stakeholders – Techdirt (original) (raw)

from the how-is-this-possible? dept

More than four years ago, the Copyright Office kicked off a project to do a big “study” on Section 512 of the DMCA, better known as either the “notice-and-takedown” section of copyright law, or the “safe harbors” section for websites. The Office took comments, held a few, somewhat bizarre “roundtables” (that we participated in)… and then… silence. Years of silence. Until yesterday when it finally released the report. It’s 250 pages and there’s a lot in there — and we’re likely to have a few more posts on it as we dig into the details, but to kick it off, I wanted to highlight just how bizarre a report it is, in that the authors don’t seem to realize or ever acknowledge that the purpose of copyright law (and even this section) is to create the best possible services for the public.

Instead, the report seems to frame the entire Section 512 debate as a battle between the legacy copyright industry and giant internet companies. From the executive summary:

In enacting section 512, Congress sought to create a balance between two goals. One is providing important legal certainty for OSPs, so that the internet ecosystem can flourish without the threat of the potentially devastating economic impact of liability for copyright infringement as a result of their users? activity. The other is protecting the legitimate interests of authors and other rightsholders against the threat of rampant, low-barrier online infringement. Congress balanced these interests through a system where OSPs can enjoy limitations on copyright liability?known as ?safe harbors??in exchange for meeting certain conditions, while giving rightsholders an expeditious and extra-judicial method for addressing infringement of their works. Thus, for some types of OSPs, their safe harbors are conditioned on taking down infringing content expeditiously upon notification by a rightsholder.

In the twenty-plus years since section 512 went into effect, the question has often been asked whether the balance that Congress sought has been achieved, particularly in the light of the enormous changes that the internet has undergone. Indeed, that is the question that motivated the Study that led to the present Report.

But the entire framing of that premise is wrong on multiple levels. For proof, let’s go back to the legislative record and the the Senate Judiciary Committee’s report on why DMCA 512 was necessary, written by long term buddy to the recording industry, Senator Orin Hatch. (As a reminder, Senator Hatch was considered so in the tank for the recording industry that in Rob Reid’s satirical sci-fi novel, Year Zero, about the recording industry, he jokes that Hatch is nicknamed “Senator Fido” for his willingness to do whatever the recording industry told him — so not exactly a defender of the public). Yet, the report makes it abundantly clear that a major stakeholder of the DMCA is the “end-user” and that the DMCA needs to be careful not to be used to take down works that are legitimately placed online. From that report:

The Committee was acutely concerned that it provide all end-users–whether contracting with private or public sector online service providers–with appropriate procedural protections to ensure that material is not disabled without proper justification. The provisions in the bill balance the need for rapid response to potential infringement with the end-users legitimate interests in not having material removed without recourse.

The Copyright Office was told repeatedly both about this clear stakeholder and was given many, many examples of how the DMCA 512 has failed on that front. And, yet very little of that is reflected in the report. Instead, the report mainly focuses on large internet providers liking the safe harbors, and copyright holders wanting it to be worse… and then claims that since only one side is “upset” clearly that means things are out of balance.

Roughly speaking, many OSPs spoke of section 512 as being a success, enabling them to grow exponentially and serve the public without facing debilitating lawsuits. Rightsholders reported a markedly different perspective, noting grave concerns with the ability of individual creators to meaningfully use the section 512 system to address copyright infringement and the ?whack-a-mole? problem of infringing content reappearing after being taken down. Based upon its own analysis of the present effectiveness of section 512, the Office has concluded that Congress? original intended balance has been tilted askew.

It’s like the public’s interest has just been written right out of the law by the Copyright Office. And that’s stunning. And it’s also disappointing because our own comments (along with many others) to the Copyright Office highlighted the failing of the notice-and-takedown process in that it frequently censors non-infringing material.

Also, the “conclusion” that the “original intended balance has been tilted askew” also further misrepresents the entire history of the DMCA. Remember, there were two major sections to the DMCA: 512 (the part we’re discussing here, which is the notice-and-takedown safe harbors) and 1201 (which is the digital locks/anti-circumvention parts). Part of the “negotiation” to get the DMCA passed (mainly between legacy copyright holders and telcos) was that these two sections were balanced against each other. That is “copyright guys get 1201 if we protect service providers with 512 safe harbors.” Some of us already had trouble with how unbalanced a trade that was, but the really ridiculous thing here is to have the Copyright Office pretend that 512 alone was designed to be a “balance” between service providers and copyright holders (ignoring the massively unbalanced 1201).

