects that "
2900 "showed something about gun violence that few would otherwise "
2901 "understand. This was an issue close to the lives of these students. The "
2902 "project <quote>gave them a tool and empowered them to be able to both "
2903 "understand it and talk about it,</quote> Barish explained. That tool "
2904 "succeeded in creating expression—far more successfully and powerfully "
2905 "than could have been created using only text. <quote>If you had said to "
2906 "these students, `you have to do it in text,' they would've just thrown their "
2907 "hands up and gone and done something else,</quote> Barish described, in "
2908 "part, no doubt, because expressing themselves in text is not something these "
2909 "students can do well. Yet neither is text a form in which "
2910 "<emphasis>these</emphasis> ideas can be expressed well. The power of this "
2911 "message depended upon its connection to this form of expression."
2915 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2916 #: freeculture.xml:2154
2918 "<quote>But isn't education about teaching kids to write?</quote> I asked. In "
2919 "part, of course, it is. But why are we teaching kids to write? Education, "
2920 "Daley explained, is about giving students a way of <quote>constructing "
2921 "meaning.</quote> To say that that means just writing is like saying teaching "
2922 "writing is only about teaching kids how to spell. Text is one part—and "
2923 "increasingly, not the most powerful part—of constructing meaning. As "
2924 "Daley explained in the most moving part of our interview,"
2927 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2928 #: freeculture.xml:2165
2930 "What you want is to give these students ways of constructing meaning. If all "
2931 "you give them is text, they're not going to do it. Because they can't. You "
2932 "know, you've got Johnny who can look at a video, he can play a video game, "
2933 "he can do graffiti all over your walls, he can take your car apart, and he "
2934 "can do all sorts of other things. He just can't read your text. So Johnny "
2935 "comes to school and you say, <quote>Johnny, you're illiterate. Nothing you "
2936 "can do matters.</quote> Well, Johnny then has two choices: He can dismiss "
2937 "you or he [can] dismiss himself. If his ego is healthy at all, he's going to "
2938 "dismiss you. [But i]nstead, if you say, <quote>Well, with all these things "
2939 "that you can do, let's talk about this issue. Play for me music that you "
2940 "think reflects that, or show me images that you think reflect that, or draw "
2941 "for me something that reflects that.</quote> Not by giving a kid a video "
2942 "camera and … saying, <quote>Let's go have fun with the video camera "
2943 "and make a little movie.</quote> But instead, really help you take these "
2944 "elements that you understand, that are your language, and construct meaning "
2945 "about the topic.…"
2948 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2949 #: freeculture.xml:2184
2951 "That empowers enormously. And then what happens, of course, is eventually, "
2952 "as it has happened in all these classes, they bump up against the fact, "
2953 "<quote>I need to explain this and I really need to write something.</quote> "
2954 "And as one of the teachers told Stephanie, they would rewrite a paragraph 5, "
2955 "6, 7, 8 times, till they got it right."
2959 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
2960 #: freeculture.xml:2191
2962 "Because they needed to. There was a reason for doing it. They needed to say "
2963 "something, as opposed to just jumping through your hoops. They actually "
2964 "needed to use a language that they didn't speak very well. But they had come "
2965 "to understand that they had a lot of power with this language."
2968 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
2969 #: freeculture.xml:2201
2970 msgid "World Trade Center"
2973 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2974 #: freeculture.xml:2203
2976 "<emphasis role='strong'>When two planes</emphasis> crashed into the World "
2977 "Trade Center, another into the Pentagon, and a fourth into a Pennsylvania "
2978 "field, all media around the world shifted to this news. Every moment of just "
2979 "about every day for that week, and for weeks after, television in "
2980 "particular, and media generally, retold the story of the events we had just "
2981 "witnessed. The telling was a retelling, because we had seen the events that "
2982 "were described. The genius of this awful act of terrorism was that the "
2983 "delayed second attack was perfectly timed to assure that the whole world "
2984 "would be watching."
2987 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
2988 #: freeculture.xml:2215
2990 "These retellings had an increasingly familiar feel. There was music scored "
2991 "for the intermissions, and fancy graphics that flashed across the "
2992 "screen. There was a formula to interviews. There was <quote>balance,</quote> "
2993 "and seriousness. This was news choreographed in the way we have increasingly "
2994 "come to expect it, <quote>news as entertainment,</quote> even if the "
2995 "entertainment is tragedy."
2998 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
2999 #: freeculture.xml:2222 freeculture.xml:8144 freeculture.xml:8381
3003 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3004 #: freeculture.xml:2223
3008 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3009 #: freeculture.xml:2225
3011 "But in addition to this produced news about the <quote>tragedy of September "
3012 "11,</quote> those of us tied to the Internet came to see a very different "
3013 "production as well. The Internet was filled with accounts of the same "
3014 "events. Yet these Internet accounts had a very different flavor. Some people "
3015 "constructed photo pages that captured images from around the world and "
3016 "presented them as slide shows with text. Some offered open letters. There "
3017 "were sound recordings. There was anger and frustration. There were attempts "
3018 "to provide context. There was, in short, an extraordinary worldwide barn "
3019 "raising, in the sense Mike Godwin uses the term in his book <citetitle>Cyber "
3020 "Rights</citetitle>, around a news event that had captured the attention of "
3021 "the world. There was ABC and CBS, but there was also the Internet."
3025 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3026 #: freeculture.xml:2239
3028 "I don't mean simply to praise the Internet—though I do think the "
3029 "people who supported this form of speech should be praised. I mean instead "
3030 "to point to a significance in this form of speech. For like a Kodak, the "
3031 "Internet enables people to capture images. And like in a movie by a student "
3032 "on the <quote>Just Think!</quote> bus, the visual images could be mixed with "
3036 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3037 #: freeculture.xml:2249
3039 "But unlike any technology for simply capturing images, the Internet allows "
3040 "these creations to be shared with an extraordinary number of people, "
3041 "practically instantaneously. This is something new in our "
3042 "tradition—not just that culture can be captured mechanically, and "
3043 "obviously not just that events are commented upon critically, but that this "
3044 "mix of captured images, sound, and commentary can be widely spread "
3045 "practically instantaneously."
3048 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3049 #: freeculture.xml:2258
3051 "September 11 was not an aberration. It was a beginning. Around the same "
3052 "time, a form of communication that has grown dramatically was just beginning "
3053 "to come into public consciousness: the Web-log, or blog. The blog is a kind "
3054 "of public diary, and within some cultures, such as in Japan, it functions "
3055 "very much like a diary. In those cultures, it records private facts in a "
3056 "public way—it's a kind of electronic <citetitle>Jerry "
3057 "Springer</citetitle>, available anywhere in the world."
3060 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3061 #: freeculture.xml:2266 freeculture.xml:2339 freeculture.xml:2462
3062 msgid "blogs (Web-logs)"
3065 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3066 #: freeculture.xml:2268
3068 "But in the United States, blogs have taken on a very different character. "
3069 "There are some who use the space simply to talk about their private "
3070 "life. But there are many who use the space to engage in public "
3071 "discourse. Discussing matters of public import, criticizing others who are "
3072 "mistaken in their views, criticizing politicians about the decisions they "
3073 "make, offering solutions to problems we all see: blogs create the sense of a "
3074 "virtual public meeting, but one in which we don't all hope to be there at "
3075 "the same time and in which conversations are not necessarily linked. The "
3076 "best of the blog entries are relatively short; they point directly to words "
3077 "used by others, criticizing with or adding to them. They are arguably the "
3078 "most important form of unchoreographed public discourse that we have."
3082 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3083 #: freeculture.xml:2282
3085 "That's a strong statement. Yet it says as much about our democracy as it "
3086 "does about blogs. This is the part of America that is most difficult for "
3087 "those of us who love America to accept: Our democracy has atrophied. Of "
3088 "course we have elections, and most of the time the courts allow those "
3089 "elections to count. A relatively small number of people vote in those "
3090 "elections. The cycle of these elections has become totally professionalized "
3091 "and routinized. Most of us think this is democracy."
3094 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3095 #: freeculture.xml:2292
3096 msgid "Tocqueville, Alexis de"
3099 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3100 #: freeculture.xml:2293
3105 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3106 #: freeculture.xml:2310
3108 "See, for example, Alexis de Tocqueville, <citetitle>Democracy in "
3109 "America</citetitle>, bk. 1, trans. Henry Reeve (New York: Bantam Books, "
3113 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3114 #: freeculture.xml:2295
3116 "But democracy has never just been about elections. Democracy means rule by "
3117 "the people, but rule means something more than mere elections. In our "
3118 "tradition, it also means control through reasoned discourse. This was the "
3119 "idea that captured the imagination of Alexis de Tocqueville, the "
3120 "nineteenth-century French lawyer who wrote the most important account of "
3121 "early <quote>Democracy in America.</quote> It wasn't popular elections that "
3122 "fascinated him—it was the jury, an institution that gave ordinary "
3123 "people the right to choose life or death for other citizens. And most "
3124 "fascinating for him was that the jury didn't just vote about the outcome "
3125 "they would impose. They deliberated. Members argued about the "
3126 "<quote>right</quote> result; they tried to persuade each other of the "
3127 "<quote>right</quote> result, and in criminal cases at least, they had to "
3128 "agree upon a unanimous result for the process to come to an end.<placeholder "
3129 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
3133 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3134 #: freeculture.xml:2319
3136 "Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin, <quote>Deliberation Day,</quote> "
3137 "<citetitle>Journal of Political Philosophy</citetitle> 10 (2) (2002): 129."
3140 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3141 #: freeculture.xml:2315
3143 "Yet even this institution flags in American life today. And in its place, "
3144 "there is no systematic effort to enable citizen deliberation. Some are "
3145 "pushing to create just such an institution.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
3146 "id=\"0\"/> And in some towns in New England, something close to deliberation "
3147 "remains. But for most of us for most of the time, there is no time or place "
3148 "for <quote>democratic deliberation</quote> to occur."
3152 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3153 #: freeculture.xml:2334
3155 "Cass Sunstein, <citetitle>Republic.com</citetitle> (Princeton: Princeton "
3156 "University Press, 2001), 65–80, 175, 182, 183, 192."
3159 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3160 #: freeculture.xml:2327
3162 "More bizarrely, there is generally not even permission for it to occur. We, "
3163 "the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm "
3164 "against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people "
3165 "you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you "
3166 "disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse "
3167 "becomes more extreme.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> We say what "
3168 "our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say."
3171 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3172 #: freeculture.xml:2340
3177 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3178 #: freeculture.xml:2342
3180 "Enter the blog. The blog's very architecture solves one part of this "
3181 "problem. People post when they want to post, and people read when they want "
3182 "to read. The most difficult time is synchronous time. Technologies that "
3183 "enable asynchronous communication, such as e-mail, increase the opportunity "
3184 "for communication. Blogs allow for public discourse without the public ever "
3185 "needing to gather in a single public place."
3188 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3189 #: freeculture.xml:2353
3191 "But beyond architecture, blogs also have solved the problem of "
3192 "norms. There's no norm (yet) in blog space not to talk about politics. "
3193 "Indeed, the space is filled with political speech, on both the right and the "
3194 "left. Some of the most popular sites are conservative or libertarian, but "
3195 "there are many of all political stripes. And even blogs that are not "
3196 "political cover political issues when the occasion merits."
3199 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3200 #: freeculture.xml:2360
3201 msgid "Dean, Howard"
3204 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3205 #: freeculture.xml:2362
3207 "The significance of these blogs is tiny now, though not so tiny. The name "
3208 "Howard Dean may well have faded from the 2004 presidential race but for "
3209 "blogs. Yet even if the number of readers is small, the reading is having an "
3213 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3214 #: freeculture.xml:2367
3218 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3219 #: freeculture.xml:2368
3220 msgid "Thurmond, Strom"
3224 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3225 #: freeculture.xml:2381
3227 "Noah Shachtman, <quote>With Incessant Postings, a Pundit Stirs the "
3228 "Pot,</quote> New York Times, 16 January 2003, G5."
3231 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3232 #: freeculture.xml:2370
3234 "One direct effect is on stories that had a different life cycle in the "
3235 "mainstream media. The Trent Lott affair is an example. When Lott "
3236 "<quote>misspoke</quote> at a party for Senator Strom Thurmond, essentially "
3237 "praising Thurmond's segregationist policies, he calculated correctly that "
3238 "this story would disappear from the mainstream press within forty-eight "
3239 "hours. It did. But he didn't calculate its life cycle in blog space. The "
3240 "bloggers kept researching the story. Over time, more and more instances of "
3241 "the same <quote>misspeaking</quote> emerged. Finally, the story broke back "
3242 "into the mainstream press. In the end, Lott was forced to resign as senate "
3243 "majority leader.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
3246 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3247 #: freeculture.xml:2386
3249 "This different cycle is possible because the same commercial pressures don't "
3250 "exist with blogs as with other ventures. Television and newspapers are "
3251 "commercial entities. They must work to keep attention. If they lose "
3252 "readers, they lose revenue. Like sharks, they must move on."
3255 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3256 #: freeculture.xml:2393
3258 "But bloggers don't have a similar constraint. They can obsess, they can "
3259 "focus, they can get serious. If a particular blogger writes a particularly "
3260 "interesting story, more and more people link to that story. And as the "
3261 "number of links to a particular story increases, it rises in the ranks of "
3262 "stories. People read what is popular; what is popular has been selected by a "
3263 "very democratic process of peer-generated rankings."
3266 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3267 #: freeculture.xml:2401
3272 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3273 #: freeculture.xml:2403
3275 "There's a second way, as well, in which blogs have a different cycle from "
3276 "the mainstream press. As Dave Winer, one of the fathers of this movement and "
3277 "a software author for many decades, told me, another difference is the "
3278 "absence of a financial <quote>conflict of interest.</quote> <quote>I think "
3279 "you have to take the conflict of interest</quote> out of journalism, Winer "
3280 "told me. <quote>An amateur journalist simply doesn't have a conflict of "
3281 "interest, or the conflict of interest is so easily disclosed that you know "
3282 "you can sort of get it out of the way.</quote>"
3285 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3286 #: freeculture.xml:2413 freeculture.xml:2459
3290 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3291 #: freeculture.xml:2414 freeculture.xml:2460 freeculture.xml:5603
3296 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3297 #: freeculture.xml:2422
3298 msgid "Telephone interview with David Winer, 16 April 2003."
3301 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3302 #: freeculture.xml:2416
3304 "These conflicts become more important as media becomes more concentrated "
3305 "(more on this below). A concentrated media can hide more from the public "
3306 "than an unconcentrated media can—as CNN admitted it did after the Iraq "
3307 "war because it was afraid of the consequences to its own "
3308 "employees.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> It also needs to sustain "
3309 "a more coherent account. (In the middle of the Iraq war, I read a post on "
3310 "the Internet from someone who was at that time listening to a satellite "
3311 "uplink with a reporter in Iraq. The New York headquarters was telling the "
3312 "reporter over and over that her account of the war was too bleak: She needed "
3313 "to offer a more optimistic story. When she told New York that wasn't "
3314 "warranted, they told her that <emphasis>they</emphasis> were writing "
3315 "<quote>the story.</quote>)"
3319 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3320 #: freeculture.xml:2440
3322 "John Schwartz, <quote>Loss of the Shuttle: The Internet; A Wealth of "
3323 "Information Online,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 2 "
3324 "February 2003, A28; Staci D. Kramer, <quote>Shuttle Disaster Coverage Mixed, "
3325 "but Strong Overall,</quote> Online Journalism Review, 2 February 2003, "
3326 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #10</ulink>."
3329 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3330 #: freeculture.xml:2432
3332 "Blog space gives amateurs a way to enter the "
3333 "debate—<quote>amateur</quote> not in the sense of inexperienced, but "
3334 "in the sense of an Olympic athlete, meaning not paid by anyone to give their "
3335 "reports. It allows for a much broader range of input into a story, as "
3336 "reporting on the Columbia disaster revealed, when hundreds from across the "
3337 "southwest United States turned to the Internet to retell what they had "
3338 "seen.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And it drives readers to read "
3339 "across the range of accounts and <quote>triangulate,</quote> as Winer puts "
3340 "it, the truth. Blogs, Winer says, are <quote>communicating directly with our "
3341 "constituency, and the middle man is out of it</quote>—with all the "
3342 "benefits, and costs, that might entail."
3345 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3346 #: freeculture.xml:2461
3347 msgid "Olafson, Steve"
3350 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3351 #: freeculture.xml:2459
3353 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
3354 "id=\"1\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> <placeholder "
3355 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/> See Michael Falcone, <quote>Does an Editor's "
3356 "Pencil Ruin a Web Log?</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 29 "
3357 "September 2003, C4. (<quote>Not all news organizations have been as "
3358 "accepting of employees who blog. Kevin Sites, a CNN correspondent in Iraq "
3359 "who started a blog about his reporting of the war on March 9, stopped "
3360 "posting 12 days later at his bosses' request. Last year Steve Olafson, a "
3361 "<citetitle>Houston Chronicle</citetitle> reporter, was fired for keeping a "
3362 "personal Web log, published under a pseudonym, that dealt with some of the "
3363 "issues and people he was covering.</quote>)"
3367 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3368 #: freeculture.xml:2452
3370 "Winer is optimistic about the future of journalism infected with "
3371 "blogs. <quote>It's going to become an essential skill,</quote> Winer "
3372 "predicts, for public figures and increasingly for private figures as "
3373 "well. It's not clear that <quote>journalism</quote> is happy about "
3374 "this—some journalists have been told to curtail their "
3375 "blogging.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> But it is clear that we "
3376 "are still in transition. <quote>A lot of what we are doing now is warm-up "
3377 "exercises,</quote> Winer told me. There is a lot that must mature before "
3378 "this space has its mature effect. And as the inclusion of content in this "
3379 "space is the least infringing use of the Internet (meaning infringing on "
3380 "copyright), Winer said, <quote>we will be the last thing that gets shut "
3384 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3385 #: freeculture.xml:2482
3387 "This speech affects democracy. Winer thinks that happens because <quote>you "
3388 "don't have to work for somebody who controls, [for] a gatekeeper.</quote> "
3389 "That is true. But it affects democracy in another way as well. As more and "
3390 "more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will "
3391 "change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and "
3392 "misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be "
3393 "criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has "
3394 "been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore "
3395 "when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and "
3396 "criticism improves democracy. Today there are probably a couple of million "
3397 "blogs where such writing happens. When there are ten million, there will be "
3398 "something extraordinary to report."
3401 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3402 #: freeculture.xml:2498
3403 msgid "Brown, John Seely"
3406 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3407 #: freeculture.xml:2501
3409 "<emphasis role='strong'>John Seely Brown</emphasis> is the chief scientist "
3410 "of the Xerox Corporation. His work, as his Web site describes it, is "
3411 "<quote>human learning and … the creation of knowledge ecologies for "
3412 "creating … innovation.</quote>"
3415 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3416 #: freeculture.xml:2507
3418 "Brown thus looks at these technologies of digital creativity a bit "
3419 "differently from the perspectives I've sketched so far. I'm sure he would be "
3420 "excited about any technology that might improve democracy. But his real "
3421 "excitement comes from how these technologies affect learning."
3425 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3426 #: freeculture.xml:2514
3428 "As Brown believes, we learn by tinkering. When <quote>a lot of us grew "
3429 "up,</quote> he explains, that tinkering was done <quote>on motorcycle "
3430 "engines, lawnmower engines, automobiles, radios, and so on.</quote> But "
3431 "digital technologies enable a different kind of tinkering—with "
3432 "abstract ideas though in concrete form. The kids at Just Think! not only "
3433 "think about how a commercial portrays a politician; using digital "
3434 "technology, they can take the commercial apart and manipulate it, tinker "
3435 "with it to see how it does what it does. Digital technologies launch a kind "
3436 "of bricolage, or <quote>free collage,</quote> as Brown calls it. Many get to "
3437 "add to or transform the tinkering of many others."
3440 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3441 #: freeculture.xml:2527
3443 "The best large-scale example of this kind of tinkering so far is free "
3444 "software or open-source software (FS/OSS). FS/OSS is software whose source "
3445 "code is shared. Anyone can download the technology that makes a FS/OSS "
3446 "program run. And anyone eager to learn how a particular bit of FS/OSS "
3447 "technology works can tinker with the code."
3450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3451 #: freeculture.xml:2534
3453 "This opportunity creates a <quote>completely new kind of learning "
3454 "platform,</quote> as Brown describes. <quote>As soon as you start doing "
3455 "that, you … unleash a free collage on the community, so that other "
3456 "people can start looking at your code, tinkering with it, trying it out, "
3457 "seeing if they can improve it.</quote> Each effort is a kind of "
3458 "apprenticeship. <quote>Open source becomes a major apprenticeship "
3462 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3463 #: freeculture.xml:2542
3465 "In this process, <quote>the concrete things you tinker with are abstract. "
3466 "They are code.</quote> Kids are <quote>shifting to the ability to tinker in "
3467 "the abstract, and this tinkering is no longer an isolated activity that "
3468 "you're doing in your garage. You are tinkering with a community "
3469 "platform. … You are tinkering with other people's stuff. The more you "
3470 "tinker the more you improve.</quote> The more you improve, the more you "
3474 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3475 #: freeculture.xml:2551
3477 "This same thing happens with content, too. And it happens in the same "
3478 "collaborative way when that content is part of the Web. As Brown puts it, "
3479 "<quote>the Web [is] the first medium that truly honors multiple forms of "
3480 "intelligence.</quote> Earlier technologies, such as the typewriter or word "
3481 "processors, helped amplify text. But the Web amplifies much more than "
3482 "text. <quote>The Web … says if you are musical, if you are artistic, "
3483 "if you are visual, if you are interested in film … [then] there is a "
3484 "lot you can start to do on this medium. [It] can now amplify and honor these "
3485 "multiple forms of intelligence.</quote>"
3489 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3490 #: freeculture.xml:2564
3492 "Brown is talking about what Elizabeth Daley, Stephanie Barish, and Just "
3493 "Think! teach: that this tinkering with culture teaches as well as "
3494 "creates. It develops talents differently, and it builds a different kind of "
3498 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3499 #: freeculture.xml:2572
3501 "Yet the freedom to tinker with these objects is not guaranteed. Indeed, as "
3502 "we'll see through the course of this book, that freedom is increasingly "
3503 "highly contested. While there's no doubt that your father had the right to "
3504 "tinker with the car engine, there's great doubt that your child will have "
3505 "the right to tinker with the images she finds all around. The law and, "
3506 "increasingly, technology interfere with a freedom that technology, and "
3507 "curiosity, would otherwise ensure."
3511 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3512 #: freeculture.xml:2588
3514 "See, for example, Edward Felten and Andrew Appel, <quote>Technological "
3515 "Access Control Interferes with Noninfringing Scholarship,</quote> "
3516 "<citetitle>Communications of the Association for Computer "
3517 "Machinery</citetitle> 43 (2000): 9."
3520 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3521 #: freeculture.xml:2581
3523 "These restrictions have become the focus of researchers and scholars. "
3524 "Professor Ed Felten of Princeton (whom we'll see more of in chapter <xref "
3525 "xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"property-i\"/>) has developed a "
3526 "powerful argument in favor of the <quote>right to tinker</quote> as it "
3527 "applies to computer science and to knowledge in general.<placeholder "
3528 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> But Brown's concern is earlier, or younger, or "
3529 "more fundamental. It is about the learning that kids can do, or can't do, "
3530 "because of the law."
3533 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3534 #: freeculture.xml:2596
3536 "<quote>This is where education in the twenty-first century is going,</quote> "
3537 "Brown explains. We need to <quote>understand how kids who grow up digital "
3538 "think and want to learn.</quote>"
3541 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3542 #: freeculture.xml:2601
3544 "<quote>Yet,</quote> as Brown continued, and as the balance of this book will "
3545 "evince, <quote>we are building a legal system that completely suppresses the "
3546 "natural tendencies of today's digital kids. … We're building an "
3547 "architecture that unleashes 60 percent of the brain [and] a legal system "
3548 "that closes down that part of the brain.</quote>"
3551 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3552 #: freeculture.xml:2609
3554 "We're building a technology that takes the magic of Kodak, mixes moving "
3555 "images and sound, and adds a space for commentary and an opportunity to "
3556 "spread that creativity everywhere. But we're building the law to close down "
3560 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3561 #: freeculture.xml:2615
3563 "<quote>No way to run a culture,</quote> as Brewster Kahle, whom we'll meet "
3564 "in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"collectors\"/>, "
3565 "quipped to me in a rare moment of despondence."
3568 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
3569 #: freeculture.xml:2622
3570 msgid "CHAPTER THREE: Catalogs"
3573 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3574 #: freeculture.xml:2623
3578 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3579 #: freeculture.xml:2623 freeculture.xml:2624
3580 msgid "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)"
3583 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3584 #: freeculture.xml:2626
3586 "<emphasis role='strong'>In the fall</emphasis> of 2002, Jesse Jordan of "
3587 "Oceanside, New York, enrolled as a freshman at Rensselaer Polytechnic "
3588 "Institute, in Troy, New York. His major at RPI was information "
3589 "technology. Though he is not a programmer, in October Jesse decided to begin "
3590 "to tinker with search engine technology that was available on the RPI "
3594 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3595 #: freeculture.xml:2634
3597 "RPI is one of America's foremost technological research institutions. It "
3598 "offers degrees in fields ranging from architecture and engineering to "
3599 "information sciences. More than 65 percent of its five thousand "
3600 "undergraduates finished in the top 10 percent of their high school "
3601 "class. The school is thus a perfect mix of talent and experience to imagine "
3602 "and then build, a generation for the network age."
3605 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3606 #: freeculture.xml:2642
3608 "RPI's computer network links students, faculty, and administration to one "
3609 "another. It also links RPI to the Internet. Not everything available on the "
3610 "RPI network is available on the Internet. But the network is designed to "
3611 "enable students to get access to the Internet, as well as more intimate "
3612 "access to other members of the RPI community."
3616 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3617 #: freeculture.xml:2649
3619 "Search engines are a measure of a network's intimacy. Google brought the "
3620 "Internet much closer to all of us by fantastically improving the quality of "
3621 "search on the network. Specialty search engines can do this even better. The "
3622 "idea of <quote>intranet</quote> search engines, search engines that search "
3623 "within the network of a particular institution, is to provide users of that "
3624 "institution with better access to material from that institution. "
3625 "Businesses do this all the time, enabling employees to have access to "
3626 "material that people outside the business can't get. Universities do it as "
3630 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3631 #: freeculture.xml:2661
3633 "These engines are enabled by the network technology itself. Microsoft, for "
3634 "example, has a network file system that makes it very easy for search "
3635 "engines tuned to that network to query the system for information about the "
3636 "publicly (within that network) available content. Jesse's search engine was "
3637 "built to take advantage of this technology. It used Microsoft's network file "
3638 "system to build an index of all the files available within the RPI network."
3641 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3642 #: freeculture.xml:2670
3644 "Jesse's wasn't the first search engine built for the RPI network. Indeed, "
3645 "his engine was a simple modification of engines that others had built. His "
3646 "single most important improvement over those engines was to fix a bug within "
3647 "the Microsoft file-sharing system that could cause a user's computer to "
3648 "crash. With the engines that existed before, if you tried to access a file "
3649 "through a Windows browser that was on a computer that was off-line, your "
3650 "computer could crash. Jesse modified the system a bit to fix that problem, "
3651 "by adding a button that a user could click to see if the machine holding the "
3652 "file was still on-line."
3655 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3656 #: freeculture.xml:2682
3658 "Jesse's engine went on-line in late October. Over the following six months, "
3659 "he continued to tweak it to improve its functionality. By March, the system "
3660 "was functioning quite well. Jesse had more than one million files in his "
3661 "directory, including every type of content that might be on users' "
3666 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3667 #: freeculture.xml:2689
3669 "Thus the index his search engine produced included pictures, which students "
3670 "could use to put on their own Web sites; copies of notes or research; copies "
3671 "of information pamphlets; movie clips that students might have created; "
3672 "university brochures—basically anything that users of the RPI network "
3673 "made available in a public folder of their computer."
3676 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3677 #: freeculture.xml:2698
3679 "But the index also included music files. In fact, one quarter of the files "
3680 "that Jesse's search engine listed were music files. But that means, of "
3681 "course, that three quarters were not, and—so that this point is "
3682 "absolutely clear—Jesse did nothing to induce people to put music files "
3683 "in their public folders. He did nothing to target the search engine to these "
3684 "files. He was a kid tinkering with a Google-like technology at a university "
3685 "where he was studying information science, and hence, tinkering was the "
3686 "aim. Unlike Google, or Microsoft, for that matter, he made no money from "
3687 "this tinkering; he was not connected to any business that would make any "
3688 "money from this experiment. He was a kid tinkering with technology in an "
3689 "environment where tinkering with technology was precisely what he was "
3693 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3694 #: freeculture.xml:2713
3696 "On April 3, 2003, Jesse was contacted by the dean of students at RPI. The "
3697 "dean informed Jesse that the Recording Industry Association of America, the "
3698 "RIAA, would be filing a lawsuit against him and three other students whom he "
3699 "didn't even know, two of them at other universities. A few hours later, "
3700 "Jesse was served with papers from the suit. As he read these papers and "
3701 "watched the news reports about them, he was increasingly astonished."
3704 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3705 #: freeculture.xml:2722
3707 "<quote>It was absurd,</quote> he told me. <quote>I don't think I did "
3708 "anything wrong. … I don't think there's anything wrong with the "
3709 "search engine that I ran or … what I had done to it. I mean, I hadn't "
3710 "modified it in any way that promoted or enhanced the work of pirates. I just "
3711 "modified the search engine in a way that would make it easier to "
3712 "use</quote>—again, a <emphasis>search engine</emphasis>, which Jesse "
3713 "had not himself built, using the Windows filesharing system, which Jesse had "
3714 "not himself built, to enable members of the RPI community to get access to "
3715 "content, which Jesse had not himself created or posted, and the vast "
3716 "majority of which had nothing to do with music."
3719 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3720 #: freeculture.xml:2734
3721 msgid "statutory damages"
3725 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3726 #: freeculture.xml:2736
3728 "But the RIAA branded Jesse a pirate. They claimed he operated a network and "
3729 "had therefore <quote>willfully</quote> violated copyright laws. They "
3730 "demanded that he pay them the damages for his wrong. For cases of "
3731 "<quote>willful infringement,</quote> the Copyright Act specifies something "
3732 "lawyers call <quote>statutory damages.</quote> These damages permit a "
3733 "copyright owner to claim $150,000 per infringement. As the RIAA alleged more "
3734 "than one hundred specific copyright infringements, they therefore demanded "
3735 "that Jesse pay them at least $15,000,000."
3738 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3739 #: freeculture.xml:2746
3740 msgid "Princeton University"
3743 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3744 #: freeculture.xml:2747
3745 msgid "Michigan Technical University"
3749 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3750 #: freeculture.xml:2761
3752 "Tim Goral, <quote>Recording Industry Goes After Campus P-2-P Networks: Suit "
3753 "Alleges $97.8 Billion in Damages,</quote> <citetitle>Professional Media "
3754 "Group LCC</citetitle> 6 (2003): 5, available at 2003 WL 55179443."
3757 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3758 #: freeculture.xml:2749
3760 "Similar lawsuits were brought against three other students: one other "
3761 "student at RPI, one at Michigan Technical University, and one at "
3762 "Princeton. Their situations were similar to Jesse's. Though each case was "
3763 "different in detail, the bottom line in each was exactly the same: huge "
3764 "demands for <quote>damages</quote> that the RIAA claimed it was entitled "
3765 "to. If you added up the claims, these four lawsuits were asking courts in "
3766 "the United States to award the plaintiffs close to $100 "
3767 "<emphasis>billion</emphasis>—six times the <emphasis>total</emphasis> "
3768 "profit of the film industry in 2001.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
3772 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3773 #: freeculture.xml:2768
3775 "Jesse called his parents. They were supportive but a bit frightened. An "
3776 "uncle was a lawyer. He began negotiations with the RIAA. They demanded to "
3777 "know how much money Jesse had. Jesse had saved $12,000 from summer jobs and "
3778 "other employment. They demanded $12,000 to dismiss the case."
3781 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
3782 #: freeculture.xml:2774
3783 msgid "Oppenheimer, Matt"
3786 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3787 #: freeculture.xml:2776
3789 "The RIAA wanted Jesse to admit to doing something wrong. He refused. They "
3790 "wanted him to agree to an injunction that would essentially make it "
3791 "impossible for him to work in many fields of technology for the rest of his "
3792 "life. He refused. They made him understand that this process of being sued "
3793 "was not going to be pleasant. (As Jesse's father recounted to me, the chief "
3794 "lawyer on the case, Matt Oppenheimer, told Jesse, <quote>You don't want to "
3795 "pay another visit to a dentist like me.</quote>) And throughout, the RIAA "
3796 "insisted it would not settle the case until it took every penny Jesse had "
3801 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3802 #: freeculture.xml:2787
3804 "Jesse's family was outraged at these claims. They wanted to fight. But "
3805 "Jesse's uncle worked to educate the family about the nature of the American "
3806 "legal system. Jesse could fight the RIAA. He might even win. But the cost of "
3807 "fighting a lawsuit like this, Jesse was told, would be at least $250,000. If "
3808 "he won, he would not recover that money. If he won, he would have a piece of "
3809 "paper saying he had won, and a piece of paper saying he and his family were "
3813 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3814 #: freeculture.xml:2797
3816 "So Jesse faced a mafia-like choice: $250,000 and a chance at winning, or "
3817 "$12,000 and a settlement."
3820 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
3821 #: freeculture.xml:2800 freeculture.xml:3154 freeculture.xml:4089 freeculture.xml:5204 freeculture.xml:5253 freeculture.xml:9637 freeculture.xml:9735 freeculture.xml:9904 freeculture.xml:14466 freeculture.xml:14531
3825 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
3826 #: freeculture.xml:2800 freeculture.xml:3154 freeculture.xml:4089 freeculture.xml:9637 freeculture.xml:9735 freeculture.xml:9904 freeculture.xml:14466 freeculture.xml:14531
3827 msgid "recording industry payments to"
3831 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3832 #: freeculture.xml:2810
3834 "Occupational Employment Survey, U.S. Dept. of Labor (2001) "
3835 "(27–2042—Musicians and Singers). See also National Endowment for "
3836 "the Arts, <citetitle>More Than One in a Blue Moon</citetitle> (2000)."
3840 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
3841 #: freeculture.xml:2818
3843 "Douglas Lichtman makes a related point in <quote>KaZaA and "
3844 "Punishment,</quote> <citetitle>Wall Street Journal</citetitle>, 10 September "
3848 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3849 #: freeculture.xml:2802
3851 "The recording industry insists this is a matter of law and morality. Let's "
3852 "put the law aside for a moment and think about the morality. Where is the "
3853 "morality in a lawsuit like this? What is the virtue in scapegoatism? The "
3854 "RIAA is an extraordinarily powerful lobby. The president of the RIAA is "
3855 "reported to make more than $1 million a year. Artists, on the other hand, "
3856 "are not well paid. The average recording artist makes $45,900.<placeholder "
3857 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> There are plenty of ways for the RIAA to affect "
3858 "and direct policy. So where is the morality in taking money from a student "
3859 "for running a search engine?<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
3862 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3863 #: freeculture.xml:2823
3865 "On June 23, Jesse wired his savings to the lawyer working for the RIAA. The "
3866 "case against him was then dismissed. And with this, this kid who had "
3867 "tinkered a computer into a $15 million lawsuit became an activist:"
3870 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
3871 #: freeculture.xml:2830
3873 "I was definitely not an activist [before]. I never really meant to be an "
3874 "activist. … [But] I've been pushed into this. In no way did I ever "
3875 "foresee anything like this, but I think it's just completely absurd what the "
3879 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3880 #: freeculture.xml:2837
3882 "Jesse's parents betray a certain pride in their reluctant activist. As his "
3883 "father told me, Jesse <quote>considers himself very conservative, and so do "
3884 "I. … He's not a tree hugger. … I think it's bizarre that they "
3885 "would pick on him. But he wants to let people know that they're sending the "
3886 "wrong message. And he wants to correct the record.</quote>"
3889 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
3890 #: freeculture.xml:2846
3891 msgid "CHAPTER FOUR: <quote>Pirates</quote>"
3894 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
3895 #: freeculture.xml:2849
3897 "<emphasis role='strong'>If <quote>piracy</quote> means</emphasis> using the "
3898 "creative property of others without their permission—if <quote>if "
3899 "value, then right</quote> is true—then the history of the content "
3900 "industry is a history of piracy. Every important sector of <quote>big "
3901 "media</quote> today—film, records, radio, and cable TV—was born "
3902 "of a kind of piracy so defined. The consistent story is how last "
3903 "generation's pirates join this generation's country club—until now."
3906 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
3907 #: freeculture.xml:2860
3911 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
3912 #: freeculture.xml:2864
3914 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> I am grateful to Peter DiMauro "
3915 "for pointing me to this extraordinary history. See also Siva Vaidhyanathan, "
3916 "<citetitle>Copyrights and Copywrongs</citetitle>, 87–93, which details "
3917 "Edison's <quote>adventures</quote> with copyright and patent."
3921 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
3922 #: freeculture.xml:2862
3924 "The film industry of Hollywood was built by fleeing pirates.<placeholder "
3925 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Creators and directors migrated from the East "
3926 "Coast to California in the early twentieth century in part to escape "
3927 "controls that patents granted the inventor of filmmaking, Thomas "
3928 "Edison. These controls were exercised through a monopoly "
3929 "<quote>trust,</quote> the Motion Pictures Patents Company, and were based on "
3930 "Thomas Edison's creative property—patents. Edison formed the MPPC to "
3931 "exercise the rights this creative property gave him, and the MPPC was "
3932 "serious about the control it demanded."
3935 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
3936 #: freeculture.xml:2880
3937 msgid "As one commentator tells one part of the story,"
3940 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
3941 #: freeculture.xml:2884
3943 "A January 1909 deadline was set for all companies to comply with the "
3944 "license. By February, unlicensed outlaws, who referred to themselves as "
3945 "independents protested the trust and carried on business without submitting "
3946 "to the Edison monopoly. In the summer of 1909 the independent movement was "
3947 "in full-swing, with producers and theater owners using illegal equipment and "
3948 "imported film stock to create their own underground market."
3951 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
3952 #: freeculture.xml:2892
3953 msgid "Fox, William"
3956 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
3957 #: freeculture.xml:2893
3958 msgid "General Film Company"
3961 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3962 #: freeculture.xml:2894 freeculture.xml:3172 freeculture.xml:4304 freeculture.xml:9777
3963 msgid "Picker, Randal C."
3966 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
3967 #: freeculture.xml:2918 freeculture.xml:4303 freeculture.xml:9511 freeculture.xml:9632
3968 msgid "broadcast flag"
3971 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
3972 #: freeculture.xml:2907
3974 "J. A. Aberdeen, <citetitle>Hollywood Renegades: The Society of Independent "
3975 "Motion Picture Producers</citetitle> (Cobblestone Entertainment, 2000) and "
3976 "expanded texts posted at <quote>The Edison Movie Monopoly: The Motion "
3977 "Picture Patents Company vs. the Independent Outlaws,</quote> available at "
3978 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #11</ulink>. For a "
3979 "discussion of the economic motive behind both these limits and the limits "
3980 "imposed by Victor on phonographs, see Randal C. Picker, <quote>From Edison "
3981 "to the Broadcast Flag: Mechanisms of Consent and Refusal and the "
3982 "Propertization of Copyright</quote> (September 2002), University of Chicago "
3983 "Law School, James M. Olin Program in Law and Economics, Working Paper "
3984 "No. 159. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
3987 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
3988 #: freeculture.xml:2896
3990 "With the country experiencing a tremendous expansion in the number of "
3991 "nickelodeons, the Patents Company reacted to the independent movement by "
3992 "forming a strong-arm subsidiary known as the General Film Company to block "
3993 "the entry of non-licensed independents. With coercive tactics that have "
3994 "become legendary, General Film confiscated unlicensed equipment, "
3995 "discontinued product supply to theaters which showed unlicensed films, and "
3996 "effectively monopolized distribution with the acquisition of all U.S. film "
3997 "exchanges, except for the one owned by the independent William Fox who "
3998 "defied the Trust even after his license was revoked.<placeholder "
3999 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4003 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4004 #: freeculture.xml:2929
4006 "Marc Wanamaker, <quote>The First Studios,</quote> <citetitle>The Silents "
4007 "Majority</citetitle>, archived at <ulink "
4008 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #12</ulink>."
4011 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4012 #: freeculture.xml:2923
4014 "The Napsters of those days, the <quote>independents,</quote> were companies "
4015 "like Fox. And no less than today, these independents were vigorously "
4016 "resisted. <quote>Shooting was disrupted by machinery stolen, and "
4017 "`accidents' resulting in loss of negatives, equipment, buildings and "
4018 "sometimes life and limb frequently occurred.</quote><placeholder "
4019 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> That led the independents to flee the East "
4020 "Coast. California was remote enough from Edison's reach that filmmakers "
4021 "there could pirate his inventions without fear of the law. And the leaders "
4022 "of Hollywood filmmaking, Fox most prominently, did just that."
4026 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4027 #: freeculture.xml:2939
4029 "Of course, California grew quickly, and the effective enforcement of federal "
4030 "law eventually spread west. But because patents grant the patent holder a "
4031 "truly <quote>limited</quote> monopoly (just seventeen years at that time), "
4032 "by the time enough federal marshals appeared, the patents had expired. A new "
4033 "industry had been born, in part from the piracy of Edison's creative "
4037 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
4038 #: freeculture.xml:2950
4039 msgid "Recorded Music"
4042 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4043 #: freeculture.xml:2952
4045 "The record industry was born of another kind of piracy, though to see how "
4046 "requires a bit of detail about the way the law regulates music."
4049 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4050 #: freeculture.xml:2955
4051 msgid "Fourneaux, Henri"
4054 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4055 #: freeculture.xml:2956
4056 msgid "Russel, Phil"
4059 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4060 #: freeculture.xml:2958
4062 "At the time that Edison and Henri Fourneaux invented machines for "
4063 "reproducing music (Edison the phonograph, Fourneaux the player piano), the "
4064 "law gave composers the exclusive right to control copies of their music and "
4065 "the exclusive right to control public performances of their music. In other "
4066 "words, in 1900, if I wanted a copy of Phil Russel's 1899 hit <quote>Happy "
4067 "Mose,</quote> the law said I would have to pay for the right to get a copy "
4068 "of the musical score, and I would also have to pay for the right to perform "
4072 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4073 #: freeculture.xml:2967 freeculture.xml:3116
4077 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4078 #: freeculture.xml:2969
4080 "But what if I wanted to record <quote>Happy Mose,</quote> using Edison's "
4081 "phonograph or Fourneaux's player piano? Here the law stumbled. It was clear "
4082 "enough that I would have to buy any copy of the musical score that I "
4083 "performed in making this recording. And it was clear enough that I would "
4084 "have to pay for any public performance of the work I was recording. But it "
4085 "wasn't totally clear that I would have to pay for a <quote>public "
4086 "performance</quote> if I recorded the song in my own house (even today, you "
4087 "don't owe the Beatles anything if you sing their songs in the shower), or if "
4088 "I recorded the song from memory (copies in your brain are "
4089 "not—yet— regulated by copyright law). So if I simply sang the "
4090 "song into a recording device in the privacy of my own home, it wasn't clear "
4091 "that I owed the composer anything. And more importantly, it wasn't clear "
4092 "whether I owed the composer anything if I then made copies of those "
4093 "recordings. Because of this gap in the law, then, I could effectively "
4094 "pirate someone else's song without paying its composer anything."
4097 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4098 #: freeculture.xml:2992 freeculture.xml:3009
4099 msgid "Kittredge, Alfred"
4102 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4103 #: freeculture.xml:2988
4105 "The composers (and publishers) were none too happy about this capacity to "
4106 "pirate. As South Dakota senator Alfred Kittredge put it, <placeholder "
4107 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4110 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4111 #: freeculture.xml:3003
4113 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright: Hearings on S. 6330 "
4114 "and H.R. 19853 Before the ( Joint) Committees on Patents, 59th Cong. 59, 1st "
4115 "sess. (1906) (statement of Senator Alfred B. Kittredge, of South Dakota, "
4116 "chairman), reprinted in <citetitle>Legislative History of the Copyright "
4117 "Act</citetitle>, E. Fulton Brylawski and Abe Goldman, eds. (South "
4118 "Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman Reprints, 1976). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
4122 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4123 #: freeculture.xml:2996
4125 "Imagine the injustice of the thing. A composer writes a song or an opera. A "
4126 "publisher buys at great expense the rights to the same and copyrights "
4127 "it. Along come the phonographic companies and companies who cut music rolls "
4128 "and deliberately steal the work of the brain of the composer and publisher "
4129 "without any regard for [their] rights.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
4133 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4134 #: freeculture.xml:3013
4135 msgid "Sousa, John Philip"
4139 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4140 #: freeculture.xml:3019
4142 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 223 (statement of "
4143 "Nathan Burkan, attorney for the Music Publishers Association)."
4147 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4148 #: freeculture.xml:3025
4150 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 226 (statement of "
4151 "Nathan Burkan, attorney for the Music Publishers Association)."
4155 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4156 #: freeculture.xml:3032
4158 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 23 (statement of "
4159 "John Philip Sousa, composer)."
4162 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4163 #: freeculture.xml:3015
4165 "The innovators who developed the technology to record other people's works "
4166 "were <quote>sponging upon the toil, the work, the talent, and genius of "
4167 "American composers,</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> and the "
4168 "<quote>music publishing industry</quote> was thereby <quote>at the complete "
4169 "mercy of this one pirate.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> "
4170 "As John Philip Sousa put it, in as direct a way as possible, <quote>When "
4171 "they make money out of my pieces, I want a share of it.</quote><placeholder "
4172 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/>"
4176 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4177 #: freeculture.xml:3045
4179 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 283–84 "
4180 "(statement of Albert Walker, representative of the Auto-Music Perforating "
4181 "Company of New York)."
4185 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4186 #: freeculture.xml:3056
4188 "To Amend and Consolidate the Acts Respecting Copyright, 376 (prepared "
4189 "memorandum of Philip Mauro, general patent counsel of the American "
4190 "Graphophone Company Association)."
4193 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4194 #: freeculture.xml:3060
4195 msgid "American Graphophone Company"
4198 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4199 #: freeculture.xml:3037
4201 "These arguments have familiar echoes in the wars of our day. So, too, do the "
4202 "arguments on the other side. The innovators who developed the player piano "
4203 "argued that <quote>it is perfectly demonstrable that the introduction of "
4204 "automatic music players has not deprived any composer of anything he had "
4205 "before their introduction.</quote> Rather, the machines increased the sales "
4206 "of sheet music.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> In any case, the "
4207 "innovators argued, the job of Congress was <quote>to consider first the "
4208 "interest of [the public], whom they represent, and whose servants they "
4209 "are.</quote> <quote>All talk about `theft,'</quote> the general counsel of "
4210 "the American Graphophone Company wrote, <quote>is the merest claptrap, for "
4211 "there exists no property in ideas musical, literary or artistic, except as "
4212 "defined by statute.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> "
4213 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/>"
4217 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4218 #: freeculture.xml:3063
4220 "The law soon resolved this battle in favor of the composer "
4221 "<emphasis>and</emphasis> the recording artist. Congress amended the law to "
4222 "make sure that composers would be paid for the <quote>mechanical "
4223 "reproductions</quote> of their music. But rather than simply granting the "
4224 "composer complete control over the right to make mechanical reproductions, "
4225 "Congress gave recording artists a right to record the music, at a price set "
4226 "by Congress, once the composer allowed it to be recorded once. This is the "
4227 "part of copyright law that makes cover songs possible. Once a composer "
4228 "authorizes a recording of his song, others are free to record the same song, "
4229 "so long as they pay the original composer a fee set by the law."
4232 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4233 #: freeculture.xml:3078
4235 "American law ordinarily calls this a <quote>compulsory license,</quote> but "
4236 "I will refer to it as a <quote>statutory license.</quote> A statutory "
4237 "license is a license whose key terms are set by law. After Congress's "
4238 "amendment of the Copyright Act in 1909, record companies were free to "
4239 "distribute copies of recordings so long as they paid the composer (or "
4240 "copyright holder) the fee set by the statute."
4243 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4244 #: freeculture.xml:3093 freeculture.xml:14163
4245 msgid "Grisham, John"
4248 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4249 #: freeculture.xml:3086
4251 "This is an exception within the law of copyright. When John Grisham writes a "
4252 "novel, a publisher is free to publish that novel only if Grisham gives the "
4253 "publisher permission. Grisham, in turn, is free to charge whatever he wants "
4254 "for that permission. The price to publish Grisham is thus set by Grisham, "
4255 "and copyright law ordinarily says you have no permission to use Grisham's "
4256 "work except with permission of Grisham. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
4261 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4262 #: freeculture.xml:3110
4264 "Copyright Law Revision: Hearings on S. 2499, S. 2900, H.R. 243, and "
4265 "H.R. 11794 Before the ( Joint) Committee on Patents, 60th Cong., 1st sess., "
4266 "217 (1908) (statement of Senator Reed Smoot, chairman), reprinted in "
4267 "<citetitle>Legislative History of the 1909 Copyright Act</citetitle>, "
4268 "E. Fulton Brylawski and Abe Goldman, eds. (South Hackensack, N.J.: Rothman "
4272 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4273 #: freeculture.xml:3096
4275 "But the law governing recordings gives recording artists less. And thus, in "
4276 "effect, the law <emphasis>subsidizes</emphasis> the recording industry "
4277 "through a kind of piracy—by giving recording artists a weaker right "
4278 "than it otherwise gives creative authors. The Beatles have less control over "
4279 "their creative work than Grisham does. And the beneficiaries of this less "
4280 "control are the recording industry and the public. The recording industry "
4281 "gets something of value for less than it otherwise would pay; the public "
4282 "gets access to a much wider range of musical creativity. Indeed, Congress "
4283 "was quite explicit about its reasons for granting this right. Its fear was "
4284 "the monopoly power of rights holders, and that that power would stifle "
4285 "follow-on creativity.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
4286 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
4289 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4290 #: freeculture.xml:3119
4292 "While the recording industry has been quite coy about this recently, "
4293 "historically it has been quite a supporter of the statutory license for "
4294 "records. As a 1967 report from the House Committee on the Judiciary relates,"
4298 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4299 #: freeculture.xml:3141
4301 "Copyright Law Revision: Report to Accompany H.R. 2512, House Committee on "
4302 "the Judiciary, 90th Cong., 1st sess., House Document no. 83, (8 March "
4303 "1967). I am grateful to Glenn Brown for drawing my attention to this report."
4306 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4307 #: freeculture.xml:3126
4309 "the record producers argued vigorously that the compulsory license system "
4310 "must be retained. They asserted that the record industry is a "
4311 "half-billion-dollar business of great economic importance in the United "
4312 "States and throughout the world; records today are the principal means of "
4313 "disseminating music, and this creates special problems, since performers "
4314 "need unhampered access to musical material on nondiscriminatory "
4315 "terms. Historically, the record producers pointed out, there were no "
4316 "recording rights before 1909 and the 1909 statute adopted the compulsory "
4317 "license as a deliberate anti-monopoly condition on the grant of these "
4318 "rights. They argue that the result has been an outpouring of recorded music, "
4319 "with the public being given lower prices, improved quality, and a greater "
4320 "choice.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4323 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4324 #: freeculture.xml:3148
4326 "By limiting the rights musicians have, by partially pirating their creative "
4327 "work, the record producers, and the public, benefit."
4330 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
4331 #: freeculture.xml:3153 freeculture.xml:4268
4335 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4336 #: freeculture.xml:3156
4337 msgid "Radio was also born of piracy."
4340 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4341 #: freeculture.xml:3171
4342 msgid "Hand, Learned"
4345 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4346 #: freeculture.xml:3162
4348 "See 17 <citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>, sections 106 and 110. At "
4349 "the beginning, record companies printed <quote>Not Licensed for Radio "
4350 "Broadcast</quote> and other messages purporting to restrict the ability to "
4351 "play a record on a radio station. Judge Learned Hand rejected the argument "
4352 "that a warning attached to a record might restrict the rights of the radio "
4353 "station. See <citetitle>RCA Manufacturing "
4354 "Co</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Whiteman</citetitle>, 114 F. 2d 86 (2nd "
4355 "Cir. 1940). See also Randal C. Picker, <quote>From Edison to the Broadcast "
4356 "Flag: Mechanisms of Consent and Refusal and the Propertization of "
4357 "Copyright,</quote> <citetitle>University of Chicago Law Review</citetitle> "
4358 "70 (2003): 281. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
4359 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
4362 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4363 #: freeculture.xml:3159
4365 "When a radio station plays a record on the air, that constitutes a "
4366 "<quote>public performance</quote> of the composer's work.<placeholder "
4367 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> As I described above, the law gives the "
4368 "composer (or copyright holder) an exclusive right to public performances of "
4369 "his work. The radio station thus owes the composer money for that "
4373 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
4374 #: freeculture.xml:3189 freeculture.xml:8846 freeculture.xml:9305 freeculture.xml:12292
4375 msgid "Lovett, Lyle"
4379 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4380 #: freeculture.xml:3179
4382 "But when the radio station plays a record, it is not only performing a copy "
4383 "of the <emphasis>composer's</emphasis> work. The radio station is also "
4384 "performing a copy of the <emphasis>recording artist's</emphasis> work. It's "
4385 "one thing to have <quote>Happy Birthday</quote> sung on the radio by the "
4386 "local children's choir; it's quite another to have it sung by the Rolling "
4387 "Stones or Lyle Lovett. The recording artist is adding to the value of the "
4388 "composition performed on the radio station. And if the law were perfectly "
4389 "consistent, the radio station would have to pay the recording artist for his "
4390 "work, just as it pays the composer of the music for his work. <placeholder "
4391 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4394 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4395 #: freeculture.xml:3194
4397 "But it doesn't. Under the law governing radio performances, the radio "
4398 "station does not have to pay the recording artist. The radio station need "
4399 "only pay the composer. The radio station thus gets a bit of something for "
4400 "nothing. It gets to perform the recording artist's work for free, even if it "
4401 "must pay the composer something for the privilege of playing the song."
4404 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
4405 #: freeculture.xml:3201 freeculture.xml:3706 freeculture.xml:6165
4409 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4410 #: freeculture.xml:3203
4412 "This difference can be huge. Imagine you compose a piece of music. Imagine "
4413 "it is your first. You own the exclusive right to authorize public "
4414 "performances of that music. So if Madonna wants to sing your song in public, "
4415 "she has to get your permission."
4418 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4419 #: freeculture.xml:3209
4421 "Imagine she does sing your song, and imagine she likes it a lot. She then "
4422 "decides to make a recording of your song, and it becomes a top hit. Under "
4423 "our law, every time a radio station plays your song, you get some money. But "
4424 "Madonna gets nothing, save the indirect effect on the sale of her CDs. The "
4425 "public performance of her recording is not a <quote>protected</quote> "
4426 "right. The radio station thus gets to <emphasis>pirate</emphasis> the value "
4427 "of Madonna's work without paying her anything."
4430 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4431 #: freeculture.xml:3220
4433 "No doubt, one might argue that, on balance, the recording artists "
4434 "benefit. On average, the promotion they get is worth more than the "
4435 "performance rights they give up. Maybe. But even if so, the law ordinarily "
4436 "gives the creator the right to make this choice. By making the choice for "
4437 "him or her, the law gives the radio station the right to take something for "
4441 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
4442 #: freeculture.xml:3230 freeculture.xml:4274
4446 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
4447 #: freeculture.xml:3231 freeculture.xml:4102 freeculture.xml:8041 freeculture.xml:8080 freeculture.xml:14564
4448 msgid "cable television"
4451 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4452 #: freeculture.xml:3233
4453 msgid "Cable TV was also born of a kind of piracy."
4457 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4458 #: freeculture.xml:3236
4460 "When cable entrepreneurs first started wiring communities with cable "
4461 "television in 1948, most refused to pay broadcasters for the content that "
4462 "they echoed to their customers. Even when the cable companies started "
4463 "selling access to television broadcasts, they refused to pay for what they "
4464 "sold. Cable companies were thus Napsterizing broadcasters' content, but more "
4465 "egregiously than anything Napster ever did— Napster never charged for "
4466 "the content it enabled others to give away."
4469 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4470 #: freeculture.xml:3246
4471 msgid "Anello, Douglas"
4474 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4475 #: freeculture.xml:3247
4476 msgid "Burdick, Quentin"
4479 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4480 #: freeculture.xml:3248 freeculture.xml:3259
4481 msgid "Hyde, Rosel H."
4484 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4485 #: freeculture.xml:3254
4487 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV: Hearing on S. 1006 Before the "
4488 "Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights of the Senate Committee "
4489 "on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., 2nd sess., 78 (1966) (statement of Rosel "
4490 "H. Hyde, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission). <placeholder "
4491 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4495 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4496 #: freeculture.xml:3266
4498 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 116 (statement of Douglas A. Anello, "
4499 "general counsel of the National Association of Broadcasters)."
4502 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4503 #: freeculture.xml:3250
4505 "Broadcasters and copyright owners were quick to attack this theft. Rosel "
4506 "Hyde, chairman of the FCC, viewed the practice as a kind of <quote>unfair "
4507 "and potentially destructive competition.</quote><placeholder "
4508 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> There may have been a <quote>public "
4509 "interest</quote> in spreading the reach of cable TV, but as Douglas Anello, "
4510 "general counsel to the National Association of Broadcasters, asked Senator "
4511 "Quentin Burdick during testimony, <quote>Does public interest dictate that "
4512 "you use somebody else's property?</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
4513 "id=\"1\"/> As another broadcaster put it,"
4517 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4518 #: freeculture.xml:3277
4520 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 126 (statement of Ernest W. Jennes, "
4521 "general counsel of the Association of Maximum Service Telecasters, Inc.)."
4524 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4525 #: freeculture.xml:3273
4527 "The extraordinary thing about the CATV business is that it is the only "
4528 "business I know of where the product that is being sold is not paid "
4529 "for.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4532 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4533 #: freeculture.xml:3283
4534 msgid "Again, the demand of the copyright holders seemed reasonable enough:"
4538 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4539 #: freeculture.xml:3292
4541 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 169 (joint statement of Arthur B. Krim, "
4542 "president of United Artists Corp., and John Sinn, president of United "
4543 "Artists Television, Inc.)."
4546 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4547 #: freeculture.xml:3287
4549 "All we are asking for is a very simple thing, that people who now take our "
4550 "property for nothing pay for it. We are trying to stop piracy and I don't "
4551 "think there is any lesser word to describe it. I think there are harsher "
4552 "words which would fit it.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4555 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4556 #: freeculture.xml:3298 freeculture.xml:3306
4557 msgid "Heston, Charlton"
4560 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4561 #: freeculture.xml:3304
4563 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 209 (statement of Charlton Heston, "
4564 "president of the Screen Actors Guild). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
4568 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4569 #: freeculture.xml:3300
4571 "These were <quote>free-ride[rs],</quote> Screen Actor's Guild president "
4572 "Charlton Heston said, who were <quote>depriving actors of "
4573 "compensation.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4576 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4577 #: freeculture.xml:3311
4579 "But again, there was another side to the debate. As Assistant Attorney "
4580 "General Edwin Zimmerman put it,"
4583 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><indexterm><primary>
4584 #: freeculture.xml:3327 freeculture.xml:3329
4585 msgid "Zimmerman, Edwin"
4588 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
4589 #: freeculture.xml:3325
4591 "Copyright Law Revision—CATV, 216 (statement of Edwin M. Zimmerman, "
4592 "acting assistant attorney general). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
4596 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
4597 #: freeculture.xml:3316
4599 "Our point here is that unlike the problem of whether you have any copyright "
4600 "protection at all, the problem here is whether copyright holders who are "
4601 "already compensated, who already have a monopoly, should be permitted to "
4602 "extend that monopoly. … The question here is how much compensation "
4603 "they should have and how far back they should carry their right to "
4604 "compensation.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
4605 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
4608 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4609 #: freeculture.xml:3333
4611 "Copyright owners took the cable companies to court. Twice the Supreme Court "
4612 "held that the cable companies owed the copyright owners nothing."
4615 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4616 #: freeculture.xml:3337
4618 "It took Congress almost thirty years before it resolved the question of "
4619 "whether cable companies had to pay for the content they "
4620 "<quote>pirated.</quote> In the end, Congress resolved this question in the "
4621 "same way that it resolved the question about record players and player "
4622 "pianos. Yes, cable companies would have to pay for the content that they "
4623 "broadcast; but the price they would have to pay was not set by the copyright "
4624 "owner. The price was set by law, so that the broadcasters couldn't exercise "
4625 "veto power over the emerging technologies of cable. Cable companies thus "
4626 "built their empire in part upon a <quote>piracy</quote> of the value created "
4627 "by broadcasters' content."
4631 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4632 #: freeculture.xml:3355
4634 "See, for example, National Music Publisher's Association, <citetitle>The "
4635 "Engine of Free Expression: Copyright on the Internet—The Myth of Free "
4636 "Information</citetitle>, available at <ulink "
4637 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #13</ulink>. <quote>The threat of "
4638 "piracy—the use of someone else's creative work without permission or "
4639 "compensation—has grown with the Internet.</quote>"
4642 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4643 #: freeculture.xml:3350
4645 "<emphasis role='strong'>These separate stories</emphasis> sing a common "
4646 "theme. If <quote>piracy</quote> means using value from someone else's "
4647 "creative property without permission from that creator—as it is "
4648 "increasingly described today<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
4649 "— then <emphasis>every</emphasis> industry affected by copyright today "
4650 "is the product and beneficiary of a certain kind of piracy. Film, records, "
4651 "radio, cable TV. … The list is long and could well be expanded. Every "
4652 "generation welcomes the pirates from the last. Every generation—until "
4656 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
4657 #: freeculture.xml:3372
4658 msgid "CHAPTER FIVE: <quote>Piracy</quote>"
4661 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
4662 #: freeculture.xml:3374
4664 "<emphasis role='strong'>There is piracy</emphasis> of copyrighted "
4665 "material. Lots of it. This piracy comes in many forms. The most significant "
4666 "is commercial piracy, the unauthorized taking of other people's content "
4667 "within a commercial context. Despite the many justifications that are "
4668 "offered in its defense, this taking is wrong. No one should condone it, and "
4669 "the law should stop it."
4673 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
4674 #: freeculture.xml:3382
4676 "But as well as copy-shop piracy, there is another kind of "
4677 "<quote>taking</quote> that is more directly related to the Internet. That "
4678 "taking, too, seems wrong to many, and it is wrong much of the time. Before "
4679 "we paint this taking <quote>piracy,</quote> however, we should understand "
4680 "its nature a bit more. For the harm of this taking is significantly more "
4681 "ambiguous than outright copying, and the law should account for that "
4682 "ambiguity, as it has so often done in the past."
4685 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
4686 #: freeculture.xml:3392
4690 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
4691 #: freeculture.xml:3393 freeculture.xml:3473 freeculture.xml:3523 freeculture.xml:14566
4692 msgid "Asia, commercial piracy in"
4695 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
4696 #: freeculture.xml:3394 freeculture.xml:3841 freeculture.xml:9306 freeculture.xml:10113 freeculture.xml:13958 freeculture.xml:14548
4700 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4701 #: freeculture.xml:3394
4702 msgid "foreign piracy of"
4706 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4707 #: freeculture.xml:3402
4709 "See IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), "
4710 "<citetitle>The Recording Industry Commercial Piracy Report 2003</citetitle>, "
4711 "July 2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
4712 "#14</ulink>. See also Ben Hunt, <quote>Companies Warned on Music Piracy "
4713 "Risk,</quote> <citetitle>Financial Times</citetitle>, 14 February 2003, 11."
4716 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4717 #: freeculture.xml:3396
4719 "All across the world, but especially in Asia and Eastern Europe, there are "
4720 "businesses that do nothing but take others people's copyrighted content, "
4721 "copy it, and sell it—all without the permission of a copyright "
4722 "owner. The recording industry estimates that it loses about $4.6 billion "
4723 "every year to physical piracy<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> (that "
4724 "works out to one in three CDs sold worldwide). The MPAA estimates that it "
4725 "loses $3 billion annually worldwide to piracy."
4728 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4729 #: freeculture.xml:3412
4731 "This is piracy plain and simple. Nothing in the argument of this book, nor "
4732 "in the argument that most people make when talking about the subject of this "
4733 "book, should draw into doubt this simple point: This piracy is wrong."
4736 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4737 #: freeculture.xml:3418
4739 "Which is not to say that excuses and justifications couldn't be made for "
4740 "it. We could, for example, remind ourselves that for the first one hundred "
4741 "years of the American Republic, America did not honor foreign copyrights. We "
4742 "were born, in this sense, a pirate nation. It might therefore seem "
4743 "hypocritical for us to insist so strongly that other developing nations "
4744 "treat as wrong what we, for the first hundred years of our existence, "
4748 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4749 #: freeculture.xml:3427
4751 "That excuse isn't terribly strong. Technically, our law did not ban the "
4752 "taking of foreign works. It explicitly limited itself to American "
4753 "works. Thus the American publishers who published foreign works without the "
4754 "permission of foreign authors were not violating any rule. The copy shops "
4755 "in Asia, by contrast, are violating Asian law. Asian law does protect "
4756 "foreign copyrights, and the actions of the copy shops violate that law. So "
4757 "the wrong of piracy that they engage in is not just a moral wrong, but a "
4758 "legal wrong, and not just an internationally legal wrong, but a locally "
4759 "legal wrong as well."
4763 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4764 #: freeculture.xml:3438
4766 "True, these local rules have, in effect, been imposed upon these "
4767 "countries. No country can be part of the world economy and choose not to "
4768 "protect copyright internationally. We may have been born a pirate nation, "
4769 "but we will not allow any other nation to have a similar childhood."
4772 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4773 #: freeculture.xml:3466
4774 msgid "agricultural patents"
4777 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4778 #: freeculture.xml:3467 freeculture.xml:12576 freeculture.xml:13029 freeculture.xml:13036
4779 msgid "Drahos, Peter"
4782 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4783 #: freeculture.xml:3451
4785 "See Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, Information Feudalism: "
4786 "<citetitle>Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?</citetitle> (New York: The New "
4787 "Press, 2003), 10–13, 209. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual "
4788 "Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement obligates member nations to create "
4789 "administrative and enforcement mechanisms for intellectual property rights, "
4790 "a costly proposition for developing countries. Additionally, patent rights "
4791 "may lead to higher prices for staple industries such as agriculture. Critics "
4792 "of TRIPS question the disparity between burdens imposed upon developing "
4793 "countries and benefits conferred to industrialized nations. TRIPS does "
4794 "permit governments to use patents for public, noncommercial uses without "
4795 "first obtaining the patent holder's permission. Developing nations may be "
4796 "able to use this to gain the benefits of foreign patents at lower "
4797 "prices. This is a promising strategy for developing nations within the TRIPS "
4798 "framework. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
4799 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
4802 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4803 #: freeculture.xml:3446
4805 "If a country is to be treated as a sovereign, however, then its laws are its "
4806 "laws regardless of their source. The international law under which these "
4807 "nations live gives them some opportunities to escape the burden of "
4808 "intellectual property law.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> In my "
4809 "view, more developing nations should take advantage of that opportunity, but "
4810 "when they don't, then their laws should be respected. And under the laws of "
4811 "these nations, this piracy is wrong."
4814 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
4815 #: freeculture.xml:3488 freeculture.xml:3762 freeculture.xml:14714
4816 msgid "Liebowitz, Stan"
4819 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
4820 #: freeculture.xml:3481
4822 "For an analysis of the economic impact of copying technology, see Stan "
4823 "Liebowitz, <citetitle>Rethinking the Network Economy</citetitle> (New York: "
4824 "Amacom, 2002), 144–90. <quote>In some instances … the impact of "
4825 "piracy on the copyright holder's ability to appropriate the value of the "
4826 "work will be negligible. One obvious instance is the case where the "
4827 "individual engaging in pirating would not have purchased an original even if "
4828 "pirating were not an option.</quote> Ibid., 149. <placeholder "
4829 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
4832 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4833 #: freeculture.xml:3475
4835 "Alternatively, we could try to excuse this piracy by noting that in any "
4836 "case, it does no harm to the industry. The Chinese who get access to "
4837 "American CDs at 50 cents a copy are not people who would have bought those "
4838 "American CDs at $15 a copy. So no one really has any less money than they "
4839 "otherwise would have had.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
4842 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4843 #: freeculture.xml:3492
4845 "This is often true (though I have friends who have purchased many thousands "
4846 "of pirated DVDs who certainly have enough money to pay for the content they "
4847 "have taken), and it does mitigate to some degree the harm caused by such "
4848 "taking. Extremists in this debate love to say, <quote>You wouldn't go into "
4849 "Barnes & Noble and take a book off of the shelf without paying; why "
4850 "should it be any different with on-line music?</quote> The difference is, of "
4851 "course, that when you take a book from Barnes & Noble, it has one less "
4852 "book to sell. By contrast, when you take an MP3 from a computer network, "
4853 "there is not one less CD that can be sold. The physics of piracy of the "
4854 "intangible are different from the physics of piracy of the tangible."
4858 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4859 #: freeculture.xml:3506
4861 "This argument is still very weak. However, although copyright is a property "
4862 "right of a very special sort, it <emphasis>is</emphasis> a property "
4863 "right. Like all property rights, the copyright gives the owner the right to "
4864 "decide the terms under which content is shared. If the copyright owner "
4865 "doesn't want to sell, she doesn't have to. There are exceptions: important "
4866 "statutory licenses that apply to copyrighted content regardless of the wish "
4867 "of the copyright owner. Those licenses give people the right to "
4868 "<quote>take</quote> copyrighted content whether or not the copyright owner "
4869 "wants to sell. But where the law does not give people the right to take "
4870 "content, it is wrong to take that content even if the wrong does no harm. If "
4871 "we have a property system, and that system is properly balanced to the "
4872 "technology of a time, then it is wrong to take property without the "
4873 "permission of a property owner. That is exactly what <quote>property</quote> "
4877 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
4878 #: freeculture.xml:3524 freeculture.xml:14567
4882 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
4883 #: freeculture.xml:3524 freeculture.xml:14567
4887 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4888 #: freeculture.xml:3525
4889 msgid "free software/open-source software (FS/OSS)"
4892 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4893 #: freeculture.xml:3526 freeculture.xml:3556 freeculture.xml:11380 freeculture.xml:12875 freeculture.xml:13473
4894 msgid "GNU/Linux operating system"
4897 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
4898 #: freeculture.xml:3527 freeculture.xml:3557 freeculture.xml:11382 freeculture.xml:12876 freeculture.xml:13474
4899 msgid "Linux operating system"
4902 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
4903 #: freeculture.xml:3528 freeculture.xml:3530 freeculture.xml:3531 freeculture.xml:5195 freeculture.xml:7680 freeculture.xml:12928
4907 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4908 #: freeculture.xml:3528
4909 msgid "competitive strategies of"
4912 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4913 #: freeculture.xml:3529
4917 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4918 #: freeculture.xml:3530
4919 msgid "international software piracy of"
4922 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4923 #: freeculture.xml:3531
4924 msgid "Windows operating system of"
4927 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4928 #: freeculture.xml:3533
4930 "Finally, we could try to excuse this piracy with the argument that the "
4931 "piracy actually helps the copyright owner. When the Chinese "
4932 "<quote>steal</quote> Windows, that makes the Chinese dependent on "
4933 "Microsoft. Microsoft loses the value of the software that was taken. But it "
4934 "gains users who are used to life in the Microsoft world. Over time, as the "
4935 "nation grows more wealthy, more and more people will buy software rather "
4936 "than steal it. And hence over time, because that buying will benefit "
4937 "Microsoft, Microsoft benefits from the piracy. If instead of pirating "
4938 "Microsoft Windows, the Chinese used the free GNU/Linux operating system, "
4939 "then these Chinese users would not eventually be buying Microsoft. Without "
4940 "piracy, then, Microsoft would lose."
4943 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4944 #: freeculture.xml:3545
4948 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
4949 #: freeculture.xml:3545
4950 msgid "databases of case reports in"
4953 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4954 #: freeculture.xml:3547
4956 "This argument, too, is somewhat true. The addiction strategy is a good "
4957 "one. Many businesses practice it. Some thrive because of it. Law students, "
4958 "for example, are given free access to the two largest legal databases. The "
4959 "companies marketing both hope the students will become so used to their "
4960 "service that they will want to use it and not the other when they become "
4961 "lawyers (and must pay high subscription fees)."
4964 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4965 #: freeculture.xml:3554
4969 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
4970 #: freeculture.xml:3555
4971 msgid "Internet Explorer"
4974 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4975 #: freeculture.xml:3559
4977 "Still, the argument is not terribly persuasive. We don't give the alcoholic "
4978 "a defense when he steals his first beer, merely because that will make it "
4979 "more likely that he will buy the next three. Instead, we ordinarily allow "
4980 "businesses to decide for themselves when it is best to give their product "
4981 "away. If Microsoft fears the competition of GNU/Linux, then Microsoft can "
4982 "give its product away, as it did, for example, with Internet Explorer to "
4983 "fight Netscape. A property right means giving the property owner the right "
4984 "to say who gets access to what—at least ordinarily. And if the law "
4985 "properly balances the rights of the copyright owner with the rights of "
4986 "access, then violating the law is still wrong."
4990 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
4991 #: freeculture.xml:3573
4993 "Thus, while I understand the pull of these justifications for piracy, and I "
4994 "certainly see the motivation, in my view, in the end, these efforts at "
4995 "justifying commercial piracy simply don't cut it. This kind of piracy is "
4996 "rampant and just plain wrong. It doesn't transform the content it steals; it "
4997 "doesn't transform the market it competes in. It merely gives someone access "
4998 "to something that the law says he should not have. Nothing has changed to "
4999 "draw that law into doubt. This form of piracy is flat out wrong."
5002 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5003 #: freeculture.xml:3583
5005 "But as the examples from the four chapters that introduced this part "
5006 "suggest, even if some piracy is plainly wrong, not all <quote>piracy</quote> "
5007 "is. Or at least, not all <quote>piracy</quote> is wrong if that term is "
5008 "understood in the way it is increasingly used today. Many kinds of "
5009 "<quote>piracy</quote> are useful and productive, to produce either new "
5010 "content or new ways of doing business. Neither our tradition nor any "
5011 "tradition has ever banned all <quote>piracy</quote> in that sense of the "
5015 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5016 #: freeculture.xml:3592
5018 "This doesn't mean that there are no questions raised by the latest piracy "
5019 "concern, peer-to-peer file sharing. But it does mean that we need to "
5020 "understand the harm in peer-to-peer sharing a bit more before we condemn it "
5021 "to the gallows with the charge of piracy."
5024 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5025 #: freeculture.xml:3598
5027 "For (1) like the original Hollywood, p2p sharing escapes an overly "
5028 "controlling industry; and (2) like the original recording industry, it "
5029 "simply exploits a new way to distribute content; but (3) unlike cable TV, no "
5030 "one is selling the content that is shared on p2p services."
5033 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5034 #: freeculture.xml:3604
5036 "These differences distinguish p2p sharing from true piracy. They should push "
5037 "us to find a way to protect artists while enabling this sharing to survive."
5040 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
5041 #: freeculture.xml:3610
5046 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5047 #: freeculture.xml:3615
5049 "<citetitle>Bach</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Longman</citetitle>, 98 "
5050 "Eng. Rep. 1274 (1777)."
5054 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5055 #: freeculture.xml:3612
5057 "The key to the <quote>piracy</quote> that the law aims to quash is a use "
5058 "that <quote>rob[s] the author of [his] profit.</quote><placeholder "
5059 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> This means we must determine whether and how "
5060 "much p2p sharing harms before we know how strongly the law should seek to "
5061 "either prevent it or find an alternative to assure the author of his profit."
5064 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
5065 #: freeculture.xml:3623 freeculture.xml:3631
5069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
5070 #: freeculture.xml:3624
5071 msgid "Fanning, Shawn"
5074 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><indexterm><primary>
5075 #: freeculture.xml:3641 freeculture.xml:8274
5076 msgid "Christensen, Clayton M."
5079 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5080 #: freeculture.xml:3631
5082 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> See Clayton M. Christensen, "
5083 "<citetitle>The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary National Bestseller "
5084 "That Changed the Way We Do Business</citetitle> (New York: HarperBusiness, "
5085 "2000). Professor Christensen examines why companies that give rise to and "
5086 "dominate a product area are frequently unable to come up with the most "
5087 "creative, paradigm-shifting uses for their own products. This job usually "
5088 "falls to outside innovators, who reassemble existing technology in inventive "
5089 "ways. For a discussion of Christensen's ideas, see Lawrence Lessig, "
5090 "<citetitle>Future</citetitle>, 89–92, 139. <placeholder "
5091 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
5094 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5095 #: freeculture.xml:3626
5097 "Peer-to-peer sharing was made famous by Napster. But the inventors of the "
5098 "Napster technology had not made any major technological innovations. Like "
5099 "every great advance in innovation on the Internet (and, arguably, off the "
5100 "Internet as well<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>), Shawn Fanning "
5101 "and crew had simply put together components that had been developed "
5106 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5107 #: freeculture.xml:3651
5109 "See Carolyn Lochhead, <quote>Silicon Valley Dream, Hollywood "
5110 "Nightmare,</quote> <citetitle>San Francisco Chronicle</citetitle>, 24 "
5111 "September 2002, A1; <quote>Rock 'n' Roll Suicide,</quote> <citetitle>New "
5112 "Scientist</citetitle>, 6 July 2002, 42; Benny Evangelista, <quote>Napster "
5113 "Names CEO, Secures New Financing,</quote> <citetitle>San Francisco "
5114 "Chronicle</citetitle>, 23 May 2003, C1; <quote>Napster's Wake-Up "
5115 "Call,</quote> <citetitle>Economist</citetitle>, 24 June 2000, 23; John "
5116 "Naughton, <quote>Hollywood at War with the Internet</quote> (London) "
5117 "<citetitle>Times</citetitle>, 26 July 2002, 18."
