Small-L libertarians broadly agree on many things, including the need for individual rights, limited government, contracts, and low taxes. But a few areas have internal rifts: Abortion and intellectual property number among them. That brings me to the DMCA and Rep. Boucher's bill to amend its currently quite restrictive "anti-circumvention" sections. The libertarians at the Competitive Enterprise Institute like that idea, saying "such a step seems to make sense": http://www.cei.org/gencon/016,03239.cfm My co-authored law review article from last year makes similar recommendations: http://mccullagh.org/misc/articles/michigan.state.drm.0605.pdf The Progress and Freedom Foundation, which calls itself a "market-oriented think tank," says this about supporters of Rep. Boucher's bill: http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/ps/ps1.7kelo.html "Their precise goal is to abolish IP rights in favor of some mystical commune wherein all IP is free as the air and creators are compensated by government." Now the Cato Institute, the world's most prominent libertarian think tank, is siding with DMCA reform. Keep reading. -Declan -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Cato News Release: Digital Millennium Copyright Act Hinders Innovation Date: Tue, 21 Mar 2006 15:43:14 -0500 From: Jim Harper <jharper@private> To: Declan McCullagh <declan@private> March 21, 2006 Media Contact: (202) 789-5200 Digital Millennium Copyright Act Hinders Innovation And exasperates consumers WASHINGTON - Why won't iTunes play on Rio MP3 players? Why are viewers forced to sit through previews on some DVDs when they could have fast-forwarded through them on video? Why is it impossible to cut and paste text on Adobe eBook? In a just released study for the Cato Institute, Tim Lee, a policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, answers these questions and more. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6025 The problem at the root of all of these annoyances, writes Lee in "Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act," is Congressional interference in the market for digital rights management technologies. The courts have historically done a good job of protecting copyright without stifling innovation. For example, in 1984 the Supreme Court rejected Hollywood's argument that the VCR should be outlawed as a piracy device. But the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) changed all that. It tied the courts' hands by outlawing all devices that tamper with copy protection technologies. Congress intended to shore up the rights of copyright holders, but Lee shows how the primary beneficiaries of the DMCA have been technology companies such as Apple, Real Networks, and TiVo. They have used the DMCA to exclude competitors from building products compatible with their own. According to Lee, the greatest victims of the DMCA's restrictions are likely to be hobbyists and small startups that lack the clout to negotiate with incumbent technology companies for permission to build compatible products. That, he warns, will make it difficult for innovative new companies to compete effectively with entrenched incumbents. Lee has a solution: Congress should undo the damage it did with the DMCA and leave the courts to deal with the issue. Judges are better able to apply the principles of intellectual property in a rapidly changing technological environment, he concludes. Policy Analysis 564: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6025 Click here to receive Cato's Daily Dispatch, news releases and event notices. Contact: Jim Harper, director of information policy studies, Cato Institute, jharper@private, 202-218-4602 Tim Lee, policy analyst, the Show-Me Institute, tlee@private, 314-726-5655 Kristen Kestner, media relations manager, Cato Institute, kkestner@private, 202-789-5212 Evans Pierre, director of broadcasting, Cato Institute, mailto:epierre@private, 202-789-5204 The Cato Institute is a nonpartisan public policy research foundation dedicated to broadening policy debate consistent with the traditional American principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace. _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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