This is like saying “I’ll trade you a bucket of oranges for a watermelon” and then, after that trade is concluded, whining “how come you get all the oranges! That’s unfair!”

There are many, many other problems with the report, and we’ll likely be digging into those in the coming weeks, but the very fact that the report appears to write the public out of its stakeholder analysis (even ignoring the Constitutional underpinnings and the stated basis for the law) suggests that the entire analysis is very, very skewed.

People within the Copyright Office keep telling me that I’m being unfair to the hardworking team there. And, to be clear, I do think that they really do mean well and actually do want to do the right thing. But if they want to be taken seriously, to put out a report that is so off the rails from the very start, it becomes more and more difficult to take their analysis seriously.

Filed Under: 512, balance, copyright office, dmca, dmca 512, public, stakeholders

Potentially Big News: Top CEOs Realizing That 'Maximizing Shareholder Value' Isn't A Great Idea

from the well-look-at-that dept

For the better part of two years, I’ve been noodling on a post (I’ve half written it a bunch of times) talking about how perhaps the biggest problem with so much of what we see today can be tied up in two related concepts: “fiduciary duty to shareholders” and the idea of “maximizing shareholder value.” I talked a little about this a few weeks back in highlighting how almost all of the problems that people talk about when they complain about big tech can really be traced back to Wall Street and this idea of maximizing shareholder value.

Conceptually, maximizing shareholder value makes some sense, but only if you don’t think about it for more than a few minutes. Because the whole thing falls apart as soon as you ask “over what time frame?” I first wrote about this back in 2006, in what I called the “time function of profits,” in trying to understand why so many people were claiming that Craigslist’s approach to grow slowly (but massively) by leaving most of their site free and not doing all sorts of icky stuff, was seen by some as “leaving money on the table” or even being anti-capitalist. As I pointed out then, that only made sense if you thought in the very short-term. Taking a longer term view suggests that “maximizing” profits in the short run is likely to create significant problems in the long run, whether it be competition or customers annoyed at you and the like. In a follow up post I did in 2008, I pointed out that maximizing profits shouldn’t mean screwing your customers. The real issue is the time frame. If you want to maximize profits for just this quarter, then, yes, screwing over your customers is a viable strategy.

However, if it’s more long term, then the incentives should change quite a bit. It’s just like the Prisoner’s Dilemma. If you are playing that game once, the incentives are heavily weighted towards cheating. However, if you’re playing it many, many times, the incentive structure changes, and it should move to a more cooperative model. For some reason, however, this hasn’t happened that much in real life. Many businesses (and many folks on Wall Street) assume that having a “fiduciary duty” to “maximize shareholder value” or “shareholder profits” means squeezing out every penny of profits right away, with no concern for the future.

Perhaps stating this backwards thought process most clearly was former big record label exec Dick Morris who once famously told Wired magazine that if someone is asking you to give up some money now to make more later, it means that “someone, somewhere, is taking advantage of you.” And, of course, one of the foremost proponents of this theory was Milton Friedman, who argued that the only responsibility of a company is to its shareholders, and that companies need to maximize the return to those shareholders. Friedman trashed the idea of social responsibility for corporations, but he, himself, didn’t seem to recognize how the long term played against the short term here. Ignoring any sense of social responsibility, in favor of short term maximization, would lead not just to long term social harms, but also to limits on the long term value for shareholders.

In recent years, we’ve started to see some pushback on these ideas. A few months ago, there was the announcement of a new Long Term Stock Exchange, designed to respond to these challenges, by giving companies more time to accomplish stuff than the usual quarterly heartbeat. But perhaps much bigger news is that the Business Roundtable, a gathering of top CEOs, has now put out a letter saying that shareholder value cannot and should not be the only focus of a corporation.