5120 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5121 #: freeculture.xml:3646
5123 "The result was spontaneous combustion. Launched in July 1999, Napster "
5124 "amassed over 10 million users within nine months. After eighteen months, "
5125 "there were close to 80 million registered users of the system.<placeholder "
5126 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Courts quickly shut Napster down, but other "
5127 "services emerged to take its place. (Kazaa is currently the most popular p2p "
5128 "service. It boasts over 100 million members.) These services' systems are "
5129 "different architecturally, though not very different in function: Each "
5130 "enables users to make content available to any number of other users. With a "
5131 "p2p system, you can share your favorite songs with your best friend— "
5132 "or your 20,000 best friends."
5136 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5137 #: freeculture.xml:3673
5139 "See Ipsos-Insight, <citetitle>TEMPO: Keeping Pace with Online Music "
5140 "Distribution</citetitle> (September 2002), reporting that 28 percent of "
5141 "Americans aged twelve and older have downloaded music off of the Internet "
5142 "and 30 percent have listened to digital music files stored on their "
5147 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5148 #: freeculture.xml:3682
5150 "Amy Harmon, <quote>Industry Offers a Carrot in Online Music Fight,</quote> "
5151 "<citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 6 June 2003, A1."
5154 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5155 #: freeculture.xml:3667
5157 "According to a number of estimates, a huge proportion of Americans have "
5158 "tasted file-sharing technology. A study by Ipsos-Insight in September 2002 "
5159 "estimated that 60 million Americans had downloaded music—28 percent of "
5160 "Americans older than 12.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> A survey "
5161 "by the NPD group quoted in <citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle> "
5162 "estimated that 43 million citizens used file-sharing networks to exchange "
5163 "content in May 2003.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> The vast "
5164 "majority of these are not kids. Whatever the actual figure, a massive "
5165 "quantity of content is being <quote>taken</quote> on these networks. The "
5166 "ease and inexpensiveness of file-sharing networks have inspired millions to "
5167 "enjoy music in a way that they hadn't before."
5170 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5171 #: freeculture.xml:3691
5173 "Some of this enjoying involves copyright infringement. Some of it does "
5174 "not. And even among the part that is technically copyright infringement, "
5175 "calculating the actual harm to copyright owners is more complicated than one "
5176 "might think. So consider—a bit more carefully than the polarized "
5177 "voices around this debate usually do—the kinds of sharing that file "
5178 "sharing enables, and the kinds of harm it entails."
5182 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5183 #: freeculture.xml:3701
5185 "File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different "
5186 "kinds into four types."
5190 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
5191 #: freeculture.xml:3709
5193 "There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing "
5194 "content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, "
5195 "these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who "
5196 "takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn't make it available "
5197 "for free. Most probably wouldn't have, but clearly there are some who "
5198 "would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead "
5203 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
5204 #: freeculture.xml:3719
5206 "There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing "
5207 "it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he's not heard "
5208 "of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of "
5209 "targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending "
5210 "the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect "
5211 "that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this "
5212 "sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased."
5216 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
5217 #: freeculture.xml:3730
5219 "There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content "
5220 "that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the "
5221 "transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is "
5222 "among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood "
5223 "but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the "
5224 "network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a "
5225 "solid weekend <quote>recalling</quote> old songs. She was astonished at the "
5226 "range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is "
5227 "still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright "
5228 "owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is "
5229 "zero—the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s "
5230 "45-rpm records to a local collector."
5235 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
5236 #: freeculture.xml:3747
5238 "Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content "
5239 "that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away."
5242 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5243 #: freeculture.xml:3753
5244 msgid "How do these different types of sharing balance out?"
5247 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5248 #: freeculture.xml:3761
5250 "See Liebowitz, <citetitle>Rethinking the Network Economy</citetitle>, "
5251 "148–49. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
5254 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5255 #: freeculture.xml:3756
5257 "Let's start with some simple but important points. From the perspective of "
5258 "the law, only type D sharing is clearly legal. From the perspective of "
5259 "economics, only type A sharing is clearly harmful.<placeholder "
5260 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Type B sharing is illegal but plainly "
5261 "beneficial. Type C sharing is illegal, yet good for society (since more "
5262 "exposure to music is good) and harmless to the artist (since the work is "
5263 "not otherwise available). So how sharing matters on balance is a hard "
5264 "question to answer—and certainly much more difficult than the current "
5265 "rhetoric around the issue suggests."
5268 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5269 #: freeculture.xml:3772
5271 "Whether on balance sharing is harmful depends importantly on how harmful "
5272 "type A sharing is. Just as Edison complained about Hollywood, composers "
5273 "complained about piano rolls, recording artists complained about radio, and "
5274 "broadcasters complained about cable TV, the music industry complains that "
5275 "type A sharing is a kind of <quote>theft</quote> that is "
5276 "<quote>devastating</quote> the industry."
5279 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
5280 #: freeculture.xml:3779 freeculture.xml:3788 freeculture.xml:4131 freeculture.xml:7840 freeculture.xml:7869 freeculture.xml:9567 freeculture.xml:14275
5281 msgid "cassette recording"
5284 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
5285 #: freeculture.xml:3779 freeculture.xml:4131 freeculture.xml:7840 freeculture.xml:7869 freeculture.xml:9567 freeculture.xml:9568 freeculture.xml:14275 freeculture.xml:14276
5289 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5290 #: freeculture.xml:3788
5292 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> See Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, "
5293 "<citetitle>Technology Evolution and the Music Industry's Business Model "
5294 "Crisis</citetitle> (2003), 3. This report describes the music industry's "
5295 "effort to stigmatize the budding practice of cassette taping in the 1970s, "
5296 "including an advertising campaign featuring a cassette-shape skull and the "
5297 "caption <quote>Home taping is killing music.</quote> At the time digital "
5298 "audio tape became a threat, the Office of Technical Assessment conducted a "
5299 "survey of consumer behavior. In 1988, 40 percent of consumers older than ten "
5300 "had taped music to a cassette format. U.S. Congress, Office of Technology "
5301 "Assessment, <citetitle>Copyright and Home Copying: Technology Challenges the "
5302 "Law</citetitle>, OTA-CIT-422 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing "
5303 "Office, October 1989), 145–56."
5306 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5307 #: freeculture.xml:3781
5309 "While the numbers do suggest that sharing is harmful, how harmful is harder "
5310 "to reckon. It has long been the recording industry's practice to blame "
5311 "technology for any drop in sales. The history of cassette recording is a "
5312 "good example. As a study by Cap Gemini Ernst & Young put it, "
5313 "<quote>Rather than exploiting this new, popular technology, the labels "
5314 "fought it.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The labels "
5315 "claimed that every album taped was an album unsold, and when record sales "
5316 "fell by 11.4 percent in 1981, the industry claimed that its point was "
5317 "proved. Technology was the problem, and banning or regulating technology was "
5321 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
5322 #: freeculture.xml:3806
5327 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5328 #: freeculture.xml:3816
5329 msgid "U.S. Congress, <citetitle>Copyright and Home Copying</citetitle>, 4."
5332 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5333 #: freeculture.xml:3808
5335 "Yet soon thereafter, and before Congress was given an opportunity to enact "
5336 "regulation, MTV was launched, and the industry had a record "
5337 "turnaround. <quote>In the end,</quote> Cap Gemini concludes, <quote>the "
5338 "`crisis' … was not the fault of the tapers—who did not [stop "
5339 "after MTV came into being]—but had to a large extent resulted from "
5340 "stagnation in musical innovation at the major labels.</quote><placeholder "
5341 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
5344 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5345 #: freeculture.xml:3821
5347 "But just because the industry was wrong before does not mean it is wrong "
5348 "today. To evaluate the real threat that p2p sharing presents to the industry "
5349 "in particular, and society in general—or at least the society that "
5350 "inherits the tradition that gave us the film industry, the record industry, "
5351 "the radio industry, cable TV, and the VCR—the question is not simply "
5352 "whether type A sharing is harmful. The question is also "
5353 "<emphasis>how</emphasis> harmful type A sharing is, and how beneficial the "
5354 "other types of sharing are."
5357 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5358 #: freeculture.xml:3831
5360 "We start to answer this question by focusing on the net harm, from the "
5361 "standpoint of the industry as a whole, that sharing networks cause. The "
5362 "<quote>net harm</quote> to the industry as a whole is the amount by which "
5363 "type A sharing exceeds type B. If the record companies sold more records "
5364 "through sampling than they lost through substitution, then sharing networks "
5365 "would actually benefit music companies on balance. They would therefore have "
5366 "little <emphasis>static</emphasis> reason to resist them."
5369 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
5370 #: freeculture.xml:3841
5371 msgid "sales levels of"
5374 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5375 #: freeculture.xml:3843
5377 "Could that be true? Could the industry as a whole be gaining because of file "
5378 "sharing? Odd as that might sound, the data about CD sales actually suggest "
5379 "it might be close."
5383 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5384 #: freeculture.xml:3852
5386 "See Recording Industry Association of America, <citetitle>2002 Yearend "
5387 "Statistics</citetitle>, available at <ulink "
5388 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #15</ulink>. A later report "
5389 "indicates even greater losses. See Recording Industry Association of "
5390 "America, <citetitle>Some Facts About Music Piracy</citetitle>, 25 June 2003, "
5391 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #16</ulink>: "
5392 "<quote>In the past four years, unit shipments of recorded music have fallen "
5393 "by 26 percent from 1.16 billion units in to 860 million units in 2002 in the "
5394 "United States (based on units shipped). In terms of sales, revenues are "
5395 "down 14 percent, from $14.6 billion in to $12.6 billion last year (based on "
5396 "U.S. dollar value of shipments). The music industry worldwide has gone from "
5397 "a $39 billion industry in 2000 down to a $32 billion industry in 2002 (based "
5398 "on U.S. dollar value of shipments).</quote>"
5401 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
5402 #: freeculture.xml:3879
5406 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5407 #: freeculture.xml:3876
5409 "Jane Black, <quote>Big Music's Broken Record,</quote> BusinessWeek online, "
5410 "13 February 2003, available at <ulink "
5411 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #17</ulink>. <placeholder "
5412 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
5415 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5416 #: freeculture.xml:3848
5418 "In 2002, the RIAA reported that CD sales had fallen by 8.9 percent, from 882 "
5419 "million to 803 million units; revenues fell 6.7 percent.<placeholder "
5420 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> This confirms a trend over the past few "
5421 "years. The RIAA blames Internet piracy for the trend, though there are many "
5422 "other causes that could account for this drop. SoundScan, for example, "
5423 "reports a more than 20 percent drop in the number of CDs released since "
5424 "1999. That no doubt accounts for some of the decrease in sales. Rising "
5425 "prices could account for at least some of the loss. <quote>From 1999 to "
5426 "2001, the average price of a CD rose 7.2 percent, from $13.04 to "
5427 "$14.19.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> Competition from "
5428 "other forms of media could also account for some of the decline. As Jane "
5429 "Black of <citetitle>BusinessWeek</citetitle> notes, <quote>The soundtrack to "
5430 "the film <citetitle>High Fidelity</citetitle> has a list price of "
5431 "$18.98. You could get the whole movie [on DVD] for "
5432 "$19.99.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/>"
5436 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5437 #: freeculture.xml:3894
5439 "But let's assume the RIAA is right, and all of the decline in CD sales is "
5440 "because of Internet sharing. Here's the rub: In the same period that the "
5441 "RIAA estimates that 803 million CDs were sold, the RIAA estimates that 2.1 "
5442 "billion CDs were downloaded for free. Thus, although 2.6 times the total "
5443 "number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, sales revenue fell by just 6.7 "
5447 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5448 #: freeculture.xml:3902
5450 "There are too many different things happening at the same time to explain "
5451 "these numbers definitively, but one conclusion is unavoidable: The recording "
5452 "industry constantly asks, <quote>What's the difference between downloading a "
5453 "song and stealing a CD?</quote>—but their own numbers reveal the "
5454 "difference. If I steal a CD, then there is one less CD to sell. Every taking "
5455 "is a lost sale. But on the basis of the numbers the RIAA provides, it is "
5456 "absolutely clear that the same is not true of downloads. If every download "
5457 "were a lost sale—if every use of Kazaa <quote>rob[bed] the author of "
5458 "[his] profit</quote>—then the industry would have suffered a 100 "
5459 "percent drop in sales last year, not a 7 percent drop. If 2.6 times the "
5460 "number of CDs sold were downloaded for free, and yet sales revenue dropped "
5461 "by just 6.7 percent, then there is a huge difference between "
5462 "<quote>downloading a song and stealing a CD.</quote>"
5465 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5466 #: freeculture.xml:3918
5468 "These are the harms—alleged and perhaps exaggerated but, let's assume, "
5469 "real. What of the benefits? File sharing may impose costs on the recording "
5470 "industry. What value does it produce in addition to these costs?"
5474 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5475 #: freeculture.xml:3930
5477 "By one estimate, 75 percent of the music released by the major labels is no "
5478 "longer in print. See Online Entertainment and Copyright Law—Coming "
5479 "Soon to a Digital Device Near You: Hearing Before the Senate Committee on "
5480 "the Judiciary, 107th Cong., 1st sess. (3 April 2001) (prepared statement of "
5481 "the Future of Music Coalition), available at <ulink "
5482 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #18</ulink>."
5485 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5486 #: freeculture.xml:3924
5488 "One benefit is type C sharing—making available content that is "
5489 "technically still under copyright but is no longer commercially available. "
5490 "This is not a small category of content. There are millions of tracks that "
5491 "are no longer commercially available.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
5492 "id=\"0\"/> And while it's conceivable that some of this content is not "
5493 "available because the artist producing the content doesn't want it to be "
5494 "made available, the vast majority of it is unavailable solely because the "
5495 "publisher or the distributor has decided it no longer makes economic sense "
5496 "<emphasis>to the company</emphasis> to make it available."
5499 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
5500 #: freeculture.xml:3943 freeculture.xml:3951 freeculture.xml:3973 freeculture.xml:3995 freeculture.xml:4483 freeculture.xml:5812 freeculture.xml:5817 freeculture.xml:5869 freeculture.xml:6744 freeculture.xml:6745 freeculture.xml:7085 freeculture.xml:7147 freeculture.xml:7181 freeculture.xml:7390 freeculture.xml:13661 freeculture.xml:14387 freeculture.xml:14388
5504 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
5505 #: freeculture.xml:3943 freeculture.xml:3951 freeculture.xml:6745 freeculture.xml:14388
5509 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5510 #: freeculture.xml:3951
5512 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> While there are not good "
5513 "estimates of the number of used record stores in existence, in 2002, there "
5514 "were 7,198 used book dealers in the United States, an increase of 20 percent "
5515 "since 1993. See Book Hunter Press, <citetitle>The Quiet Revolution: The "
5516 "Expansion of the Used Book Market</citetitle> (2002), available at <ulink "
5517 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #19</ulink>. Used records "
5518 "accounted for $260 million in sales in 2002. See National Association of "
5519 "Recording Merchandisers, <quote>2002 Annual Survey Results,</quote> "
5520 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #20</ulink>."
5523 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5524 #: freeculture.xml:3945
5526 "In real space—long before the Internet—the market had a simple "
5527 "response to this problem: used book and record stores. There are thousands "
5528 "of used book and used record stores in America today.<placeholder "
5529 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> These stores buy content from owners, then sell "
5530 "the content they buy. And under American copyright law, when they buy and "
5531 "sell this content, <emphasis>even if the content is still under "
5532 "copyright</emphasis>, the copyright owner doesn't get a dime. Used book and "
5533 "record stores are commercial entities; their owners make money from the "
5534 "content they sell; but as with cable companies before statutory licensing, "
5535 "they don't have to pay the copyright owner for the content they sell."
5538 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
5539 #: freeculture.xml:3972
5540 msgid "Bernstein, Leonard"
5543 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
5544 #: freeculture.xml:3973 freeculture.xml:5812 freeculture.xml:5817 freeculture.xml:6744 freeculture.xml:14387
5545 msgid "out of print"
5548 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5549 #: freeculture.xml:3975
5551 "Type C sharing, then, is very much like used book stores or used record "
5552 "stores. It is different, of course, because the person making the content "
5553 "available isn't making money from making the content available. It is also "
5554 "different, of course, because in real space, when I sell a record, I don't "
5555 "have it anymore, while in cyberspace, when someone shares my 1949 recording "
5556 "of Bernstein's <quote>Two Love Songs,</quote> I still have it. That "
5557 "difference would matter economically if the owner of the copyright were "
5558 "selling the record in competition to my sharing. But we're talking about the "
5559 "class of content that is not currently commercially available. The Internet "
5560 "is making it available, through cooperative sharing, without competing with "
5564 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5565 #: freeculture.xml:3988
5567 "It may well be, all things considered, that it would be better if the "
5568 "copyright owner got something from this trade. But just because it may well "
5569 "be better, it doesn't follow that it would be good to ban used book "
5570 "stores. Or put differently, if you think that type C sharing should be "
5571 "stopped, do you think that libraries and used book stores should be shut as "
5575 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
5576 #: freeculture.xml:3995 freeculture.xml:13661
5577 msgid "free on-line releases of"
5581 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5582 #: freeculture.xml:3997
5584 "Finally, and perhaps most importantly, file-sharing networks enable type D "
5585 "sharing to occur—the sharing of content that copyright owners want to "
5586 "have shared or for which there is no continuing copyright. This sharing "
5587 "clearly benefits authors and society. Science fiction author Cory Doctorow, "
5588 "for example, released his first novel, <citetitle>Down and Out in the Magic "
5589 "Kingdom</citetitle>, both free on-line and in bookstores on the same "
5590 "day. His (and his publisher's) thinking was that the on-line distribution "
5591 "would be a great advertisement for the <quote>real</quote> book. People "
5592 "would read part on-line, and then decide whether they liked the book or "
5593 "not. If they liked it, they would be more likely to buy it. Doctorow's "
5594 "content is type D content. If sharing networks enable his work to be spread, "
5595 "then both he and society are better off. (Actually, much better off: It is a "
5599 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5600 #: freeculture.xml:4015
5602 "Likewise for work in the public domain: This sharing benefits society with "
5603 "no legal harm to authors at all. If efforts to solve the problem of type A "
5604 "sharing destroy the opportunity for type D sharing, then we lose something "
5605 "important in order to protect type A content."
5608 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5609 #: freeculture.xml:4021
5611 "The point throughout is this: While the recording industry understandably "
5612 "says, <quote>This is how much we've lost,</quote> we must also ask, "
5613 "<quote>How much has society gained from p2p sharing? What are the "
5614 "efficiencies? What is the content that otherwise would be "
5615 "unavailable?</quote>"
5618 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5619 #: freeculture.xml:4028
5621 "For unlike the piracy I described in the first section of this chapter, much "
5622 "of the <quote>piracy</quote> that file sharing enables is plainly legal and "
5623 "good. And like the piracy I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: "
5624 "labelnumber\" linkend=\"pirates\"/>, much of this piracy is motivated by a "
5625 "new way of spreading content caused by changes in the technology of "
5626 "distribution. Thus, consistent with the tradition that gave us Hollywood, "
5627 "radio, the recording industry, and cable TV, the question we should be "
5628 "asking about file sharing is how best to preserve its benefits while "
5629 "minimizing (to the extent possible) the wrongful harm it causes artists. The "
5630 "question is one of balance. The law should seek that balance, and that "
5631 "balance will be found only with time."
5634 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5635 #: freeculture.xml:4042
5637 "<quote>But isn't the war just a war against illegal sharing? Isn't the "
5638 "target just what you call type A sharing?</quote>"
5642 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5643 #: freeculture.xml:4059
5645 "See Transcript of Proceedings, In Re: Napster Copyright Litigation at 34- 35 "
5646 "(N.D. Cal., 11 July 2001), nos. MDL-00-1369 MHP, C 99-5183 MHP, available at "
5647 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #21</ulink>. For an "
5648 "account of the litigation and its toll on Napster, see Joseph Menn, "
5649 "<citetitle>All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's "
5650 "Napster</citetitle> (New York: Crown Business, 2003), 269–82."
5653 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5654 #: freeculture.xml:4046
5656 "You would think. And we should hope. But so far, it is not. The effect of "
5657 "the war purportedly on type A sharing alone has been felt far beyond that "
5658 "one class of sharing. That much is obvious from the Napster case "
5659 "itself. When Napster told the district court that it had developed a "
5660 "technology to block the transfer of 99.4 percent of identified infringing "
5661 "material, the district court told counsel for Napster 99.4 percent was not "
5662 "good enough. Napster had to push the infringements <quote>down to "
5663 "zero.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
5666 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5667 #: freeculture.xml:4070
5669 "If 99.4 percent is not good enough, then this is a war on file-sharing "
5670 "technologies, not a war on copyright infringement. There is no way to assure "
5671 "that a p2p system is used 100 percent of the time in compliance with the "
5672 "law, any more than there is a way to assure that 100 percent of VCRs or 100 "
5673 "percent of Xerox machines or 100 percent of handguns are used in compliance "
5674 "with the law. Zero tolerance means zero p2p. The court's ruling means that "
5675 "we as a society must lose the benefits of p2p, even for the totally legal "
5676 "and beneficial uses they serve, simply to assure that there are zero "
5677 "copyright infringements caused by p2p."
5680 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5681 #: freeculture.xml:4081
5683 "Zero tolerance has not been our history. It has not produced the content "
5684 "industry that we know today. The history of American law has been a process "
5685 "of balance. As new technologies changed the way content was distributed, the "
5686 "law adjusted, after some time, to the new technology. In this adjustment, "
5687 "the law sought to ensure the legitimate rights of creators while protecting "
5688 "innovation. Sometimes this has meant more rights for creators. Sometimes "
5692 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5693 #: freeculture.xml:4091
5695 "So, as we've seen, when <quote>mechanical reproduction</quote> threatened "
5696 "the interests of composers, Congress balanced the rights of composers "
5697 "against the interests of the recording industry. It granted rights to "
5698 "composers, but also to the recording artists: Composers were to be paid, but "
5699 "at a price set by Congress. But when radio started broadcasting the "
5700 "recordings made by these recording artists, and they complained to Congress "
5701 "that their <quote>creative property</quote> was not being respected (since "
5702 "the radio station did not have to pay them for the creativity it broadcast), "
5703 "Congress rejected their claim. An indirect benefit was enough."
5706 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5707 #: freeculture.xml:4104
5709 "Cable TV followed the pattern of record albums. When the courts rejected the "
5710 "claim that cable broadcasters had to pay for the content they rebroadcast, "
5711 "Congress responded by giving broadcasters a right to compensation, but at a "
5712 "level set by the law. It likewise gave cable companies the right to the "
5713 "content, so long as they paid the statutory price."
5717 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5718 #: freeculture.xml:4114
5720 "This compromise, like the compromise affecting records and player pianos, "
5721 "served two important goals—indeed, the two central goals of any "
5722 "copyright legislation. First, the law assured that new innovators would have "
5723 "the freedom to develop new ways to deliver content. Second, the law assured "
5724 "that copyright holders would be paid for the content that was "
5725 "distributed. One fear was that if Congress simply required cable TV to pay "
5726 "copyright holders whatever they demanded for their content, then copyright "
5727 "holders associated with broadcasters would use their power to stifle this "
5728 "new technology, cable. But if Congress had permitted cable to use "
5729 "broadcasters' content for free, then it would have unfairly subsidized "
5730 "cable. Thus Congress chose a path that would assure "
5731 "<emphasis>compensation</emphasis> without giving the past (broadcasters) "
5732 "control over the future (cable)."
5735 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
5736 #: freeculture.xml:4130
5740 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5741 #: freeculture.xml:4133
5743 "In the same year that Congress struck this balance, two major producers and "
5744 "distributors of film content filed a lawsuit against another technology, the "
5745 "video tape recorder (VTR, or as we refer to them today, VCRs) that Sony had "
5746 "produced, the Betamax. Disney's and Universal's claim against Sony was "
5747 "relatively simple: Sony produced a device, Disney and Universal claimed, "
5748 "that enabled consumers to engage in copyright infringement. Because the "
5749 "device that Sony built had a <quote>record</quote> button, the device could "
5750 "be used to record copyrighted movies and shows. Sony was therefore "
5751 "benefiting from the copyright infringement of its customers. It should "
5752 "therefore, Disney and Universal claimed, be partially liable for that "
5757 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5758 #: freeculture.xml:4146
5760 "There was something to Disney's and Universal's claim. Sony did decide to "
5761 "design its machine to make it very simple to record television shows. It "
5762 "could have built the machine to block or inhibit any direct copying from a "
5763 "television broadcast. Or possibly, it could have built the machine to copy "
5764 "only if there were a special <quote>copy me</quote> signal on the line. It "
5765 "was clear that there were many television shows that did not grant anyone "
5766 "permission to copy. Indeed, if anyone had asked, no doubt the majority of "
5767 "shows would not have authorized copying. And in the face of this obvious "
5768 "preference, Sony could have designed its system to minimize the opportunity "
5769 "for copyright infringement. It did not, and for that, Disney and Universal "
5770 "wanted to hold it responsible for the architecture it chose."
5774 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5775 #: freeculture.xml:4168
5777 "Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders): Hearing on S. 1758 "
5778 "Before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 97th Cong., 1st and 2nd sess., "
5779 "459 (1982) (testimony of Jack Valenti, president, Motion Picture Association "
5780 "of America, Inc.)."
5784 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5785 #: freeculture.xml:4180
5786 msgid "Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders), 475."
5790 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5791 #: freeculture.xml:4185
5793 "<citetitle>Universal City Studios, Inc</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Sony "
5794 "Corp. of America</citetitle>, 480 F. Supp. 429, (C.D. Cal., 1979)."
5798 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5799 #: freeculture.xml:4196
5801 "Copyright Infringements (Audio and Video Recorders), 485 (testimony of Jack "
5805 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5806 #: freeculture.xml:4161
5808 "MPAA president Jack Valenti became the studios' most vocal champion. Valenti "
5809 "called VCRs <quote>tapeworms.</quote> He warned, <quote>When there are 20, "
5810 "30, 40 million of these VCRs in the land, we will be invaded by millions of "
5811 "`tapeworms,' eating away at the very heart and essence of the most precious "
5812 "asset the copyright owner has, his copyright.</quote><placeholder "
5813 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> <quote>One does not have to be trained in "
5814 "sophisticated marketing and creative judgment,</quote> he told Congress, "
5815 "<quote>to understand the devastation on the after-theater marketplace caused "
5816 "by the hundreds of millions of tapings that will adversely impact on the "
5817 "future of the creative community in this country. It is simply a question of "
5818 "basic economics and plain common sense.</quote><placeholder "
5819 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> Indeed, as surveys would later show, percent of "
5820 "VCR owners had movie libraries of ten videos or more<placeholder "
5821 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/> — a use the Court would later hold was "
5822 "not <quote>fair.</quote> By <quote>allowing VCR owners to copy freely by the "
5823 "means of an exemption from copyright infringementwithout creating a "
5824 "mechanism to compensate copyrightowners,</quote> Valenti testified, Congress "
5825 "would <quote>take from the owners the very essence of their property: the "
5826 "exclusive right to control who may use their work, that is, who may copy it "
5827 "and thereby profit from its reproduction.</quote><placeholder "
5828 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"3\"/>"
5832 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5833 #: freeculture.xml:4213
5835 "<citetitle>Universal City Studios, Inc</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Sony "
5836 "Corp. of America</citetitle>, 659 F. 2d 963 (9th Cir. 1981)."
5839 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><indexterm><primary>
5840 #: freeculture.xml:4216
5841 msgid "Kozinski, Alex"
5844 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5845 #: freeculture.xml:4201
5847 "It took eight years for this case to be resolved by the Supreme Court. In "
5848 "the interim, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Hollywood in "
5849 "its jurisdiction—leading Judge Alex Kozinski, who sits on that court, "
5850 "refers to it as the <quote>Hollywood Circuit</quote>—held that Sony "
5851 "would be liable for the copyright infringement made possible by its "
5852 "machines. Under the Ninth Circuit's rule, this totally familiar "
5853 "technology—which Jack Valenti had called <quote>the Boston Strangler "
5854 "of the American film industry</quote> (worse yet, it was a "
5855 "<emphasis>Japanese</emphasis> Boston Strangler of the American film "
5856 "industry)—was an illegal technology.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
5857 "id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
5861 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5862 #: freeculture.xml:4219
5864 "But the Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Ninth Circuit. And in "
5865 "its reversal, the Court clearly articulated its understanding of when and "
5866 "whether courts should intervene in such disputes. As the Court wrote,"
5870 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
5871 #: freeculture.xml:4238
5873 "<citetitle>Sony Corp. of America</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Universal City "
5874 "Studios, Inc</citetitle>., 464 U.S. 417, 431 (1984)."
5877 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
5878 #: freeculture.xml:4228
5880 "Sound policy, as well as history, supports our consistent deference to "
5881 "Congress when major technological innovations alter the market for "
5882 "copyrighted materials. Congress has the constitutional authority and the "
5883 "institutional ability to accommodate fully the varied permutations of "
5884 "competing interests that are inevitably implicated by such new "
5885 "technology.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
5888 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5889 #: freeculture.xml:4243
5891 "Congress was asked to respond to the Supreme Court's decision. But as with "
5892 "the plea of recording artists about radio broadcasts, Congress ignored the "
5893 "request. Congress was convinced that American film got enough, this "
5894 "<quote>taking</quote> notwithstanding. If we put these cases together, a "
5898 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
5899 #: freeculture.xml:4254
5903 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
5904 #: freeculture.xml:4255
5905 msgid "WHOSE VALUE WAS <quote>PIRATED</quote>"
5908 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
5909 #: freeculture.xml:4256
5910 msgid "RESPONSE OF THE COURTS"
5913 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
5914 #: freeculture.xml:4257
5915 msgid "RESPONSE OF CONGRESS"
5918 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5919 #: freeculture.xml:4262
5923 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5924 #: freeculture.xml:4263
5928 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5929 #: freeculture.xml:4264 freeculture.xml:4276 freeculture.xml:4282
5930 msgid "No protection"
5933 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5934 #: freeculture.xml:4265 freeculture.xml:4277
5935 msgid "Statutory license"
5938 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5939 #: freeculture.xml:4269
5940 msgid "Recording artists"
5943 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5944 #: freeculture.xml:4270
5948 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5949 #: freeculture.xml:4271 freeculture.xml:4283
5953 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5954 #: freeculture.xml:4275
5955 msgid "Broadcasters"
5958 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5959 #: freeculture.xml:4280
5963 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
5964 #: freeculture.xml:4281
5965 msgid "Film creators"
5968 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
5969 #: freeculture.xml:4293
5971 "These are the most important instances in our history, but there are other "
5972 "cases as well. The technology of digital audio tape (DAT), for example, was "
5973 "regulated by Congress to minimize the risk of piracy. The remedy Congress "
5974 "imposed did burden DAT producers, by taxing tape sales and controlling the "
5975 "technology of DAT. See Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 (Title 17 of the "
5976 "<citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>), Pub. L. No. 102-563, 106 Stat. "
5977 "4237, codified at 17 U.S.C. §1001. Again, however, this regulation did not "
5978 "eliminate the opportunity for free riding in the sense I've described. See "
5979 "Lessig, <citetitle>Future</citetitle>, 71. See also Picker, <quote>From "
5980 "Edison to the Broadcast Flag,</quote> <citetitle>University of Chicago Law "
5981 "Review</citetitle> 70 (2003): 293–96. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
5982 "id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
5985 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5986 #: freeculture.xml:4290
5988 "In each case throughout our history, a new technology changed the way "
5989 "content was distributed.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> In each "
5990 "case, throughout our history, that change meant that someone got a "
5991 "<quote>free ride</quote> on someone else's work."
5995 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
5996 #: freeculture.xml:4311
5998 "In <emphasis>none</emphasis> of these cases did either the courts or "
5999 "Congress eliminate all free riding. In <emphasis>none</emphasis> of these "
6000 "cases did the courts or Congress insist that the law should assure that the "
6001 "copyright holder get all the value that his copyright created. In every "
6002 "case, the copyright owners complained of <quote>piracy.</quote> In every "
6003 "case, Congress acted to recognize some of the legitimacy in the behavior of "
6004 "the <quote>pirates.</quote> In each case, Congress allowed some new "
6005 "technology to benefit from content made before. It balanced the interests at "
6009 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6010 #: freeculture.xml:4323
6012 "When you think across these examples, and the other examples that make up "
6013 "the first four chapters of this section, this balance makes sense. Was Walt "
6014 "Disney a pirate? Would doujinshi be better if creators had to ask "
6015 "permission? Should tools that enable others to capture and spread images as "
6016 "a way to cultivate or criticize our culture be better regulated? Is it "
6017 "really right that building a search engine should expose you to $15 million "
6018 "in damages? Would it have been better if Edison had controlled film? Should "
6019 "every cover band have to hire a lawyer to get permission to record a song?"
6023 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
6024 #: freeculture.xml:4340
6026 "<citetitle>Sony Corp. of America</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Universal City "
6027 "Studios, Inc</citetitle>., 464 U.S. 417, (1984)."
6030 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6031 #: freeculture.xml:4335
6033 "We could answer yes to each of these questions, but our tradition has "
6034 "answered no. In our tradition, as the Supreme Court has stated, copyright "
6035 "<quote>has never accorded the copyright owner complete control over all "
6036 "possible uses of his work.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
6037 "Instead, the particular uses that the law regulates have been defined by "
6038 "balancing the good that comes from granting an exclusive right against the "
6039 "burdens such an exclusive right creates. And this balancing has historically "
6040 "been done <emphasis>after</emphasis> a technology has matured, or settled "
6041 "into the mix of technologies that facilitate the distribution of content."
6044 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6045 #: freeculture.xml:4351
6047 "We should be doing the same thing today. The technology of the Internet is "
6048 "changing quickly. The way people connect to the Internet (wires "
6049 "vs. wireless) is changing very quickly. No doubt the network should not "
6050 "become a tool for <quote>stealing</quote> from artists. But neither should "
6051 "the law become a tool to entrench one particular way in which artists (or "
6052 "more accurately, distributors) get paid. As I describe in some detail in the "
6053 "last chapter of this book, we should be securing income to artists while we "
6054 "allow the market to secure the most efficient way to promote and distribute "
6055 "content. This will require changes in the law, at least in the "
6056 "interim. These changes should be designed to balance the protection of the "
6057 "law against the strong public interest that innovation continue."
6061 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
6062 #: freeculture.xml:4375
6064 "John Schwartz, <quote>New Economy: The Attack on Peer-to-Peer Software "
6065 "Echoes Past Efforts,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 22 "
6066 "September 2003, C3."
6069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6070 #: freeculture.xml:4367
6072 "This is especially true when a new technology enables a vastly superior mode "
6073 "of distribution. And this p2p has done. P2p technologies can be ideally "
6074 "efficient in moving content across a widely diverse network. Left to "
6075 "develop, they could make the network vastly more efficient. Yet these "
6076 "<quote>potential public benefits,</quote> as John Schwartz writes in "
6077 "<citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle>, <quote>could be delayed in the "
6078 "P2P fight.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6081 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6082 #: freeculture.xml:4380
6084 "<emphasis role='strong'>Yet when anyone</emphasis> begins to talk about "
6085 "<quote>balance,</quote> the copyright warriors raise a different "
6086 "argument. <quote>All this hand waving about balance and incentives,</quote> "
6087 "they say, <quote>misses a fundamental point. Our content,</quote> the "
6088 "warriors insist, <quote>is our <emphasis>property</emphasis>. Why should we "
6089 "wait for Congress to `rebalance' our property rights? Do you have to wait "
6090 "before calling the police when your car has been stolen? And why should "
6091 "Congress deliberate at all about the merits of this theft? Do we ask whether "
6092 "the car thief had a good use for the car before we arrest him?</quote>"
6095 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
6096 #: freeculture.xml:4392
6098 "<quote>It is <emphasis>our property</emphasis>,</quote> the warriors "
6099 "insist. <quote>And it should be protected just as any other property is "
6100 "protected.</quote>"
6103 #. type: Content of: <book><part><title>
6104 #: freeculture.xml:4401
6105 msgid "<quote>PROPERTY</quote>"
6109 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6110 #: freeculture.xml:4406
6112 "<emphasis role='strong'>The copyright warriors</emphasis> are right: A "
6113 "copyright is a kind of property. It can be owned and sold, and the law "
6114 "protects against its theft. Ordinarily, the copyright owner gets to hold out "
6115 "for any price he wants. Markets reckon the supply and demand that partially "
6116 "determine the price she can get."
6119 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6120 #: freeculture.xml:4413
6122 "But in ordinary language, to call a copyright a <quote>property</quote> "
6123 "right is a bit misleading, for the property of copyright is an odd kind of "
6124 "property. Indeed, the very idea of property in any idea or any expression "
6125 "is very odd. I understand what I am taking when I take the picnic table you "
6126 "put in your backyard. I am taking a thing, the picnic table, and after I "
6127 "take it, you don't have it. But what am I taking when I take the good "
6128 "<emphasis>idea</emphasis> you had to put a picnic table in the "
6129 "backyard—by, for example, going to Sears, buying a table, and putting "
6130 "it in my backyard? What is the thing I am taking then?"
6134 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
6135 #: freeculture.xml:4438
6137 "Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813) in "
6138 "<citetitle>The Writings of Thomas Jefferson</citetitle>, vol. 6 (Andrew "
6139 "A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, eds., 1903), 330, 333–34."
6142 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6143 #: freeculture.xml:4425
6145 "The point is not just about the thingness of picnic tables versus ideas, "
6146 "though that's an important difference. The point instead is that in the "
6147 "ordinary case—indeed, in practically every case except for a narrow "
6148 "range of exceptions—ideas released to the world are free. I don't take "
6149 "anything from you when I copy the way you dress—though I might seem "
6150 "weird if I did it every day, and especially weird if you are a "
6151 "woman. Instead, as Thomas Jefferson said (and as is especially true when I "
6152 "copy the way someone else dresses), <quote>He who receives an idea from me, "
6153 "receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his "
6154 "taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.</quote><placeholder "
6155 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6158 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6159 #: freeculture.xml:4444
6161 "The exceptions to free use are ideas and expressions within the reach of the "
6162 "law of patent and copyright, and a few other domains that I won't discuss "
6163 "here. Here the law says you can't take my idea or expression without my "
6164 "permission: The law turns the intangible into property."
6168 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para><footnote><para>
6169 #: freeculture.xml:4457
6171 "As the legal realists taught American law, all property rights are "
6172 "intangible. A property right is simply a right that an individual has "
6173 "against the world to do or not do certain things that may or may not attach "
6174 "to a physical object. The right itself is intangible, even if the object to "
6175 "which it is (metaphorically) attached is tangible. See Adam Mossoff, "
6176 "<quote>What Is Property? Putting the Pieces Back Together,</quote> "
6177 "<citetitle>Arizona Law Review</citetitle> 45 (2003): 373, 429 n. 241."
6180 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6181 #: freeculture.xml:4452
6183 "But how, and to what extent, and in what form—the details, in other "
6184 "words—matter. To get a good sense of how this practice of turning the "
6185 "intangible into property emerged, we need to place this "
6186 "<quote>property</quote> in its proper context.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
6190 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
6191 #: freeculture.xml:4467
6193 "My strategy in doing this will be the same as my strategy in the preceding "
6194 "part. I offer four stories to help put the idea of <quote>copyright material "
6195 "is property</quote> in context. Where did the idea come from? What are its "
6196 "limits? How does it function in practice? After these stories, the "
6197 "significance of this true statement—<quote>copyright material is "
6198 "property</quote>— will be a bit more clear, and its implications will "
6199 "be revealed as quite different from the implications that the copyright "
6200 "warriors would have us draw."
6203 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
6204 #: freeculture.xml:4480
6205 msgid "CHAPTER SIX: Founders"
6208 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6209 #: freeculture.xml:4481
6213 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6214 #: freeculture.xml:4482 freeculture.xml:4627
6215 msgid "Branagh, Kenneth"
6218 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
6219 #: freeculture.xml:4483
6220 msgid "English copyright law developed for"
6223 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6224 #: freeculture.xml:4485
6226 "<emphasis role='strong'>William Shakespeare</emphasis> wrote "
6227 "<citetitle>Romeo and Juliet</citetitle> in 1595. The play was first "
6228 "published in 1597. It was the eleventh major play that Shakespeare had "
6229 "written. He would continue to write plays through 1613, and the plays that "
6230 "he wrote have continued to define Anglo-American culture ever since. So "
6231 "deeply have the works of a sixteenth-century writer seeped into our culture "
6232 "that we often don't even recognize their source. I once overheard someone "
6233 "commenting on Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Henry V: <quote>I liked it, "
6234 "but Shakespeare is so full of clichés.</quote>"
6237 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
6238 #: freeculture.xml:4501
6242 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
6243 #: freeculture.xml:4502
6244 msgid "Dryden, John"
6247 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6248 #: freeculture.xml:4501
6250 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
6251 "id=\"1\"/> Jacob Tonson is typically remembered for his associations with "
6252 "prominent eighteenth-century literary figures, especially John Dryden, and "
6253 "for his handsome <quote>definitive editions</quote> of classic works. In "
6254 "addition to <citetitle>Romeo and Juliet</citetitle>, he published an "
6255 "astonishing array of works that still remain at the heart of the English "
6256 "canon, including collected works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Milton, "
6257 "and John Dryden. See Keith Walker, <quote>Jacob Tonson, Bookseller,</quote> "
6258 "<citetitle>American Scholar</citetitle> 61:3 (1992): 424–31."
6262 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6263 #: freeculture.xml:4514
6265 "Lyman Ray Patterson, <citetitle>Copyright in Historical "
6266 "Perspective</citetitle> (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), "
6271 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6272 #: freeculture.xml:4497
6274 "In 1774, almost 180 years after <citetitle>Romeo and Juliet</citetitle> was "
6275 "written, the <quote>copy-right</quote> for the work was still thought by "
6276 "many to be the exclusive right of a single London publisher, Jacob "
6277 "Tonson.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Tonson was the most "
6278 "prominent of a small group of publishers called the Conger<placeholder "
6279 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> who controlled bookselling in England during "
6280 "the eighteenth century. The Conger claimed a perpetual right to control the "
6281 "<quote>copy</quote> of books that they had acquired from authors. That "
6282 "perpetual right meant that no one else could publish copies of a book to "
6283 "which they held the copyright. Prices of the classics were thus kept high; "
6284 "competition to produce better or cheaper editions was eliminated."
6287 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6288 #: freeculture.xml:4526
6289 msgid "British Parliament"
6292 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6293 #: freeculture.xml:4537
6295 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> As Siva Vaidhyanathan nicely "
6296 "argues, it is erroneous to call this a <quote>copyright law.</quote> See "
6297 "Vaidhyanathan, <citetitle>Copyrights and Copywrongs</citetitle>, 40."
6300 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6301 #: freeculture.xml:4528
6303 "Now, there's something puzzling about the year 1774 to anyone who knows a "
6304 "little about copyright law. The better-known year in the history of "
6305 "copyright is 1710, the year that the British Parliament adopted the first "
6306 "<quote>copyright</quote> act. Known as the Statute of Anne, the act stated "
6307 "that all published works would get a copyright term of fourteen years, "
6308 "renewable once if the author was alive, and that all works already published "
6309 "by 1710 would get a single term of twenty-one additional years.<placeholder "
6310 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Under this law, <citetitle>Romeo and "
6311 "Juliet</citetitle> should have been free in 1731. So why was there any issue "
6312 "about it still being under Tonson's control in 1774?"
6315 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6316 #: freeculture.xml:4544
6317 msgid "Licensing Act (1662)"
6320 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6321 #: freeculture.xml:4546
6323 "The reason is that the English hadn't yet agreed on what a "
6324 "<quote>copyright</quote> was—indeed, no one had. At the time the "
6325 "English passed the Statute of Anne, there was no other legislation governing "
6326 "copyrights. The last law regulating publishers, the Licensing Act of 1662, "
6327 "had expired in 1695. That law gave publishers a monopoly over publishing, as "
6328 "a way to make it easier for the Crown to control what was published. But "
6329 "after it expired, there was no positive law that said that the publishers, "
6330 "or <quote>Stationers,</quote> had an exclusive right to print books."
6333 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6334 #: freeculture.xml:4557
6336 "There was no <emphasis>positive</emphasis> law, but that didn't mean that "
6337 "there was no law. The Anglo-American legal tradition looks to both the words "
6338 "of legislatures and the words of judges to know the rules that are to govern "
6339 "how people are to behave. We call the words from legislatures "
6340 "<quote>positive law.</quote> We call the words from judges <quote>common "
6341 "law.</quote> The common law sets the background against which legislatures "
6342 "legislate; the legislature, ordinarily, can trump that background only if it "
6343 "passes a law to displace it. And so the real question after the licensing "
6344 "statutes had expired was whether the common law protected a copyright, "
6345 "independent of any positive law."
6349 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6350 #: freeculture.xml:4569
6352 "This question was important to the publishers, or "
6353 "<quote>booksellers,</quote> as they were called, because there was growing "
6354 "competition from foreign publishers. The Scottish, in particular, were "
6355 "increasingly publishing and exporting books to England. That competition "
6356 "reduced the profits of the Conger, which reacted by demanding that "
6357 "Parliament pass a law to again give them exclusive control over "
6358 "publishing. That demand ultimately resulted in the Statute of Anne."
6361 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6362 #: freeculture.xml:4581
6364 "The Statute of Anne granted the author or <quote>proprietor</quote> of a "
6365 "book an exclusive right to print that book. In an important limitation, "
6366 "however, and to the horror of the booksellers, the law gave the bookseller "
6367 "that right for a limited term. At the end of that term, the copyright "
6368 "<quote>expired,</quote> and the work would then be free and could be "
6369 "published by anyone. Or so the legislature is thought to have believed."
6372 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6373 #: freeculture.xml:4590
6375 "Now, the thing to puzzle about for a moment is this: Why would Parliament "
6376 "limit the exclusive right? Not why would they limit it to the particular "
6377 "limit they set, but why would they limit the right <emphasis>at "
6381 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6382 #: freeculture.xml:4596
6384 "For the booksellers, and the authors whom they represented, had a very "
6385 "strong claim. Take <citetitle>Romeo and Juliet</citetitle> as an example: "
6386 "That play was written by Shakespeare. It was his genius that brought it into "
6387 "the world. He didn't take anybody's property when he created this play "
6388 "(that's a controversial claim, but never mind), and by his creating this "
6389 "play, he didn't make it any harder for others to craft a play. So why is it "
6390 "that the law would ever allow someone else to come along and take "
6391 "Shakespeare's play without his, or his estate's, permission? What reason is "
6392 "there to allow someone else to <quote>steal</quote> Shakespeare's work?"
6395 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6396 #: freeculture.xml:4607
6398 "The answer comes in two parts. We first need to see something special about "
6399 "the notion of <quote>copyright</quote> that existed at the time of the "
6400 "Statute of Anne. Second, we have to see something important about "
6401 "<quote>booksellers.</quote>"
6405 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6406 #: freeculture.xml:4613
6408 "First, about copyright. In the last three hundred years, we have come to "
6409 "apply the concept of <quote>copyright</quote> ever more broadly. But in "
6410 "1710, it wasn't so much a concept as it was a very particular right. The "
6411 "copyright was born as a very specific set of restrictions: It forbade others "
6412 "from reprinting a book. In 1710, the <quote>copy-right</quote> was a right "
6413 "to use a particular machine to replicate a particular work. It did not go "
6414 "beyond that very narrow right. It did not control any more generally how a "
6415 "work could be <emphasis>used</emphasis>. Today the right includes a large "
6416 "collection of restrictions on the freedom of others: It grants the author "
6417 "the exclusive right to copy, the exclusive right to distribute, the "
6418 "exclusive right to perform, and so on."
6421 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6422 #: freeculture.xml:4629
6424 "So, for example, even if the copyright to Shakespeare's works were "
6425 "perpetual, all that would have meant under the original meaning of the term "
6426 "was that no one could reprint Shakespeare's work without the permission of "
6427 "the Shakespeare estate. It would not have controlled anything, for example, "
6428 "about how the work could be performed, whether the work could be translated, "
6429 "or whether Kenneth Branagh would be allowed to make his films. The "
6430 "<quote>copy-right</quote> was only an exclusive right to print—no "
6431 "less, of course, but also no more."
6434 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6435 #: freeculture.xml:4638
6436 msgid "Henry VIII, King of England"
6439 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6440 #: freeculture.xml:4639
6441 msgid "Statute of Monopolies (1656)"
6444 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6445 #: freeculture.xml:4641
6447 "Even that limited right was viewed with skepticism by the British. They had "
6448 "had a long and ugly experience with <quote>exclusive rights,</quote> "
6449 "especially <quote>exclusive rights</quote> granted by the Crown. The English "
6450 "had fought a civil war in part about the Crown's practice of handing out "
6451 "monopolies—especially monopolies for works that already existed. King "
6452 "Henry VIII granted a patent to print the Bible and a monopoly to Darcy to "
6453 "print playing cards. The English Parliament began to fight back against this "
6454 "power of the Crown. In 1656, it passed the Statute of Monopolies, limiting "
6455 "monopolies to patents for new inventions. And by 1710, Parliament was eager "
6456 "to deal with the growing monopoly in publishing."
6459 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6460 #: freeculture.xml:4654
6462 "Thus the <quote>copy-right,</quote> when viewed as a monopoly right, was "
6463 "naturally viewed as a right that should be limited. (However convincing the "
6464 "claim that <quote>it's my property, and I should have it forever,</quote> "
6465 "try sounding convincing when uttering, <quote>It's my monopoly, and I should "
6466 "have it forever.</quote>) The state would protect the exclusive right, but "
6467 "only so long as it benefited society. The British saw the harms from "
6468 "specialinterest favors; they passed a law to stop them."
6471 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6472 #: freeculture.xml:4662
6473 msgid "booksellers, English"
6477 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6478 #: freeculture.xml:4679
6480 "Philip Wittenberg, <citetitle>The Protection and Marketing of Literary "
6481 "Property</citetitle> (New York: J. Messner, Inc., 1937), 31."
6484 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6485 #: freeculture.xml:4664
6487 "Second, about booksellers. It wasn't just that the copyright was a "
6488 "monopoly. It was also that it was a monopoly held by the booksellers. "
6489 "Booksellers sound quaint and harmless to us. They were not viewed as "
6490 "harmless in seventeenth-century England. Members of the Conger were "
6491 "increasingly seen as monopolists of the worst kind—tools of the "
6492 "Crown's repression, selling the liberty of England to guarantee themselves a "
6493 "monopoly profit. The attacks against these monopolists were harsh: Milton "
6494 "described them as <quote>old patentees and monopolizers in the trade of "
6495 "book-selling</quote>; they were <quote>men who do not therefore labour in an "
6496 "honest profession to which learning is indetted.</quote><placeholder "
6497 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6500 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6501 #: freeculture.xml:4684
6503 "Many believed the power the booksellers exercised over the spread of "
6504 "knowledge was harming that spread, just at the time the Enlightenment was "
6505 "teaching the importance of education and knowledge spread generally. The "
6506 "idea that knowledge should be free was a hallmark of the time, and these "
6507 "powerful commercial interests were interfering with that idea."
6510 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6511 #: freeculture.xml:4692
6513 "To balance this power, Parliament decided to increase competition among "
6514 "booksellers, and the simplest way to do that was to spread the wealth of "
6515 "valuable books. Parliament therefore limited the term of copyrights, and "
6516 "thereby guaranteed that valuable books would become open to any publisher to "
6517 "publish after a limited time. Thus the setting of the term for existing "
6518 "works to just twenty-one years was a compromise to fight the power of the "
6519 "booksellers. The limitation on terms was an indirect way to assure "
6520 "competition among publishers, and thus the construction and spread of "
6524 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6525 #: freeculture.xml:4704
6527 "When 1731 (1710 + 21) came along, however, the booksellers were getting "
6528 "anxious. They saw the consequences of more competition, and like every "
6529 "competitor, they didn't like them. At first booksellers simply ignored the "
6530 "Statute of Anne, continuing to insist on the perpetual right to control "
6531 "publication. But in 1735 and 1737, they tried to persuade Parliament to "
6532 "extend their terms. Twenty-one years was not enough, they said; they needed "
6536 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6537 #: freeculture.xml:4713
6539 "Parliament rejected their requests. As one pamphleteer put it, in words that "
6544 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
6545 #: freeculture.xml:4728
6547 "A Letter to a Member of Parliament concerning the Bill now depending in the "
6548 "House of Commons, for making more effectual an Act in the Eighth Year of the "
6549 "Reign of Queen Anne, entitled, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by "
6550 "Vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or Purchasers of such "
6551 "Copies, during the Times therein mentioned (London, 1735), in Brief Amici "
6552 "Curiae of Tyler T. Ochoa et al., 8, <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
6553 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01-618)."
6556 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
6557 #: freeculture.xml:4718
6559 "I see no Reason for granting a further Term now, which will not hold as well "
6560 "for granting it again and again, as often as the Old ones Expire; so that "
6561 "should this Bill pass, it will in Effect be establishing a perpetual "
6562 "Monopoly, a Thing deservedly odious in the Eye of the Law; it will be a "
6563 "great Cramp to Trade, a Discouragement to Learning, no Benefit to the "
6564 "Authors, but a general Tax on the Publick; and all this only to increase the "
6565 "private Gain of the Booksellers.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6568 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6569 #: freeculture.xml:4739
6571 "Having failed in Parliament, the publishers turned to the courts in a series "
6572 "of cases. Their argument was simple and direct: The Statute of Anne gave "
6573 "authors certain protections through positive law, but those protections were "
6574 "not intended as replacements for the common law. Instead, they were "
6575 "intended simply to supplement the common law. Under common law, it was "
6576 "already wrong to take another person's creative <quote>property</quote> and "
6577 "use it without his permission. The Statute of Anne, the booksellers argued, "
6578 "didn't change that. Therefore, just because the protections of the Statute "
6579 "of Anne expired, that didn't mean the protections of the common law expired: "
6580 "Under the common law they had the right to ban the publication of a book, "
6581 "even if its Statute of Anne copyright had expired. This, they argued, was "
6582 "the only way to protect authors."
6585 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
6586 #: freeculture.xml:4753 freeculture.xml:4761 freeculture.xml:4808
6587 msgid "Patterson, Raymond"
6590 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6591 #: freeculture.xml:4761
6593 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
6594 "id=\"1\"/> Lyman Ray Patterson, <quote>Free Speech, Copyright, and Fair "
6595 "Use,</quote> <citetitle>Vanderbilt Law Review</citetitle> 40 (1987): 28. For "
6596 "a wonderfully compelling account, see Vaidhyanathan, 37–48."
6599 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6600 #: freeculture.xml:4755
6602 "This was a clever argument, and one that had the support of some of the "
6603 "leading jurists of the day. It also displayed extraordinary chutzpah. Until "
6604 "then, as law professor Raymond Patterson has put it, <quote>The publishers "
6605 "… had as much concern for authors as a cattle rancher has for "
6606 "cattle.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The bookseller "
6607 "didn't care squat for the rights of the author. His concern was the "
6608 "monopoly profit that the author's work gave."
6612 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6613 #: freeculture.xml:4775
6615 "For a compelling account, see David Saunders, <citetitle>Authorship and "
6616 "Copyright</citetitle> (London: Routledge, 1992), 62–69."
6619 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6620 #: freeculture.xml:4771
6622 "The booksellers' argument was not accepted without a fight. The hero of "
6623 "this fight was a Scottish bookseller named Alexander Donaldson.<placeholder "
6624 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6627 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6628 #: freeculture.xml:4779
6629 msgid "Boswell, James"
6632 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6633 #: freeculture.xml:4780
6634 msgid "Erskine, Andrew"
6637 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6638 #: freeculture.xml:4789 freeculture.xml:14810
6642 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6643 #: freeculture.xml:4787
6645 "Mark Rose, <citetitle>Authors and Owners</citetitle> (Cambridge: Harvard "
6646 "University Press, 1993), 92. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
6650 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6651 #: freeculture.xml:4798
6655 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6656 #: freeculture.xml:4782
6658 "Donaldson was an outsider to the London Conger. He began his career in "
6659 "Edinburgh in 1750. The focus of his business was inexpensive reprints "
6660 "<quote>of standard works whose copyright term had expired,</quote> at least "
6661 "under the Statute of Anne.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
6662 "Donaldson's publishing house prospered and became <quote>something of a "
6663 "center for literary Scotsmen.</quote> <quote>[A]mong them,</quote> Professor "
6664 "Mark Rose writes, was <quote>the young James Boswell who, together with his "
6665 "friend Andrew Erskine, published an anthology of contemporary Scottish poems "
6666 "with Donaldson.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
6669 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6670 #: freeculture.xml:4808
6672 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Lyman Ray Patterson, "
6673 "<citetitle>Copyright in Historical Perspective</citetitle>, 167 (quoting "
6677 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6678 #: freeculture.xml:4802
6680 "When the London booksellers tried to shut down Donaldson's shop in Scotland, "
6681 "he responded by moving his shop to London, where he sold inexpensive "
6682 "editions <quote>of the most popular English books, in defiance of the "
6683 "supposed common law right of Literary Property.</quote><placeholder "
6684 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> His books undercut the Conger prices by 30 to "
6685 "50 percent, and he rested his right to compete upon the ground that, under "
6686 "the Statute of Anne, the works he was selling had passed out of protection."
6689 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6690 #: freeculture.xml:4817
6692 "The London booksellers quickly brought suit to block <quote>piracy</quote> "
6693 "like Donaldson's. A number of actions were successful against the "
6694 "<quote>pirates,</quote> the most important early victory being "
6695 "<citetitle>Millar</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Taylor</citetitle>."
6698 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6699 #: freeculture.xml:4821
6700 msgid "Seasons, The (Thomson)"
6703 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6704 #: freeculture.xml:4822
6705 msgid "Taylor, Robert"
6709 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6710 #: freeculture.xml:4831
6712 "Howard B. Abrams, <quote>The Historic Foundation of American Copyright Law: "
6713 "Exploding the Myth of Common Law Copyright,</quote> <citetitle>Wayne Law "
6714 "Review</citetitle> 29 (1983): 1152."
6717 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6718 #: freeculture.xml:4824
6720 "Millar was a bookseller who in 1729 had purchased the rights to James "
6721 "Thomson's poem <quote>The Seasons.</quote> Millar complied with the "
6722 "requirements of the Statute of Anne, and therefore received the full "
6723 "protection of the statute. After the term of copyright ended, Robert Taylor "
6724 "began printing a competing volume. Millar sued, claiming a perpetual common "
6725 "law right, the Statute of Anne notwithstanding.<placeholder "
6726 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6729 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6730 #: freeculture.xml:4838
6732 "Astonishingly to modern lawyers, one of the greatest judges in English "
6733 "history, Lord Mansfield, agreed with the booksellers. Whatever protection "
6734 "the Statute of Anne gave booksellers, it did not, he held, extinguish any "
6735 "common law right. The question was whether the common law would protect the "
6736 "author against subsequent <quote>pirates.</quote> Mansfield's answer was "
6737 "yes: The common law would bar Taylor from reprinting Thomson's poem without "
6738 "Millar's permission. That common law rule thus effectively gave the "
6739 "booksellers a perpetual right to control the publication of any book "
6744 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6745 #: freeculture.xml:4849
6747 "Considered as a matter of abstract justice—reasoning as if justice "
6748 "were just a matter of logical deduction from first "
6749 "principles—Mansfield's conclusion might make some sense. But what it "
6750 "ignored was the larger issue that Parliament had struggled with in 1710: How "
6751 "best to limit the monopoly power of publishers? Parliament's strategy was to "
6752 "offer a term for existing works that was long enough to buy peace in 1710, "
6753 "but short enough to assure that culture would pass into competition within a "
6754 "reasonable period of time. Within twenty-one years, Parliament believed, "
6755 "Britain would mature from the controlled culture that the Crown coveted to "
6756 "the free culture that we inherited."
6759 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6760 #: freeculture.xml:4864
6762 "The fight to defend the limits of the Statute of Anne was not to end there, "
6763 "however, and it is here that Donaldson enters the mix."
6766 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6767 #: freeculture.xml:4867
6768 msgid "Beckett, Thomas"
6772 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6773 #: freeculture.xml:4873
6774 msgid "Ibid., 1156."
6777 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6778 #: freeculture.xml:4869
6780 "Millar died soon after his victory, so his case was not appealed. His estate "
6781 "sold Thomson's poems to a syndicate of printers that included Thomas "
6782 "Beckett.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Donaldson then released an "
6783 "unauthorized edition of Thomson's works. Beckett, on the strength of the "
6784 "decision in <citetitle>Millar</citetitle>, got an injunction against "
6785 "Donaldson. Donaldson appealed the case to the House of Lords, which "
6786 "functioned much like our own Supreme Court. In February of 1774, that body "
6787 "had the chance to interpret the meaning of Parliament's limits from sixty "
6791 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6792 #: freeculture.xml:4883
6794 "As few legal cases ever do, <citetitle>Donaldson</citetitle> "
6795 "v. <citetitle>Beckett</citetitle> drew an enormous amount of attention "
6796 "throughout Britain. Donaldson's lawyers argued that whatever rights may have "
6797 "existed under the common law, the Statute of Anne terminated those "
6798 "rights. After passage of the Statute of Anne, the only legal protection for "
6799 "an exclusive right to control publication came from that statute. Thus, they "
6800 "argued, after the term specified in the Statute of Anne expired, works that "
6801 "had been protected by the statute were no longer protected."
6804 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6805 #: freeculture.xml:4893
6807 "The House of Lords was an odd institution. Legal questions were presented to "
6808 "the House and voted upon first by the <quote>law lords,</quote> members of "
6809 "special legal distinction who functioned much like the Justices in our "
6810 "Supreme Court. Then, after the law lords voted, the House of Lords generally "
6815 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6816 #: freeculture.xml:4900
6818 "The reports about the law lords' votes are mixed. On some counts, it looks "
6819 "as if perpetual copyright prevailed. But there is no ambiguity about how the "
6820 "House of Lords voted as whole. By a two-to-one majority (22 to 11) they "
6821 "voted to reject the idea of perpetual copyrights. Whatever one's "
6822 "understanding of the common law, now a copyright was fixed for a limited "
6823 "time, after which the work protected by copyright passed into the public "
6827 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6828 #: freeculture.xml:4918
6829 msgid "Bacon, Francis"
6832 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6833 #: freeculture.xml:4919
6834 msgid "Bunyan, John"
6837 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6838 #: freeculture.xml:4920
6839 msgid "Johnson, Samuel"
6842 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6843 #: freeculture.xml:4921
6844 msgid "Milton, John"
6847 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><indexterm><primary>
6848 #: freeculture.xml:4922
6849 msgid "Shakespeare, William"
6852 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6853 #: freeculture.xml:4910
6855 "<quote>The public domain.</quote> Before the case of "
6856 "<citetitle>Donaldson</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Beckett</citetitle>, there "
6857 "was no clear idea of a public domain in England. Before 1774, there was a "
6858 "strong argument that common law copyrights were perpetual. After 1774, the "
6859 "public domain was born. For the first time in Anglo-American history, the "
6860 "legal control over creative works expired, and the greatest works in English "
6861 "history—including those of Shakespeare, Bacon, Milton, Johnson, and "
6862 "Bunyan—were free of legal restraint. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
6863 "id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder "
6864 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/> "
6865 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"4\"/>"
6869 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
6870 #: freeculture.xml:4935
6874 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6875 #: freeculture.xml:4925
6877 "It is hard for us to imagine, but this decision by the House of Lords fueled "
6878 "an extraordinarily popular and political reaction. In Scotland, where most "
6879 "of the <quote>pirate publishers</quote> did their work, people celebrated "
6880 "the decision in the streets. As the <citetitle>Edinburgh "
6881 "Advertiser</citetitle> reported, <quote>No private cause has so much "
6882 "engrossed the attention of the public, and none has been tried before the "
6883 "House of Lords in the decision of which so many individuals were "
6884 "interested.</quote> <quote>Great rejoicing in Edinburgh upon victory over "
6885 "literary property: bonfires and illuminations.</quote><placeholder "
6886 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
6889 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6890 #: freeculture.xml:4939
6892 "In London, however, at least among publishers, the reaction was equally "
6893 "strong in the opposite direction. The <citetitle>Morning "
6894 "Chronicle</citetitle> reported:"
6897 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
6898 #: freeculture.xml:4945
6900 "By the above decision … near 200,000 pounds worth of what was "
6901 "honestly purchased at public sale, and which was yesterday thought property "
6902 "is now reduced to nothing. The Booksellers of London and Westminster, many "
6903 "of whom sold estates and houses to purchase Copy-right, are in a manner "
6904 "ruined, and those who after many years industry thought they had acquired a "
6905 "competency to provide for their families now find themselves without a "
6906 "shilling to devise to their successors.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
6911 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6912 #: freeculture.xml:4960
6914 "<quote>Ruined</quote> is a bit of an exaggeration. But it is not an "
6915 "exaggeration to say that the change was profound. The decision of the House "
6916 "of Lords meant that the booksellers could no longer control how culture in "
6917 "England would grow and develop. Culture in England was thereafter "
6918 "<emphasis>free</emphasis>. Not in the sense that copyrights would not be "
6919 "respected, for of course, for a limited time after a work was published, the "
6920 "bookseller had an exclusive right to control the publication of that "
6921 "book. And not in the sense that books could be stolen, for even after a "
6922 "copyright expired, you still had to buy the book from someone. But "
6923 "<emphasis>free</emphasis> in the sense that the culture and its growth would "
6924 "no longer be controlled by a small group of publishers. As every free market "
6925 "does, this free market of free culture would grow as the consumers and "
6926 "producers chose. English culture would develop as the many English readers "
6927 "chose to let it develop— chose in the books they bought and wrote; "
6928 "chose in the memes they repeated and endorsed. Chose in a "
6929 "<emphasis>competitive context</emphasis>, not a context in which the choices "
6930 "about what culture is available to people and how they get access to it are "
6931 "made by the few despite the wishes of the many."
6934 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6935 #: freeculture.xml:4982
6937 "At least, this was the rule in a world where the Parliament is antimonopoly, "
6938 "resistant to the protectionist pleas of publishers. In a world where the "
6939 "Parliament is more pliant, free culture would be less protected."
6942 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
6943 #: freeculture.xml:4992
6944 msgid "CHAPTER SEVEN: Recorders"
6947 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6948 #: freeculture.xml:4994
6950 "<emphasis role='strong'>Jon Else</emphasis> is a filmmaker. He is best known "
6951 "for his documentaries and has been very successful in spreading his art. He "
6952 "is also a teacher, and as a teacher myself, I envy the loyalty and "
6953 "admiration that his students feel for him. (I met, by accident, two of his "
6954 "students at a dinner party. He was their god.)"
6957 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6958 #: freeculture.xml:5001
6960 "Else worked on a documentary that I was involved in. At a break, he told me "
6961 "a story about the freedom to create with film in America today."
6964 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
6965 #: freeculture.xml:5012 freeculture.xml:5075
6966 msgid "San Francisco Opera"
6969 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6970 #: freeculture.xml:5006
6972 "In 1990, Else was working on a documentary about Wagner's Ring Cycle. The "
6973 "focus was stagehands at the San Francisco Opera. Stagehands are a "
6974 "particularly funny and colorful element of an opera. During a show, they "
6975 "hang out below the stage in the grips' lounge and in the lighting loft. They "
6976 "make a perfect contrast to the art on the stage. <placeholder "
6977 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
6981 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6982 #: freeculture.xml:5015
6984 "During one of the performances, Else was shooting some stagehands playing "
6985 "checkers. In one corner of the room was a television set. Playing on the "
6986 "television set, while the stagehands played checkers and the opera company "
6987 "played Wagner, was <citetitle>The Simpsons</citetitle>. As Else judged it, "
6988 "this touch of cartoon helped capture the flavor of what was special about "
6992 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
6993 #: freeculture.xml:5024
6995 "Years later, when he finally got funding to complete the film, Else "
6996 "attempted to clear the rights for those few seconds of <citetitle>The "
6997 "Simpsons</citetitle>. For of course, those few seconds are copyrighted; and "
6998 "of course, to use copyrighted material you need the permission of the "
6999 "copyright owner, unless <quote>fair use</quote> or some other privilege "
7003 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7004 #: freeculture.xml:5030 freeculture.xml:5038
7005 msgid "Gracie Films"
7008 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7009 #: freeculture.xml:5032
7011 "Else called <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> creator Matt Groening's office "
7012 "to get permission. Groening approved the shot. The shot was a "
7013 "four-and-a-halfsecond image on a tiny television set in the corner of the "
7014 "room. How could it hurt? Groening was happy to have it in the film, but he "
7015 "told Else to contact Gracie Films, the company that produces the program."
7018 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7019 #: freeculture.xml:5040
7021 "Gracie Films was okay with it, too, but they, like Groening, wanted to be "
7022 "careful. So they told Else to contact Fox, Gracie's parent company. Else "
7023 "called Fox and told them about the clip in the corner of the one room shot "
7024 "of the film. Matt Groening had already given permission, Else said. He was "
7025 "just confirming the permission with Fox."
7028 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7029 #: freeculture.xml:5047
7031 "Then, as Else told me, <quote>two things happened. First we discovered "
7032 "… that Matt Groening doesn't own his own creation—or at least "
7033 "that someone [at Fox] believes he doesn't own his own creation.</quote> And "
7034 "second, Fox <quote>wanted ten thousand dollars as a licensing fee for us to "
7035 "use this four-point-five seconds of … entirely unsolicited "
7036 "<citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> which was in the corner of the shot.</quote>"
7039 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7040 #: freeculture.xml:5054
7041 msgid "Herrera, Rebecca"
7044 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7045 #: freeculture.xml:5056
7047 "Else was certain there was a mistake. He worked his way up to someone he "
7048 "thought was a vice president for licensing, Rebecca Herrera. He explained "
7049 "to her, <quote>There must be some mistake here. … We're asking for "
7050 "your educational rate on this.</quote> That was the educational rate, "
7051 "Herrera told Else. A day or so later, Else called again to confirm what he "
7056 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7057 #: freeculture.xml:5064
7059 "<quote>I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight,</quote> he told "
7060 "me. <quote>Yes, you have your facts straight,</quote> she said. It would "
7061 "cost $10,000 to use the clip of <citetitle>The Simpsons</citetitle> in the "
7062 "corner of a shot in a documentary film about Wagner's Ring Cycle. And then, "
7063 "astonishingly, Herrera told Else, <quote>And if you quote me, I'll turn you "
7064 "over to our attorneys.</quote> As an assistant to Herrera told Else later "
7065 "on, <quote>They don't give a shit. They just want the money.</quote>"
7068 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7069 #: freeculture.xml:5076
7070 msgid "Day After Trinity, The"
7073 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7074 #: freeculture.xml:5078
7076 "Else didn't have the money to buy the right to replay what was playing on "
7077 "the television backstage at the San Francisco Opera. To reproduce this "
7078 "reality was beyond the documentary filmmaker's budget. At the very last "
7079 "minute before the film was to be released, Else digitally replaced the shot "
7080 "with a clip from another film that he had worked on, <citetitle>The Day "
7081 "After Trinity</citetitle>, from ten years before."
7084 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7085 #: freeculture.xml:5086
7087 "There's no doubt that someone, whether Matt Groening or Fox, owns the "
7088 "copyright to <citetitle>The Simpsons</citetitle>. That copyright is their "
7089 "property. To use that copyrighted material thus sometimes requires the "
7090 "permission of the copyright owner. If the use that Else wanted to make of "
7091 "the <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> copyright were one of the uses "
7092 "restricted by the law, then he would need to get the permission of the "
7093 "copyright owner before he could use the work in that way. And in a free "
7094 "market, it is the owner of the copyright who gets to set the price for any "
7095 "use that the law says the owner gets to control."
7098 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7099 #: freeculture.xml:5097
7101 "For example, <quote>public performance</quote> is a use of <citetitle>The "
7102 "Simpsons</citetitle> that the copyright owner gets to control. If you take a "
7103 "selection of favorite episodes, rent a movie theater, and charge for tickets "
7104 "to come see <quote>My Favorite <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle>,</quote> then "
7105 "you need to get permission from the copyright owner. And the copyright owner "
7106 "(rightly, in my view) can charge whatever she wants—$10 or "
7107 "$1,000,000. That's her right, as set by the law."
7111 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7112 #: freeculture.xml:5109
7114 "For an excellent argument that such use is <quote>fair use,</quote> but that "
7115 "lawyers don't permit recognition that it is <quote>fair use,</quote> see "
7116 "Richard A. Posner with William F. Patry, <quote>Fair Use and Statutory "
7117 "Reform in the Wake of <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle></quote> (draft on file "
7118 "with author), University of Chicago Law School, 5 August 2003."
7121 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7122 #: freeculture.xml:5106
7124 "But when lawyers hear this story about Jon Else and Fox, their first thought "
7125 "is <quote>fair use.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Else's "
7126 "use of just 4.5 seconds of an indirect shot of a "
7127 "<citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> episode is clearly a fair use of "
7128 "<citetitle>The Simpsons</citetitle>—and fair use does not require the "
7129 "permission of anyone."
7133 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7134 #: freeculture.xml:5121
7136 "So I asked Else why he didn't just rely upon <quote>fair use.</quote> Here's "
7140 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7141 #: freeculture.xml:5125
7143 "The <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> fiasco was for me a great lesson in the "
7144 "gulf between what lawyers find irrelevant in some abstract sense, and what "
7145 "is crushingly relevant in practice to those of us actually trying to make "
7146 "and broadcast documentaries. I never had any doubt that it was "
7147 "<quote>clearly fair use</quote> in an absolute legal sense. But I couldn't "
7148 "rely on the concept in any concrete way. Here's why:"
7152 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><para>
7153 #: freeculture.xml:5135
7155 "Before our films can be broadcast, the network requires that we buy Errors "
7156 "and Omissions insurance. The carriers require a detailed <quote>visual cue "
7157 "sheet</quote> listing the source and licensing status of each shot in the "
7158 "film. They take a dim view of <quote>fair use,</quote> and a claim of "
7159 "<quote>fair use</quote> can grind the application process to a halt."
7162 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><indexterm><primary>
7163 #: freeculture.xml:5142
7164 msgid "<citetitle>Star Wars</citetitle>"
7167 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><indexterm><primary>
7168 #: freeculture.xml:5143
7169 msgid "Lucas, George"
7173 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><para>
7174 #: freeculture.xml:5146
7176 "I probably never should have asked Matt Groening in the first place. But I "
7177 "knew (at least from folklore) that Fox had a history of tracking down and "
7178 "stopping unlicensed <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle> usage, just as George "
7179 "Lucas had a very high profile litigating <citetitle>Star Wars</citetitle> "
7180 "usage. So I decided to play by the book, thinking that we would be granted "
7181 "free or cheap license to four seconds of <citetitle>Simpsons</citetitle>. As "
7182 "a documentary producer working to exhaustion on a shoestring, the last thing "
7183 "I wanted was to risk legal trouble, even nuisance legal trouble, and even to "
7184 "defend a principle."
7189 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><para>
7190 #: freeculture.xml:5158
7192 "I did, in fact, speak with one of your colleagues at Stanford Law School "
7193 "… who confirmed that it was fair use. He also confirmed that Fox "
7194 "would <quote>depose and litigate you to within an inch of your life,</quote> "
7195 "regardless of the merits of my claim. He made clear that it would boil down "
7196 "to who had the bigger legal department and the deeper pockets, me or them."
7200 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><orderedlist><listitem><para>
7201 #: freeculture.xml:5168
7203 "The question of fair use usually comes up at the end of the project, when we "
7204 "are up against a release deadline and out of money."
7207 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7208 #: freeculture.xml:5175
7210 "In theory, fair use means you need no permission. The theory therefore "
7211 "supports free culture and insulates against a permission culture. But in "
7212 "practice, fair use functions very differently. The fuzzy lines of the law, "
7213 "tied to the extraordinary liability if lines are crossed, means that the "
7214 "effective fair use for many types of creators is slight. The law has the "
7215 "right aim; practice has defeated the aim."
7218 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7219 #: freeculture.xml:5183
7221 "This practice shows just how far the law has come from its "
7222 "eighteenth-century roots. The law was born as a shield to protect "
7223 "publishers' profits against the unfair competition of a pirate. It has "
7224 "matured into a sword that interferes with any use, transformative or not."
7227 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
7228 #: freeculture.xml:5192
7229 msgid "CHAPTER EIGHT: Transformers"
7232 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7233 #: freeculture.xml:5193
7237 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
7238 #: freeculture.xml:5194 freeculture.xml:5254 freeculture.xml:5439 freeculture.xml:9882 freeculture.xml:14178
7242 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7243 #: freeculture.xml:5197
7245 "<emphasis role='strong'>In 1993</emphasis>, Alex Alben was a lawyer working "
7246 "at Starwave, Inc. Starwave was an innovative company founded by Microsoft "
7247 "cofounder Paul Allen to develop digital entertainment. Long before the "
7248 "Internet became popular, Starwave began investing in new technology for "
7249 "delivering entertainment in anticipation of the power of networks."
7252 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
7253 #: freeculture.xml:5204
7254 msgid "retrospective compilations on"
7257 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7258 #: freeculture.xml:5205
7259 msgid "CD-ROMs, film clips used in"
7262 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7263 #: freeculture.xml:5207
7265 "Alben had a special interest in new technology. He was intrigued by the "
7266 "emerging market for CD-ROM technology—not to distribute film, but to "
7267 "do things with film that otherwise would be very difficult. In 1993, he "
7268 "launched an initiative to develop a product to build retrospectives on the "
7269 "work of particular actors. The first actor chosen was Clint Eastwood. The "
7270 "idea was to showcase all of the work of Eastwood, with clips from his films "
7271 "and interviews with figures important to his career."
