Dispatches from the SOPAcolypse

By , November 02, 2011.

Harold Camping has famously predicted the end of the world three times.

His first prediction — September 6, 1994 — came and went with little fanfare. His second attempt at setting a date for the apocalypse was far more successful. The Internet was abuzz as May 21, 2011 approached. But again, the world did not end.

Undeterred, Camping checked his math and announced a new date. October 21, 2011, would mark the final day of everything we know, for real this time. Wrong once again, the former leader of the California-based Family Radio has apparently retired from his role as apocalyptic soothsayer.

Apocalypse Now?

I mention Camping because a similar phenomenon occurs in the copyright realm. It seems that whenever new legislation is introduced, there are those who are ready to predict that if it passes, it will surely result in the demise of the Internet, or innovation, or some other thing we hold dear.

You can see this in action by taking a look at some of the headlines in response to the US House’s introduction of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA):

This are just a sampling of the dire predictions about the epic catastrophes SOPA would bring if passed — the SOPAcolpyse, if you will.

But, like Camping, copyright’s skeptics have made these predictions before.

Sometimes they are done with striking consistency. Sci-fi author Cory Doctorow says SOPA “might be the worst-ever copyright proposal in US legislative history.” Not one to make use of hyperbole sparingly, Doctorow also declared a 2005 French proposal the “worst copyright law in Europe”; in 2007, it was an EU proposal that would surely be the “worst copyright law in the world!”; little more than seven months later, he stated that a Canadian legislative proposal “promises to be the worst copyright law in the developed world.”

The same goes for copyright activist Lawrence Lessig, a big proponent of the “break the internet” line over the years. Talking in 2003 about his idea for a compulsory license that would cover P2P activity, he said, “We have to buy [music and movie companies] off, so they don’t break the Internet in the interim.” That same year on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, it was DRM: “The response that the music industry has insisted on would be technologies that would essentially break the Internet.” Fast-forward to 2008, and Lessig, speaking at an event hosted by Harvard’s Berkman Center, Google, and the Family Online Safety Institute, again cautions against letting copyright law “break the Internet.”

The Sky is Falling

The doomsday scenarios began on day one. In February 1993, the Clinton administration put together the Information Infrastructure Task Force to study the advancement and development of information technologies, including the burgeoning Internet and infant web. Part of their mandate was examining the intersection of copyright law, digital technologies, and networked communications and exploring what changes were necessary.

The Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights released its report, Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure (the “White Paper”), in September of 1995, sparking the first wave of the “parade of horribles” that would accompany copyright reform from then on out.

Copyright scholar Pamela Samuelson penned an article in Wired magazine that gave a laundry-list of reasons to oppose legislation proposed after the White Paper was released: “your online service provider will be forced to snoop through your files”, it would “transform the emerging information superhighway into a publisher-dominated toll road”, it would “eliminate fair-use rights”, “it can be construed as outlawing many activities widely believed to be lawful.”

Others concurred. “The bill in Congress now, critics say, goes much too far … the Internet’s potential as a source of public education and free expression could be crippled … [it] could instead turn out to be the executioner of the Internet’s real promise.”

The initial legislation evolved to become the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which became law in 1998. Some still weren’t convinced the days of a free Internet weren’t numbered. A writer in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal predicted shortly after the DMCA became law that:

The post-DMCA Internet will feature even more of those damnable “404 – file not found” messages than it currently does. As media companies expand their demand-letter operations from commercial “piracy” to include negative commentary, transformative uses, and what they deem to be a little bit too much sampling or quotation, the ranks of the independent Internet publishers will be radically depopulated.

Ten years later, many of those same critics couldn’t praise the DMCA enough. Wired magazine calls it “the law that saved the web.” “Blogs, search engines, e-commerce sites, video and social-networking portals are thriving today thanks in large part to the notice-and-takedown regime ushered in by the much-maligned copyright overhaul.”