I’d argue that the letter is not that well-written, and given the signatories, I’m sure it went through millions of dollars worth of lawyering before anyone agreed to sign onto it. However, it does set up a much more thorough framework for thinking about all of the stakeholders that a company should consider in doing business: customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders. It’s signed by a bunch of big company CEOs (the letter itself is one page, then there are 11 more with signatures).

Of course, it pays to be cynical about such things. It’s one thing to say all of this, another thing altogether to actually walk the walk. And, certainly, some of the signatures come from CEOs who run companies who don’t exactly have a strong history of paying attention to most of the stakeholders listed above. Indeed, if you want to find some of the worst behaving companies — especially towards customers, employees, and communities — this is a ready-made list (I mean, AT&T’s and Comcast’s CEOs, Randall Stephenson and Brian Roberts, both signed on to this). So, no one should take this as a real commitment to change.

That’s only going to come if the companies are seen to be putting this into action, and that’s where the public (and the media) need to come into play. When companies — especially those who signed onto this document — are seen behaving badly, it should be called out, and this letter should be referenced. Yes, it’s quite probable that many signed onto this thinking that it’s a good PR effort to pretend to be good corporate citizens for a day or two. But if we want to enact real change, and have companies get past the short term view of screwing over everyone to “maximize shareholder value,” it’s only going to happen if these execs are held to the very standards they claim to support.

Filed Under: business roundtable, maximizing shareholder value, priorities, profits, shareholder value, shareholders, stakeholders

USTR's Weakass Response To TPP's IP Chapter Leaking

from the *cough*-bullshit-*cough* dept

We already wrote about the leaking of a recent draft of the IP chapter of the TPP agreement — almost two years since the previous leak. While we’re going to have some more posts digging deeper into many of the horrific problems with the agreement (and how it was created), first I just wanted to note — and to respond to — the USTR’s weakass response to both the leak and the outcry that has surrounded it:

The intellectual property negotiation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership discussions has not been completed and a final text has not been agreed to. We are working with Congress, stakeholders, and our TPP negotiating partners to reach an outcome that promotes high-paying jobs in innovative American industries and reflects our values, including by seeking strong and balanced copyright protections, as well as advancing access to medicines while incentivizing the development of new, life-saving drugs.

So much bullshit in so few words. As per usual, this is the USTR at its most obnoxious and dismissive of legitimate concerns. First, while technically true that the agreement has not been completed, that doesn’t mean that (1) there aren’t substantial portions of it that are complete and (2) it does not show the US’s (and others’) negotiating points and positions on various important issues. To try to dismiss the concerns by arguing it’s not complete yet ignores that we finally know what kind of pure crap the USTR is trying to shove down the throats of the American public, which they’ve worked on for years in secret.

Second is the claim that they are working with “Congress, stakeholders and our TPP negotiating partners.” Again, let’s define those carefully. First, “working with Congress.” No, not really. As we’ve described, the access Congress has is incredibly limited. The USTR is willing to work with a few members of specific committees but when others, such as Senator Ron Wyden, sought access to the TPP documents they were greatly limited. And Wyden is not just any Senator, but the head of the Senate’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness.

While he, personally, was able to go to the USTR’s offices to see the document, he would only be able to see it alone in a room. He would not be able to make any copies or take any notes. More importantly, he would not be able to bring any of his staffers who have direct technical expertise on the language — such as the staff director of that committee, who had the necessary security clearance. Think about that for a second. The USTR claims that it works with Congress, and yet it denied access to the document to the staff director of the Senate’s subcommittee on international trade. How, exactly, is that “working with Congress”?

As for the “stakeholders,” there are different kinds of “stakeholders” here and none of them are the American public. The USTR has Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITACs). These are representatives of legacy industries. Take a look at the list of industries represented. Where are the current innovators in that list? You won’t find them. What you find is a big list of last century’s industries — the legacy players who are more interested in protectionism and blocking competition than in innovation.

Now, let’s look specifically at the members of the “Intellectual Property” ITAC. It’s all companies or trade groups which represent big, old, legacy players, who have strong interest in protecting their position, not in innovating and disrupting. The RIAA. GE. Johnson and Johnson. Verizon. The Executive Director of the “Coalition for Intellectual Property Rights”? Really? Could they put together a more biased group of people? Doubtful. Who on that list is looking out for the public interest? Who on that list is looking out for innovators? The answer is absolutely no one.

