Details On The FTC's DRM Workshop

from the don't-miss-it dept

At the beginning of January we noted -- with some amount of surprise -- that it appeared that the FTC was preparing a workshop on DRM. When I was in Washington, DC recently, I had the chance to meet some of the folks putting that workshop together, and now they've sent over a more detailed list of topics up for discussion at the session, and it does seem like a pretty good list -- covering pretty much the entire range of questions concerning DRM, specifically from a consumer perspective. It's definitely an encouraging sign that folks at the FTC are recognizing that DRM can be used to do harm, rather than just (as the industry would have you believe) to "open up new business models."

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Is The FTC Interested In Protecting Consumers From Bad DRM?

from the that-would-be-interesting... dept

We're so used to hearing the government fall for the industry propaganda about the need for DRM that it's almost... shocking, to hear that the FTC is even willing to consider the question of whether or not it should be involved in protecting consumers from DRM. However, as Game Politics is noting, that question appears to be on the agenda of an FTC town hall meeting about DRM in Seattle in March. Of course, it sounds as though that question is just a preliminary one, as the full agenda has yet to be set. That means, it could have just been put there by a random staffer charged with filling out a few bullet points about what to talk about concerning DRM. Still, it's at least interesting to see a hint of recognition from the government that DRM has its downsides.

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Entertainment Industry Again Says Everyone Else Must Protect Its Business Model

from the please,-please-help-us dept

The Progress & Freedom Foundation is hosting its annual tech policy conference in Aspen, and given that it's PFF we're talking about, it's chock full of entertainment industry folks without any input from anyone who questions the basic premise that the entertainment industry puts forth: that content creators need to charge for each individual copy of their works. Thus, it should come as no surprise that a panel of entertainment industry lobbyists fell into the usual routine of insisting that everyone else -- mainly ISPs -- be responsible for protecting the entertainment industry's business model.

The reasoning seems to be the same as always: the entertainment industry itself has found it too difficult to come up with a business model (even as those who have escaped the traditional bounds of the industry seem to be figuring it out on their own), and thus others simply must be responsible for propping up the business model. If you put them all on a panel together, of course, they're going to whine and complain that others have to fix their business model for them -- but that doesn't mean it's true. There are plenty of business models that they could embrace on their own, requiring no assistance from others. That they chose not to is their own mistake -- not the fault of companies in a totally separate industry.

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Are People In China Happy With The Great Firewall?

from the some-of-them-appear-to-be dept

We've heard this argument plenty of times in the past, but a recent study suggests that 85% of people surveyed in China are perfectly fine with the Great Firewall, saying that they believe the government has a responsibility to "protect" them from dangerous content. Of course, this is always how the government has positioned the filter: not as "blocking" content it doesn't like, but as protecting citizens from "dangerous" content. Before people act surprised about this, take a step back and recognize that if you did the same study in the US, asking if the government should be protecting children from "bad stuff" online, many Americans would naturally say yes. That doesn't necessarily mean that either is okay -- but does suggest how different the answers are based on how the question is positioned.

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Copyright Out Of Control: Does Saying '2012 Olympic Games' Violate All Sorts Of Copyright Laws?

from the have-fun-with-it dept

It's been nearly two years since we wrote about the effort by the folks who run the Olympics to have British law changed to provide special copyright protection for the word "Olympics" and even "2012" (as that's when the Olympics will be held in London). This was hardly the first (nor last) time that the Olympics had gone overboard in trying to protect its brand. Years ago, they started threatening anyone who used the word, and more recently sought similar legal changes in Canada for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics (that's gonna cost me...). Over in the UK, playwright and president of the Writer's Guild, David Edgar is talking about how ridiculous all this is, specifically pointing to the Olympic committee's concern over a new novel called "Olympic Mind Games." Eventually (perhaps realizing the ridicule it would generate), it decided not to sue the author, but based on the law, it probably could have. As Edgar writes:

By declaring images, titles and now words to be ownable brands, these various organisations and individuals are contributing to an increased commodification and thus privatisation of materials previously agreed to be in the public domain. For scientists, this constrains the use of public and published knowledge, up to and including the human genome. For artists, it implies that the only thing you can do with subject matter is to sell it.

Edgar goes on to point to other similarly ridiculous attempts to misuse copyright or trademark law to prevent certain actions. The key problem here (once again) is that too many people now believe that the purpose of intellectual property laws is "protection" of the creator/owner. That's simply not true. The purpose of copyright law is to create the incentives to create the content in question. The purpose of trademark law, is really about consumer protection -- and making sure that someone doesn't buy something under the false impression that it was made and/or endorsed by someone else. Obviously, both of these require some amount of protection to make those things possible -- but in every instance, it should be viewed under the light of the original purpose of both laws. If the control is not related to the original incentive to create, or in preventing consumer confusion -- then the exercises in control should not be allowed under those laws.

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