A Decade of Falling Sky

Since the DMCA, most copyright legislation has elicited similar responses.

The No Electronic Theft (NET) Act was passed in 1997, expanding the definition of “financial gain” in criminal copyright infringement and increasing criminal penalties. Among the opponents of the bill was the Association for Computing, which raised concerns that it would restrict dissemination of science, criminalize the transfer of information protected by fair use, and chill free speech in research institutions. Others warned it would greatly expand the scope of criminal infringement; “aggressive prosecutors would abuse their discretion to win convictions” or “bring weak felony cases to get quick misdemeanor plea bargains.” 1Eric Goldman, A Road to No Warez: The No Electronic Theft Act and Criminal Copyright Infringement, 82 Oregon Law Review 369 (2003).

None of these concerns materialized. As Eric Goldman concludes after examining the five years following the Act, “the prosecutions to date appear generally consistent with Congress’ objectives for the Act.” None of the convictions could be fairly characterized as “de minimis“, none of the defendants could have raised a legitimate fair use defense, and universities and educators remained untouched by efforts under the Act. 2Id. 392-96.

The Artists’ Rights and Theft Prevention (ART) Act of 2005 added provisions to criminal copyright law that expressly targeted “camming” and distribution of pre-release commercial works. Critics called it draconian, foresaw an uptick in prison sentences, and decried a lack of fair use in the Act. The provisions have instead been used judiciously; prisons have not been filled with cammers and leakers.

2008 brought the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO-IP) Act, a broad bill that amended civil and criminal provisions of the Copyright Act and created the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator position, currently held by Victoria Espinel.

The response? Michael Seman of NetSherpa wrote, “The passing of the PRO-IP act is the latest in a string of actions taken by the U.S. Government that result in further constricting the free exchange of ideas,” one that “means we’re close to losing the flow of culture that the Internet so greatly facilitates.” Mike Masnick said, “All it will actually serve to do is to limit more creative forms of expression and much more innovative business models from being allowed to thrive.” And noted copyright scholar William Patry remarked, “The dangers in the new Zero Tolerance to copyright go far beyond the individuals swept within its net, although that is bad enough: the Zero Tolerance approach threatens respect for law itself.”

Grokster pt. 2

Legislative proposals aren’t the only things that brings out the freedom and innovation pessimists.

The Supreme Court issued its decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios v. Grokster in 2005, holding that “one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright” may be liable for the resulting infringing acts by its users. In its amicus brief to the Grokster court, the National Venture Capital Association warned that a rule holding Grokster liable would “have a chilling effect on innovation.”

However, since Grokster:

[V]enture capital in the media and entertainment sectors grew faster than the rest of the VC market in four out of the six years. By comparison, in the five years before the Grokster decision, growth was lower in four of them. From 2000 to 2004, media and entertainment venture capital accounted for about 4.6 percent of total VC dollars invested. From 2006 through 2010, media and entertainment VC dollars grew to 7.1 percent of total VC dollars. 3Greg Sandoval, VCs to Congress: Antipiracy will ‘chill’ tech investment, CNet, June 24, 2011.

This year alone, in a down economy, music-based startups have received nearly half a billion dollars in funding. And some of these startups are far more exciting than the mere hoarding of music files that Grokster and other P2P services offered.

Little difference that makes though. In a letter to Congress on the proposed PROTECT IP Act, a group of venture capitalists offer the same warning: the bill would “throttle innovation” and “chill investment.”

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

Despite this history, critics of the Stop Online Piracy Act promise that the bill spells the end of innovation, culture, freedom, and the very Internet itself, for real this time.

It won’t.

In the long term, the public benefits the most when both creators and innovators succeed. And our laws should continue to adapt to make sure that happens.