That group is the main “stakeholder” that the USTR is referring to. They get much greater access to the negotiating texts than most of Congress does. Then there’s a second class of “stakeholders” which the USTR pretends to involve in the process. These are the “civil society” and public interest groups — folks like Public Citizen, KEI and EFF — who have been working hard to raise the concerns of the actual public and society. The USTR doesn’t share crap with them. Nothing. Literally nothing. What they do is every so often, if there is time and space permitting, let those groups hold “stakeholder meetings” in which they can present their arguments to the negotiators.

The USTR pretends this is “transparency” and “working with.” It is neither. Transparency is about sharing the details of what the USTR is doing in order to get feedback. Every so often “listening” to concerns of people who don’t know for sure what’s in the document is not transparency, and it’s hardly “working with” those stakeholders. Is it really any surprise at all that when the only stakeholders who matter, the IP ITAC, all represent legacy industries that what comes out from the USTR is a bloated piece of crap designed to protect their interests against the rights of the public?

Third, the idea that the end result of this process is designed to “reach an outcome that promotes high-paying jobs in innovative American industries and reflects our values.” Again, that’s not true. Which “innovative American industries” are actually represented on that list? Biotech, maybe, but the rest are all legacy players holding onto their markets, not creating economic growth. That doesn’t promote high paying jobs — it lets companies block out real innovation, slow down growth and limit jobs.

Fourth, “including by seeking strong and balanced copyright protections.” Ha! First off, nothing in the released text suggests any look towards “balanced” copyright protections. It’s entirely about locking in the worst of the worst, making an end run around Congress to block any potential future copyright reform that would fix many of the problems of today’s copyright law. TPP is a time bomb designed to subvert real copyright reform. Just the fact that the statement itself argues that “strong” copyright protections are necessary for “balance” suggests that the USTR is not only biased, but totally clueless about the state of copyright law today. Over and over and over again, we’ve seen that real innovation comes from allowing much greater flexibility and user rights — not in ratcheting up enforcement and restrictions on innovation. Yet that’s what the USTR gives us.

Finally, “incentivizing the development of new, life-saving drugs” may be the most sickening, disgusting and dishonest claim of them all. Whoever wrote this statement should look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, seriously, how many people they personally are helping to die. The patent portions of the TPP will kill many, many people by guaranteeing that they cannot possibly get access to life-saving drugs. The USTR is parroting the blatant lies of the pharmaceutical industry, who falsely argue that they need strong patent protection in order to “incentivize the development of new life-saving drugs.” But there is little evidence to support this, beyond the whining complaints of the pharma industry. Most of the actual discoveries today are really done by universities and other research institutes, often funded by federal grants. It’s only late in the process that the pharmaceuticals come in and grab the patents and then seek to focus on which drugs will be most profitable — not which will save the most lives.

This is why the USTR and the rest of the administration fought so hard against revealing this text all along. They know that their arguments are weak excuses for legacy players seeking blatant protectionism and against the public interest and the interest of actual innovation. The former USTR, Ron Kirk, specifically had stated that if the text of the TPP were public it would make it very difficult to approve, and now we know why. Because it’s the worst form of political cronyism by the USTR, giving lots of favors to legacy industries at the expense of the public. When the USTR is unwilling to be transparent or have an open and full discussion with the public, it is not representing the interests of the American public. It is trying to pull a fast one on us.

Filed Under: copyright, patents, process, secrecy, stakeholders, tpp, transparency, ustr

Authoritarian Governments Still Trying To Seek More Control Over The Internet

from the well,-duh dept

There was plenty of attention paid to the failed WCIT meeting last year, in which some countries effectively sought greater control over the internet, leading many countries to refuse to sign on. There has since been plenty of reasonable concern that the end result of this is a fragmented internet, with one internet for those who believe in internet freedom and openness… and one for those who don’t.

