EFF Launches Copyright Curriculum To Counter RIAA Propaganda Being Handed Out To Schools

from the good-news dept

It's been quite troubling that for years various schools have simply accepted propaganda and totally inaccurate "teaching materials" about copyright and used them to teach students. These programs have been created by both the RIAA and the MPAA, at times. More recently, a lobbying organization backed by both of those organizations, the Copyright Alliance (which has a long history of making up the most fantastic myths about copyright) has been pushing a copyright curriculum on schools. Tragically, unsuspecting schools have been using the pure propaganda put out by the Copyright Alliance as if it were some sort of impartial and accurate educational material on copyright. It's not. Not even close. Last year, one of the world's foremost experts in copyright, William Patry, took the Copyright Alliance's founder to task for having "chutzpah in abundance" in basically making up what copyright and fair use is about, and presenting himself as some sort of expert on the subject.

Unfortunately, schools that are using these materials often don't realize that they're simply accepting corporate propaganda, assuming that a front group like The Copyright Alliance is some sort of impartial player in the space, even though its curriculum is laughably bad, positioning any kind of copying as a high risk activity that should be avoided. Luckily, the EFF has finally launched a much more accurate and reasonable curriculum that was actually created by those who know the subject matter, rather than corporate execs and lobbyists. The EFF's curriculum is available at Teaching Copyright and is under a Creative Commons license. Unlike many of the propaganda copyright curricula, Teaching Copyright focuses on the broader picture, recognizing the fact that copyright is not for protecting creators, but is a deal between creators and the public to encourage creation within certain important limitations. It covers important concepts such as the public domain and fair use that are either ignored or downplayed in most of the curricula put out by the industry. This is a welcome addition to materials for schools to use to educate students on copyright.

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Copyright Alliance Begs Supreme Court To Make Remote DVRs Illegal

from the we-prefer-our-screwed-up-copyright-laws dept

You may recall that the Copyright Alliance is a group that is basically the personal vehicle of Patrick Ross, a copyright maximalist, who has been known to twist copyright law to ridiculous extremes on a regular basis. He's the guy who has claimed that fair use harms innovation, that government-backed monopolies in copyright represent a free market and any attempt to actually free up the market and remove government backed monopolies would be unnecessary regulation that would result in market failure. Ross also sent all of the presidential candidates one of the most ridiculous surveys ever on their views on copyright, that was written in an extremely leading "and when did you stop beating your wife" style.

With such extreme and twisted views, it's no surprise that Ross has lined up a bunch of big entertainment companies to back him as he goes around trying to convince politicians that day is night and up is down when it comes to copyright -- but now he's moved on to trying to convince the Supreme Court as well. As you may recall, back in August there was an extremely important Appeals Court ruling that noted that Cablevision's remote DVR setup did not infringe on copyrights. The ruling pointed out the rather obvious troubles that would occur if we interpreted copyright laws the way copyright holders wanted to. It's clear that DVRs, like TiVo, are perfectly legal in the home. Time shifting shows has been found, quite clearly, to be legal. Cablevision's remote DVR is effectively the same exact thing. The only difference is that the DVR is stored at Cablevision data center, rather than at someone's home. The ruling, quite clearly, demonstrated how twisted copyright law has become, as it is patched up each time some new technology comes along.

The importance of this ruling cannot be understated, however, as it will enable many important online services that will be tremendously useful. Needless to say, copyright maximalists in the entertainment industry don't like that. They prefer the way things used to be, and want the law to force the market never to change. So, before the Supreme Court has even decided whether or not to hear the appeal on the case, Ross's Copyright Alliance has already begged the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling -- the first time the Alliance has become involved in any lawsuit. The amicus brief itself, basically uses Ross's typical logic: copyright is good, therefore, making companies pay multiple times for different types of licenses to use content in more ways must be even better!

Hopefully, the court recognizes the logical fallacies in the filing. Preventing this service will not help anyone. The entertainment industry that Ross claims to represent thinks that this will get companies like Cablevision to pay them yet again for content it already licensed. But, the reality is that they'll just move on. People will instead keep buying TiVos or home DVRs, and the potential for truly new and unique services that make the entertainment company's content even more valuable will be greatly diminished. Ross and the content companies falsely believe that the old model is the best, and that content should be paid for again and again, every time it's accessed. Basic economics tells you that this is wrong, and that protectionist policies -- such as what Ross champions -- only shrinks markets and hurts just about everyone.

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Presidential Candidates Asked If They've Stopped Beating Their Wives With Weak Copyright Laws

from the big-content-propaganda dept

Patrick Ross apparently has no shame. For years, at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, he presented ridiculous statement after ridiculous statement about intellectual property. There was the one about how fair use harmed innovation. Then there's my personal favorite, where he argued that the DMCA shouldn't be changed because markets shouldn't be regulated -- ignoring the key point that the DMCA, itself, was a regulation that was tremendously distorting the market. After attacking me for suggesting that his viewpoints were influenced by the fact that he was paid to promote the positions of the entertainment industry (when I hadn't even suggested that), Ross went on to make it official that he was shilling for the entertainment industry, by creating a super-lobbying group that represented all the different big copyright groups under one umbrella: The Copyright Alliance, made up of the MPAA, the RIAA, the BSA, the ESA and others.

Ross' latest stunt is to demand that all presidential candidates answer his survey of stunningly loaded questions about copyright. The questions are all of the "and have you stopped beating your wife?" variety -- even causing the reporters attending Ross's press conference to make fun of the questions as being ridiculously leading. Of course, the questions are publically available (pdf) for anyone to view. Let's go through them one by one in order to help the presidential candidates step around the incredibly loaded nature of the questions to do a better job with them. Hopefully, Ross won't accuse us of a copyright violation in reposting the questions.