7274 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7275 #: freeculture.xml:5217
7277 "At that time, Eastwood had made more than fifty films, as an actor and as a "
7278 "director. Alben began with a series of interviews with Eastwood, asking him "
7279 "about his career. Because Starwave produced those interviews, it was free to "
7280 "include them on the CD."
7284 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7285 #: freeculture.xml:5224
7287 "That alone would not have made a very interesting product, so Starwave "
7288 "wanted to add content from the movies in Eastwood's career: posters, "
7289 "scripts, and other material relating to the films Eastwood made. Most of his "
7290 "career was spent at Warner Brothers, and so it was relatively easy to get "
7291 "permission for that content."
7294 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7295 #: freeculture.xml:5231
7297 "Then Alben and his team decided to include actual film clips. <quote>Our "
7298 "goal was that we were going to have a clip from every one of Eastwood's "
7299 "films,</quote> Alben told me. It was here that the problem arose. <quote>No "
7300 "one had ever really done this before,</quote> Alben explained. <quote>No one "
7301 "had ever tried to do this in the context of an artistic look at an actor's "
7305 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7306 #: freeculture.xml:5239
7308 "Alben brought the idea to Michael Slade, the CEO of Starwave. Slade asked, "
7309 "<quote>Well, what will it take?</quote>"
7312 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><secondary>
7313 #: freeculture.xml:5253
7314 msgid "publicity rights on images of"
7317 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7318 #: freeculture.xml:5249
7320 "Technically, the rights that Alben had to clear were mainly those of "
7321 "publicity—rights an artist has to control the commercial exploitation "
7322 "of his image. But these rights, too, burden <quote>Rip, Mix, Burn</quote> "
7323 "creativity, as this chapter evinces. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
7324 "id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
7327 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7328 #: freeculture.xml:5243
7330 "Alben replied, <quote>Well, we're going to have to clear rights from "
7331 "everyone who appears in these films, and the music and everything else that "
7332 "we want to use in these film clips.</quote> Slade said, <quote>Great! Go for "
7333 "it.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
7336 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7337 #: freeculture.xml:5258
7339 "The problem was that neither Alben nor Slade had any idea what clearing "
7340 "those rights would mean. Every actor in each of the films could have a claim "
7341 "to royalties for the reuse of that film. But CD- ROMs had not been specified "
7342 "in the contracts for the actors, so there was no clear way to know just what "
7343 "Starwave was to do."
7346 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7347 #: freeculture.xml:5265
7349 "I asked Alben how he dealt with the problem. With an obvious pride in his "
7350 "resourcefulness that obscured the obvious bizarreness of his tale, Alben "
7351 "recounted just what they did:"
7354 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7355 #: freeculture.xml:5271
7357 "So we very mechanically went about looking up the film clips. We made some "
7358 "artistic decisions about what film clips to include—of course we were "
7359 "going to use the <quote>Make my day</quote> clip from <citetitle>Dirty "
7360 "Harry</citetitle>. But you then need to get the guy on the ground who's "
7361 "wiggling under the gun and you need to get his permission. And then you "
7362 "have to decide what you are going to pay him."
7366 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7367 #: freeculture.xml:5280
7369 "We decided that it would be fair if we offered them the dayplayer rate for "
7370 "the right to reuse that performance. We're talking about a clip of less than "
7371 "a minute, but to reuse that performance in the CD-ROM the rate at the time "
7372 "was about $600. So we had to identify the people—some of them were "
7373 "hard to identify because in Eastwood movies you can't tell who's the guy "
7374 "crashing through the glass—is it the actor or is it the stuntman? And "
7375 "then we just, we put together a team, my assistant and some others, and we "
7376 "just started calling people."
7379 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7380 #: freeculture.xml:5291
7381 msgid "Sutherland, Donald"
7384 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7385 #: freeculture.xml:5293
7387 "Some actors were glad to help—Donald Sutherland, for example, followed "
7388 "up himself to be sure that the rights had been cleared. Others were "
7389 "dumbfounded at their good fortune. Alben would ask, <quote>Hey, can I pay "
7390 "you $600 or maybe if you were in two films, you know, $1,200?</quote> And "
7391 "they would say, <quote>Are you for real? Hey, I'd love to get "
7392 "$1,200.</quote> And some of course were a bit difficult (estranged ex-wives, "
7393 "in particular). But eventually, Alben and his team had cleared the rights to "
7394 "this retrospective CD-ROM on Clint Eastwood's career."
7397 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7398 #: freeculture.xml:5304
7400 "It was one <emphasis>year</emphasis> later—<quote>and even then we "
7401 "weren't sure whether we were totally in the clear.</quote>"
7404 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7405 #: freeculture.xml:5308
7407 "Alben is proud of his work. The project was the first of its kind and the "
7408 "only time he knew of that a team had undertaken such a massive project for "
7409 "the purpose of releasing a retrospective."
7412 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7413 #: freeculture.xml:5314
7415 "Everyone thought it would be too hard. Everyone just threw up their hands "
7416 "and said, <quote>Oh, my gosh, a film, it's so many copyrights, there's the "
7417 "music, there's the screenplay, there's the director, there's the "
7418 "actors.</quote> But we just broke it down. We just put it into its "
7419 "constituent parts and said, <quote>Okay, there's this many actors, this many "
7420 "directors, … this many musicians,</quote> and we just went at it very "
7421 "systematically and cleared the rights."
7425 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7426 #: freeculture.xml:5326
7428 "And no doubt, the product itself was exceptionally good. Eastwood loved it, "
7429 "and it sold very well."
7432 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7433 #: freeculture.xml:5329
7434 msgid "Drucker, Peter"
7438 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7439 #: freeculture.xml:5337
7441 "U.S. Department of Commerce Office of Acquisition Management, "
7442 "<citetitle>Seven Steps to Performance-Based Services "
7443 "Acquisition</citetitle>, available at <ulink "
7444 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #22</ulink>."
7447 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7448 #: freeculture.xml:5331
7450 "But I pressed Alben about how weird it seems that it would have to take a "
7451 "year's work simply to clear rights. No doubt Alben had done this "
7452 "efficiently, but as Peter Drucker has famously quipped, <quote>There is "
7453 "nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at "
7454 "all.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Did it make sense, I "
7455 "asked Alben, that this is the way a new work has to be made?"
7458 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7459 #: freeculture.xml:5345
7461 "For, as he acknowledged, <quote>very few … have the time and "
7462 "resources, and the will to do this,</quote> and thus, very few such works "
7463 "would ever be made. Does it make sense, I asked him, from the standpoint of "
7464 "what anybody really thought they were ever giving rights for originally, "
7465 "that you would have to go clear rights for these kinds of clips?"
7468 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7469 #: freeculture.xml:5353
7471 "I don't think so. When an actor renders a performance in a movie, he or she "
7472 "gets paid very well. … And then when 30 seconds of that performance "
7473 "is used in a new product that is a retrospective of somebody's career, I "
7474 "don't think that that person … should be compensated for that."
7477 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7478 #: freeculture.xml:5361
7480 "Or at least, is this <emphasis>how</emphasis> the artist should be "
7481 "compensated? Would it make sense, I asked, for there to be some kind of "
7482 "statutory license that someone could pay and be free to make derivative use "
7483 "of clips like this? Did it really make sense that a follow-on creator would "
7484 "have to track down every artist, actor, director, musician, and get explicit "
7485 "permission from each? Wouldn't a lot more be created if the legal part of "
7486 "the creative process could be made to be more clean?"
7490 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7491 #: freeculture.xml:5372
7493 "Absolutely. I think that if there were some fair-licensing "
7494 "mechanism—where you weren't subject to hold-ups and you weren't "
7495 "subject to estranged former spouses—you'd see a lot more of this work, "
7496 "because it wouldn't be so daunting to try to put together a retrospective of "
7497 "someone's career and meaningfully illustrate it with lots of media from that "
7498 "person's career. You'd build in a cost as the producer of one of these "
7499 "things. You'd build in a cost of paying X dollars to the talent that "
7500 "performed. But it would be a known cost. That's the thing that trips "
7501 "everybody up and makes this kind of product hard to get off the ground. If "
7502 "you knew I have a hundred minutes of film in this product and it's going to "
7503 "cost me X, then you build your budget around it, and you can get investments "
7504 "and everything else that you need to produce it. But if you say, <quote>Oh, "
7505 "I want a hundred minutes of something and I have no idea what it's going to "
7506 "cost me, and a certain number of people are going to hold me up for "
7507 "money,</quote> then it becomes difficult to put one of these things "
7511 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7512 #: freeculture.xml:5392
7514 "Alben worked for a big company. His company was backed by some of the "
7515 "richest investors in the world. He therefore had authority and access that "
7516 "the average Web designer would not have. So if it took him a year, how long "
7517 "would it take someone else? And how much creativity is never made just "
7518 "because the costs of clearing the rights are so high?"
7521 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7522 #: freeculture.xml:5401
7524 "These costs are the burdens of a kind of regulation. Put on a Republican hat "
7525 "for a moment, and get angry for a bit. The government defines the scope of "
7526 "these rights, and the scope defined determines how much it's going to cost "
7527 "to negotiate them. (Remember the idea that land runs to the heavens, and "
7528 "imagine the pilot purchasing flythrough rights as he negotiates to fly from "
7529 "Los Angeles to San Francisco.) These rights might well have once made "
7530 "sense; but as circumstances change, they make no sense at all. Or at least, "
7531 "a well-trained, regulationminimizing Republican should look at the rights "
7532 "and ask, <quote>Does this still make sense?</quote>"
7536 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7537 #: freeculture.xml:5414
7539 "I've seen the flash of recognition when people get this point, but only a "
7540 "few times. The first was at a conference of federal judges in California. "
7541 "The judges were gathered to discuss the emerging topic of cyber-law. I was "
7542 "asked to be on the panel. Harvey Saferstein, a well-respected lawyer from an "
7543 "L.A. firm, introduced the panel with a video that he and a friend, Robert "
7544 "Fairbank, had produced."
7547 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7548 #: freeculture.xml:5424
7550 "The video was a brilliant collage of film from every period in the twentieth "
7551 "century, all framed around the idea of a <citetitle>60 Minutes</citetitle> "
7552 "episode. The execution was perfect, down to the sixty-minute stopwatch. The "
7553 "judges loved every minute of it."
7556 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7557 #: freeculture.xml:5429
7558 msgid "Nimmer, David"
7561 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7562 #: freeculture.xml:5431
7564 "When the lights came up, I looked over to my copanelist, David Nimmer, "
7565 "perhaps the leading copyright scholar and practitioner in the nation. He had "
7566 "an astonished look on his face, as he peered across the room of over 250 "
7567 "well-entertained judges. Taking an ominous tone, he began his talk with a "
7568 "question: <quote>Do you know how many federal laws were just violated in "
7569 "this room?</quote>"
7572 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7573 #: freeculture.xml:5438
7574 msgid "Boies, David"
7577 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7578 #: freeculture.xml:5441
7580 "For of course, the two brilliantly talented creators who made this film "
7581 "hadn't done what Alben did. They hadn't spent a year clearing the rights to "
7582 "these clips; technically, what they had done violated the law. Of course, "
7583 "it wasn't as if they or anyone were going to be prosecuted for this "
7584 "violation (the presence of 250 judges and a gaggle of federal marshals "
7585 "notwithstanding). But Nimmer was making an important point: A year before "
7586 "anyone would have heard of the word Napster, and two years before another "
7587 "member of our panel, David Boies, would defend Napster before the Ninth "
7588 "Circuit Court of Appeals, Nimmer was trying to get the judges to see that "
7589 "the law would not be friendly to the capacities that this technology would "
7590 "enable. Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you "
7591 "couldn't easily do them legally."
7594 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7595 #: freeculture.xml:5456
7597 "We live in a <quote>cut and paste</quote> culture enabled by "
7598 "technology. Anyone building a presentation knows the extraordinary freedom "
7599 "that the cut and paste architecture of the Internet created—in a "
7600 "second you can find just about any image you want; in another second, you "
7601 "can have it planted in your presentation."
7604 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7605 #: freeculture.xml:5462
7610 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7611 #: freeculture.xml:5464
7613 "But presentations are just a tiny beginning. Using the Internet and its "
7614 "archives, musicians are able to string together mixes of sound never before "
7615 "imagined; filmmakers are able to build movies out of clips on computers "
7616 "around the world. An extraordinary site in Sweden takes images of "
7617 "politicians and blends them with music to create biting political "
7618 "commentary. A site called Camp Chaos has produced some of the most biting "
7619 "criticism of the record industry that there is through the mixing of Flash! "
7623 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7624 #: freeculture.xml:5475
7626 "All of these creations are technically illegal. Even if the creators wanted "
7627 "to be <quote>legal,</quote> the cost of complying with the law is impossibly "
7628 "high. Therefore, for the law-abiding sorts, a wealth of creativity is never "
7629 "made. And for that part that is made, if it doesn't follow the clearance "
7630 "rules, it doesn't get released."
7633 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7634 #: freeculture.xml:5482
7636 "To some, these stories suggest a solution: Let's alter the mix of rights so "
7637 "that people are free to build upon our culture. Free to add or mix as they "
7638 "see fit. We could even make this change without necessarily requiring that "
7639 "the <quote>free</quote> use be free as in <quote>free beer.</quote> Instead, "
7640 "the system could simply make it easy for follow-on creators to compensate "
7641 "artists without requiring an army of lawyers to come along: a rule, for "
7642 "example, that says <quote>the royalty owed the copyright owner of an "
7643 "unregistered work for the derivative reuse of his work will be a flat 1 "
7644 "percent of net revenues, to be held in escrow for the copyright "
7645 "owner.</quote> Under this rule, the copyright owner could benefit from some "
7646 "royalty, but he would not have the benefit of a full property right (meaning "
7647 "the right to name his own price) unless he registers the work."
7650 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7651 #: freeculture.xml:5497
7653 "Who could possibly object to this? And what reason would there be for "
7654 "objecting? We're talking about work that is not now being made; which if "
7655 "made, under this plan, would produce new income for artists. What reason "
7656 "would anyone have to oppose it?"
7660 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7661 #: freeculture.xml:5503
7663 "<emphasis role='strong'>In February 2003</emphasis>, DreamWorks studios "
7664 "announced an agreement with Mike Myers, the comic genius of "
7665 "<citetitle>Saturday Night Live</citetitle> and Austin Powers. According to "
7666 "the announcement, Myers and Dream-Works would work together to form a "
7667 "<quote>unique filmmaking pact.</quote> Under the agreement, DreamWorks "
7668 "<quote>will acquire the rights to existing motion picture hits and classics, "
7669 "write new storylines and—with the use of stateof-the-art digital "
7670 "technology—insert Myers and other actors into the film, thereby "
7671 "creating an entirely new piece of entertainment.</quote>"
7674 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7675 #: freeculture.xml:5516
7677 "The announcement called this <quote>film sampling.</quote> As Myers "
7678 "explained, <quote>Film Sampling is an exciting way to put an original spin "
7679 "on existing films and allow audiences to see old movies in a new light. Rap "
7680 "artists have been doing this for years with music and now we are able to "
7681 "take that same concept and apply it to film.</quote> Steven Spielberg is "
7682 "quoted as saying, <quote>If anyone can create a way to bring old films to "
7683 "new audiences, it is Mike.</quote>"
7686 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7687 #: freeculture.xml:5525
7689 "Spielberg is right. Film sampling by Myers will be brilliant. But if you "
7690 "don't think about it, you might miss the truly astonishing point about this "
7691 "announcement. As the vast majority of our film heritage remains under "
7692 "copyright, the real meaning of the DreamWorks announcement is just this: It "
7693 "is Mike Myers and only Mike Myers who is free to sample. Any general freedom "
7694 "to build upon the film archive of our culture, a freedom in other contexts "
7695 "presumed for us all, is now a privilege reserved for the funny and "
7696 "famous—and presumably rich."
7699 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7700 #: freeculture.xml:5535
7702 "This privilege becomes reserved for two sorts of reasons. The first "
7703 "continues the story of the last chapter: the vagueness of <quote>fair "
7704 "use.</quote> Much of <quote>sampling</quote> should be considered "
7705 "<quote>fair use.</quote> But few would rely upon so weak a doctrine to "
7706 "create. That leads to the second reason that the privilege is reserved for "
7707 "the few: The costs of negotiating the legal rights for the creative reuse of "
7708 "content are astronomically high. These costs mirror the costs with fair "
7709 "use: You either pay a lawyer to defend your fair use rights or pay a lawyer "
7710 "to track down permissions so you don't have to rely upon fair use "
7711 "rights. Either way, the creative process is a process of paying "
7712 "lawyers—again a privilege, or perhaps a curse, reserved for the few."
7715 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
7716 #: freeculture.xml:5550
7717 msgid "CHAPTER NINE: Collectors"
7720 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7721 #: freeculture.xml:5551 freeculture.xml:8680 freeculture.xml:10893 freeculture.xml:11138
7722 msgid "archives, digital"
7725 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
7726 #: freeculture.xml:5552 freeculture.xml:7979
7730 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7731 #: freeculture.xml:5554
7733 "<emphasis role='strong'>In April 1996</emphasis>, millions of "
7734 "<quote>bots</quote>—computer codes designed to <quote>spider,</quote> "
7735 "or automatically search the Internet and copy content—began running "
7736 "across the Net. Page by page, these bots copied Internet-based information "
7737 "onto a small set of computers located in a basement in San Francisco's "
7738 "Presidio. Once the bots finished the whole of the Internet, they started "
7739 "again. Over and over again, once every two months, these bits of code took "
7740 "copies of the Internet and stored them."
7743 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7744 #: freeculture.xml:5564 freeculture.xml:5595 freeculture.xml:5657
7745 msgid "Way Back Machine"
7748 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7749 #: freeculture.xml:5566
7751 "By October 2001, the bots had collected more than five years of copies. And "
7752 "at a small announcement in Berkeley, California, the archive that these "
7753 "copies created, the Internet Archive, was opened to the world. Using a "
7754 "technology called <quote>the Way Back Machine,</quote> you could enter a Web "
7755 "page, and see all of its copies going back to 1996, as well as when those "
7759 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7760 #: freeculture.xml:5573
7761 msgid "Orwell, George"
7764 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7765 #: freeculture.xml:5575
7767 "This is the thing about the Internet that Orwell would have appreciated. In "
7768 "the dystopia described in <citetitle>1984</citetitle>, old newspapers were "
7769 "constantly updated to assure that the current view of the world, approved of "
7770 "by the government, was not contradicted by previous news reports."
7774 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7775 #: freeculture.xml:5583
7777 "Thousands of workers constantly reedited the past, meaning there was no way "
7778 "ever to know whether the story you were reading today was the story that was "
7779 "printed on the date published on the paper."
7782 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7783 #: freeculture.xml:5588
7785 "It's the same with the Internet. If you go to a Web page today, there's no "
7786 "way for you to know whether the content you are reading is the same as the "
7787 "content you read before. The page may seem the same, but the content could "
7788 "easily be different. The Internet is Orwell's library—constantly "
7789 "updated, without any reliable memory."
7792 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
7793 #: freeculture.xml:5604
7794 msgid "White House press releases"
7797 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7798 #: freeculture.xml:5603
7800 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
7801 "id=\"1\"/> The temptations remain, however. Brewster Kahle reports that the "
7802 "White House changes its own press releases without notice. A May 13, 2003, "
7803 "press release stated, <quote>Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended.</quote> "
7804 "That was later changed, without notice, to <quote>Major Combat Operations in "
7805 "Iraq Have Ended.</quote> E-mail from Brewster Kahle, 1 December 2003."
7808 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7809 #: freeculture.xml:5597
7811 "Until the Way Back Machine, at least. With the Way Back Machine, and the "
7812 "Internet Archive underlying it, you can see what the Internet was. You have "
7813 "the power to see what you remember. More importantly, perhaps, you also have "
7814 "the power to find what you don't remember and what others might prefer you "
7815 "forget.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
7818 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7819 #: freeculture.xml:5612
7820 msgid "history, records of"
7823 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7824 #: freeculture.xml:5614
7826 "<emphasis role='strong'>We take it</emphasis> for granted that we can go "
7827 "back to see what we remember reading. Think about newspapers. If you wanted "
7828 "to study the reaction of your hometown newspaper to the race riots in Watts "
7829 "in 1965, or to Bull Connor's water cannon in 1963, you could go to your "
7830 "public library and look at the newspapers. Those papers probably exist on "
7831 "microfiche. If you're lucky, they exist in paper, too. Either way, you are "
7832 "free, using a library, to go back and remember—not just what it is "
7833 "convenient to remember, but remember something close to the truth."
7836 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7837 #: freeculture.xml:5625
7839 "It is said that those who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat "
7840 "it. That's not quite correct. We <emphasis>all</emphasis> forget "
7841 "history. The key is whether we have a way to go back to rediscover what we "
7842 "forget. More directly, the key is whether an objective past can keep us "
7843 "honest. Libraries help do that, by collecting content and keeping it, for "
7844 "schoolchildren, for researchers, for grandma. A free society presumes this "
7849 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7850 #: freeculture.xml:5634
7852 "The Internet was an exception to this presumption. Until the Internet "
7853 "Archive, there was no way to go back. The Internet was the quintessentially "
7854 "transitory medium. And yet, as it becomes more important in forming and "
7855 "reforming society, it becomes more and more important to maintain in some "
7856 "historical form. It's just bizarre to think that we have scads of archives "
7857 "of newspapers from tiny towns around the world, yet there is but one copy of "
7858 "the Internet—the one kept by the Internet Archive."
7861 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7862 #: freeculture.xml:5645
7864 "Brewster Kahle is the founder of the Internet Archive. He was a very "
7865 "successful Internet entrepreneur after he was a successful computer "
7866 "researcher. In the 1990s, Kahle decided he had had enough business "
7867 "success. It was time to become a different kind of success. So he launched "
7868 "a series of projects designed to archive human knowledge. The Internet "
7869 "Archive was just the first of the projects of this Andrew Carnegie of the "
7870 "Internet. By December of 2002, the archive had over 10 billion pages, and it "
7871 "was growing at about a billion pages a month."
7874 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7875 #: freeculture.xml:5654 freeculture.xml:5708
7876 msgid "Library of Congress"
7879 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7880 #: freeculture.xml:5655
7881 msgid "Television Archive"
7884 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7885 #: freeculture.xml:5656
7886 msgid "Vanderbilt University"
7889 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7890 #: freeculture.xml:5658
7894 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
7895 #: freeculture.xml:5658
7896 msgid "archival function of"
7899 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7900 #: freeculture.xml:5660
7902 "The Way Back Machine is the largest archive of human knowledge in human "
7903 "history. At the end of 2002, it held <quote>two hundred and thirty terabytes "
7904 "of material</quote>—and was <quote>ten times larger than the Library "
7905 "of Congress.</quote> And this was just the first of the archives that Kahle "
7906 "set out to build. In addition to the Internet Archive, Kahle has been "
7907 "constructing the Television Archive. Television, it turns out, is even more "
7908 "ephemeral than the Internet. While much of twentieth-century culture was "
7909 "constructed through television, only a tiny proportion of that culture is "
7910 "available for anyone to see today. Three hours of news are recorded each "
7911 "evening by Vanderbilt University—thanks to a specific exemption in the "
7912 "copyright law. That content is indexed, and is available to scholars for a "
7913 "very low fee. <quote>But other than that, [television] is almost "
7914 "unavailable,</quote> Kahle told me. <quote>If you were Barbara Walters you "
7915 "could get access to [the archives], but if you are just a graduate "
7916 "student?</quote> As Kahle put it,"
7919 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
7920 #: freeculture.xml:5677
7924 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
7925 #: freeculture.xml:5678
7930 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
7931 #: freeculture.xml:5680
7933 "Do you remember when Dan Quayle was interacting with Murphy Brown? Remember "
7934 "that back and forth surreal experience of a politician interacting with a "
7935 "fictional television character? If you were a graduate student wanting to "
7936 "study that, and you wanted to get those original back and forth exchanges "
7937 "between the two, the <citetitle>60 Minutes</citetitle> episode that came out "
7938 "after it … it would be almost impossible. … Those materials "
7939 "are almost unfindable. …"
7942 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7943 #: freeculture.xml:5691
7947 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
7948 #: freeculture.xml:5691
7952 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7953 #: freeculture.xml:5693
7955 "Why is that? Why is it that the part of our culture that is recorded in "
7956 "newspapers remains perpetually accessible, while the part that is recorded "
7957 "on videotape is not? How is it that we've created a world where researchers "
7958 "trying to understand the effect of media on nineteenthcentury America will "
7959 "have an easier time than researchers trying to understand the effect of "
7960 "media on twentieth-century America?"
7963 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7964 #: freeculture.xml:5701
7966 "In part, this is because of the law. Early in American copyright law, "
7967 "copyright owners were required to deposit copies of their work in "
7968 "libraries. These copies were intended both to facilitate the spread of "
7969 "knowledge and to assure that a copy of the work would be around once the "
7970 "copyright expired, so that others might access and copy the work."
7973 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
7974 #: freeculture.xml:5709 freeculture.xml:5752
7978 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
7979 #: freeculture.xml:5709 freeculture.xml:5752
7984 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
7985 #: freeculture.xml:5720
7987 "Doug Herrick, <quote>Toward a National Film Collection: Motion Pictures at "
7988 "the Library of Congress,</quote> <citetitle>Film Library "
7989 "Quarterly</citetitle> 13 nos. 2–3 (1980): 5; Anthony Slide, "
7990 "<citetitle>Nitrate Won't Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United "
7991 "States</citetitle> ( Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 1992), 36."
7994 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
7995 #: freeculture.xml:5711
7997 "These rules applied to film as well. But in 1915, the Library of Congress "
7998 "made an exception for film. Film could be copyrighted so long as such "
7999 "deposits were made. But the filmmaker was then allowed to borrow back the "
8000 "deposits—for an unlimited time at no cost. In 1915 alone, there were "
8001 "more than 5,475 films deposited and <quote>borrowed back.</quote> Thus, when "
8002 "the copyrights to films expire, there is no copy held by any library. The "
8003 "copy exists—if it exists at all—in the library archive of the "
8004 "film company.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
8007 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8008 #: freeculture.xml:5728
8010 "The same is generally true about television. Television broadcasts were "
8011 "originally not copyrighted—there was no way to capture the broadcasts, "
8012 "so there was no fear of <quote>theft.</quote> But as technology enabled "
8013 "capturing, broadcasters relied increasingly upon the law. The law required "
8014 "they make a copy of each broadcast for the work to be "
8015 "<quote>copyrighted.</quote> But those copies were simply kept by the "
8016 "broadcasters. No library had any right to them; the government didn't demand "
8017 "them. The content of this part of American culture is practically invisible "
8018 "to anyone who would look."
8021 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8022 #: freeculture.xml:5738
8023 msgid "September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks of"
8027 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8028 #: freeculture.xml:5740
8030 "Kahle was eager to correct this. Before September 11, 2001, he and his "
8031 "allies had started capturing television. They selected twenty stations from "
8032 "around the world and hit the Record button. After September 11, Kahle, "
8033 "working with dozens of others, selected twenty stations from around the "
8034 "world and, beginning October 11, 2001, made their coverage during the week "
8035 "of September 11 available free on-line. Anyone could see how news reports "
8036 "from around the world covered the events of that day."
8039 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8040 #: freeculture.xml:5750
8041 msgid "Movie Archive"
8044 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8045 #: freeculture.xml:5751
8049 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8050 #: freeculture.xml:5751 freeculture.xml:5753
8051 msgid "Internet Archive"
8054 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8055 #: freeculture.xml:5754
8056 msgid "Duck and Cover film"
8059 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8060 #: freeculture.xml:5755
8061 msgid "ephemeral films"
8064 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8065 #: freeculture.xml:5756
8066 msgid "Prelinger, Rick"
8069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8070 #: freeculture.xml:5758
8072 "Kahle had the same idea with film. Working with Rick Prelinger, whose "
8073 "archive of film includes close to 45,000 <quote>ephemeral films</quote> "
8074 "(meaning films other than Hollywood movies, films that were never "
8075 "copyrighted), Kahle established the Movie Archive. Prelinger let Kahle "
8076 "digitize 1,300 films in this archive and post those films on the Internet to "
8077 "be downloaded for free. Prelinger's is a for-profit company. It sells copies "
8078 "of these films as stock footage. What he has discovered is that after he "
8079 "made a significant chunk available for free, his stock footage sales went up "
8080 "dramatically. People could easily find the material they wanted to use. Some "
8081 "downloaded that material and made films on their own. Others purchased "
8082 "copies to enable other films to be made. Either way, the archive enabled "
8083 "access to this important part of our culture. Want to see a copy of the "
8084 "<quote>Duck and Cover</quote> film that instructed children how to save "
8085 "themselves in the middle of nuclear attack? Go to archive.org, and you can "
8086 "download the film in a few minutes—for free."
8089 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8090 #: freeculture.xml:5776
8092 "Here again, Kahle is providing access to a part of our culture that we "
8093 "otherwise could not get easily, if at all. It is yet another part of what "
8094 "defines the twentieth century that we have lost to history. The law doesn't "
8095 "require these copies to be kept by anyone, or to be deposited in an archive "
8096 "by anyone. Therefore, there is no simple way to find them."
8099 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8100 #: freeculture.xml:5784
8102 "The key here is access, not price. Kahle wants to enable free access to this "
8103 "content, but he also wants to enable others to sell access to it. His aim is "
8104 "to ensure competition in access to this important part of our culture. Not "
8105 "during the commercial life of a bit of creative property, but during a "
8106 "second life that all creative property has—a noncommercial life."
8110 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8111 #: freeculture.xml:5792
8113 "For here is an idea that we should more clearly recognize. Every bit of "
8114 "creative property goes through different <quote>lives.</quote> In its first "
8115 "life, if the creator is lucky, the content is sold. In such cases the "
8116 "commercial market is successful for the creator. The vast majority of "
8117 "creative property doesn't enjoy such success, but some clearly does. For "
8118 "that content, commercial life is extremely important. Without this "
8119 "commercial market, there would be, many argue, much less creativity."
8122 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8123 #: freeculture.xml:5804
8125 "After the commercial life of creative property has ended, our tradition has "
8126 "always supported a second life as well. A newspaper delivers the news every "
8127 "day to the doorsteps of America. The very next day, it is used to wrap fish "
8128 "or to fill boxes with fragile gifts or to build an archive of knowledge "
8129 "about our history. In this second life, the content can continue to inform "
8130 "even if that information is no longer sold."
8133 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8134 #: freeculture.xml:5817
8136 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Dave Barns, <quote>Fledgling "
8137 "Career in Antique Books: Woodstock Landlord, Bar Owner Starts a New Chapter "
8138 "by Adopting Business,</quote> <citetitle>Chicago Tribune</citetitle>, 5 "
8139 "September 1997, at Metro Lake 1L. Of books published between 1927 and 1946, "
8140 "only 2.2 percent were in print in 2002. R. Anthony Reese, <quote>The First "
8141 "Sale Doctrine in the Era of Digital Networks,</quote> <citetitle>Boston "
8142 "College Law Review</citetitle> 44 (2003): 593 n. 51."
8145 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8146 #: freeculture.xml:5814
8148 "The same has always been true about books. A book goes out of print very "
8149 "quickly (the average today is after about a year<placeholder "
8150 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>). After it is out of print, it can be sold in "
8151 "used book stores without the copyright owner getting anything and stored in "
8152 "libraries, where many get to read the book, also for free. Used book stores "
8153 "and libraries are thus the second life of a book. That second life is "
8154 "extremely important to the spread and stability of culture."
8157 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8158 #: freeculture.xml:5832
8160 "Yet increasingly, any assumption about a stable second life for creative "
8161 "property does not hold true with the most important components of popular "
8162 "culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For "
8163 "these—television, movies, music, radio, the Internet—there is no "
8164 "guarantee of a second life. For these sorts of culture, it is as if we've "
8165 "replaced libraries with Barnes & Noble superstores. With this culture, "
8166 "what's accessible is nothing but what a certain limited market demands. "
8167 "Beyond that, culture disappears."
8171 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8172 #: freeculture.xml:5843
8174 "<emphasis role='strong'>For most of</emphasis> the twentieth century, it was "
8175 "economics that made this so. It would have been insanely expensive to "
8176 "collect and make accessible all television and film and music: The cost of "
8177 "analog copies is extraordinarily high. So even though the law in principle "
8178 "would have restricted the ability of a Brewster Kahle to copy culture "
8179 "generally, the real restriction was economics. The market made it impossibly "
8180 "difficult to do anything about this ephemeral culture; the law had little "
8184 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8185 #: freeculture.xml:5855
8187 "Perhaps the single most important feature of the digital revolution is that "
8188 "for the first time since the Library of Alexandria, it is feasible to "
8189 "imagine constructing archives that hold all culture produced or distributed "
8190 "publicly. Technology makes it possible to imagine an archive of all books "
8191 "published, and increasingly makes it possible to imagine an archive of all "
8192 "moving images and sound."
8195 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8196 #: freeculture.xml:5863
8198 "The scale of this potential archive is something we've never imagined "
8199 "before. The Brewster Kahles of our history have dreamed about it; but we are "
8200 "for the first time at a point where that dream is possible. As Kahle "
8204 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><indexterm><secondary>
8205 #: freeculture.xml:5869
8206 msgid "total number of"
8209 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
8210 #: freeculture.xml:5871
8212 "It looks like there's about two to three million recordings of music. "
8213 "Ever. There are about a hundred thousand theatrical releases of movies, "
8214 "… and about one to two million movies [distributed] during the "
8215 "twentieth century. There are about twenty-six million different titles of "
8216 "books. All of these would fit on computers that would fit in this room and "
8217 "be able to be afforded by a small company. So we're at a turning point in "
8218 "our history. Universal access is the goal. And the opportunity of leading a "
8219 "different life, based on this, is … thrilling. It could be one of the "
8220 "things humankind would be most proud of. Up there with the Library of "
8221 "Alexandria, putting a man on the moon, and the invention of the printing "
8226 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8227 #: freeculture.xml:5885
8229 "Kahle is not the only librarian. The Internet Archive is not the only "
8230 "archive. But Kahle and the Internet Archive suggest what the future of "
8231 "libraries or archives could be. <emphasis>When</emphasis> the commercial "
8232 "life of creative property ends, I don't know. But it does. And whenever it "
8233 "does, Kahle and his archive hint at a world where this knowledge, and "
8234 "culture, remains perpetually available. Some will draw upon it to understand "
8235 "it; some to criticize it. Some will use it, as Walt Disney did, to re-create "
8236 "the past for the future. These technologies promise something that had "
8237 "become unimaginable for much of our past—a future "
8238 "<emphasis>for</emphasis> our past. The technology of digital arts could make "
8239 "the dream of the Library of Alexandria real again."
8242 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8243 #: freeculture.xml:5900
8245 "Technologists have thus removed the economic costs of building such an "
8246 "archive. But lawyers' costs remain. For as much as we might like to call "
8247 "these <quote>archives,</quote> as warm as the idea of a "
8248 "<quote>library</quote> might seem, the <quote>content</quote> that is "
8249 "collected in these digital spaces is also someone's <quote>property.</quote> "
8250 "And the law of property restricts the freedoms that Kahle and others would "
8254 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
8255 #: freeculture.xml:5911
8256 msgid "CHAPTER TEN: <quote>Property</quote>"
8259 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8260 #: freeculture.xml:5912
8261 msgid "Johnson, Lyndon"
8264 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8265 #: freeculture.xml:5913 freeculture.xml:9638
8266 msgid "Kennedy, John F."
8269 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8270 #: freeculture.xml:5915
8272 "<emphasis role='strong'>Jack Valenti</emphasis> has been the president of "
8273 "the Motion Picture Association of America since 1966. He first came to "
8274 "Washington, D.C., with Lyndon Johnson's administration—literally. The "
8275 "famous picture of Johnson's swearing-in on Air Force One after the "
8276 "assassination of President Kennedy has Valenti in the background. In his "
8277 "almost forty years of running the MPAA, Valenti has established himself as "
8278 "perhaps the most prominent and effective lobbyist in Washington."
8281 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8282 #: freeculture.xml:5924
8283 msgid "Disney, Inc."
8286 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8287 #: freeculture.xml:5925
8288 msgid "Sony Pictures Entertainment"
8291 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8292 #: freeculture.xml:5926
8296 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8297 #: freeculture.xml:5927
8298 msgid "Paramount Pictures"
8301 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8302 #: freeculture.xml:5928
8303 msgid "Twentieth Century Fox"
8306 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8307 #: freeculture.xml:5929
8308 msgid "Universal Pictures"
8311 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8312 #: freeculture.xml:5930 freeculture.xml:7356
8313 msgid "Warner Brothers"
8316 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8317 #: freeculture.xml:5932
8319 "The MPAA is the American branch of the international Motion Picture "
8320 "Association. It was formed in 1922 as a trade association whose goal was to "
8321 "defend American movies against increasing domestic criticism. The "
8322 "organization now represents not only filmmakers but producers and "
8323 "distributors of entertainment for television, video, and cable. Its board is "
8324 "made up of the chairmen and presidents of the seven major producers and "
8325 "distributors of motion picture and television programs in the United States: "
8326 "Walt Disney, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth "
8327 "Century Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Brothers."
8331 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8332 #: freeculture.xml:5945
8334 "Valenti is only the third president of the MPAA. No president before him has "
8335 "had as much influence over that organization, or over Washington. As a "
8336 "Texan, Valenti has mastered the single most important political skill of a "
8337 "Southerner—the ability to appear simple and slow while hiding a "
8338 "lightning-fast intellect. To this day, Valenti plays the simple, humble "
8339 "man. But this Harvard MBA, and author of four books, who finished high "
8340 "school at the age of fifteen and flew more than fifty combat missions in "
8341 "World War II, is no Mr. Smith. When Valenti went to Washington, he mastered "
8342 "the city in a quintessentially Washingtonian way."
8345 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8346 #: freeculture.xml:5957
8348 "In defending artistic liberty and the freedom of speech that our culture "
8349 "depends upon, the MPAA has done important good. In crafting the MPAA rating "
8350 "system, it has probably avoided a great deal of speech-regulating harm. But "
8351 "there is an aspect to the organization's mission that is both the most "
8352 "radical and the most important. This is the organization's effort, "
8353 "epitomized in Valenti's every act, to redefine the meaning of "
8354 "<quote>creative property.</quote>"
8357 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8358 #: freeculture.xml:5966
8359 msgid "In 1982, Valenti's testimony to Congress captured the strategy perfectly:"
8363 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
8364 #: freeculture.xml:5980
8366 "Home Recording of Copyrighted Works: Hearings on H.R. 4783, H.R. 4794, "
8367 "H.R. 4808, H.R. 5250, H.R. 5488, and H.R. 5705 Before the Subcommittee on "
8368 "Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice of the Committee "
8369 "on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, 97th Cong., 2nd "
8370 "sess. (1982): 65 (testimony of Jack Valenti)."
8373 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
8374 #: freeculture.xml:5971
8376 "No matter the lengthy arguments made, no matter the charges and the "
8377 "counter-charges, no matter the tumult and the shouting, reasonable men and "
8378 "women will keep returning to the fundamental issue, the central theme which "
8379 "animates this entire debate: <emphasis>Creative property owners must be "
8380 "accorded the same rights and protection resident in all other property "
8381 "owners in the nation</emphasis>. That is the issue. That is the "
8382 "question. And that is the rostrum on which this entire hearing and the "
8383 "debates to follow must rest.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
8387 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8388 #: freeculture.xml:5990
8390 "The strategy of this rhetoric, like the strategy of most of Valenti's "
8391 "rhetoric, is brilliant and simple and brilliant because simple. The "
8392 "<quote>central theme</quote> to which <quote>reasonable men and "
8393 "women</quote> will return is this: <quote>Creative property owners must be "
8394 "accorded the same rights and protections resident in all other property "
8395 "owners in the nation.</quote> There are no second-class citizens, Valenti "
8396 "might have continued. There should be no second-class property owners."
8399 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8400 #: freeculture.xml:6001
8402 "This claim has an obvious and powerful intuitive pull. It is stated with "
8403 "such clarity as to make the idea as obvious as the notion that we use "
8404 "elections to pick presidents. But in fact, there is no more extreme a claim "
8405 "made by <emphasis>anyone</emphasis> who is serious in this debate than this "
8406 "claim of Valenti's. Jack Valenti, however sweet and however brilliant, is "
8407 "perhaps the nation's foremost extremist when it comes to the nature and "
8408 "scope of <quote>creative property.</quote> His views have "
8409 "<emphasis>no</emphasis> reasonable connection to our actual legal tradition, "
8410 "even if the subtle pull of his Texan charm has slowly redefined that "
8411 "tradition, at least in Washington."
8415 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8416 #: freeculture.xml:6016
8418 "Lawyers speak of <quote>property</quote> not as an absolute thing, but as a "
8419 "bundle of rights that are sometimes associated with a particular "
8420 "object. Thus, my <quote>property right</quote> to my car gives me the right "
8421 "to exclusive use, but not the right to drive at 150 miles an hour. For the "
8422 "best effort to connect the ordinary meaning of <quote>property</quote> to "
8423 "<quote>lawyer talk,</quote> see Bruce Ackerman, <citetitle>Private Property "
8424 "and the Constitution</citetitle> (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), "
8428 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8429 #: freeculture.xml:6013
8431 "While <quote>creative property</quote> is certainly <quote>property</quote> "
8432 "in a nerdy and precise sense that lawyers are trained to "
8433 "understand,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> it has never been the "
8434 "case, nor should it be, that <quote>creative property owners</quote> have "
8435 "been <quote>accorded the same rights and protection resident in all other "
8436 "property owners.</quote> Indeed, if creative property owners were given the "
8437 "same rights as all other property owners, that would effect a radical, and "
8438 "radically undesirable, change in our tradition."
8441 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8442 #: freeculture.xml:6031
8444 "Valenti knows this. But he speaks for an industry that cares squat for our "
8445 "tradition and the values it represents. He speaks for an industry that is "
8446 "instead fighting to restore the tradition that the British overturned in "
8447 "1710. In the world that Valenti's changes would create, a powerful few would "
8448 "exercise powerful control over how our creative culture would develop."
8452 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8453 #: freeculture.xml:6039
8455 "I have two purposes in this chapter. The first is to convince you that, "
8456 "historically, Valenti's claim is absolutely wrong. The second is to convince "
8457 "you that it would be terribly wrong for us to reject our history. We have "
8458 "always treated rights in creative property differently from the rights "
8459 "resident in all other property owners. They have never been the same. And "
8460 "they should never be the same, because, however counterintuitive this may "
8461 "seem, to make them the same would be to fundamentally weaken the opportunity "
8462 "for new creators to create. Creativity depends upon the owners of "
8463 "creativity having less than perfect control."
8466 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8467 #: freeculture.xml:6054
8469 "Organizations such as the MPAA, whose board includes the most powerful of "
8470 "the old guard, have little interest, their rhetoric notwithstanding, in "
8471 "assuring that the new can displace them. No organization does. No person "
8472 "does. (Ask me about tenure, for example.) But what's good for the MPAA is "
8473 "not necessarily good for America. A society that defends the ideals of free "
8474 "culture must preserve precisely the opportunity for new creativity to "
8478 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8479 #: freeculture.xml:6063
8481 "<emphasis role='strong'>To get</emphasis> just a hint that there is "
8482 "something fundamentally wrong in Valenti's argument, we need look no further "
8483 "than the United States Constitution itself."
8486 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8487 #: freeculture.xml:6068
8489 "The framers of our Constitution loved <quote>property.</quote> Indeed, so "
8490 "strongly did they love property that they built into the Constitution an "
8491 "important requirement. If the government takes your property—if it "
8492 "condemns your house, or acquires a slice of land from your farm—it is "
8493 "required, under the Fifth Amendment's <quote>Takings Clause,</quote> to pay "
8494 "you <quote>just compensation</quote> for that taking. The Constitution thus "
8495 "guarantees that property is, in a certain sense, sacred. It cannot "
8496 "<emphasis>ever</emphasis> be taken from the property owner unless the "
8497 "government pays for the privilege."
8501 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8502 #: freeculture.xml:6079
8504 "Yet the very same Constitution speaks very differently about what Valenti "
8505 "calls <quote>creative property.</quote> In the clause granting Congress the "
8506 "power to create <quote>creative property,</quote> the Constitution "
8507 "<emphasis>requires</emphasis> that after a <quote>limited time,</quote> "
8508 "Congress take back the rights that it has granted and set the "
8509 "<quote>creative property</quote> free to the public domain. Yet when "
8510 "Congress does this, when the expiration of a copyright term "
8511 "<quote>takes</quote> your copyright and turns it over to the public domain, "
8512 "Congress does not have any obligation to pay <quote>just "
8513 "compensation</quote> for this <quote>taking.</quote> Instead, the same "
8514 "Constitution that requires compensation for your land requires that you lose "
8515 "your <quote>creative property</quote> right without any compensation at all."
8518 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8519 #: freeculture.xml:6094
8521 "The Constitution thus on its face states that these two forms of property "
8522 "are not to be accorded the same rights. They are plainly to be treated "
8523 "differently. Valenti is therefore not just asking for a change in our "
8524 "tradition when he argues that creative-property owners should be accorded "
8525 "the same rights as every other property-right owner. He is effectively "
8526 "arguing for a change in our Constitution itself."
8529 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8530 #: freeculture.xml:6103
8532 "Arguing for a change in our Constitution is not necessarily wrong. There "
8533 "was much in our original Constitution that was plainly wrong. The "
8534 "Constitution of 1789 entrenched slavery; it left senators to be appointed "
8535 "rather than elected; it made it possible for the electoral college to "
8536 "produce a tie between the president and his own vice president (as it did in "
8537 "1800). The framers were no doubt extraordinary, but I would be the first to "
8538 "admit that they made big mistakes. We have since rejected some of those "
8539 "mistakes; no doubt there could be others that we should reject as well. So "
8540 "my argument is not simply that because Jefferson did it, we should, too."
8543 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8544 #: freeculture.xml:6115
8546 "Instead, my argument is that because Jefferson did it, we should at least "
8547 "try to understand <emphasis>why</emphasis>. Why did the framers, fanatical "
8548 "property types that they were, reject the claim that creative property be "
8549 "given the same rights as all other property? Why did they require that for "
8550 "creative property there must be a public domain?"
8553 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8554 #: freeculture.xml:6123
8556 "To answer this question, we need to get some perspective on the history of "
8557 "these <quote>creative property</quote> rights, and the control that they "
8558 "enabled. Once we see clearly how differently these rights have been "
8559 "defined, we will be in a better position to ask the question that should be "
8560 "at the core of this war: Not <emphasis>whether</emphasis> creative property "
8561 "should be protected, but how. Not <emphasis>whether</emphasis> we will "
8562 "enforce the rights the law gives to creative-property owners, but what the "
8563 "particular mix of rights ought to be. Not <emphasis>whether</emphasis> "
8564 "artists should be paid, but whether institutions designed to assure that "
8565 "artists get paid need also control how culture develops."
8569 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8570 #: freeculture.xml:6138
8572 "To answer these questions, we need a more general way to talk about how "
8573 "property is protected. More precisely, we need a more general way than the "
8574 "narrow language of the law allows. In <citetitle>Code and Other Laws of "
8575 "Cyberspace</citetitle>, I used a simple model to capture this more general "
8576 "perspective. For any particular right or regulation, this model asks how "
8577 "four different modalities of regulation interact to support or weaken the "
8578 "right or regulation. I represented it with this diagram:"
8581 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure><title>
8582 #: freeculture.xml:6147
8584 "How four different modalities of regulation interact to support or weaken "
8585 "the right or regulation."
8588 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
8589 #: freeculture.xml:6148 freeculture.xml:6332 freeculture.xml:6639
8590 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1331.png\"></graphic>"
8593 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8594 #: freeculture.xml:6151
8596 "At the center of this picture is a regulated dot: the individual or group "
8597 "that is the target of regulation, or the holder of a right. (In each case "
8598 "throughout, we can describe this either as regulation or as a right. For "
8599 "simplicity's sake, I will speak only of regulations.) The ovals represent "
8600 "four ways in which the individual or group might be regulated— either "
8601 "constrained or, alternatively, enabled. Law is the most obvious constraint "
8602 "(to lawyers, at least). It constrains by threatening punishments after the "
8603 "fact if the rules set in advance are violated. So if, for example, you "
8604 "willfully infringe Madonna's copyright by copying a song from her latest CD "
8605 "and posting it on the Web, you can be punished with a $150,000 fine. The "
8606 "fine is an ex post punishment for violating an ex ante rule. It is imposed "
8607 "by the state. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
8610 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8611 #: freeculture.xml:6167 freeculture.xml:6226 freeculture.xml:6335
8612 msgid "norms, regulatory influence of"
8615 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8616 #: freeculture.xml:6169
8618 "Norms are a different kind of constraint. They, too, punish an individual "
8619 "for violating a rule. But the punishment of a norm is imposed by a "
8620 "community, not (or not only) by the state. There may be no law against "
8621 "spitting, but that doesn't mean you won't be punished if you spit on the "
8622 "ground while standing in line at a movie. The punishment might not be harsh, "
8623 "though depending upon the community, it could easily be more harsh than many "
8624 "of the punishments imposed by the state. The mark of the difference is not "
8625 "the severity of the rule, but the source of the enforcement."
8628 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8629 #: freeculture.xml:6179 freeculture.xml:6225 freeculture.xml:6315 freeculture.xml:6334 freeculture.xml:9263 freeculture.xml:9462
8630 msgid "market constraints"
8633 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8634 #: freeculture.xml:6181
8636 "The market is a third type of constraint. Its constraint is effected through "
8637 "conditions: You can do X if you pay Y; you'll be paid M if you do N. These "
8638 "constraints are obviously not independent of law or norms—it is "
8639 "property law that defines what must be bought if it is to be taken legally; "
8640 "it is norms that say what is appropriately sold. But given a set of norms, "
8641 "and a background of property and contract law, the market imposes a "
8642 "simultaneous constraint upon how an individual or group might behave."
8645 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
8646 #: freeculture.xml:6190 freeculture.xml:6224 freeculture.xml:6273 freeculture.xml:6314
8647 msgid "architecture, constraint effected through"
8650 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8651 #: freeculture.xml:6192
8653 "Finally, and for the moment, perhaps, most mysteriously, "
8654 "<quote>architecture</quote>—the physical world as one finds "
8655 "it—is a constraint on behavior. A fallen bridge might constrain your "
8656 "ability to get across a river. Railroad tracks might constrain the ability "
8657 "of a community to integrate its social life. As with the market, "
8658 "architecture does not effect its constraint through ex post "
8659 "punishments. Instead, also as with the market, architecture effects its "
8660 "constraint through simultaneous conditions. These conditions are imposed not "
8661 "by courts enforcing contracts, or by police punishing theft, but by nature, "
8662 "by <quote>architecture.</quote> If a 500-pound boulder blocks your way, it "
8663 "is the law of gravity that enforces this constraint. If a $500 airplane "
8664 "ticket stands between you and a flight to New York, it is the market that "
8665 "enforces this constraint."
8669 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8670 #: freeculture.xml:6209
8672 "So the first point about these four modalities of regulation is obvious: "
8673 "They interact. Restrictions imposed by one might be reinforced by "
8674 "another. Or restrictions imposed by one might be undermined by another."
8677 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8678 #: freeculture.xml:6215
8680 "The second point follows directly: If we want to understand the effective "
8681 "freedom that anyone has at a given moment to do any particular thing, we "
8682 "have to consider how these four modalities interact. Whether or not there "
8683 "are other constraints (there may well be; my claim is not about "
8684 "comprehensiveness), these four are among the most significant, and any "
8685 "regulator (whether controlling or freeing) must consider how these four in "
8686 "particular interact."
8689 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8690 #: freeculture.xml:6223
8691 msgid "driving speed, constraints on"
8694 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8695 #: freeculture.xml:6228
8697 "So, for example, consider the <quote>freedom</quote> to drive a car at a "
8698 "high speed. That freedom is in part restricted by laws: speed limits that "
8699 "say how fast you can drive in particular places at particular times. It is "
8700 "in part restricted by architecture: speed bumps, for example, slow most "
8701 "rational drivers; governors in buses, as another example, set the maximum "
8702 "rate at which the driver can drive. The freedom is in part restricted by the "
8703 "market: Fuel efficiency drops as speed increases, thus the price of gasoline "
8704 "indirectly constrains speed. And finally, the norms of a community may or "
8705 "may not constrain the freedom to speed. Drive at 50 mph by a school in your "
8706 "own neighborhood and you're likely to be punished by the neighbors. The same "
8707 "norm wouldn't be as effective in a different town, or at night."
8711 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8712 #: freeculture.xml:6246
8714 "By describing the way law affects the other three modalities, I don't mean "
8715 "to suggest that the other three don't affect law. Obviously, they do. Law's "
8716 "only distinction is that it alone speaks as if it has a right "
8717 "self-consciously to change the other three. The right of the other three is "
8718 "more timidly expressed. See Lawrence Lessig, <citetitle>Code: And Other "
8719 "Laws of Cyberspace</citetitle> (New York: Basic Books, 1999): 90–95; "
8720 "Lawrence Lessig, <quote>The New Chicago School,</quote> <citetitle>Journal "
8721 "of Legal Studies</citetitle>, June 1998."
8725 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8726 #: freeculture.xml:6242
8728 "The final point about this simple model should also be fairly clear: While "
8729 "these four modalities are analytically independent, law has a special role "
8730 "in affecting the three.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The law, in "
8731 "other words, sometimes operates to increase or decrease the constraint of a "
8732 "particular modality. Thus, the law might be used to increase taxes on "
8733 "gasoline, so as to increase the incentives to drive more slowly. The law "
8734 "might be used to mandate more speed bumps, so as to increase the difficulty "
8735 "of driving rapidly. The law might be used to fund ads that stigmatize "
8736 "reckless driving. Or the law might be used to require that other laws be "
8737 "more strict—a federal requirement that states decrease the speed "
8738 "limit, for example—so as to decrease the attractiveness of fast "
8742 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure><title>
8743 #: freeculture.xml:6270
8744 msgid "Law has a special role in affecting the three."
8747 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure>
8748 #: freeculture.xml:6271
8749 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1361.png\"></graphic>"
8752 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
8753 #: freeculture.xml:6312
8754 msgid "Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)"
8757 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
8758 #: freeculture.xml:6313
8759 msgid "Commons, John R."
8762 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
8763 #: freeculture.xml:6283
8765 "Some people object to this way of talking about <quote>liberty.</quote> They "
8766 "object because their focus when considering the constraints that exist at "
8767 "any particular moment are constraints imposed exclusively by the "
8768 "government. For instance, if a storm destroys a bridge, these people think "
8769 "it is meaningless to say that one's liberty has been restrained. A bridge "
8770 "has washed out, and it's harder to get from one place to another. To talk "
8771 "about this as a loss of freedom, they say, is to confuse the stuff of "
8772 "politics with the vagaries of ordinary life. I don't mean to deny the value "
8773 "in this narrower view, which depends upon the context of the inquiry. I do, "
8774 "however, mean to argue against any insistence that this narrower view is the "
8775 "only proper view of liberty. As I argued in <citetitle>Code</citetitle>, we "
8776 "come from a long tradition of political thought with a broader focus than "
8777 "the narrow question of what the government did when. John Stuart Mill "
8778 "defended freedom of speech, for example, from the tyranny of narrow minds, "
8779 "not from the fear of government prosecution; John Stuart Mill, <citetitle>On "
8780 "Liberty</citetitle> (Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), 19. John "
8781 "R. Commons famously defended the economic freedom of labor from constraints "
8782 "imposed by the market; John R. Commons, <quote>The Right to Work,</quote> in "
8783 "Malcom Rutherford and Warren J. Samuels, eds., <citetitle>John R. Commons: "
8784 "Selected Essays</citetitle> (London: Routledge: 1997), 62. The Americans "
8785 "with Disabilities Act increases the liberty of people with physical "
8786 "disabilities by changing the architecture of certain public places, thereby "
8787 "making access to those places easier; 42 <citetitle>United States "
8788 "Code</citetitle>, section 12101 (2000). Each of these interventions to "
8789 "change existing conditions changes the liberty of a particular group. The "
8790 "effect of those interventions should be accounted for in order to understand "
8791 "the effective liberty that each of these groups might face. <placeholder "
8792 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> "
8793 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
8797 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
8798 #: freeculture.xml:6275
8800 "These constraints can thus change, and they can be changed. To understand "
8801 "the effective protection of liberty or protection of property at any "
8802 "particular moment, we must track these changes over time. A restriction "
8803 "imposed by one modality might be erased by another. A freedom enabled by one "
8804 "modality might be displaced by another.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
8808 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
8809 #: freeculture.xml:6319
8810 msgid "Why Hollywood Is Right"
8813 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8814 #: freeculture.xml:6321
8816 "The most obvious point that this model reveals is just why, or just how, "
8817 "Hollywood is right. The copyright warriors have rallied Congress and the "
8818 "courts to defend copyright. This model helps us see why that rallying makes "
8822 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8823 #: freeculture.xml:6327
8824 msgid "Let's say this is the picture of copyright's regulation before the Internet:"
8827 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
8828 #: freeculture.xml:6331 freeculture.xml:6638
8829 msgid "Copyright's regulation before the Internet."
8833 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8834 #: freeculture.xml:6338
8836 "There is balance between law, norms, market, and architecture. The law "
8837 "limits the ability to copy and share content, by imposing penalties on those "
8838 "who copy and share content. Those penalties are reinforced by technologies "
8839 "that make it hard to copy and share content (architecture) and expensive to "
8840 "copy and share content (market). Finally, those penalties are mitigated by "
8841 "norms we all recognize—kids, for example, taping other kids' "
8842 "records. These uses of copyrighted material may well be infringement, but "
8843 "the norms of our society (before the Internet, at least) had no problem with "
8844 "this form of infringement."
8847 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8848 #: freeculture.xml:6350
8850 "Enter the Internet, or, more precisely, technologies such as MP3s and p2p "
8851 "sharing. Now the constraint of architecture changes dramatically, as does "
8852 "the constraint of the market. And as both the market and architecture relax "
8853 "the regulation of copyright, norms pile on. The happy balance (for the "
8854 "warriors, at least) of life before the Internet becomes an effective state "
8855 "of anarchy after the Internet."
8859 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8860 #: freeculture.xml:6358
8862 "Thus the sense of, and justification for, the warriors' response. "
8863 "Technology has changed, the warriors say, and the effect of this change, "
8864 "when ramified through the market and norms, is that a balance of protection "
8865 "for the copyright owners' rights has been lost. This is Iraq after the fall "
8866 "of Saddam, but this time no government is justifying the looting that "
8870 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
8871 #: freeculture.xml:6368
8872 msgid "effective state of anarchy after the Internet."
8875 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
8876 #: freeculture.xml:6369
8877 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1381.png\"></graphic>"
8880 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8881 #: freeculture.xml:6372
8883 "Neither this analysis nor the conclusions that follow are new to the "
8884 "warriors. Indeed, in a <quote>White Paper</quote> prepared by the Commerce "
8885 "Department (one heavily influenced by the copyright warriors) in 1995, this "
8886 "mix of regulatory modalities had already been identified and the strategy to "
8887 "respond already mapped. In response to the changes the Internet had "
8888 "effected, the White Paper argued (1) Congress should strengthen intellectual "
8889 "property law, (2) businesses should adopt innovative marketing techniques, "
8890 "(3) technologists should push to develop code to protect copyrighted "
8891 "material, and (4) educators should educate kids to better protect copyright."
8894 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8895 #: freeculture.xml:6383
8896 msgid "steel industry"
8900 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8901 #: freeculture.xml:6385
8903 "This mixed strategy is just what copyright needed—if it was to "
8904 "preserve the particular balance that existed before the change induced by "
8905 "the Internet. And it's just what we should expect the content industry to "
8906 "push for. It is as American as apple pie to consider the happy life you have "
8907 "as an entitlement, and to look to the law to protect it if something comes "
8908 "along to change that happy life. Homeowners living in a flood plain have no "
8909 "hesitation appealing to the government to rebuild (and rebuild again) when a "
8910 "flood (architecture) wipes away their property (law). Farmers have no "
8911 "hesitation appealing to the government to bail them out when a virus "
8912 "(architecture) devastates their crop. Unions have no hesitation appealing to "
8913 "the government to bail them out when imports (market) wipe out the "
8914 "U.S. steel industry."
8917 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8918 #: freeculture.xml:6402
8920 "Thus, there's nothing wrong or surprising in the content industry's campaign "
8921 "to protect itself from the harmful consequences of a technological "
8922 "innovation. And I would be the last person to argue that the changing "
8923 "technology of the Internet has not had a profound effect on the content "
8924 "industry's way of doing business, or as John Seely Brown describes it, its "
8925 "<quote>architecture of revenue.</quote>"
8928 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
8929 #: freeculture.xml:6409
8930 msgid "railroad industry"
8934 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
8935 #: freeculture.xml:6421
8937 "See Geoffrey Smith, <quote>Film vs. Digital: Can Kodak Build a "
8938 "Bridge?</quote> BusinessWeek online, 2 August 1999, available at <ulink "
8939 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #23</ulink>. For a more recent "
8940 "analysis of Kodak's place in the market, see Chana R. Schoenberger, "
8941 "<quote>Can Kodak Make Up for Lost Moments?</quote> Forbes.com, 6 October "
8942 "2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
8946 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8947 #: freeculture.xml:6413
8949 "But just because a particular interest asks for government support, it "
8950 "doesn't follow that support should be granted. And just because technology "
8951 "has weakened a particular way of doing business, it doesn't follow that the "
8952 "government should intervene to support that old way of doing "
8953 "business. Kodak, for example, has lost perhaps as much as 20 percent of "
8954 "their traditional film market to the emerging technologies of digital "
8955 "cameras.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Does anyone believe the "
8956 "government should ban digital cameras just to support Kodak? Highways have "
8957 "weakened the freight business for railroads. Does anyone think we should ban "
8958 "trucks from roads <emphasis>for the purpose of</emphasis> protecting the "
8959 "railroads? Closer to the subject of this book, remote channel changers have "
8960 "weakened the <quote>stickiness</quote> of television advertising (if a "
8961 "boring commercial comes on the TV, the remote makes it easy to surf ), and "
8962 "it may well be that this change has weakened the television advertising "
8963 "market. But does anyone believe we should regulate remotes to reinforce "
8964 "commercial television? (Maybe by limiting them to function only once a "
8965 "second, or to switch to only ten channels within an hour?)"
8968 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
8969 #: freeculture.xml:6442 freeculture.xml:14753
8970 msgid "Brezhnev, Leonid"
8973 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
8974 #: freeculture.xml:6443 freeculture.xml:12990
8979 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
8980 #: freeculture.xml:6455
8982 "Fred Warshofsky, <citetitle>The Patent Wars</citetitle> (New York: Wiley, "
8983 "1994), 170–71."
8986 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
8987 #: freeculture.xml:6445
8989 "The obvious answer to these obviously rhetorical questions is no. In a free "
8990 "society, with a free market, supported by free enterprise and free trade, "
8991 "the government's role is not to support one way of doing business against "
8992 "others. Its role is not to pick winners and protect them against loss. If "
8993 "the government did this generally, then we would never have any progress. As "
8994 "Microsoft chairman Bill Gates wrote in 1991, in a memo criticizing software "
8995 "patents, <quote>established companies have an interest in excluding future "
8996 "competitors.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And relative "
8997 "to a startup, established companies also have the means. (Think RCA and FM "
8998 "radio.) A world in which competitors with new ideas must fight not only the "
8999 "market but also the government is a world in which competitors with new "
9000 "ideas will not succeed. It is a world of stasis and increasingly "
9001 "concentrated stagnation. It is the Soviet Union under Brezhnev."
9004 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9005 #: freeculture.xml:6466
9007 "Thus, while it is understandable for industries threatened with new "
9008 "technologies that change the way they do business to look to the government "
9009 "for protection, it is the special duty of policy makers to guarantee that "
9010 "that protection not become a deterrent to progress. It is the duty of policy "
9011 "makers, in other words, to assure that the changes they create, in response "
9012 "to the request of those hurt by changing technology, are changes that "
9013 "preserve the incentives and opportunities for innovation and change."
9016 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9017 #: freeculture.xml:6476
9019 "In the context of laws regulating speech—which include, obviously, "
9020 "copyright law—that duty is even stronger. When the industry "
9021 "complaining about changing technologies is asking Congress to respond in a "
9022 "way that burdens speech and creativity, policy makers should be especially "
9023 "wary of the request. It is always a bad deal for the government to get into "
9024 "the business of regulating speech markets. The risks and dangers of that "
9025 "game are precisely why our framers created the First Amendment to our "
9026 "Constitution: <quote>Congress shall make no law … abridging the "
9027 "freedom of speech.</quote> So when Congress is being asked to pass laws that "
9028 "would <quote>abridge</quote> the freedom of speech, it should ask— "
9029 "carefully—whether such regulation is justified."
9033 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9034 #: freeculture.xml:6490
9036 "My argument just now, however, has nothing to do with whether the changes "
9037 "that are being pushed by the copyright warriors are "
9038 "<quote>justified.</quote> My argument is about their effect. For before we "
9039 "get to the question of justification, a hard question that depends a great "
9040 "deal upon your values, we should first ask whether we understand the effect "
9041 "of the changes the content industry wants."
9044 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9045 #: freeculture.xml:6499
9046 msgid "Here's the metaphor that will capture the argument to follow."
9049 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9050 #: freeculture.xml:6501
9054 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9055 #: freeculture.xml:6502
9056 msgid "Müller, Paul Hermann"
9059 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9060 #: freeculture.xml:6504
9062 "In 1873, the chemical DDT was first synthesized. In 1948, Swiss chemist Paul "
9063 "Hermann Müller won the Nobel Prize for his work demonstrating the "
9064 "insecticidal properties of DDT. By the 1950s, the insecticide was widely "
9065 "used around the world to kill disease-carrying pests. It was also used to "
9066 "increase farm production."
9069 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9070 #: freeculture.xml:6511
9072 "No one doubts that killing disease-carrying pests or increasing crop "
9073 "production is a good thing. No one doubts that the work of Müller was "
9074 "important and valuable and probably saved lives, possibly millions."
9077 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9078 #: freeculture.xml:6515
9079 msgid "Carson, Rachel"
9082 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9083 #: freeculture.xml:6516
9084 msgid "Silent Sprint (Carson)"
9087 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9088 #: freeculture.xml:6518
9090 "But in 1962, Rachel Carson published <citetitle>Silent Spring</citetitle>, "
9091 "which argued that DDT, whatever its primary benefits, was also having "
9092 "unintended environmental consequences. Birds were losing the ability to "
9093 "reproduce. Whole chains of the ecology were being destroyed."
9096 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9097 #: freeculture.xml:6524
9099 "No one set out to destroy the environment. Paul Müller certainly did not aim "
9100 "to harm any birds. But the effort to solve one set of problems produced "
9101 "another set which, in the view of some, was far worse than the problems that "
9102 "were originally attacked. Or more accurately, the problems DDT caused were "
9103 "worse than the problems it solved, at least when considering the other, more "
9104 "environmentally friendly ways to solve the problems that DDT was meant to "
9108 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
9109 #: freeculture.xml:6532
9110 msgid "Boyle, James"
9114 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9115 #: freeculture.xml:6538
9117 "See, for example, James Boyle, <quote>A Politics of Intellectual Property: "
9118 "Environmentalism for the Net?</quote> <citetitle>Duke Law "
9119 "Journal</citetitle> 47 (1997): 87."
9123 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9124 #: freeculture.xml:6534
9126 "It is to this image precisely that Duke University law professor James Boyle "
9127 "appeals when he argues that we need an <quote>environmentalism</quote> for "
9128 "culture.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> His point, and the point I "
9129 "want to develop in the balance of this chapter, is not that the aims of "
9130 "copyright are flawed. Or that authors should not be paid for their work. Or "
9131 "that music should be given away <quote>for free.</quote> The point is that "
9132 "some of the ways in which we might protect authors will have unintended "
9133 "consequences for the cultural environment, much like DDT had for the natural "
9134 "environment. And just as criticism of DDT is not an endorsement of malaria "
9135 "or an attack on farmers, so, too, is criticism of one particular set of "
9136 "regulations protecting copyright not an endorsement of anarchy or an attack "
9137 "on authors. It is an environment of creativity that we seek, and we should "
9138 "be aware of our actions' effects on the environment."
9141 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9142 #: freeculture.xml:6555
9144 "My argument, in the balance of this chapter, tries to map exactly this "
9145 "effect. No doubt the technology of the Internet has had a dramatic effect on "
9146 "the ability of copyright owners to protect their content. But there should "
9147 "also be little doubt that when you add together the changes in copyright law "
9148 "over time, plus the change in technology that the Internet is undergoing "
9149 "just now, the net effect of these changes will not be only that copyrighted "
9150 "work is effectively protected. Also, and generally missed, the net effect of "
9151 "this massive increase in protection will be devastating to the environment "
9155 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9156 #: freeculture.xml:6566
9158 "In a line: To kill a gnat, we are spraying DDT with consequences for free "
9159 "culture that will be far more devastating than that this gnat will be lost."
9162 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
9163 #: freeculture.xml:6573
9167 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9168 #: freeculture.xml:6575
9170 "America copied English copyright law. Actually, we copied and improved "
9171 "English copyright law. Our Constitution makes the purpose of <quote>creative "
9172 "property</quote> rights clear; its express limitations reinforce the English "
9173 "aim to avoid overly powerful publishers."
9176 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9177 #: freeculture.xml:6581
9179 "The power to establish <quote>creative property</quote> rights is granted to "
9180 "Congress in a way that, for our Constitution, at least, is very odd. Article "
9181 "I, section 8, clause 8 of our Constitution states that:"
9185 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9186 #: freeculture.xml:6586
9188 "Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, "
9189 "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right "
9190 "to their respective Writings and Discoveries. We can call this the "
9191 "<quote>Progress Clause,</quote> for notice what this clause does not say. It "
9192 "does not say Congress has the power to grant <quote>creative property "
9193 "rights.</quote> It says that Congress has the power <emphasis>to promote "
9194 "progress</emphasis>. The grant of power is its purpose, and its purpose is a "
9195 "public one, not the purpose of enriching publishers, nor even primarily the "
9196 "purpose of rewarding authors."
9199 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9200 #: freeculture.xml:6599
9202 "The Progress Clause expressly limits the term of copyrights. As we saw in "
9203 "chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"founders\"/>, the "
9204 "English limited the term of copyright so as to assure that a few would not "
9205 "exercise disproportionate control over culture by exercising "
9206 "disproportionate control over publishing. We can assume the framers followed "
9207 "the English for a similar purpose. Indeed, unlike the English, the framers "
9208 "reinforced that objective, by requiring that copyrights extend <quote>to "
9209 "Authors</quote> only."
9212 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9213 #: freeculture.xml:6609
9215 "The design of the Progress Clause reflects something about the "
9216 "Constitution's design in general. To avoid a problem, the framers built "
9217 "structure. To prevent the concentrated power of publishers, they built a "
9218 "structure that kept copyrights away from publishers and kept them short. To "
9219 "prevent the concentrated power of a church, they banned the federal "
9220 "government from establishing a church. To prevent concentrating power in the "
9221 "federal government, they built structures to reinforce the power of the "
9222 "states—including the Senate, whose members were at the time selected "
9223 "by the states, and an electoral college, also selected by the states, to "
9224 "select the president. In each case, a <emphasis>structure</emphasis> built "
9225 "checks and balances into the constitutional frame, structured to prevent "
9226 "otherwise inevitable concentrations of power."
9229 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9230 #: freeculture.xml:6624
9232 "I doubt the framers would recognize the regulation we call "
9233 "<quote>copyright</quote> today. The scope of that regulation is far beyond "
9234 "anything they ever considered. To begin to understand what they did, we need "
9235 "to put our <quote>copyright</quote> in context: We need to see how it has "
9236 "changed in the 210 years since they first struck its design."
9240 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9241 #: freeculture.xml:6631
9243 "Some of these changes come from the law: some in light of changes in "
9244 "technology, and some in light of changes in technology given a particular "
9245 "concentration of market power. In terms of our model, we started here:"
9248 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9249 #: freeculture.xml:6642
9250 msgid "We will end here:"
9253 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9254 #: freeculture.xml:6645
9255 msgid "<quote>Copyright</quote> today."
9258 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9259 #: freeculture.xml:6646
9260 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1442.png\"></graphic>"
9264 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9265 #: freeculture.xml:6649
9266 msgid "Let me explain how."
9269 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
9270 #: freeculture.xml:6654
9271 msgid "Law: Duration"
9274 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
9275 #: freeculture.xml:6670
9276 msgid "Crosskey, William W."
9279 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9280 #: freeculture.xml:6664
9282 "William W. Crosskey, <citetitle>Politics and the Constitution in the History "
9283 "of the United States</citetitle> (London: Cambridge University Press, 1953), "
9284 "vol. 1, 485–86: <quote>extinguish[ing], by plain implication of `the "
9285 "supreme Law of the Land,' <emphasis>the perpetual rights which authors had, "
9286 "or were supposed by some to have, under the Common Law</emphasis></quote> "
9287 "(emphasis added). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
9290 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9291 #: freeculture.xml:6656
9293 "When the first Congress enacted laws to protect creative property, it faced "
9294 "the same uncertainty about the status of creative property that the English "
9295 "had confronted in 1774. Many states had passed laws protecting creative "
9296 "property, and some believed that these laws simply supplemented common law "
9297 "rights that already protected creative authorship.<placeholder "
9298 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> This meant that there was no guaranteed public "
9299 "domain in the United States in 1790. If copyrights were protected by the "
9300 "common law, then there was no simple way to know whether a work published in "
9301 "the United States was controlled or free. Just as in England, this lingering "
9302 "uncertainty would make it hard for publishers to rely upon a public domain "
9303 "to reprint and distribute works."
9306 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9307 #: freeculture.xml:6680
9309 "That uncertainty ended after Congress passed legislation granting "
9310 "copyrights. Because federal law overrides any contrary state law, federal "
9311 "protections for copyrighted works displaced any state law protections. Just "
9312 "as in England the Statute of Anne eventually meant that the copyrights for "
9313 "all English works expired, a federal statute meant that any state copyrights "
9317 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9318 #: freeculture.xml:6688
9320 "In 1790, Congress enacted the first copyright law. It created a federal "
9321 "copyright and secured that copyright for fourteen years. If the author was "
9322 "alive at the end of that fourteen years, then he could opt to renew the "
9323 "copyright for another fourteen years. If he did not renew the copyright, his "
9324 "work passed into the public domain."
9328 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9329 #: freeculture.xml:6703
9331 "Although 13,000 titles were published in the United States from 1790 to "
9332 "1799, only 556 copyright registrations were filed; John Tebbel, <citetitle>A "
9333 "History of Book Publishing in the United States</citetitle>, vol. 1, "
9334 "<citetitle>The Creation of an Industry, 1630–1865</citetitle> (New "
9335 "York: Bowker, 1972), 141. Of the 21,000 imprints recorded before 1790, only "
9336 "twelve were copyrighted under the 1790 act; William J. Maher, "
9337 "<citetitle>Copyright Term, Retrospective Extension and the Copyright Law of "
9338 "1790 in Historical Context</citetitle>, 7–10 (2002), available at "
9339 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #25</ulink>. Thus, the "
9340 "overwhelming majority of works fell immediately into the public domain. Even "
9341 "those works that were copyrighted fell into the public domain quickly, "
9342 "because the term of copyright was short. The initial term of copyright was "
9343 "fourteen years, with the option of renewal for an additional fourteen "
9344 "years. Copyright Act of May 31, 1790, §1, 1 stat. 124."
9347 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9348 #: freeculture.xml:6695
9350 "While there were many works created in the United States in the first ten "
9351 "years of the Republic, only 5 percent of the works were actually registered "
9352 "under the federal copyright regime. Of all the work created in the United "
9353 "States both before 1790 and from 1790 through 1800, 95 percent immediately "
9354 "passed into the public domain; the balance would pass into the pubic domain "
9355 "within twenty-eight years at most, and more likely within fourteen "
9356 "years.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
9360 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9361 #: freeculture.xml:6719
9363 "This system of renewal was a crucial part of the American system of "
9364 "copyright. It assured that the maximum terms of copyright would be granted "
9365 "only for works where they were wanted. After the initial term of fourteen "
9366 "years, if it wasn't worth it to an author to renew his copyright, then it "
9367 "wasn't worth it to society to insist on the copyright, either."
9371 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9372 #: freeculture.xml:6734
9374 "Few copyright holders ever chose to renew their copyrights. For instance, of "
9375 "the 25,006 copyrights registered in 1883, only 894 were renewed in 1910. For "
9376 "a year-by-year analysis of copyright renewal rates, see Barbara A. Ringer, "
9377 "<quote>Study No. 31: Renewal of Copyright,</quote> <citetitle>Studies on "
9378 "Copyright</citetitle>, vol. 1 (New York: Practicing Law Institute, 1963), "
9379 "618. For a more recent and comprehensive analysis, see William M. Landes and "
9380 "Richard A. Posner, <quote>Indefinitely Renewable Copyright,</quote> "
9381 "<citetitle>University of Chicago Law Review</citetitle> 70 (2003): 471, "
9382 "498–501, and accompanying figures."
9385 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9386 #: freeculture.xml:6728
9388 "Fourteen years may not seem long to us, but for the vast majority of "
9389 "copyright owners at that time, it was long enough: Only a small minority of "
9390 "them renewed their copyright after fourteen years; the balance allowed their "
9391 "work to pass into the public domain.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
9396 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9397 #: freeculture.xml:6751
9398 msgid "See Ringer, ch. 9, n. 2."
9401 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9402 #: freeculture.xml:6747
9404 "Even today, this structure would make sense. Most creative work has an "
9405 "actual commercial life of just a couple of years. Most books fall out of "
9406 "print after one year.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> When that "
9407 "happens, the used books are traded free of copyright regulation. Thus the "
9408 "books are no longer <emphasis>effectively</emphasis> controlled by "
9409 "copyright. The only practical commercial use of the books at that time is to "
9410 "sell the books as used books; that use—because it does not involve "
9411 "publication—is effectively free."
