--- Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 11:51:58 -0800 From: Brad Templeton <brad@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> Cc: declan@private Subject: Re: [Politech] Reply to EFF over its position on RIAA, file swapping [ip] In-Reply-To: <6.0.0.22.2.20031104073656.02e48d58@private> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Organization: http://www.templetons.com/brad Declan: While I have included text from the earlier post, I know that you don't want to get into a lot of point by point debate on a list, so Scott's included text can largely be removed if you prefer. > From: "Scott Matthews" <scott@private> > Subject: EFF's Brad Templeton's response to Czarina > > Hey Declan, > > In response to EFF chair Brad Templeton's response to Czarina's email: > http://politechbot.com/pipermail/politech/2003-October/000138.html > > The EFF sends a pretty mixed message, no? Indeed. This is a remarkably complex and contentious issue. It's a novel issue, which you, we, and the world are learning new things about every day. Let's be clear on an important point: The solution to the crisis in copyright has not yet been found. Rather this is an area of debate and experimentation, with mistakes and learning. I actually understand why the RIAA and others think DRM is the solution. After all, many people from my industry -- software -- felt that copy protection was the answer for a long time. I even had some simple copy protection on software I sold 24 years ago. Some still seek it though most have abandoned it. DRM seems like a solution that can be tried now, and the RIAA is desperate for solutions that can be tried now, especially solutions that preserve their lucrative middleman's role. Sitting in their shoes, with a duty to protect their stockholder's interests, many of us might think the same way. So we're calling for debate. We're exploring a number of alternatives. Naturally, we fully expect some of those alternatives will be wrong. They might all be wrong. So if you weren't getting a mixed message, if we were pure and simple and on-message for a particular solution, that's when you should worry about us having a hidden agenda. Our agenda is very open -- free speech and free technology in a free hignly-online society. > > And yet the EFF continues to tacitly endorse such file-sharing, running an > ad campaign that says "file-sharing is music to our ears." Accept a cute promotional phrase for what it is. The networks are cool. They are a remarkable way to distribute vast volumes of data in a distributed fashion. They are innovative use of technology. Yes, many people are using them to do ill, as is always the case. Our campaign tells people there is a gem underneath that can result in an even bigger and better music industry if we find a way to make the money flow. (Indeed, I suggested too late we call it "let the music pay.") Go back 25 years when the VCR came out. Had we been there at the Betamax case we would have come up with another cute phrase like "The VCR is a vision of the future." The MPAA would have called the VCR the Boston Strangler, and I hope we would have been pointing out the gem inside. (Now, of course, Video revenues exceed cinema ticket sales.) > > In his email, Brad goes on to fault the RIAA and MPAA when they "pretend > it's about stealing from the artists" but the EFF is likewise wrong when > they pretend that copyright only protects an oligopic entertainment > industry -- the same copyright laws also protect independent musicians, > filmmakers, programmers, and so on. I'm one of them. Me too. As I've written before, 99.9% of the dimes that have fed me over my life have come from creative work and copyright. It's how my parents made money when I grew up, it's how I've made all my money. We don't pretend that copyright only protects the industry. It does, however, bring its prime benefits there. Copyright law, which requires the high expensive of litigation to enforce it, is only effective against large-scale infringers, where it's worth a lot of money to bring an action. Today we have the RIAA trying to experiment with more than that, filing suits that will lose them money in the hope of creating a deterrent. That's not an option open to the little guy. But yes, the work of the big boys does percolate down to the small folk. Certainly only the big folk get a seat at the table when copyright law is rewritten as it was for the DMCA. No surprise that we focus there. > > provisions, and stop the broadcast flag. But don't be fooled when the EFF > uses those issues as a justification for file-sharing. We're not trying to fool you. The big issue behind file-sharing that we're defending is the doctrine of the famous "Betamax" case that ruled the VCR was legal because, even though people might be largely using it to violate copyrights, it still was legal to sell because there were many legit things you could do iwth it. All of these issues are part of an attack on the underlying doctrine of free technology that is at the center of our agenda. Is our current call for discussion of compulsory licencing vapourware? Absolutely. We haven't even endorsed a specific compulsory regime yet. Nothing has been implemented, and in any event, we aren't the ones who will be doing the implementing. This is as intended. In part that's because compulsory licencing is a "Churchillian" solution. Full of issues, and "the worst solution except for all the other proposed solutions." We're dying to hear your proposals and others that are better. > As Aaron Swartz points out http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001016 when it > comes to compulsory licensing, there's a tradeoff between privacy, accuracy, > and security. I also explore some free speech issues here: > http://www.turnstyle.com/blog Some first-blush looks into compulsory licencing do indeed raise issues regarding how to do it while respecting free speech and privacy. But rest assured. Free speech and privacy are trump at the EFF. We won't sacrifice them to solve the copyright crisis. We plan to find solutions that don't need to sacrifice them. I hope nobody who knows the history of the EFF would ever doubt that. Will the solution be found overnight? I doubt it. We've been agonizing over this stuff for years. Will we be implementing it? No. We're just doing research, trying to frame the debate, looking for input. And yes, when we see wrong solutions coming from the RIAA we're coming down on them. Should we do otherwise? Expect ambivalent solutions here, this is not a black and white problem. Expect flaws in our proposals and everybody else's too. Come up with solutions that don't involve locking up all content and banning technologies and regulating every computer and player. We would love to see them. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Nov 05 2003 - 05:42:24 PST