April 7, 2003
Springboards…
John Palfrey wonders what effect the Super DMCAs and the RIAA’s lawsuit against four college students will have on the public and, in turn, our cause. (And Lessig responds)
Couple of thoughts:
1. John states, “Attention is elsewhere, on the war and other things that people indeed should be paying attention to. But [these copyright issues are] important, too, and those of us who don’t like it aren’t getting through.”
Glad I’m not alone in that feeling. I feel like throwing my hands up in the air everytime I hear someone say that these issues aren’t important. Rep. Berman at the Digital Rights Summit said something to that effect. First, I hate it when people like Berman say that; if these issues aren’t important, then he shouldn’t be legislating on them. Second, sure, these issues aren’t as important to me than universal healthcare. But, what are we supposed to do? Do nothing about them? It’s not like it’s an either-or. We can care about both issues. And, we can choose to fight for certain issues and not others. Saying that we should focus on healthcare instead of copyright is like saying to a law professor “You should be studying and teaching biology, so we can produce better scientists and doctors. That’s more important” What kind of sense would that make?
(Also, from a personal perspective: While I consider issues like universal healthcare more important in the abstract, I don’t have the same emotional connection to it. I don’t have infinite space in my head to fully care about every political issue.I’m not sure if this is just me, but I know that there are only a limited amount of issues that I can get actually passionate about. This is one of them.)
2. To be honest, I’m not as up in arms about the RIAA lawsuits as some people. I need to know more of the facts first. How close are these systems to Napster? How much were they being advertised as purely for infringement purposes? What precisely is the direct infringement claim?
If these systems are just like Napster and were distributed solely for the purpose of fostering copyright infringement, I can’t really complain about the RIAA’s tactics. It’s their legal right to do this, it makes sense to go after the system’s provider if he’s really contributing the infringements. I can get upset about the damages they’re asking for, but that’s not a reason for not going after the system’s provider at all.
What’s more, I certainly can’t complain about this tactic as it relates to the general strategy of going after individual infringers. Haven’t we been saying for years “Go after the individual, not the tool. The tool has substantial non-infringing uses.” We’ve called going after the tool over-reaching. Now, they’re going after actual individuals (particularly, college students). How can we call that over-reaching, too? What would be plain old reaching then?
So, yes, I don’t think the RIAA’s suits will be make particularly good rhetorical tools for our side – unless the systems are significantly different from Napster. Then things get interesting. I’ll try to do some research on this later.
3. For balance, reasons for optimism:
(Correct me if I’m wrong, but) We have more lobbying groups than ever to attack these issues. There are more organizations fighting on many different fronts. We are also gaining legislative allies.
Yes, we need to start fighting on the offensive, rather than the defensive. But we’re now in a better place to do that.
Filed by Derek Slater at 12:15 pm under General news
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