And, of course, the whole ITU WCIT process was never going to be the end of such discussions. Eli Dourado, who has been following this stuff closely for a while, recently had a good report about how various authoritarian governments made a bit of a power play for more control over internet governance. The issue may seem bureaucratic and messy, but that’s also why it’s important to pay attention. Because mixed in with all that bureaucracy are some key decisions.

The short version is that countries agreed, nearly a decade ago, at the World Summit on Information Society, that governments shouldn’t have too much control over the internet. This was initially directed at the US, since it really did have an awful lot of power over the internet. So, an agreement was reached with the following language on a “multi-stakeholder model.”

“The international management of the Internet should be multilateral, transparent and democratic, with the full involvement of governments, the private sector, civil society and international organizations.”

As Dourado points out, “note the four classes of stakeholders.” They were chosen this way to avoid governments having too much power. Except that certain countries are using these various international gatherings to try to change the meaning of “multi-stakeholder” to basically minimize everyone but government, while still pretending to support the concept.

Authoritarian governments have been quick to remind the world that they are stakeholders, too. Since the Tunis Agenda urges all stakeholders to work together “in their respective roles,” the most illiberal countries have simply argued that national governments should have the biggest and most pre-eminent roles, while other stakeholders should have smaller subordinate ones. Russia in particular is aggressively pushing this definition for the role of governments. Its proposed edits to the multi-stakeholder opinion invites member states “to exercise their rights on Internet Governance … at the national level,” by which it means that national governments should preempt ICANN.

In other words, Russia — and its allies like China and Saudi Arabia — are adopting the language of multi-stakeholderism to support something rather like its opposite. The position they are advancing is virtually indistinguishable from one which accords no role to other stakeholders.

Dourado also points out that having governments make decisions on internet governance is a recipe for disaster in a number of ways, including the fact that current internet governance is earned through trust and respect — but governments swooping in don’t seem to care about any of that.

… it is worth reflecting on one fundamental difference between Internet institutions and sovereign governments. In the Internet technical community, authority is earned. Internet institutions have legitimacy because it is freely given by a wide array of stakeholders. For example, the non-governmental Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) maintains and develops the core technical standards that are the sine qua non of the Internet. People are free to disobey the recommendations issued by the IETF, but they usually follow them because it has earned its authority through competence, transparency, and inclusiveness. The system of state sovereignty is at odds with the earned authority of Internet institutions. Governments punish their subjects for failing to comply with their orders, and they do not accept challenges to their territorial authority. Governmental authority is not earned; it is imposed.

Neither the authoritarian regimes nor the ITU seem genuinely invested in earning the authority they are eager to assert on the Internet. Instead, they are using the vagueness of the nominal consensus on the multi-stakeholder model as cover to impose authority.

Filed Under: internet, internet governance, itu, stakeholders, wcit

UN Wants Multi-Stakeholder Discussions On 'Rethinking Copyright' — Ignores That The Only Stakeholder That Matters Is The Public

from the and-they've-already-decided dept

The UN’s Internet Governance Forum had a gathering to discuss rethinking copyright, in which WIPO made the case that it should lead “multi-stakeholder” discussions on how to reform copyright. WIPO, of course, has a history of having a rather one-sided view of copyright and who the “stakeholders” are. But now, it insists that it can hear all voices:

Trevor Clarke, assistant director general for the Culture and Creative Industries Sector of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), said during a workshop on “Rethinking Copyright” today that the multi-stakeholder environment is “the best and and most appropriate” when it comes to the debate on copyright in the digital age. WIPO is preparing for such multi-stakeholder discussions, Clarke told Intellectual Property Watch.

Clarke said the WIPO director general and secretariat has added their voices to the call for a reexamination of the copyright system and have not shied away from the fact that some aspects of the law need to be revisited. Not only law, but also culture and infrastructure of the system, have to be considered, he underlined. Member state positions vary considerably on the issues, and it would make sense to include the private sector and also civil society into the talks, he said, adding, “We need that dialogue.”

While it’s nice to “include the private sector and also civil society,” that’s really ignoring the larger point. The only real “stakeholder” in copyright is the public. The private sector may be beneficiaries, but the system is supposed to benefit the public. And while “civil society” may represent the public in some areas, which is helpful, it seems that any real discussion on reforming copyright should be very, very open to the public.