9414 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9415 #: freeculture.xml:6759
9417 "In the first hundred years of the Republic, the term of copyright was "
9418 "changed once. In 1831, the term was increased from a maximum of 28 years to "
9419 "a maximum of 42 by increasing the initial term of copyright from 14 years to "
9420 "28 years. In the next fifty years of the Republic, the term increased once "
9421 "again. In 1909, Congress extended the renewal term of 14 years to 28 years, "
9422 "setting a maximum term of 56 years."
9425 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9426 #: freeculture.xml:6767
9428 "Then, beginning in 1962, Congress started a practice that has defined "
9429 "copyright law since. Eleven times in the last forty years, Congress has "
9430 "extended the terms of existing copyrights; twice in those forty years, "
9431 "Congress extended the term of future copyrights. Initially, the extensions "
9432 "of existing copyrights were short, a mere one to two years. In 1976, "
9433 "Congress extended all existing copyrights by nineteen years. And in 1998, "
9434 "in the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Congress extended the term "
9435 "of existing and future copyrights by twenty years."
9439 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9440 #: freeculture.xml:6777
9442 "The effect of these extensions is simply to toll, or delay, the passing of "
9443 "works into the public domain. This latest extension means that the public "
9444 "domain will have been tolled for thirty-nine out of fifty-five years, or 70 "
9445 "percent of the time since 1962. Thus, in the twenty years after the Sonny "
9446 "Bono Act, while one million patents will pass into the public domain, zero "
9447 "copyrights will pass into the public domain by virtue of the expiration of a "
9451 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9452 #: freeculture.xml:6788
9454 "The effect of these extensions has been exacerbated by another, "
9455 "little-noticed change in the copyright law. Remember I said that the framers "
9456 "established a two-part copyright regime, requiring a copyright owner to "
9457 "renew his copyright after an initial term. The requirement of renewal meant "
9458 "that works that no longer needed copyright protection would pass more "
9459 "quickly into the public domain. The works remaining under protection would "
9460 "be those that had some continuing commercial value."
9463 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9464 #: freeculture.xml:6798
9466 "The United States abandoned this sensible system in 1976. For all works "
9467 "created after 1978, there was only one copyright term—the maximum "
9468 "term. For <quote>natural</quote> authors, that term was life plus fifty "
9469 "years. For corporations, the term was seventy-five years. Then, in 1992, "
9470 "Congress abandoned the renewal requirement for all works created before "
9471 "1978. All works still under copyright would be accorded the maximum term "
9472 "then available. After the Sonny Bono Act, that term was ninety-five years."
9475 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9476 #: freeculture.xml:6808
9478 "This change meant that American law no longer had an automatic way to assure "
9479 "that works that were no longer exploited passed into the public domain. And "
9480 "indeed, after these changes, it is unclear whether it is even possible to "
9481 "put works into the public domain. The public domain is orphaned by these "
9482 "changes in copyright law. Despite the requirement that terms be "
9483 "<quote>limited,</quote> we have no evidence that anything will limit them."
9487 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9488 #: freeculture.xml:6825
9490 "These statistics are understated. Between the years 1910 and 1962 (the first "
9491 "year the renewal term was extended), the average term was never more than "
9492 "thirty-two years, and averaged thirty years. See Landes and Posner, "
9493 "<quote>Indefinitely Renewable Copyright,</quote> loc. cit."
9496 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9497 #: freeculture.xml:6817
9499 "The effect of these changes on the average duration of copyright is "
9500 "dramatic. In 1973, more than 85 percent of copyright owners failed to renew "
9501 "their copyright. That meant that the average term of copyright in 1973 was "
9502 "just 32.2 years. Because of the elimination of the renewal requirement, the "
9503 "average term of copyright is now the maximum term. In thirty years, then, "
9504 "the average term has tripled, from 32.2 years to 95 years.<placeholder "
9505 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
9508 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
9509 #: freeculture.xml:6834
9513 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9514 #: freeculture.xml:6836
9516 "The <quote>scope</quote> of a copyright is the range of rights granted by "
9517 "the law. The scope of American copyright has changed dramatically. Those "
9518 "changes are not necessarily bad. But we should understand the extent of the "
9519 "changes if we're to keep this debate in context."
9522 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9523 #: freeculture.xml:6842
9525 "In 1790, that scope was very narrow. Copyright covered only <quote>maps, "
9526 "charts, and books.</quote> That means it didn't cover, for example, music or "
9527 "architecture. More significantly, the right granted by a copyright gave the "
9528 "author the exclusive right to <quote>publish</quote> copyrighted works. That "
9529 "means someone else violated the copyright only if he republished the work "
9530 "without the copyright owner's permission. Finally, the right granted by a "
9531 "copyright was an exclusive right to that particular book. The right did not "
9532 "extend to what lawyers call <quote>derivative works.</quote> It would not, "
9533 "therefore, interfere with the right of someone other than the author to "
9534 "translate a copyrighted book, or to adapt the story to a different form "
9535 "(such as a drama based on a published book)."
9538 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9539 #: freeculture.xml:6855
9541 "This, too, has changed dramatically. While the contours of copyright today "
9542 "are extremely hard to describe simply, in general terms, the right covers "
9543 "practically any creative work that is reduced to a tangible form. It covers "
9544 "music as well as architecture, drama as well as computer programs. It gives "
9545 "the copyright owner of that creative work not only the exclusive right to "
9546 "<quote>publish</quote> the work, but also the exclusive right of control "
9547 "over any <quote>copies</quote> of that work. And most significant for our "
9548 "purposes here, the right gives the copyright owner control over not only his "
9549 "or her particular work, but also any <quote>derivative work</quote> that "
9550 "might grow out of the original work. In this way, the right covers more "
9551 "creative work, protects the creative work more broadly, and protects works "
9552 "that are based in a significant way on the initial creative work."
9556 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9557 #: freeculture.xml:6870
9559 "At the same time that the scope of copyright has expanded, procedural "
9560 "limitations on the right have been relaxed. I've already described the "
9561 "complete removal of the renewal requirement in 1992. In addition to the "
9562 "renewal requirement, for most of the history of American copyright law, "
9563 "there was a requirement that a work be registered before it could receive "
9564 "the protection of a copyright. There was also a requirement that any "
9565 "copyrighted work be marked either with that famous © or the word "
9566 "<emphasis>copyright</emphasis>. And for most of the history of American "
9567 "copyright law, there was a requirement that works be deposited with the "
9568 "government before a copyright could be secured."
9571 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9572 #: freeculture.xml:6884
9574 "The reason for the registration requirement was the sensible understanding "
9575 "that for most works, no copyright was required. Again, in the first ten "
9576 "years of the Republic, 95 percent of works eligible for copyright were never "
9577 "copyrighted. Thus, the rule reflected the norm: Most works apparently didn't "
9578 "need copyright, so registration narrowed the regulation of the law to the "
9579 "few that did. The same reasoning justified the requirement that a work be "
9580 "marked as copyrighted—that way it was easy to know whether a copyright "
9581 "was being claimed. The requirement that works be deposited was to assure "
9582 "that after the copyright expired, there would be a copy of the work "
9583 "somewhere so that it could be copied by others without locating the original "
9587 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9588 #: freeculture.xml:6898
9590 "All of these <quote>formalities</quote> were abolished in the American "
9591 "system when we decided to follow European copyright law. There is no "
9592 "requirement that you register a work to get a copyright; the copyright now "
9593 "is automatic; the copyright exists whether or not you mark your work with a "
9594 "©; and the copyright exists whether or not you actually make a copy "
9595 "available for others to copy."
9598 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9599 #: freeculture.xml:6906
9600 msgid "Consider a practical example to understand the scope of these differences."
9604 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9605 #: freeculture.xml:6917
9607 "See Thomas Bender and David Sampliner, <quote>Poets, Pirates, and the "
9608 "Creation of American Literature,</quote> 29 <citetitle>New York University "
9609 "Journal of International Law and Politics</citetitle> 255 (1997), and James "
9610 "Gilraeth, ed., Federal Copyright Records, 1790–1800 (U.S. G.P.O., "
9614 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9615 #: freeculture.xml:6910
9617 "If, in 1790, you wrote a book and you were one of the 5 percent who actually "
9618 "copyrighted that book, then the copyright law protected you against another "
9619 "publisher's taking your book and republishing it without your "
9620 "permission. The aim of the act was to regulate publishers so as to prevent "
9621 "that kind of unfair competition. In 1790, there were 174 publishers in the "
9622 "United States.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The Copyright Act "
9623 "was thus a tiny regulation of a tiny proportion of a tiny part of the "
9624 "creative market in the United States—publishers."
9628 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9629 #: freeculture.xml:6929
9631 "The act left other creators totally unregulated. If I copied your poem by "
9632 "hand, over and over again, as a way to learn it by heart, my act was totally "
9633 "unregulated by the 1790 act. If I took your novel and made a play based upon "
9634 "it, or if I translated it or abridged it, none of those activities were "
9635 "regulated by the original copyright act. These creative activities remained "
9636 "free, while the activities of publishers were restrained."
9639 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9640 #: freeculture.xml:6938
9642 "Today the story is very different: If you write a book, your book is "
9643 "automatically protected. Indeed, not just your book. Every e-mail, every "
9644 "note to your spouse, every doodle, <emphasis>every</emphasis> creative act "
9645 "that's reduced to a tangible form—all of this is automatically "
9646 "copyrighted. There is no need to register or mark your work. The protection "
9647 "follows the creation, not the steps you take to protect it."
9650 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9651 #: freeculture.xml:6947
9653 "That protection gives you the right (subject to a narrow range of fair use "
9654 "exceptions) to control how others copy the work, whether they copy it to "
9655 "republish it or to share an excerpt."
9658 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9659 #: freeculture.xml:6952
9661 "That much is the obvious part. Any system of copyright would control "
9662 "competing publishing. But there's a second part to the copyright of today "
9663 "that is not at all obvious. This is the protection of <quote>derivative "
9664 "rights.</quote> If you write a book, no one can make a movie out of your "
9665 "book without permission. No one can translate it without permission. "
9666 "CliffsNotes can't make an abridgment unless permission is granted. All of "
9667 "these derivative uses of your original work are controlled by the copyright "
9668 "holder. The copyright, in other words, is now not just an exclusive right to "
9669 "your writings, but an exclusive right to your writings and a large "
9670 "proportion of the writings inspired by them."
9673 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9674 #: freeculture.xml:6966
9676 "It is this derivative right that would seem most bizarre to our framers, "
9677 "though it has become second nature to us. Initially, this expansion was "
9678 "created to deal with obvious evasions of a narrower copyright. If I write a "
9679 "book, can you change one word and then claim a copyright in a new and "
9680 "different book? Obviously that would make a joke of the copyright, so the "
9681 "law was properly expanded to include those slight modifications as well as "
9682 "the verbatim original work."
9685 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9686 #: freeculture.xml:6988
9688 "Jonathan Zittrain, <quote>The Copyright Cage,</quote> <citetitle>Legal "
9689 "Affairs</citetitle>, July/August 2003, available at <ulink "
9690 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #26</ulink>. <placeholder "
9691 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
9694 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9695 #: freeculture.xml:6978
9697 "In preventing that joke, the law created an astonishing power within a free "
9698 "culture—at least, it's astonishing when you understand that the law "
9699 "applies not just to the commercial publisher but to anyone with a "
9700 "computer. I understand the wrong in duplicating and selling someone else's "
9701 "work. But whatever <emphasis>that</emphasis> wrong is, transforming someone "
9702 "else's work is a different wrong. Some view transformation as no wrong at "
9703 "all—they believe that our law, as the framers penned it, should not "
9704 "protect derivative rights at all.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
9705 "Whether or not you go that far, it seems plain that whatever wrong is "
9706 "involved is fundamentally different from the wrong of direct piracy."
9709 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
9710 #: freeculture.xml:7010
9711 msgid "Rubenfeld, Jeb"
9714 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9715 #: freeculture.xml:7003
9717 "Professor Rubenfeld has presented a powerful constitutional argument about "
9718 "the difference that copyright law should draw (from the perspective of the "
9719 "First Amendment) between mere <quote>copies</quote> and derivative "
9720 "works. See Jed Rubenfeld, <quote>The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright's "
9721 "Constitutionality,</quote> <citetitle>Yale Law Journal</citetitle> 112 "
9722 "(2002): 1–60 (see especially pp. 53–59). <placeholder "
9723 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
9726 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9727 #: freeculture.xml:6998
9729 "Yet copyright law treats these two different wrongs in the same way. I can "
9730 "go to court and get an injunction against your pirating my book. I can go to "
9731 "court and get an injunction against your transformative use of my "
9732 "book.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> These two different uses of "
9733 "my creative work are treated the same."
9736 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9737 #: freeculture.xml:7015
9739 "This again may seem right to you. If I wrote a book, then why should you be "
9740 "able to write a movie that takes my story and makes money from it without "
9741 "paying me or crediting me? Or if Disney creates a creature called "
9742 "<quote>Mickey Mouse,</quote> why should you be able to make Mickey Mouse "
9743 "toys and be the one to trade on the value that Disney originally created?"
9746 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9747 #: freeculture.xml:7023
9749 "These are good arguments, and, in general, my point is not that the "
9750 "derivative right is unjustified. My aim just now is much narrower: simply to "
9751 "make clear that this expansion is a significant change from the rights "
9752 "originally granted."
9755 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
9756 #: freeculture.xml:7030
9757 msgid "Law and Architecture: Reach"
9761 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9762 #: freeculture.xml:7037
9764 "This is a simplification of the law, but not much of one. The law certainly "
9765 "regulates more than <quote>copies</quote>—a public performance of a "
9766 "copyrighted song, for example, is regulated even though performance per se "
9767 "doesn't make a copy; 17 <citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>, section "
9768 "106(4). And it certainly sometimes doesn't regulate a <quote>copy</quote>; "
9769 "17 <citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>, section 112(a). But the "
9770 "presumption under the existing law (which regulates <quote>copies;</quote> "
9771 "17 <citetitle>United States Code</citetitle>, section 102) is that if there "
9772 "is a copy, there is a right."
9775 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9776 #: freeculture.xml:7032
9778 "Whereas originally the law regulated only publishers, the change in "
9779 "copyright's scope means that the law today regulates publishers, users, and "
9780 "authors. It regulates them because all three are capable of making copies, "
9781 "and the core of the regulation of copyright law is copies.<placeholder "
9782 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
9786 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9787 #: freeculture.xml:7049
9789 "<quote>Copies.</quote> That certainly sounds like the obvious thing for "
9790 "<emphasis>copy</emphasis>right law to regulate. But as with Jack Valenti's "
9791 "argument at the start of this chapter, that <quote>creative property</quote> "
9792 "deserves the <quote>same rights</quote> as all other property, it is the "
9793 "<emphasis>obvious</emphasis> that we need to be most careful about. For "
9794 "while it may be obvious that in the world before the Internet, copies were "
9795 "the obvious trigger for copyright law, upon reflection, it should be obvious "
9796 "that in the world with the Internet, copies should <emphasis>not</emphasis> "
9797 "be the trigger for copyright law. More precisely, they should not "
9798 "<emphasis>always</emphasis> be the trigger for copyright law."
9802 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9803 #: freeculture.xml:7067
9805 "Thus, my argument is not that in each place that copyright law extends, we "
9806 "should repeal it. It is instead that we should have a good argument for its "
9807 "extending where it does, and should not determine its reach on the basis of "
9808 "arbitrary and automatic changes caused by technology."
9811 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9812 #: freeculture.xml:7062
9814 "This is perhaps the central claim of this book, so let me take this very "
9815 "slowly so that the point is not easily missed. My claim is that the Internet "
9816 "should at least force us to rethink the conditions under which the law of "
9817 "copyright automatically applies,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
9818 "because it is clear that the current reach of copyright was never "
9819 "contemplated, much less chosen, by the legislators who enacted copyright "
9823 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9824 #: freeculture.xml:7078
9826 "We can see this point abstractly by beginning with this largely empty "
9830 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9831 #: freeculture.xml:7082
9832 msgid "All potential uses of a book."
9835 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9836 #: freeculture.xml:7083
9837 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1521.png\"></graphic>"
9840 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
9841 #: freeculture.xml:7085
9842 msgid "three types of uses of"
9846 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9847 #: freeculture.xml:7088
9849 "Think about a book in real space, and imagine this circle to represent all "
9850 "its potential <emphasis>uses</emphasis>. Most of these uses are unregulated "
9851 "by copyright law, because the uses don't create a copy. If you read a book, "
9852 "that act is not regulated by copyright law. If you give someone the book, "
9853 "that act is not regulated by copyright law. If you resell a book, that act "
9854 "is not regulated (copyright law expressly states that after the first sale "
9855 "of a book, the copyright owner can impose no further conditions on the "
9856 "disposition of the book). If you sleep on the book or use it to hold up a "
9857 "lamp or let your puppy chew it up, those acts are not regulated by copyright "
9858 "law, because those acts do not make a copy."
9861 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9862 #: freeculture.xml:7101
9863 msgid "Examples of unregulated uses of a book."
9866 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9867 #: freeculture.xml:7102
9868 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1531.png\"></graphic>"
9871 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9872 #: freeculture.xml:7105
9874 "Obviously, however, some uses of a copyrighted book are regulated by "
9875 "copyright law. Republishing the book, for example, makes a copy. It is "
9876 "therefore regulated by copyright law. Indeed, this particular use stands at "
9877 "the core of this circle of possible uses of a copyrighted work. It is the "
9878 "paradigmatic use properly regulated by copyright regulation (see first "
9879 "diagram on next page)."
9882 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9883 #: freeculture.xml:7113
9885 "Finally, there is a tiny sliver of otherwise regulated copying uses that "
9886 "remain unregulated because the law considers these <quote>fair uses.</quote>"
9889 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9890 #: freeculture.xml:7118
9892 "Republishing stands at the core of this circle of possible uses of a "
9896 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9897 #: freeculture.xml:7119
9898 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1541.png\"></graphic>"
9901 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9902 #: freeculture.xml:7122
9904 "These are uses that themselves involve copying, but which the law treats as "
9905 "unregulated because public policy demands that they remain unregulated. You "
9906 "are free to quote from this book, even in a review that is quite negative, "
9907 "without my permission, even though that quoting makes a copy. That copy "
9908 "would ordinarily give the copyright owner the exclusive right to say whether "
9909 "the copy is allowed or not, but the law denies the owner any exclusive right "
9910 "over such <quote>fair uses</quote> for public policy (and possibly First "
9911 "Amendment) reasons."
9914 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9915 #: freeculture.xml:7132
9916 msgid "Unregulated copying considered <quote>fair uses.</quote>"
9919 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9920 #: freeculture.xml:7133
9921 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1542.png\"></graphic>"
9924 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
9925 #: freeculture.xml:7137
9927 "Uses that before were presumptively unregulated are now presumptively "
9931 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
9932 #: freeculture.xml:7138
9933 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1551.png\"></graphic>"
9937 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9938 #: freeculture.xml:7142
9940 "In real space, then, the possible uses of a book are divided into three "
9941 "sorts: (1) unregulated uses, (2) regulated uses, and (3) regulated uses that "
9942 "are nonetheless deemed <quote>fair</quote> regardless of the copyright "
9946 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
9947 #: freeculture.xml:7147 freeculture.xml:7181 freeculture.xml:7390
9952 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
9953 #: freeculture.xml:7152
9955 "I don't mean <quote>nature</quote> in the sense that it couldn't be "
9956 "different, but rather that its present instantiation entails a copy. Optical "
9957 "networks need not make copies of content they transmit, and a digital "
9958 "network could be designed to delete anything it copies so that the same "
9959 "number of copies remain."
9962 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9963 #: freeculture.xml:7149
9965 "Enter the Internet—a distributed, digital network where every use of a "
9966 "copyrighted work produces a copy.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
9967 "And because of this single, arbitrary feature of the design of a digital "
9968 "network, the scope of category 1 changes dramatically. Uses that before were "
9969 "presumptively unregulated are now presumptively regulated. No longer is "
9970 "there a set of presumptively unregulated uses that define a freedom "
9971 "associated with a copyrighted work. Instead, each use is now subject to the "
9972 "copyright, because each use also makes a copy—category 1 gets sucked "
9973 "into category 2. And those who would defend the unregulated uses of "
9974 "copyrighted work must look exclusively to category 3, fair uses, to bear the "
9975 "burden of this shift."
9979 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9980 #: freeculture.xml:7170
9982 "So let's be very specific to make this general point clear. Before the "
9983 "Internet, if you purchased a book and read it ten times, there would be no "
9984 "plausible <emphasis>copyright</emphasis>-related argument that the copyright "
9985 "owner could make to control that use of her book. Copyright law would have "
9986 "nothing to say about whether you read the book once, ten times, or every "
9987 "night before you went to bed. None of those instances of "
9988 "use—reading— could be regulated by copyright law because none of "
9989 "those uses produced a copy."
9992 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
9993 #: freeculture.xml:7183
9995 "But the same book as an e-book is effectively governed by a different set of "
9996 "rules. Now if the copyright owner says you may read the book only once or "
9997 "only once a month, then <emphasis>copyright law</emphasis> would aid the "
9998 "copyright owner in exercising this degree of control, because of the "
9999 "accidental feature of copyright law that triggers its application upon there "
10000 "being a copy. Now if you read the book ten times and the license says you "
10001 "may read it only five times, then whenever you read the book (or any portion "
10002 "of it) beyond the fifth time, you are making a copy of the book contrary to "
10003 "the copyright owner's wish."
10006 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10007 #: freeculture.xml:7195
10009 "There are some people who think this makes perfect sense. My aim just now is "
10010 "not to argue about whether it makes sense or not. My aim is only to make "
10011 "clear the change. Once you see this point, a few other points also become "
10015 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10016 #: freeculture.xml:7201
10018 "First, making category 1 disappear is not anything any policy maker ever "
10019 "intended. Congress did not think through the collapse of the presumptively "
10020 "unregulated uses of copyrighted works. There is no evidence at all that "
10021 "policy makers had this idea in mind when they allowed our policy here to "
10022 "shift. Unregulated uses were an important part of free culture before the "
10026 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10027 #: freeculture.xml:7209
10029 "Second, this shift is especially troubling in the context of transformative "
10030 "uses of creative content. Again, we can all understand the wrong in "
10031 "commercial piracy. But the law now purports to regulate "
10032 "<emphasis>any</emphasis> transformation you make of creative work using a "
10033 "machine. <quote>Copy and paste</quote> and <quote>cut and paste</quote> "
10034 "become crimes. Tinkering with a story and releasing it to others exposes the "
10035 "tinkerer to at least a requirement of justification. However troubling the "
10036 "expansion with respect to copying a particular work, it is extraordinarily "
10037 "troubling with respect to transformative uses of creative work."
10041 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10042 #: freeculture.xml:7221
10044 "Third, this shift from category 1 to category 2 puts an extraordinary burden "
10045 "on category 3 (<quote>fair use</quote>) that fair use never before had to "
10046 "bear. If a copyright owner now tried to control how many times I could read "
10047 "a book on-line, the natural response would be to argue that this is a "
10048 "violation of my fair use rights. But there has never been any litigation "
10049 "about whether I have a fair use right to read, because before the Internet, "
10050 "reading did not trigger the application of copyright law and hence the need "
10051 "for a fair use defense. The right to read was effectively protected before "
10052 "because reading was not regulated."
10055 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10056 #: freeculture.xml:7235
10058 "This point about fair use is totally ignored, even by advocates for free "
10059 "culture. We have been cornered into arguing that our rights depend upon fair "
10060 "use—never even addressing the earlier question about the expansion in "
10061 "effective regulation. A thin protection grounded in fair use makes sense "
10062 "when the vast majority of uses are <emphasis>unregulated</emphasis>. But "
10063 "when everything becomes presumptively regulated, then the protections of "
10064 "fair use are not enough."
10067 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10068 #: freeculture.xml:7246
10070 "The case of Video Pipeline is a good example. Video Pipeline was in the "
10071 "business of making <quote>trailer</quote> advertisements for movies "
10072 "available to video stores. The video stores displayed the trailers as a way "
10073 "to sell videos. Video Pipeline got the trailers from the film distributors, "
10074 "put the trailers on tape, and sold the tapes to the retail stores."
10077 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
10078 #: freeculture.xml:7252 freeculture.xml:7312 freeculture.xml:13341
10082 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10083 #: freeculture.xml:7254
10085 "The company did this for about fifteen years. Then, in 1997, it began to "
10086 "think about the Internet as another way to distribute these previews. The "
10087 "idea was to expand their <quote>selling by sampling</quote> technique by "
10088 "giving on-line stores the same ability to enable <quote>browsing.</quote> "
10089 "Just as in a bookstore you can read a few pages of a book before you buy the "
10090 "book, so, too, you would be able to sample a bit from the movie on-line "
10091 "before you bought it."
10095 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10096 #: freeculture.xml:7263
10098 "In 1998, Video Pipeline informed Disney and other film distributors that it "
10099 "intended to distribute the trailers through the Internet (rather than "
10100 "sending the tapes) to distributors of their videos. Two years later, Disney "
10101 "told Video Pipeline to stop. The owner of Video Pipeline asked Disney to "
10102 "talk about the matter—he had built a business on distributing this "
10103 "content as a way to help sell Disney films; he had customers who depended "
10104 "upon his delivering this content. Disney would agree to talk only if Video "
10105 "Pipeline stopped the distribution immediately. Video Pipeline thought it "
10106 "was within their <quote>fair use</quote> rights to distribute the clips as "
10107 "they had. So they filed a lawsuit to ask the court to declare that these "
10108 "rights were in fact their rights."
10111 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10112 #: freeculture.xml:7278
10114 "Disney countersued—for $100 million in damages. Those damages were "
10115 "predicated upon a claim that Video Pipeline had <quote>willfully "
10116 "infringed</quote> on Disney's copyright. When a court makes a finding of "
10117 "willful infringement, it can award damages not on the basis of the actual "
10118 "harm to the copyright owner, but on the basis of an amount set in the "
10119 "statute. Because Video Pipeline had distributed seven hundred clips of "
10120 "Disney movies to enable video stores to sell copies of those movies, Disney "
10121 "was now suing Video Pipeline for $100 million."
10124 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10125 #: freeculture.xml:7288
10127 "Disney has the right to control its property, of course. But the video "
10128 "stores that were selling Disney's films also had some sort of right to be "
10129 "able to sell the films that they had bought from Disney. Disney's claim in "
10130 "court was that the stores were allowed to sell the films and they were "
10131 "permitted to list the titles of the films they were selling, but they were "
10132 "not allowed to show clips of the films as a way of selling them without "
10133 "Disney's permission."
10136 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10137 #: freeculture.xml:7298
10139 "Now, you might think this is a close case, and I think the courts would "
10140 "consider it a close case. My point here is to map the change that gives "
10141 "Disney this power. Before the Internet, Disney couldn't really control how "
10142 "people got access to their content. Once a video was in the marketplace, the "
10143 "<quote>first-sale doctrine</quote> would free the seller to use the video as "
10144 "he wished, including showing portions of it in order to engender sales of "
10145 "the entire movie video. But with the Internet, it becomes possible for "
10146 "Disney to centralize control over access to this content. Because each use "
10147 "of the Internet produces a copy, use on the Internet becomes subject to the "
10148 "copyright owner's control. The technology expands the scope of effective "
10149 "control, because the technology builds a copy into every transaction."
10152 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10153 #: freeculture.xml:7311
10154 msgid "Barnes & Noble"
10158 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10159 #: freeculture.xml:7315
10161 "No doubt, a potential is not yet an abuse, and so the potential for control "
10162 "is not yet the abuse of control. Barnes & Noble has the right to say you "
10163 "can't touch a book in their store; property law gives them that right. But "
10164 "the market effectively protects against that abuse. If Barnes & Noble "
10165 "banned browsing, then consumers would choose other bookstores. Competition "
10166 "protects against the extremes. And it may well be (my argument so far does "
10167 "not even question this) that competition would prevent any similar danger "
10168 "when it comes to copyright. Sure, publishers exercising the rights that "
10169 "authors have assigned to them might try to regulate how many times you read "
10170 "a book, or try to stop you from sharing the book with anyone. But in a "
10171 "competitive market such as the book market, the dangers of this happening "
10172 "are quite slight."
10175 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10176 #: freeculture.xml:7330
10178 "Again, my aim so far is simply to map the changes that this changed "
10179 "architecture enables. Enabling technology to enforce the control of "
10180 "copyright means that the control of copyright is no longer defined by "
10181 "balanced policy. The control of copyright is simply what private owners "
10182 "choose. In some contexts, at least, that fact is harmless. But in some "
10183 "contexts it is a recipe for disaster."
10186 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
10187 #: freeculture.xml:7339
10188 msgid "Architecture and Law: Force"
10191 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10192 #: freeculture.xml:7341
10194 "The disappearance of unregulated uses would be change enough, but a second "
10195 "important change brought about by the Internet magnifies its "
10196 "significance. This second change does not affect the reach of copyright "
10197 "regulation; it affects how such regulation is enforced."
10200 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10201 #: freeculture.xml:7347
10203 "In the world before digital technology, it was generally the law that "
10204 "controlled whether and how someone was regulated by copyright law. The law, "
10205 "meaning a court, meaning a judge: In the end, it was a human, trained in the "
10206 "tradition of the law and cognizant of the balances that tradition embraced, "
10207 "who said whether and how the law would restrict your freedom."
10210 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10211 #: freeculture.xml:7354
10215 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10216 #: freeculture.xml:7355 freeculture.xml:7524
10217 msgid "Marx Brothers"
10221 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
10222 #: freeculture.xml:7366
10224 "See David Lange, <quote>Recognizing the Public Domain,</quote> "
10225 "<citetitle>Law and Contemporary Problems</citetitle> 44 (1981): "
10229 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10230 #: freeculture.xml:7358
10232 "There's a famous story about a battle between the Marx Brothers and Warner "
10233 "Brothers. The Marxes intended to make a parody of "
10234 "<citetitle>Casablanca</citetitle>. Warner Brothers objected. They wrote a "
10235 "nasty letter to the Marxes, warning them that there would be serious legal "
10236 "consequences if they went forward with their plan.<placeholder "
10237 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
10240 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
10241 #: freeculture.xml:7375
10243 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Ibid. See also Vaidhyanathan, "
10244 "<citetitle>Copyrights and Copywrongs</citetitle>, 1–3."
10247 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10248 #: freeculture.xml:7371
10250 "This led the Marx Brothers to respond in kind. They warned Warner Brothers "
10251 "that the Marx Brothers <quote>were brothers long before you "
10252 "were.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The Marx Brothers "
10253 "therefore owned the word <citetitle>brothers</citetitle>, and if Warner "
10254 "Brothers insisted on trying to control <citetitle>Casablanca</citetitle>, "
10255 "then the Marx Brothers would insist on control over "
10256 "<citetitle>brothers</citetitle>."
10259 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10260 #: freeculture.xml:7385
10262 "An absurd and hollow threat, of course, because Warner Brothers, like the "
10263 "Marx Brothers, knew that no court would ever enforce such a silly "
10264 "claim. This extremism was irrelevant to the real freedoms anyone (including "
10265 "Warner Brothers) enjoyed."
10268 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10269 #: freeculture.xml:7392
10271 "On the Internet, however, there is no check on silly rules, because on the "
10272 "Internet, increasingly, rules are enforced not by a human but by a machine: "
10273 "Increasingly, the rules of copyright law, as interpreted by the copyright "
10274 "owner, get built into the technology that delivers copyrighted content. It "
10275 "is code, rather than law, that rules. And the problem with code regulations "
10276 "is that, unlike law, code has no shame. Code would not get the humor of the "
10277 "Marx Brothers. The consequence of that is not at all funny."
10280 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10281 #: freeculture.xml:7404
10282 msgid "Adobe eBook Reader"
10285 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10286 #: freeculture.xml:7406
10287 msgid "Consider the life of my Adobe eBook Reader."
10290 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10291 #: freeculture.xml:7409
10293 "An e-book is a book delivered in electronic form. An Adobe eBook is not a "
10294 "book that Adobe has published; Adobe simply produces the software that "
10295 "publishers use to deliver e-books. It provides the technology, and the "
10296 "publisher delivers the content by using the technology."
10299 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10300 #: freeculture.xml:7416
10301 msgid "On the next page is a picture of an old version of my Adobe eBook Reader."
10305 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10306 #: freeculture.xml:7420
10308 "As you can see, I have a small collection of e-books within this e-book "
10309 "library. Some of these books reproduce content that is in the public domain: "
10310 "<citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle>, for example, is in the public domain. "
10311 "Some of them reproduce content that is not in the public domain: My own book "
10312 "<citetitle>The Future of Ideas</citetitle> is not yet within the public "
10313 "domain. Consider <citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle> first. If you click on "
10314 "my e-book copy of <citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle>, you'll see a fancy "
10315 "cover, and then a button at the bottom called Permissions."
10318 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10319 #: freeculture.xml:7433
10320 msgid "Picture of an old version of Adobe eBook Reader"
10323 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10324 #: freeculture.xml:7434
10325 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1611.png\"></graphic>"
10328 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10329 #: freeculture.xml:7437
10331 "If you click on the Permissions button, you'll see a list of the permissions "
10332 "that the publisher purports to grant with this book."
10335 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10336 #: freeculture.xml:7441
10337 msgid "List of the permissions that the publisher purports to grant."
10340 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10341 #: freeculture.xml:7442
10342 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1612.png\"></graphic>"
10346 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10347 #: freeculture.xml:7446
10349 "According to my eBook Reader, I have the permission to copy to the clipboard "
10350 "of the computer ten text selections every ten days. (So far, I've copied no "
10351 "text to the clipboard.) I also have the permission to print ten pages from "
10352 "the book every ten days. Lastly, I have the permission to use the Read Aloud "
10353 "button to hear <citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle> read aloud through the "
10357 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10358 #: freeculture.xml:7453
10362 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10363 #: freeculture.xml:7454
10364 msgid "<citetitle>Politics</citetitle>, (Aristotle)"
10367 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10368 #: freeculture.xml:7456
10370 "Here's the e-book for another work in the public domain (including the "
10371 "translation): Aristotle's <citetitle>Politics</citetitle>."
10374 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10375 #: freeculture.xml:7460
10376 msgid "E-book of Aristotle;s <quote>Politics</quote>"
10379 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10380 #: freeculture.xml:7461
10381 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1621.png\"></graphic>"
10384 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10385 #: freeculture.xml:7464
10387 "According to its permissions, no printing or copying is permitted at "
10388 "all. But fortunately, you can use the Read Aloud button to hear the book."
10391 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10392 #: freeculture.xml:7469
10393 msgid "List of the permissions for Aristotle;s <quote>Politics</quote>."
10396 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10397 #: freeculture.xml:7470
10398 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1622.png\"></graphic>"
10401 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10402 #: freeculture.xml:7473
10404 "Finally (and most embarrassingly), here are the permissions for the original "
10405 "e-book version of my last book, <citetitle>The Future of Ideas</citetitle>:"
10408 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10409 #: freeculture.xml:7479
10410 msgid "List of the permissions for <quote>The Future of Ideas</quote>."
10413 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10414 #: freeculture.xml:7480
10415 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1631.png\"></graphic>"
10418 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10419 #: freeculture.xml:7483
10420 msgid "No copying, no printing, and don't you dare try to listen to this book!"
10424 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
10425 #: freeculture.xml:7493
10427 "In principle, a contract might impose a requirement on me. I might, for "
10428 "example, buy a book from you that includes a contract that says I will read "
10429 "it only three times, or that I promise to read it three times. But that "
10430 "obligation (and the limits for creating that obligation) would come from the "
10431 "contract, not from copyright law, and the obligations of contract would not "
10432 "necessarily pass to anyone who subsequently acquired the book."
10435 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10436 #: freeculture.xml:7486
10438 "Now, the Adobe eBook Reader calls these controls "
10439 "<quote>permissions</quote>— as if the publisher has the power to "
10440 "control how you use these works. For works under copyright, the copyright "
10441 "owner certainly does have the power—up to the limits of the copyright "
10442 "law. But for work not under copyright, there is no such copyright "
10443 "power.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> When my e-book of "
10444 "<citetitle>Middlemarch</citetitle> says I have the permission to copy only "
10445 "ten text selections into the memory every ten days, what that really means "
10446 "is that the eBook Reader has enabled the publisher to control how I use the "
10447 "book on my computer, far beyond the control that the law would enable."
10450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10451 #: freeculture.xml:7508
10453 "The control comes instead from the code—from the technology within "
10454 "which the e-book <quote>lives.</quote> Though the e-book says that these are "
10455 "permissions, they are not the sort of <quote>permissions</quote> that most "
10456 "of us deal with. When a teenager gets <quote>permission</quote> to stay out "
10457 "till midnight, she knows (unless she's Cinderella) that she can stay out "
10458 "till 2 A.M., but will suffer a punishment if she's caught. But when the "
10459 "Adobe eBook Reader says I have the permission to make ten copies of the text "
10460 "into the computer's memory, that means that after I've made ten copies, the "
10461 "computer will not make any more. The same with the printing restrictions: "
10462 "After ten pages, the eBook Reader will not print any more pages. It's the "
10463 "same with the silly restriction that says that you can't use the Read Aloud "
10464 "button to read my book aloud—it's not that the company will sue you if "
10465 "you do; instead, if you push the Read Aloud button with my book, the machine "
10466 "simply won't read aloud."
10470 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10471 #: freeculture.xml:7527
10473 "These are <emphasis>controls</emphasis>, not permissions. Imagine a world "
10474 "where the Marx Brothers sold word processing software that, when you tried "
10475 "to type <quote>Warner Brothers,</quote> erased <quote>Brothers</quote> from "
10479 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10480 #: freeculture.xml:7533
10482 "This is the future of copyright law: not so much copyright "
10483 "<emphasis>law</emphasis> as copyright <emphasis>code</emphasis>. The "
10484 "controls over access to content will not be controls that are ratified by "
10485 "courts; the controls over access to content will be controls that are coded "
10486 "by programmers. And whereas the controls that are built into the law are "
10487 "always to be checked by a judge, the controls that are built into the "
10488 "technology have no similar built-in check."
10491 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10492 #: freeculture.xml:7542
10494 "How significant is this? Isn't it always possible to get around the controls "
10495 "built into the technology? Software used to be sold with technologies that "
10496 "limited the ability of users to copy the software, but those were trivial "
10497 "protections to defeat. Why won't it be trivial to defeat these protections "
10501 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10502 #: freeculture.xml:7549
10504 "We've only scratched the surface of this story. Return to the Adobe eBook "
10508 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10509 #: freeculture.xml:7552
10510 msgid "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Carroll)"
10513 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10514 #: freeculture.xml:7554
10516 "Early in the life of the Adobe eBook Reader, Adobe suffered a public "
10517 "relations nightmare. Among the books that you could download for free on the "
10518 "Adobe site was a copy of <citetitle>Alice's Adventures in "
10519 "Wonderland</citetitle>. This wonderful book is in the public domain. Yet "
10520 "when you clicked on Permissions for that book, you got the following report:"
10523 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
10524 #: freeculture.xml:7562
10525 msgid "List of the permissions for <quote>Alice's Adventures in Wonderland</quote>."
10528 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
10529 #: freeculture.xml:7564
10530 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1641.png\"></graphic>"
10533 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10534 #: freeculture.xml:7568
10536 "Here was a public domain children's book that you were not allowed to copy, "
10537 "not allowed to lend, not allowed to give, and, as the "
10538 "<quote>permissions</quote> indicated, not allowed to <quote>read "
10542 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10543 #: freeculture.xml:7573
10545 "The public relations nightmare attached to that final permission. For the "
10546 "text did not say that you were not permitted to use the Read Aloud button; "
10547 "it said you did not have the permission to read the book aloud. That led "
10548 "some people to think that Adobe was restricting the right of parents, for "
10549 "example, to read the book to their children, which seemed, to say the least, "
10553 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10554 #: freeculture.xml:7581
10556 "Adobe responded quickly that it was absurd to think that it was trying to "
10557 "restrict the right to read a book aloud. Obviously it was only restricting "
10558 "the ability to use the Read Aloud button to have the book read aloud. But "
10559 "the question Adobe never did answer is this: Would Adobe thus agree that a "
10560 "consumer was free to use software to hack around the restrictions built into "
10561 "the eBook Reader? If some company (call it Elcomsoft) developed a program to "
10562 "disable the technological protection built into an Adobe eBook so that a "
10563 "blind person, say, could use a computer to read the book aloud, would Adobe "
10564 "agree that such a use of an eBook Reader was fair? Adobe didn't answer "
10565 "because the answer, however absurd it might seem, is no."
10568 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10569 #: freeculture.xml:7594
10571 "The point is not to blame Adobe. Indeed, Adobe is among the most innovative "
10572 "companies developing strategies to balance open access to content with "
10573 "incentives for companies to innovate. But Adobe's technology enables "
10574 "control, and Adobe has an incentive to defend this control. That incentive "
10575 "is understandable, yet what it creates is often crazy."
10578 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10579 #: freeculture.xml:7604
10581 "To see the point in a particularly absurd context, consider a favorite story "
10582 "of mine that makes the same point."
10585 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10586 #: freeculture.xml:7607 freeculture.xml:7751 freeculture.xml:7816 freeculture.xml:7924
10587 msgid "Aibo robotic dog"
10590 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10591 #: freeculture.xml:7608 freeculture.xml:7752 freeculture.xml:7817 freeculture.xml:7925
10592 msgid "robotic dog"
10595 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10596 #: freeculture.xml:7609 freeculture.xml:7753 freeculture.xml:7818 freeculture.xml:7926
10600 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
10601 #: freeculture.xml:7609 freeculture.xml:7753 freeculture.xml:7818 freeculture.xml:7926
10602 msgid "Aibo robotic dog produced by"
10605 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10606 #: freeculture.xml:7611
10608 "Consider the robotic dog made by Sony named <quote>Aibo.</quote> The Aibo "
10609 "learns tricks, cuddles, and follows you around. It eats only electricity and "
10610 "that doesn't leave that much of a mess (at least in your house)."
10614 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10615 #: freeculture.xml:7616
10617 "The Aibo is expensive and popular. Fans from around the world have set up "
10618 "clubs to trade stories. One fan in particular set up a Web site to enable "
10619 "information about the Aibo dog to be shared. This fan set up aibopet.com "
10620 "(and aibohack.com, but that resolves to the same site), and on that site he "
10621 "provided information about how to teach an Aibo to do tricks in addition to "
10622 "the ones Sony had taught it."
10625 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10626 #: freeculture.xml:7625
10628 "<quote>Teach</quote> here has a special meaning. Aibos are just cute "
10629 "computers. You teach a computer how to do something by programming it "
10630 "differently. So to say that aibopet.com was giving information about how to "
10631 "teach the dog to do new tricks is just to say that aibopet.com was giving "
10632 "information to users of the Aibo pet about how to hack their computer "
10633 "<quote>dog</quote> to make it do new tricks (thus, aibohack.com)."
10636 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10637 #: freeculture.xml:7632
10641 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10642 #: freeculture.xml:7634
10644 "If you're not a programmer or don't know many programmers, the word "
10645 "<citetitle>hack</citetitle> has a particularly unfriendly "
10646 "connotation. Nonprogrammers hack bushes or weeds. Nonprogrammers in horror "
10647 "movies do even worse. But to programmers, or coders, as I call them, "
10648 "<citetitle>hack</citetitle> is a much more positive "
10649 "term. <citetitle>Hack</citetitle> just means code that enables the program "
10650 "to do something it wasn't originally intended or enabled to do. If you buy a "
10651 "new printer for an old computer, you might find the old computer doesn't "
10652 "run, or <quote>drive,</quote> the printer. If you discovered that, you'd "
10653 "later be happy to discover a hack on the Net by someone who has written a "
10654 "driver to enable the computer to drive the printer you just bought."
10657 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10658 #: freeculture.xml:7648
10660 "Some hacks are easy. Some are unbelievably hard. Hackers as a community like "
10661 "to challenge themselves and others with increasingly difficult "
10662 "tasks. There's a certain respect that goes with the talent to hack "
10663 "well. There's a well-deserved respect that goes with the talent to hack "
10667 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10668 #: freeculture.xml:7655
10670 "The Aibo fan was displaying a bit of both when he hacked the program and "
10671 "offered to the world a bit of code that would enable the Aibo to dance "
10672 "jazz. The dog wasn't programmed to dance jazz. It was a clever bit of "
10673 "tinkering that turned the dog into a more talented creature than Sony had "
10678 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10679 #: freeculture.xml:7665
10681 "I've told this story in many contexts, both inside and outside the United "
10682 "States. Once I was asked by a puzzled member of the audience, is it "
10683 "permissible for a dog to dance jazz in the United States? We forget that "
10684 "stories about the backcountry still flow across much of the world. So let's "
10685 "just be clear before we continue: It's not a crime anywhere (anymore) to "
10686 "dance jazz. Nor is it a crime to teach your dog to dance jazz. Nor should it "
10687 "be a crime (though we don't have a lot to go on here) to teach your robot "
10688 "dog to dance jazz. Dancing jazz is a completely legal activity. One imagines "
10689 "that the owner of aibopet.com thought, <emphasis>What possible problem could "
10690 "there be with teaching a robot dog to dance?</emphasis>"
10693 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
10694 #: freeculture.xml:7680
10695 msgid "government case against"
10698 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10699 #: freeculture.xml:7682
10701 "Let's put the dog to sleep for a minute, and turn to a pony show— not "
10702 "literally a pony show, but rather a paper that a Princeton academic named Ed "
10703 "Felten prepared for a conference. This Princeton academic is well known and "
10704 "respected. He was hired by the government in the Microsoft case to test "
10705 "Microsoft's claims about what could and could not be done with its own "
10706 "code. In that trial, he demonstrated both his brilliance and his "
10707 "coolness. Under heavy badgering by Microsoft lawyers, Ed Felten stood his "
10708 "ground. He was not about to be bullied into being silent about something he "
10712 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10713 #: freeculture.xml:7705 freeculture.xml:10194
10714 msgid "Electronic Frontier Foundation"
10717 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
10718 #: freeculture.xml:7695
10720 "See Pamela Samuelson, <quote>Anticircumvention Rules: Threat to "
10721 "Science,</quote> <citetitle>Science</citetitle> 293 (2001): 2028; Brendan "
10722 "I. Koerner, <quote>Play Dead: Sony Muzzles the Techies Who Teach a Robot Dog "
10723 "New Tricks,</quote> <citetitle>American Prospect</citetitle>, January 2002; "
10724 "<quote>Court Dismisses Computer Scientists' Challenge to DMCA,</quote> "
10725 "<citetitle>Intellectual Property Litigation Reporter</citetitle>, 11 "
10726 "December 2001; Bill Holland, <quote>Copyright Act Raising Free-Speech "
10727 "Concerns,</quote> <citetitle>Billboard</citetitle>, May 2001; Janelle Brown, "
10728 "<quote>Is the RIAA Running Scared?</quote> Salon.com, April 2001; Electronic "
10729 "Frontier Foundation, <quote>Frequently Asked Questions about "
10730 "<citetitle>Felten and USENIX</citetitle> v. <citetitle>RIAA</citetitle> "
10731 "Legal Case,</quote> available at <ulink "
10732 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #27</ulink>. <placeholder "
10733 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
10736 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10737 #: freeculture.xml:7693
10739 "But Felten's bravery was really tested in April 2001.<placeholder "
10740 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> He and a group of colleagues were working on a "
10741 "paper to be submitted at conference. The paper was intended to describe the "
10742 "weakness in an encryption system being developed by the Secure Digital Music "
10743 "Initiative as a technique to control the distribution of music."
10746 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10747 #: freeculture.xml:7713
10749 "The SDMI coalition had as its goal a technology to enable content owners to "
10750 "exercise much better control over their content than the Internet, as it "
10751 "originally stood, granted them. Using encryption, SDMI hoped to develop a "
10752 "standard that would allow the content owner to say <quote>this music cannot "
10753 "be copied,</quote> and have a computer respect that command. The technology "
10754 "was to be part of a <quote>trusted system</quote> of control that would get "
10755 "content owners to trust the system of the Internet much more."
10758 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10759 #: freeculture.xml:7723
10761 "When SDMI thought it was close to a standard, it set up a competition. In "
10762 "exchange for providing contestants with the code to an SDMI-encrypted bit of "
10763 "content, contestants were to try to crack it and, if they did, report the "
10764 "problems to the consortium."
10768 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10769 #: freeculture.xml:7730
10771 "Felten and his team figured out the encryption system quickly. He and the "
10772 "team saw the weakness of this system as a type: Many encryption systems "
10773 "would suffer the same weakness, and Felten and his team thought it "
10774 "worthwhile to point this out to those who study encryption."
10777 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10778 #: freeculture.xml:7736
10780 "Let's review just what Felten was doing. Again, this is the United "
10781 "States. We have a principle of free speech. We have this principle not just "
10782 "because it is the law, but also because it is a really great idea. A "
10783 "strongly protected tradition of free speech is likely to encourage a wide "
10784 "range of criticism. That criticism is likely, in turn, to improve the "
10785 "systems or people or ideas criticized."
10788 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10789 #: freeculture.xml:7744
10791 "What Felten and his colleagues were doing was publishing a paper describing "
10792 "the weakness in a technology. They were not spreading free music, or "
10793 "building and deploying this technology. The paper was an academic essay, "
10794 "unintelligible to most people. But it clearly showed the weakness in the "
10795 "SDMI system, and why SDMI would not, as presently constituted, succeed."
10798 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10799 #: freeculture.xml:7755
10801 "What links these two, aibopet.com and Felten, is the letters they then "
10802 "received. Aibopet.com received a letter from Sony about the aibopet.com "
10803 "hack. Though a jazz-dancing dog is perfectly legal, Sony wrote:"
10806 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
10807 #: freeculture.xml:7762
10809 "Your site contains information providing the means to circumvent AIBO-ware's "
10810 "copy protection protocol constituting a violation of the anti-circumvention "
10811 "provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act."
10814 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10815 #: freeculture.xml:7771
10817 "And though an academic paper describing the weakness in a system of "
10818 "encryption should also be perfectly legal, Felten received a letter from an "
10819 "RIAA lawyer that read:"
10823 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
10824 #: freeculture.xml:7777
10826 "Any disclosure of information gained from participating in the Public "
10827 "Challenge would be outside the scope of activities permitted by the "
10828 "Agreement and could subject you and your research team to actions under the "
10829 "Digital Millennium Copyright Act (<quote>DMCA</quote>)."
10832 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10833 #: freeculture.xml:7785
10835 "In both cases, this weirdly Orwellian law was invoked to control the spread "
10836 "of information. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act made spreading such "
10837 "information an offense."
10840 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10841 #: freeculture.xml:7790
10843 "The DMCA was enacted as a response to copyright owners' first fear about "
10844 "cyberspace. The fear was that copyright control was effectively dead; the "
10845 "response was to find technologies that might compensate. These new "
10846 "technologies would be copyright protection technologies— technologies "
10847 "to control the replication and distribution of copyrighted material. They "
10848 "were designed as <emphasis>code</emphasis> to modify the original "
10849 "<emphasis>code</emphasis> of the Internet, to reestablish some protection "
10850 "for copyright owners."
10853 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10854 #: freeculture.xml:7801
10856 "The DMCA was a bit of law intended to back up the protection of this code "
10857 "designed to protect copyrighted material. It was, we could say, "
10858 "<emphasis>legal code</emphasis> intended to buttress <emphasis>software "
10859 "code</emphasis> which itself was intended to support the <emphasis>legal "
10860 "code of copyright</emphasis>."
10863 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10864 #: freeculture.xml:7808
10866 "But the DMCA was not designed merely to protect copyrighted works to the "
10867 "extent copyright law protected them. Its protection, that is, did not end at "
10868 "the line that copyright law drew. The DMCA regulated devices that were "
10869 "designed to circumvent copyright protection measures. It was designed to ban "
10870 "those devices, whether or not the use of the copyrighted material made "
10871 "possible by that circumvention would have been a copyright violation."
10875 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10876 #: freeculture.xml:7820
10878 "Aibopet.com and Felten make the point. The Aibo hack circumvented a "
10879 "copyright protection system for the purpose of enabling the dog to dance "
10880 "jazz. That enablement no doubt involved the use of copyrighted material. But "
10881 "as aibopet.com's site was noncommercial, and the use did not enable "
10882 "subsequent copyright infringements, there's no doubt that aibopet.com's hack "
10883 "was fair use of Sony's copyrighted material. Yet fair use is not a defense "
10884 "to the DMCA. The question is not whether the use of the copyrighted material "
10885 "was a copyright violation. The question is whether a copyright protection "
10886 "system was circumvented."
10889 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10890 #: freeculture.xml:7832
10892 "The threat against Felten was more attenuated, but it followed the same line "
10893 "of reasoning. By publishing a paper describing how a copyright protection "
10894 "system could be circumvented, the RIAA lawyer suggested, Felten himself was "
10895 "distributing a circumvention technology. Thus, even though he was not "
10896 "himself infringing anyone's copyright, his academic paper was enabling "
10897 "others to infringe others' copyright."
10900 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
10901 #: freeculture.xml:7839 freeculture.xml:7874
10902 msgid "Rogers, Fred"
10905 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10906 #: freeculture.xml:7850 freeculture.xml:7887 freeculture.xml:7913
10907 msgid "Conrad, Paul"
10910 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10911 #: freeculture.xml:7842
10913 "The bizarreness of these arguments is captured in a cartoon drawn in 1981 by "
10914 "Paul Conrad. At that time, a court in California had held that the VCR could "
10915 "be banned because it was a copyright-infringing technology: It enabled "
10916 "consumers to copy films without the permission of the copyright owner. No "
10917 "doubt there were uses of the technology that were legal: Fred Rogers, aka "
10918 "<quote><citetitle>Mr. Rogers</citetitle>,</quote> for example, had testified "
10919 "in that case that he wanted people to feel free to tape Mr. Rogers' "
10920 "Neighborhood. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
10923 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
10924 #: freeculture.xml:7869
10926 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <citetitle>Sony Corporation of "
10927 "America</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Universal City Studios, Inc</citetitle>., "
10928 "464 U.S. 417, 455 fn. 27 (1984). Rogers never changed his view about the "
10929 "VCR. See James Lardner, <citetitle>Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, "
10930 "and the Onslaught of the VCR</citetitle> (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), "
10931 "270–71. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
10934 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
10935 #: freeculture.xml:7854
10937 "Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "
10938 "<quote>Neighborhood</quote> at hours when some children cannot use it. I "
10939 "think that it's a real service to families to be able to record such "
10940 "programs and show them at appropriate times. I have always felt that with "
10941 "the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the "
10942 "<quote>Neighborhood</quote> off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "
10943 "<quote>Neighborhood</quote> because that's what I produce, that they then "
10944 "become much more active in the programming of their family's television "
10945 "life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My "
10946 "whole approach in broadcasting has always been <quote>You are an important "
10947 "person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.</quote> Maybe "
10948 "I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to "
10949 "be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is "
10950 "important.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
10954 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10955 #: freeculture.xml:7880
10957 "Even though there were uses that were legal, because there were some uses "
10958 "that were illegal, the court held the companies producing the VCR "
10962 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10963 #: freeculture.xml:7885
10965 "This led Conrad to draw the cartoon below, which we can adopt to the DMCA. "
10966 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
10969 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10970 #: freeculture.xml:7890
10971 msgid "No argument I have can top this picture, but let me try to get close."
10974 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10975 #: freeculture.xml:7893
10977 "The anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA target copyright circumvention "
10978 "technologies. Circumvention technologies can be used for different "
10979 "ends. They can be used, for example, to enable massive pirating of "
10980 "copyrighted material—a bad end. Or they can be used to enable the use "
10981 "of particular copyrighted materials in ways that would be considered fair "
10982 "use—a good end."
10985 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
10986 #: freeculture.xml:7900
10991 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
10992 #: freeculture.xml:7902
10994 "A handgun can be used to shoot a police officer or a child. Most would agree "
10995 "such a use is bad. Or a handgun can be used for target practice or to "
10996 "protect against an intruder. At least some would say that such a use would "
10997 "be good. It, too, is a technology that has both good and bad uses."
11000 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
11001 #: freeculture.xml:7910
11002 msgid "VCR/handgun cartoon."
11005 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
11006 #: freeculture.xml:7911
11007 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1711.png\"></graphic>"
11010 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11011 #: freeculture.xml:7915
11013 "The obvious point of Conrad's cartoon is the weirdness of a world where guns "
11014 "are legal, despite the harm they can do, while VCRs (and circumvention "
11015 "technologies) are illegal. Flash: <emphasis>No one ever died from copyright "
11016 "circumvention</emphasis>. Yet the law bans circumvention technologies "
11017 "absolutely, despite the potential that they might do some good, but permits "
11018 "guns, despite the obvious and tragic harm they do."
11021 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11022 #: freeculture.xml:7928
11024 "The Aibo and RIAA examples demonstrate how copyright owners are changing the "
11025 "balance that copyright law grants. Using code, copyright owners restrict "
11026 "fair use; using the DMCA, they punish those who would attempt to evade the "
11027 "restrictions on fair use that they impose through code. Technology becomes a "
11028 "means by which fair use can be erased; the law of the DMCA backs up that "
11032 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11033 #: freeculture.xml:7936
11035 "This is how <emphasis>code</emphasis> becomes <emphasis>law</emphasis>. The "
11036 "controls built into the technology of copy and access protection become "
11037 "rules the violation of which is also a violation of the law. In this way, "
11038 "the code extends the law—increasing its regulation, even if the "
11039 "subject it regulates (activities that would otherwise plainly constitute "
11040 "fair use) is beyond the reach of the law. Code becomes law; code extends the "
11041 "law; code thus extends the control that copyright owners effect—at "
11042 "least for those copyright holders with the lawyers who can write the nasty "
11043 "letters that Felten and aibopet.com received."
11046 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11047 #: freeculture.xml:7948
11049 "There is one final aspect of the interaction between architecture and law "
11050 "that contributes to the force of copyright's regulation. This is the ease "
11051 "with which infringements of the law can be detected. For contrary to the "
11052 "rhetoric common at the birth of cyberspace that on the Internet, no one "
11053 "knows you're a dog, increasingly, given changing technologies deployed on "
11054 "the Internet, it is easy to find the dog who committed a legal wrong. The "
11055 "technologies of the Internet are open to snoops as well as sharers, and the "
11056 "snoops are increasingly good at tracking down the identity of those who "
11057 "violate the rules."
11061 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11062 #: freeculture.xml:7967
11064 "For an early and prescient analysis, see Rebecca Tushnet, <quote>Legal "
11065 "Fictions, Copyright, Fan Fiction, and a New Common Law,</quote> "
11066 "<citetitle>Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Journal</citetitle> 17 "
11070 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11071 #: freeculture.xml:7961
11073 "For example, imagine you were part of a <citetitle>Star Trek</citetitle> fan "
11074 "club. You gathered every month to share trivia, and maybe to enact a kind of "
11075 "fan fiction about the show. One person would play Spock, another, Captain "
11076 "Kirk. The characters would begin with a plot from a real story, then simply "
11077 "continue it.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11080 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11081 #: freeculture.xml:7973
11083 "Before the Internet, this was, in effect, a totally unregulated activity. "
11084 "No matter what happened inside your club room, you would never be interfered "
11085 "with by the copyright police. You were free in that space to do as you "
11086 "wished with this part of our culture. You were allowed to build on it as you "
11087 "wished without fear of legal control."
11090 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11091 #: freeculture.xml:7981
11093 "But if you moved your club onto the Internet, and made it generally "
11094 "available for others to join, the story would be very different. Bots "
11095 "scouring the Net for trademark and copyright infringement would quickly find "
11096 "your site. Your posting of fan fiction, depending upon the ownership of the "
11097 "series that you're depicting, could well inspire a lawyer's threat. And "
11098 "ignoring the lawyer's threat would be extremely costly indeed. The law of "
11099 "copyright is extremely efficient. The penalties are severe, and the process "
11103 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11104 #: freeculture.xml:7991
11106 "This change in the effective force of the law is caused by a change in the "
11107 "ease with which the law can be enforced. That change too shifts the law's "
11108 "balance radically. It is as if your car transmitted the speed at which you "
11109 "traveled at every moment that you drove; that would be just one step before "
11110 "the state started issuing tickets based upon the data you transmitted. That "
11111 "is, in effect, what is happening here."
11114 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
11115 #: freeculture.xml:8000
11116 msgid "Market: Concentration"
11120 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11121 #: freeculture.xml:8002
11123 "So copyright's duration has increased dramatically—tripled in the past "
11124 "thirty years. And copyright's scope has increased as well—from "
11125 "regulating only publishers to now regulating just about everyone. And "
11126 "copyright's reach has changed, as every action becomes a copy and hence "
11127 "presumptively regulated. And as technologists find better ways to control "
11128 "the use of content, and as copyright is increasingly enforced through "
11129 "technology, copyright's force changes, too. Misuse is easier to find and "
11130 "easier to control. This regulation of the creative process, which began as a "
11131 "tiny regulation governing a tiny part of the market for creative work, has "
11132 "become the single most important regulator of creativity there is. It is a "
11133 "massive expansion in the scope of the government's control over innovation "
11134 "and creativity; it would be totally unrecognizable to those who gave birth "
11135 "to copyright's control."
11138 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11139 #: freeculture.xml:8020
11141 "Still, in my view, all of these changes would not matter much if it weren't "
11142 "for one more change that we must also consider. This is a change that is in "
11143 "some sense the most familiar, though its significance and scope are not well "
11144 "understood. It is the one that creates precisely the reason to be concerned "
11145 "about all the other changes I have described."
11148 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11149 #: freeculture.xml:8027
11151 "This is the change in the concentration and integration of the media. In "
11152 "the past twenty years, the nature of media ownership has undergone a radical "
11153 "alteration, caused by changes in legal rules governing the media. Before "
11154 "this change happened, the different forms of media were owned by separate "
11155 "media companies. Now, the media is increasingly owned by only a few "
11156 "companies. Indeed, after the changes that the FCC announced in June 2003, "
11157 "most expect that within a few years, we will live in a world where just "
11158 "three companies control more than percent of the media."
11161 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11162 #: freeculture.xml:8038
11163 msgid "These changes are of two sorts: the scope of concentration, and its nature."
11166 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11167 #: freeculture.xml:8042
11171 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11172 #: freeculture.xml:8043 freeculture.xml:9387
11176 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11177 #: freeculture.xml:8044
11178 msgid "McCain, John"
11181 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11182 #: freeculture.xml:8045 freeculture.xml:9388
11183 msgid "Universal Music Group"
11186 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11187 #: freeculture.xml:8046
11188 msgid "Warner Music Group"
11192 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11193 #: freeculture.xml:8052
11195 "FCC Oversight: Hearing Before the Senate Commerce, Science and "
11196 "Transportation Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (22 May 2003) (statement "
11197 "of Senator John McCain)."
11201 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11202 #: freeculture.xml:8059
11204 "Lynette Holloway, <quote>Despite a Marketing Blitz, CD Sales Continue to "
11205 "Slide,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 23 December 2002."
11209 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11210 #: freeculture.xml:8065
11212 "Molly Ivins, <quote>Media Consolidation Must Be Stopped,</quote> "
11213 "<citetitle>Charleston Gazette</citetitle>, 31 May 2003."
11216 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11217 #: freeculture.xml:8048
11219 "Changes in scope are the easier ones to describe. As Senator John McCain "
11220 "summarized the data produced in the FCC's review of media ownership, "
11221 "<quote>five companies control 85 percent of our media "
11222 "sources.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The five recording "
11223 "labels of Universal Music Group, BMG, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music "
11224 "Group, and EMI control 84.8 percent of the U.S. music market.<placeholder "
11225 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> The <quote>five largest cable companies pipe "
11226 "programming to 74 percent of the cable subscribers "
11227 "nationwide.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/>"
11231 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11232 #: freeculture.xml:8070
11234 "The story with radio is even more dramatic. Before deregulation, the "
11235 "nation's largest radio broadcasting conglomerate owned fewer than "
11236 "seventy-five stations. Today <emphasis>one</emphasis> company owns more than "
11237 "1,200 stations. During that period of consolidation, the total number of "
11238 "radio owners dropped by 34 percent. Today, in most markets, the two largest "
11239 "broadcasters control 74 percent of that market's revenues. Overall, just "
11240 "four companies control 90 percent of the nation's radio advertising "
11244 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11245 #: freeculture.xml:8082
11247 "Newspaper ownership is becoming more concentrated as well. Today, there are "
11248 "six hundred fewer daily newspapers in the United States than there were "
11249 "eighty years ago, and ten companies control half of the nation's "
11250 "circulation. There are twenty major newspaper publishers in the United "
11251 "States. The top ten film studios receive 99 percent of all film revenue. The "
11252 "ten largest cable companies account for 85 percent of all cable "
11253 "revenue. This is a market far from the free press the framers sought to "
11254 "protect. Indeed, it is a market that is quite well protected— by the "
11258 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11259 #: freeculture.xml:8096 freeculture.xml:8113
11260 msgid "Fallows, James"
11263 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11264 #: freeculture.xml:8093
11266 "Concentration in size alone is one thing. The more invidious change is in "
11267 "the nature of that concentration. As author James Fallows put it in a recent "
11268 "article about Rupert Murdoch, <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
11271 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
11272 #: freeculture.xml:8111
11274 "James Fallows, <quote>The Age of Murdoch,</quote> <citetitle>Atlantic "
11275 "Monthly</citetitle> (September 2003): 89. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
11279 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
11280 #: freeculture.xml:8100
11282 "Murdoch's companies now constitute a production system unmatched in its "
11283 "integration. They supply content—Fox movies … Fox TV shows "
11284 "… Fox-controlled sports broadcasts, plus newspapers and books. They "
11285 "sell the content to the public and to advertisers—in newspapers, on "
11286 "the broadcast network, on the cable channels. And they operate the physical "
11287 "distribution system through which the content reaches the "
11288 "customers. Murdoch's satellite systems now distribute News Corp. content in "
11289 "Europe and Asia; if Murdoch becomes DirecTV's largest single owner, that "
11290 "system will serve the same function in the United States.<placeholder "
11291 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11294 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11295 #: freeculture.xml:8118
11297 "The pattern with Murdoch is the pattern of modern media. Not just large "
11298 "companies owning many radio stations, but a few companies owning as many "
11299 "outlets of media as possible. A picture describes this pattern better than a "
11300 "thousand words could do:"
11303 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure><title>
11304 #: freeculture.xml:8124
11305 msgid "Pattern of modern media ownership."
11308 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><figure>
11309 #: freeculture.xml:8125
11310 msgid "<graphic fileref=\"images/1761.png\"></graphic>"
11314 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11315 #: freeculture.xml:8129
11317 "Does this concentration matter? Will it affect what is made, or what is "
11318 "distributed? Or is it merely a more efficient way to produce and distribute "
11322 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11323 #: freeculture.xml:8134
11325 "My view was that concentration wouldn't matter. I thought it was nothing "
11326 "more than a more efficient financial structure. But now, after reading and "
11327 "listening to a barrage of creators try to convince me to the contrary, I am "
11328 "beginning to change my mind."
11331 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11332 #: freeculture.xml:8140
11334 "Here's a representative story that begins to suggest how this integration "
11338 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11339 #: freeculture.xml:8143
11340 msgid "Lear, Norman"
11343 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11344 #: freeculture.xml:8145 freeculture.xml:8208
11345 msgid "All in the Family"
11348 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11349 #: freeculture.xml:8147
11351 "In 1969, Norman Lear created a pilot for <citetitle>All in the "
11352 "Family</citetitle>. He took the pilot to ABC. The network didn't like it. It "
11353 "was too edgy, they told Lear. Make it again. Lear made a second pilot, more "
11354 "edgy than the first. ABC was exasperated. You're missing the point, they "
11355 "told Lear. We wanted less edgy, not more."
11359 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11360 #: freeculture.xml:8159
11362 "Leonard Hill, <quote>The Axis of Access,</quote> remarks before Weidenbaum "
11363 "Center Forum, <quote>Entertainment Economics: The Movie Industry,</quote> "
11364 "St. Louis, Missouri, 3 April 2003 (transcript of prepared remarks available "
11365 "at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #28</ulink>; for the "
11366 "Lear story, not included in the prepared remarks, see <ulink "
11367 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #29</ulink>)."
11370 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11371 #: freeculture.xml:8154
11373 "Rather than comply, Lear simply took the show elsewhere. CBS was happy to "
11374 "have the series; ABC could not stop Lear from walking. The copyrights that "
11375 "Lear held assured an independence from network control.<placeholder "
11376 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11380 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11381 #: freeculture.xml:8170
11383 "The network did not control those copyrights because the law forbade the "
11384 "networks from controlling the content they syndicated. The law required a "
11385 "separation between the networks and the content producers; that separation "
11386 "would guarantee Lear freedom. And as late as 1992, because of these rules, "
11387 "the vast majority of prime time television—75 percent of it—was "
11388 "<quote>independent</quote> of the networks."
11392 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11393 #: freeculture.xml:8189
11395 "NewsCorp./DirecTV Merger and Media Consolidation: Hearings on Media "
11396 "Ownership Before the Senate Commerce Committee, 108th Cong., 1st "
11397 "sess. (2003) (testimony of Gene Kimmelman on behalf of Consumers Union and "
11398 "the Consumer Federation of America), available at <ulink "
11399 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #30</ulink>. Kimmelman quotes "
11400 "Victoria Riskin, president of Writers Guild of America, West, in her Remarks "
11401 "at FCC En Banc Hearing, Richmond, Virginia, 27 February 2003."
11404 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11405 #: freeculture.xml:8179
11407 "In 1994, the FCC abandoned the rules that required this independence. After "
11408 "that change, the networks quickly changed the balance. In 1985, there were "
11409 "twenty-five independent television production studios; in 2002, only five "
11410 "independent television studios remained. <quote>In 1992, only 15 percent of "
11411 "new series were produced for a network by a company it controlled. Last "
11412 "year, the percentage of shows produced by controlled companies more than "
11413 "quintupled to 77 percent.</quote> <quote>In 1992, 16 new series were "
11414 "produced independently of conglomerate control, last year there was "
11415 "one.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> In 2002, 75 percent of "
11416 "prime time television was owned by the networks that ran it. <quote>In the "
11417 "ten-year period between 1992 and 2002, the number of prime time television "
11418 "hours per week produced by network studios increased over 200%, whereas the "
11419 "number of prime time television hours per week produced by independent "
11420 "studios decreased 63%.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
11423 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11424 #: freeculture.xml:8210
11426 "Today, another Norman Lear with another <citetitle>All in the "
11427 "Family</citetitle> would find that he had the choice either to make the show "
11428 "less edgy or to be fired: The content of any show developed for a network is "
11429 "increasingly owned by the network."
11432 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11433 #: freeculture.xml:8215
11434 msgid "Diller, Barry"
11437 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11438 #: freeculture.xml:8216
11439 msgid "Moyers, Bill"
11442 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11443 #: freeculture.xml:8218
11445 "While the number of channels has increased dramatically, the ownership of "
11446 "those channels has narrowed to an ever smaller and smaller few. As Barry "
11447 "Diller said to Bill Moyers,"
11451 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
11452 #: freeculture.xml:8233
11454 "<quote>Barry Diller Takes on Media Deregulation,</quote> <citetitle>Now with "
11455 "Bill Moyers</citetitle>, Bill Moyers, 25 April 2003, edited transcript "
11456 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #31</ulink>."
11459 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
11460 #: freeculture.xml:8224
11462 "Well, if you have companies that produce, that finance, that air on their "
11463 "channel and then distribute worldwide everything that goes through their "
11464 "controlled distribution system, then what you get is fewer and fewer actual "
11465 "voices participating in the process. [We u]sed to have dozens and dozens of "
11466 "thriving independent production companies producing television programs. Now "
11467 "you have less than a handful.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11470 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11471 #: freeculture.xml:8240
11473 "This narrowing has an effect on what is produced. The product of such large "
11474 "and concentrated networks is increasingly homogenous. Increasingly "
11475 "safe. Increasingly sterile. The product of news shows from networks like "
11476 "this is increasingly tailored to the message the network wants to "
11477 "convey. This is not the communist party, though from the inside, it must "
11478 "feel a bit like the communist party. No one can question without risk of "
11479 "consequence—not necessarily banishment to Siberia, but punishment "
11480 "nonetheless. Independent, critical, different views are quashed. This is not "
11481 "the environment for a democracy."
11484 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
11485 #: freeculture.xml:8251
11486 msgid "Clark, Kim B."
11490 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11491 #: freeculture.xml:8260
11493 "Clayton M. Christensen, <citetitle>The Innovator's Dilemma: The "
11494 "Revolutionary National Bestseller that Changed the Way We Do "
11495 "Business</citetitle> (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, "
11496 "1997). Christensen acknowledges that the idea was first suggested by Dean "
11497 "Kim Clark. See Kim B. Clark, <quote>The Interaction of Design Hierarchies "
11498 "and Market Concepts in Technological Evolution,</quote> <citetitle>Research "
11499 "Policy</citetitle> 14 (1985): 235–51. For a more recent study, see "
11500 "Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan, <citetitle>Creative Destruction: Why "
11501 "Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market—and How to "
11502 "Successfully Transform Them</citetitle> (New York: Currency/Doubleday, "
11506 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11507 #: freeculture.xml:8253
11509 "Economics itself offers a parallel that explains why this integration "
11510 "affects creativity. Clay Christensen has written about the "
11511 "<quote>Innovator's Dilemma</quote>: the fact that large traditional firms "
11512 "find it rational to ignore new, breakthrough technologies that compete with "
11513 "their core business. The same analysis could help explain why large, "
11514 "traditional media companies would find it rational to ignore new cultural "
11515 "trends.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Lumbering giants not only "
11516 "don't, but should not, sprint. Yet if the field is only open to the giants, "
11517 "there will be far too little sprinting. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
11521 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11522 #: freeculture.xml:8277
11524 "I don't think we know enough about the economics of the media market to say "
11525 "with certainty what concentration and integration will do. The efficiencies "
11526 "are important, and the effect on culture is hard to measure."
11529 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11530 #: freeculture.xml:8283
11532 "But there is a quintessentially obvious example that does strongly suggest "
11536 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11537 #: freeculture.xml:8287
11539 "In addition to the copyright wars, we're in the middle of the drug "
11540 "wars. Government policy is strongly directed against the drug cartels; "
11541 "criminal and civil courts are filled with the consequences of this battle."
11545 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11546 #: freeculture.xml:8292
11548 "Let me hereby disqualify myself from any possible appointment to any "
11549 "position in government by saying I believe this war is a profound mistake. I "
11550 "am not pro drugs. Indeed, I come from a family once wrecked by "
11551 "drugs—though the drugs that wrecked my family were all quite legal. I "
11552 "believe this war is a profound mistake because the collateral damage from it "
11553 "is so great as to make waging the war insane. When you add together the "
11554 "burdens on the criminal justice system, the desperation of generations of "
11555 "kids whose only real economic opportunities are as drug warriors, the "
11556 "queering of constitutional protections because of the constant surveillance "
11557 "this war requires, and, most profoundly, the total destruction of the legal "
11558 "systems of many South American nations because of the power of the local "
11559 "drug cartels, I find it impossible to believe that the marginal benefit in "
11560 "reduced drug consumption by Americans could possibly outweigh these costs."
11563 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11564 #: freeculture.xml:8311
11566 "You may not be convinced. That's fine. We live in a democracy, and it is "
11567 "through votes that we are to choose policy. But to do that, we depend "
11568 "fundamentally upon the press to help inform Americans about these issues."
11571 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11572 #: freeculture.xml:8318
11574 "Beginning in 1998, the Office of National Drug Control Policy launched a "
11575 "media campaign as part of the <quote>war on drugs.</quote> The campaign "
11576 "produced scores of short film clips about issues related to illegal "
11577 "drugs. In one series (the Nick and Norm series) two men are in a bar, "
11578 "discussing the idea of legalizing drugs as a way to avoid some of the "
11579 "collateral damage from the war. One advances an argument in favor of drug "
11580 "legalization. The other responds in a powerful and effective way against the "
11581 "argument of the first. In the end, the first guy changes his mind (hey, it's "
11582 "television). The plug at the end is a damning attack on the pro-legalization "
11586 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11587 #: freeculture.xml:8330
11589 "Fair enough. It's a good ad. Not terribly misleading. It delivers its "
11590 "message well. It's a fair and reasonable message."
11593 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11594 #: freeculture.xml:8334
11596 "But let's say you think it is a wrong message, and you'd like to run a "
11597 "countercommercial. Say you want to run a series of ads that try to "
11598 "demonstrate the extraordinary collateral harm that comes from the drug "
11599 "war. Can you do it?"