References

References
↑1 Eric Goldman, A Road to No Warez: The No Electronic Theft Act and Criminal Copyright Infringement, 82 Oregon Law Review 369 (2003).
↑2 Id. 392-96.
↑3 Greg Sandoval, VCs to Congress: Antipiracy will ‘chill’ tech investment, CNet, June 24, 2011.

Drawing Distinctions

By , November 11, 2010.

Earlier this month, I wrote about the Copyright Principles Project, an independent initiative that presented twenty-five recommendations for reforming copyright law for the digital age. One of the reasons I felt it was worth mentioning was because, unlike many other reform efforts, the Copyright Principles Project included participants from a wide variety of perspectives: academics, content industry representatives, and private practitioners.

One of the contributers to the Project was Jeremy Williams, Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel of Warner Bros. Entertainment. This past April, Williams joined Pamela Samuelson — the Project’s coordinator — and several other Project contributors for a two-day conference marking the 300th anniversary of the Statute of Anne, the first modern copyright law. Hosted by the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, the Copyright @ 300 symposium used the anniversary as an opportunity to look back at “the law’s influence on the history and evolution of the Anglo-American copyright tradition” and look forward to copyright law’s challenges in the future.

Williams spoke to attendees at a seminar titled “Looking Forward: What Challenges Does Copyright Face in the Twenty-First Century.” The Berkeley Center has audio from the event available online. I recommend giving it a listen; Williams talks about the importance of copyright attitudes for the future and touches on a number of themes I’ve discussed here from a perspective that is seldom seen in online discussions and academic literature.

Copyright attitudes

Williams joshingly introduces himself as a “defender of those poor, down-trodden Fortune 500 companies.” The health of copyright in the future, he states, depends entirely on the attitudes of “Digital Natives.” It will not be long before the generation that never knew a world where everything is connected will be “lawmakers, norm-makers, and consumers.” Williams goes on to ask, “How do we promote respect for good copyright attitudes” when millions are simultaneously authors, distributors, and infringers.

This past Monday, I pointed out a recent paper that sheds some light on what these “Digital Natives” currently know and think about copyright law. Williams’s talk reflects a recognition of what the authors of that paper have found to be true. With those current attitudes in mind, he lays out what he considers should be the two main goals of copyright policy as it looks ahead:

  1. Empower individuals as creators. Policymakers and stakeholders should try to steer clear of talk about the “wrongness” of noncommercial copying. Extending this goal to small producers, content creators should strive to make licensing of their content for creative uses cheap and easy, and give wide berth for fair use.
  2. Move enforcement away from individuals and toward digital intermediaries.

Creative vs. Consumptive Uses

Next, Williams discussed the importance of distinguishing between creative and consumptive uses, a distinction I have previously made on this site. I wrote that the distinction is important to make because you’re dealing with an entirely different set of questions when you talk about fair use, remixes, and mashups then when you talk about filesharing. As it turns out, this is exactly the approach that Williams suggests is important for the future of copyright.

He says that promoting healthy copyright discussion requires a different approach for both types of uses: increased tolerance toward creative uses and increased focus on widespread, uncompensated dissemination of consumptive uses and the harm they cause.

From his own experience at Warner Bros., Williams identifies the primary creative uses that major creative companies deal with most often: fan uses and, as he puts it, ad hoc uses, like mash-ups. He suggests that companies like his should tolerate and support noncommercial uses — even tolerate some commercial uses. This is the approach he has taken, giving the okay to fan sites even when they use incidental advertising to support the site but drawing the line at fan merchandising. For third-party user-generated content sites like YouTube, he advocates “smart” technological filters that can identify uses of copyrighted works but allow creative uses like mash-ups.

Most importantly, Williams reiterates that these kinds of discussions should not revolve around copyright law. Rather, the focus should be on fostering mutually respectful behavior between creators and users.

Individual vs. Industrial Responsibility

The rest of Williams’s talk seemed to continue a meta-theme of drawing distinctions to further the health of copyright in the future. The next distinction he discussed was between individual responsibility for upholding copyright protection and “industrial” responsibility.