Yet that never seems to be suggested by anyone.

And, really, when you look at what’s happening in reality vs. what’s happening in these discussions, you realize that the public has already made its position pretty clear. People are more than willing to pay for a certain amount of content if it’s convenient and not hindered/locked down. They’re willing to pay for content when they know they’re directly supporting artists they love. They’re willing to pay. But, if things are annoying and limited, expensive or inconvenient, they certainly might take matters into their own hands. On top of that, certain aspects of copyright law seem quaint or simply so unrealistic that they’re consistently ignored (such as with people making mashups and videos and the like). Yet, no one seems to want to address how the public is actually dealing with all of this, preferring to try to make up new rules based on artificial claims about copyright.

There’s no need for “multistakeholder” debates when the public has already said “here’s the deal: offer us what we want and we’ll pay and everyone’s happy.” The job of any governing organization right now should be to stop ignoring the public and start paying attention.

Filed Under: copyright, internet governance, public, reality, stakeholders, un, wipo

Australian Government Holds Secret Anti-Piracy Meetings; The Public Is Not Invited

from the so-20th-century dept

As Techdirt noted recently, policy-making behind closed doors is no longer acceptable. Until the end of the 20th century, it was hard for the general public to make their views heard, and so governments didn’t really bother asking them. But that’s no longer the case: the Internet has blown government wide open, and there is now no excuse for not consulting as widely as possible — including the public — before passing legislation or signing treaties.

That’s a lesson that the Australian government seems not to have learned yet, judging by the following story:

> The Federal Government has reportedly held a second closed door meeting held between the content and telecommunications industries to address the issue of illegal file sharing on the Internet through avenues such as BitTorrent.

The first meeting took place at the end of last year, and is part of the content industries’ attempt to circumvent the Australian courts’ refusal to order ISPs to act as a private copyright police force.

According to another report, the argument now seems to be mainly about who will pay for a proposed “graduated response” (three-strikes) scheme:

> one source familiar with the discussions said local film industry representatives are concerned that the cost of operating graduated response schemes is too high. > > Another source said the content industry’s response was to try to push the cost of managing infringement notices — and an appeals mechanism for customers who felt they had been wrongly accused — onto internet service providers.

Never mind the fact that the content industries not only want this kind of extra-judicial punishment, they want it for free: what’s really appalling here is that “three strikes” seems to have been settled upon without any qualms about whether it is fair or would work, or whether it might be a good idea to conduct some research to find out. It’s the usual evidence-free policy making that has bedevilled this area for decades. But that’s hardly surprising, since the most important stakeholder here — the public — wasn’t invited to the meetings to offer its views on moves that would have a major impact on using the Internet, on privacy and on civil liberties.

That’s not only unacceptable, it’s extremely unwise in view of what the Australian government plans to do next:

> If the content and internet industries reach agreement on a scheme to deal with copyright infringement, the Attorney-General’s department is expected to put a draft proposal out for public consultation.

Given the way that such a draft proposal is being drawn up, any public consultation is likely to be seen as a sham, since the terms of the debate have already been set. And when the draft with a few token but irrelevant tweaks finally becomes law, guess how much public support that is going to have?

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Filed Under: australia, copyright, piracy, public, stakeholders

UK Rightsholders Want Web Censorship; Don't Want The Public To Be A Part Of The Conversation

from the of-course-not dept

A whole bunch of you have been pointing to James Firth’s detailed post concerning some leaked information about a “private” meeting of rightsholders, ISPs and the government in the UK to discuss a “voluntary” web censorship system designed to block what copyright holders deem to be infringing.

“Confidential” documents sent to this blog show the Premier League has joined a coalition of rights holders including the Publishers Association, BPI, Motion Picture Association and others lobbying hard for a great copyright firewall of Britain.

The group is attempting to influence public policy with a desperate-sounding and confused in places confidential submission to minister for the internets Ed Vaizey, who discussed the proposal at a meeting of stakeholders (including ISPs) last Wednesday.