11603 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11604 #: freeculture.xml:8340
11606 "Well, obviously, these ads cost lots of money. Assume you raise the "
11607 "money. Assume a group of concerned citizens donates all the money in the "
11608 "world to help you get your message out. Can you be sure your message will be "
11612 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11613 #: freeculture.xml:8382
11617 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11618 #: freeculture.xml:8383
11619 msgid "Marijuana Policy Project"
11622 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11623 #: freeculture.xml:8384
11627 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11628 #: freeculture.xml:8385
11632 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11633 #: freeculture.xml:8386
11637 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11638 #: freeculture.xml:8357
11640 "The Marijuana Policy Project, in February 2003, sought to place ads that "
11641 "directly responded to the Nick and Norm series on stations within the "
11642 "Washington, D.C., area. Comcast rejected the ads as <quote>against [their] "
11643 "policy.</quote> The local NBC affiliate, WRC, rejected the ads without "
11644 "reviewing them. The local ABC affiliate, WJOA, originally agreed to run the "
11645 "ads and accepted payment to do so, but later decided not to run the ads and "
11646 "returned the collected fees. Interview with Neal Levine, 15 October 2003. "
11647 "These restrictions are, of course, not limited to drug policy. See, for "
11648 "example, Nat Ives, <quote>On the Issue of an Iraq War, Advocacy Ads Meet "
11649 "with Rejection from TV Networks,</quote> <citetitle>New York "
11650 "Times</citetitle>, 13 March 2003, C4. Outside of election-related air time "
11651 "there is very little that the FCC or the courts are willing to do to even "
11652 "the playing field. For a general overview, see Rhonda Brown, <quote>Ad Hoc "
11653 "Access: The Regulation of Editorial Advertising on Television and "
11654 "Radio,</quote> <citetitle>Yale Law and Policy Review</citetitle> 6 (1988): "
11655 "449–79, and for a more recent summary of the stance of the FCC and the "
11656 "courts, see <citetitle>Radio-Television News Directors "
11657 "Association</citetitle> v. <citetitle>FCC</citetitle>, 184 F. 3d 872 "
11658 "(D.C. Cir. 1999). Municipal authorities exercise the same authority as the "
11659 "networks. In a recent example from San Francisco, the San Francisco transit "
11660 "authority rejected an ad that criticized its Muni diesel buses. Phillip "
11661 "Matier and Andrew Ross, <quote>Antidiesel Group Fuming After Muni Rejects "
11662 "Ad,</quote> SFGate.com, 16 June 2003, available at <ulink "
11663 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #32</ulink>. The ground was that "
11664 "the criticism was <quote>too controversial.</quote> <placeholder "
11665 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> "
11666 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
11667 "id=\"3\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"4\"/> <placeholder "
11668 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"5\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"6\"/>"
11671 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11672 #: freeculture.xml:8347
11674 "No. You cannot. Television stations have a general policy of avoiding "
11675 "<quote>controversial</quote> ads. Ads sponsored by the government are deemed "
11676 "uncontroversial; ads disagreeing with the government are controversial. "
11677 "This selectivity might be thought inconsistent with the First Amendment, but "
11678 "the Supreme Court has held that stations have the right to choose what they "
11679 "run. Thus, the major channels of commercial media will refuse one side of a "
11680 "crucial debate the opportunity to present its case. And the courts will "
11681 "defend the rights of the stations to be this biased.<placeholder "
11682 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11685 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11686 #: freeculture.xml:8391
11688 "I'd be happy to defend the networks' rights, as well—if we lived in a "
11689 "media market that was truly diverse. But concentration in the media throws "
11690 "that condition into doubt. If a handful of companies control access to the "
11691 "media, and that handful of companies gets to decide which political "
11692 "positions it will allow to be promoted on its channels, then in an obvious "
11693 "and important way, concentration matters. You might like the positions the "
11694 "handful of companies selects. But you should not like a world in which a "
11695 "mere few get to decide which issues the rest of us get to know about."
11698 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
11699 #: freeculture.xml:8404
11703 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11704 #: freeculture.xml:8406
11706 "There is something innocent and obvious about the claim of the copyright "
11707 "warriors that the government should <quote>protect my property.</quote> In "
11708 "the abstract, it is obviously true and, ordinarily, totally harmless. No "
11709 "sane sort who is not an anarchist could disagree."
11713 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11714 #: freeculture.xml:8412
11716 "But when we see how dramatically this <quote>property</quote> has "
11717 "changed— when we recognize how it might now interact with both "
11718 "technology and markets to mean that the effective constraint on the liberty "
11719 "to cultivate our culture is dramatically different—the claim begins to "
11720 "seem less innocent and obvious. Given (1) the power of technology to "
11721 "supplement the law's control, and (2) the power of concentrated markets to "
11722 "weaken the opportunity for dissent, if strictly enforcing the massively "
11723 "expanded <quote>property</quote> rights granted by copyright fundamentally "
11724 "changes the freedom within this culture to cultivate and build upon our "
11725 "past, then we have to ask whether this property should be redefined."
11728 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11729 #: freeculture.xml:8428
11731 "Not starkly. Or absolutely. My point is not that we should abolish copyright "
11732 "or go back to the eighteenth century. That would be a total mistake, "
11733 "disastrous for the most important creative enterprises within our culture "
11737 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11738 #: freeculture.xml:8434
11740 "But there is a space between zero and one, Internet culture "
11741 "notwithstanding. And these massive shifts in the effective power of "
11742 "copyright regulation, tied to increased concentration of the content "
11743 "industry and resting in the hands of technology that will increasingly "
11744 "enable control over the use of culture, should drive us to consider whether "
11745 "another adjustment is called for. Not an adjustment that increases "
11746 "copyright's power. Not an adjustment that increases its term. Rather, an "
11747 "adjustment to restore the balance that has traditionally defined copyright's "
11748 "regulation—a weakening of that regulation, to strengthen creativity."
11751 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11752 #: freeculture.xml:8446
11754 "Copyright law has not been a rock of Gibraltar. It's not a set of constant "
11755 "commitments that, for some mysterious reason, teenagers and geeks now "
11756 "flout. Instead, copyright power has grown dramatically in a short period of "
11757 "time, as the technologies of distribution and creation have changed and as "
11758 "lobbyists have pushed for more control by copyright holders. Changes in the "
11759 "past in response to changes in technology suggest that we may well need "
11760 "similar changes in the future. And these changes have to be "
11761 "<emphasis>reductions</emphasis> in the scope of copyright, in response to "
11762 "the extraordinary increase in control that technology and the market enable."
11766 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11767 #: freeculture.xml:8458
11769 "For the single point that is lost in this war on pirates is a point that we "
11770 "see only after surveying the range of these changes. When you add together "
11771 "the effect of changing law, concentrated markets, and changing technology, "
11772 "together they produce an astonishing conclusion: <emphasis>Never in our "
11773 "history have fewer had a legal right to control more of the development of "
11774 "our culture than now</emphasis>."
11777 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11778 #: freeculture.xml:8482
11780 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Siva Vaidhyanathan captures a "
11781 "similar point in his <quote>four surrenders</quote> of copyright law in the "
11782 "digital age. See Vaidhyanathan, 159–60."
11785 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11786 #: freeculture.xml:8467
11788 "Not when copyrights were perpetual, for when copyrights were perpetual, they "
11789 "affected only that precise creative work. Not when only publishers had the "
11790 "tools to publish, for the market then was much more diverse. Not when there "
11791 "were only three television networks, for even then, newspapers, film "
11792 "studios, radio stations, and publishers were independent of the "
11793 "networks. <emphasis>Never</emphasis> has copyright protected such a wide "
11794 "range of rights, against as broad a range of actors, for a term that was "
11795 "remotely as long. This form of regulation—a tiny regulation of a tiny "
11796 "part of the creative energy of a nation at the founding—is now a "
11797 "massive regulation of the overall creative process. Law plus technology plus "
11798 "the market now interact to turn this historically benign regulation into the "
11799 "most significant regulation of culture that our free society has "
11800 "known.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
11803 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11804 #: freeculture.xml:8488
11806 "<emphasis role='strong'>This has been</emphasis> a long chapter. Its point "
11807 "can now be briefly stated."
11810 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11811 #: freeculture.xml:8492
11813 "At the start of this book, I distinguished between commercial and "
11814 "noncommercial culture. In the course of this chapter, I have distinguished "
11815 "between copying a work and transforming it. We can now combine these two "
11816 "distinctions and draw a clear map of the changes that copyright law has "
11817 "undergone. In 1790, the law looked like this:"
11820 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
11821 #: freeculture.xml:8504 freeculture.xml:8541
11825 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
11826 #: freeculture.xml:8505 freeculture.xml:8542 freeculture.xml:8580 freeculture.xml:8612
11830 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11831 #: freeculture.xml:8510 freeculture.xml:8547 freeculture.xml:8585 freeculture.xml:8617
11835 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11836 #: freeculture.xml:8511 freeculture.xml:8548 freeculture.xml:8549 freeculture.xml:8586 freeculture.xml:8587 freeculture.xml:8618 freeculture.xml:8619 freeculture.xml:8623 freeculture.xml:8624
11840 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11841 #: freeculture.xml:8512 freeculture.xml:8516 freeculture.xml:8517 freeculture.xml:8553 freeculture.xml:8554 freeculture.xml:8592
11845 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11846 #: freeculture.xml:8515 freeculture.xml:8552 freeculture.xml:8590 freeculture.xml:8622
11847 msgid "Noncommercial"
11851 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11852 #: freeculture.xml:8524
11854 "The act of publishing a map, chart, and book was regulated by copyright "
11855 "law. Nothing else was. Transformations were free. And as copyright attached "
11856 "only with registration, and only those who intended to benefit commercially "
11857 "would register, copying through publishing of noncommercial work was also "
11861 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11862 #: freeculture.xml:8533
11863 msgid "By the end of the nineteenth century, the law had changed to this:"
11866 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11867 #: freeculture.xml:8561
11869 "Derivative works were now regulated by copyright law—if published, "
11870 "which again, given the economics of publishing at the time, means if offered "
11871 "commercially. But noncommercial publishing and transformation were still "
11872 "essentially free."
11875 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11876 #: freeculture.xml:8567
11878 "In 1909 the law changed to regulate copies, not publishing, and after this "
11879 "change, the scope of the law was tied to technology. As the technology of "
11880 "copying became more prevalent, the reach of the law expanded. Thus by 1975, "
11881 "as photocopying machines became more common, we could say the law began to "
11885 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><thead><row><entry>
11886 #: freeculture.xml:8579 freeculture.xml:8611
11890 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><informaltable><tgroup><tbody><row><entry>
11891 #: freeculture.xml:8591
11892 msgid "©/Free"
11895 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11896 #: freeculture.xml:8599
11898 "The law was interpreted to reach noncommercial copying through, say, copy "
11899 "machines, but still much of copying outside of the commercial market "
11900 "remained free. But the consequence of the emergence of digital technologies, "
11901 "especially in the context of a digital network, means that the law now looks "
11906 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11907 #: freeculture.xml:8631
11909 "Every realm is governed by copyright law, whereas before most creativity was "
11910 "not. The law now regulates the full range of creativity— commercial or "
11911 "not, transformative or not—with the same rules designed to regulate "
11912 "commercial publishers."
11915 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11916 #: freeculture.xml:8639
11918 "Obviously, copyright law is not the enemy. The enemy is regulation that does "
11919 "no good. So the question that we should be asking just now is whether "
11920 "extending the regulations of copyright law into each of these domains "
11921 "actually does any good."
11924 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11925 #: freeculture.xml:8645
11927 "I have no doubt that it does good in regulating commercial copying. But I "
11928 "also have no doubt that it does more harm than good when regulating (as it "
11929 "regulates just now) noncommercial copying and, especially, noncommercial "
11930 "transformation. And increasingly, for the reasons sketched especially in "
11931 "chapters <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"recorders\"/> and "
11932 "<xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"transformers\"/>, one "
11933 "might well wonder whether it does more harm than good for commercial "
11934 "transformation. More commercial transformative work would be created if "
11935 "derivative rights were more sharply restricted."
11938 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
11939 #: freeculture.xml:8669
11940 msgid "legal realist movement"
11943 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
11944 #: freeculture.xml:8663
11946 "It was the single most important contribution of the legal realist movement "
11947 "to demonstrate that all property rights are always crafted to balance public "
11948 "and private interests. See Thomas C. Grey, <quote>The Disintegration of "
11949 "Property,</quote> in <citetitle>Nomos XXII: Property</citetitle>, J. Roland "
11950 "Pennock and John W. Chapman, eds. (New York: New York University Press, "
11951 "1980). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
11954 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11955 #: freeculture.xml:8657
11957 "The issue is therefore not simply whether copyright is property. Of course "
11958 "copyright is a kind of <quote>property,</quote> and of course, as with any "
11959 "property, the state ought to protect it. But first impressions "
11960 "notwithstanding, historically, this property right (as with all property "
11961 "rights<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>) has been crafted to "
11962 "balance the important need to give authors and artists incentives with the "
11963 "equally important need to assure access to creative work. This balance has "
11964 "always been struck in light of new technologies. And for almost half of our "
11965 "tradition, the <quote>copyright</quote> did not control <emphasis>at "
11966 "all</emphasis> the freedom of others to build upon or transform a creative "
11967 "work. American culture was born free, and for almost 180 years our country "
11968 "consistently protected a vibrant and rich free culture."
11972 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11973 #: freeculture.xml:8682
11975 "We achieved that free culture because our law respected important limits on "
11976 "the scope of the interests protected by <quote>property.</quote> The very "
11977 "birth of <quote>copyright</quote> as a statutory right recognized those "
11978 "limits, by granting copyright owners protection for a limited time only (the "
11979 "story of chapter 6). The tradition of <quote>fair use</quote> is animated by "
11980 "a similar concern that is increasingly under strain as the costs of "
11981 "exercising any fair use right become unavoidably high (the story of chapter "
11982 "7). Adding statutory rights where markets might stifle innovation is another "
11983 "familiar limit on the property right that copyright is (chapter 8). And "
11984 "granting archives and libraries a broad freedom to collect, claims of "
11985 "property notwithstanding, is a crucial part of guaranteeing the soul of a "
11986 "culture (chapter 9). Free cultures, like free markets, are built with "
11987 "property. But the nature of the property that builds a free culture is very "
11988 "different from the extremist vision that dominates the debate today."
11991 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
11992 #: freeculture.xml:8701
11994 "Free culture is increasingly the casualty in this war on piracy. In response "
11995 "to a real, if not yet quantified, threat that the technologies of the "
11996 "Internet present to twentieth-century business models for producing and "
11997 "distributing culture, the law and technology are being transformed in a way "
11998 "that will undermine our tradition of free culture. The property right that "
11999 "is copyright is no longer the balanced right that it was, or was intended to "
12000 "be. The property right that is copyright has become unbalanced, tilted "
12001 "toward an extreme. The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened "
12002 "in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check "
12006 #. type: Content of: <book><part><title>
12007 #: freeculture.xml:8718
12011 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
12012 #: freeculture.xml:8722
12013 msgid "CHAPTER ELEVEN: Chimera"
12016 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
12017 #: freeculture.xml:8723
12021 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
12022 #: freeculture.xml:8724
12023 msgid "Wells, H. G."
12026 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
12027 #: freeculture.xml:8725
12028 msgid "<quote>Country of the Blind, The</quote> (Wells)"
12032 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
12033 #: freeculture.xml:8733
12035 "H. G. Wells, <quote>The Country of the Blind</quote> (1904, 1911). See "
12036 "H. G. Wells, <citetitle>The Country of the Blind and Other "
12037 "Stories</citetitle>, Michael Sherborne, ed. (New York: Oxford University "
12041 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12042 #: freeculture.xml:8728
12044 "<emphasis role='strong'>In a well-known</emphasis> short story by "
12045 "H. G. Wells, a mountain climber named Nunez trips (literally, down an ice "
12046 "slope) into an unknown and isolated valley in the Peruvian "
12047 "Andes.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The valley is "
12048 "extraordinarily beautiful, with <quote>sweet water, pasture, an even "
12049 "climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an "
12050 "excellent fruit.</quote> But the villagers are all blind. Nunez takes this "
12051 "as an opportunity. <quote>In the Country of the Blind,</quote> he tells "
12052 "himself, <quote>the One-Eyed Man is King.</quote> So he resolves to live "
12053 "with the villagers to explore life as a king."
12056 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12057 #: freeculture.xml:8745
12059 "Things don't go quite as he planned. He tries to explain the idea of sight "
12060 "to the villagers. They don't understand. He tells them they are "
12061 "<quote>blind.</quote> They don't have the word "
12062 "<citetitle>blind</citetitle>. They think he's just thick. Indeed, as they "
12063 "increasingly notice the things he can't do (hear the sound of grass being "
12064 "stepped on, for example), they increasingly try to control him. He, in turn, "
12065 "becomes increasingly frustrated. <quote>`You don't understand,' he cried, in "
12066 "a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke. `You are "
12067 "blind and I can see. Leave me alone!'</quote>"
12071 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12072 #: freeculture.xml:8757
12074 "The villagers don't leave him alone. Nor do they see (so to speak) the "
12075 "virtue of his special power. Not even the ultimate target of his affection, "
12076 "a young woman who to him seems <quote>the most beautiful thing in the whole "
12077 "of creation,</quote> understands the beauty of sight. Nunez's description of "
12078 "what he sees <quote>seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she "
12079 "listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet "
12080 "white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence.</quote> <quote>She "
12081 "did not believe,</quote> Wells tells us, and <quote>she could only half "
12082 "understand, but she was mysteriously delighted.</quote>"
12085 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12086 #: freeculture.xml:8768
12088 "When Nunez announces his desire to marry his <quote>mysteriously "
12089 "delighted</quote> love, the father and the village object. <quote>You see, "
12090 "my dear,</quote> her father instructs, <quote>he's an idiot. He has "
12091 "delusions. He can't do anything right.</quote> They take Nunez to the "
12095 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12096 #: freeculture.xml:8774
12098 "After a careful examination, the doctor gives his opinion. <quote>His brain "
12099 "is affected,</quote> he reports."
12102 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12103 #: freeculture.xml:8778
12105 "<quote>What affects it?</quote> the father asks. <quote>Those queer things "
12106 "that are called the eyes … are diseased … in such a way as to "
12107 "affect his brain.</quote>"
12110 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12111 #: freeculture.xml:8783
12113 "The doctor continues: <quote>I think I may say with reasonable certainty "
12114 "that in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple and "
12115 "easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies [the "
12119 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12120 #: freeculture.xml:8789
12122 "<quote>Thank Heaven for science!</quote> says the father to the doctor. They "
12123 "inform Nunez of this condition necessary for him to be allowed his bride. "
12124 "(You'll have to read the original to learn what happens in the end. I "
12125 "believe in free culture, but never in giving away the end of a story.)"
12129 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12130 #: freeculture.xml:8795
12132 "<emphasis role='strong'>It sometimes</emphasis> happens that the eggs of "
12133 "twins fuse in the mother's womb. That fusion produces a "
12134 "<quote>chimera.</quote> A chimera is a single creature with two sets of "
12135 "DNA. The DNA in the blood, for example, might be different from the DNA of "
12136 "the skin. This possibility is an underused plot for murder "
12137 "mysteries. <quote>But the DNA shows with 100 percent certainty that she was "
12138 "not the person whose blood was at the scene. …</quote>"
12141 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12142 #: freeculture.xml:8809
12144 "Before I had read about chimeras, I would have said they were impossible. A "
12145 "single person can't have two sets of DNA. The very idea of DNA is that it is "
12146 "the code of an individual. Yet in fact, not only can two individuals have "
12147 "the same set of DNA (identical twins), but one person can have two different "
12148 "sets of DNA (a chimera). Our understanding of a <quote>person</quote> should "
12149 "reflect this reality."
12152 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12153 #: freeculture.xml:8817
12155 "The more I work to understand the current struggle over copyright and "
12156 "culture, which I've sometimes called unfairly, and sometimes not unfairly "
12157 "enough, <quote>the copyright wars,</quote> the more I think we're dealing "
12158 "with a chimera. For example, in the battle over the question <quote>What is "
12159 "p2p file sharing?</quote> both sides have it right, and both sides have it "
12160 "wrong. One side says, <quote>File sharing is just like two kids taping each "
12161 "others' records—the sort of thing we've been doing for the last thirty "
12162 "years without any question at all.</quote> That's true, at least in "
12163 "part. When I tell my best friend to try out a new CD that I've bought, but "
12164 "rather than just send the CD, I point him to my p2p server, that is, in all "
12165 "relevant respects, just like what every executive in every recording company "
12166 "no doubt did as a kid: sharing music."
12169 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12170 #: freeculture.xml:8831
12172 "But the description is also false in part. For when my p2p server is on a "
12173 "p2p network through which anyone can get access to my music, then sure, my "
12174 "friends can get access, but it stretches the meaning of "
12175 "<quote>friends</quote> beyond recognition to say <quote>my ten thousand best "
12176 "friends</quote> can get access. Whether or not sharing my music with my best "
12177 "friend is what <quote>we have always been allowed to do,</quote> we have not "
12178 "always been allowed to share music with <quote>our ten thousand best "
12182 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12183 #: freeculture.xml:8840
12185 "Likewise, when the other side says, <quote>File sharing is just like walking "
12186 "into a Tower Records and taking a CD off the shelf and walking out with "
12187 "it,</quote> that's true, at least in part. If, after Lyle Lovett (finally) "
12188 "releases a new album, rather than buying it, I go to Kazaa and find a free "
12189 "copy to take, that is very much like stealing a copy from Tower. "
12190 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
12194 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12195 #: freeculture.xml:8851
12197 "But it is not quite stealing from Tower. After all, when I take a CD from "
12198 "Tower Records, Tower has one less CD to sell. And when I take a CD from "
12199 "Tower Records, I get a bit of plastic and a cover, and something to show on "
12200 "my shelves. (And, while we're at it, we could also note that when I take a "
12201 "CD from Tower Records, the maximum fine that might be imposed on me, under "
12202 "California law, at least, is $1,000. According to the RIAA, by contrast, if "
12203 "I download a ten-song CD, I'm liable for $1,500,000 in damages.)"
12206 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12207 #: freeculture.xml:8861
12209 "The point is not that it is as neither side describes. The point is that it "
12210 "is both—both as the RIAA describes it and as Kazaa describes it. It is "
12211 "a chimera. And rather than simply denying what the other side asserts, we "
12212 "need to begin to think about how we should respond to this chimera. What "
12213 "rules should govern it?"
12216 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12217 #: freeculture.xml:8877 freeculture.xml:9159 freeculture.xml:10195
12218 msgid "ISPs (Internet service providers), user identities revealed by"
12221 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12222 #: freeculture.xml:8908
12223 msgid "Conyers, John, Jr."
12226 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12227 #: freeculture.xml:8909 freeculture.xml:9630
12228 msgid "Berman, Howard L."
12231 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
12232 #: freeculture.xml:8877
12234 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> For an excellent summary, see the "
12235 "report prepared by GartnerG2 and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society "
12236 "at Harvard Law School, <quote>Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster "
12237 "World,</quote> 27 June 2003, available at <ulink "
12238 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #33</ulink>. Reps. John Conyers "
12239 "Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard L. Berman (D-Calif.) have introduced a bill that "
12240 "would treat unauthorized on-line copying as a felony offense with "
12241 "punishments ranging as high as five years imprisonment; see Jon Healey, "
12242 "<quote>House Bill Aims to Up Stakes on Piracy,</quote> <citetitle>Los "
12243 "Angeles Times</citetitle>, 17 July 2003, available at <ulink "
12244 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #34</ulink>. Civil penalties are "
12245 "currently set at $150,000 per copied song. For a recent (and unsuccessful) "
12246 "legal challenge to the RIAA's demand that an ISP reveal the identity of a "
12247 "user accused of sharing more than 600 songs through a family computer, see "
12248 "<citetitle>RIAA</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Verizon Internet Services (In "
12249 "re. Verizon Internet Services)</citetitle>, 240 F. Supp. 2d 24 "
12250 "(D.D.C. 2003). Such a user could face liability ranging as high as $90 "
12251 "million. Such astronomical figures furnish the RIAA with a powerful arsenal "
12252 "in its prosecution of file sharers. Settlements ranging from $12,000 to "
12253 "$17,500 for four students accused of heavy file sharing on university "
12254 "networks must have seemed a mere pittance next to the $98 billion the RIAA "
12255 "could seek should the matter proceed to court. See Elizabeth Young, "
12256 "<quote>Downloading Could Lead to Fines,</quote> redandblack.com, August "
12257 "2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
12258 "#35</ulink>. For an example of the RIAA's targeting of student file sharing, "
12259 "and of the subpoenas issued to universities to reveal student file-sharer "
12260 "identities, see James Collins, <quote>RIAA Steps Up Bid to Force BC, MIT to "
12261 "Name Students,</quote> <citetitle>Boston Globe</citetitle>, 8 August 2003, "
12262 "D3, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
12263 "#36</ulink>. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder "
12264 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/>"
12267 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12268 #: freeculture.xml:8868
12270 "We could respond by simply pretending that it is not a chimera. We could, "
12271 "with the RIAA, decide that every act of file sharing should be a felony. We "
12272 "could prosecute families for millions of dollars in damages just because "
12273 "file sharing occurred on a family computer. And we can get universities to "
12274 "monitor all computer traffic to make sure that no computer is used to commit "
12275 "this crime. These responses might be extreme, but each of them has either "
12276 "been proposed or actually implemented.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
12280 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12281 #: freeculture.xml:8915
12283 "Alternatively, we could respond to file sharing the way many kids act as "
12284 "though we've responded. We could totally legalize it. Let there be no "
12285 "copyright liability, either civil or criminal, for making copyrighted "
12286 "content available on the Net. Make file sharing like gossip: regulated, if "
12287 "at all, by social norms but not by law."
12290 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12291 #: freeculture.xml:8922
12293 "Either response is possible. I think either would be a mistake. Rather than "
12294 "embrace one of these two extremes, we should embrace something that "
12295 "recognizes the truth in both. And while I end this book with a sketch of a "
12296 "system that does just that, my aim in the next chapter is to show just how "
12297 "awful it would be for us to adopt the zero-tolerance extreme. I believe "
12298 "<emphasis>either</emphasis> extreme would be worse than a reasonable "
12299 "alternative. But I believe the zero-tolerance solution would be the worse "
12300 "of the two extremes."
12304 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12305 #: freeculture.xml:8934
12307 "Yet zero tolerance is increasingly our government's policy. In the middle of "
12308 "the chaos that the Internet has created, an extraordinary land grab is "
12309 "occurring. The law and technology are being shifted to give content holders "
12310 "a kind of control over our culture that they have never had before. And in "
12311 "this extremism, many an opportunity for new innovation and new creativity "
12315 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12316 #: freeculture.xml:8942
12318 "I'm not talking about the opportunities for kids to <quote>steal</quote> "
12319 "music. My focus instead is the commercial and cultural innovation that this "
12320 "war will also kill. We have never seen the power to innovate spread so "
12321 "broadly among our citizens, and we have just begun to see the innovation "
12322 "that this power will unleash. Yet the Internet has already seen the passing "
12323 "of one cycle of innovation around technologies to distribute content. The "
12324 "law is responsible for this passing. As the vice president for global public "
12325 "policy at one of these new innovators, eMusic.com, put it when criticizing "
12326 "the DMCA's added protection for copyrighted material,"
12329 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
12330 #: freeculture.xml:8955
12332 "eMusic opposes music piracy. We are a distributor of copyrighted material, "
12333 "and we want to protect those rights."
12336 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
12337 #: freeculture.xml:8959
12339 "But building a technology fortress that locks in the clout of the major "
12340 "labels is by no means the only way to protect copyright interests, nor is it "
12341 "necessarily the best. It is simply too early to answer that question. Market "
12342 "forces operating naturally may very well produce a totally different "
12347 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
12348 #: freeculture.xml:8976
12350 "WIPO and the DMCA One Year Later: Assessing Consumer Access to Digital "
12351 "Entertainment on the Internet and Other Media: Hearing Before the "
12352 "Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection, House "
12353 "Committee on Commerce, 106th Cong. 29 (1999) (statement of Peter Harter, "
12354 "vice president, Global Public Policy and Standards, EMusic.com), available "
12355 "in LEXIS, Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony File."
12358 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
12359 #: freeculture.xml:8966
12361 "This is a critical point. The choices that industry sectors make with "
12362 "respect to these systems will in many ways directly shape the market for "
12363 "digital media and the manner in which digital media are distributed. This in "
12364 "turn will directly influence the options that are available to consumers, "
12365 "both in terms of the ease with which they will be able to access digital "
12366 "media and the equipment that they will require to do so. Poor choices made "
12367 "this early in the game will retard the growth of this market, hurting "
12368 "everyone's interests.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
12371 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12372 #: freeculture.xml:8990 freeculture.xml:9348
12373 msgid "Vivendi Universal"
12376 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12377 #: freeculture.xml:8987
12379 "In April 2001, eMusic.com was purchased by Vivendi Universal, one of "
12380 "<quote>the major labels.</quote> Its position on these matters has now "
12381 "changed. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
12384 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12385 #: freeculture.xml:8993
12387 "Reversing our tradition of tolerance now will not merely quash piracy. It "
12388 "will sacrifice values that are important to this culture, and will kill "
12389 "opportunities that could be extraordinarily valuable."
12392 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
12393 #: freeculture.xml:9001
12394 msgid "CHAPTER TWELVE: Harms"
12397 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12398 #: freeculture.xml:9003
12400 "<emphasis role='strong'>To fight</emphasis> <quote>piracy,</quote> to "
12401 "protect <quote>property,</quote> the content industry has launched a "
12402 "war. Lobbying and lots of campaign contributions have now brought the "
12403 "government into this war. As with any war, this one will have both direct "
12404 "and collateral damage. As with any war of prohibition, these damages will be "
12405 "suffered most by our own people."
12408 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12409 #: freeculture.xml:9011
12411 "My aim so far has been to describe the consequences of this war, in "
12412 "particular, the consequences for <quote>free culture.</quote> But my aim now "
12413 "is to extend this description of consequences into an argument. Is this war "
12417 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12418 #: freeculture.xml:9017
12420 "In my view, it is not. There is no good reason why this time, for the first "
12421 "time, the law should defend the old against the new, just when the power of "
12422 "the property called <quote>intellectual property</quote> is at its greatest "
12426 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12427 #: freeculture.xml:9025
12429 "Yet <quote>common sense</quote> does not see it this way. Common sense is "
12430 "still on the side of the Causbys and the content industry. The extreme "
12431 "claims of control in the name of property still resonate; the uncritical "
12432 "rejection of <quote>piracy</quote> still has play."
12436 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
12437 #: freeculture.xml:9033
12439 "There will be many consequences of continuing this war. I want to describe "
12440 "just three. All three might be said to be unintended. I am quite confident "
12441 "the third is unintended. I'm less sure about the first two. The first two "
12442 "protect modern RCAs, but there is no Howard Armstrong in the wings to fight "
12443 "today's monopolists of culture."
12446 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
12447 #: freeculture.xml:9040
12448 msgid "Constraining Creators"
12451 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12452 #: freeculture.xml:9042
12454 "In the next ten years we will see an explosion of digital technologies. "
12455 "These technologies will enable almost anyone to capture and share "
12456 "content. Capturing and sharing content, of course, is what humans have done "
12457 "since the dawn of man. It is how we learn and communicate. But capturing and "
12458 "sharing through digital technology is different. The fidelity and power are "
12459 "different. You could send an e-mail telling someone about a joke you saw on "
12460 "Comedy Central, or you could send the clip. You could write an essay about "
12461 "the inconsistencies in the arguments of the politician you most love to "
12462 "hate, or you could make a short film that puts statement against "
12463 "statement. You could write a poem to express your love, or you could weave "
12464 "together a string—a mash-up— of songs from your favorite artists "
12465 "in a collage and make it available on the Net."
12468 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12469 #: freeculture.xml:9057
12471 "This digital <quote>capturing and sharing</quote> is in part an extension of "
12472 "the capturing and sharing that has always been integral to our culture, and "
12473 "in part it is something new. It is continuous with the Kodak, but it "
12474 "explodes the boundaries of Kodak-like technologies. The technology of "
12475 "digital <quote>capturing and sharing</quote> promises a world of "
12476 "extraordinarily diverse creativity that can be easily and broadly "
12477 "shared. And as that creativity is applied to democracy, it will enable a "
12478 "broad range of citizens to use technology to express and criticize and "
12479 "contribute to the culture all around."
12483 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12484 #: freeculture.xml:9068
12486 "Technology has thus given us an opportunity to do something with culture "
12487 "that has only ever been possible for individuals in small groups, isolated "
12488 "from others. Think about an old man telling a story to a collection of "
12489 "neighbors in a small town. Now imagine that same storytelling extended "
12490 "across the globe."
12493 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12494 #: freeculture.xml:9078
12496 "Yet all this is possible only if the activity is presumptively legal. In the "
12497 "current regime of legal regulation, it is not. Forget file sharing for a "
12498 "moment. Think about your favorite amazing sites on the Net. Web sites that "
12499 "offer plot summaries from forgotten television shows; sites that catalog "
12500 "cartoons from the 1960s; sites that mix images and sound to criticize "
12501 "politicians or businesses; sites that gather newspaper articles on remote "
12502 "topics of science or culture. There is a vast amount of creative work spread "
12503 "across the Internet. But as the law is currently crafted, this work is "
12504 "presumptively illegal."
12507 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12508 #: freeculture.xml:9088 freeculture.xml:9107
12512 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
12513 #: freeculture.xml:9102
12515 "See Lynne W. Jeter, <citetitle>Disconnected: Deceit and Betrayal at "
12516 "WorldCom</citetitle> (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, 2003), 176, 204; "
12517 "for details of the settlement, see MCI press release, <quote>MCI Wins "
12518 "U.S. District Court Approval for SEC Settlement</quote> (7 July 2003), "
12519 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #37</ulink>. "
12520 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
12523 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12524 #: freeculture.xml:9123
12525 msgid "Bush, George W."
12528 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
12529 #: freeculture.xml:9114
12531 "The bill, modeled after California's tort reform model, was passed in the "
12532 "House of Representatives but defeated in a Senate vote in July 2003. For an "
12533 "overview, see Tanya Albert, <quote>Measure Stalls in Senate: `We'll Be "
12534 "Back,' Say Tort Reformers,</quote> amednews.com, 28 July 2003, available at "
12535 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #38</ulink>, and "
12536 "<quote>Senate Turns Back Malpractice Caps,</quote> CBSNews.com, 9 July 2003, "
12537 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
12538 "#39</ulink>. President Bush has continued to urge tort reform in recent "
12539 "months. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
12542 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12543 #: freeculture.xml:9090
12545 "That presumption will increasingly chill creativity, as the examples of "
12546 "extreme penalties for vague infringements continue to proliferate. It is "
12547 "impossible to get a clear sense of what's allowed and what's not, and at the "
12548 "same time, the penalties for crossing the line are astonishingly harsh. The "
12549 "four students who were threatened by the RIAA ( Jesse Jordan of chapter 3 "
12550 "was just one) were threatened with a $98 billion lawsuit for building search "
12551 "engines that permitted songs to be copied. Yet World-Com—which "
12552 "defrauded investors of $11 billion, resulting in a loss to investors in "
12553 "market capitalization of over $200 billion—received a fine of a mere "
12554 "$750 million.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And under legislation "
12555 "being pushed in Congress right now, a doctor who negligently removes the "
12556 "wrong leg in an operation would be liable for no more than $250,000 in "
12557 "damages for pain and suffering.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> Can "
12558 "common sense recognize the absurdity in a world where the maximum fine for "
12559 "downloading two songs off the Internet is more than the fine for a doctor's "
12560 "negligently butchering a patient?"
12563 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12564 #: freeculture.xml:9129
12565 msgid "art, underground"
12569 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
12570 #: freeculture.xml:9150
12572 "See Danit Lidor, <quote>Artists Just Wanna Be Free,</quote> "
12573 "<citetitle>Wired</citetitle>, 7 July 2003, available at <ulink "
12574 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #40</ulink>. For an overview of "
12575 "the exhibition, see <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
12579 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12580 #: freeculture.xml:9131
12582 "The consequence of this legal uncertainty, tied to these extremely high "
12583 "penalties, is that an extraordinary amount of creativity will either never "
12584 "be exercised, or never be exercised in the open. We drive this creative "
12585 "process underground by branding the modern-day Walt Disneys "
12586 "<quote>pirates.</quote> We make it impossible for businesses to rely upon a "
12587 "public domain, because the boundaries of the public domain are designed to "
12588 "be unclear. It never pays to do anything except pay for the right to create, "
12589 "and hence only those who can pay are allowed to create. As was the case in "
12590 "the Soviet Union, though for very different reasons, we will begin to see a "
12591 "world of underground art—not because the message is necessarily "
12592 "political, or because the subject is controversial, but because the very act "
12593 "of creating the art is legally fraught. Already, exhibits of <quote>illegal "
12594 "art</quote> tour the United States.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
12595 "In what does their <quote>illegality</quote> consist? In the act of mixing "
12596 "the culture around us with an expression that is critical or reflective."
12599 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12600 #: freeculture.xml:9161
12602 "Part of the reason for this fear of illegality has to do with the changing "
12603 "law. I described that change in detail in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: "
12604 "labelnumber\" linkend=\"property-i\"/>. But an even bigger part has to do "
12605 "with the increasing ease with which infractions can be tracked. As users of "
12606 "file-sharing systems discovered in 2002, it is a trivial matter for "
12607 "copyright owners to get courts to order Internet service providers to reveal "
12608 "who has what content. It is as if your cassette tape player transmitted a "
12609 "list of the songs that you played in the privacy of your own home that "
12610 "anyone could tune into for whatever reason they chose."
12613 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12614 #: freeculture.xml:9174
12616 "Never in our history has a painter had to worry about whether his painting "
12617 "infringed on someone else's work; but the modern-day painter, using the "
12618 "tools of Photoshop, sharing content on the Web, must worry all the "
12619 "time. Images are all around, but the only safe images to use in the act of "
12620 "creation are those purchased from Corbis or another image farm. And in "
12621 "purchasing, censoring happens. There is a free market in pencils; we needn't "
12622 "worry about its effect on creativity. But there is a highly regulated, "
12623 "monopolized market in cultural icons; the right to cultivate and transform "
12624 "them is not similarly free."
12627 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12628 #: freeculture.xml:9185
12630 "Lawyers rarely see this because lawyers are rarely empirical. As I described "
12631 "in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"recorders\"/>, "
12632 "in response to the story about documentary filmmaker Jon Else, I have been "
12633 "lectured again and again by lawyers who insist Else's use was fair use, and "
12634 "hence I am wrong to say that the law regulates such a use."
12638 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12639 #: freeculture.xml:9196
12641 "But fair use in America simply means the right to hire a lawyer to defend "
12642 "your right to create. And as lawyers love to forget, our system for "
12643 "defending rights such as fair use is astonishingly bad—in practically "
12644 "every context, but especially here. It costs too much, it delivers too "
12645 "slowly, and what it delivers often has little connection to the justice "
12646 "underlying the claim. The legal system may be tolerable for the very rich. "
12647 "For everyone else, it is an embarrassment to a tradition that prides itself "
12648 "on the rule of law."
12651 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12652 #: freeculture.xml:9206
12654 "Judges and lawyers can tell themselves that fair use provides adequate "
12655 "<quote>breathing room</quote> between regulation by the law and the access "
12656 "the law should allow. But it is a measure of how out of touch our legal "
12657 "system has become that anyone actually believes this. The rules that "
12658 "publishers impose upon writers, the rules that film distributors impose upon "
12659 "filmmakers, the rules that newspapers impose upon journalists— these "
12660 "are the real laws governing creativity. And these rules have little "
12661 "relationship to the <quote>law</quote> with which judges comfort themselves."
12664 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12665 #: freeculture.xml:9217
12667 "For in a world that threatens $150,000 for a single willful infringement of "
12668 "a copyright, and which demands tens of thousands of dollars to even defend "
12669 "against a copyright infringement claim, and which would never return to the "
12670 "wrongfully accused defendant anything of the costs she suffered to defend "
12671 "her right to speak—in that world, the astonishingly broad regulations "
12672 "that pass under the name <quote>copyright</quote> silence speech and "
12673 "creativity. And in that world, it takes a studied blindness for people to "
12674 "continue to believe they live in a culture that is free."
12677 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12678 #: freeculture.xml:9228
12679 msgid "As Jed Horovitz, the businessman behind Video Pipeline, said to me,"
12683 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
12684 #: freeculture.xml:9232
12686 "We're losing [creative] opportunities right and left. Creative people are "
12687 "being forced not to express themselves. Thoughts are not being "
12688 "expressed. And while a lot of stuff may [still] be created, it still won't "
12689 "get distributed. Even if the stuff gets made … you're not going to "
12690 "get it distributed in the mainstream media unless you've got a little note "
12691 "from a lawyer saying, <quote>This has been cleared.</quote> You're not even "
12692 "going to get it on PBS without that kind of permission. That's the point at "
12693 "which they control it."
12696 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
12697 #: freeculture.xml:9245
12698 msgid "Constraining Innovators"
12701 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12702 #: freeculture.xml:9247
12704 "The story of the last section was a crunchy-lefty story—creativity "
12705 "quashed, artists who can't speak, yada yada yada. Maybe that doesn't get you "
12706 "going. Maybe you think there's enough weird art out there, and enough "
12707 "expression that is critical of what seems to be just about everything. And "
12708 "if you think that, you might think there's little in this story to worry "
12712 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12713 #: freeculture.xml:9255
12715 "But there's an aspect of this story that is not lefty in any sense. Indeed, "
12716 "it is an aspect that could be written by the most extreme promarket "
12717 "ideologue. And if you're one of these sorts (and a special one at that, 188 "
12718 "pages into a book like this), then you can see this other aspect by "
12719 "substituting <quote>free market</quote> every place I've spoken of "
12720 "<quote>free culture.</quote> The point is the same, even if the interests "
12721 "affecting culture are more fundamental."
12724 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12725 #: freeculture.xml:9265
12727 "The charge I've been making about the regulation of culture is the same "
12728 "charge free marketers make about regulating markets. Everyone, of course, "
12729 "concedes that some regulation of markets is necessary—at a minimum, we "
12730 "need rules of property and contract, and courts to enforce both. Likewise, "
12731 "in this culture debate, everyone concedes that at least some framework of "
12732 "copyright is also required. But both perspectives vehemently insist that "
12733 "just because some regulation is good, it doesn't follow that more regulation "
12734 "is better. And both perspectives are constantly attuned to the ways in which "
12735 "regulation simply enables the powerful industries of today to protect "
12736 "themselves against the competitors of tomorrow."
12739 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12740 #: freeculture.xml:9277 freeculture.xml:9385
12741 msgid "Barry, Hank"
12745 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12746 #: freeculture.xml:9279
12748 "This is the single most dramatic effect of the shift in regulatory strategy "
12749 "that I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
12750 "linkend=\"property-i\"/>. The consequence of this massive threat of "
12751 "liability tied to the murky boundaries of copyright law is that innovators "
12752 "who want to innovate in this space can safely innovate only if they have the "
12753 "sign-off from last generation's dominant industries. That lesson has been "
12754 "taught through a series of cases that were designed and executed to teach "
12755 "venture capitalists a lesson. That lesson—what former Napster CEO Hank "
12756 "Barry calls a <quote>nuclear pall</quote> that has fallen over the "
12757 "Valley—has been learned."
12760 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12761 #: freeculture.xml:9292
12763 "Consider one example to make the point, a story whose beginning I told in "
12764 "<citetitle>The Future of Ideas</citetitle> and which has progressed in a way "
12765 "that even I (pessimist extraordinaire) would never have predicted."
12768 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12769 #: freeculture.xml:9296
12770 msgid "Roberts, Michael"
12773 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12774 #: freeculture.xml:9298
12776 "In 1997, Michael Roberts launched a company called MP3.com. MP3.com was "
12777 "keen to remake the music business. Their goal was not just to facilitate new "
12778 "ways to get access to content. Their goal was also to facilitate new ways to "
12779 "create content. Unlike the major labels, MP3.com offered creators a venue to "
12780 "distribute their creativity, without demanding an exclusive engagement from "
12784 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
12785 #: freeculture.xml:9306
12786 msgid "preference data on"
12789 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12790 #: freeculture.xml:9308
12792 "To make this system work, however, MP3.com needed a reliable way to "
12793 "recommend music to its users. The idea behind this alternative was to "
12794 "leverage the revealed preferences of music listeners to recommend new "
12795 "artists. If you like Lyle Lovett, you're likely to enjoy Bonnie Raitt. And "
12799 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12800 #: freeculture.xml:9315
12802 "This idea required a simple way to gather data about user preferences. "
12803 "MP3.com came up with an extraordinarily clever way to gather this preference "
12804 "data. In January 2000, the company launched a service called "
12805 "my.mp3.com. Using software provided by MP3.com, a user would sign into an "
12806 "account and then insert into her computer a CD. The software would identify "
12807 "the CD, and then give the user access to that content. So, for example, if "
12808 "you inserted a CD by Jill Sobule, then wherever you were—at work or at "
12809 "home—you could get access to that music once you signed into your "
12810 "account. The system was therefore a kind of music-lockbox."
12814 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12815 #: freeculture.xml:9327
12817 "No doubt some could use this system to illegally copy content. But that "
12818 "opportunity existed with or without MP3.com. The aim of the my.mp3.com "
12819 "service was to give users access to their own content, and as a by-product, "
12820 "by seeing the content they already owned, to discover the kind of content "
12824 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12825 #: freeculture.xml:9337
12827 "To make this system function, however, MP3.com needed to copy 50,000 CDs to "
12828 "a server. (In principle, it could have been the user who uploaded the music, "
12829 "but that would have taken a great deal of time, and would have produced a "
12830 "product of questionable quality.) It therefore purchased 50,000 CDs from a "
12831 "store, and started the process of making copies of those CDs. Again, it "
12832 "would not serve the content from those copies to anyone except those who "
12833 "authenticated that they had a copy of the CD they wanted to access. So while "
12834 "this was 50,000 copies, it was 50,000 copies directed at giving customers "
12835 "something they had already bought."
12838 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12839 #: freeculture.xml:9350
12841 "Nine days after MP3.com launched its service, the five major labels, headed "
12842 "by the RIAA, brought a lawsuit against MP3.com. MP3.com settled with four of "
12843 "the five. Nine months later, a federal judge found MP3.com to have been "
12844 "guilty of willful infringement with respect to the fifth. Applying the law "
12845 "as it is, the judge imposed a fine against MP3.com of $118 million. MP3.com "
12846 "then settled with the remaining plaintiff, Vivendi Universal, paying over "
12847 "$54 million. Vivendi purchased MP3.com just about a year later."
12850 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12851 #: freeculture.xml:9360
12852 msgid "That part of the story I have told before. Now consider its conclusion."
12855 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12856 #: freeculture.xml:9363
12858 "After Vivendi purchased MP3.com, Vivendi turned around and filed a "
12859 "malpractice lawsuit against the lawyers who had advised it that they had a "
12860 "good faith claim that the service they wanted to offer would be considered "
12861 "legal under copyright law. This lawsuit alleged that it should have been "
12862 "obvious that the courts would find this behavior illegal; therefore, this "
12863 "lawsuit sought to punish any lawyer who had dared to suggest that the law "
12864 "was less restrictive than the labels demanded."
12868 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12869 #: freeculture.xml:9373
12871 "The clear purpose of this lawsuit (which was settled for an unspecified "
12872 "amount shortly after the story was no longer covered in the press) was to "
12873 "send an unequivocal message to lawyers advising clients in this space: It is "
12874 "not just your clients who might suffer if the content industry directs its "
12875 "guns against them. It is also you. So those of you who believe the law "
12876 "should be less restrictive should realize that such a view of the law will "
12877 "cost you and your firm dearly."
12880 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12881 #: freeculture.xml:9384
12882 msgid "Hummer, John"
12885 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
12886 #: freeculture.xml:9386
12887 msgid "Hummer Winblad"
12891 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
12892 #: freeculture.xml:9396
12894 "See Joseph Menn, <quote>Universal, EMI Sue Napster Investor,</quote> "
12895 "<citetitle>Los Angeles Times</citetitle>, 23 April 2003. For a parallel "
12896 "argument about the effects on innovation in the distribution of music, see "
12897 "Janelle Brown, <quote>The Music Revolution Will Not Be Digitized,</quote> "
12898 "Salon.com, 1 June 2001, available at <ulink "
12899 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #42</ulink>. See also Jon "
12900 "Healey, <quote>Online Music Services Besieged,</quote> <citetitle>Los "
12901 "Angeles Times</citetitle>, 28 May 2001."
12904 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12905 #: freeculture.xml:9390
12907 "This strategy is not just limited to the lawyers. In April 2003, Universal "
12908 "and EMI brought a lawsuit against Hummer Winblad, the venture capital firm "
12909 "(VC) that had funded Napster at a certain stage of its development, its "
12910 "cofounder ( John Hummer), and general partner (Hank Barry).<placeholder "
12911 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The claim here, as well, was that the VC should "
12912 "have recognized the right of the content industry to control how the "
12913 "industry should develop. They should be held personally liable for funding a "
12914 "company whose business turned out to be beyond the law. Here again, the aim "
12915 "of the lawsuit is transparent: Any VC now recognizes that if you fund a "
12916 "company whose business is not approved of by the dinosaurs, you are at risk "
12917 "not just in the marketplace, but in the courtroom as well. Your investment "
12918 "buys you not only a company, it also buys you a lawsuit. So extreme has the "
12919 "environment become that even car manufacturers are afraid of technologies "
12920 "that touch content. In an article in <citetitle>Business 2.0</citetitle>, "
12921 "Rafe Needleman describes a discussion with BMW:"
12924 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
12925 #: freeculture.xml:9418
12929 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><indexterm><primary>
12930 #: freeculture.xml:9419
12931 msgid "cars, MP3 sound system in"
12934 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
12935 #: freeculture.xml:9434
12936 msgid "Needleman, Rafe"
12939 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
12940 #: freeculture.xml:9430
12942 "Rafe Needleman, <quote>Driving in Cars with MP3s,</quote> "
12943 "<citetitle>Business 2.0</citetitle>, 16 June 2003, available at <ulink "
12944 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #43</ulink>. I am grateful to "
12945 "Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli for this example. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
12949 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
12950 #: freeculture.xml:9421
12952 "I asked why, with all the storage capacity and computer power in the car, "
12953 "there was no way to play MP3 files. I was told that BMW engineers in Germany "
12954 "had rigged a new vehicle to play MP3s via the car's built-in sound system, "
12955 "but that the company's marketing and legal departments weren't comfortable "
12956 "with pushing this forward for release stateside. Even today, no new cars are "
12957 "sold in the United States with bona fide MP3 players. … <placeholder "
12958 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
12961 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12962 #: freeculture.xml:9439
12964 "This is the world of the mafia—filled with <quote>your money or your "
12965 "life</quote> offers, governed in the end not by courts but by the threats "
12966 "that the law empowers copyright holders to exercise. It is a system that "
12967 "will obviously and necessarily stifle new innovation. It is hard enough to "
12968 "start a company. It is impossibly hard if that company is constantly "
12969 "threatened by litigation."
12973 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12974 #: freeculture.xml:9449
12976 "The point is not that businesses should have a right to start illegal "
12977 "enterprises. The point is the definition of <quote>illegal.</quote> The law "
12978 "is a mess of uncertainty. We have no good way to know how it should apply to "
12979 "new technologies. Yet by reversing our tradition of judicial deference, and "
12980 "by embracing the astonishingly high penalties that copyright law imposes, "
12981 "that uncertainty now yields a reality which is far more conservative than is "
12982 "right. If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not "
12983 "only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving. The same "
12984 "principle applies to innovation. If innovation is constantly checked by this "
12985 "uncertain and unlimited liability, we will have much less vibrant innovation "
12986 "and much less creativity."
12989 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
12990 #: freeculture.xml:9464
12992 "The point is directly parallel to the crunchy-lefty point about fair "
12993 "use. Whatever the <quote>real</quote> law is, realism about the effect of "
12994 "law in both contexts is the same. This wildly punitive system of regulation "
12995 "will systematically stifle creativity and innovation. It will protect some "
12996 "industries and some creators, but it will harm industry and creativity "
12997 "generally. Free market and free culture depend upon vibrant competition. "
12998 "Yet the effect of the law today is to stifle just this kind of competition. "
12999 "The effect is to produce an overregulated culture, just as the effect of too "
13000 "much control in the market is to produce an overregulatedregulated market."
13004 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13005 #: freeculture.xml:9476
13007 "The building of a permission culture, rather than a free culture, is the "
13008 "first important way in which the changes I have described will burden "
13009 "innovation. A permission culture means a lawyer's culture—a culture in "
13010 "which the ability to create requires a call to your lawyer. Again, I am not "
13011 "antilawyer, at least when they're kept in their proper place. I am certainly "
13012 "not antilaw. But our profession has lost the sense of its limits. And "
13013 "leaders in our profession have lost an appreciation of the high costs that "
13014 "our profession imposes upon others. The inefficiency of the law is an "
13015 "embarrassment to our tradition. And while I believe our profession should "
13016 "therefore do everything it can to make the law more efficient, it should at "
13017 "least do everything it can to limit the reach of the law where the law is "
13018 "not doing any good. The transaction costs buried within a permission culture "
13019 "are enough to bury a wide range of creativity. Someone needs to do a lot of "
13020 "justifying to justify that result."
13023 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13024 #: freeculture.xml:9495
13026 "<emphasis role='strong'>The uncertainty</emphasis> of the law is one burden "
13027 "on innovation. There is a second burden that operates more directly. This is "
13028 "the effort by many in the content industry to use the law to directly "
13029 "regulate the technology of the Internet so that it better protects their "
13033 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13034 #: freeculture.xml:9502
13036 "The motivation for this response is obvious. The Internet enables the "
13037 "efficient spread of content. That efficiency is a feature of the Internet's "
13038 "design. But from the perspective of the content industry, this feature is a "
13039 "<quote>bug.</quote> The efficient spread of content means that content "
13040 "distributors have a harder time controlling the distribution of content. "
13041 "One obvious response to this efficiency is thus to make the Internet less "
13042 "efficient. If the Internet enables <quote>piracy,</quote> then, this "
13043 "response says, we should break the kneecaps of the Internet."
13047 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13048 #: freeculture.xml:9517
13050 "<quote>Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World,</quote> "
13051 "GartnerG2 and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law "
13052 "School (2003), 33–35, available at <ulink "
13053 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #44</ulink>."
13057 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13058 #: freeculture.xml:9530
13059 msgid "GartnerG2, 26–27."
13062 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13063 #: freeculture.xml:9513
13065 "The examples of this form of legislation are many. At the urging of the "
13066 "content industry, some in Congress have threatened legislation that would "
13067 "require computers to determine whether the content they access is protected "
13068 "or not, and to disable the spread of protected content.<placeholder "
13069 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Congress has already launched proceedings to "
13070 "explore a mandatory <quote>broadcast flag</quote> that would be required on "
13071 "any device capable of transmitting digital video (i.e., a computer), and "
13072 "that would disable the copying of any content that is marked with a "
13073 "broadcast flag. Other members of Congress have proposed immunizing content "
13074 "providers from liability for technology they might deploy that would hunt "
13075 "down copyright violators and disable their machines.<placeholder "
13076 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
13080 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13081 #: freeculture.xml:9534
13083 "In one sense, these solutions seem sensible. If the problem is the code, why "
13084 "not regulate the code to remove the problem. But any regulation of technical "
13085 "infrastructure will always be tuned to the particular technology of the "
13086 "day. It will impose significant burdens and costs on the technology, but "
13087 "will likely be eclipsed by advances around exactly those requirements."
13090 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
13091 #: freeculture.xml:9543 freeculture.xml:11381
13096 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13097 #: freeculture.xml:9549
13099 "See David McGuire, <quote>Tech Execs Square Off Over Piracy,</quote> "
13100 "Newsbytes, February 2002 (Entertainment)."
13103 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13104 #: freeculture.xml:9545
13106 "In March 2002, a broad coalition of technology companies, led by Intel, "
13107 "tried to get Congress to see the harm that such legislation would "
13108 "impose.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Their argument was "
13109 "obviously not that copyright should not be protected. Instead, they argued, "
13110 "any protection should not do more harm than good."
13113 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13114 #: freeculture.xml:9557
13116 "<emphasis role='strong'>There is one</emphasis> more obvious way in which "
13117 "this war has harmed innovation—again, a story that will be quite "
13118 "familiar to the free market crowd."
13121 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13122 #: freeculture.xml:9562
13124 "Copyright may be property, but like all property, it is also a form of "
13125 "regulation. It is a regulation that benefits some and harms others. When "
13126 "done right, it benefits creators and harms leeches. When done wrong, it is "
13127 "regulation the powerful use to defeat competitors."
13130 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13131 #: freeculture.xml:9576
13133 "Jessica Litman, <citetitle>Digital Copyright</citetitle> (Amherst, N.Y.: "
13134 "Prometheus Books, 2001). <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
13137 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13138 #: freeculture.xml:9570
13140 "As I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
13141 "linkend=\"property-i\"/>, despite this feature of copyright as regulation, "
13142 "and subject to important qualifications outlined by Jessica Litman in her "
13143 "book <citetitle>Digital Copyright</citetitle>,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
13144 "id=\"0\"/> overall this history of copyright is not bad. As chapter 10 "
13145 "details, when new technologies have come along, Congress has struck a "
13146 "balance to assure that the new is protected from the old. Compulsory, or "
13147 "statutory, licenses have been one part of that strategy. Free use (as in the "
13148 "case of the VCR) has been another."
13151 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13152 #: freeculture.xml:9587
13154 "But that pattern of deference to new technologies has now changed with the "
13155 "rise of the Internet. Rather than striking a balance between the claims of a "
13156 "new technology and the legitimate rights of content creators, both the "
13157 "courts and Congress have imposed legal restrictions that will have the "
13158 "effect of smothering the new to benefit the old."
13161 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
13162 #: freeculture.xml:9596
13163 msgid "Grokster, Ltd."
13166 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13167 #: freeculture.xml:9596
13169 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> The only circuit court exception "
13170 "is found in <citetitle>Recording Industry Association of America "
13171 "(RIAA)</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Diamond Multimedia Systems</citetitle>, 180 "
13172 "F. 3d 1072 (9th Cir. 1999). There the court of appeals for the Ninth Circuit "
13173 "reasoned that makers of a portable MP3 player were not liable for "
13174 "contributory copyright infringement for a device that is unable to record or "
13175 "redistribute music (a device whose only copying function is to render "
13176 "portable a music file already stored on a user's hard drive). At the "
13177 "district court level, the only exception is found in "
13178 "<citetitle>Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, "
13179 "Inc</citetitle>. v. <citetitle>Grokster, Ltd</citetitle>., 259 F. Supp. 2d "
13180 "1029 (C.D. Cal., 2003), where the court found the link between the "
13181 "distributor and any given user's conduct too attenuated to make the "
13182 "distributor liable for contributory or vicarious infringement liability."
13185 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
13186 #: freeculture.xml:9615
13187 msgid "Tauzin, Billy"
13190 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
13191 #: freeculture.xml:9631
13192 msgid "Hollings, Fritz"
13195 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13196 #: freeculture.xml:9615
13198 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> For example, in July 2002, "
13199 "Representative Howard Berman introduced the Peer-to-Peer Piracy Prevention "
13200 "Act (H.R. 5211), which would immunize copyright holders from liability for "
13201 "damage done to computers when the copyright holders use technology to stop "
13202 "copyright infringement. In August 2002, Representative Billy Tauzin "
13203 "introduced a bill to mandate that technologies capable of rebroadcasting "
13204 "digital copies of films broadcast on TV (i.e., computers) respect a "
13205 "<quote>broadcast flag</quote> that would disable copying of that "
13206 "content. And in March of the same year, Senator Fritz Hollings introduced "
13207 "the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act, which mandated "
13208 "copyright protection technology in all digital media devices. See GartnerG2, "
13209 "<quote>Copyright and Digital Media in a Post-Napster World,</quote> 27 June "
13210 "2003, 33–34, available at <ulink "
13211 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #44</ulink>. <placeholder "
13212 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"2\"/> "
13213 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/>"
13216 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13217 #: freeculture.xml:9594
13219 "The response by the courts has been fairly universal.<placeholder "
13220 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> It has been mirrored in the responses "
13221 "threatened and actually implemented by Congress. I won't catalog all of "
13222 "those responses here.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> But there is "
13223 "one example that captures the flavor of them all. This is the story of the "
13224 "demise of Internet radio."
13228 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13229 #: freeculture.xml:9642
13231 "As I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
13232 "linkend=\"pirates\"/>, when a radio station plays a song, the recording "
13233 "artist doesn't get paid for that <quote>radio performance</quote> unless he "
13234 "or she is also the composer. So, for example if Marilyn Monroe had recorded "
13235 "a version of <quote>Happy Birthday</quote>—to memorialize her famous "
13236 "performance before President Kennedy at Madison Square Garden— then "
13237 "whenever that recording was played on the radio, the current copyright "
13238 "owners of <quote>Happy Birthday</quote> would get some money, whereas "
13239 "Marilyn Monroe would not."
13242 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13243 #: freeculture.xml:9653
13245 "The reasoning behind this balance struck by Congress makes some sense. The "
13246 "justification was that radio was a kind of advertising. The recording artist "
13247 "thus benefited because by playing her music, the radio station was making it "
13248 "more likely that her records would be purchased. Thus, the recording artist "
13249 "got something, even if only indirectly. Probably this reasoning had less to "
13250 "do with the result than with the power of radio stations: Their lobbyists "
13251 "were quite good at stopping any efforts to get Congress to require "
13252 "compensation to the recording artists."
13255 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13256 #: freeculture.xml:9664
13258 "Enter Internet radio. Like regular radio, Internet radio is a technology to "
13259 "stream content from a broadcaster to a listener. The broadcast travels "
13260 "across the Internet, not across the ether of radio spectrum. Thus, I can "
13261 "<quote>tune in</quote> to an Internet radio station in Berlin while sitting "
13262 "in San Francisco, even though there's no way for me to tune in to a regular "
13263 "radio station much beyond the San Francisco metropolitan area."
13266 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13267 #: freeculture.xml:9673
13269 "This feature of the architecture of Internet radio means that there are "
13270 "potentially an unlimited number of radio stations that a user could tune in "
13271 "to using her computer, whereas under the existing architecture for broadcast "
13272 "radio, there is an obvious limit to the number of broadcasters and clear "
13273 "broadcast frequencies. Internet radio could therefore be more competitive "
13274 "than regular radio; it could provide a wider range of selections. And "
13275 "because the potential audience for Internet radio is the whole world, niche "
13276 "stations could easily develop and market their content to a relatively large "
13277 "number of users worldwide. According to some estimates, more than eighty "
13278 "million users worldwide have tuned in to this new form of radio."
13282 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13283 #: freeculture.xml:9689
13285 "Internet radio is thus to radio what FM was to AM. It is an improvement "
13286 "potentially vastly more significant than the FM improvement over AM, since "
13287 "not only is the technology better, so, too, is the competition. Indeed, "
13288 "there is a direct parallel between the fight to establish FM radio and the "
13289 "fight to protect Internet radio. As one author describes Howard Armstrong's "
13290 "struggle to enable FM radio,"
13294 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
13295 #: freeculture.xml:9713
13296 msgid "Lessing, 239."
13299 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
13300 #: freeculture.xml:9699
13302 "An almost unlimited number of FM stations was possible in the shortwaves, "
13303 "thus ending the unnatural restrictions imposed on radio in the crowded "
13304 "longwaves. If FM were freely developed, the number of stations would be "
13305 "limited only by economics and competition rather than by technical "
13306 "restrictions. … Armstrong likened the situation that had grown up in "
13307 "radio to that following the invention of the printing press, when "
13308 "governments and ruling interests attempted to control this new instrument of "
13309 "mass communications by imposing restrictive licenses on it. This tyranny was "
13310 "broken only when it became possible for men freely to acquire printing "
13311 "presses and freely to run them. FM in this sense was as great an invention "
13312 "as the printing presses, for it gave radio the opportunity to strike off its "
13313 "shackles.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
13317 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13318 #: freeculture.xml:9723
13319 msgid "Ibid., 229."
13322 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13323 #: freeculture.xml:9718
13325 "This potential for FM radio was never realized—not because Armstrong "
13326 "was wrong about the technology, but because he underestimated the power of "
13327 "<quote>vested interests, habits, customs and legislation</quote><placeholder "
13328 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> to retard the growth of this competing "
13332 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13333 #: freeculture.xml:9728
13335 "Now the very same claim could be made about Internet radio. For again, there "
13336 "is no technical limitation that could restrict the number of Internet radio "
13337 "stations. The only restrictions on Internet radio are those imposed by the "
13338 "law. Copyright law is one such law. So the first question we should ask is, "
13339 "what copyright rules would govern Internet radio?"
13343 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13344 #: freeculture.xml:9737
13346 "But here the power of the lobbyists is reversed. Internet radio is a new "
13347 "industry. The recording artists, on the other hand, have a very powerful "
13348 "lobby, the RIAA. Thus when Congress considered the phenomenon of Internet "
13349 "radio in 1995, the lobbyists had primed Congress to adopt a different rule "
13350 "for Internet radio than the rule that applies to terrestrial radio. While "
13351 "terrestrial radio does not have to pay our hypothetical Marilyn Monroe when "
13352 "it plays her hypothetical recording of <quote>Happy Birthday</quote> on the "
13353 "air, <emphasis>Internet radio does</emphasis>. Not only is the law not "
13354 "neutral toward Internet radio—the law actually burdens Internet radio "
13355 "more than it burdens terrestrial radio."
13358 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
13359 #: freeculture.xml:9776
13360 msgid "CARP (Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel)"
13363 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13364 #: freeculture.xml:9759
13366 "This example was derived from fees set by the original Copyright Arbitration "
13367 "Royalty Panel (CARP) proceedings, and is drawn from an example offered by "
13368 "Professor William Fisher. Conference Proceedings, iLaw (Stanford), 3 July "
13369 "2003, on file with author. Professors Fisher and Zittrain submitted "
13370 "testimony in the CARP proceeding that was ultimately rejected. See Jonathan "
13371 "Zittrain, Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings and Ephemeral "
13372 "Recordings, Docket No. 2000-9, CARP DTRA 1 and 2, available at <ulink "
13373 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #45</ulink>. For an excellent "
13374 "analysis making a similar point, see Randal C. Picker, <quote>Copyright as "
13375 "Entry Policy: The Case of Digital Distribution,</quote> <citetitle>Antitrust "
13376 "Bulletin</citetitle> (Summer/Fall 2002): 461: <quote>This was not confusion, "
13377 "these are just old-fashioned entry barriers. Analog radio stations are "
13378 "protected from digital entrants, reducing entry in radio and diversity. Yes, "
13379 "this is done in the name of getting royalties to copyright holders, but, "
13380 "absent the play of powerful interests, that could have been done in a "
13381 "media-neutral way.</quote> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> "
13382 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
13385 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13386 #: freeculture.xml:9752
13388 "This financial burden is not slight. As Harvard law professor William Fisher "
13389 "estimates, if an Internet radio station distributed adfree popular music to "
13390 "(on average) ten thousand listeners, twenty-four hours a day, the total "
13391 "artist fees that radio station would owe would be over $1 million a "
13392 "year.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> A regular radio station "
13393 "broadcasting the same content would pay no equivalent fee."
13396 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13397 #: freeculture.xml:9784
13399 "The burden is not financial only. Under the original rules that were "
13400 "proposed, an Internet radio station (but not a terrestrial radio station) "
13401 "would have to collect the following data from <emphasis>every listening "
13402 "transaction</emphasis>:"
13405 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13406 #: freeculture.xml:9792
13407 msgid "name of the service;"
13410 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13411 #: freeculture.xml:9795
13412 msgid "channel of the program (AM/FM stations use station ID);"
13415 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13416 #: freeculture.xml:9798
13417 msgid "type of program (archived/looped/live);"
13420 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13421 #: freeculture.xml:9801
13422 msgid "date of transmission;"
13425 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13426 #: freeculture.xml:9804
13427 msgid "time of transmission;"
13430 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13431 #: freeculture.xml:9807
13432 msgid "time zone of origination of transmission;"
13435 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13436 #: freeculture.xml:9810
13437 msgid "numeric designation of the place of the sound recording within the program;"
13440 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13441 #: freeculture.xml:9813
13442 msgid "duration of transmission (to nearest second);"
13445 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13446 #: freeculture.xml:9816
13447 msgid "sound recording title;"
13450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13451 #: freeculture.xml:9819
13452 msgid "ISRC code of the recording;"
13455 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13456 #: freeculture.xml:9822
13458 "release year of the album per copyright notice and in the case of "
13459 "compilation albums, the release year of the album and copy- right date of "
13463 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13464 #: freeculture.xml:9825
13465 msgid "featured recording artist;"
13468 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13469 #: freeculture.xml:9828
13470 msgid "retail album title;"
13473 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13474 #: freeculture.xml:9831
13475 msgid "recording label;"
13478 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13479 #: freeculture.xml:9834
13480 msgid "UPC code of the retail album;"
13483 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13484 #: freeculture.xml:9837
13485 msgid "catalog number;"
13488 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13489 #: freeculture.xml:9840
13490 msgid "copyright owner information;"
13493 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13494 #: freeculture.xml:9843
13495 msgid "musical genre of the channel or program (station format);"
13498 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13499 #: freeculture.xml:9846
13500 msgid "name of the service or entity;"
13503 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13504 #: freeculture.xml:9849
13505 msgid "channel or program;"
13508 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13509 #: freeculture.xml:9852
13510 msgid "date and time that the user logged in (in the user's time zone);"
13513 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13514 #: freeculture.xml:9855
13515 msgid "date and time that the user logged out (in the user's time zone);"
13518 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13519 #: freeculture.xml:9858
13520 msgid "time zone where the signal was received (user);"
13523 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13524 #: freeculture.xml:9861
13525 msgid "unique user identifier;"
13528 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
13529 #: freeculture.xml:9864
13530 msgid "the country in which the user received the transmissions."
13533 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13534 #: freeculture.xml:9869
13536 "The Librarian of Congress eventually suspended these reporting requirements, "
13537 "pending further study. And he also changed the original rates set by the "
13538 "arbitration panel charged with setting rates. But the basic difference "
13539 "between Internet radio and terrestrial radio remains: Internet radio has to "
13540 "pay a <emphasis>type of copyright fee</emphasis> that terrestrial radio does "
13544 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13545 #: freeculture.xml:9877
13547 "Why? What justifies this difference? Was there any study of the economic "
13548 "consequences from Internet radio that would justify these differences? Was "
13549 "the motive to protect artists against piracy?"
13552 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
13553 #: freeculture.xml:9881 freeculture.xml:14547
13554 msgid "Real Networks"
13557 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13558 #: freeculture.xml:9884
13560 "In a rare bit of candor, one RIAA expert admitted what seemed obvious to "
13561 "everyone at the time. As Alex Alben, vice president for Public Policy at "
13562 "Real Networks, told me,"
13566 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
13567 #: freeculture.xml:9890
13569 "The RIAA, which was representing the record labels, presented some testimony "
13570 "about what they thought a willing buyer would pay to a willing seller, and "
13571 "it was much higher. It was ten times higher than what radio stations pay to "
13572 "perform the same songs for the same period of time. And so the attorneys "
13573 "representing the webcasters asked the RIAA, … <quote>How do you come "
13574 "up with a rate that's so much higher? Why is it worth more than radio? "
13575 "Because here we have hundreds of thousands of webcasters who want to pay, "
13576 "and that should establish the market rate, and if you set the rate so high, "
13577 "you're going to drive the small webcasters out of business. …</quote>"
13580 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
13581 #: freeculture.xml:9906
13583 "And the RIAA experts said, <quote>Well, we don't really model this as an "
13584 "industry with thousands of webcasters, <emphasis>we think it should be an "
13585 "industry with, you know, five or seven big players who can pay a high rate "
13586 "and it's a stable, predictable market</emphasis>.</quote> (Emphasis added.)"
13589 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13590 #: freeculture.xml:9915
13592 "Translation: The aim is to use the law to eliminate competition, so that "
13593 "this platform of potentially immense competition, which would cause the "
13594 "diversity and range of content available to explode, would not cause pain to "
13595 "the dinosaurs of old. There is no one, on either the right or the left, who "
13596 "should endorse this use of the law. And yet there is practically no one, on "
13597 "either the right or the left, who is doing anything effective to prevent it."
13600 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><title>
13601 #: freeculture.xml:9925
13602 msgid "Corrupting Citizens"
13605 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13606 #: freeculture.xml:9927
13608 "Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives "
13609 "dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity "
13610 "for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables."
13613 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13614 #: freeculture.xml:9933
13616 "In addition to these important harms, there is one more that was important "
13617 "to our forebears, but seems forgotten today. Overregulation corrupts "
13618 "citizens and weakens the rule of law."
13622 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13623 #: freeculture.xml:9942
13625 "Mike Graziano and Lee Rainie, <quote>The Music Downloading Deluge,</quote> "
13626 "Pew Internet and American Life Project (24 April 2001), available at <ulink "
13627 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #46</ulink>. The Pew Internet "
13628 "and American Life Project reported that 37 million Americans had downloaded "
13629 "music files from the Internet by early 2001."
13633 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13634 #: freeculture.xml:9938
13636 "The war that is being waged today is a war of prohibition. As with every war "
13637 "of prohibition, it is targeted against the behavior of a very large number "
13638 "of citizens. According to <citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle>, 43 "
13639 "million Americans downloaded music in May 2002.<placeholder "
13640 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> According to the RIAA, the behavior of those 43 "
13641 "million Americans is a felony. We thus have a set of rules that transform 20 "
13642 "percent of America into criminals. As the RIAA launches lawsuits against not "
13643 "only the Napsters and Kazaas of the world, but against students building "
13644 "search engines, and increasingly against ordinary users downloading content, "
13645 "the technologies for sharing will advance to further protect and hide "
13646 "illegal use. It is an arms race or a civil war, with the extremes of one "
13647 "side inviting a more extreme response by the other."
13651 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13652 #: freeculture.xml:9976
13654 "Alex Pham, <quote>The Labels Strike Back: N.Y. Girl Settles RIAA "
13655 "Case,</quote> <citetitle>Los Angeles Times</citetitle>, 10 September 2003, "
13659 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13660 #: freeculture.xml:9963
13662 "The content industry's tactics exploit the failings of the American legal "
13663 "system. When the RIAA brought suit against Jesse Jordan, it knew that in "
13664 "Jordan it had found a scapegoat, not a defendant. The threat of having to "
13665 "pay either all the money in the world in damages ($15,000,000) or almost all "
13666 "the money in the world to defend against paying all the money in the world "
13667 "in damages ($250,000 in legal fees) led Jordan to choose to pay all the "
13668 "money he had in the world ($12,000) to make the suit go away. The same "
13669 "strategy animates the RIAA's suits against individual users. In September "
13670 "2003, the RIAA sued 261 individuals—including a twelve-year-old girl "
13671 "living in public housing and a seventy-year-old man who had no idea what "
13672 "file sharing was.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> As these "
13673 "scapegoats discovered, it will always cost more to defend against these "
13674 "suits than it would cost to simply settle. (The twelve year old, for "
13675 "example, like Jesse Jordan, paid her life savings of $2,000 to settle the "
13676 "case.) Our law is an awful system for defending rights. It is an "
13677 "embarrassment to our tradition. And the consequence of our law as it is, is "
13678 "that those with the power can use the law to quash any rights they oppose."
13681 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
13682 #: freeculture.xml:9987
13683 msgid "alcohol prohibition"
13687 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13688 #: freeculture.xml:9999
13690 "Jeffrey A. Miron and Jeffrey Zwiebel, <quote>Alcohol Consumption During "
13691 "Prohibition,</quote> <citetitle>American Economic Review</citetitle> 81, "
13692 "no. 2 (1991): 242."
13696 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13697 #: freeculture.xml:10007
13699 "National Drug Control Policy: Hearing Before the House Government Reform "
13700 "Committee, 108th Cong., 1st sess. (5 March 2003) (statement of John "
13701 "P. Walters, director of National Drug Control Policy)."
13705 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
13706 #: freeculture.xml:10017
13708 "See James Andreoni, Brian Erard, and Jonathon Feinstein, <quote>Tax "
13709 "Compliance,</quote> <citetitle>Journal of Economic Literature</citetitle> 36 "
13710 "(1998): 818 (survey of compliance literature)."
13713 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13714 #: freeculture.xml:9989
13716 "Wars of prohibition are nothing new in America. This one is just something "
13717 "more extreme than anything we've seen before. We experimented with alcohol "
13718 "prohibition, at a time when the per capita consumption of alcohol was 1.5 "
13719 "gallons per capita per year. The war against drinking initially reduced that "
13720 "consumption to just 30 percent of its preprohibition levels, but by the end "
13721 "of prohibition, consumption was up to 70 percent of the preprohibition "
13722 "level. Americans were drinking just about as much, but now, a vast number "
13723 "were criminals.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> We have launched a "
13724 "war on drugs aimed at reducing the consumption of regulated narcotics that 7 "
13725 "percent (or 16 million) Americans now use.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
13726 "id=\"1\"/> That is a drop from the high (so to speak) in 1979 of 14 percent "
13727 "of the population. We regulate automobiles to the point where the vast "
13728 "majority of Americans violate the law every day. We run such a complex tax "
13729 "system that a majority of cash businesses regularly cheat.<placeholder "
13730 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/> We pride ourselves on our <quote>free "
13731 "society,</quote> but an endless array of ordinary behavior is regulated "
13732 "within our society. And as a result, a huge proportion of Americans "
13733 "regularly violate at least some law."
13736 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
13737 #: freeculture.xml:10025
13738 msgid "law schools"
13741 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13742 #: freeculture.xml:10027
13744 "This state of affairs is not without consequence. It is a particularly "
13745 "salient issue for teachers like me, whose job it is to teach law students "
13746 "about the importance of <quote>ethics.</quote> As my colleague Charlie "
13747 "Nesson told a class at Stanford, each year law schools admit thousands of "
13748 "students who have illegally downloaded music, illegally consumed alcohol and "
13749 "sometimes drugs, illegally worked without paying taxes, illegally driven "
13750 "cars. These are kids for whom behaving illegally is increasingly the "
13751 "norm. And then we, as law professors, are supposed to teach them how to "
13752 "behave ethically—how to say no to bribes, or keep client funds "
13753 "separate, or honor a demand to disclose a document that will mean that your "
13754 "case is over. Generations of Americans—more significantly in some "
13755 "parts of America than in others, but still, everywhere in America "
13756 "today—can't live their lives both normally and legally, since "
13757 "<quote>normally</quote> entails a certain degree of illegality."
13760 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13761 #: freeculture.xml:10044
13763 "The response to this general illegality is either to enforce the law more "
13764 "severely or to change the law. We, as a society, have to learn how to make "
13765 "that choice more rationally. Whether a law makes sense depends, in part, at "
13766 "least, upon whether the costs of the law, both intended and collateral, "
13767 "outweigh the benefits. If the costs, intended and collateral, do outweigh "
13768 "the benefits, then the law ought to be changed. Alternatively, if the costs "
13769 "of the existing system are much greater than the costs of an alternative, "
13770 "then we have a good reason to consider the alternative."