Basically, Williams says we should move away from placing responsibility on individuals as much as possible. People should be able to enjoy copyrighted works without thinking about copyright law.

The digital intermediaries — user-generated content and social networking sites — should instead be induced to help reduce the harm of widespread, uncompensated dissemination of copyrighted works, and copyright owners should be allowed to share in the value their works provide to these sites. Interestingly, Williams believes we should reduce the present focus on secondary liability doctrines. These doctrines suffer two disadvantages: because they require a showing of direct infringement, there is still a focus on individual behavior, and the factors involved in determining secondary liability — knowledge, inducement, etc. — are difficult to apply, leading to an uncertain and muddy legal landscape.

Williams’s recommendation? “Be direct about it.” Those who can protect copyright, should protect it. Those who can are likely to be the previously-mentioned social networking and user-generated content sites. Williams thinks the best way to implement this is through voluntary agreements and reasonable technological measures, with the law operating in the background as a way of inducing these sites to help solve problems in ways that are not commercially harmful to them.

Protest vs. Obliviousness

While you can find those people who embrace piracy as a “cause”, who believe they are making a “statement” or protesting against somebody or something when they share files without permission, the majority of people, especially digital natives, download simply because they can. Williams relates a conversation he had with his daughter. He asked her what her friends “think” when they choose to download music off p2p or torrent sites; she answered, “they don’t think.”

Unauthorized files are simply “there,” and unless you know otherwise, it is not unreasonable for someone to assume that if you find something online, you can download it. The future of copyright depends on addressing this obliviousness and helping the next generation understand the value copyright gives to creators.

Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

Williams wraps up his remarks by pointing out the one distinction that shouldn’t be made. Both sides in the copyright debates need to move past an “us vs. them” mentality, a “good guy-bad guy” way of thinking. Copyright is good for society and culture. Most people recognize the value of creativity and of artists. The emphasis should move away from the rules of copyright — ie, the notion that copyright exists solely to punish infringers — and toward the role of copyright.

Copyright Principles Project: Increasing the US Copyright Office’s Role

By , November 01, 2010.

On September 28, a group of leading copyright academics and practitioners released the Copyright Principles Project: Directions for Reform (full report [pdf] available here). According to the press release, the Project “attempts to ignite an informed debate about how to best balance the interests of copyright owners and users” by examining “several ways to improve and update the law in an era of rapid technological change.”

The project is well worth a read. Participants in the project come from a variety of perspectives, including academics like project leader Pamela Samuelson, Jessica Litman, Michael Carroll, and Christopher Sprigman; copyright practitioners like Jon A. Baumgarten of Proskauer Rose LLP and Kate Spelman of Cobalt LLC; and corporate attorneys like Troy Dow of Walt Disney, Terry Ilardi of IBM, Jule Sigall of Microsoft, and Jeremy Williams of Warner Bros. Entertainment. Working together, they crafted twenty-five specific proposals that address “how current copyright law could be improved and how the law’s current problems could be mitigated.” 1Copyright Principles Project, pg. 2.

The Copyright Principles Project came about in part from Samuelson’s idea of creating a “model copyright law” — akin to projects like the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code — which could provide “an inchoate vision of a ‘good’ copyright law”; “provide a platform from which to launch specific copyright reforms”; and “prove useful as a resource to courts and commentators as they try to interpret ambiguous provisions of the existing statutes” and apply the statute to novel and unforeseen circumstances. 2Pamela Samuelson, Preliminary Thoughts on Copyright Reform Project, 3 Utah L. Rev. 551 (2007). Samuelson discusses how the model copyright law project served as a genesis for the Copyright Principles Project during her remarks at Berkeley Law’s “Copyright @ 300” conference, audio available under Looking Forward: What Challenges Does Copyright Face in the Twenty-First Century.

