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One post-election question up for debate is where the Republican Party would go to try and capture the areas of the electorate they cannot penetrate – particularly minorities and the youth vote. The watered-down version of the DREAM Act suggested a policy path for reaching some segments of the minority electorate. And for about 24 hours this weekend, it looked like Republicans would make their pitch to the youth vote on copyright law.
Late on Friday, the Republican Study Committee, the far-right caucus in the House, put out a policy paper on copyright reform that really sought to upend traditional notions of the issue, which in the US really skews in favor of copyright holders. Concluding that copyright law often destroys rather than distorts markets, the paper, which received high praise from the tech community, made several key points about the nature of copyrights, attacking several myths. Here’s an example:
That the purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator. No, it correctly notes, it’s about benefiting the public:
Thus, according to the Constitution, the overriding purpose of the copyright system is to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” In today’s terminology we may say that the purpose is to lead to maximum productivity and innovation.
This is a major distinction, because most legislative discussions on this topic, particularly during the extension of the copyright term, are not premised upon what is in the public good or what will promote the most productivity and innovation, but rather what the content creators “deserve” or are “entitled to” by virtue of their creation. This lexicon is appropriate in the realm of taxation and sometimes in the realm of trade protection, but it is inappropriate in the realm of patents and copyrights.
This is the opposite of how stakeholders view the issue, and seeks to exploit what could be an actual divide on policy. Democrats have cultivated Hollywood as a fundraising source for decades, and out of this grew an adherence to copyright laws that favors rights holders. This, as the RSC report intimates, amounts to rent seeking, and can be used to stifle innovation in favor of locking in profits. It also creates large rights-holding corporations that can edge out their competitors. “We frankly may have no idea how it actually hurts innovation, because we don’t know what isn’t able to be produced as a result of our current system,” the report notes. And the RSC offered several reform ideas, including changing the statutory damages rules (copyright holders invariably seek the maximum penalty and call all copryright infringement “willful”), expanding “fair use,” and creating disincentives for unlimited copyright extensions.
The Stop Online Piracy Act proposal of last year, which was defeated after public outcry, sought to take copyrights to their extreme and shut down any website or user-generated media source which had copyrighted material placed on it by any user. In the debate over SOPA, once constituents badgered Congress on the issue, Republicans moved away from the bill much more quickly than Democrats. This has the potential to really cause a split, with Republicans taking the more populist line while Democrats stick with a corporate agenda. And considering the profile of those who stood up against SOPA, that could move a key constituency of young voters into the Republican column.
Alas, I would link to the full paper, but within 24 hours of posting it, the Republican Study Committee took it down claiming that it wasn’t properly “vetted.” This email comes from the executive director of the RSC, Paul Teller:
From: Teller, Paul
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2012 04:11 PM
Subject: RSC Copyright PBWe at the RSC take pride in providing informative analysis of major policy issues and pending legislation that accounts for the range of perspectives held by RSC Members and within the conservative community. Yesterday you received a Policy Brief on copyright law that was published without adequate review within the RSC and failed to meet that standard. Copyright reform would have far-reaching impacts, so it is incredibly important that it be approached with all facts and viewpoints in hand. As the RSC’s Executive Director, I apologize and take full responsibility for this oversight.
Tech Dirt did manage to save a copy of the initial report. But clearly, entertainment industry lobbyists went ballistic on the RSC and forced them to recant the paper.
This dynamic, where Republicans attempt to moderate their views (or in this case, get completely to the left of Democrats on an issue important to young people) and then get pulled back by their base or their corporate contributors, explains a lot about their party’s performance the past several years, in not just the political but the policy arena. This idea that a crushing defeat will somehow cause a sea change within the party just doesn’t meet with reality.
Image by opensourceway under Creative Commons license.
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Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment in the original “Bill of Rights” to control “corporate entity’s” monoplistic practices. Corporations maintain monopolies by suppressing innovations which would benefit the republic’s “general welfare,” by using copyright law and what ever means possible. Sometimes killing people. The result is the opposite of what was intended?
Copyright law does not advance maximum productivity and innovation. Is is a ploy to protect wasteful business models from competition and prevent new models which are more efficient and would bring greater value to the consumer, the economy and the republic from seeing the market place and benefiting humanity… Yes Edison fucked Tesla hard and Jefferson and Madison where all over this shit! They addressed it…
The 11th Amendment was not ratified. And the corporate beast which once lead to America’s founding, is consuming America, today, unchecked.
BTW, that 11th Amendment was rejected by those who enjoyed a monopoly on labor and energy and took America to civil war to protect their business model, slavery, in the same manner the wasting of a billion plus dollars a day out the tailpipe’s of America’s gas powered carts is protected. A form of insidious leverage servitude to a monopoly on energy, once again.
Servitude is bought….
Edison fucked Tesla and by default US.
Many GOP insiders may very well be concerned about their future relevance while “on stage.” But the MOTU control what will happen to them “off stage.”