13774 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13775 #: freeculture.xml:10057
13777 "My point is not the idiotic one: Just because people violate a law, we "
13778 "should therefore repeal it. Obviously, we could reduce murder statistics "
13779 "dramatically by legalizing murder on Wednesdays and Fridays. But that "
13780 "wouldn't make any sense, since murder is wrong every day of the week. A "
13781 "society is right to ban murder always and everywhere."
13784 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13785 #: freeculture.xml:10064
13787 "My point is instead one that democracies understood for generations, but "
13788 "that we recently have learned to forget. The rule of law depends upon people "
13789 "obeying the law. The more often, and more repeatedly, we as citizens "
13790 "experience violating the law, the less we respect the law. Obviously, in "
13791 "most cases, the important issue is the law, not respect for the law. I don't "
13792 "care whether the rapist respects the law or not; I want to catch and "
13793 "incarcerate the rapist. But I do care whether my students respect the "
13794 "law. And I do care if the rules of law sow increasing disrespect because of "
13795 "the extreme of regulation they impose. Twenty million Americans have come "
13796 "of age since the Internet introduced this different idea of "
13797 "<quote>sharing.</quote> We need to be able to call these twenty million "
13798 "Americans <quote>citizens,</quote> not <quote>felons.</quote>"
13801 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13802 #: freeculture.xml:10078
13804 "When at least forty-three million citizens download content from the "
13805 "Internet, and when they use tools to combine that content in ways "
13806 "unauthorized by copyright holders, the first question we should be asking is "
13807 "not how best to involve the FBI. The first question should be whether this "
13808 "particular prohibition is really necessary in order to achieve the proper "
13809 "ends that copyright law serves. Is there another way to assure that artists "
13810 "get paid without transforming forty-three million Americans into felons? "
13811 "Does it make sense if there are other ways to assure that artists get paid "
13812 "without transforming America into a nation of felons?"
13815 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13816 #: freeculture.xml:10090
13817 msgid "This abstract point can be made more clear with a particular example."
13821 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13822 #: freeculture.xml:10093
13824 "We all own CDs. Many of us still own phonograph records. These pieces of "
13825 "plastic encode music that in a certain sense we have bought. The law "
13826 "protects our right to buy and sell that plastic: It is not a copyright "
13827 "infringement for me to sell all my classical records at a used record store "
13828 "and buy jazz records to replace them. That <quote>use</quote> of the "
13829 "recordings is free."
13832 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13833 #: freeculture.xml:10104
13835 "But as the MP3 craze has demonstrated, there is another use of phonograph "
13836 "records that is effectively free. Because these recordings were made without "
13837 "copy-protection technologies, I am <quote>free</quote> to copy, or "
13838 "<quote>rip,</quote> music from my records onto a computer hard disk. Indeed, "
13839 "Apple Corporation went so far as to suggest that <quote>freedom</quote> was "
13840 "a right: In a series of commercials, Apple endorsed the <quote>Rip, Mix, "
13841 "Burn</quote> capacities of digital technologies."
13844 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
13845 #: freeculture.xml:10112
13849 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><secondary>
13850 #: freeculture.xml:10113
13851 msgid "mix technology and"
13854 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13855 #: freeculture.xml:10115
13857 "This <quote>use</quote> of my records is certainly valuable. I have begun a "
13858 "large process at home of ripping all of my and my wife's CDs, and storing "
13859 "them in one archive. Then, using Apple's iTunes, or a wonderful program "
13860 "called Andromeda, we can build different play lists of our music: Bach, "
13861 "Baroque, Love Songs, Love Songs of Significant Others—the potential is "
13862 "endless. And by reducing the costs of mixing play lists, these technologies "
13863 "help build a creativity with play lists that is itself independently "
13864 "valuable. Compilations of songs are creative and meaningful in their own "
13868 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13869 #: freeculture.xml:10126
13871 "This use is enabled by unprotected media—either CDs or records. But "
13872 "unprotected media also enable file sharing. File sharing threatens (or so "
13873 "the content industry believes) the ability of creators to earn a fair return "
13874 "from their creativity. And thus, many are beginning to experiment with "
13875 "technologies to eliminate unprotected media. These technologies, for "
13876 "example, would enable CDs that could not be ripped. Or they might enable spy "
13877 "programs to identify ripped content on people's machines."
13881 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13882 #: freeculture.xml:10136
13884 "If these technologies took off, then the building of large archives of your "
13885 "own music would become quite difficult. You might hang in hacker circles, "
13886 "and get technology to disable the technologies that protect the "
13887 "content. Trading in those technologies is illegal, but maybe that doesn't "
13888 "bother you much. In any case, for the vast majority of people, these "
13889 "protection technologies would effectively destroy the archiving use of "
13890 "CDs. The technology, in other words, would force us all back to the world "
13891 "where we either listened to music by manipulating pieces of plastic or were "
13892 "part of a massively complex <quote>digital rights management</quote> system."
13895 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13896 #: freeculture.xml:10151
13898 "If the only way to assure that artists get paid were the elimination of the "
13899 "ability to freely move content, then these technologies to interfere with "
13900 "the freedom to move content would be justifiable. But what if there were "
13901 "another way to assure that artists are paid, without locking down any "
13902 "content? What if, in other words, a different system could assure "
13903 "compensation to artists while also preserving the freedom to move content "
13907 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13908 #: freeculture.xml:10160
13910 "My point just now is not to prove that there is such a system. I offer a "
13911 "version of such a system in the last chapter of this book. For now, the only "
13912 "point is the relatively uncontroversial one: If a different system achieved "
13913 "the same legitimate objectives that the existing copyright system achieved, "
13914 "but left consumers and creators much more free, then we'd have a very good "
13915 "reason to pursue this alternative—namely, freedom. The choice, in "
13916 "other words, would not be between property and piracy; the choice would be "
13917 "between different property systems and the freedoms each allowed."
13920 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13921 #: freeculture.xml:10171
13923 "I believe there is a way to assure that artists are paid without turning "
13924 "forty-three million Americans into felons. But the salient feature of this "
13925 "alternative is that it would lead to a very different market for producing "
13926 "and distributing creativity. The dominant few, who today control the vast "
13927 "majority of the distribution of content in the world, would no longer "
13928 "exercise this extreme of control. Rather, they would go the way of the "
13929 "horse-drawn buggy."
13932 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13933 #: freeculture.xml:10180
13935 "Except that this generation's buggy manufacturers have already saddled "
13936 "Congress, and are riding the law to protect themselves against this new form "
13937 "of competition. For them the choice is between fortythree million Americans "
13938 "as criminals and their own survival."
13942 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13943 #: freeculture.xml:10186
13945 "It is understandable why they choose as they do. It is not understandable "
13946 "why we as a democracy continue to choose as we do. Jack Valenti is charming; "
13947 "but not so charming as to justify giving up a tradition as deep and "
13948 "important as our tradition of free culture."
13951 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13952 #: freeculture.xml:10197
13954 "<emphasis role='strong'>There's one more</emphasis> aspect to this "
13955 "corruption that is particularly important to civil liberties, and follows "
13956 "directly from any war of prohibition. As Electronic Frontier Foundation "
13957 "attorney Fred von Lohmann describes, this is the <quote>collateral "
13958 "damage</quote> that <quote>arises whenever you turn a very large percentage "
13959 "of the population into criminals.</quote> This is the collateral damage to "
13960 "civil liberties generally."
13963 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><indexterm><primary>
13964 #: freeculture.xml:10205 freeculture.xml:10305
13965 msgid "von Lohmann, Fred"
13968 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13969 #: freeculture.xml:10207
13971 "<quote>If you can treat someone as a putative lawbreaker,</quote> von "
13972 "Lohmann explains,"
13975 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
13976 #: freeculture.xml:10212
13978 "then all of a sudden a lot of basic civil liberty protections evaporate to "
13979 "one degree or another. … If you're a copyright infringer, how can you "
13980 "hope to have any privacy rights? If you're a copyright infringer, how can "
13981 "you hope to be secure against seizures of your computer? How can you hope to "
13982 "continue to receive Internet access? … Our sensibilities change as "
13983 "soon as we think, <quote>Oh, well, but that person's a criminal, a "
13984 "lawbreaker.</quote> Well, what this campaign against file sharing has done "
13985 "is turn a remarkable percentage of the American Internet-using population "
13986 "into <quote>lawbreakers.</quote>"
13989 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13990 #: freeculture.xml:10224
13992 "And the consequence of this transformation of the American public into "
13993 "criminals is that it becomes trivial, as a matter of due process, to "
13994 "effectively erase much of the privacy most would presume."
13997 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
13998 #: freeculture.xml:10229
14000 "Users of the Internet began to see this generally in 2003 as the RIAA "
14001 "launched its campaign to force Internet service providers to turn over the "
14002 "names of customers who the RIAA believed were violating copyright "
14003 "law. Verizon fought that demand and lost. With a simple request to a judge, "
14004 "and without any notice to the customer at all, the identity of an Internet "
14005 "user is revealed."
14009 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
14010 #: freeculture.xml:10247
14012 "See Frank Ahrens, <quote>RIAA's Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets; Single "
14013 "Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl in N.Y. Among Defendants,</quote> "
14014 "<citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, 10 September 2003, E1; Chris Cobbs, "
14015 "<quote>Worried Parents Pull Plug on File `Stealing'; With the Music Industry "
14016 "Cracking Down on File Swapping, Parents are Yanking Software from Home PCs "
14017 "to Avoid Being Sued,</quote> <citetitle>Orlando Sentinel "
14018 "Tribune</citetitle>, 30 August 2003, C1; Jefferson Graham, <quote>Recording "
14019 "Industry Sues Parents,</quote> <citetitle>USA Today</citetitle>, 15 "
14020 "September 2003, 4D; John Schwartz, <quote>She Says She's No Music Pirate. No "
14021 "Snoop Fan, Either,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 25 "
14022 "September 2003, C1; Margo Varadi, <quote>Is Brianna a Criminal?</quote> "
14023 "<citetitle>Toronto Star</citetitle>, 18 September 2003, P7."
14026 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14027 #: freeculture.xml:10238
14029 "The RIAA then expanded this campaign, by announcing a general strategy to "
14030 "sue individual users of the Internet who are alleged to have downloaded "
14031 "copyrighted music from file-sharing systems. But as we've seen, the "
14032 "potential damages from these suits are astronomical: If a family's computer "
14033 "is used to download a single CD's worth of music, the family could be liable "
14034 "for $2 million in damages. That didn't stop the RIAA from suing a number of "
14035 "these families, just as they had sued Jesse Jordan.<placeholder "
14036 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14040 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
14041 #: freeculture.xml:10265
14043 "See <quote>Revealed: How RIAA Tracks Downloaders: Music Industry Discloses "
14044 "Some Methods Used,</quote> CNN.com, available at <ulink "
14045 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #47</ulink>."
14048 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14049 #: freeculture.xml:10261
14051 "Even this understates the espionage that is being waged by the RIAA. A "
14052 "report from CNN late last summer described a strategy the RIAA had adopted "
14053 "to track Napster users.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Using a "
14054 "sophisticated hashing algorithm, the RIAA took what is in effect a "
14055 "fingerprint of every song in the Napster catalog. Any copy of one of those "
14056 "MP3s will have the same <quote>fingerprint.</quote>"
14060 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para><footnote><para>
14061 #: freeculture.xml:10286
14063 "See Jeff Adler, <quote>Cambridge: On Campus, Pirates Are Not "
14064 "Penitent,</quote> <citetitle>Boston Globe</citetitle>, 18 May 2003, City "
14065 "Weekly, 1; Frank Ahrens, <quote>Four Students Sued over Music Sites; "
14066 "Industry Group Targets File Sharing at Colleges,</quote> "
14067 "<citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, 4 April 2003, E1; Elizabeth "
14068 "Armstrong, <quote>Students `Rip, Mix, Burn' at Their Own Risk,</quote> "
14069 "<citetitle>Christian Science Monitor</citetitle>, 2 September 2003, 20; "
14070 "Robert Becker and Angela Rozas, <quote>Music Pirate Hunt Turns to Loyola; "
14071 "Two Students Names Are Handed Over; Lawsuit Possible,</quote> "
14072 "<citetitle>Chicago Tribune</citetitle>, 16 July 2003, 1C; Beth Cox, "
14073 "<quote>RIAA Trains Antipiracy Guns on Universities,</quote> "
14074 "<citetitle>Internet News</citetitle>, 30 January 2003, available at <ulink "
14075 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #48</ulink>; Benny Evangelista, "
14076 "<quote>Download Warning 101: Freshman Orientation This Fall to Include "
14077 "Record Industry Warnings Against File Sharing,</quote> <citetitle>San "
14078 "Francisco Chronicle</citetitle>, 11 August 2003, E11; <quote>Raid, Letters "
14079 "Are Weapons at Universities,</quote> <citetitle>USA Today</citetitle>, 26 "
14080 "September 2000, 3D."
14083 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14084 #: freeculture.xml:10274
14086 "So imagine the following not-implausible scenario: Imagine a friend gives a "
14087 "CD to your daughter—a collection of songs just like the cassettes you "
14088 "used to make as a kid. You don't know, and neither does your daughter, where "
14089 "these songs came from. But she copies these songs onto her computer. She "
14090 "then takes her computer to college and connects it to a college network, and "
14091 "if the college network is <quote>cooperating</quote> with the RIAA's "
14092 "espionage, and she hasn't properly protected her content from the network "
14093 "(do you know how to do that yourself ?), then the RIAA will be able to "
14094 "identify your daughter as a <quote>criminal.</quote> And under the rules "
14095 "that universities are beginning to deploy,<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
14096 "id=\"0\"/> your daughter can lose the right to use the university's computer "
14097 "network. She can, in some cases, be expelled."
14101 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14102 #: freeculture.xml:10307
14104 "Now, of course, she'll have the right to defend herself. You can hire a "
14105 "lawyer for her (at $300 per hour, if you're lucky), and she can plead that "
14106 "she didn't know anything about the source of the songs or that they came "
14107 "from Napster. And it may well be that the university believes her. But the "
14108 "university might not believe her. It might treat this "
14109 "<quote>contraband</quote> as presumptive of guilt. And as any number of "
14110 "college students have already learned, our presumptions about innocence "
14111 "disappear in the middle of wars of prohibition. This war is no different. "
14112 "Says von Lohmann,"
14115 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><blockquote><para>
14116 #: freeculture.xml:10322
14118 "So when we're talking about numbers like forty to sixty million Americans "
14119 "that are essentially copyright infringers, you create a situation where the "
14120 "civil liberties of those people are very much in peril in a general "
14121 "matter. [I don't] think [there is any] analog where you could randomly "
14122 "choose any person off the street and be confident that they were committing "
14123 "an unlawful act that could put them on the hook for potential felony "
14124 "liability or hundreds of millions of dollars of civil liability. Certainly "
14125 "we all speed, but speeding isn't the kind of an act for which we routinely "
14126 "forfeit civil liberties. Some people use drugs, and I think that's the "
14127 "closest analog, [but] many have noted that the war against drugs has eroded "
14128 "all of our civil liberties because it's treated so many Americans as "
14129 "criminals. Well, I think it's fair to say that file sharing is an order of "
14130 "magnitude larger number of Americans than drug use. … If forty to "
14131 "sixty million Americans have become lawbreakers, then we're really on a "
14132 "slippery slope to lose a lot of civil liberties for all forty to sixty "
14136 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><section><para>
14137 #: freeculture.xml:10342
14139 "When forty to sixty million Americans are considered "
14140 "<quote>criminals</quote> under the law, and when the law could achieve the "
14141 "same objective— securing rights to authors—without these "
14142 "millions being considered <quote>criminals,</quote> who is the villain? "
14143 "Americans or the law? Which is American, a constant war on our own people or "
14144 "a concerted effort through our democracy to change our law?"
14147 #. type: Content of: <book><part><title>
14148 #: freeculture.xml:10355
14152 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14153 #: freeculture.xml:10360
14155 "<emphasis role='strong'>So here's</emphasis> the picture: You're standing at "
14156 "the side of the road. Your car is on fire. You are angry and upset because "
14157 "in part you helped start the fire. Now you don't know how to put it "
14158 "out. Next to you is a bucket, filled with gasoline. Obviously, gasoline "
14159 "won't put the fire out."
14162 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14163 #: freeculture.xml:10367
14165 "As you ponder the mess, someone else comes along. In a panic, she grabs the "
14166 "bucket. Before you have a chance to tell her to stop—or before she "
14167 "understands just why she should stop—the bucket is in the air. The "
14168 "gasoline is about to hit the blazing car. And the fire that gasoline will "
14169 "ignite is about to ignite everything around."
14172 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14173 #: freeculture.xml:10375
14175 "<emphasis role='strong'>A war</emphasis> about copyright rages all "
14176 "around—and we're all focusing on the wrong thing. No doubt, current "
14177 "technologies threaten existing businesses. No doubt they may threaten "
14178 "artists. But technologies change. The industry and technologists have "
14179 "plenty of ways to use technology to protect themselves against the current "
14180 "threats of the Internet. This is a fire that if let alone would burn itself "
14185 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14186 #: freeculture.xml:10385
14188 "Yet policy makers are not willing to leave this fire to itself. Primed with "
14189 "plenty of lobbyists' money, they are keen to intervene to eliminate the "
14190 "problem they perceive. But the problem they perceive is not the real threat "
14191 "this culture faces. For while we watch this small fire in the corner, there "
14192 "is a massive change in the way culture is made that is happening all around."
14195 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14196 #: freeculture.xml:10393
14198 "Somehow we have to find a way to turn attention to this more important and "
14199 "fundamental issue. Somehow we have to find a way to avoid pouring gasoline "
14203 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14204 #: freeculture.xml:10398
14206 "We have not found that way yet. Instead, we seem trapped in a simpler, "
14207 "binary view. However much many people push to frame this debate more "
14208 "broadly, it is the simple, binary view that remains. We rubberneck to look "
14209 "at the fire when we should be keeping our eyes on the road."
14212 #. type: Content of: <book><part><partintro><para>
14213 #: freeculture.xml:10404
14215 "This challenge has been my life these last few years. It has also been my "
14216 "failure. In the two chapters that follow, I describe one small brace of "
14217 "efforts, so far failed, to find a way to refocus this debate. We must "
14218 "understand these failures if we're to understand what success will require."
14221 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
14222 #: freeculture.xml:10414
14223 msgid "CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Eldred"
14226 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14227 #: freeculture.xml:10415
14228 msgid "Hawthorne, Nathaniel"
14231 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14232 #: freeculture.xml:10417
14234 "<emphasis role='strong'>In 1995</emphasis>, a father was frustrated that his "
14235 "daughters didn't seem to like Hawthorne. No doubt there was more than one "
14236 "such father, but at least one did something about it. Eric Eldred, a retired "
14237 "computer programmer living in New Hampshire, decided to put Hawthorne on the "
14238 "Web. An electronic version, Eldred thought, with links to pictures and "
14239 "explanatory text, would make this nineteenth-century author's work come "
14243 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14244 #: freeculture.xml:10426
14246 "It didn't work—at least for his daughters. They didn't find Hawthorne "
14247 "any more interesting than before. But Eldred's experiment gave birth to a "
14248 "hobby, and his hobby begat a cause: Eldred would build a library of public "
14249 "domain works by scanning these works and making them available for free."
14253 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14254 #: freeculture.xml:10433
14256 "Eldred's library was not simply a copy of certain public domain works, "
14257 "though even a copy would have been of great value to people across the world "
14258 "who can't get access to printed versions of these works. Instead, Eldred was "
14259 "producing derivative works from these public domain works. Just as Disney "
14260 "turned Grimm into stories more accessible to the twentieth century, Eldred "
14261 "transformed Hawthorne, and many others, into a form more "
14262 "accessible—technically accessible—today."
14265 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14266 #: freeculture.xml:10444
14268 "Eldred's freedom to do this with Hawthorne's work grew from the same source "
14269 "as Disney's. Hawthorne's <citetitle>Scarlet Letter</citetitle> had passed "
14270 "into the public domain in 1907. It was free for anyone to take without the "
14271 "permission of the Hawthorne estate or anyone else. Some, such as Dover Press "
14272 "and Penguin Classics, take works from the public domain and produce printed "
14273 "editions, which they sell in bookstores across the country. Others, such as "
14274 "Disney, take these stories and turn them into animated cartoons, sometimes "
14275 "successfully (<citetitle>Cinderella</citetitle>), sometimes not "
14276 "(<citetitle>The Hunchback of Notre Dame</citetitle>, <citetitle>Treasure "
14277 "Planet</citetitle>). These are all commercial publications of public domain "
14282 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14283 #: freeculture.xml:10468
14285 "There's a parallel here with pornography that is a bit hard to describe, but "
14286 "it's a strong one. One phenomenon that the Internet created was a world of "
14287 "noncommercial pornographers—people who were distributing porn but were "
14288 "not making money directly or indirectly from that distribution. Such a "
14289 "class didn't exist before the Internet came into being because the costs of "
14290 "distributing porn were so high. Yet this new class of distributors got "
14291 "special attention in the Supreme Court, when the Court struck down the "
14292 "Communications Decency Act of 1996. It was partly because of the burden on "
14293 "noncommercial speakers that the statute was found to exceed Congress's "
14294 "power. The same point could have been made about noncommercial publishers "
14295 "after the advent of the Internet. The Eric Eldreds of the world before the "
14296 "Internet were extremely few. Yet one would think it at least as important to "
14297 "protect the Eldreds of the world as to protect noncommercial pornographers."
14300 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14301 #: freeculture.xml:10457
14303 "The Internet created the possibility of noncommercial publications of public "
14304 "domain works. Eldred's is just one example. There are literally thousands of "
14305 "others. Hundreds of thousands from across the world have discovered this "
14306 "platform of expression and now use it to share works that are, by law, free "
14307 "for the taking. This has produced what we might call the "
14308 "<quote>noncommercial publishing industry,</quote> which before the Internet "
14309 "was limited to people with large egos or with political or social "
14310 "causes. But with the Internet, it includes a wide range of individuals and "
14311 "groups dedicated to spreading culture generally.<placeholder "
14312 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14315 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14316 #: freeculture.xml:10485
14318 "As I said, Eldred lives in New Hampshire. In 1998, Robert Frost's collection "
14319 "of poems <citetitle>New Hampshire</citetitle> was slated to pass into the "
14320 "public domain. Eldred wanted to post that collection in his free public "
14321 "library. But Congress got in the way. As I described in chapter <xref "
14322 "xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"property-i\"/>, in 1998, for the "
14323 "eleventh time in forty years, Congress extended the terms of existing "
14324 "copyrights—this time by twenty years. Eldred would not be free to add "
14325 "any works more recent than 1923 to his collection until 2019. Indeed, no "
14326 "copyrighted work would pass into the public domain until that year (and not "
14327 "even then, if Congress extends the term again). By contrast, in the same "
14328 "period, more than 1 million patents will pass into the public domain."
14331 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
14332 #: freeculture.xml:10498 freeculture.xml:10508
14336 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
14337 #: freeculture.xml:10499 freeculture.xml:10509
14338 msgid "Bono, Sonny"
14341 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14342 #: freeculture.xml:10508
14344 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
14345 "id=\"1\"/> The full text is: <quote>Sonny [Bono] wanted the term of "
14346 "copyright protection to last forever. I am informed by staff that such a "
14347 "change would violate the Constitution. I invite all of you to work with me "
14348 "to strengthen our copyright laws in all of the ways available to us. As you "
14349 "know, there is also Jack Valenti's proposal for a term to last forever less "
14350 "one day. Perhaps the Committee may look at that next Congress,</quote> 144 "
14351 "Cong. Rec. H9946, 9951-2 (October 7, 1998)."
14354 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14355 #: freeculture.xml:10503
14357 "This was the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), enacted in "
14358 "memory of the congressman and former musician Sonny Bono, who, his widow, "
14359 "Mary Bono, says, believed that <quote>copyrights should be "
14360 "forever.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14363 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14364 #: freeculture.xml:10521
14366 "Eldred decided to fight this law. He first resolved to fight it through "
14367 "civil disobedience. In a series of interviews, Eldred announced that he "
14368 "would publish as planned, CTEA notwithstanding. But because of a second law "
14369 "passed in 1998, the NET (No Electronic Theft) Act, his act of publishing "
14370 "would make Eldred a felon—whether or not anyone complained. This was a "
14371 "dangerous strategy for a disabled programmer to undertake."
14374 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14375 #: freeculture.xml:10530
14377 "It was here that I became involved in Eldred's battle. I was a "
14378 "constitutional scholar whose first passion was constitutional "
14379 "interpretation. And though constitutional law courses never focus upon the "
14380 "Progress Clause of the Constitution, it had always struck me as importantly "
14381 "different. As you know, the Constitution says,"
14384 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
14385 #: freeculture.xml:10541
14387 "Congress has the power to promote the Progress of Science … by "
14388 "securing for limited Times to Authors … exclusive Right to their "
14389 "… Writings. …"
14392 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14393 #: freeculture.xml:10547
14395 "As I've described, this clause is unique within the power-granting clause of "
14396 "Article I, section 8 of our Constitution. Every other clause granting power "
14397 "to Congress simply says Congress has the power to do something—for "
14398 "example, to regulate <quote>commerce among the several states</quote> or "
14399 "<quote>declare War.</quote> But here, the <quote>something</quote> is "
14400 "something quite specific—to <quote>promote … "
14401 "Progress</quote>—through means that are also specific— by "
14402 "<quote>securing</quote> <quote>exclusive Rights</quote> (i.e., copyrights) "
14403 "<quote>for limited Times.</quote>"
14406 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14407 #: freeculture.xml:10556 freeculture.xml:12038
14408 msgid "Jaszi, Peter"
14412 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14413 #: freeculture.xml:10558
14415 "In the past forty years, Congress has gotten into the practice of extending "
14416 "existing terms of copyright protection. What puzzled me about this was, if "
14417 "Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then the Constitution's "
14418 "requirement that terms be <quote>limited</quote> will have no practical "
14419 "effect. If every time a copyright is about to expire, Congress has the power "
14420 "to extend its term, then Congress can achieve what the Constitution plainly "
14421 "forbids—perpetual terms <quote>on the installment plan,</quote> as "
14422 "Professor Peter Jaszi so nicely put it."
14425 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14426 #: freeculture.xml:10569
14428 "As an academic, my first response was to hit the books. I remember sitting "
14429 "late at the office, scouring on-line databases for any serious consideration "
14430 "of the question. No one had ever challenged Congress's practice of extending "
14431 "existing terms. That failure may in part be why Congress seemed so "
14432 "untroubled in its habit. That, and the fact that the practice had become so "
14433 "lucrative for Congress. Congress knows that copyright owners will be willing "
14434 "to pay a great deal of money to see their copyright terms extended. And so "
14435 "Congress is quite happy to keep this gravy train going."
14438 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14439 #: freeculture.xml:10580
14441 "For this is the core of the corruption in our present system of "
14442 "government. <quote>Corruption</quote> not in the sense that representatives "
14443 "are bribed. Rather, <quote>corruption</quote> in the sense that the system "
14444 "induces the beneficiaries of Congress's acts to raise and give money to "
14445 "Congress to induce it to act. There's only so much time; there's only so "
14446 "much Congress can do. Why not limit its actions to those things it must "
14447 "do—and those things that pay? Extending copyright terms pays."
14450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14451 #: freeculture.xml:10589
14453 "If that's not obvious to you, consider the following: Say you're one of the "
14454 "very few lucky copyright owners whose copyright continues to make money one "
14455 "hundred years after it was created. The Estate of Robert Frost is a good "
14456 "example. Frost died in 1963. His poetry continues to be extraordinarily "
14457 "valuable. Thus the Robert Frost estate benefits greatly from any extension "
14458 "of copyright, since no publisher would pay the estate any money if the poems "
14459 "Frost wrote could be published by anyone for free."
14462 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14463 #: freeculture.xml:10599
14465 "So imagine the Robert Frost estate is earning $100,000 a year from three of "
14466 "Frost's poems. And imagine the copyright for those poems is about to "
14467 "expire. You sit on the board of the Robert Frost estate. Your financial "
14468 "adviser comes to your board meeting with a very grim report:"
14472 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14473 #: freeculture.xml:10606
14475 "<quote>Next year,</quote> the adviser announces, <quote>our copyrights in "
14476 "works A, B, and C will expire. That means that after next year, we will no "
14477 "longer be receiving the annual royalty check of $100,000 from the publishers "
14478 "of those works.</quote>"
14481 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14482 #: freeculture.xml:10614
14484 "<quote>There's a proposal in Congress, however,</quote> she continues, "
14485 "<quote>that could change this. A few congressmen are floating a bill to "
14486 "extend the terms of copyright by twenty years. That bill would be "
14487 "extraordinarily valuable to us. So we should hope this bill passes.</quote>"
14490 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14491 #: freeculture.xml:10620
14493 "<quote>Hope?</quote> a fellow board member says. <quote>Can't we be doing "
14494 "something about it?</quote>"
14497 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14498 #: freeculture.xml:10624
14500 "<quote>Well, obviously, yes,</quote> the adviser responds. <quote>We could "
14501 "contribute to the campaigns of a number of representatives to try to assure "
14502 "that they support the bill.</quote>"
14505 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14506 #: freeculture.xml:10629
14508 "You hate politics. You hate contributing to campaigns. So you want to know "
14509 "whether this disgusting practice is worth it. <quote>How much would we get "
14510 "if this extension were passed?</quote> you ask the adviser. <quote>How much "
14511 "is it worth?</quote>"
14514 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14515 #: freeculture.xml:10635
14517 "<quote>Well,</quote> the adviser says, <quote>if you're confident that you "
14518 "will continue to get at least $100,000 a year from these copyrights, and you "
14519 "use the `discount rate' that we use to evaluate estate investments (6 "
14520 "percent), then this law would be worth $1,146,000 to the estate.</quote>"
14523 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14524 #: freeculture.xml:10641
14526 "You're a bit shocked by the number, but you quickly come to the correct "
14530 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14531 #: freeculture.xml:10645
14533 "<quote>So you're saying it would be worth it for us to pay more than "
14534 "$1,000,000 in campaign contributions if we were confident those "
14535 "contributions would assure that the bill was passed?</quote>"
14538 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14539 #: freeculture.xml:10651
14541 "<quote>Absolutely,</quote> the adviser responds. <quote>It is worth it to "
14542 "you to contribute up to the `present value' of the income you expect from "
14543 "these copyrights. Which for us means over $1,000,000.</quote>"
14547 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14548 #: freeculture.xml:10657
14550 "You quickly get the point—you as the member of the board and, I trust, "
14551 "you the reader. Each time copyrights are about to expire, every beneficiary "
14552 "in the position of the Robert Frost estate faces the same choice: If they "
14553 "can contribute to get a law passed to extend copyrights, they will benefit "
14554 "greatly from that extension. And so each time copyrights are about to "
14555 "expire, there is a massive amount of lobbying to get the copyright term "
14559 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14560 #: freeculture.xml:10668
14562 "Thus a congressional perpetual motion machine: So long as legislation can be "
14563 "bought (albeit indirectly), there will be all the incentive in the world to "
14564 "buy further extensions of copyright."
14568 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14569 #: freeculture.xml:10680
14571 "Associated Press, <quote>Disney Lobbying for Copyright Extension No Mickey "
14572 "Mouse Effort; Congress OKs Bill Granting Creators 20 More Years,</quote> "
14573 "<citetitle>Chicago Tribune</citetitle>, 17 October 1998, 22."
14577 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14578 #: freeculture.xml:10687
14580 "See Nick Brown, <quote>Fair Use No More?: Copyright in the Information "
14581 "Age,</quote> available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
14586 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14587 #: freeculture.xml:10695
14589 "Alan K. Ota, <quote>Disney in Washington: The Mouse That Roars,</quote> "
14590 "<citetitle>Congressional Quarterly This Week</citetitle>, 8 August 1990, "
14591 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #50</ulink>."
14594 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14595 #: freeculture.xml:10673
14597 "In the lobbying that led to the passage of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term "
14598 "Extension Act, this <quote>theory</quote> about incentives was proved "
14599 "real. Ten of the thirteen original sponsors of the act in the House received "
14600 "the maximum contribution from Disney's political action committee; in the "
14601 "Senate, eight of the twelve sponsors received contributions.<placeholder "
14602 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The RIAA and the MPAA are estimated to have "
14603 "spent over $1.5 million lobbying in the 1998 election cycle. They paid out "
14604 "more than $200,000 in campaign contributions.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
14605 "id=\"1\"/> Disney is estimated to have contributed more than $800,000 to "
14606 "reelection campaigns in the cycle.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/>"
14609 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14610 #: freeculture.xml:10702
14612 "<emphasis role='strong'>Constitutional law</emphasis> is not oblivious to "
14613 "the obvious. Or at least, it need not be. So when I was considering Eldred's "
14614 "complaint, this reality about the never-ending incentives to increase the "
14615 "copyright term was central to my thinking. In my view, a pragmatic court "
14616 "committed to interpreting and applying the Constitution of our framers would "
14617 "see that if Congress has the power to extend existing terms, then there "
14618 "would be no effective constitutional requirement that terms be "
14619 "<quote>limited.</quote> If they could extend it once, they would extend it "
14620 "again and again and again."
14624 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14625 #: freeculture.xml:10714
14627 "It was also my judgment that <emphasis>this</emphasis> Supreme Court would "
14628 "not allow Congress to extend existing terms. As anyone close to the Supreme "
14629 "Court's work knows, this Court has increasingly restricted the power of "
14630 "Congress when it has viewed Congress's actions as exceeding the power "
14631 "granted to it by the Constitution. Among constitutional scholars, the most "
14632 "famous example of this trend was the Supreme Court's decision in 1995 to "
14633 "strike down a law that banned the possession of guns near schools."
14636 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14637 #: freeculture.xml:10727
14639 "Since 1937, the Supreme Court had interpreted Congress's granted powers very "
14640 "broadly; so, while the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate "
14641 "only <quote>commerce among the several states</quote> (aka <quote>interstate "
14642 "commerce</quote>), the Supreme Court had interpreted that power to include "
14643 "the power to regulate any activity that merely affected interstate commerce."
14646 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14647 #: freeculture.xml:10737
14649 "As the economy grew, this standard increasingly meant that there was no "
14650 "limit to Congress's power to regulate, since just about every activity, when "
14651 "considered on a national scale, affects interstate commerce. A Constitution "
14652 "designed to limit Congress's power was instead interpreted to impose no "
14656 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14657 #: freeculture.xml:10743 freeculture.xml:11525
14658 msgid "Rehnquist, William H."
14661 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14662 #: freeculture.xml:10745
14664 "The Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Rehnquist's command, changed that in "
14665 "<citetitle>United States</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>. The "
14666 "government had argued that possessing guns near schools affected interstate "
14667 "commerce. Guns near schools increase crime, crime lowers property values, "
14668 "and so on. In the oral argument, the Chief Justice asked the government "
14669 "whether there was any activity that would not affect interstate commerce "
14670 "under the reasoning the government advanced. The government said there was "
14671 "not; if Congress says an activity affects interstate commerce, then that "
14672 "activity affects interstate commerce. The Supreme Court, the government "
14673 "said, was not in the position to second-guess Congress."
14677 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14678 #: freeculture.xml:10760
14680 "<citetitle>United States</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>, 514 "
14681 "U.S. 549, 564 (1995)."
14685 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14686 #: freeculture.xml:10767
14688 "<citetitle>United States</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Morrison</citetitle>, 529 "
14692 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14693 #: freeculture.xml:10758
14695 "<quote>We pause to consider the implications of the government's "
14696 "arguments,</quote> the Chief Justice wrote.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
14697 "id=\"0\"/> If anything Congress says is interstate commerce must therefore "
14698 "be considered interstate commerce, then there would be no limit to "
14699 "Congress's power. The decision in <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> was "
14700 "reaffirmed five years later in <citetitle>United States</citetitle> "
14701 "v. <citetitle>Morrison</citetitle>.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
14705 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14706 #: freeculture.xml:10774
14708 "If it is a principle about enumerated powers, then the principle carries "
14709 "from one enumerated power to another. The animating point in the context of "
14710 "the Commerce Clause was that the interpretation offered by the government "
14711 "would allow the government unending power to regulate commerce—the "
14712 "limitation to interstate commerce notwithstanding. The same point is true in "
14713 "the context of the Copyright Clause. Here, too, the government's "
14714 "interpretation would allow the government unending power to regulate "
14715 "copyrights—the limitation to <quote>limited times</quote> "
14720 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14721 #: freeculture.xml:10771
14723 "If a principle were at work here, then it should apply to the Progress "
14724 "Clause as much as the Commerce Clause.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
14725 "id=\"0\"/> And if it is applied to the Progress Clause, the principle should "
14726 "yield the conclusion that Congress can't extend an existing term. If "
14727 "Congress could extend an existing term, then there would be no "
14728 "<quote>stopping point</quote> to Congress's power over terms, though the "
14729 "Constitution expressly states that there is such a limit. Thus, the same "
14730 "principle applied to the power to grant copyrights should entail that "
14731 "Congress is not allowed to extend the term of existing copyrights."
14734 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14735 #: freeculture.xml:10795
14737 "<emphasis>If</emphasis>, that is, the principle announced in "
14738 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> stood for a principle. Many believed the "
14739 "decision in <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> stood for politics—a "
14740 "conservative Supreme Court, which believed in states' rights, using its "
14741 "power over Congress to advance its own personal political preferences. But I "
14742 "rejected that view of the Supreme Court's decision. Indeed, shortly after "
14743 "the decision, I wrote an article demonstrating the <quote>fidelity</quote> "
14744 "in such an interpretation of the Constitution. The idea that the Supreme "
14745 "Court decides cases based upon its politics struck me as extraordinarily "
14746 "boring. I was not going to devote my life to teaching constitutional law if "
14747 "these nine Justices were going to be petty politicians."
14750 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14751 #: freeculture.xml:10808
14753 "<emphasis role='strong'>Now let's pause</emphasis> for a moment to make sure "
14754 "we understand what the argument in <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> was not "
14755 "about. By insisting on the Constitution's limits to copyright, obviously "
14756 "Eldred was not endorsing piracy. Indeed, in an obvious sense, he was "
14757 "fighting a kind of piracy—piracy of the public domain. When Robert "
14758 "Frost wrote his work and when Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse, the maximum "
14759 "copyright term was just fifty-six years. Because of interim changes, Frost "
14760 "and Disney had already enjoyed a seventy-five-year monopoly for their "
14761 "work. They had gotten the benefit of the bargain that the Constitution "
14762 "envisions: In exchange for a monopoly protected for fifty-six years, they "
14763 "created new work. But now these entities were using their "
14764 "power—expressed through the power of lobbyists' money—to get "
14765 "another twenty-year dollop of monopoly. That twenty-year dollop would be "
14766 "taken from the public domain. Eric Eldred was fighting a piracy that affects "
14770 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14771 #: freeculture.xml:10825
14772 msgid "Nashville Songwriters Association"
14776 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14777 #: freeculture.xml:10833
14779 "Brief of the Nashville Songwriters Association, "
14780 "<citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 537 U.S. "
14781 "186 (2003) (No. 01-618), n.10, available at <ulink "
14782 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #51</ulink>."
14785 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14786 #: freeculture.xml:10827
14788 "Some people view the public domain with contempt. In their brief before the "
14789 "Supreme Court, the Nashville Songwriters Association wrote that the public "
14790 "domain is nothing more than <quote>legal piracy.</quote><placeholder "
14791 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> But it is not piracy when the law allows it; "
14792 "and in our constitutional system, our law requires it. Some may not like the "
14793 "Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a "
14794 "pirate's charter."
14797 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14798 #: freeculture.xml:10843
14800 "As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a "
14801 "way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the "
14802 "development and distribution of our culture. Yet, as Eric Eldred discovered, "
14803 "we have set up a system that assures that copyright terms will be repeatedly "
14804 "extended, and extended, and extended. We have created the perfect storm for "
14805 "the public domain. Copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long "
14806 "as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again."
14809 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14810 #: freeculture.xml:10855
14812 "<emphasis role='strong'>It is valuable</emphasis> copyrights that are "
14813 "responsible for terms being extended. Mickey Mouse and <quote>Rhapsody in "
14814 "Blue.</quote> These works are too valuable for copyright owners to "
14815 "ignore. But the real harm to our society from copyright extensions is not "
14816 "that Mickey Mouse remains Disney's. Forget Mickey Mouse. Forget Robert "
14817 "Frost. Forget all the works from the 1920s and 1930s that have continuing "
14818 "commercial value. The real harm of term extension comes not from these "
14819 "famous works. The real harm is to the works that are not famous, not "
14820 "commercially exploited, and no longer available as a result."
14824 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14825 #: freeculture.xml:10873
14827 "The figure of 2 percent is an extrapolation from the study by the "
14828 "Congressional Research Service, in light of the estimated renewal "
14829 "ranges. See Brief of Petitioners, <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
14830 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 7, available at <ulink "
14831 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #52</ulink>."
14834 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14835 #: freeculture.xml:10867
14837 "If you look at the work created in the first twenty years (1923 to 1942) "
14838 "affected by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, 2 percent of that "
14839 "work has any continuing commercial value. It was the copyright holders for "
14840 "that 2 percent who pushed the CTEA through. But the law and its effect were "
14841 "not limited to that 2 percent. The law extended the terms of copyright "
14842 "generally.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14846 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14847 #: freeculture.xml:10882
14849 "Think practically about the consequence of this extension—practically, "
14850 "as a businessperson, and not as a lawyer eager for more legal work. In 1930, "
14851 "10,047 books were published. In 2000, 174 of those books were still in "
14852 "print. Let's say you were Brewster Kahle, and you wanted to make available "
14853 "to the world in your iArchive project the remaining 9,873. What would you "
14857 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14858 #: freeculture.xml:10895
14860 "Well, first, you'd have to determine which of the 9,873 books were still "
14861 "under copyright. That requires going to a library (these data are not "
14862 "on-line) and paging through tomes of books, cross-checking the titles and "
14863 "authors of the 9,873 books with the copyright registration and renewal "
14864 "records for works published in 1930. That will produce a list of books still "
14868 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14869 #: freeculture.xml:10903
14871 "Then for the books still under copyright, you would need to locate the "
14872 "current copyright owners. How would you do that?"
14875 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14876 #: freeculture.xml:10907
14878 "Most people think that there must be a list of these copyright owners "
14879 "somewhere. Practical people think this way. How could there be thousands and "
14880 "thousands of government monopolies without there being at least a list?"
14883 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14884 #: freeculture.xml:10914
14886 "But there is no list. There may be a name from 1930, and then in 1959, of "
14887 "the person who registered the copyright. But just think practically about "
14888 "how impossibly difficult it would be to track down thousands of such "
14889 "records—especially since the person who registered is not necessarily "
14890 "the current owner. And we're just talking about 1930!"
14893 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14894 #: freeculture.xml:10923
14896 "<quote>But there isn't a list of who owns property generally,</quote> the "
14897 "apologists for the system respond. <quote>Why should there be a list of "
14898 "copyright owners?</quote>"
14901 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14902 #: freeculture.xml:10928
14904 "Well, actually, if you think about it, there <emphasis>are</emphasis> plenty "
14905 "of lists of who owns what property. Think about deeds on houses, or titles "
14906 "to cars. And where there isn't a list, the code of real space is pretty "
14907 "good at suggesting who the owner of a bit of property is. (A swing set in "
14908 "your backyard is probably yours.) So formally or informally, we have a "
14909 "pretty good way to know who owns what tangible property."
14913 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14914 #: freeculture.xml:10937
14916 "So: You walk down a street and see a house. You can know who owns the house "
14917 "by looking it up in the courthouse registry. If you see a car, there is "
14918 "ordinarily a license plate that will link the owner to the car. If you see a "
14919 "bunch of children's toys sitting on the front lawn of a house, it's fairly "
14920 "easy to determine who owns the toys. And if you happen to see a baseball "
14921 "lying in a gutter on the side of the road, look around for a second for some "
14922 "kids playing ball. If you don't see any kids, then okay: Here's a bit of "
14923 "property whose owner we can't easily determine. It is the exception that "
14924 "proves the rule: that we ordinarily know quite well who owns what property."
14927 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14928 #: freeculture.xml:10952
14930 "Compare this story to intangible property. You go into a library. The "
14931 "library owns the books. But who owns the copyrights? As I've already "
14932 "described, there's no list of copyright owners. There are authors' names, of "
14933 "course, but their copyrights could have been assigned, or passed down in an "
14934 "estate like Grandma's old jewelry. To know who owns what, you would have to "
14935 "hire a private detective. The bottom line: The owner cannot easily be "
14936 "located. And in a regime like ours, in which it is a felony to use such "
14937 "property without the property owner's permission, the property isn't going "
14941 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14942 #: freeculture.xml:10964
14944 "The consequence with respect to old books is that they won't be digitized, "
14945 "and hence will simply rot away on shelves. But the consequence for other "
14946 "creative works is much more dire."
14949 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14950 #: freeculture.xml:10969
14951 msgid "Agee, Michael"
14954 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14955 #: freeculture.xml:10970 freeculture.xml:11405
14956 msgid "Hal Roach Studios"
14959 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14960 #: freeculture.xml:10971
14961 msgid "Laurel and Hardy Films"
14964 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
14965 #: freeculture.xml:10972
14966 msgid "Lucky Dog, The"
14970 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
14971 #: freeculture.xml:10985
14973 "See David G. Savage, <quote>High Court Scene of Showdown on Copyright "
14974 "Law,</quote> <citetitle>Los Angeles Times</citetitle>, 6 October 2002; David "
14975 "Streitfeld, <quote>Classic Movies, Songs, Books at Stake; Supreme Court "
14976 "Hears Arguments Today on Striking Down Copyright Extension,</quote> "
14977 "<citetitle>Orlando Sentinel Tribune</citetitle>, 9 October 2002."
14980 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14981 #: freeculture.xml:10974
14983 "Consider the story of Michael Agee, chairman of Hal Roach Studios, which "
14984 "owns the copyrights for the Laurel and Hardy films. Agee is a direct "
14985 "beneficiary of the Bono Act. The Laurel and Hardy films were made between "
14986 "1921 and 1951. Only one of these films, <citetitle>The Lucky "
14987 "Dog</citetitle>, is currently out of copyright. But for the CTEA, films made "
14988 "after 1923 would have begun entering the public domain. Because Agee "
14989 "controls the exclusive rights for these popular films, he makes a great deal "
14990 "of money. According to one estimate, <quote>Roach has sold about 60,000 "
14991 "videocassettes and 50,000 DVDs of the duo's silent "
14992 "films.</quote><placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
14995 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
14996 #: freeculture.xml:10992
14998 "Yet Agee opposed the CTEA. His reasons demonstrate a rare virtue in this "
14999 "culture: selflessness. He argued in a brief before the Supreme Court that "
15000 "the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will, if left standing, destroy "
15001 "a whole generation of American film."
15005 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15006 #: freeculture.xml:10998
15008 "His argument is straightforward. A tiny fraction of this work has any "
15009 "continuing commercial value. The rest—to the extent it survives at "
15010 "all—sits in vaults gathering dust. It may be that some of this work "
15011 "not now commercially valuable will be deemed to be valuable by the owners of "
15012 "the vaults. For this to occur, however, the commercial benefit from the work "
15013 "must exceed the costs of making the work available for distribution."
15017 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
15018 #: freeculture.xml:11016
15020 "Brief of Hal Roach Studios and Michael Agee as Amicus Curiae Supporting the "
15021 "Petitoners, <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
15022 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 537 U.S. 186 (2003) (No. 01- 618), "
15023 "12. See also Brief of Amicus Curiae filed on behalf of Petitioners by the "
15024 "Internet Archive, <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
15025 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, available at <ulink "
15026 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #53</ulink>."
15029 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15030 #: freeculture.xml:11009
15032 "We can't know the benefits, but we do know a lot about the costs. For most "
15033 "of the history of film, the costs of restoring film were very high; digital "
15034 "technology has lowered these costs substantially. While it cost more than "
15035 "$10,000 to restore a ninety-minute black-and-white film in 1993, it can now "
15036 "cost as little as $100 to digitize one hour of mm film.<placeholder "
15037 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
15040 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15041 #: freeculture.xml:11026
15043 "Restoration technology is not the only cost, nor the most important. "
15044 "Lawyers, too, are a cost, and increasingly, a very important one. In "
15045 "addition to preserving the film, a distributor needs to secure the rights. "
15046 "And to secure the rights for a film that is under copyright, you need to "
15047 "locate the copyright owner."
15050 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15051 #: freeculture.xml:11034
15053 "Or more accurately, <emphasis>owners</emphasis>. As we've seen, there isn't "
15054 "only a single copyright associated with a film; there are many. There isn't "
15055 "a single person whom you can contact about those copyrights; there are as "
15056 "many as can hold the rights, which turns out to be an extremely large "
15057 "number. Thus the costs of clearing the rights to these films is "
15058 "exceptionally high."
15061 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15062 #: freeculture.xml:11042
15064 "<quote>But can't you just restore the film, distribute it, and then pay the "
15065 "copyright owner when she shows up?</quote> Sure, if you want to commit a "
15066 "felony. And even if you're not worried about committing a felony, when she "
15067 "does show up, she'll have the right to sue you for all the profits you have "
15068 "made. So, if you're successful, you can be fairly confident you'll be "
15069 "getting a call from someone's lawyer. And if you're not successful, you "
15070 "won't make enough to cover the costs of your own lawyer. Either way, you "
15071 "have to talk to a lawyer. And as is too often the case, saying you have to "
15072 "talk to a lawyer is the same as saying you won't make any money."
15076 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15077 #: freeculture.xml:11053
15079 "For some films, the benefit of releasing the film may well exceed these "
15080 "costs. But for the vast majority of them, there is no way the benefit would "
15081 "outweigh the legal costs. Thus, for the vast majority of old films, Agee "
15082 "argued, the film will not be restored and distributed until the copyright "
15086 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15087 #: freeculture.xml:11064
15089 "But by the time the copyright for these films expires, the film will have "
15090 "expired. These films were produced on nitrate-based stock, and nitrate stock "
15091 "dissolves over time. They will be gone, and the metal canisters in which "
15092 "they are now stored will be filled with nothing more than dust."
15095 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15096 #: freeculture.xml:11072
15098 "<emphasis role='strong'>Of all the</emphasis> creative work produced by "
15099 "humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that "
15100 "tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device. For that "
15101 "tiny fraction, the copyright creates incentives to produce and distribute "
15102 "the creative work. For that tiny fraction, the copyright acts as an "
15103 "<quote>engine of free expression.</quote>"
15106 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15107 #: freeculture.xml:11080
15109 "But even for that tiny fraction, the actual time during which the creative "
15110 "work has a commercial life is extremely short. As I've indicated, most books "
15111 "go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and "
15112 "film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a "
15113 "creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the "
15114 "commercial life ends."
15117 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15118 #: freeculture.xml:11090
15120 "Yet that doesn't mean the life of the creative work ends. We don't keep "
15121 "libraries of books in order to compete with Barnes & Noble, and we don't "
15122 "have archives of films because we expect people to choose between spending "
15123 "Friday night watching new movies and spending Friday night watching a 1930 "
15124 "news documentary. The noncommercial life of culture is important and "
15125 "valuable—for entertainment but also, and more importantly, for "
15126 "knowledge. To understand who we are, and where we came from, and how we have "
15127 "made the mistakes that we have, we need to have access to this history."
15131 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15132 #: freeculture.xml:11103
15134 "Copyrights in this context do not drive an engine of free expression. In "
15135 "this context, there is no need for an exclusive right. Copyrights in this "
15136 "context do no good."
15139 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15140 #: freeculture.xml:11110
15142 "Yet, for most of our history, they also did little harm. For most of our "
15143 "history, when a work ended its commercial life, there was no "
15144 "<emphasis>copyright-related use</emphasis> that would be inhibited by an "
15145 "exclusive right. When a book went out of print, you could not buy it from a "
15146 "publisher. But you could still buy it from a used book store, and when a "
15147 "used book store sells it, in America, at least, there is no need to pay the "
15148 "copyright owner anything. Thus, the ordinary use of a book after its "
15149 "commercial life ended was a use that was independent of copyright law."
15152 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15153 #: freeculture.xml:11121
15155 "The same was effectively true of film. Because the costs of restoring a "
15156 "film—the real economic costs, not the lawyer costs—were so high, "
15157 "it was never at all feasible to preserve or restore film. Like the remains "
15158 "of a great dinner, when it's over, it's over. Once a film passed out of its "
15159 "commercial life, it may have been archived for a bit, but that was the end "
15160 "of its life so long as the market didn't have more to offer."
15163 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15164 #: freeculture.xml:11130
15166 "In other words, though copyright has been relatively short for most of our "
15167 "history, long copyrights wouldn't have mattered for the works that lost "
15168 "their commercial value. Long copyrights for these works would not have "
15169 "interfered with anything."
15172 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15173 #: freeculture.xml:11136
15174 msgid "But this situation has now changed."
15177 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15178 #: freeculture.xml:11140
15180 "One crucially important consequence of the emergence of digital technologies "
15181 "is to enable the archive that Brewster Kahle dreams of. Digital "
15182 "technologies now make it possible to preserve and give access to all sorts "
15183 "of knowledge. Once a book goes out of print, we can now imagine digitizing "
15184 "it and making it available to everyone, forever. Once a film goes out of "
15185 "distribution, we could digitize it and make it available to everyone, "
15186 "forever. Digital technologies give new life to copyrighted material after it "
15187 "passes out of its commercial life. It is now possible to preserve and assure "
15188 "universal access to this knowledge and culture, whereas before it was not."
15192 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15193 #: freeculture.xml:11153
15195 "And now copyright law does get in the way. Every step of producing this "
15196 "digital archive of our culture infringes on the exclusive right of "
15197 "copyright. To digitize a book is to copy it. To do that requires permission "
15198 "of the copyright owner. The same with music, film, or any other aspect of "
15199 "our culture protected by copyright. The effort to make these things "
15200 "available to history, or to researchers, or to those who just want to "
15201 "explore, is now inhibited by a set of rules that were written for a "
15202 "radically different context."
15205 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15206 #: freeculture.xml:11163
15208 "Here is the core of the harm that comes from extending terms: Now that "
15209 "technology enables us to rebuild the library of Alexandria, the law gets in "
15210 "the way. And it doesn't get in the way for any useful "
15211 "<emphasis>copyright</emphasis> purpose, for the purpose of copyright is to "
15212 "enable the commercial market that spreads culture. No, we are talking about "
15213 "culture after it has lived its commercial life. In this context, copyright "
15214 "is serving no purpose <emphasis>at all</emphasis> related to the spread of "
15215 "knowledge. In this context, copyright is not an engine of free "
15216 "expression. Copyright is a brake."
15219 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15220 #: freeculture.xml:11174
15222 "You may well ask, <quote>But if digital technologies lower the costs for "
15223 "Brewster Kahle, then they will lower the costs for Random House, too. So "
15224 "won't Random House do as well as Brewster Kahle in spreading culture "
15228 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15229 #: freeculture.xml:11180
15231 "Maybe. Someday. But there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that "
15232 "publishers would be as complete as libraries. If Barnes & Noble offered "
15233 "to lend books from its stores for a low price, would that eliminate the need "
15234 "for libraries? Only if you think that the only role of a library is to serve "
15235 "what <quote>the market</quote> would demand. But if you think the role of a "
15236 "library is bigger than this—if you think its role is to archive "
15237 "culture, whether there's a demand for any particular bit of that culture or "
15238 "not—then we can't count on the commercial market to do our library "
15243 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
15244 #: freeculture.xml:11204
15246 "Jason Schultz, <quote>The Myth of the 1976 Copyright `Chaos' Theory,</quote> "
15247 "20 December 2002, available at <ulink "
15248 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #54</ulink>."
15251 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15252 #: freeculture.xml:11192
15254 "I would be the first to agree that it should do as much as it can: We should "
15255 "rely upon the market as much as possible to spread and enable culture. My "
15256 "message is absolutely not antimarket. But where we see the market is not "
15257 "doing the job, then we should allow nonmarket forces the freedom to fill the "
15258 "gaps. As one researcher calculated for American culture, 94 percent of the "
15259 "films, books, and music produced between and 1946 is not commercially "
15260 "available. However much you love the commercial market, if access is a "
15261 "value, then 6 percent is a failure to provide that value.<placeholder "
15262 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
15265 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15266 #: freeculture.xml:11211
15268 "<emphasis role='strong'>In January 1999</emphasis>, we filed a lawsuit on "
15269 "Eric Eldred's behalf in federal district court in Washington, D.C., asking "
15270 "the court to declare the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act "
15271 "unconstitutional. The two central claims that we made were (1) that "
15272 "extending existing terms violated the Constitution's <quote>limited "
15273 "Times</quote> requirement, and (2) that extending terms by another twenty "
15274 "years violated the First Amendment."
15277 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15278 #: freeculture.xml:11220
15280 "The district court dismissed our claims without even hearing an argument. A "
15281 "panel of the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also dismissed our "
15282 "claims, though after hearing an extensive argument. But that decision at "
15283 "least had a dissent, by one of the most conservative judges on that "
15284 "court. That dissent gave our claims life."
15287 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15288 #: freeculture.xml:11227
15290 "Judge David Sentelle said the CTEA violated the requirement that copyrights "
15291 "be for <quote>limited Times</quote> only. His argument was as elegant as it "
15292 "was simple: If Congress can extend existing terms, then there is no "
15293 "<quote>stopping point</quote> to Congress's power under the Copyright "
15294 "Clause. The power to extend existing terms means Congress is not required to "
15295 "grant terms that are <quote>limited.</quote> Thus, Judge Sentelle argued, "
15296 "the court had to interpret the term <quote>limited Times</quote> to give it "
15297 "meaning. And the best interpretation, Judge Sentelle argued, would be to "
15298 "deny Congress the power to extend existing terms."
15301 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15302 #: freeculture.xml:11238
15304 "We asked the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as a whole to hear the "
15305 "case. Cases are ordinarily heard in panels of three, except for important "
15306 "cases or cases that raise issues specific to the circuit as a whole, where "
15307 "the court will sit <quote>en banc</quote> to hear the case."
15310 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15311 #: freeculture.xml:11243
15312 msgid "Tatel, David"
15316 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15317 #: freeculture.xml:11245
15319 "The Court of Appeals rejected our request to hear the case en banc. This "
15320 "time, Judge Sentelle was joined by the most liberal member of the "
15321 "D.C. Circuit, Judge David Tatel. Both the most conservative and the most "
15322 "liberal judges in the D.C. Circuit believed Congress had overstepped its "
15326 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15327 #: freeculture.xml:11254
15329 "It was here that most expected Eldred v. Ashcroft would die, for the Supreme "
15330 "Court rarely reviews any decision by a court of appeals. (It hears about one "
15331 "hundred cases a year, out of more than five thousand appeals.) And it "
15332 "practically never reviews a decision that upholds a statute when no other "
15333 "court has yet reviewed the statute."
15336 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15337 #: freeculture.xml:11261
15339 "But in February 2002, the Supreme Court surprised the world by granting our "
15340 "petition to review the D.C. Circuit opinion. Argument was set for October of "
15341 "2002. The summer would be spent writing briefs and preparing for argument."
15344 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15345 #: freeculture.xml:11267
15347 "<emphasis role='strong'>It is over</emphasis> a year later as I write these "
15348 "words. It is still astonishingly hard. If you know anything at all about "
15349 "this story, you know that we lost the appeal. And if you know something more "
15350 "than just the minimum, you probably think there was no way this case could "
15351 "have been won. After our defeat, I received literally thousands of missives "
15352 "by well-wishers and supporters, thanking me for my work on behalf of this "
15353 "noble but doomed cause. And none from this pile was more significant to me "
15354 "than the e-mail from my client, Eric Eldred."
15357 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15358 #: freeculture.xml:11278
15360 "But my client and these friends were wrong. This case could have been "
15361 "won. It should have been won. And no matter how hard I try to retell this "
15362 "story to myself, I can never escape believing that my own mistake lost it."
15365 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15366 #: freeculture.xml:11283 freeculture.xml:11297
15367 msgid "Steward, Geoffrey"
15371 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15372 #: freeculture.xml:11285
15374 "<emphasis role='strong'>The mistake</emphasis> was made early, though it "
15375 "became obvious only at the very end. Our case had been supported from the "
15376 "very beginning by an extraordinary lawyer, Geoffrey Stewart, and by the law "
15377 "firm he had moved to, Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue. Jones Day took a great "
15378 "deal of heat from its copyright-protectionist clients for supporting "
15379 "us. They ignored this pressure (something that few law firms today would "
15380 "ever do), and throughout the case, they gave it everything they could."
15383 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15384 #: freeculture.xml:11295 freeculture.xml:11654 freeculture.xml:11670 freeculture.xml:11767 freeculture.xml:11987 freeculture.xml:12018 freeculture.xml:12116
15388 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15389 #: freeculture.xml:11296
15390 msgid "Bromberg, Dan"
15393 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15394 #: freeculture.xml:11299
15396 "There were three key lawyers on the case from Jones Day. Geoff Stewart was "
15397 "the first, but then Dan Bromberg and Don Ayer became quite "
15398 "involved. Bromberg and Ayer in particular had a common view about how this "
15399 "case would be won: We would only win, they repeatedly told me, if we could "
15400 "make the issue seem <quote>important</quote> to the Supreme Court. It had to "
15401 "seem as if dramatic harm were being done to free speech and free culture; "
15402 "otherwise, they would never vote against <quote>the most powerful media "
15403 "companies in the world.</quote>"
15406 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15407 #: freeculture.xml:11309
15409 "I hate this view of the law. Of course I thought the Sonny Bono Act was a "
15410 "dramatic harm to free speech and free culture. Of course I still think it "
15411 "is. But the idea that the Supreme Court decides the law based on how "
15412 "important they believe the issues are is just wrong. It might be "
15413 "<quote>right</quote> as in <quote>true,</quote> I thought, but it is "
15414 "<quote>wrong</quote> as in <quote>it just shouldn't be that way.</quote> As "
15415 "I believed that any faithful interpretation of what the framers of our "
15416 "Constitution did would yield the conclusion that the CTEA was "
15417 "unconstitutional, and as I believed that any faithful interpretation of what "
15418 "the First Amendment means would yield the conclusion that the power to "
15419 "extend existing copyright terms is unconstitutional, I was not persuaded "
15420 "that we had to sell our case like soap. Just as a law that bans the "
15421 "swastika is unconstitutional not because the Court likes Nazis but because "
15422 "such a law would violate the Constitution, so too, in my view, would the "
15423 "Court decide whether Congress's law was constitutional based on the "
15424 "Constitution, not based on whether they liked the values that the framers "
15425 "put in the Constitution."
15428 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15429 #: freeculture.xml:11330
15431 "In any case, I thought, the Court must already see the danger and the harm "
15432 "caused by this sort of law. Why else would they grant review? There was no "
15433 "reason to hear the case in the Supreme Court if they weren't convinced that "
15434 "this regulation was harmful. So in my view, we didn't need to persuade them "
15435 "that this law was bad, we needed to show why it was unconstitutional."
15439 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15440 #: freeculture.xml:11338
15442 "There was one way, however, in which I felt politics would matter and in "
15443 "which I thought a response was appropriate. I was convinced that the Court "
15444 "would not hear our arguments if it thought these were just the arguments of "
15445 "a group of lefty loons. This Supreme Court was not about to launch into a "
15446 "new field of judicial review if it seemed that this field of review was "
15447 "simply the preference of a small political minority. Although my focus in "
15448 "the case was not to demonstrate how bad the Sonny Bono Act was but to "
15449 "demonstrate that it was unconstitutional, my hope was to make this argument "
15450 "against a background of briefs that covered the full range of political "
15451 "views. To show that this claim against the CTEA was grounded in "
15452 "<emphasis>law</emphasis> and not politics, then, we tried to gather the "
15453 "widest range of credible critics—credible not because they were rich "
15454 "and famous, but because they, in the aggregate, demonstrated that this law "
15455 "was unconstitutional regardless of one's politics."
15458 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15459 #: freeculture.xml:11356 freeculture.xml:11383
15460 msgid "Eagle Forum"
15463 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15464 #: freeculture.xml:11357
15465 msgid "Schlafly, Phyllis"
15468 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15469 #: freeculture.xml:11359
15471 "The first step happened all by itself. Phyllis Schlafly's organization, "
15472 "Eagle Forum, had been an opponent of the CTEA from the very beginning. "
15473 "Mrs. Schlafly viewed the CTEA as a sellout by Congress. In November 1998, "
15474 "she wrote a stinging editorial attacking the Republican Congress for "
15475 "allowing the law to pass. As she wrote, <quote>Do you sometimes wonder why "
15476 "bills that create a financial windfall to narrow special interests slide "
15477 "easily through the intricate legislative process, while bills that benefit "
15478 "the general public seem to get bogged down?</quote> The answer, as the "
15479 "editorial documented, was the power of money. Schlafly enumerated Disney's "
15480 "contributions to the key players on the committees. It was money, not "
15481 "justice, that gave Mickey Mouse twenty more years in Disney's control, "
15485 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15486 #: freeculture.xml:11373
15488 "In the Court of Appeals, Eagle Forum was eager to file a brief supporting "
15489 "our position. Their brief made the argument that became the core claim in "
15490 "the Supreme Court: If Congress can extend the term of existing copyrights, "
15491 "there is no limit to Congress's power to set terms. That strong "
15492 "conservative argument persuaded a strong conservative judge, Judge Sentelle."
15496 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15497 #: freeculture.xml:11385
15499 "In the Supreme Court, the briefs on our side were about as diverse as it "
15500 "gets. They included an extraordinary historical brief by the Free Software "
15501 "Foundation (home of the GNU project that made GNU/ Linux possible). They "
15502 "included a powerful brief about the costs of uncertainty by Intel. There "
15503 "were two law professors' briefs, one by copyright scholars and one by First "
15504 "Amendment scholars. There was an exhaustive and uncontroverted brief by the "
15505 "world's experts in the history of the Progress Clause. And of course, there "
15506 "was a new brief by Eagle Forum, repeating and strengthening its arguments."
15509 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15510 #: freeculture.xml:11397
15511 msgid "American Association of Law Libraries"
15514 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15515 #: freeculture.xml:11398
15516 msgid "National Writers Union"
15519 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15520 #: freeculture.xml:11400
15522 "Those briefs framed a legal argument. Then to support the legal argument, "
15523 "there were a number of powerful briefs by libraries and archives, including "
15524 "the Internet Archive, the American Association of Law Libraries, and the "
15525 "National Writers Union."
15528 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15529 #: freeculture.xml:11407
15531 "But two briefs captured the policy argument best. One made the argument I've "
15532 "already described: A brief by Hal Roach Studios argued that unless the law "
15533 "was struck, a whole generation of American film would disappear. The other "
15534 "made the economic argument absolutely clear."
15537 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15538 #: freeculture.xml:11413
15539 msgid "Akerlof, George"
15542 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15543 #: freeculture.xml:11414
15544 msgid "Arrow, Kenneth"
15547 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15548 #: freeculture.xml:11415
15549 msgid "Buchanan, James"
15552 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15553 #: freeculture.xml:11416
15554 msgid "Coase, Ronald"
15557 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15558 #: freeculture.xml:11417
15559 msgid "Friedman, Milton"
15562 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15563 #: freeculture.xml:11419
15565 "This economists' brief was signed by seventeen economists, including five "
15566 "Nobel Prize winners, including Ronald Coase, James Buchanan, Milton "
15567 "Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, and George Akerlof. The economists, as the list of "
15568 "Nobel winners demonstrates, spanned the political spectrum. Their "
15569 "conclusions were powerful: There was no plausible claim that extending the "
15570 "terms of existing copyrights would do anything to increase incentives to "
15571 "create. Such extensions were nothing more than "
15572 "<quote>rent-seeking</quote>—the fancy term economists use to describe "
15573 "special-interest legislation gone wild."
15576 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15577 #: freeculture.xml:11429 freeculture.xml:11447 freeculture.xml:11656 freeculture.xml:12019
15578 msgid "Fried, Charles"
15581 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15582 #: freeculture.xml:11430
15583 msgid "Morrison, Alan"
15586 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15587 #: freeculture.xml:11431
15588 msgid "Public Citizen"
15591 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15592 #: freeculture.xml:11432 freeculture.xml:11655 freeculture.xml:12775
15593 msgid "Reagan, Ronald"
15597 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15598 #: freeculture.xml:11434
15600 "The same effort at balance was reflected in the legal team we gathered to "
15601 "write our briefs in the case. The Jones Day lawyers had been with us from "
15602 "the start. But when the case got to the Supreme Court, we added three "
15603 "lawyers to help us frame this argument to this Court: Alan Morrison, a "
15604 "lawyer from Public Citizen, a Washington group that had made constitutional "
15605 "history with a series of seminal victories in the Supreme Court defending "
15606 "individual rights; my colleague and dean, Kathleen Sullivan, who had argued "
15607 "many cases in the Court, and who had advised us early on about a First "
15608 "Amendment strategy; and finally, former solicitor general Charles Fried."
15611 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15612 #: freeculture.xml:11449
15614 "Fried was a special victory for our side. Every other former solicitor "
15615 "general was hired by the other side to defend Congress's power to give media "
15616 "companies the special favor of extended copyright terms. Fried was the only "
15617 "one who turned down that lucrative assignment to stand up for something he "
15618 "believed in. He had been Ronald Reagan's chief lawyer in the Supreme "
15619 "Court. He had helped craft the line of cases that limited Congress's power "
15620 "in the context of the Commerce Clause. And while he had argued many "
15621 "positions in the Supreme Court that I personally disagreed with, his joining "
15622 "the cause was a vote of confidence in our argument."
15625 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15626 #: freeculture.xml:11461
15628 "The government, in defending the statute, had its collection of friends, as "
15629 "well. Significantly, however, none of these <quote>friends</quote> included "
15630 "historians or economists. The briefs on the other side of the case were "
15631 "written exclusively by major media companies, congressmen, and copyright "
15635 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15636 #: freeculture.xml:11468
15638 "The media companies were not surprising. They had the most to gain from the "
15639 "law. The congressmen were not surprising either—they were defending "
15640 "their power and, indirectly, the gravy train of contributions such power "
15641 "induced. And of course it was not surprising that the copyright holders "
15642 "would defend the idea that they should continue to have the right to control "
15643 "who did what with content they wanted to control."
15646 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15647 #: freeculture.xml:11476
15648 msgid "Gershwin, George"
15652 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
15653 #: freeculture.xml:11485
15655 "Brief of Amici Dr. Seuss Enterprise et al., <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
15656 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, 537 U.S. (2003) (No. 01-618), 19."
15660 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
15661 #: freeculture.xml:11493
15663 "Dinitia Smith, <quote>Immortal Words, Immortal Royalties? Even Mickey Mouse "
15664 "Joins the Fray,</quote> <citetitle>New York Times</citetitle>, 28 March "
15669 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15670 #: freeculture.xml:11478
15672 "Dr. Seuss's representatives, for example, argued that it was better for the "
15673 "Dr. Seuss estate to control what happened to Dr. Seuss's work— better "
15674 "than allowing it to fall into the public domain—because if this "
15675 "creativity were in the public domain, then people could use it to "
15676 "<quote>glorify drugs or to create pornography.</quote><placeholder "
15677 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> That was also the motive of the Gershwin "
15678 "estate, which defended its <quote>protection</quote> of the work of George "
15679 "Gershwin. They refuse, for example, to license <citetitle>Porgy and "
15680 "Bess</citetitle> to anyone who refuses to use African Americans in the "
15681 "cast.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> That's their view of how this "
15682 "part of American culture should be controlled, and they wanted this law to "
15683 "help them effect that control."
15686 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15687 #: freeculture.xml:11502
15689 "This argument made clear a theme that is rarely noticed in this debate. "
15690 "When Congress decides to extend the term of existing copyrights, Congress is "
15691 "making a choice about which speakers it will favor. Famous and beloved "
15692 "copyright owners, such as the Gershwin estate and Dr. Seuss, come to "
15693 "Congress and say, <quote>Give us twenty years to control the speech about "
15694 "these icons of American culture. We'll do better with them than anyone "
15695 "else.</quote> Congress of course likes to reward the popular and famous by "
15696 "giving them what they want. But when Congress gives people an exclusive "
15697 "right to speak in a certain way, that's just what the First Amendment is "
15698 "traditionally meant to block."
15701 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15702 #: freeculture.xml:11514
15704 "We argued as much in a final brief. Not only would upholding the CTEA mean "
15705 "that there was no limit to the power of Congress to extend "
15706 "copyrights—extensions that would further concentrate the market; it "
15707 "would also mean that there was no limit to Congress's power to play "
15708 "favorites, through copyright, with who has the right to speak."
15711 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15712 #: freeculture.xml:11521
15714 "<emphasis role='strong'>Between February</emphasis> and October, there was "
15715 "little I did beyond preparing for this case. Early on, as I said, I set the "
15719 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15720 #: freeculture.xml:11526 freeculture.xml:11712
15721 msgid "O'Connor, Sandra Day"
15724 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15725 #: freeculture.xml:11528
15727 "The Supreme Court was divided into two important camps. One camp we called "
15728 "<quote>the Conservatives.</quote> The other we called <quote>the "
15729 "Rest.</quote> The Conservatives included Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice "
15730 "O'Connor, Justice Scalia, Justice Kennedy, and Justice Thomas. These five "
15731 "had been the most consistent in limiting Congress's power. They were the "
15732 "five who had supported the <citetitle>Lopez/Morrison</citetitle> line of "
15733 "cases that said that an enumerated power had to be interpreted to assure "
15734 "that Congress's powers had limits."
15737 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15738 #: freeculture.xml:11537 freeculture.xml:11562 freeculture.xml:11914 freeculture.xml:11926
15739 msgid "Breyer, Stephen"
15742 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
15743 #: freeculture.xml:11538 freeculture.xml:11878
15744 msgid "Ginsburg, Ruth Bader"
15748 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15749 #: freeculture.xml:11540
15751 "The Rest were the four Justices who had strongly opposed limits on "
15752 "Congress's power. These four—Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, Justice "
15753 "Ginsburg, and Justice Breyer—had repeatedly argued that the "
15754 "Constitution gives Congress broad discretion to decide how best to implement "
15755 "its powers. In case after case, these justices had argued that the Court's "
15756 "role should be one of deference. Though the votes of these four justices "
15757 "were the votes that I personally had most consistently agreed with, they "
15758 "were also the votes that we were least likely to get."
15761 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15762 #: freeculture.xml:11552
15764 "In particular, the least likely was Justice Ginsburg's. In addition to her "
15765 "general view about deference to Congress (except where issues of gender are "
15766 "involved), she had been particularly deferential in the context of "
15767 "intellectual property protections. She and her daughter (an excellent and "
15768 "well-known intellectual property scholar) were cut from the same "
15769 "intellectual property cloth. We expected she would agree with the writings "
15770 "of her daughter: that Congress had the power in this context to do as it "
15771 "wished, even if what Congress wished made little sense."
15774 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15775 #: freeculture.xml:11564
15777 "Close behind Justice Ginsburg were two justices whom we also viewed as "
15778 "unlikely allies, though possible surprises. Justice Souter strongly favored "
15779 "deference to Congress, as did Justice Breyer. But both were also very "
15780 "sensitive to free speech concerns. And as we strongly believed, there was a "
15781 "very important free speech argument against these retrospective extensions."
15784 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15785 #: freeculture.xml:11573
15787 "The only vote we could be confident about was that of Justice "
15788 "Stevens. History will record Justice Stevens as one of the greatest judges "
15789 "on this Court. His votes are consistently eclectic, which just means that no "
15790 "simple ideology explains where he will stand. But he had consistently argued "
15791 "for limits in the context of intellectual property generally. We were fairly "
15792 "confident he would recognize limits here."
15795 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15796 #: freeculture.xml:11581
15798 "This analysis of <quote>the Rest</quote> showed most clearly where our focus "
15799 "had to be: on the Conservatives. To win this case, we had to crack open "
15800 "these five and get at least a majority to go our way. Thus, the single "
15801 "overriding argument that animated our claim rested on the Conservatives' "
15802 "most important jurisprudential innovation—the argument that Judge "
15803 "Sentelle had relied upon in the Court of Appeals, that Congress's power must "
15804 "be interpreted so that its enumerated powers have limits."
15808 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15809 #: freeculture.xml:11591
15811 "This then was the core of our strategy—a strategy for which I am "
15812 "responsible. We would get the Court to see that just as with the "
15813 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> case, under the government's argument here, "
15814 "Congress would always have unlimited power to extend existing terms. If "
15815 "anything was plain about Congress's power under the Progress Clause, it was "
15816 "that this power was supposed to be <quote>limited.</quote> Our aim would be "
15817 "to get the Court to reconcile <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> with "
15818 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>: If Congress's power to regulate commerce was "
15819 "limited, then so, too, must Congress's power to regulate copyright be "
15823 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15824 #: freeculture.xml:11605
15826 "<emphasis role='strong'>The argument</emphasis> on the government's side "
15827 "came down to this: Congress has done it before. It should be allowed to do "
15828 "it again. The government claimed that from the very beginning, Congress has "
15829 "been extending the term of existing copyrights. So, the government argued, "
15830 "the Court should not now say that practice is unconstitutional."
15833 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15834 #: freeculture.xml:11613
15836 "There was some truth to the government's claim, but not much. We certainly "
15837 "agreed that Congress had extended existing terms in 1831 and in 1909. And of "
15838 "course, in 1962, Congress began extending existing terms "
15839 "regularly—eleven times in forty years."
15842 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15843 #: freeculture.xml:11620
15845 "But this <quote>consistency</quote> should be kept in perspective. Congress "
15846 "extended existing terms once in the first hundred years of the Republic. It "
15847 "then extended existing terms once again in the next fifty. Those rare "
15848 "extensions are in contrast to the now regular practice of extending existing "
15849 "terms. Whatever restraint Congress had had in the past, that restraint was "
15850 "now gone. Congress was now in a cycle of extensions; there was no reason to "
15851 "expect that cycle would end. This Court had not hesitated to intervene where "
15852 "Congress was in a similar cycle of extension. There was no reason it "
15853 "couldn't intervene here."