Reaction to the report from the Copyright Principles Project has been generally positive. I haven’t been able to find too much analysis of the individual recommendations online, though there has been some. Copyright Chronicle’s Thomas Gulick, for example, points to recommendations that seem to “create imbalance for the sake of ease.”

Today, I want to look at those recommendations in the Project that call for an increased role for the US Copyright Office within copyright law. This topic is of special interest to me. In Copyright Reform Step Zero, I make the case for delegating substantive rulemaking authority to the Copyright Office as an important first step to maintaining an up-to-date and effective copyright law. Several of the recommendations in the Copyright Principles Project take the same approach while also envisioning adding adjudicatory functions to the Office.

Recommendation #3: The Copyright Office should develop additional policy expertise and research capability, particularly in the area of economics and technology.

The Copyright Principles Project specifically calls for two new positions to be created within the US Copyright Office: Chief Economist and Chief Technologist. These positions would help ensure that those areas of expertise which are most important for developing copyright policy in today’s world can be led by dedicated individuals. The Copyright Office already plays an important role preparing studies of specific copyright issues, advising Congress and other federal agencies on policy matters, and interacting with foreign and international organizations; so even if the Office didn’t take on a greater role in actual policymaking, it could still benefit by beefing up its expertise in these areas.

Recommendation #4: The Copyright Office should give serious consideration to developing some mechanism(s) through which users could receive guidance on “fair use.”

One of the mechanisms suggested by the Copyright Principles Project is the idea of a fair use “opinion letter,” likely inspired by an existing proposal from Project contributor Michael Carroll. In Fixing Fair Use, Carroll envisions as body within the Copyright Office that would hear from companies or individuals contemplating the use of a copyrighted work. The body would analyze if the contemplated use would legally be a fair use and issue an advisory letter with its opinion, similar to advisory letters that the IRS and SEC currently issue.

Recommendation #5: A small claims procedure should be available for resolving small-scale copyright disputes.

Interestingly, after orphan works, this recommendation may have the best chance for being adopted out of all the Copyright Principles Project’s recommendations. Although orphan works legislation failed to pass in 2006 and 2008 (and wasn’t even introduced in 2010), it is still considered by many to eventually become law. Both orphan works bills contained a provision commissioning the US Copyright Office to study the idea of a “small claims court” for copyright disputes which would otherwise stay out of courts because of legal costs. 3HR 5439 — Orphan Works Act of 2006, Sec. 4; HR 5889 — Orphan Works Act of 2008, Sec. 6.

Recommendation #23: Contributions to computer programs should be considered as a new category of specially commissioned work eligible for treatment as works made for hire.

The Copyright Principles Project discussion of this recommendation included the following: “We considered, for instance, whether the U.S. Copyright Office should be given rule-making authority to add computer software contributions or other types of works to the specially commissioned work for hire rule. We did not reach consensus on this approach.” This statement describes an example of how substantive rulemaking authority would be exercised by the US Copyright Office as I contemplate it in my paper. Congress incorporates a doctrine like “work for hire” into the Copyright Act. It lays out the broad strokes of the purpose and principles behind the doctrine. But it then delegates the nuts and bolts to the Copyright Office. In this example, the Copyright Office would have the authority to add additional categories to types of works eligible for treatment as works made for hire — within the limits of the statute and guided by the principles expressed by Congress.

References

References
↑1 Copyright Principles Project, pg. 2.
↑2 Pamela Samuelson, Preliminary Thoughts on Copyright Reform Project, 3 Utah L. Rev. 551 (2007). Samuelson discusses how the model copyright law project served as a genesis for the Copyright Principles Project during her remarks at Berkeley Law’s “Copyright @ 300” conference, audio available under Looking Forward: What Challenges Does Copyright Face in the Twenty-First Century.
↑3 HR 5439 — Orphan Works Act of 2006, Sec. 4; HR 5889 — Orphan Works Act of 2008, Sec. 6.