The MOTU don’t give a hoot which party / individual actors plays the role of spokesperson.
And DDay… great catch. It is very telling.
The RSC is an ad hoc committee of the House. The members of congress who support the committee pay for it by giving up a staff position of half of a staff position to fund its operations. The staff writes position papers that members of congress can quote and cite for their constituents. The RSC also holds briefings for members with some of the biggest conservative players of the day.
All position papers are fully vetted by its shoestring staff. In this case, it would have passed the internal review before touching a nerve of one or more member of congress — one who is more in favor of a dollar today instead of supporting the vision of shared prosperity the founding fathers outlined in the constitution. This smells more like a smackdown of the RSC by its political members rather than a “poor” job at reviewing the “logic and reasonableness” of the study’s conclusions.
No, that was a patent problem not copyright.
And sometimes the big guys lose big, as George Eastman found out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Goodwin
The monopolists and enslavers
are insistent in their desire
to monopolize and enslave.
Is this
http://static1.firedoglake.com/1/files/2010/03/mythfactshcr-2.pdf
really now you see it now you don’t
insurance replaced with a monument to
monopoly but actually written in classic
insurance policy-like obfuscation form?
Some Republican took a look at this and saw it for what it is: clearly a case of property rights vs community rights (“promote the progress of science and useful arts”). Their party has been the party of property rights for many years. The wonder is not that it was quickly pulled but that it made it to the RSC website at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Goodwin
“In 1900, Goodwin set up the Goodwin Film and Camera Company, but before film production had started he was involved in a street accident near a construction site and died on December 31, 1900 from his injuries.”
noted….
But right now the GOP is trying to do another Jimmy Swagart. The media keeps bringing them up as if they are still relevant instead of flushing the toilet on them. It is interesting when they use logic and go to the left of the new Republican party (Democrats) but we need to go to the far left of both. Take the Keystone XL. The media simply covers how its going to socialize the cost of Sandy for the rich and their property losses. It doesn’t talk about curbing emissions. So that means it will seem logical when Keystone XL will be as a solution to Sandy instead of a cause! Look at the media in general and CBS. Look at how CBS handled the debates and then now Gaza.
Our problem is that we don’t understand that mass sponsorship in aggregate over time amounts to defacto and eventually dejure censorship. We need an alternative to sponsorship and we have the technology now to do that. Search should be powered by the noise that is sponsorship- its basically span search because just like there is no editorial firewall the RIAA is now corrupting Google’s SEO. For one we need public search by universities and municipalities because search will be the glue that binds everything in the future and that glue should not be made of the censorship (sponsorship.) Post automation we already have an economy based on attention more than effort. Its an attention economy- all the more reason.
We also need to work on language. Creative people and certainly not the corporates, neither of these are the “rights holders,” we have the people are the rights holders and the owners of the markets, there is no concession or balance or compromise here. These exist to serve us, not the other way. We need total control over end user interfaces, we don’t share this power and its got to be opt-in by default. We need to be completely free as the opt in position of the spying and interrupting. Media companies are the one the public has the greatest interest in breaking up and we should exercise this with de-consolidation and dis-intermediation. “The medium is the message” and the current message and medium are tyrannical.
Big shocker is that money is speech. Yes we can accept that and embrace it as coercive speech. It worse than yelling misrepresentation in a crowded theater it literally causing death with loud non destination denoting bill boards on free ways and its more like intentionally telling someone a loved one had died when they haven’t and when its for profit its aggravated. We need to consider a general liquidation of corporate right’s holder’s so called right and regular revocation of their charters as these firms in their consolidate form are an extreme thereat to the public well being. We want to end the market in loudness or coercive speech for the sake of coercive speech with its prime aim of censorship and misinformation. Its a total perversion of the markets as the bill indicates.
There is also all this talk of voting with our wallets. This doesn’t work when the signals between buyer and seller are disrupted when the sellers consider their real customers a sponsor union and its ad firms that try to pick the pockets of consumers. Together sellers and the sponsor units conspire to weaken buyers in an unsustainable way.
“Together sellers and the sponsor units conspire to weaken buyers in an unsustainable way.”
“…for the sake of coercive speech with its prime aim of censorship and misinformation.”
Hey you got a cancer stick? I’m shaking and I don’t care if I’m addicted. I need it! Besides it’s OK! Smoking doesn’t cause cancer. Tobacco Institute says so. They know all the trade secrets. BTW, Where did you get that black eye? Get in a fight for a Tarrington?
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/tobacco_related_mortality/
Still, weakening addicted buyers in this sustainable scenario for Big Tobacco, is terminal for many of the addicted buyers effectively manipulated by sellers and sponsors by misinformation and lies…
“We need to consider a general liquidation of corporate right’s holder’s so called right and regular revocation of their charters as these firms in their consolidate form are an extreme thereat to the public well being.”
Yup…. Theo’s big stick turned domestic and Jefferson/Madison’s 11th amendment are good starting points. Lets get it on and “cull” corporate before we are pickled and canned.