15857 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15858 #: freeculture.xml:11635
15860 "<emphasis role='strong'>Oral argument</emphasis> was scheduled for the first "
15861 "week in October. I arrived in D.C. two weeks before the argument. During "
15862 "those two weeks, I was repeatedly <quote>mooted</quote> by lawyers who had "
15863 "volunteered to help in the case. Such <quote>moots</quote> are basically "
15864 "practice rounds, where wannabe justices fire questions at wannabe winners."
15867 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15868 #: freeculture.xml:11645
15870 "I was convinced that to win, I had to keep the Court focused on a single "
15871 "point: that if this extension is permitted, then there is no limit to the "
15872 "power to set terms. Going with the government would mean that terms would be "
15873 "effectively unlimited; going with us would give Congress a clear line to "
15874 "follow: Don't extend existing terms. The moots were an effective practice; I "
15875 "found ways to take every question back to this central idea."
15878 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15879 #: freeculture.xml:11658
15881 "One moot was before the lawyers at Jones Day. Don Ayer was the skeptic. He "
15882 "had served in the Reagan Justice Department with Solicitor General Charles "
15883 "Fried. He had argued many cases before the Supreme Court. And in his review "
15884 "of the moot, he let his concern speak:"
15887 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15888 #: freeculture.xml:11664
15890 "<quote>I'm just afraid that unless they really see the harm, they won't be "
15891 "willing to upset this practice that the government says has been a "
15892 "consistent practice for two hundred years. You have to make them see the "
15893 "harm—passionately get them to see the harm. For if they don't see "
15894 "that, then we haven't any chance of winning.</quote>"
15897 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15898 #: freeculture.xml:11672
15900 "He may have argued many cases before this Court, I thought, but he didn't "
15901 "understand its soul. As a clerk, I had seen the Justices do the right "
15902 "thing—not because of politics but because it was right. As a law "
15903 "professor, I had spent my life teaching my students that this Court does the "
15904 "right thing—not because of politics but because it is right. As I "
15905 "listened to Ayer's plea for passion in pressing politics, I understood his "
15906 "point, and I rejected it. Our argument was right. That was enough. Let the "
15907 "politicians learn to see that it was also good."
15911 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15912 #: freeculture.xml:11682
15914 "<emphasis role='strong'>The night before</emphasis> the argument, a line of "
15915 "people began to form in front of the Supreme Court. The case had become a "
15916 "focus of the press and of the movement to free culture. Hundreds stood in "
15917 "line for the chance to see the proceedings. Scores spent the night on the "
15918 "Supreme Court steps so that they would be assured a seat."
15921 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15922 #: freeculture.xml:11692
15924 "Not everyone has to wait in line. People who know the Justices can ask for "
15925 "seats they control. (I asked Justice Scalia's chambers for seats for my "
15926 "parents, for example.) Members of the Supreme Court bar can get a seat in a "
15927 "special section reserved for them. And senators and congressmen have a "
15928 "special place where they get to sit, too. And finally, of course, the press "
15929 "has a gallery, as do clerks working for the Justices on the Court. As we "
15930 "entered that morning, there was no place that was not taken. This was an "
15931 "argument about intellectual property law, yet the halls were filled. As I "
15932 "walked in to take my seat at the front of the Court, I saw my parents "
15933 "sitting on the left. As I sat down at the table, I saw Jack Valenti sitting "
15934 "in the special section ordinarily reserved for family of the Justices."
15937 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15938 #: freeculture.xml:11707
15940 "When the Chief Justice called me to begin my argument, I began where I "
15941 "intended to stay: on the question of the limits on Congress's power. This "
15942 "was a case about enumerated powers, I said, and whether those enumerated "
15943 "powers had any limit."
15946 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15947 #: freeculture.xml:11714
15949 "Justice O'Connor stopped me within one minute of my opening. The history "
15950 "was bothering her."
15953 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
15954 #: freeculture.xml:11719
15956 "justice o'connor: Congress has extended the term so often through the years, "
15957 "and if you are right, don't we run the risk of upsetting previous extensions "
15958 "of time? I mean, this seems to be a practice that began with the very first "
15962 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15963 #: freeculture.xml:11726
15965 "She was quite willing to concede <quote>that this flies directly in the face "
15966 "of what the framers had in mind.</quote> But my response again and again was "
15967 "to emphasize limits on Congress's power."
15971 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
15972 #: freeculture.xml:11732
15974 "mr. lessig: Well, if it flies in the face of what the framers had in mind, "
15975 "then the question is, is there a way of interpreting their words that gives "
15976 "effect to what they had in mind, and the answer is yes."
15979 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15980 #: freeculture.xml:11740
15982 "There were two points in this argument when I should have seen where the "
15983 "Court was going. The first was a question by Justice Kennedy, who observed,"
15986 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
15987 #: freeculture.xml:11746
15989 "justice kennedy: Well, I suppose implicit in the argument that the '76 act, "
15990 "too, should have been declared void, and that we might leave it alone "
15991 "because of the disruption, is that for all these years the act has impeded "
15992 "progress in science and the useful arts. I just don't see any empirical "
15993 "evidence for that."
15996 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
15997 #: freeculture.xml:11754
15999 "Here follows my clear mistake. Like a professor correcting a student, I "
16003 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16004 #: freeculture.xml:11760
16006 "mr. lessig: Justice, we are not making an empirical claim at all. Nothing "
16007 "in our Copyright Clause claim hangs upon the empirical assertion about "
16008 "impeding progress. Our only argument is this is a structural limit necessary "
16009 "to assure that what would be an effectively perpetual term not be permitted "
16010 "under the copyright laws."
16013 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16014 #: freeculture.xml:11769
16016 "That was a correct answer, but it wasn't the right answer. The right answer "
16017 "was instead that there was an obvious and profound harm. Any number of "
16018 "briefs had been written about it. He wanted to hear it. And here was the "
16019 "place Don Ayer's advice should have mattered. This was a softball; my answer "
16020 "was a swing and a miss."
16023 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16024 #: freeculture.xml:11776
16026 "The second came from the Chief, for whom the whole case had been "
16027 "crafted. For the Chief Justice had crafted the <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> "
16028 "ruling, and we hoped that he would see this case as its second cousin."
16032 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16033 #: freeculture.xml:11781
16035 "It was clear a second into his question that he wasn't at all sympathetic. "
16036 "To him, we were a bunch of anarchists. As he asked:"
16039 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16040 #: freeculture.xml:11788
16042 "chief justice: Well, but you want more than that. You want the right to copy "
16043 "verbatim other people's books, don't you?"
16046 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16047 #: freeculture.xml:11792
16049 "mr. lessig: We want the right to copy verbatim works that should be in the "
16050 "public domain and would be in the public domain but for a statute that "
16051 "cannot be justified under ordinary First Amendment analysis or under a "
16052 "proper reading of the limits built into the Copyright Clause."
16055 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16056 #: freeculture.xml:11800
16057 msgid "Olson, Theodore B."
16060 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16061 #: freeculture.xml:11802
16063 "Things went better for us when the government gave its argument; for now the "
16064 "Court picked up on the core of our claim. As Justice Scalia asked Solicitor "
16068 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16069 #: freeculture.xml:11808
16071 "justice scalia: You say that the functional equivalent of an unlimited time "
16072 "would be a violation [of the Constitution], but that's precisely the "
16073 "argument that's being made by petitioners here, that a limited time which is "
16074 "extendable is the functional equivalent of an unlimited time."
16077 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16078 #: freeculture.xml:11816
16080 "When Olson was finished, it was my turn to give a closing rebuttal. Olson's "
16081 "flailing had revived my anger. But my anger still was directed to the "
16082 "academic, not the practical. The government was arguing as if this were the "
16083 "first case ever to consider limits on Congress's Copyright and Patent Clause "
16084 "power. Ever the professor and not the advocate, I closed by pointing out the "
16085 "long history of the Court imposing limits on Congress's power in the name of "
16086 "the Copyright and Patent Clause— indeed, the very first case striking "
16087 "a law of Congress as exceeding a specific enumerated power was based upon "
16088 "the Copyright and Patent Clause. All true. But it wasn't going to move the "
16089 "Court to my side."
16093 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16094 #: freeculture.xml:11829
16096 "<emphasis role='strong'>As I left</emphasis> the court that day, I knew "
16097 "there were a hundred points I wished I could remake. There were a hundred "
16098 "questions I wished I had answered differently. But one way of thinking about "
16099 "this case left me optimistic."
16102 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16103 #: freeculture.xml:11838
16105 "The government had been asked over and over again, what is the limit? Over "
16106 "and over again, it had answered there is no limit. This was precisely the "
16107 "answer I wanted the Court to hear. For I could not imagine how the Court "
16108 "could understand that the government believed Congress's power was unlimited "
16109 "under the terms of the Copyright Clause, and sustain the government's "
16110 "argument. The solicitor general had made my argument for me. No matter how "
16111 "often I tried, I could not understand how the Court could find that "
16112 "Congress's power under the Commerce Clause was limited, but under the "
16113 "Copyright Clause, unlimited. In those rare moments when I let myself believe "
16114 "that we may have prevailed, it was because I felt this Court—in "
16115 "particular, the Conservatives—would feel itself constrained by the "
16116 "rule of law that it had established elsewhere."
16119 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16120 #: freeculture.xml:11853
16122 "<emphasis role='strong'>The morning</emphasis> of January 15, 2003, I was "
16123 "five minutes late to the office and missed the 7:00 A.M. call from the "
16124 "Supreme Court clerk. Listening to the message, I could tell in an instant "
16125 "that she had bad news to report.The Supreme Court had affirmed the decision "
16126 "of the Court of Appeals. Seven justices had voted in the majority. There "
16127 "were two dissents."
16130 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16131 #: freeculture.xml:11861
16133 "A few seconds later, the opinions arrived by e-mail. I took the phone off "
16134 "the hook, posted an announcement to our blog, and sat down to see where I "
16135 "had been wrong in my reasoning."
16138 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16139 #: freeculture.xml:11866
16141 "My <emphasis>reasoning</emphasis>. Here was a case that pitted all the money "
16142 "in the world against <emphasis>reasoning</emphasis>. And here was the last "
16143 "naïve law professor, scouring the pages, looking for reasoning."
16146 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16147 #: freeculture.xml:11872
16149 "I first scoured the opinion, looking for how the Court would distinguish the "
16150 "principle in this case from the principle in "
16151 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>. The argument was nowhere to be found. The case "
16152 "was not even cited. The argument that was the core argument of our case did "
16153 "not even appear in the Court's opinion."
16157 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16158 #: freeculture.xml:11882
16160 "Justice Ginsburg simply ignored the enumerated powers argument. Consistent "
16161 "with her view that Congress's power was not limited generally, she had found "
16162 "Congress's power not limited here."
16165 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16166 #: freeculture.xml:11887
16168 "Her opinion was perfectly reasonable—for her, and for Justice "
16169 "Souter. Neither believes in <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle>. It would be too "
16170 "much to expect them to write an opinion that recognized, much less "
16171 "explained, the doctrine they had worked so hard to defeat."
16174 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16175 #: freeculture.xml:11893
16177 "But as I realized what had happened, I couldn't quite believe what I was "
16178 "reading. I had said there was no way this Court could reconcile limited "
16179 "powers with the Commerce Clause and unlimited powers with the Progress "
16180 "Clause. It had never even occurred to me that they could reconcile the two "
16181 "simply <emphasis>by not addressing the argument</emphasis>. There was no "
16182 "inconsistency because they would not talk about the two together. There was "
16183 "therefore no principle that followed from the <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> "
16184 "case: In that context, Congress's power would be limited, but in this "
16185 "context it would not."
16188 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16189 #: freeculture.xml:11904
16191 "Yet by what right did they get to choose which of the framers' values they "
16192 "would respect? By what right did they—the silent five—get to "
16193 "select the part of the Constitution they would enforce based on the values "
16194 "they thought important? We were right back to the argument that I said I "
16195 "hated at the start: I had failed to convince them that the issue here was "
16196 "important, and I had failed to recognize that however much I might hate a "
16197 "system in which the Court gets to pick the constitutional values that it "
16198 "will respect, that is the system we have."
16201 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16202 #: freeculture.xml:11916
16204 "Justices Breyer and Stevens wrote very strong dissents. Stevens's opinion "
16205 "was crafted internal to the law: He argued that the tradition of "
16206 "intellectual property law should not support this unjustified extension of "
16207 "terms. He based his argument on a parallel analysis that had governed in the "
16208 "context of patents (so had we). But the rest of the Court discounted the "
16209 "parallel—without explaining how the very same words in the Progress "
16210 "Clause could come to mean totally different things depending upon whether "
16211 "the words were about patents or copyrights. The Court let Justice Stevens's "
16212 "charge go unanswered."
16216 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16217 #: freeculture.xml:11929
16219 "Justice Breyer's opinion, perhaps the best opinion he has ever written, was "
16220 "external to the Constitution. He argued that the term of copyrights has "
16221 "become so long as to be effectively unlimited. We had said that under the "
16222 "current term, a copyright gave an author 99.8 percent of the value of a "
16223 "perpetual term. Breyer said we were wrong, that the actual number was "
16224 "99.9997 percent of a perpetual term. Either way, the point was clear: If the "
16225 "Constitution said a term had to be <quote>limited,</quote> and the existing "
16226 "term was so long as to be effectively unlimited, then it was "
16227 "unconstitutional."
16230 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16231 #: freeculture.xml:11940
16233 "These two justices understood all the arguments we had made. But because "
16234 "neither believed in the <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> case, neither was "
16235 "willing to push it as a reason to reject this extension. The case was "
16236 "decided without anyone having addressed the argument that we had carried "
16237 "from Judge Sentelle. It was <citetitle>Hamlet</citetitle> without the "
16241 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16242 #: freeculture.xml:11947
16244 "<emphasis role='strong'>Defeat brings depression</emphasis>. They say it is "
16245 "a sign of health when depression gives way to anger. My anger came quickly, "
16246 "but it didn't cure the depression. This anger was of two sorts."
16249 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16250 #: freeculture.xml:11952
16251 msgid "originalism"
16254 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16255 #: freeculture.xml:11954
16257 "It was first anger with the five <quote>Conservatives.</quote> It would have "
16258 "been one thing for them to have explained why the principle of "
16259 "<citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> didn't apply in this case. That wouldn't have "
16260 "been a very convincing argument, I don't believe, having read it made by "
16261 "others, and having tried to make it myself. But it at least would have been "
16262 "an act of integrity. These justices in particular have repeatedly said that "
16263 "the proper mode of interpreting the Constitution is "
16264 "<quote>originalism</quote>—to first understand the framers' text, "
16265 "interpreted in their context, in light of the structure of the "
16266 "Constitution. That method had produced <citetitle>Lopez</citetitle> and many "
16267 "other <quote>originalist</quote> rulings. Where was their "
16268 "<quote>originalism</quote> now?"
16272 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16273 #: freeculture.xml:11967
16275 "Here, they had joined an opinion that never once tried to explain what the "
16276 "framers had meant by crafting the Progress Clause as they did; they joined "
16277 "an opinion that never once tried to explain how the structure of that clause "
16278 "would affect the interpretation of Congress's power. And they joined an "
16279 "opinion that didn't even try to explain why this grant of power could be "
16280 "unlimited, whereas the Commerce Clause would be limited. In short, they had "
16281 "joined an opinion that did not apply to, and was inconsistent with, their "
16282 "own method for interpreting the Constitution. This opinion may well have "
16283 "yielded a result that they liked. It did not produce a reason that was "
16284 "consistent with their own principles."
16287 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16288 #: freeculture.xml:11982
16290 "My anger with the Conservatives quickly yielded to anger with myself. For I "
16291 "had let a view of the law that I liked interfere with a view of the law as "
16295 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16296 #: freeculture.xml:11989
16298 "Most lawyers, and most law professors, have little patience for idealism "
16299 "about courts in general and this Supreme Court in particular. Most have a "
16300 "much more pragmatic view. When Don Ayer said that this case would be won "
16301 "based on whether I could convince the Justices that the framers' values were "
16302 "important, I fought the idea, because I didn't want to believe that that is "
16303 "how this Court decides. I insisted on arguing this case as if it were a "
16304 "simple application of a set of principles. I had an argument that followed "
16305 "in logic. I didn't need to waste my time showing it should also follow in "
16310 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16311 #: freeculture.xml:12000
16313 "As I read back over the transcript from that argument in October, I can see "
16314 "a hundred places where the answers could have taken the conversation in "
16315 "different directions, where the truth about the harm that this unchecked "
16316 "power will cause could have been made clear to this Court. Justice Kennedy "
16317 "in good faith wanted to be shown. I, idiotically, corrected his "
16318 "question. Justice Souter in good faith wanted to be shown the First "
16319 "Amendment harms. I, like a math teacher, reframed the question to make the "
16320 "logical point. I had shown them how they could strike this law of Congress "
16321 "if they wanted to. There were a hundred places where I could have helped "
16322 "them want to, yet my stubbornness, my refusal to give in, stopped me. I have "
16323 "stood before hundreds of audiences trying to persuade; I have used passion "
16324 "in that effort to persuade; but I refused to stand before this audience and "
16325 "try to persuade with the passion I had used elsewhere. It was not the basis "
16326 "on which a court should decide the issue."
16329 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16330 #: freeculture.xml:12021
16332 "Would it have been different if I had argued it differently? Would it have "
16333 "been different if Don Ayer had argued it? Or Charles Fried? Or Kathleen "
16337 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16338 #: freeculture.xml:12026
16340 "My friends huddled around me to insist it would not. The Court was not "
16341 "ready, my friends insisted. This was a loss that was destined. It would take "
16342 "a great deal more to show our society why our framers were right. And when "
16343 "we do that, we will be able to show that Court."
16346 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16347 #: freeculture.xml:12032
16349 "Maybe, but I doubt it. These Justices have no financial interest in doing "
16350 "anything except the right thing. They are not lobbied. They have little "
16351 "reason to resist doing right. I can't help but think that if I had stepped "
16352 "down from this pretty picture of dispassionate justice, I could have "
16356 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16357 #: freeculture.xml:12040
16359 "And even if I couldn't, then that doesn't excuse what happened in "
16360 "January. For at the start of this case, one of America's leading "
16361 "intellectual property professors stated publicly that my bringing this case "
16362 "was a mistake. <quote>The Court is not ready,</quote> Peter Jaszi said; this "
16363 "issue should not be raised until it is."
16366 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16367 #: freeculture.xml:12047
16369 "After the argument and after the decision, Peter said to me, and publicly, "
16370 "that he was wrong. But if indeed that Court could not have been persuaded, "
16371 "then that is all the evidence that's needed to know that here again Peter "
16372 "was right. Either I was not ready to argue this case in a way that would do "
16373 "some good or they were not ready to hear this case in a way that would do "
16374 "some good. Either way, the decision to bring this case—a decision I "
16375 "had made four years before—was wrong."
16379 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16380 #: freeculture.xml:12056
16382 "<emphasis role='strong'>While the reaction</emphasis> to the Sonny Bono Act "
16383 "itself was almost unanimously negative, the reaction to the Court's decision "
16384 "was mixed. No one, at least in the press, tried to say that extending the "
16385 "term of copyright was a good idea. We had won that battle over ideas. Where "
16386 "the decision was praised, it was praised by papers that had been skeptical "
16387 "of the Court's activism in other cases. Deference was a good thing, even if "
16388 "it left standing a silly law. But where the decision was attacked, it was "
16389 "attacked because it left standing a silly and harmful law. <citetitle>The "
16390 "New York Times</citetitle> wrote in its editorial,"
16393 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><blockquote><para>
16394 #: freeculture.xml:12071
16396 "In effect, the Supreme Court's decision makes it likely that we are seeing "
16397 "the beginning of the end of public domain and the birth of copyright "
16398 "perpetuity. The public domain has been a grand experiment, one that should "
16399 "not be allowed to die. The ability to draw freely on the entire creative "
16400 "output of humanity is one of the reasons we live in a time of such fruitful "
16401 "creative ferment."
16404 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure><indexterm><primary>
16405 #: freeculture.xml:12085 freeculture.xml:12090
16406 msgid "Bolling, Ruben"
16409 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16410 #: freeculture.xml:12080
16412 "The best responses were in the cartoons. There was a gaggle of hilarious "
16413 "images—of Mickey in jail and the like. The best, from my view of the "
16414 "case, was Ruben Bolling's, reproduced on the next page (<xref "
16415 "linkend=\"fig-18\"/>). The <quote>powerful and wealthy</quote> line is a bit "
16416 "unfair. But the punch in the face felt exactly like that. <placeholder "
16417 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
16420 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure><title>
16421 #: freeculture.xml:12088
16422 msgid "Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon"
16425 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><figure>
16426 #: freeculture.xml:12089
16428 "<graphic fileref=\"images/18.png\"></graphic> <placeholder "
16429 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
16432 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16433 #: freeculture.xml:12093
16435 "The image that will always stick in my head is that evoked by the quote from "
16436 "<citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle>. That <quote>grand "
16437 "experiment</quote> we call the <quote>public domain</quote> is over? When I "
16438 "can make light of it, I think, <quote>Honey, I shrunk the "
16439 "Constitution.</quote> But I can rarely make light of it. We had in our "
16440 "Constitution a commitment to free culture. In the case that I fathered, the "
16441 "Supreme Court effectively renounced that commitment. A better lawyer would "
16442 "have made them see differently."
16445 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><title>
16446 #: freeculture.xml:12104
16447 msgid "CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Eldred II"
16450 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16451 #: freeculture.xml:12106
16453 "<emphasis role='strong'>The day</emphasis> <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> was "
16454 "decided, fate would have it that I was to travel to Washington, D.C. (The "
16455 "day the rehearing petition in <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> was "
16456 "denied—meaning the case was really finally over—fate would have "
16457 "it that I was giving a speech to technologists at Disney World.) This was a "
16458 "particularly long flight to my least favorite city. The drive into the city "
16459 "from Dulles was delayed because of traffic, so I opened up my computer and "
16460 "wrote an op-ed piece."
16463 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16464 #: freeculture.xml:12118
16466 "It was an act of contrition. During the whole of the flight from San "
16467 "Francisco to Washington, I had heard over and over again in my head the same "
16468 "advice from Don Ayer: You need to make them see why it is important. And "
16469 "alternating with that command was the question of Justice Kennedy: "
16470 "<quote>For all these years the act has impeded progress in science and the "
16471 "useful arts. I just don't see any empirical evidence for that.</quote> And "
16472 "so, having failed in the argument of constitutional principle, finally, I "
16473 "turned to an argument of politics."
16477 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16478 #: freeculture.xml:12128
16480 "<citetitle>The New York Times</citetitle> published the piece. In it, I "
16481 "proposed a simple fix: Fifty years after a work has been published, the "
16482 "copyright owner would be required to register the work and pay a small "
16483 "fee. If he paid the fee, he got the benefit of the full term of "
16484 "copyright. If he did not, the work passed into the public domain."
16487 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16488 #: freeculture.xml:12136
16490 "We called this the Eldred Act, but that was just to give it a name. Eric "
16491 "Eldred was kind enough to let his name be used once again, but as he said "
16492 "early on, it won't get passed unless it has another name."
16495 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16496 #: freeculture.xml:12141
16498 "Or another two names. For depending upon your perspective, this is either "
16499 "the <quote>Public Domain Enhancement Act</quote> or the <quote>Copyright "
16500 "Term Deregulation Act.</quote> Either way, the essence of the idea is clear "
16501 "and obvious: Remove copyright where it is doing nothing except blocking "
16502 "access and the spread of knowledge. Leave it for as long as Congress allows "
16503 "for those works where its worth is at least $1. But for everything else, let "
16507 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16508 #: freeculture.xml:12149 freeculture.xml:12350
16509 msgid "Forbes, Steve"
16512 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16513 #: freeculture.xml:12151
16515 "The reaction to this idea was amazingly strong. Steve Forbes endorsed it in "
16516 "an editorial. I received an avalanche of e-mail and letters expressing "
16517 "support. When you focus the issue on lost creativity, people can see the "
16518 "copyright system makes no sense. As a good Republican might say, here "
16519 "government regulation is simply getting in the way of innovation and "
16520 "creativity. And as a good Democrat might say, here the government is "
16521 "blocking access and the spread of knowledge for no good reason. Indeed, "
16522 "there is no real difference between Democrats and Republicans on this "
16523 "issue. Anyone can recognize the stupid harm of the present system."
16526 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16527 #: freeculture.xml:12163
16529 "Indeed, many recognized the obvious benefit of the registration "
16530 "requirement. For one of the hardest things about the current system for "
16531 "people who want to license content is that there is no obvious place to look "
16532 "for the current copyright owners. Since registration is not required, since "
16533 "marking content is not required, since no formality at all is required, it "
16534 "is often impossibly hard to locate copyright owners to ask permission to use "
16535 "or license their work. This system would lower these costs, by establishing "
16536 "at least one registry where copyright owners could be identified."
16539 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16540 #: freeculture.xml:12173
16541 msgid "Berlin Act (1908)"
16544 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16545 #: freeculture.xml:12174 freeculture.xml:12215
16546 msgid "Berne Convention (1908)"
16549 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
16550 #: freeculture.xml:12182
16551 msgid "German copyright law"
16554 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para><footnote><para>
16555 #: freeculture.xml:12182
16557 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> Until the 1908 Berlin Act of the "
16558 "Berne Convention, national copyright legislation sometimes made protection "
16559 "depend upon compliance with formalities such as registration, deposit, and "
16560 "affixation of notice of the author's claim of copyright. However, starting "
16561 "with the 1908 act, every text of the Convention has provided that <quote>the "
16562 "enjoyment and the exercise</quote> of rights guaranteed by the Convention "
16563 "<quote>shall not be subject to any formality.</quote> The prohibition "
16564 "against formalities is presently embodied in Article 5(2) of the Paris Text "
16565 "of the Berne Convention. Many countries continue to impose some form of "
16566 "deposit or registration requirement, albeit not as a condition of "
16567 "copyright. French law, for example, requires the deposit of copies of works "
16568 "in national repositories, principally the National Museum. Copies of books "
16569 "published in the United Kingdom must be deposited in the British "
16570 "Library. The German Copyright Act provides for a Registrar of Authors where "
16571 "the author's true name can be filed in the case of anonymous or pseudonymous "
16572 "works. Paul Goldstein, <citetitle>International Intellectual Property Law, "
16573 "Cases and Materials</citetitle> (New York: Foundation Press, 2001), "
16577 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16578 #: freeculture.xml:12177
16580 "As I described in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
16581 "linkend=\"property-i\"/>, formalities in copyright law were removed in 1976, "
16582 "when Congress followed the Europeans by abandoning any formal requirement "
16583 "before a copyright is granted.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The "
16584 "Europeans are said to view copyright as a <quote>natural right.</quote> "
16585 "Natural rights don't need forms to exist. Traditions, like the "
16586 "Anglo-American tradition that required copyright owners to follow form if "
16587 "their rights were to be protected, did not, the Europeans thought, properly "
16588 "respect the dignity of the author. My right as a creator turns on my "
16589 "creativity, not upon the special favor of the government."
16592 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16593 #: freeculture.xml:12209
16595 "That's great rhetoric. It sounds wonderfully romantic. But it is absurd "
16596 "copyright policy. It is absurd especially for authors, because a world "
16597 "without formalities harms the creator. The ability to spread <quote>Walt "
16598 "Disney creativity</quote> is destroyed when there is no simple way to know "
16599 "what's protected and what's not."
16602 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16603 #: freeculture.xml:12217
16605 "The fight against formalities achieved its first real victory in Berlin in "
16606 "1908. International copyright lawyers amended the Berne Convention in 1908, "
16607 "to require copyright terms of life plus fifty years, as well as the "
16608 "abolition of copyright formalities. The formalities were hated because the "
16609 "stories of inadvertent loss were increasingly common. It was as if a Charles "
16610 "Dickens character ran all copyright offices, and the failure to dot an "
16611 "<citetitle>i</citetitle> or cross a <citetitle>t</citetitle> resulted in the "
16612 "loss of widows' only income."
16615 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16616 #: freeculture.xml:12227
16618 "These complaints were real and sensible. And the strictness of the "
16619 "formalities, especially in the United States, was absurd. The law should "
16620 "always have ways of forgiving innocent mistakes. There is no reason "
16621 "copyright law couldn't, as well. Rather than abandoning formalities totally, "
16622 "the response in Berlin should have been to embrace a more equitable system "
16626 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16627 #: freeculture.xml:12235
16629 "Even that would have been resisted, however, because registration in the "
16630 "nineteenth and twentieth centuries was still expensive. It was also a "
16631 "hassle. The abolishment of formalities promised not only to save the "
16632 "starving widows, but also to lighten an unnecessary regulatory burden "
16633 "imposed upon creators."
16637 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16638 #: freeculture.xml:12243
16640 "In addition to the practical complaint of authors in 1908, there was a moral "
16641 "claim as well. There was no reason that creative property should be a "
16642 "second-class form of property. If a carpenter builds a table, his rights "
16643 "over the table don't depend upon filing a form with the government. He has "
16644 "a property right over the table <quote>naturally,</quote> and he can assert "
16645 "that right against anyone who would steal the table, whether or not he has "
16646 "informed the government of his ownership of the table."
16649 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16650 #: freeculture.xml:12255
16652 "This argument is correct, but its implications are misleading. For the "
16653 "argument in favor of formalities does not depend upon creative property "
16654 "being second-class property. The argument in favor of formalities turns upon "
16655 "the special problems that creative property presents. The law of "
16656 "formalities responds to the special physics of creative property, to assure "
16657 "that it can be efficiently and fairly spread."
16660 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16661 #: freeculture.xml:12264
16663 "No one thinks, for example, that land is second-class property just because "
16664 "you have to register a deed with a court if your sale of land is to be "
16665 "effective. And few would think a car is second-class property just because "
16666 "you must register the car with the state and tag it with a license. In both "
16667 "of those cases, everyone sees that there is an important reason to secure "
16668 "registration—both because it makes the markets more efficient and "
16669 "because it better secures the rights of the owner. Without a registration "
16670 "system for land, landowners would perpetually have to guard their "
16671 "property. With registration, they can simply point the police to a "
16672 "deed. Without a registration system for cars, auto theft would be much "
16673 "easier. With a registration system, the thief has a high burden to sell a "
16674 "stolen car. A slight burden is placed on the property owner, but those "
16675 "burdens produce a much better system of protection for property generally."
16678 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16679 #: freeculture.xml:12280
16681 "It is similarly special physics that makes formalities important in "
16682 "copyright law. Unlike a carpenter's table, there's nothing in nature that "
16683 "makes it relatively obvious who might own a particular bit of creative "
16684 "property. A recording of Lyle Lovett's latest album can exist in a billion "
16685 "places without anything necessarily linking it back to a particular "
16686 "owner. And like a car, there's no way to buy and sell creative property with "
16687 "confidence unless there is some simple way to authenticate who is the author "
16688 "and what rights he has. Simple transactions are destroyed in a world without "
16689 "formalities. Complex, expensive, <emphasis>lawyer</emphasis> transactions "
16690 "take their place. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
16693 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16694 #: freeculture.xml:12295
16696 "This was the understanding of the problem with the Sonny Bono Act that we "
16697 "tried to demonstrate to the Court. This was the part it didn't "
16698 "<quote>get.</quote> Because we live in a system without formalities, there "
16699 "is no way easily to build upon or use culture from our past. If copyright "
16700 "terms were, as Justice Story said they would be, <quote>short,</quote> then "
16701 "this wouldn't matter much. For fourteen years, under the framers' system, a "
16702 "work would be presumptively controlled. After fourteen years, it would be "
16703 "presumptively uncontrolled."
16706 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16707 #: freeculture.xml:12305
16709 "But now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to "
16710 "know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious "
16711 "burden on the creative process. If the only way a library can offer an "
16712 "Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights "
16713 "to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity "
16714 "in a way that has never been seen before <emphasis>because there are no "
16715 "formalities</emphasis>."
16718 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16719 #: freeculture.xml:12314
16721 "The Eldred Act was designed to respond to exactly this problem. If it is "
16722 "worth $1 to you, then register your work and you can get the longer "
16723 "term. Others will know how to contact you and, therefore, how to get your "
16724 "permission if they want to use your work. And you will get the benefit of an "
16725 "extended copyright term."
16728 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16729 #: freeculture.xml:12321
16731 "If it isn't worth it to you to register to get the benefit of an extended "
16732 "term, then it shouldn't be worth it for the government to defend your "
16733 "monopoly over that work either. The work should pass into the public domain "
16734 "where anyone can copy it, or build archives with it, or create a movie based "
16735 "on it. It should become free if it is not worth $1 to you."
16738 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16739 #: freeculture.xml:12328
16741 "Some worry about the burden on authors. Won't the burden of registering the "
16742 "work mean that the $1 is really misleading? Isn't the hassle worth more than "
16743 "$1? Isn't that the real problem with registration?"
16747 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16748 #: freeculture.xml:12334
16750 "It is. The hassle is terrible. The system that exists now is awful. I "
16751 "completely agree that the Copyright Office has done a terrible job (no doubt "
16752 "because they are terribly funded) in enabling simple and cheap "
16753 "registrations. Any real solution to the problem of formalities must address "
16754 "the real problem of <emphasis>governments</emphasis> standing at the core of "
16755 "any system of formalities. In this book, I offer such a solution. That "
16756 "solution essentially remakes the Copyright Office. For now, assume it was "
16757 "Amazon that ran the registration system. Assume it was one-click "
16758 "registration. The Eldred Act would propose a simple, one-click registration "
16759 "fifty years after a work was published. Based upon historical data, that "
16760 "system would move up to 98 percent of commercial work, commercial work that "
16761 "no longer had a commercial life, into the public domain within fifty "
16762 "years. What do you think?"
16765 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16766 #: freeculture.xml:12352
16768 "<emphasis role='strong'>When Steve Forbes</emphasis> endorsed the idea, some "
16769 "in Washington began to pay attention. Many people contacted me pointing to "
16770 "representatives who might be willing to introduce the Eldred Act. And I had "
16771 "a few who directly suggested that they might be willing to take the first "
16775 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16776 #: freeculture.xml:12358
16777 msgid "Lofgren, Zoe"
16780 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16781 #: freeculture.xml:12360
16783 "One representative, Zoe Lofgren of California, went so far as to get the "
16784 "bill drafted. The draft solved any problem with international law. It "
16785 "imposed the simplest requirement upon copyright owners possible. In May "
16786 "2003, it looked as if the bill would be introduced. On May 16, I posted on "
16787 "the Eldred Act blog, <quote>we are close.</quote> There was a general "
16788 "reaction in the blog community that something good might happen here."
16791 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16792 #: freeculture.xml:12369
16794 "But at this stage, the lobbyists began to intervene. Jack Valenti and the "
16795 "MPAA general counsel came to the congresswoman's office to give the view of "
16796 "the MPAA. Aided by his lawyer, as Valenti told me, Valenti informed the "
16797 "congresswoman that the MPAA would oppose the Eldred Act. The reasons are "
16798 "embarrassingly thin. More importantly, their thinness shows something clear "
16799 "about what this debate is really about."
16803 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16804 #: freeculture.xml:12377
16806 "The MPAA argued first that Congress had <quote>firmly rejected the central "
16807 "concept in the proposed bill</quote>—that copyrights be renewed. That "
16808 "was true, but irrelevant, as Congress's <quote>firm rejection</quote> had "
16809 "occurred long before the Internet made subsequent uses much more likely. "
16810 "Second, they argued that the proposal would harm poor copyright "
16811 "owners—apparently those who could not afford the $1 fee. Third, they "
16812 "argued that Congress had determined that extending a copyright term would "
16813 "encourage restoration work. Maybe in the case of the small percentage of "
16814 "work covered by copyright law that is still commercially valuable, but again "
16815 "this was irrelevant, as the proposal would not cut off the extended term "
16816 "unless the $1 fee was not paid. Fourth, the MPAA argued that the bill would "
16817 "impose <quote>enormous</quote> costs, since a registration system is not "
16818 "free. True enough, but those costs are certainly less than the costs of "
16819 "clearing the rights for a copyright whose owner is not known. Fifth, they "
16820 "worried about the risks if the copyright to a story underlying a film were "
16821 "to pass into the public domain. But what risk is that? If it is in the "
16822 "public domain, then the film is a valid derivative use."
16825 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16826 #: freeculture.xml:12398
16828 "Finally, the MPAA argued that existing law enabled copyright owners to do "
16829 "this if they wanted. But the whole point is that there are thousands of "
16830 "copyright owners who don't even know they have a copyright to give. Whether "
16831 "they are free to give away their copyright or not—a controversial "
16832 "claim in any case—unless they know about a copyright, they're not "
16836 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16837 #: freeculture.xml:12406
16839 "<emphasis role='strong'>At the beginning</emphasis> of this book, I told two "
16840 "stories about the law reacting to changes in technology. In the one, common "
16841 "sense prevailed. In the other, common sense was delayed. The difference "
16842 "between the two stories was the power of the opposition—the power of "
16843 "the side that fought to defend the status quo. In both cases, a new "
16844 "technology threatened old interests. But in only one case did those "
16845 "interest's have the power to protect themselves against this new competitive "
16849 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16850 #: freeculture.xml:12416
16852 "I used these two cases as a way to frame the war that this book has been "
16853 "about. For here, too, a new technology is forcing the law to react. And "
16854 "here, too, we should ask, is the law following or resisting common sense? If "
16855 "common sense supports the law, what explains this common sense?"
16859 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16860 #: freeculture.xml:12425
16862 "When the issue is piracy, it is right for the law to back the copyright "
16863 "owners. The commercial piracy that I described is wrong and harmful, and the "
16864 "law should work to eliminate it. When the issue is p2p sharing, it is easy "
16865 "to understand why the law backs the owners still: Much of this sharing is "
16866 "wrong, even if much is harmless. When the issue is copyright terms for the "
16867 "Mickey Mouses of the world, it is possible still to understand why the law "
16868 "favors Hollywood: Most people don't recognize the reasons for limiting "
16869 "copyright terms; it is thus still possible to see good faith within the "
16873 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16874 #: freeculture.xml:12435
16875 msgid "Kelly, Kevin"
16878 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16879 #: freeculture.xml:12437
16881 "But when the copyright owners oppose a proposal such as the Eldred Act, "
16882 "then, finally, there is an example that lays bare the naked selfinterest "
16883 "driving this war. This act would free an extraordinary range of content that "
16884 "is otherwise unused. It wouldn't interfere with any copyright owner's desire "
16885 "to exercise continued control over his content. It would simply liberate "
16886 "what Kevin Kelly calls the <quote>Dark Content</quote> that fills archives "
16887 "around the world. So when the warriors oppose a change like this, we should "
16888 "ask one simple question:"
16891 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16892 #: freeculture.xml:12447
16893 msgid "What does this industry really want?"
16896 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16897 #: freeculture.xml:12450
16899 "With very little effort, the warriors could protect their content. So the "
16900 "effort to block something like the Eldred Act is not really about protecting "
16901 "<emphasis>their</emphasis> content. The effort to block the Eldred Act is an "
16902 "effort to assure that nothing more passes into the public domain. It is "
16903 "another step to assure that the public domain will never compete, that there "
16904 "will be no use of content that is not commercially controlled, and that "
16905 "there will be no commercial use of content that doesn't require "
16906 "<emphasis>their</emphasis> permission first."
16909 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16910 #: freeculture.xml:12461
16912 "The opposition to the Eldred Act reveals how extreme the other side is. The "
16913 "most powerful and sexy and well loved of lobbies really has as its aim not "
16914 "the protection of <quote>property</quote> but the rejection of a tradition. "
16915 "Their aim is not simply to protect what is theirs. <emphasis>Their aim is to "
16916 "assure that all there is is what is theirs</emphasis>."
16920 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16921 #: freeculture.xml:12469
16923 "It is not hard to understand why the warriors take this view. It is not hard "
16924 "to see why it would benefit them if the competition of the public domain "
16925 "tied to the Internet could somehow be quashed. Just as RCA feared the "
16926 "competition of FM, they fear the competition of a public domain connected to "
16927 "a public that now has the means to create with it and to share its own "
16931 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16932 #: freeculture.xml:12481
16934 "What is hard to understand is why the public takes this view. It is as if "
16935 "the law made airplanes trespassers. The MPAA stands with the Causbys and "
16936 "demands that their remote and useless property rights be respected, so that "
16937 "these remote and forgotten copyright holders might block the progress of "
16941 #. type: Content of: <book><part><chapter><para>
16942 #: freeculture.xml:12488
16944 "All this seems to follow easily from this untroubled acceptance of the "
16945 "<quote>property</quote> in intellectual property. Common sense supports it, "
16946 "and so long as it does, the assaults will rain down upon the technologies of "
16947 "the Internet. The consequence will be an increasing <quote>permission "
16948 "society.</quote> The past can be cultivated only if you can identify the "
16949 "owner and gain permission to build upon his work. The future will be "
16950 "controlled by this dead (and often unfindable) hand of the past."
16953 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
16954 #: freeculture.xml:12500
16958 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16959 #: freeculture.xml:12501
16960 msgid "antiretroviral drugs"
16963 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16964 #: freeculture.xml:12502
16965 msgid "HIV/AIDS therapies"
16968 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
16969 #: freeculture.xml:12503
16970 msgid "Africa, medications for HIV patients in"
16973 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
16974 #: freeculture.xml:12505
16976 "<emphasis role='strong'>There are more</emphasis> than 35 million people "
16977 "with the AIDS virus worldwide. Twenty-five million of them live in "
16978 "sub-Saharan Africa. Seventeen million have already died. Seventeen million "
16979 "Africans is proportional percentage-wise to seven million Americans. More "
16980 "importantly, it is seventeen million Africans."
16983 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
16984 #: freeculture.xml:12512
16986 "There is no cure for AIDS, but there are drugs to slow its progression. "
16987 "These antiretroviral therapies are still experimental, but they have already "
16988 "had a dramatic effect. In the United States, AIDS patients who regularly "
16989 "take a cocktail of these drugs increase their life expectancy by ten to "
16990 "twenty years. For some, the drugs make the disease almost invisible."
16994 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
16995 #: freeculture.xml:12527
16997 "Commission on Intellectual Property Rights, <quote>Final Report: Integrating "
16998 "Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy</quote> (London, 2002), "
16999 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
17000 "#55</ulink>. According to a World Health Organization press release issued 9 "
17001 "July 2002, only 230,000 of the 6 million who need drugs in the developing "
17002 "world receive them—and half of them are in Brazil."
17005 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17006 #: freeculture.xml:12520
17008 "These drugs are expensive. When they were first introduced in the United "
17009 "States, they cost between $10,000 and $15,000 per person per year. Today, "
17010 "some cost $25,000 per year. At these prices, of course, no African nation "
17011 "can afford the drugs for the vast majority of its population: $15,000 is "
17012 "thirty times the per capita gross national product of Zimbabwe. At these "
17013 "prices, the drugs are totally unavailable.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
17018 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17019 #: freeculture.xml:12538
17021 "These prices are not high because the ingredients of the drugs are "
17022 "expensive. These prices are high because the drugs are protected by "
17023 "patents. The drug companies that produced these life-saving mixes enjoy at "
17024 "least a twenty-year monopoly for their inventions. They use that monopoly "
17025 "power to extract the most they can from the market. That power is in turn "
17026 "used to keep the prices high."
17029 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17030 #: freeculture.xml:12546
17032 "There are many who are skeptical of patents, especially drug patents. I am "
17033 "not. Indeed, of all the areas of research that might be supported by "
17034 "patents, drug research is, in my view, the clearest case where patents are "
17035 "needed. The patent gives the drug company some assurance that if it is "
17036 "successful in inventing a new drug to treat a disease, it will be able to "
17037 "earn back its investment and more. This is socially an extremely valuable "
17038 "incentive. I am the last person who would argue that the law should abolish "
17039 "it, at least without other changes."
17042 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17043 #: freeculture.xml:12557
17045 "But it is one thing to support patents, even drug patents. It is another "
17046 "thing to determine how best to deal with a crisis. And as African leaders "
17047 "began to recognize the devastation that AIDS was bringing, they started "
17048 "looking for ways to import HIV treatments at costs significantly below the "
17052 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17053 #: freeculture.xml:12575 freeculture.xml:13030
17054 msgid "Braithwaite, John"
17057 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17058 #: freeculture.xml:12573
17060 "See Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, <citetitle>Information Feudalism: "
17061 "Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?</citetitle> (New York: The New Press, 2003), "
17062 "37. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
17063 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
17066 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17067 #: freeculture.xml:12564
17069 "In 1997, South Africa tried one tack. It passed a law to allow the "
17070 "importation of patented medicines that had been produced or sold in another "
17071 "nation's market with the consent of the patent owner. For example, if the "
17072 "drug was sold in India, it could be imported into Africa from India. This is "
17073 "called <quote>parallel importation,</quote> and it is generally permitted "
17074 "under international trade law and is specifically permitted within the "
17075 "European Union.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
17079 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17080 #: freeculture.xml:12586
17082 "International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), <citetitle>Patent "
17083 "Protection and Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals in Sub-Saharan Africa, a "
17084 "Report Prepared for the World Intellectual Property Organization</citetitle> "
17085 "(Washington, D.C., 2000), 14, available at <ulink "
17086 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #56</ulink>. For a firsthand "
17087 "account of the struggle over South Africa, see Hearing Before the "
17088 "Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, House "
17089 "Committee on Government Reform, H. Rep., 1st sess., Ser. No. 106-126 (22 "
17090 "July 1999), 150–57 (statement of James Love)."
17094 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17095 #: freeculture.xml:12613
17097 "International Intellectual Property Institute (IIPI), <citetitle>Patent "
17098 "Protection and Access to HIV/AIDS Pharmaceuticals in Sub-Saharan Africa, a "
17099 "Report Prepared for the World Intellectual Property Organization</citetitle> "
17100 "(Washington, D.C., 2000), 15."
17103 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17104 #: freeculture.xml:12580
17106 "However, the United States government opposed the bill. Indeed, more than "
17107 "opposed. As the International Intellectual Property Association "
17108 "characterized it, <quote>The U.S. government pressured South Africa … "
17109 "not to permit compulsory licensing or parallel imports.</quote><placeholder "
17110 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Through the Office of the United States Trade "
17111 "Representative, the government asked South Africa to change the "
17112 "law—and to add pressure to that request, in 1998, the USTR listed "
17113 "South Africa for possible trade sanctions. That same year, more than forty "
17114 "pharmaceutical companies began proceedings in the South African courts to "
17115 "challenge the government's actions. The United States was then joined by "
17116 "other governments from the EU. Their claim, and the claim of the "
17117 "pharmaceutical companies, was that South Africa was violating its "
17118 "obligations under international law by discriminating against a particular "
17119 "kind of patent— pharmaceutical patents. The demand of these "
17120 "governments, with the United States in the lead, was that South Africa "
17121 "respect these patents as it respects any other patent, regardless of any "
17122 "effect on the treatment of AIDS within South Africa.<placeholder "
17123 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/>"
17126 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17127 #: freeculture.xml:12619
17129 "We should place the intervention by the United States in context. No doubt "
17130 "patents are not the most important reason that Africans don't have access to "
17131 "drugs. Poverty and the total absence of an effective health care "
17132 "infrastructure matter more. But whether patents are the most important "
17133 "reason or not, the price of drugs has an effect on their demand, and patents "
17134 "affect price. And so, whether massive or marginal, there was an effect from "
17135 "our government's intervention to stop the flow of medications into Africa."
17138 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17139 #: freeculture.xml:12629
17141 "By stopping the flow of HIV treatment into Africa, the United States "
17142 "government was not saving drugs for United States citizens. This is not "
17143 "like wheat (if they eat it, we can't); instead, the flow that the United "
17144 "States intervened to stop was, in effect, a flow of knowledge: information "
17145 "about how to take chemicals that exist within Africa, and turn those "
17146 "chemicals into drugs that would save 15 to 30 million lives."
17149 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17150 #: freeculture.xml:12637
17152 "Nor was the intervention by the United States going to protect the profits "
17153 "of United States drug companies—at least, not substantially. It was "
17154 "not as if these countries were in the position to buy the drugs for the "
17155 "prices the drug companies were charging. Again, the Africans are wildly too "
17156 "poor to afford these drugs at the offered prices. Stopping the parallel "
17157 "import of these drugs would not substantially increase the sales by "
17163 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17164 #: freeculture.xml:12652
17166 "See Sabin Russell, <quote>New Crusade to Lower AIDS Drug Costs: Africa's "
17167 "Needs at Odds with Firms' Profit Motive,</quote> <citetitle>San Francisco "
17168 "Chronicle</citetitle>, 24 May 1999, A1, available at <ulink "
17169 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #57</ulink> (<quote>compulsory "
17170 "licenses and gray markets pose a threat to the entire system of intellectual "
17171 "property protection</quote>); Robert Weissman, <quote>AIDS and Developing "
17172 "Countries: Democratizing Access to Essential Medicines,</quote> "
17173 "<citetitle>Foreign Policy in Focus</citetitle> 4:23 (August 1999), available "
17174 "at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #58</ulink> (describing "
17175 "U.S. policy); John A. Harrelson, <quote>TRIPS, Pharmaceutical Patents, and "
17176 "the HIV/AIDS Crisis: Finding the Proper Balance Between Intellectual "
17177 "Property Rights and Compassion, a Synopsis,</quote> <citetitle>Widener Law "
17178 "Symposium Journal</citetitle> (Spring 2001): 175."
17181 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17182 #: freeculture.xml:12646
17184 "Instead, the argument in favor of restricting this flow of information, "
17185 "which was needed to save the lives of millions, was an argument about the "
17186 "sanctity of property.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> It was "
17187 "because <quote>intellectual property</quote> would be violated that these "
17188 "drugs should not flow into Africa. It was a principle about the importance "
17189 "of <quote>intellectual property</quote> that led these government actors to "
17190 "intervene against the South African response to AIDS."
17193 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17194 #: freeculture.xml:12673
17196 "Now just step back for a moment. There will be a time thirty years from now "
17197 "when our children look back at us and ask, how could we have let this "
17198 "happen? How could we allow a policy to be pursued whose direct cost would be "
17199 "to speed the death of 15 to 30 million Africans, and whose only real benefit "
17200 "would be to uphold the <quote>sanctity</quote> of an idea? What possible "
17201 "justification could there ever be for a policy that results in so many "
17202 "deaths? What exactly is the insanity that would allow so many to die for "
17203 "such an abstraction?"
17206 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17207 #: freeculture.xml:12683
17209 "Some blame the drug companies. I don't. They are corporations. Their "
17210 "managers are ordered by law to make money for the corporation. They push a "
17211 "certain patent policy not because of ideals, but because it is the policy "
17212 "that makes them the most money. And it only makes them the most money "
17213 "because of a certain corruption within our political system— a "
17214 "corruption the drug companies are certainly not responsible for."
17217 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17218 #: freeculture.xml:12691
17220 "The corruption is our own politicians' failure of integrity. For the drug "
17221 "companies would love—they say, and I believe them—to sell their "
17222 "drugs as cheaply as they can to countries in Africa and elsewhere. There "
17223 "are issues they'd have to resolve to make sure the drugs didn't get back "
17224 "into the United States, but those are mere problems of technology. They "
17225 "could be overcome."
17229 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17230 #: freeculture.xml:12699
17232 "A different problem, however, could not be overcome. This is the fear of the "
17233 "grandstanding politician who would call the presidents of the drug companies "
17234 "before a Senate or House hearing, and ask, <quote>How is it you can sell "
17235 "this HIV drug in Africa for only $1 a pill, but the same drug would cost an "
17236 "American $1,500?</quote> Because there is no <quote>sound bite</quote> "
17237 "answer to that question, its effect would be to induce regulation of prices "
17238 "in America. The drug companies thus avoid this spiral by avoiding the first "
17239 "step. They reinforce the idea that property should be sacred. They adopt a "
17240 "rational strategy in an irrational context, with the unintended consequence "
17241 "that perhaps millions die. And that rational strategy thus becomes framed in "
17242 "terms of this ideal—the sanctity of an idea called <quote>intellectual "
17243 "property.</quote>"
17246 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17247 #: freeculture.xml:12714
17249 "So when the common sense of your child confronts you, what will you say? "
17250 "When the common sense of a generation finally revolts against what we have "
17251 "done, how will we justify what we have done? What is the argument?"
17254 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17255 #: freeculture.xml:12720
17257 "A sensible patent policy could endorse and strongly support the patent "
17258 "system without having to reach everyone everywhere in exactly the same "
17259 "way. Just as a sensible copyright policy could endorse and strongly support "
17260 "a copyright system without having to regulate the spread of culture "
17261 "perfectly and forever, a sensible patent policy could endorse and strongly "
17262 "support a patent system without having to block the spread of drugs to a "
17263 "country not rich enough to afford market prices in any case. A sensible "
17264 "policy, in other words, could be a balanced policy. For most of our history, "
17265 "both copyright and patent policies were balanced in just this sense."
17268 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17269 #: freeculture.xml:12732
17271 "But we as a culture have lost this sense of balance. We have lost the "
17272 "critical eye that helps us see the difference between truth and extremism. "
17273 "A certain property fundamentalism, having no connection to our tradition, "
17274 "now reigns in this culture—bizarrely, and with consequences more grave "
17275 "to the spread of ideas and culture than almost any other single policy "
17276 "decision that we as a democracy will make."
17280 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17281 #: freeculture.xml:12743
17283 "<emphasis role='strong'>A simple idea</emphasis> blinds us, and under the "
17284 "cover of darkness, much happens that most of us would reject if any of us "
17285 "looked. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we "
17286 "don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are "
17287 "dying without them. So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in "
17288 "culture that we don't even question when the control of that property "
17289 "removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture "
17290 "democratically. Blindness becomes our common sense. And the challenge for "
17291 "anyone who would reclaim the right to cultivate our culture is to find a way "
17292 "to make this common sense open its eyes."
17295 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17296 #: freeculture.xml:12757
17298 "So far, common sense sleeps. There is no revolt. Common sense does not yet "
17299 "see what there could be to revolt about. The extremism that now dominates "
17300 "this debate fits with ideas that seem natural, and that fit is reinforced by "
17301 "the RCAs of our day. They wage a frantic war to fight <quote>piracy,</quote> "
17302 "and devastate a culture for creativity. They defend the idea of "
17303 "<quote>creative property,</quote> while transforming real creators into "
17304 "modern-day sharecroppers. They are insulted by the idea that rights should "
17305 "be balanced, even though each of the major players in this content war was "
17306 "itself a beneficiary of a more balanced ideal. The hypocrisy reeks. Yet in a "
17307 "city like Washington, hypocrisy is not even noticed. Powerful lobbies, "
17308 "complex issues, and MTV attention spans produce the <quote>perfect "
17309 "storm</quote> for free culture."
17312 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17313 #: freeculture.xml:12770
17314 msgid "public domain"
17317 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
17318 #: freeculture.xml:12770
17319 msgid "public projects in"
17322 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17323 #: freeculture.xml:12771
17324 msgid "single nucleotied polymorphisms (SNPs)"
17327 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17328 #: freeculture.xml:12772
17329 msgid "Wellcome Trust"
17332 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17333 #: freeculture.xml:12773
17334 msgid "World Wide Web"
17337 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17338 #: freeculture.xml:12774
17339 msgid "Global Positioning System"
17342 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17343 #: freeculture.xml:12776
17344 msgid "biomedical research"
17348 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17349 #: freeculture.xml:12781
17351 "Jonathan Krim, <quote>The Quiet War over Open-Source,</quote> "
17352 "<citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, August 2003, E1, available at <ulink "
17353 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #59</ulink>; William New, "
17354 "<quote>Global Group's Shift on `Open Source' Meeting Spurs Stir,</quote> "
17355 "<citetitle>National Journal's Technology Daily</citetitle>, 19 August 2003, "
17356 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #60</ulink>; "
17357 "William New, <quote>U.S. Official Opposes `Open Source' Talks at "
17358 "WIPO,</quote> <citetitle>National Journal's Technology Daily</citetitle>, 19 "
17359 "August 2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
17363 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
17364 #: freeculture.xml:12809 freeculture.xml:13500
17365 msgid "academic journals"
17368 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
17369 #: freeculture.xml:12810 freeculture.xml:12877 freeculture.xml:13426
17373 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><indexterm><primary>
17374 #: freeculture.xml:12811 freeculture.xml:13563
17375 msgid "PLoS (Public Library of Science)"
17378 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17379 #: freeculture.xml:12778
17381 "<emphasis role='strong'>In August 2003</emphasis>, a fight broke out in the "
17382 "United States about a decision by the World Intellectual Property "
17383 "Organization to cancel a meeting.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
17384 "At the request of a wide range of interests, WIPO had decided to hold a "
17385 "meeting to discuss <quote>open and collaborative projects to create public "
17386 "goods.</quote> These are projects that have been successful in producing "
17387 "public goods without relying exclusively upon a proprietary use of "
17388 "intellectual property. Examples include the Internet and the World Wide Web, "
17389 "both of which were developed on the basis of protocols in the public "
17390 "domain. It included an emerging trend to support open academic journals, "
17391 "including the Public Library of Science project that I describe in the "
17392 "Afterword. It included a project to develop single nucleotide polymorphisms "
17393 "(SNPs), which are thought to have great significance in biomedical "
17394 "research. (That nonprofit project comprised a consortium of the Wellcome "
17395 "Trust and pharmaceutical and technological companies, including Amersham "
17396 "Biosciences, AstraZeneca, Aventis, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Hoffmann-La "
17397 "Roche, Glaxo-SmithKline, IBM, Motorola, Novartis, Pfizer, and Searle.) It "
17398 "included the Global Positioning System, which Ronald Reagan set free in the "
17399 "early 1980s. And it included <quote>open source and free software.</quote> "
17400 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
17401 "id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/>"
17404 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17405 #: freeculture.xml:12815
17407 "The aim of the meeting was to consider this wide range of projects from one "
17408 "common perspective: that none of these projects relied upon intellectual "
17409 "property extremism. Instead, in all of them, intellectual property was "
17410 "balanced by agreements to keep access open or to impose limitations on the "
17411 "way in which proprietary claims might be used."
17415 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17416 #: freeculture.xml:12823
17418 "I should disclose that I was one of the people who asked WIPO for the "
17422 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17423 #: freeculture.xml:12822
17425 "From the perspective of this book, then, the conference was "
17426 "ideal.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The projects within its "
17427 "scope included both commercial and noncommercial work. They primarily "
17428 "involved science, but from many perspectives. And WIPO was an ideal venue "
17429 "for this discussion, since WIPO is the preeminent international body dealing "
17430 "with intellectual property issues."
17434 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17435 #: freeculture.xml:12833
17437 "Indeed, I was once publicly scolded for not recognizing this fact about "
17438 "WIPO. In February 2003, I delivered a keynote address to a preparatory "
17439 "conference for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). At a "
17440 "press conference before the address, I was asked what I would say. I "
17441 "responded that I would be talking a little about the importance of balance "
17442 "in intellectual property for the development of an information society. The "
17443 "moderator for the event then promptly interrupted to inform me and the "
17444 "assembled reporters that no question about intellectual property would be "
17445 "discussed by WSIS, since those questions were the exclusive domain of "
17446 "WIPO. In the talk that I had prepared, I had actually made the issue of "
17447 "intellectual property relatively minor. But after this astonishing "
17448 "statement, I made intellectual property the sole focus of my talk. There was "
17449 "no way to talk about an <quote>Information Society</quote> unless one also "
17450 "talked about the range of information and culture that would be free. My "
17451 "talk did not make my immoderate moderator very happy. And she was no doubt "
17452 "correct that the scope of intellectual property protections was ordinarily "
17453 "the stuff of WIPO. But in my view, there couldn't be too much of a "
17454 "conversation about how much intellectual property is needed, since in my "
17455 "view, the very idea of balance in intellectual property had been lost."
17458 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17459 #: freeculture.xml:12857
17461 "So whether or not WSIS can discuss balance in intellectual property, I had "
17462 "thought it was taken for granted that WIPO could and should. And thus the "
17463 "meeting about <quote>open and collaborative projects to create public "
17464 "goods</quote> seemed perfectly appropriate within the WIPO agenda."
17467 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
17468 #: freeculture.xml:12862 freeculture.xml:14545
17469 msgid "Apple Corporation"
17472 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17473 #: freeculture.xml:12864
17475 "But there is one project within that list that is highly controversial, at "
17476 "least among lobbyists. That project is <quote>open source and free "
17477 "software.</quote> Microsoft in particular is wary of discussion of the "
17478 "subject. From its perspective, a conference to discuss open source and free "
17479 "software would be like a conference to discuss Apple's operating "
17480 "system. Both open source and free software compete with Microsoft's "
17481 "software. And internationally, many governments have begun to explore "
17482 "requirements that they use open source or free software, rather than "
17483 "<quote>proprietary software,</quote> for their own internal uses."
17486 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17487 #: freeculture.xml:12874
17488 msgid "<quote>copyleft</quote> licenses"
17492 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17493 #: freeculture.xml:12890
17495 "Microsoft's position about free and open source software is more "
17496 "sophisticated. As it has repeatedly asserted, it has no problem with "
17497 "<quote>open source</quote> software or software in the public "
17498 "domain. Microsoft's principal opposition is to <quote>free software</quote> "
17499 "licensed under a <quote>copyleft</quote> license, meaning a license that "
17500 "requires the licensee to adopt the same terms on any derivative work. See "
17501 "Bradford L. Smith, <quote>The Future of Software: Enabling the Marketplace "
17502 "to Decide,</quote> <citetitle>Government Policy Toward Open Source "
17503 "Software</citetitle> (Washington, D.C.: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for "
17504 "Regulatory Studies, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy "
17505 "Research, 2002), 69, available at <ulink "
17506 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #62</ulink>. See also Craig "
17507 "Mundie, Microsoft senior vice president, <citetitle>The Commercial Software "
17508 "Model</citetitle>, discussion at New York University Stern School of "
17509 "Business (3 May 2001), available at <ulink "
17510 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #63</ulink>."
17513 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17514 #: freeculture.xml:12879
17516 "I don't mean to enter that debate here. It is important only to make clear "
17517 "that the distinction is not between commercial and noncommercial "
17518 "software. There are many important companies that depend fundamentally upon "
17519 "open source and free software, IBM being the most prominent. IBM is "
17520 "increasingly shifting its focus to the GNU/Linux operating system, the most "
17521 "famous bit of <quote>free software</quote>—and IBM is emphatically a "
17522 "commercial entity. Thus, to support <quote>open source and free "
17523 "software</quote> is not to oppose commercial entities. It is, instead, to "
17524 "support a mode of software development that is different from "
17525 "Microsoft's.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
17528 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17529 #: freeculture.xml:12907
17530 msgid "General Public License (GPL)"
17533 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17534 #: freeculture.xml:12908
17535 msgid "GPL (General Public License)"
17539 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17540 #: freeculture.xml:12910
17542 "More important for our purposes, to support <quote>open source and free "
17543 "software</quote> is not to oppose copyright. <quote>Open source and free "
17544 "software</quote> is not software in the public domain. Instead, like "
17545 "Microsoft's software, the copyright owners of free and open source software "
17546 "insist quite strongly that the terms of their software license be respected "
17547 "by adopters of free and open source software. The terms of that license are "
17548 "no doubt different from the terms of a proprietary software license. Free "
17549 "software licensed under the General Public License (GPL), for example, "
17550 "requires that the source code for the software be made available by anyone "
17551 "who modifies and redistributes the software. But that requirement is "
17552 "effective only if copyright governs software. If copyright did not govern "
17553 "software, then free software could not impose the same kind of requirements "
17554 "on its adopters. It thus depends upon copyright law just as Microsoft does."
17557 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17558 #: freeculture.xml:12927
17559 msgid "Krim, Jonathan"
17562 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
17563 #: freeculture.xml:12928
17564 msgid "WIPO meeting opposed by"
17568 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17569 #: freeculture.xml:12938
17571 "Krim, <quote>The Quiet War over Open-Source,</quote> available at <ulink "
17572 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #64</ulink>."
17575 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17576 #: freeculture.xml:12930
17578 "It is therefore understandable that as a proprietary software developer, "
17579 "Microsoft would oppose this WIPO meeting, and understandable that it would "
17580 "use its lobbyists to get the United States government to oppose it, as "
17581 "well. And indeed, that is just what was reported to have happened. According "
17582 "to Jonathan Krim of the <citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, Microsoft's "
17583 "lobbyists succeeded in getting the United States government to veto the "
17584 "meeting.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And without U.S. backing, "
17585 "the meeting was canceled."
17588 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17589 #: freeculture.xml:12944
17591 "I don't blame Microsoft for doing what it can to advance its own interests, "
17592 "consistent with the law. And lobbying governments is plainly consistent with "
17593 "the law. There was nothing surprising about its lobbying here, and nothing "
17594 "terribly surprising about the most powerful software producer in the United "
17595 "States having succeeded in its lobbying efforts."
17598 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17599 #: freeculture.xml:12951 freeculture.xml:13004
17600 msgid "Boland, Lois"
17603 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17604 #: freeculture.xml:12953
17606 "What was surprising was the United States government's reason for opposing "
17607 "the meeting. Again, as reported by Krim, Lois Boland, acting director of "
17608 "international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, explained "
17609 "that <quote>open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which "
17610 "is to promote intellectual-property rights.</quote> She is quoted as saying, "
17611 "<quote>To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such "
17612 "rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO.</quote>"
17615 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17616 #: freeculture.xml:12963
17617 msgid "These statements are astonishing on a number of levels."
17620 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17621 #: freeculture.xml:12967
17623 "First, they are just flat wrong. As I described, most open source and free "
17624 "software relies fundamentally upon the intellectual property right called "
17625 "<quote>copyright</quote>. Without it, restrictions imposed by those "
17626 "licenses wouldn't work. Thus, to say it <quote>runs counter</quote> to the "
17627 "mission of promoting intellectual property rights reveals an extraordinary "
17628 "gap in understanding—the sort of mistake that is excusable in a "
17629 "first-year law student, but an embarrassment from a high government official "
17630 "dealing with intellectual property issues."
17633 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17634 #: freeculture.xml:12976
17635 msgid "generic drugs"
17638 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17639 #: freeculture.xml:12978
17641 "Second, who ever said that WIPO's exclusive aim was to "
17642 "<quote>promote</quote> intellectual property maximally? As I had been "
17643 "scolded at the preparatory conference of WSIS, WIPO is to consider not only "
17644 "how best to protect intellectual property, but also what the best balance of "
17645 "intellectual property is. As every economist and lawyer knows, the hard "
17646 "question in intellectual property law is to find that balance. But that "
17647 "there should be limits is, I had thought, uncontested. One wants to ask "
17648 "Ms. Boland, are generic drugs (drugs based on drugs whose patent has "
17649 "expired) contrary to the WIPO mission? Does the public domain weaken "
17650 "intellectual property? Would it have been better if the protocols of the "
17651 "Internet had been patented?"
17654 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17655 #: freeculture.xml:12992
17657 "Third, even if one believed that the purpose of WIPO was to maximize "
17658 "intellectual property rights, in our tradition, intellectual property rights "
17659 "are held by individuals and corporations. They get to decide what to do with "
17660 "those rights because, again, they are <emphasis>their</emphasis> rights. If "
17661 "they want to <quote>waive</quote> or <quote>disclaim</quote> their rights, "
17662 "that is, within our tradition, totally appropriate. When Bill Gates gives "
17663 "away more than $20 billion to do good in the world, that is not inconsistent "
17664 "with the objectives of the property system. That is, on the contrary, just "
17665 "what a property system is supposed to be about: giving individuals the right "
17666 "to decide what to do with <emphasis>their</emphasis> property."
17670 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17671 #: freeculture.xml:13006
17673 "When Ms. Boland says that there is something wrong with a meeting "
17674 "<quote>which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights,</quote> "
17675 "she's saying that WIPO has an interest in interfering with the choices of "
17676 "the individuals who own intellectual property rights. That somehow, WIPO's "
17677 "objective should be to stop an individual from <quote>waiving</quote> or "
17678 "<quote>disclaiming</quote> an intellectual property right. That the interest "
17679 "of WIPO is not just that intellectual property rights be maximized, but that "
17680 "they also should be exercised in the most extreme and restrictive way "
17684 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17685 #: freeculture.xml:13018
17687 "There is a history of just such a property system that is well known in the "
17688 "Anglo-American tradition. It is called <quote>feudalism.</quote> Under "
17689 "feudalism, not only was property held by a relatively small number of "
17690 "individuals and entities. And not only were the rights that ran with that "
17691 "property powerful and extensive. But the feudal system had a strong interest "
17692 "in assuring that property holders within that system not weaken feudalism by "
17693 "liberating people or property within their control to the free "
17694 "market. Feudalism depended upon maximum control and concentration. It fought "
17695 "any freedom that might interfere with that control."
17698 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17699 #: freeculture.xml:13035
17701 "See Drahos with Braithwaite, <citetitle>Information Feudalism</citetitle>, "
17702 "210–20. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
17705 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17706 #: freeculture.xml:13032
17708 "As Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite relate, this is precisely the choice we "
17709 "are now making about intellectual property.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
17710 "id=\"0\"/> We will have an information society. That much is certain. Our "
17711 "only choice now is whether that information society will be "
17712 "<emphasis>free</emphasis> or <emphasis>feudal</emphasis>. The trend is "
17713 "toward the feudal."
17716 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17717 #: freeculture.xml:13044
17719 "When this battle broke, I blogged it. A spirited debate within the comment "
17720 "section ensued. Ms. Boland had a number of supporters who tried to show why "
17721 "her comments made sense. But there was one comment that was particularly "
17722 "depressing for me. An anonymous poster wrote,"
17726 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><blockquote><para>
17727 #: freeculture.xml:13051
17729 "George, you misunderstand Lessig: He's only talking about the world as it "
17730 "should be (<quote>the goal of WIPO, and the goal of any government, should "
17731 "be to promote the right balance of intellectual property rights, not simply "
17732 "to promote intellectual property rights</quote>), not as it is. If we were "
17733 "talking about the world as it is, then of course Boland didn't say anything "
17734 "wrong. But in the world as Lessig would have it, then of course she "
17735 "did. Always pay attention to the distinction between Lessig's world and "
17739 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17740 #: freeculture.xml:13063
17742 "I missed the irony the first time I read it. I read it quickly and thought "
17743 "the poster was supporting the idea that seeking balance was what our "
17744 "government should be doing. (Of course, my criticism of Ms. Boland was not "
17745 "about whether she was seeking balance or not; my criticism was that her "
17746 "comments betrayed a first-year law student's mistake. I have no illusion "
17747 "about the extremism of our government, whether Republican or Democrat. My "
17748 "only illusion apparently is about whether our government should speak the "
17752 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17753 #: freeculture.xml:13074
17755 "Obviously, however, the poster was not supporting that idea. Instead, the "
17756 "poster was ridiculing the very idea that in the real world, the "
17757 "<quote>goal</quote> of a government should be <quote>to promote the right "
17758 "balance</quote> of intellectual property. That was obviously silly to "
17759 "him. And it obviously betrayed, he believed, my own silly "
17760 "utopianism. <quote>Typical for an academic,</quote> the poster might well "
17764 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17765 #: freeculture.xml:13082
17767 "I understand criticism of academic utopianism. I think utopianism is silly, "
17768 "too, and I'd be the first to poke fun at the absurdly unrealistic ideals of "
17769 "academics throughout history (and not just in our own country's history)."
17772 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17773 #: freeculture.xml:13088
17775 "But when it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government "
17776 "should be to <quote>seek balance,</quote> then count me with the silly, for "
17777 "that means that this has become quite serious indeed. If it should be "
17778 "obvious to everyone that the government does not seek balance, that the "
17779 "government is simply the tool of the most powerful lobbyists, that the idea "
17780 "of holding the government to a different standard is absurd, that the idea "
17781 "of demanding of the government that it speak truth and not lies is just "
17782 "naïve, then who have we, the most powerful democracy in the world, "
17787 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17788 #: freeculture.xml:13099
17790 "It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the "
17791 "truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something "
17792 "more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy "
17793 "to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our "
17794 "tradition for most of our history—free culture."
17797 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17798 #: freeculture.xml:13107
17799 msgid "If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon."
17802 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17803 #: freeculture.xml:13111
17804 msgid "Turner, Ted"
17807 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17808 #: freeculture.xml:13113
17810 "<emphasis role='strong'>There are moments</emphasis> of hope in this "
17811 "struggle. And moments that surprise. When the FCC was considering relaxing "
17812 "ownership rules, which would thereby further increase the concentration in "
17813 "media ownership, an extraordinary bipartisan coalition formed to fight this "
17814 "change. For perhaps the first time in history, interests as diverse as the "
17815 "NRA, the ACLU, Moveon.org, William Safire, Ted Turner, and CodePink Women "
17816 "for Peace organized to oppose this change in FCC policy. An astonishing "
17817 "700,000 letters were sent to the FCC, demanding more hearings and a "
17818 "different result."
17821 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17822 #: freeculture.xml:13124
17824 "This activism did not stop the FCC, but soon after, a broad coalition in the "
17825 "Senate voted to reverse the FCC decision. The hostile hearings leading up to "
17826 "that vote revealed just how powerful this movement had become. There was no "
17827 "substantial support for the FCC's decision, and there was broad and "
17828 "sustained support for fighting further concentration in the media."
17831 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17832 #: freeculture.xml:13132
17834 "But even this movement misses an important piece of the puzzle. Largeness "
17835 "as such is not bad. Freedom is not threatened just because some become very "
17836 "rich, or because there are only a handful of big players. The poor quality "
17837 "of Big Macs or Quarter Pounders does not mean that you can't get a good "
17838 "hamburger from somewhere else."
17841 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17842 #: freeculture.xml:13139
17844 "The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but "
17845 "instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in "
17846 "copyright, produces. It is not just that there are a few powerful companies "
17847 "that control an ever expanding slice of the media. It is that this "
17848 "concentration can call upon an equally bloated range of "
17849 "rights—property rights of a historically extreme form—that makes "
17850 "their bigness bad."
17853 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17854 #: freeculture.xml:13149
17856 "It is therefore significant that so many would rally to demand competition "
17857 "and increased diversity. Still, if the rally is understood as being about "
17858 "bigness alone, it is not terribly surprising. We Americans have a long "
17859 "history of fighting <quote>big,</quote> wisely or not. That we could be "
17860 "motivated to fight <quote>big</quote> again is not something new."
17863 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17864 #: freeculture.xml:13156
17866 "It would be something new, and something very important, if an equal number "
17867 "could be rallied to fight the increasing extremism built within the idea of "
17868 "<quote>intellectual property.</quote> Not because balance is alien to our "
17869 "tradition; indeed, as I've argued, balance is our tradition. But because the "
17870 "muscle to think critically about the scope of anything called "
17871 "<quote>property</quote> is not well exercised within this tradition anymore."
17874 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17875 #: freeculture.xml:13164
17877 "If we were Achilles, this would be our heel. This would be the place of our "
17881 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17882 #: freeculture.xml:13167
17887 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17888 #: freeculture.xml:13173
17890 "John Borland, <quote>RIAA Sues 261 File Swappers,</quote> CNET News.com, "
17891 "September 2003, available at <ulink "
17892 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #65</ulink>; Paul R. La Monica, "
17893 "<quote>Music Industry Sues Swappers,</quote> CNN/Money, 8 September 2003, "
17894 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #66</ulink>; "
17895 "Soni Sangha and Phyllis Furman with Robert Gearty, <quote>Sued for a Song, "
17896 "N.Y.C. 12-Yr-Old Among 261 Cited as Sharers,</quote> <citetitle>New York "
17897 "Daily News</citetitle>, 9 September 2003, 3; Frank Ahrens, <quote>RIAA's "
17898 "Lawsuits Meet Surprised Targets; Single Mother in Calif., 12-Year-Old Girl "
17899 "in N.Y. Among Defendants,</quote> <citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, 10 "
17900 "September 2003, E1; Katie Dean, <quote>Schoolgirl Settles with RIAA,</quote> "
17901 "<citetitle>Wired News</citetitle>, 10 September 2003, available at <ulink "
17902 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #67</ulink>."
17906 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17907 #: freeculture.xml:13191
17909 "Jon Wiederhorn, <quote>Eminem Gets Sued … by a Little Old "
17910 "Lady,</quote> mtv.com, 17 September 2003, available at <ulink "
17911 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #68</ulink>."
17916 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17917 #: freeculture.xml:13198
17919 "Kenji Hall, Associated Press, <quote>Japanese Book May Be Inspiration for "
17920 "Dylan Songs,</quote> Kansascity.com, 9 July 2003, available at <ulink "
17921 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #69</ulink>."
17924 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17925 #: freeculture.xml:13169
17927 "<emphasis role='strong'>As I write</emphasis> these final words, the news is "
17928 "filled with stories about the RIAA lawsuits against almost three hundred "
17929 "individuals.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> Eminem has just been "
17930 "sued for <quote>sampling</quote> someone else's music.<placeholder "
17931 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> The story about Bob Dylan "
17932 "<quote>stealing</quote> from a Japanese author has just finished making the "
17933 "rounds.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"2\"/> An insider from "
17934 "Hollywood—who insists he must remain anonymous—reports <quote>an "
17935 "amazing conversation with these studio guys. They've got extraordinary [old] "
17936 "content that they'd love to use but can't because they can't begin to clear "
17937 "the rights. They've got scores of kids who could do amazing things with the "
17938 "content, but it would take scores of lawyers to clean it first.</quote> "
17939 "Congressmen are talking about deputizing computer viruses to bring down "
17940 "computers thought to violate the law. Universities are threatening expulsion "
17941 "for kids who use a computer to share content."