As Firth’s source notes, no matter where you stand on issues of copyright, the idea that policy decisions should be made behind closed doors without the public involved seems incredibly questionable, even if it’s quite common. We’ve seen the same thing in the US, where politicians seem to think that the public isn’t a stakeholder, and that the beneficiaries of a law are the only stakeholders. In this case, making matters even worse is that representatives from the Open Rights Group asked to attend the meeting and were denied. The government did allow a single “consumer rights” representative to attend, from a group called Consumer Focus. We’ve seen this before also. When the USTR was working on ACTA, it very briefly showed a couple of consumer rights groups a copy of a draft (which they weren’t allowed to copy, take notes on or do anything with) and then claimed that they were being fair in allowing all stakeholders access. Of course, they ignored that the copyright maximalists were helping in the actual drafting and had full copies of the documents. But… details.

As for the actual proposal under discussion: it would be a scheme under which ISPs would “swiftly” block access to certain sites rightsholders claimed were infringing, as reviewed by an “expert board.” However, the speed with which the censorship would take place suggests little actual review of the websites in question, because it even notes the desire to censor sites that may be streaming live events. Due process? That’s for peons, apparently. And while people will again insist that this sort of thing would only be used for obviously infringing sites, remember, it was just in the past few days that we noted that copyright holders were claiming that obviously non-infringing sites like Archive.org, Vimeo and SoundCloud were pirate sites.

About the only good news to come out of this meeting is that the UK government apparently wasn’t too interested in being a part of this scheme, which is supposed to be “voluntary.”

If another contact of mine inside government is to be believed, Ed Vaizey is said to have commented, “if it’s a voluntary scheme, go and do it.” Heavily implying that the government need not be involved.

What’s really scary here, however, is how much is being done behind closed doors to create policies — whether “voluntary” or via the government — that massively impact everyone and their rights to free speech. No matter what your opinion on copyright enforcement, is it really so crazy to think that these discussions and proposals should be done out in the open to get all views heard?

Filed Under: censorship, closed doors, policy, stakeholders, uk

from the indeed dept

In discussions on copyright policy, you almost always hear politicians talk about the importance of hearing from the “stakeholders,” in which the only “stakeholders” they talk to are the copyright industry which benefits from copyright law. In fact, a little over a year ago, when VP Joe Biden convened a “piracy summit”, he claimed that the idea was to “bring together all the stakeholders” — except that everyone in the room was a copyright industry executive or a politician. There was no public representation at all. Similarly, in the recently leaked State Department cables concerning US embassy efforts to pressure Canada into changing its copyright laws, the US ambassador refers to Canadian copyright industry representatives as the stakeholders it’s talking to.

This is wrong.

Some might argue that copyright holders are a stakeholder, but I think Rick Falkvinge has it exactly right when he notes that the copyright industry is not a stakeholder at all, but a beneficiary of copyright law. The article should be mandatory, required remedial reading for anyone who ever refers to the copyright industry as a “stakeholder” in any policy discussions on copyright law:

The copyright monopoly legislation is a balance between the public?s interest of having access to culture, and the same public?s interest of having new culture created.

That?s it. Those are the two values that go into determining the wording of the copyright monopoly.

The copyright industry always demands to be regarded as a stakeholder in this monopoly. But to give them that status would be to royally confuse the means of the copyright monopoly with its end.

I’d argue that it’s not that the copyright industry demands to be considered a stakeholder, it demands to be considered the only staskeholder. But as Falkvinge points out, copyright is entirely about the public. The industry is not a stakeholder but a beneficiary. He provides an analogy that is so instructive that it should be used more often:

Blackwater Security benefits from United States foreign policy. Does that mean that Blackwater is a stakeholder in the US foreign policy, and should get a seat at the drafting table? Of course it doesn?t. The notion would be horrifying, with quite predictable outcomes. Yet, we accept this horrendous construction in the case of the copyright monopoly, with just the outcomes predicted.

In the past, I’ve pointed out that you don’t ask the guy who owns the sugar monopoly to be a part of the policy team in determining who gets the sugar monopoly, but why do politicians continually do this with copyright? Why do the highest levels of government (yes, such as Joe Biden) insist that the beneficiaries are the only real stakeholders? And what will it take for him to realize that he’s not just wrong, but that he’s harming the actual stakeholders?

Filed Under: copyright, joe biden, stakeholders