• How would you promote the progress of science and creativity, as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, by upholding and strengthening copyright law and preventing its diminishment?
  
  Well, first, it might help to point out that the U.S. publishing industry was initially built on extremely loose copyrights, so the very idea that strengthening copyright law is necessary to promote progress of science and creativity is provably false. Even the biggest defender of copyrights these days (and a backer of Ross' organization), Disney, owes much of its early success to being able to use the characters others created. That, alone, should be argument enough for a stronger public domain, rather than stronger copyright. On top of that, plenty of research has shown that by strengthening copyright, you will often diminish how much content is created. More to the point, with the rise of modern communications tools, and a world where content is made by everyone, rather than just a small group of professionals, the entire concept of copyright needs to be revisited from scratch to figure out what really is necessary.
  
  
• How do you feel the rights that have served our economy and spurred creativity in the physical world should apply in the digital world?
  
  The rights that have served our economy and spurred creativity are quite important. The First Amendment, for example, is a key right, preventing the government from passing laws that take away freedom of speech. It's that freedom that is important and clearly should be (and is) extended into the digital world. In fact, we should reinforce that by removing dangerous and creativity harming restrictions on speech, found in laws like the DMCA that hold back perfectly legitimate and reasonable uses of content, often hindering creativity.
  
  
• How would you protect the incentive to create by committing sufficient resources to support effective civil and criminal enforcement of copyright laws domestically and internationally?
  
  There's a false assumption there, that the incentive to create is copyright laws. If you look at the incentives to create historically, you'll see that copyright has rarely had much to do with it at all. Instead, plenty of other factors, often coming from the marketplace had much stronger incentives. In fact, copyright has all too often held back incentives to create. As you well know, plenty of people created plenty of content prior to copyright existing. And, famously, once copyright was put in place, it often gave those who had created content earlier less incentive to create, as they could just sit back and rely on royalties from earlier content. More importantly, modern communications systems have shown that the incentive to create often has little to do with monetary rewards. Much of the internet is filled with user-generated content that was created not because of copyright, but for many other reasons. In fact, we're seeing a tremendous explosion in content creation these days -- often in spite of copyright rather than because of it. So, the best way to protect the incentive to create is to continue to get restrictions on creation out of the way, remove barriers to creation, expand the public domain, broaden the definition of fair use and get rid of pointless restriction such as those found in the DMCA.
  
  
• How would you ensure inclusion of copyright protections in bilateral, regional and multilateral trade agreements to protect creators and foster global development?
  
  Aha! A trick question! Why would we want to include monopoly protections in a free trade agreement? Monopoly rights deserve no place in any free trade agreement -- and, in fact, are against the very idea of free trade.
  
  
• How would you protect the rights of creators to express themselves freely under the principles established in the First Amendment?
  
  An excellent and important question. I would do so by getting rid of much of the DMCA, which unfairly puts excessive restrictions on the rights of creators to express themselves freely. I'd also look towards lowering the copyright burden on creators, expanding the public domain, rolling back unlimited copyright extensions and increasing the power of fair use -- all with an eye towards protecting the rights of the majority of content creators today not to be bullied by a bunch of companies with huge lobbying budgets and increasingly obsolete business models.

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Copyright Alliance Pretending That Gov't Backed Monopolies Are The Free Market Again

from the up-is-down,-black-is-white dept

A few months back, the big entertainment companies formed yet another copyright lobbying group -- as if they didn't already have enough -- to push for more restrictive copyright policies that would limit the rights of consumers. This was the group that just last week was trying to spread the myth that fair use was not a right and copyright holders should be able to lie about what rights copyright grants them. However, the head of the group, Patrick Ross, really seems to get into trouble when he tries to trot out free market concepts to support his positions. You may recall back in January his position that getting rid of the DMCA would go against the free market because it would represent government intervention. He seemed to totally ignore the fact that it was the DMCA that was gov't intervention in the first place. Apparently, Ross hasn't given up on this "up is down, day is night" type of debate style, as copyright expert William Patry has taken Patrick Ross to task for claiming that new laws supporting consumer rights when it comes to copyrighted content were "government intervention" against the free market. As Patry points out all copyright is government intervention -- and supporting stronger copyrights is to be calling for greater gov't intervention. To then claim that giving more power back to the consumers on copyright is gov't intervention, is being intellectually dishonest. You can support copyright by claiming that the market breaks down and there's a market failure that necessitates such gov't intervention (and, in fact, many people do). But to claim that stronger copyrights means a stronger free market is an outright falsehood. Ross seems to be under the false impression that the "natural" position of the market is to have the strongest possible copyrights, and therefore, any weakening of that is gov't intervention. That creates a complete blindspot to the fact that all copyright is government intervention, and giving rights back to consumers is less government intervention.

Ross's response to Patry in the comments continues this rather twisted logic, by claiming that free markets are about property rights, and therefore, supporting stronger copyright is about supporting stronger property rights -- and therefore, it is a free market position. However, Ross's understanding of the free market is confused here. He's right that property rights are important -- but only as a means of more efficiently handling the allocation of scarce resources. That's the entire purpose of property rights in the free market. The logic breaks down, rather completely, when you talk about infinite, rather than scarce, goods. There is no need for more efficient allocation of infinite goods, because they're infinitely available, and therefore allocation is automatically efficient. Again, it's perfectly reasonable (though I would likely disagree with some of the assumptions) to argue that copyright is a necessary gov't intervention due to market failures from a true free market (which appears to be Patry's position). However, to argue that stronger copyright monopolies from the gov't is the opposite of gov't intervention isn't a supportable position.

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