17944 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17945 #: freeculture.xml:13215
17949 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17950 #: freeculture.xml:13216
17951 msgid "Brazil, free culture in"
17954 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
17955 #: freeculture.xml:13217 freeculture.xml:13579
17956 msgid "Creative Commons"
17959 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17960 #: freeculture.xml:13218
17961 msgid "Gil, Gilberto"
17964 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><primary>
17965 #: freeculture.xml:13219
17966 msgid "United Kingdom"
17969 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><indexterm><secondary>
17970 #: freeculture.xml:13219
17971 msgid "public creative archive in"
17975 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17976 #: freeculture.xml:13224
17978 "<quote>BBC Plans to Open Up Its Archive to the Public,</quote> BBC press "
17979 "release, 24 August 2003, available at <ulink "
17980 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #70</ulink>."
17984 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para><footnote><para>
17985 #: freeculture.xml:13233
17987 "<quote>Creative Commons and Brazil,</quote> Creative Commons Weblog, 6 "
17988 "August 2003, available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link "
17993 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
17994 #: freeculture.xml:13221
17996 "Yet on the other side of the Atlantic, the BBC has just announced that it "
17997 "will build a <quote>Creative Archive,</quote> from which British citizens "
17998 "can download BBC content, and rip, mix, and burn it.<placeholder "
17999 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> And in Brazil, the culture minister, Gilberto "
18000 "Gil, himself a folk hero of Brazilian music, has joined with Creative "
18001 "Commons to release content and free licenses in that Latin American "
18002 "country.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"1\"/> I've told a dark "
18003 "story. The truth is more mixed. A technology has given us a new "
18004 "freedom. Slowly, some begin to understand that this freedom need not mean "
18005 "anarchy. We can carry a free culture into the twenty-first century, without "
18006 "artists losing and without the potential of digital technology being "
18007 "destroyed. It will take some thought, and more importantly, it will take "
18008 "some will to transform the RCAs of our day into the Causbys."
18012 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18013 #: freeculture.xml:13247
18015 "Common sense must revolt. It must act to free culture. Soon, if this "
18016 "potential is ever to be realized."
18019 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
18020 #: freeculture.xml:13255
18025 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18026 #: freeculture.xml:13259
18028 "<emphasis role='strong'>At least some</emphasis> who have read this far will "
18029 "agree with me that something must be done to change where we are "
18030 "heading. The balance of this book maps what might be done."
18033 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18034 #: freeculture.xml:13264
18036 "I divide this map into two parts: that which anyone can do now, and that "
18037 "which requires the help of lawmakers. If there is one lesson that we can "
18038 "draw from the history of remaking common sense, it is that it requires "
18039 "remaking how many people think about the very same issue."
18042 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18043 #: freeculture.xml:13270
18045 "That means this movement must begin in the streets. It must recruit a "
18046 "significant number of parents, teachers, librarians, creators, authors, "
18047 "musicians, filmmakers, scientists—all to tell this story in their own "
18048 "words, and to tell their neighbors why this battle is so important."
18051 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
18052 #: freeculture.xml:13277
18054 "Once this movement has its effect in the streets, it has some hope of having "
18055 "an effect in Washington. We are still a democracy. What people think "
18056 "matters. Not as much as it should, at least when an RCA stands opposed, but "
18057 "still, it matters. And thus, in the second part below, I sketch changes that "
18058 "Congress could make to better secure a free culture."
18061 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><title>
18062 #: freeculture.xml:13286
18066 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18067 #: freeculture.xml:13288
18069 "<emphasis role='strong'>Common sense</emphasis> is with the copyright "
18070 "warriors because the debate so far has been framed at the extremes—as "
18071 "a grand either/or: either property or anarchy, either total control or "
18072 "artists won't be paid. If that really is the choice, then the warriors "
18076 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18077 #: freeculture.xml:13295
18079 "The mistake here is the error of the excluded middle. There are extremes in "
18080 "this debate, but the extremes are not all that there is. There are those who "
18081 "believe in maximal copyright—<quote>All Rights Reserved</quote>— "
18082 "and those who reject copyright—<quote>No Rights Reserved.</quote> The "
18083 "<quote>All Rights Reserved</quote> sorts believe that you should ask "
18084 "permission before you <quote>use</quote> a copyrighted work in any way. The "
18085 "<quote>No Rights Reserved</quote> sorts believe you should be able to do "
18086 "with content as you wish, regardless of whether you have permission or not."
18090 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18091 #: freeculture.xml:13305
18093 "When the Internet was first born, its initial architecture effectively "
18094 "tilted in the <quote>no rights reserved</quote> direction. Content could be "
18095 "copied perfectly and cheaply; rights could not easily be controlled. Thus, "
18096 "regardless of anyone's desire, the effective regime of copyright under the "
18097 "original design of the Internet was <quote>no rights reserved.</quote> "
18098 "Content was <quote>taken</quote> regardless of the rights. Any rights were "
18099 "effectively unprotected."
18102 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18103 #: freeculture.xml:13317
18105 "This initial character produced a reaction (opposite, but not quite equal) "
18106 "by copyright owners. That reaction has been the topic of this book. Through "
18107 "legislation, litigation, and changes to the network's design, copyright "
18108 "holders have been able to change the essential character of the environment "
18109 "of the original Internet. If the original architecture made the effective "
18110 "default <quote>no rights reserved,</quote> the future architecture will make "
18111 "the effective default <quote>all rights reserved.</quote> The architecture "
18112 "and law that surround the Internet's design will increasingly produce an "
18113 "environment where all use of content requires permission. The <quote>cut "
18114 "and paste</quote> world that defines the Internet today will become a "
18115 "<quote>get permission to cut and paste</quote> world that is a creator's "
18119 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18120 #: freeculture.xml:13331
18122 "What's needed is a way to say something in the middle—neither "
18123 "<quote>all rights reserved</quote> nor <quote>no rights reserved</quote> but "
18124 "<quote>some rights reserved</quote>— and thus a way to respect "
18125 "copyrights but enable creators to free content as they see fit. In other "
18126 "words, we need a way to restore a set of freedoms that we could just take "
18127 "for granted before."
18130 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
18131 #: freeculture.xml:13340
18132 msgid "Rebuilding Freedoms Previously Presumed: Examples"
18135 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18136 #: freeculture.xml:13343
18138 "If you step back from the battle I've been describing here, you will "
18139 "recognize this problem from other contexts. Think about privacy. Before the "
18140 "Internet, most of us didn't have to worry much about data about our lives "
18141 "that we broadcast to the world. If you walked into a bookstore and browsed "
18142 "through some of the works of Karl Marx, you didn't need to worry about "
18143 "explaining your browsing habits to your neighbors or boss. The "
18144 "<quote>privacy</quote> of your browsing habits was assured."
18147 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18148 #: freeculture.xml:13353
18149 msgid "What made it assured?"
18152 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18153 #: freeculture.xml:13357
18155 "Well, if we think in terms of the modalities I described in chapter <xref "
18156 "xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"property-i\"/>, your privacy was "
18157 "assured because of an inefficient architecture for gathering data and hence "
18158 "a market constraint (cost) on anyone who wanted to gather that data. If you "
18159 "were a suspected spy for North Korea, working for the CIA, no doubt your "
18160 "privacy would not be assured. But that's because the CIA would (we hope) "
18161 "find it valuable enough to spend the thousands required to track you. But "
18162 "for most of us (again, we can hope), spying doesn't pay. The highly "
18163 "inefficient architecture of real space means we all enjoy a fairly robust "
18164 "amount of privacy. That privacy is guaranteed to us by friction. Not by law "
18165 "(there is no law protecting <quote>privacy</quote> in public places), and in "
18166 "many places, not by norms (snooping and gossip are just fun), but instead, "
18167 "by the costs that friction imposes on anyone who would want to spy."
18170 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18171 #: freeculture.xml:13372
18175 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18176 #: freeculture.xml:13373
18177 msgid "cookies, Internet"
18180 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18181 #: freeculture.xml:13375
18183 "Enter the Internet, where the cost of tracking browsing in particular has "
18184 "become quite tiny. If you're a customer at Amazon, then as you browse the "
18185 "pages, Amazon collects the data about what you've looked at. You know this "
18186 "because at the side of the page, there's a list of <quote>recently "
18187 "viewed</quote> pages. Now, because of the architecture of the Net and the "
18188 "function of cookies on the Net, it is easier to collect the data than "
18189 "not. The friction has disappeared, and hence any <quote>privacy</quote> "
18190 "protected by the friction disappears, too."
18193 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18194 #: freeculture.xml:13385
18196 "Amazon, of course, is not the problem. But we might begin to worry about "
18197 "libraries. If you're one of those crazy lefties who thinks that people "
18198 "should have the <quote>right</quote> to browse in a library without the "
18199 "government knowing which books you look at (I'm one of those lefties, too), "
18200 "then this change in the technology of monitoring might concern you. If it "
18201 "becomes simple to gather and sort who does what in electronic spaces, then "
18202 "the friction-induced privacy of yesterday disappears."
18206 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
18207 #: freeculture.xml:13402
18209 "See, for example, Marc Rotenberg, <quote>Fair Information Practices and the "
18210 "Architecture of Privacy (What Larry Doesn't Get),</quote> "
18211 "<citetitle>Stanford Technology Law Review</citetitle> 1 (2001): "
18212 "par. 6–18, available at <ulink "
18213 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #72</ulink> (describing examples "
18214 "in which technology defines privacy policy). See also Jeffrey Rosen, "
18215 "<citetitle>The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious "
18216 "Age</citetitle> (New York: Random House, 2004) (mapping tradeoffs between "
18217 "technology and privacy)."
18221 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18222 #: freeculture.xml:13396
18224 "It is this reality that explains the push of many to define "
18225 "<quote>privacy</quote> on the Internet. It is the recognition that "
18226 "technology can remove what friction before gave us that leads many to push "
18227 "for laws to do what friction did.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
18228 "And whether you're in favor of those laws or not, it is the pattern that is "
18229 "important here. We must take affirmative steps to secure a kind of freedom "
18230 "that was passively provided before. A change in technology now forces those "
18231 "who believe in privacy to affirmatively act where, before, privacy was given "
18235 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18236 #: freeculture.xml:13420
18238 "A similar story could be told about the birth of the free software "
18239 "movement. When computers with software were first made available "
18240 "commercially, the software—both the source code and the "
18241 "binaries— was free. You couldn't run a program written for a Data "
18242 "General machine on an IBM machine, so Data General and IBM didn't care much "
18243 "about controlling their software. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
18247 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18248 #: freeculture.xml:13428
18249 msgid "Stallman, Richard"
18252 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18253 #: freeculture.xml:13430
18255 "That was the world Richard Stallman was born into, and while he was a "
18256 "researcher at MIT, he grew to love the community that developed when one was "
18257 "free to explore and tinker with the software that ran on machines. Being a "
18258 "smart sort himself, and a talented programmer, Stallman grew to depend upon "
18259 "the freedom to add to or modify other people's work."
18262 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18263 #: freeculture.xml:13438
18265 "In an academic setting, at least, that's not a terribly radical idea. In a "
18266 "math department, anyone would be free to tinker with a proof that someone "
18267 "offered. If you thought you had a better way to prove a theorem, you could "
18268 "take what someone else did and change it. In a classics department, if you "
18269 "believed a colleague's translation of a recently discovered text was flawed, "
18270 "you were free to improve it. Thus, to Stallman, it seemed obvious that you "
18271 "should be free to tinker with and improve the code that ran a machine. This, "
18272 "too, was knowledge. Why shouldn't it be open for criticism like anything "
18276 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18277 #: freeculture.xml:13450
18279 "No one answered that question. Instead, the architecture of revenue for "
18280 "computing changed. As it became possible to import programs from one system "
18281 "to another, it became economically attractive (at least in the view of some) "
18282 "to hide the code of your program. So, too, as companies started selling "
18283 "peripherals for mainframe systems. If I could just take your printer driver "
18284 "and copy it, then that would make it easier for me to sell a printer to the "
18285 "market than it was for you."
18289 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18290 #: freeculture.xml:13459
18292 "Thus, the practice of proprietary code began to spread, and by the early "
18293 "1980s, Stallman found himself surrounded by proprietary code. The world of "
18294 "free software had been erased by a change in the economics of computing. And "
18295 "as he believed, if he did nothing about it, then the freedom to change and "
18296 "share software would be fundamentally weakened."
18299 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18300 #: freeculture.xml:13467
18301 msgid "Torvalds, Linus"
18304 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18305 #: freeculture.xml:13469
18307 "Therefore, in 1984, Stallman began a project to build a free operating "
18308 "system, so that at least a strain of free software would survive. That was "
18309 "the birth of the GNU project, into which Linus Torvalds's "
18310 "<quote>Linux</quote> kernel was added to produce the GNU/Linux operating "
18311 "system. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> <placeholder "
18312 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/>"
18315 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18316 #: freeculture.xml:13477
18318 "Stallman's technique was to use copyright law to build a world of software "
18319 "that must be kept free. Software licensed under the Free Software "
18320 "Foundation's GPL cannot be modified and distributed unless the source code "
18321 "for that software is made available as well. Thus, anyone building upon "
18322 "GPL'd software would have to make their buildings free as well. This would "
18323 "assure, Stallman believed, that an ecology of code would develop that "
18324 "remained free for others to build upon. His fundamental goal was freedom; "
18325 "innovative creative code was a byproduct."
18328 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18329 #: freeculture.xml:13488
18331 "Stallman was thus doing for software what privacy advocates now do for "
18332 "privacy. He was seeking a way to rebuild a kind of freedom that was taken "
18333 "for granted before. Through the affirmative use of licenses that bind "
18334 "copyrighted code, Stallman was affirmatively reclaiming a space where free "
18335 "software would survive. He was actively protecting what before had been "
18336 "passively guaranteed."
18339 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18340 #: freeculture.xml:13496
18342 "Finally, consider a very recent example that more directly resonates with "
18343 "the story of this book. This is the shift in the way academic and scientific "
18344 "journals are produced."
18348 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18349 #: freeculture.xml:13502
18351 "As digital technologies develop, it is becoming obvious to many that "
18352 "printing thousands of copies of journals every month and sending them to "
18353 "libraries is perhaps not the most efficient way to distribute "
18354 "knowledge. Instead, journals are increasingly becoming electronic, and "
18355 "libraries and their users are given access to these electronic journals "
18356 "through password-protected sites. Something similar to this has been "
18357 "happening in law for almost thirty years: Lexis and Westlaw have had "
18358 "electronic versions of case reports available to subscribers to their "
18359 "service. Although a Supreme Court opinion is not copyrighted, and anyone is "
18360 "free to go to a library and read it, Lexis and Westlaw are also free to "
18361 "charge users for the privilege of gaining access to that Supreme Court "
18362 "opinion through their respective services."
18365 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18366 #: freeculture.xml:13518
18368 "There's nothing wrong in general with this, and indeed, the ability to "
18369 "charge for access to even public domain materials is a good incentive for "
18370 "people to develop new and innovative ways to spread knowledge. The law has "
18371 "agreed, which is why Lexis and Westlaw have been allowed to flourish. And if "
18372 "there's nothing wrong with selling the public domain, then there could be "
18373 "nothing wrong, in principle, with selling access to material that is not in "
18374 "the public domain."
18377 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18378 #: freeculture.xml:13527
18380 "But what if the only way to get access to social and scientific data was "
18381 "through proprietary services? What if no one had the ability to browse this "
18382 "data except by paying for a subscription?"
18385 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18386 #: freeculture.xml:13532
18388 "As many are beginning to notice, this is increasingly the reality with "
18389 "scientific journals. When these journals were distributed in paper form, "
18390 "libraries could make the journals available to anyone who had access to the "
18391 "library. Thus, patients with cancer could become cancer experts because the "
18392 "library gave them access. Or patients trying to understand the risks of a "
18393 "certain treatment could research those risks by reading all available "
18394 "articles about that treatment. This freedom was therefore a function of the "
18395 "institution of libraries (norms) and the technology of paper journals "
18396 "(architecture)—namely, that it was very hard to control access to a "
18400 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18401 #: freeculture.xml:13544
18403 "As journals become electronic, however, the publishers are demanding that "
18404 "libraries not give the general public access to the journals. This means "
18405 "that the freedoms provided by print journals in public libraries begin to "
18406 "disappear. Thus, as with privacy and with software, a changing technology "
18407 "and market shrink a freedom taken for granted before."
18410 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18411 #: freeculture.xml:13552
18413 "This shrinking freedom has led many to take affirmative steps to restore the "
18414 "freedom that has been lost. The Public Library of Science (PLoS), for "
18415 "example, is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making scientific research "
18416 "available to anyone with a Web connection. Authors of scientific work submit "
18417 "that work to the Public Library of Science. That work is then subject to "
18418 "peer review. If accepted, the work is then deposited in a public, electronic "
18419 "archive and made permanently available for free. PLoS also sells a print "
18420 "version of its work, but the copyright for the print journal does not "
18421 "inhibit the right of anyone to redistribute the work for free. <placeholder "
18422 "type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
18425 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18426 #: freeculture.xml:13566
18428 "This is one of many such efforts to restore a freedom taken for granted "
18429 "before, but now threatened by changing technology and markets. There's no "
18430 "doubt that this alternative competes with the traditional publishers and "
18431 "their efforts to make money from the exclusive distribution of content. But "
18432 "competition in our tradition is presumptively a good—especially when "
18433 "it helps spread knowledge and science."
18436 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
18437 #: freeculture.xml:13578
18438 msgid "Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea"
18441 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18442 #: freeculture.xml:13581
18444 "The same strategy could be applied to culture, as a response to the "
18445 "increasing control effected through law and technology."
18448 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18449 #: freeculture.xml:13584
18450 msgid "Stanford University"
18453 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18454 #: freeculture.xml:13586
18456 "Enter the Creative Commons. The Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation "
18457 "established in Massachusetts, but with its home at Stanford University. Its "
18458 "aim is to build a layer of <emphasis>reasonable</emphasis> copyright on top "
18459 "of the extremes that now reign. It does this by making it easy for people to "
18460 "build upon other people's work, by making it simple for creators to express "
18461 "the freedom for others to take and build upon their work. Simple tags, tied "
18462 "to human-readable descriptions, tied to bulletproof licenses, make this "
18467 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18468 #: freeculture.xml:13597
18470 "<emphasis>Simple</emphasis>—which means without a middleman, or "
18471 "without a lawyer. By developing a free set of licenses that people can "
18472 "attach to their content, Creative Commons aims to mark a range of content "
18473 "that can easily, and reliably, be built upon. These tags are then linked to "
18474 "machine-readable versions of the license that enable computers automatically "
18475 "to identify content that can easily be shared. These three expressions "
18476 "together—a legal license, a human-readable description, and "
18477 "machine-readable tags—constitute a Creative Commons license. A "
18478 "Creative Commons license constitutes a grant of freedom to anyone who "
18479 "accesses the license, and more importantly, an expression of the ideal that "
18480 "the person associated with the license believes in something different than "
18481 "the <quote>All</quote> or <quote>No</quote> extremes. Content is marked with "
18482 "the CC mark, which does not mean that copyright is waived, but that certain "
18483 "freedoms are given."
18486 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18487 #: freeculture.xml:13615
18489 "These freedoms are beyond the freedoms promised by fair use. Their precise "
18490 "contours depend upon the choices the creator makes. The creator can choose a "
18491 "license that permits any use, so long as attribution is given. She can "
18492 "choose a license that permits only noncommercial use. She can choose a "
18493 "license that permits any use so long as the same freedoms are given to other "
18494 "uses (<quote>share and share alike</quote>). Or any use so long as no "
18495 "derivative use is made. Or any use at all within developing nations. Or any "
18496 "sampling use, so long as full copies are not made. Or lastly, any "
18500 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18501 #: freeculture.xml:13626
18503 "These choices thus establish a range of freedoms beyond the default of "
18504 "copyright law. They also enable freedoms that go beyond traditional fair "
18505 "use. And most importantly, they express these freedoms in a way that "
18506 "subsequent users can use and rely upon without the need to hire a "
18507 "lawyer. Creative Commons thus aims to build a layer of content, governed by "
18508 "a layer of reasonable copyright law, that others can build upon. Voluntary "
18509 "choice of individuals and creators will make this content available. And "
18510 "that content will in turn enable us to rebuild a public domain."
18513 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18514 #: freeculture.xml:13636
18515 msgid "Garlick, Mia"
18519 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18520 #: freeculture.xml:13638
18522 "This is just one project among many within the Creative Commons. And of "
18523 "course, Creative Commons is not the only organization pursuing such "
18524 "freedoms. But the point that distinguishes the Creative Commons from many is "
18525 "that we are not interested only in talking about a public domain or in "
18526 "getting legislators to help build a public domain. Our aim is to build a "
18527 "movement of consumers and producers of content (<quote>content "
18528 "conducers,</quote> as attorney Mia Garlick calls them) who help build the "
18529 "public domain and, by their work, demonstrate the importance of the public "
18530 "domain to other creativity."
18533 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18534 #: freeculture.xml:13650
18536 "The aim is not to fight the <quote>All Rights Reserved</quote> sorts. The "
18537 "aim is to complement them. The problems that the law creates for us as a "
18538 "culture are produced by insane and unintended consequences of laws written "
18539 "centuries ago, applied to a technology that only Jefferson could have "
18540 "imagined. The rules may well have made sense against a background of "
18541 "technologies from centuries ago, but they do not make sense against the "
18542 "background of digital technologies. New rules—with different freedoms, "
18543 "expressed in ways so that humans without lawyers can use them—are "
18544 "needed. Creative Commons gives people a way effectively to begin to build "
18548 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18549 #: freeculture.xml:13663
18551 "Why would creators participate in giving up total control? Some participate "
18552 "to better spread their content. Cory Doctorow, for example, is a science "
18553 "fiction author. His first novel, <citetitle>Down and Out in the Magic "
18554 "Kingdom</citetitle>, was released on-line and for free, under a Creative "
18555 "Commons license, on the same day that it went on sale in bookstores."
18558 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18559 #: freeculture.xml:13670
18561 "Why would a publisher ever agree to this? I suspect his publisher reasoned "
18562 "like this: There are two groups of people out there: (1) those who will buy "
18563 "Cory's book whether or not it's on the Internet, and (2) those who may never "
18564 "hear of Cory's book, if it isn't made available for free on the "
18565 "Internet. Some part of (1) will download Cory's book instead of buying "
18566 "it. Call them bad-(1)s. Some part of (2) will download Cory's book, like "
18567 "it, and then decide to buy it. Call them (2)-goods. If there are more "
18568 "(2)-goods than bad-(1)s, the strategy of releasing Cory's book free on-line "
18569 "will probably <emphasis>increase</emphasis> sales of Cory's book."
18572 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18573 #: freeculture.xml:13682
18575 "Indeed, the experience of his publisher clearly supports that conclusion. "
18576 "The book's first printing was exhausted months before the publisher had "
18577 "expected. This first novel of a science fiction author was a total success."
18580 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18581 #: freeculture.xml:13687
18582 msgid "Free for All (Wayner)"
18585 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18586 #: freeculture.xml:13688
18587 msgid "Wayner, Peter"
18591 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18592 #: freeculture.xml:13690
18594 "The idea that free content might increase the value of nonfree content was "
18595 "confirmed by the experience of another author. Peter Wayner, who wrote a "
18596 "book about the free software movement titled <citetitle>Free for "
18597 "All</citetitle>, made an electronic version of his book free on-line under a "
18598 "Creative Commons license after the book went out of print. He then monitored "
18599 "used book store prices for the book. As predicted, as the number of "
18600 "downloads increased, the used book price for his book increased, as well."
18603 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18604 #: freeculture.xml:13701
18605 msgid "Public Enemy"
18608 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18609 #: freeculture.xml:13702
18613 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
18614 #: freeculture.xml:13703
18615 msgid "Leaphart, Walter"
18619 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
18620 #: freeculture.xml:13720
18622 "<citetitle>Willful Infringement: A Report from the Front Lines of the Real "
18623 "Culture Wars</citetitle> (2003), produced by Jed Horovitz, directed by Greg "
18624 "Hittelman, a Fiat Lucre production, available at <ulink "
18625 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #72</ulink>."
18628 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18629 #: freeculture.xml:13705
18631 "These are examples of using the Commons to better spread proprietary "
18632 "content. I believe that is a wonderful and common use of the Commons. There "
18633 "are others who use Creative Commons licenses for other reasons. Many who use "
18634 "the <quote>sampling license</quote> do so because anything else would be "
18635 "hypocritical. The sampling license says that others are free, for commercial "
18636 "or noncommercial purposes, to sample content from the licensed work; they "
18637 "are just not free to make full copies of the licensed work available to "
18638 "others. This is consistent with their own art—they, too, sample from "
18639 "others. Because the <emphasis>legal</emphasis> costs of sampling are so high "
18640 "(Walter Leaphart, manager of the rap group Public Enemy, which was born "
18641 "sampling the music of others, has stated that he does not "
18642 "<quote>allow</quote> Public Enemy to sample anymore, because the legal costs "
18643 "are so high<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>), these artists release "
18644 "into the creative environment content that others can build upon, so that "
18645 "their form of creativity might grow."
18648 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18649 #: freeculture.xml:13729
18651 "Finally, there are many who mark their content with a Creative Commons "
18652 "license just because they want to express to others the importance of "
18653 "balance in this debate. If you just go along with the system as it is, you "
18654 "are effectively saying you believe in the <quote>All Rights Reserved</quote> "
18655 "model. Good for you, but many do not. Many believe that however appropriate "
18656 "that rule is for Hollywood and freaks, it is not an appropriate description "
18657 "of how most creators view the rights associated with their content. The "
18658 "Creative Commons license expresses this notion of <quote>Some Rights "
18659 "Reserved,</quote> and gives many the chance to say it to others."
18663 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18664 #: freeculture.xml:13741
18666 "In the first six months of the Creative Commons experiment, over 1 million "
18667 "objects were licensed with these free-culture licenses. The next step is "
18668 "partnerships with middleware content providers to help them build into their "
18669 "technologies simple ways for users to mark their content with Creative "
18670 "Commons freedoms. Then the next step is to watch and celebrate creators who "
18671 "build content based upon content set free."
18674 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18675 #: freeculture.xml:13751
18677 "These are first steps to rebuilding a public domain. They are not mere "
18678 "arguments; they are action. Building a public domain is the first step to "
18679 "showing people how important that domain is to creativity and "
18680 "innovation. Creative Commons relies upon voluntary steps to achieve this "
18681 "rebuilding. They will lead to a world in which more than voluntary steps are "
18685 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18686 #: freeculture.xml:13759
18688 "Creative Commons is just one example of voluntary efforts by individuals and "
18689 "creators to change the mix of rights that now govern the creative field. The "
18690 "project does not compete with copyright; it complements it. Its aim is not "
18691 "to defeat the rights of authors, but to make it easier for authors and "
18692 "creators to exercise their rights more flexibly and cheaply. That "
18693 "difference, we believe, will enable creativity to spread more easily."
18696 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><title>
18697 #: freeculture.xml:13773
18701 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18702 #: freeculture.xml:13775
18704 "<emphasis role='strong'>We will</emphasis> not reclaim a free culture by "
18705 "individual action alone. It will also take important reforms of laws. We "
18706 "have a long way to go before the politicians will listen to these ideas and "
18707 "implement these reforms. But that also means that we have time to build "
18708 "awareness around the changes that we need."
18711 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><para>
18712 #: freeculture.xml:13782
18714 "In this chapter, I outline five kinds of changes: four that are general, and "
18715 "one that's specific to the most heated battle of the day, music. Each is a "
18716 "step, not an end. But any of these steps would carry us a long way to our "
18720 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
18721 #: freeculture.xml:13789
18722 msgid "1. More Formalities"
18725 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18726 #: freeculture.xml:13791
18728 "If you buy a house, you have to record the sale in a deed. If you buy land "
18729 "upon which to build a house, you have to record the purchase in a deed. If "
18730 "you buy a car, you get a bill of sale and register the car. If you buy an "
18731 "airplane ticket, it has your name on it."
18735 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18736 #: freeculture.xml:13798
18738 "These are all formalities associated with property. They are requirements "
18739 "that we all must bear if we want our property to be protected."
18742 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18743 #: freeculture.xml:13803
18745 "In contrast, under current copyright law, you automatically get a copyright, "
18746 "regardless of whether you comply with any formality. You don't have to "
18747 "register. You don't even have to mark your content. The default is control, "
18748 "and <quote>formalities</quote> are banished."
18751 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18752 #: freeculture.xml:13809
18756 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18757 #: freeculture.xml:13812
18759 "As I suggested in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
18760 "linkend=\"property-i\"/>, the motivation to abolish formalities was a good "
18761 "one. In the world before digital technologies, formalities imposed a burden "
18762 "on copyright holders without much benefit. Thus, it was progress when the "
18763 "law relaxed the formal requirements that a copyright owner must bear to "
18764 "protect and secure his work. Those formalities were getting in the way."
18767 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18768 #: freeculture.xml:13821
18770 "But the Internet changes all this. Formalities today need not be a "
18771 "burden. Rather, the world without formalities is the world that burdens "
18772 "creativity. Today, there is no simple way to know who owns what, or with "
18773 "whom one must deal in order to use or build upon the creative work of "
18774 "others. There are no records, there is no system to trace— there is no "
18775 "simple way to know how to get permission. Yet given the massive increase in "
18776 "the scope of copyright's rule, getting permission is a necessary step for "
18777 "any work that builds upon our past. And thus, the <emphasis>lack</emphasis> "
18778 "of formalities forces many into silence where they otherwise could speak."
18782 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
18783 #: freeculture.xml:13835
18785 "The proposal I am advancing here would apply to American works only. "
18786 "Obviously, I believe it would be beneficial for the same idea to be adopted "
18787 "by other countries as well."
18790 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18791 #: freeculture.xml:13833
18793 "The law should therefore change this requirement<placeholder "
18794 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>—but it should not change it by going back "
18795 "to the old, broken system. We should require formalities, but we should "
18796 "establish a system that will create the incentives to minimize the burden of "
18797 "these formalities."
18800 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18801 #: freeculture.xml:13843
18803 "The important formalities are three: marking copyrighted work, registering "
18804 "copyrights, and renewing the claim to copyright. Traditionally, the first of "
18805 "these three was something the copyright owner did; the second two were "
18806 "something the government did. But a revised system of formalities would "
18807 "banish the government from the process, except for the sole purpose of "
18808 "approving standards developed by others."
18811 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><title>
18812 #: freeculture.xml:13855
18813 msgid "REGISTRATION AND RENEWAL"
18816 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18817 #: freeculture.xml:13857
18819 "Under the old system, a copyright owner had to file a registration with the "
18820 "Copyright Office to register or renew a copyright. When filing that "
18821 "registration, the copyright owner paid a fee. As with most government "
18822 "agencies, the Copyright Office had little incentive to minimize the burden "
18823 "of registration; it also had little incentive to minimize the fee. And as "
18824 "the Copyright Office is not a main target of government policymaking, the "
18825 "office has historically been terribly underfunded. Thus, when people who "
18826 "know something about the process hear this idea about formalities, their "
18827 "first reaction is panic—nothing could be worse than forcing people to "
18828 "deal with the mess that is the Copyright Office."
18831 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18832 #: freeculture.xml:13870
18834 "Yet it is always astonishing to me that we, who come from a tradition of "
18835 "extraordinary innovation in governmental design, can no longer think "
18836 "innovatively about how governmental functions can be designed. Just because "
18837 "there is a public purpose to a government role, it doesn't follow that the "
18838 "government must actually administer the role. Instead, we should be creating "
18839 "incentives for private parties to serve the public, subject to standards "
18840 "that the government sets."
18843 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18844 #: freeculture.xml:13879
18846 "In the context of registration, one obvious model is the Internet. There "
18847 "are at least 32 million Web sites registered around the world. Domain name "
18848 "owners for these Web sites have to pay a fee to keep their registration "
18849 "alive. In the main top-level domains (.com, .org, .net), there is a central "
18850 "registry. The actual registrations are, however, performed by many competing "
18851 "registrars. That competition drives the cost of registering down, and more "
18852 "importantly, it drives the ease with which registration occurs up."
18856 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18857 #: freeculture.xml:13889
18859 "We should adopt a similar model for the registration and renewal of "
18860 "copyrights. The Copyright Office may well serve as the central registry, but "
18861 "it should not be in the registrar business. Instead, it should establish a "
18862 "database, and a set of standards for registrars. It should approve "
18863 "registrars that meet its standards. Those registrars would then compete with "
18864 "one another to deliver the cheapest and simplest systems for registering and "
18865 "renewing copyrights. That competition would substantially lower the burden "
18866 "of this formality—while producing a database of registrations that "
18867 "would facilitate the licensing of content."
18870 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><title>
18871 #: freeculture.xml:13904
18875 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18876 #: freeculture.xml:13906
18878 "It used to be that the failure to include a copyright notice on a creative "
18879 "work meant that the copyright was forfeited. That was a harsh punishment for "
18880 "failing to comply with a regulatory rule—akin to imposing the death "
18881 "penalty for a parking ticket in the world of creative rights. Here again, "
18882 "there is no reason that a marking requirement needs to be enforced in this "
18883 "way. And more importantly, there is no reason a marking requirement needs to "
18884 "be enforced uniformly across all media."
18887 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18888 #: freeculture.xml:13916
18890 "The aim of marking is to signal to the public that this work is copyrighted "
18891 "and that the author wants to enforce his rights. The mark also makes it easy "
18892 "to locate a copyright owner to secure permission to use the work."
18895 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18896 #: freeculture.xml:13922
18898 "One of the problems the copyright system confronted early on was that "
18899 "different copyrighted works had to be differently marked. It wasn't clear "
18900 "how or where a statue was to be marked, or a record, or a film. A new "
18901 "marking requirement could solve these problems by recognizing the "
18902 "differences in media, and by allowing the system of marking to evolve as "
18903 "technologies enable it to. The system could enable a special signal from the "
18904 "failure to mark—not the loss of the copyright, but the loss of the "
18905 "right to punish someone for failing to get permission first."
18909 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para><footnote><para>
18910 #: freeculture.xml:13939
18912 "There would be a complication with derivative works that I have not solved "
18913 "here. In my view, the law of derivatives creates a more complicated system "
18914 "than is justified by the marginal incentive it creates."
18918 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18919 #: freeculture.xml:13932
18921 "Let's start with the last point. If a copyright owner allows his work to be "
18922 "published without a copyright notice, the consequence of that failure need "
18923 "not be that the copyright is lost. The consequence could instead be that "
18924 "anyone has the right to use this work, until the copyright owner complains "
18925 "and demonstrates that it is his work and he doesn't give "
18926 "permission.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The meaning of an "
18927 "unmarked work would therefore be <quote>use unless someone "
18928 "complains.</quote> If someone does complain, then the obligation would be to "
18929 "stop using the work in any new work from then on though no penalty would "
18930 "attach for existing uses. This would create a strong incentive for "
18931 "copyright owners to mark their work."
18934 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18935 #: freeculture.xml:13952
18937 "That in turn raises the question about how work should best be marked. Here "
18938 "again, the system needs to adjust as the technologies evolve. The best way "
18939 "to ensure that the system evolves is to limit the Copyright Office's role to "
18940 "that of approving standards for marking content that have been crafted "
18944 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
18945 #: freeculture.xml:13958
18946 msgid "copyright marking of"
18949 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18950 #: freeculture.xml:13960
18952 "For example, if a recording industry association devises a method for "
18953 "marking CDs, it would propose that to the Copyright Office. The Copyright "
18954 "Office would hold a hearing, at which other proposals could be made. The "
18955 "Copyright Office would then select the proposal that it judged preferable, "
18956 "and it would base that choice <emphasis>solely</emphasis> upon the "
18957 "consideration of which method could best be integrated into the registration "
18958 "and renewal system. We would not count on the government to innovate; but we "
18959 "would count on the government to keep the product of innovation in line with "
18960 "its other important functions."
18963 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18964 #: freeculture.xml:13972
18966 "Finally, marking content clearly would simplify registration requirements. "
18967 "If photographs were marked by author and year, there would be little reason "
18968 "not to allow a photographer to reregister, for example, all photographs "
18969 "taken in a particular year in one quick step. The aim of the formality is "
18970 "not to burden the creator; the system itself should be kept as simple as "
18974 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18975 #: freeculture.xml:13980
18977 "The objective of formalities is to make things clear. The existing system "
18978 "does nothing to make things clear. Indeed, it seems designed to make things "
18982 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><section><para>
18983 #: freeculture.xml:13985
18985 "If formalities such as registration were reinstated, one of the most "
18986 "difficult aspects of relying upon the public domain would be removed. It "
18987 "would be simple to identify what content is presumptively free; it would be "
18988 "simple to identify who controls the rights for a particular kind of content; "
18989 "it would be simple to assert those rights, and to renew that assertion at "
18990 "the appropriate time."
18993 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
18994 #: freeculture.xml:13997
18995 msgid "2. Shorter Terms"
18998 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
18999 #: freeculture.xml:13999
19001 "The term of copyright has gone from fourteen years to ninety-five years for "
19002 "corporate authors, and life of the author plus seventy years for natural "
19007 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19008 #: freeculture.xml:14012
19010 "<quote>A Radical Rethink,</quote> <citetitle>Economist</citetitle>, 366:8308 "
19011 "(25 January 2003): 15, available at <ulink "
19012 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #74</ulink>."
19015 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19016 #: freeculture.xml:14004
19018 "In <citetitle>The Future of Ideas</citetitle>, I proposed a "
19019 "seventy-five-year term, granted in five-year increments with a requirement "
19020 "of renewal every five years. That seemed radical enough at the time. But "
19021 "after we lost <citetitle>Eldred</citetitle> "
19022 "v. <citetitle>Ashcroft</citetitle>, the proposals became even more "
19023 "radical. <citetitle>The Economist</citetitle> endorsed a proposal for a "
19024 "fourteen-year copyright term.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> "
19025 "Others have proposed tying the term to the term for patents."
19028 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19029 #: freeculture.xml:14019
19031 "I agree with those who believe that we need a radical change in copyright's "
19032 "term. But whether fourteen years or seventy-five, there are four principles "
19033 "that are important to keep in mind about copyright terms."
19037 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19038 #: freeculture.xml:14027
19040 "<emphasis>Keep it short:</emphasis> The term should be as long as necessary "
19041 "to give incentives to create, but no longer. If it were tied to very strong "
19042 "protections for authors (so authors were able to reclaim rights from "
19043 "publishers), rights to the same work (not derivative works) might be "
19044 "extended further. The key is not to tie the work up with legal regulations "
19045 "when it no longer benefits an author."
19050 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19051 #: freeculture.xml:14036
19053 "<emphasis>Keep it simple:</emphasis> The line between the public domain and "
19054 "protected content must be kept clear. Lawyers like the fuzziness of "
19055 "<quote>fair use,</quote> and the distinction between <quote>ideas</quote> "
19056 "and <quote>expression.</quote> That kind of law gives them lots of work. But "
19057 "our framers had a simpler idea in mind: protected versus unprotected. The "
19058 "value of short terms is that there is little need to build exceptions into "
19059 "copyright when the term itself is kept short. A clear and active "
19060 "<quote>lawyer-free zone</quote> makes the complexities of <quote>fair "
19061 "use</quote> and <quote>idea/expression</quote> less necessary to navigate."
19064 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><indexterm><primary>
19065 #: freeculture.xml:14048
19066 msgid "veterans' pensions"
19070 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para><footnote><para>
19071 #: freeculture.xml:14059
19073 "Department of Veterans Affairs, Veteran's Application for Compensation "
19074 "and/or Pension, VA Form 21-526 (OMB Approved No. 2900-0001), available at "
19075 "<ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #75</ulink>."
19078 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19079 #: freeculture.xml:14051
19081 "<emphasis>Keep it alive:</emphasis> Copyright should have to be renewed. "
19082 "Especially if the maximum term is long, the copyright owner should be "
19083 "required to signal periodically that he wants the protection continued. This "
19084 "need not be an onerous burden, but there is no reason this monopoly "
19085 "protection has to be granted for free. On average, it takes ninety minutes "
19086 "for a veteran to apply for a pension.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
19087 "id=\"0\"/> If we make veterans suffer that burden, I don't see why we "
19088 "couldn't require authors to spend ten minutes every fifty years to file a "
19093 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19094 #: freeculture.xml:14070
19096 "<emphasis>Keep it prospective:</emphasis> Whatever the term of copyright "
19097 "should be, the clearest lesson that economists teach is that a term once "
19098 "given should not be extended. It might have been a mistake in 1923 for the "
19099 "law to offer authors only a fifty-six-year term. I don't think so, but it's "
19100 "possible. If it was a mistake, then the consequence was that we got fewer "
19101 "authors to create in 1923 than we otherwise would have. But we can't correct "
19102 "that mistake today by increasing the term. No matter what we do today, we "
19103 "will not increase the number of authors who wrote in 1923. Of course, we can "
19104 "increase the reward that those who write now get (or alternatively, increase "
19105 "the copyright burden that smothers many works that are today invisible). But "
19106 "increasing their reward will not increase their creativity in 1923. What's "
19107 "not done is not done, and there's nothing we can do about that now."
19110 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19111 #: freeculture.xml:14086
19113 "These changes together should produce an <emphasis>average</emphasis> "
19114 "copyright term that is much shorter than the current term. Until 1976, the "
19115 "average term was just 32.2 years. We should be aiming for the same."
19118 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19119 #: freeculture.xml:14092
19121 "No doubt the extremists will call these ideas <quote>radical.</quote> (After "
19122 "all, I call them <quote>extremists.</quote>) But again, the term I "
19123 "recommended was longer than the term under Richard Nixon. How "
19124 "<quote>radical</quote> can it be to ask for a more generous copyright law "
19125 "than Richard Nixon presided over?"
19128 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
19129 #: freeculture.xml:14102
19130 msgid "3. Free Use Vs. Fair Use"
19133 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19134 #: freeculture.xml:14106
19136 "As I observed at the beginning of this book, property law originally granted "
19137 "property owners the right to control their property from the ground to the "
19138 "heavens. The airplane came along. The scope of property rights quickly "
19139 "changed. There was no fuss, no constitutional challenge. It made no sense "
19140 "anymore to grant that much control, given the emergence of that new "
19144 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19145 #: freeculture.xml:14114
19147 "Our Constitution gives Congress the power to give authors <quote>exclusive "
19148 "right</quote> to <quote>their writings.</quote> Congress has given authors "
19149 "an exclusive right to <quote>their writings</quote> plus any derivative "
19150 "writings (made by others) that are sufficiently close to the author's "
19151 "original work. Thus, if I write a book, and you base a movie on that book, I "
19152 "have the power to deny you the right to release that movie, even though that "
19153 "movie is not <quote>my writing.</quote>"
19156 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19157 #: freeculture.xml:14122
19158 msgid "Kaplan, Benjamin"
19162 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19163 #: freeculture.xml:14128
19165 "Benjamin Kaplan, <citetitle>An Unhurried View of Copyright</citetitle> (New "
19166 "York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 32."
19169 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19170 #: freeculture.xml:14124
19172 "Congress granted the beginnings of this right in 1870, when it expanded the "
19173 "exclusive right of copyright to include a right to control translations and "
19174 "dramatizations of a work.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> The "
19175 "courts have expanded it slowly through judicial interpretation ever "
19176 "since. This expansion has been commented upon by one of the law's greatest "
19177 "judges, Judge Benjamin Kaplan."
19181 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><blockquote><para><footnote><para>
19182 #: freeculture.xml:14141
19186 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><blockquote><para>
19187 #: freeculture.xml:14137
19189 "So inured have we become to the extension of the monopoly to a large range "
19190 "of so-called derivative works, that we no longer sense the oddity of "
19191 "accepting such an enlargement of copyright while yet intoning the "
19192 "abracadabra of idea and expression.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
19195 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19196 #: freeculture.xml:14146
19198 "I think it's time to recognize that there are airplanes in this field and "
19199 "the expansiveness of these rights of derivative use no longer make "
19200 "sense. More precisely, they don't make sense for the period of time that a "
19201 "copyright runs. And they don't make sense as an amorphous grant. Consider "
19202 "each limitation in turn."
19205 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19206 #: freeculture.xml:14153
19208 "<emphasis>Term:</emphasis> If Congress wants to grant a derivative right, "
19209 "then that right should be for a much shorter term. It makes sense to protect "
19210 "John Grisham's right to sell the movie rights to his latest novel (or at "
19211 "least I'm willing to assume it does); but it does not make sense for that "
19212 "right to run for the same term as the underlying copyright. The derivative "
19213 "right could be important in inducing creativity; it is not important long "
19214 "after the creative work is done. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
19217 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19218 #: freeculture.xml:14166
19220 "<emphasis>Scope:</emphasis> Likewise should the scope of derivative rights "
19221 "be narrowed. Again, there are some cases in which derivative rights are "
19222 "important. Those should be specified. But the law should draw clear lines "
19223 "around regulated and unregulated uses of copyrighted material. When all "
19224 "<quote>reuse</quote> of creative material was within the control of "
19225 "businesses, perhaps it made sense to require lawyers to negotiate the "
19226 "lines. It no longer makes sense for lawyers to negotiate the lines. Think "
19227 "about all the creative possibilities that digital technologies enable; now "
19228 "imagine pouring molasses into the machines. That's what this general "
19229 "requirement of permission does to the creative process. Smothers it."
19232 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19233 #: freeculture.xml:14180
19235 "This was the point that Alben made when describing the making of the Clint "
19236 "Eastwood CD. While it makes sense to require negotiation for foreseeable "
19237 "derivative rights—turning a book into a movie, or a poem into a "
19238 "musical score—it doesn't make sense to require negotiation for the "
19239 "unforeseeable. Here, a statutory right would make much more sense."
19242 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
19243 #: freeculture.xml:14196
19244 msgid "Goldstein, Paul"
19247 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19248 #: freeculture.xml:14194
19250 "Paul Goldstein, <citetitle>Copyright's Highway: From Gutenberg to the "
19251 "Celestial Jukebox</citetitle> (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), "
19252 "187–216. <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
19255 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19256 #: freeculture.xml:14188
19258 "In each of these cases, the law should mark the uses that are protected, and "
19259 "the presumption should be that other uses are not protected. This is the "
19260 "reverse of the recommendation of my colleague Paul Goldstein.<placeholder "
19261 "type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> His view is that the law should be written so "
19262 "that expanded protections follow expanded uses."
19265 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19266 #: freeculture.xml:14202
19268 "Goldstein's analysis would make perfect sense if the cost of the legal "
19269 "system were small. But as we are currently seeing in the context of the "
19270 "Internet, the uncertainty about the scope of protection, and the incentives "
19271 "to protect existing architectures of revenue, combined with a strong "
19272 "copyright, weaken the process of innovation."
19276 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19277 #: freeculture.xml:14209
19279 "The law could remedy this problem either by removing protection beyond the "
19280 "part explicitly drawn or by granting reuse rights upon certain statutory "
19281 "conditions. Either way, the effect would be to free a great deal of culture "
19282 "to others to cultivate. And under a statutory rights regime, that reuse "
19283 "would earn artists more income."
19286 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
19287 #: freeculture.xml:14219
19288 msgid "4. Liberate the Music—Again"
19291 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19292 #: freeculture.xml:14221
19294 "The battle that got this whole war going was about music, so it wouldn't be "
19295 "fair to end this book without addressing the issue that is, to most people, "
19296 "most pressing—music. There is no other policy issue that better "
19297 "teaches the lessons of this book than the battles around the sharing of "
19301 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19302 #: freeculture.xml:14228
19304 "The appeal of file-sharing music was the crack cocaine of the Internet's "
19305 "growth. It drove demand for access to the Internet more powerfully than any "
19306 "other single application. It was the Internet's killer app—possibly in "
19307 "two senses of that word. It no doubt was the application that drove demand "
19308 "for bandwidth. It may well be the application that drives demand for "
19309 "regulations that in the end kill innovation on the network."
19312 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19313 #: freeculture.xml:14237
19315 "The aim of copyright, with respect to content in general and music in "
19316 "particular, is to create the incentives for music to be composed, performed, "
19317 "and, most importantly, spread. The law does this by giving an exclusive "
19318 "right to a composer to control public performances of his work, and to a "
19319 "performing artist to control copies of her performance."
19322 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19323 #: freeculture.xml:14244
19325 "File-sharing networks complicate this model by enabling the spread of "
19326 "content for which the performer has not been paid. But of course, that's not "
19327 "all the file-sharing networks do. As I described in chapter <xref "
19328 "xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" linkend=\"piracy\"/>, they enable four "
19329 "different kinds of sharing:"
19333 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19334 #: freeculture.xml:14253
19336 "There are some who are using sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing "
19341 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19342 #: freeculture.xml:14258
19344 "There are also some who are using sharing networks to sample, on the way to "
19350 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19351 #: freeculture.xml:14264
19353 "There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content "
19354 "that is no longer sold but is still under copyright or that would have been "
19355 "too cumbersome to buy off the Net."
19359 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19360 #: freeculture.xml:14270
19362 "There are many who are using file-sharing networks to get access to content "
19363 "that is not copyrighted or to get access that the copyright owner plainly "
19367 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19368 #: freeculture.xml:14278
19370 "Any reform of the law needs to keep these different uses in focus. It must "
19371 "avoid burdening type D even if it aims to eliminate type A. The eagerness "
19372 "with which the law aims to eliminate type A, moreover, should depend upon "
19373 "the magnitude of type B. As with VCRs, if the net effect of sharing is "
19374 "actually not very harmful, the need for regulation is significantly "
19378 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19379 #: freeculture.xml:14286
19381 "As I said in chapter <xref xrefstyle=\"select: labelnumber\" "
19382 "linkend=\"piracy\"/>, the actual harm caused by sharing is controversial. "
19383 "For the purposes of this chapter, however, I assume the harm is real. I "
19384 "assume, in other words, that type A sharing is significantly greater than "
19385 "type B, and is the dominant use of sharing networks."
19388 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19389 #: freeculture.xml:14294
19391 "Nonetheless, there is a crucial fact about the current technological context "
19392 "that we must keep in mind if we are to understand how the law should "
19396 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19397 #: freeculture.xml:14299
19399 "Today, file sharing is addictive. In ten years, it won't be. It is addictive "
19400 "today because it is the easiest way to gain access to a broad range of "
19401 "content. It won't be the easiest way to get access to a broad range of "
19402 "content in ten years. Today, access to the Internet is cumbersome and "
19403 "slow—we in the United States are lucky to have broadband service at "
19404 "1.5 MBs, and very rarely do we get service at that speed both up and "
19405 "down. Although wireless access is growing, most of us still get access "
19406 "across wires. Most only gain access through a machine with a keyboard. The "
19407 "idea of the always on, always connected Internet is mainly just an idea."
19411 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19412 #: freeculture.xml:14311
19414 "But it will become a reality, and that means the way we get access to the "
19415 "Internet today is a technology in transition. Policy makers should not make "
19416 "policy on the basis of technology in transition. They should make policy on "
19417 "the basis of where the technology is going. The question should not be, how "
19418 "should the law regulate sharing in this world? The question should be, what "
19419 "law will we require when the network becomes the network it is clearly "
19420 "becoming? That network is one in which every machine with electricity is "
19421 "essentially on the Net; where everywhere you are—except maybe the "
19422 "desert or the Rockies—you can instantaneously be connected to the "
19423 "Internet. Imagine the Internet as ubiquitous as the best cell-phone service, "
19424 "where with the flip of a device, you are connected."
19427 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19428 #: freeculture.xml:14325
19429 msgid "cell phones, music streamed over"
19433 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19434 #: freeculture.xml:14345
19436 "See, for example, <quote>Music Media Watch,</quote> The J@pan "
19437 "Inc. Newsletter, 3 April 2002, available at <ulink "
19438 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #76</ulink>."
19441 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19442 #: freeculture.xml:14327
19444 "In that world, it will be extremely easy to connect to services that give "
19445 "you access to content on the fly—such as Internet radio, content that "
19446 "is streamed to the user when the user demands. Here, then, is the critical "
19447 "point: When it is <emphasis>extremely</emphasis> easy to connect to services "
19448 "that give access to content, it will be <emphasis>easier</emphasis> to "
19449 "connect to services that give you access to content than it will be to "
19450 "download and store content <emphasis>on the many devices you will have for "
19451 "playing content</emphasis>. It will be easier, in other words, to subscribe "
19452 "than it will be to be a database manager, as everyone in the "
19453 "download-sharing world of Napster-like technologies essentially is. Content "
19454 "services will compete with content sharing, even if the services charge "
19455 "money for the content they give access to. Already cell-phone services in "
19456 "Japan offer music (for a fee) streamed over cell phones (enhanced with plugs "
19457 "for headphones). The Japanese are paying for this content even though "
19458 "<quote>free</quote> content is available in the form of MP3s across the "
19459 "Web.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
19463 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19464 #: freeculture.xml:14352
19466 "This point about the future is meant to suggest a perspective on the "
19467 "present: It is emphatically temporary. The <quote>problem</quote> with file "
19468 "sharing—to the extent there is a real problem—is a problem that "
19469 "will increasingly disappear as it becomes easier to connect to the "
19470 "Internet. And thus it is an extraordinary mistake for policy makers today "
19471 "to be <quote>solving</quote> this problem in light of a technology that will "
19472 "be gone tomorrow. The question should not be how to regulate the Internet "
19473 "to eliminate file sharing (the Net will evolve that problem away). The "
19474 "question instead should be how to assure that artists get paid, during this "
19475 "transition between twentieth-century models for doing business and "
19476 "twenty-first-century technologies."
19479 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19480 #: freeculture.xml:14368
19482 "The answer begins with recognizing that there are different "
19483 "<quote>problems</quote> here to solve. Let's start with type D "
19484 "content—uncopyrighted content or copyrighted content that the artist "
19485 "wants shared. The <quote>problem</quote> with this content is to make sure "
19486 "that the technology that would enable this kind of sharing is not rendered "
19487 "illegal. You can think of it this way: Pay phones are used to deliver ransom "
19488 "demands, no doubt. But there are many who need to use pay phones who have "
19489 "nothing to do with ransoms. It would be wrong to ban pay phones in order to "
19490 "eliminate kidnapping."
19493 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19494 #: freeculture.xml:14379
19496 "Type C content raises a different <quote>problem.</quote> This is content "
19497 "that was, at one time, published and is no longer available. It may be "
19498 "unavailable because the artist is no longer valuable enough for the record "
19499 "label he signed with to carry his work. Or it may be unavailable because the "
19500 "work is forgotten. Either way, the aim of the law should be to facilitate "
19501 "the access to this content, ideally in a way that returns something to the "
19505 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19506 #: freeculture.xml:14390
19508 "Again, the model here is the used book store. Once a book goes out of print, "
19509 "it may still be available in libraries and used book stores. But libraries "
19510 "and used book stores don't pay the copyright owner when someone reads or "
19511 "buys an out-of-print book. That makes total sense, of course, since any "
19512 "other system would be so burdensome as to eliminate the possibility of used "
19513 "book stores' existing. But from the author's perspective, this "
19514 "<quote>sharing</quote> of his content without his being compensated is less "
19518 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19519 #: freeculture.xml:14400
19521 "The model of used book stores suggests that the law could simply deem "
19522 "out-of-print music fair game. If the publisher does not make copies of the "
19523 "music available for sale, then commercial and noncommercial providers would "
19524 "be free, under this rule, to <quote>share</quote> that content, even though "
19525 "the sharing involved making a copy. The copy here would be incidental to the "
19526 "trade; in a context where commercial publishing has ended, trading music "
19527 "should be as free as trading books."
19531 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19532 #: freeculture.xml:14411
19534 "Alternatively, the law could create a statutory license that would ensure "
19535 "that artists get something from the trade of their work. For example, if the "
19536 "law set a low statutory rate for the commercial sharing of content that was "
19537 "not offered for sale by a commercial publisher, and if that rate were "
19538 "automatically transferred to a trust for the benefit of the artist, then "
19539 "businesses could develop around the idea of trading this content, and "
19540 "artists would benefit from this trade."
19543 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19544 #: freeculture.xml:14421
19546 "This system would also create an incentive for publishers to keep works "
19547 "available commercially. Works that are available commercially would not be "
19548 "subject to this license. Thus, publishers could protect the right to charge "
19549 "whatever they want for content if they kept the work commercially "
19550 "available. But if they don't keep it available, and instead, the computer "
19551 "hard disks of fans around the world keep it alive, then any royalty owed for "
19552 "such copying should be much less than the amount owed a commercial "
19556 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19557 #: freeculture.xml:14431
19559 "The hard case is content of types A and B, and again, this case is hard only "
19560 "because the extent of the problem will change over time, as the technologies "
19561 "for gaining access to content change. The law's solution should be as "
19562 "flexible as the problem is, understanding that we are in the middle of a "
19563 "radical transformation in the technology for delivering and accessing "
19567 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19568 #: freeculture.xml:14439
19570 "So here's a solution that will at first seem very strange to both sides in "
19571 "this war, but which upon reflection, I suggest, should make some sense."
19574 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19575 #: freeculture.xml:14443
19577 "Stripped of the rhetoric about the sanctity of property, the basic claim of "
19578 "the content industry is this: A new technology (the Internet) has harmed a "
19579 "set of rights that secure copyright. If those rights are to be protected, "
19580 "then the content industry should be compensated for that harm. Just as the "
19581 "technology of tobacco harmed the health of millions of Americans, or the "
19582 "technology of asbestos caused grave illness to thousands of miners, so, too, "
19583 "has the technology of digital networks harmed the interests of the content "
19588 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19589 #: freeculture.xml:14454
19591 "I love the Internet, and so I don't like likening it to tobacco or "
19592 "asbestos. But the analogy is a fair one from the perspective of the law. "
19593 "And it suggests a fair response: Rather than seeking to destroy the "
19594 "Internet, or the p2p technologies that are currently harming content "
19595 "providers on the Internet, we should find a relatively simple way to "
19596 "compensate those who are harmed."
19599 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para><indexterm><primary>
19600 #: freeculture.xml:14500
19601 msgid "Fisher, William"
19604 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19605 #: freeculture.xml:14502 freeculture.xml:14515
19606 msgid "Promises to Keep (Fisher)"
19609 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19610 #: freeculture.xml:14466
19612 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/> William Fisher, "
19613 "<citetitle>Digital Music: Problems and Possibilities</citetitle> (last "
19614 "revised: 10 October 2000), available at <ulink "
19615 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #77</ulink>; William Fisher, "
19616 "<citetitle>Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of "
19617 "Entertainment</citetitle> (forthcoming) (Stanford: Stanford University "
19618 "Press, 2004), ch. 6, available at <ulink "
19619 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #78</ulink>. Professor Netanel "
19620 "has proposed a related idea that would exempt noncommercial sharing from the "
19621 "reach of copyright and would establish compensation to artists to balance "
19622 "any loss. See Neil Weinstock Netanel, <quote>Impose a Noncommercial Use Levy "
19623 "to Allow Free P2P File Sharing,</quote> available at <ulink "
19624 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #79</ulink>. For other proposals, "
19625 "see Lawrence Lessig, <quote>Who's Holding Back Broadband?</quote> "
19626 "<citetitle>Washington Post</citetitle>, 8 January 2002, A17; Philip "
19627 "S. Corwin on behalf of Sharman Networks, A Letter to Senator Joseph "
19628 "R. Biden, Jr., Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 26 "
19629 "February 2002, available at <ulink "
19630 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #80</ulink>; Serguei Osokine, "
19631 "<citetitle>A Quick Case for Intellectual Property Use Fee "
19632 "(IPUF)</citetitle>, 3 March 2002, available at <ulink "
19633 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #81</ulink>; Jefferson Graham, "
19634 "<quote>Kazaa, Verizon Propose to Pay Artists Directly,</quote> "
19635 "<citetitle>USA Today</citetitle>, 13 May 2002, available at <ulink "
19636 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #82</ulink>; Steven M. Cherry, "
19637 "<quote>Getting Copyright Right,</quote> IEEE Spectrum Online, 1 July 2002, "
19638 "available at <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #83</ulink>; "
19639 "Declan McCullagh, <quote>Verizon's Copyright Campaign,</quote> CNET "
19640 "News.com, 27 August 2002, available at <ulink "
19641 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #84</ulink>. Fisher's proposal "
19642 "is very similar to Richard Stallman's proposal for DAT. Unlike Fisher's, "
19643 "Stallman's proposal would not pay artists directly proportionally, though "
19644 "more popular artists would get more than the less popular. As is typical "
19645 "with Stallman, his proposal predates the current debate by about a "
19646 "decade. See <ulink url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #85</ulink>. "
19647 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"1\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" "
19648 "id=\"2\"/> <placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"3\"/>"
19651 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19652 #: freeculture.xml:14462
19654 "The idea would be a modification of a proposal that has been floated by "
19655 "Harvard law professor William Fisher.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" "
19656 "id=\"0\"/> Fisher suggests a very clever way around the current impasse of "
19657 "the Internet. Under his plan, all content capable of digital transmission "
19658 "would (1) be marked with a digital watermark (don't worry about how easy it "
19659 "is to evade these marks; as you'll see, there's no incentive to evade "
19660 "them). Once the content is marked, then entrepreneurs would develop (2) "
19661 "systems to monitor how many items of each content were distributed. On the "
19662 "basis of those numbers, then (3) artists would be compensated. The "
19663 "compensation would be paid for by (4) an appropriate tax."
19666 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19667 #: freeculture.xml:14517
19669 "Fisher's proposal is careful and comprehensive. It raises a million "
19670 "questions, most of which he answers well in his upcoming book, "
19671 "<citetitle>Promises to Keep</citetitle>. The modification that I would make "
19672 "is relatively simple: Fisher imagines his proposal replacing the existing "
19673 "copyright system. I imagine it complementing the existing system. The aim "
19674 "of the proposal would be to facilitate compensation to the extent that harm "
19675 "could be shown. This compensation would be temporary, aimed at facilitating "
19676 "a transition between regimes. And it would require renewal after a period of "
19677 "years. If it continues to make sense to facilitate free exchange of content, "
19678 "supported through a taxation system, then it can be continued. If this form "
19679 "of protection is no longer necessary, then the system could lapse into the "
19680 "old system of controlling access."
19684 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19685 #: freeculture.xml:14533
19687 "Fisher would balk at the idea of allowing the system to lapse. His aim is "
19688 "not just to ensure that artists are paid, but also to ensure that the system "
19689 "supports the widest range of <quote>semiotic democracy</quote> possible. But "
19690 "the aims of semiotic democracy would be satisfied if the other changes I "
19691 "described were accomplished—in particular, the limits on derivative "
19692 "uses. A system that simply charges for access would not greatly burden "
19693 "semiotic democracy if there were few limitations on what one was allowed to "
19694 "do with the content itself."
19697 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19698 #: freeculture.xml:14546
19702 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
19703 #: freeculture.xml:14548
19707 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19708 #: freeculture.xml:14550
19710 "No doubt it would be difficult to calculate the proper measure of "
19711 "<quote>harm</quote> to an industry. But the difficulty of making that "
19712 "calculation would be outweighed by the benefit of facilitating "
19713 "innovation. This background system to compensate would also not need to "
19714 "interfere with innovative proposals such as Apple's MusicStore. As experts "
19715 "predicted when Apple launched the MusicStore, it could beat "
19716 "<quote>free</quote> by being easier than free is. This has proven correct: "
19717 "Apple has sold millions of songs at even the very high price of 99 cents a "
19718 "song. (At 99 cents, the cost is the equivalent of a per-song CD price, "
19719 "though the labels have none of the costs of a CD to pay.) Apple's move was "
19720 "countered by Real Networks, offering music at just 79 cents a song. And no "
19721 "doubt there will be a great deal of competition to offer and sell music "
19725 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19726 #: freeculture.xml:14565
19730 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
19731 #: freeculture.xml:14565
19732 msgid "cable vs. broadcast"
19735 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19736 #: freeculture.xml:14568
19737 msgid "film industry"
19740 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
19741 #: freeculture.xml:14568
19742 msgid "luxury theatres vs. video piracy in"
19745 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19746 #: freeculture.xml:14570
19748 "This competition has already occurred against the background of "
19749 "<quote>free</quote> music from p2p systems. As the sellers of cable "
19750 "television have known for thirty years, and the sellers of bottled water for "
19751 "much more than that, there is nothing impossible at all about "
19752 "<quote>competing with free.</quote> Indeed, if anything, the competition "
19753 "spurs the competitors to offer new and better products. This is precisely "
19754 "what the competitive market was to be about. Thus in Singapore, though "
19755 "piracy is rampant, movie theaters are often luxurious—with "
19756 "<quote>first class</quote> seats, and meals served while you watch a "
19757 "movie—as they struggle and succeed in finding ways to compete with "
19758 "<quote>free.</quote>"
19761 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19762 #: freeculture.xml:14582
19764 "This regime of competition, with a backstop to assure that artists don't "
19765 "lose, would facilitate a great deal of innovation in the delivery of "
19766 "content. That competition would continue to shrink type A sharing. It would "
19767 "inspire an extraordinary range of new innovators—ones who would have a "
19768 "right to the content, and would no longer fear the uncertain and "
19769 "barbarically severe punishments of the law."
19772 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19773 #: freeculture.xml:14591
19774 msgid "In summary, then, my proposal is this:"
19778 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19779 #: freeculture.xml:14596
19781 "The Internet is in transition. We should not be regulating a technology in "
19782 "transition. We should instead be regulating to minimize the harm to "
19783 "interests affected by this technological change, while enabling, and "
19784 "encouraging, the most efficient technology we can create."
19787 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19788 #: freeculture.xml:14603
19789 msgid "We can minimize that harm while maximizing the benefit to innovation by"
19793 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19794 #: freeculture.xml:14609
19795 msgid "guaranteeing the right to engage in type D sharing;"
19799 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19800 #: freeculture.xml:14613
19802 "permitting noncommercial type C sharing without liability, and commercial "
19803 "type C sharing at a low and fixed rate set by statute;"
19807 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><orderedlist><listitem><para>
19808 #: freeculture.xml:14619
19810 "while in this transition, taxing and compensating for type A sharing, to the "
19811 "extent actual harm is demonstrated."
19814 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19815 #: freeculture.xml:14624
19817 "But what if <quote>piracy</quote> doesn't disappear? What if there is a "
19818 "competitive market providing content at a low cost, but a significant number "
19819 "of consumers continue to <quote>take</quote> content for nothing? Should the "
19820 "law do something then?"
19823 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19824 #: freeculture.xml:14630
19826 "Yes, it should. But, again, what it should do depends upon how the facts "
19827 "develop. These changes may not eliminate type A sharing. But the real issue "
19828 "is not whether it eliminates sharing in the abstract. The real issue is its "
19829 "effect on the market. Is it better (a) to have a technology that is 95 "
19830 "percent secure and produces a market of size <citetitle>x</citetitle>, or "
19831 "(b) to have a technology that is 50 percent secure but produces a market of "
19832 "five times <citetitle>x</citetitle>? Less secure might produce more "
19833 "unauthorized sharing, but it is likely to also produce a much bigger market "
19834 "in authorized sharing. The most important thing is to assure artists' "
19835 "compensation without breaking the Internet. Once that's assured, then it may "
19836 "well be appropriate to find ways to track down the petty pirates."
19840 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19841 #: freeculture.xml:14644
19843 "But we're a long way away from whittling the problem down to this subset of "
19844 "type A sharers. And our focus until we're there should not be on finding "
19845 "ways to break the Internet. Our focus until we're there should be on how to "
19846 "make sure the artists are paid, while protecting the space for innovation "
19847 "and creativity that the Internet is."
19850 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><title>
19851 #: freeculture.xml:14655
19852 msgid "5. Fire Lots of Lawyers"
19855 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19856 #: freeculture.xml:14657
19858 "I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living. I believe in the law. I believe "
19859 "in the law of copyright. Indeed, I have devoted my life to working in law, "
19860 "not because there are big bucks at the end but because there are ideals at "
19861 "the end that I would love to live."
19864 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19865 #: freeculture.xml:14663
19867 "Yet much of this book has been a criticism of lawyers, or the role lawyers "
19868 "have played in this debate. The law speaks to ideals, but it is my view that "
19869 "our profession has become too attuned to the client. And in a world where "
19870 "the rich clients have one strong view, the unwillingness of the profession "
19871 "to question or counter that one strong view queers the law."
19874 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19875 #: freeculture.xml:14670
19876 msgid "Nimmer, Melville"
19879 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><primary>
19880 #: freeculture.xml:14671
19881 msgid "Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) (1998)"
19884 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><indexterm><secondary>
19885 #: freeculture.xml:14671
19886 msgid "Supreme Court challenge of"
19890 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19891 #: freeculture.xml:14682
19893 "Lawrence Lessig, <quote>Copyright's First Amendment</quote> (Melville "
19894 "B. Nimmer Memorial Lecture), <citetitle>UCLA Law Review</citetitle> 48 "
19895 "(2001): 1057, 1069–70."
19898 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19899 #: freeculture.xml:14673
19901 "The evidence of this bending is compelling. I'm attacked as a "
19902 "<quote>radical</quote> by many within the profession, yet the positions that "
19903 "I am advocating are precisely the positions of some of the most moderate and "
19904 "significant figures in the history of this branch of the law. Many, for "
19905 "example, thought crazy the challenge that we brought to the Copyright Term "
19906 "Extension Act. Yet just thirty years ago, the dominant scholar and "
19907 "practitioner in the field of copyright, Melville Nimmer, thought it "
19908 "obvious.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/>"
19911 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19912 #: freeculture.xml:14688
19914 "However, my criticism of the role that lawyers have played in this debate is "
19915 "not just about a professional bias. It is more importantly about our failure "
19916 "to actually reckon the costs of the law."
19919 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para><footnote><para>
19920 #: freeculture.xml:14698
19922 "A good example is the work of Professor Stan Liebowitz. Liebowitz is to be "
19923 "commended for his careful review of data about infringement, leading him to "
19924 "question his own publicly stated position—twice. He initially "
19925 "predicted that downloading would substantially harm the industry. He then "
19926 "revised his view in light of the data, and he has since revised his view "
19927 "again. Compare Stan J. Liebowitz, <citetitle>Rethinking the Network "
19928 "Economy: The True Forces That Drive the Digital Marketplace</citetitle> (New "
19929 "York: Amacom, 2002), (reviewing his original view but expressing skepticism) "
19930 "with Stan J. Liebowitz, <quote>Will MP3s Annihilate the Record "
19931 "Industry?</quote> working paper, June 2003, available at <ulink "
19932 "url=\"http://free-culture.cc/notes/\">link #86</ulink>. Liebowitz's careful "
19933 "analysis is extremely valuable in estimating the effect of file-sharing "
19934 "technology. In my view, however, he underestimates the costs of the legal "
19935 "system. See, for example, <citetitle>Rethinking</citetitle>, 174–76. "
19936 "<placeholder type=\"indexterm\" id=\"0\"/>"
19939 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19940 #: freeculture.xml:14693
19942 "Economists are supposed to be good at reckoning costs and benefits. But "
19943 "more often than not, economists, with no clue about how the legal system "
19944 "actually functions, simply assume that the transaction costs of the legal "
19945 "system are slight.<placeholder type=\"footnote\" id=\"0\"/> They see a "
19946 "system that has been around for hundreds of years, and they assume it works "
19947 "the way their elementary school civics class taught them it works."
19951 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19952 #: freeculture.xml:14722
19954 "But the legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for "
19955 "anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is "
19956 "corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is "
19957 "at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so "
19958 "astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done."
19961 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19962 #: freeculture.xml:14730
19964 "These costs distort free culture in many ways. A lawyer's time is billed at "
19965 "the largest firms at more than $400 per hour. How much time should such a "
19966 "lawyer spend reading cases carefully, or researching obscure strands of "
19967 "authority? The answer is the increasing reality: very little. The law "
19968 "depended upon the careful articulation and development of doctrine, but the "
19969 "careful articulation and development of legal doctrine depends upon careful "
19970 "work. Yet that careful work costs too much, except in the most high-profile "
19971 "and costly cases."
19974 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19975 #: freeculture.xml:14740
19977 "The costliness and clumsiness and randomness of this system mock our "
19978 "tradition. And lawyers, as well as academics, should consider it their duty "
19979 "to change the way the law works—or better, to change the law so that "
19980 "it works. It is wrong that the system works well only for the top 1 percent "
19981 "of the clients. It could be made radically more efficient, and inexpensive, "
19982 "and hence radically more just."
19985 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19986 #: freeculture.xml:14748
19988 "But until that reform is complete, we as a society should keep the law away "
19989 "from areas that we know it will only harm. And that is precisely what the "
19990 "law will too often do if too much of our culture is left to its review."
19993 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
19994 #: freeculture.xml:14755
19996 "Think about the amazing things your kid could do or make with digital "
19997 "technology—the film, the music, the Web page, the blog. Or think about "
19998 "the amazing things your community could facilitate with digital "
19999 "technology—a wiki, a barn raising, activism to change something. "
20000 "Think about all those creative things, and then imagine cold molasses poured "
20001 "onto the machines. This is what any regime that requires permission "
20002 "produces. Again, this is the reality of Brezhnev's Russia."
20006 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
20007 #: freeculture.xml:14764
20009 "The law should regulate in certain areas of culture—but it should "
20010 "regulate culture only where that regulation does good. Yet lawyers rarely "
20011 "test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic "
20012 "question: <quote>Will it do good?</quote> When challenged about the "
20013 "expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, <quote>Why not?</quote>"
20016 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><section><section><para>
20017 #: freeculture.xml:14773
20019 "We should ask, <quote>Why?</quote> Show me why your regulation of culture is "
20020 "needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your "
20024 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
20025 #: freeculture.xml:14782
20029 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20030 #: freeculture.xml:14784
20032 "Throughout this text, there are references to links on the World Wide "
20033 "Web. As anyone who has tried to use the Web knows, these links can be highly "
20034 "unstable. I have tried to remedy the instability by redirecting readers to "
20035 "the original source through the Web site associated with this book. For each "
20036 "link below, you can go to http://free-culture.cc/notes and locate the "
20037 "original source by clicking on the number after the # sign. If the original "
20038 "link remains alive, you will be redirected to that link. If the original "
20039 "link has disappeared, you will be redirected to an appropriate reference for "
20043 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><title>
20044 #: freeculture.xml:14803
20045 msgid "ACKNOWLEDGMENTS"
20048 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20049 #: freeculture.xml:14805
20051 "This book is the product of a long and as yet unsuccessful struggle that "
20052 "began when I read of Eric Eldred's war to keep books free. Eldred's work "
20053 "helped launch a movement, the free culture movement, and it is to him that "
20054 "this book is dedicated."
20057 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20058 #: freeculture.xml:14812
20060 "I received guidance in various places from friends and academics, including "
20061 "Glenn Brown, Peter DiCola, Jennifer Mnookin, Richard Posner, Mark Rose, and "
20062 "Kathleen Sullivan. And I received correction and guidance from many amazing "
20063 "students at Stanford Law School and Stanford University. They included "
20064 "Andrew B. Coan, John Eden, James P. Fellers, Christopher Guzelian, Erica "
20065 "Goldberg, Robert Hallman, Andrew Harris, Matthew Kahn, Brian Link, Ohad "
20066 "Mayblum, Alina Ng, and Erica Platt. I am particularly grateful to Catherine "
20067 "Crump and Harry Surden, who helped direct their research, and to Laura "
20068 "Lynch, who brilliantly managed the army that they assembled, and provided "
20069 "her own critical eye on much of this."
20073 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20074 #: freeculture.xml:14825
20076 "Yuko Noguchi helped me to understand the laws of Japan as well as its "
20077 "culture. I am thankful to her, and to the many in Japan who helped me "
20078 "prepare this book: Joi Ito, Takayuki Matsutani, Naoto Misaki, Michihiro "
20079 "Sasaki, Hiromichi Tanaka, Hiroo Yamagata, and Yoshihiro Yonezawa. I am "
20080 "thankful as well as to Professor Nobuhiro Nakayama, and the Tokyo University "
20081 "Business Law Center, for giving me the chance to spend time in Japan, and to "
20082 "Tadashi Shiraishi and Kiyokazu Yamagami for their generous help while I was "
20086 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20087 #: freeculture.xml:14836
20089 "These are the traditional sorts of help that academics regularly draw "
20090 "upon. But in addition to them, the Internet has made it possible to receive "
20091 "advice and correction from many whom I have never even met. Among those who "
20092 "have responded with extremely helpful advice to requests on my blog about "
20093 "the book are Dr. Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, David Gerstein, and Peter DiMauro, as "
20094 "well as a long list of those who had specific ideas about ways to develop my "
20095 "argument. They included Richard Bondi, Steven Cherry, David Coe, Nik "
20096 "Cubrilovic, Bob Devine, Charles Eicher, Thomas Guida, Elihu M. Gerson, "
20097 "Jeremy Hunsinger, Vaughn Iverson, John Karabaic, Jeff Keltner, James "
20098 "Lindenschmidt, K. L. Mann, Mark Manning, Nora McCauley, Jeffrey McHugh, Evan "
20099 "McMullen, Fred Norton, John Pormann, Pedro A. D. Rezende, Shabbir Safdar, "
20100 "Saul Schleimer, Clay Shirky, Adam Shostack, Kragen Sitaker, Chris Smith, "
20101 "Bruce Steinberg, Andrzej Jan Taramina, Sean Walsh, Matt Wasserman, Miljenko "
20102 "Williams, <quote>Wink,</quote> Roger Wood, <quote>Ximmbo da Jazz,</quote> "
20103 "and Richard Yanco. (I apologize if I have missed anyone; with computers come "
20104 "glitches, and a crash of my e-mail system meant I lost a bunch of great "
20108 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20109 #: freeculture.xml:14856
20111 "Richard Stallman and Michael Carroll each read the whole book in draft, and "
20112 "each provided extremely helpful correction and advice. Michael helped me to "
20113 "see more clearly the significance of the regulation of derivitive works. And "
20114 "Richard corrected an embarrassingly large number of errors. While my work is "
20115 "in part inspired by Stallman's, he does not agree with me in important "
20116 "places throughout this book."
20119 #. type: Content of: <book><chapter><para>
20120 #: freeculture.xml:14865
20122 "Finally, and forever, I am thankful to Bettina, who has always insisted that "
20123 "there would be unending happiness away from these battles, and who has "
20124 "always been right. This slow learner is, as ever, grateful for her perpetual "
20125 "patience and love."