A Copyfighter’s Musings

After every study that claims to prove whether file-sharing
infringements are decreasing or file-sharers purchase more than others,
I find myself always scratching my head, questioning the study’s
methodology and results.  Brad Hill’s recently gone further on multiple occasions, tearing the studies apart.

Today, BBC brings us
a report on yet another study.  I haven’t looked deeply into, but
I ask you: would you trust a survey-based market research firm that
calls itself The Leading Question?

Filed by Derek Slater at 6:32 pm under General news
2 Comments

You can see me in the background of this shot taken by The Economist on July 30, 2001. On that day, over 150 protestors, organized by the EFF, gathered in San Francisco to free Dmitry Sklyarov, who the government had imprisoned for allegedly violating the DMCA.

That’s when I became a copyfighter.

When I read about Dmitry and saw this picture of him and his family, I had a gut level reaction—instinctively, his imprisonment was insanely wrong. I didn’t think twice about joining the protest.

There are many issues to be concerned about in this world, but I don’t generally have that kind of automatic response; I was not an eighteen year old causehead. Why did this issue strike such a chord then, and why does it continue to captivate me today?

My brother and mother played Space Quest with me and taught me a little BASIC. I was raised on BBSes, Mosaic, IRC, and the like. The Internet provided a technological playground and most importantly a revolutionary means to interact and connect with others. As I was uprooted from California to New Zealand and New York, I formed meaningful relationships online. I fondly remember visiting my rotisserie sports league-mates at the Department of Education in DC. Those leagues also spurred me to start writing and publishing and inspires my own dorky version of remix culture [WMV] today.
My interest in digital media grew beyond the sheer excitement and profound cool factor I felt when I got a Rio PMP 300 for my sixteenth birthday. My concern with copyright developed over the next two years as I tried to puzzle out MP3s, Napster, Gnutella, and the DeCSS case in articles for my school newspaper.

Increasingly, copyright directly impacted ordinary people, and putting Dmitry’s face on the damage being done made this even clearer. What’s more, Dmitry’s imprisonment demonstrated that you cannot simply hide in a cyberutopian dream. You are in meatspace, so are agents of control, and they can put you in a real prison. Another e-petition wouldn’t stop those constraining our cyberfreedoms. The copyfight has to happen outside, in the streets.

My amazement seeing everyone there who shared these concerns has stuck with me—a crowd gathered just to fight against an obscure copyright law. I felt empowered and like I belonged.

And so the following summer I interned at the EFF. On the wall above my desk happened to be a shot like this one, a reminder of that inspirational moment.

Happy birthday, EFF.

(This post is part of EFF’s 15th Anniversary Blog-a-thon. Want to read other posts or submit one of your own and have a chance to win an EFF Blog-a-thon award? Find out how here.)
[Technorati tag: EFF15]

Filed by Derek Slater at 4:17 pm under Big Ideas
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I don’t know where to start.  Just see for yourself.

When people miss the point of something like Creative Commons, I try to
see it as a failure to communicate on the sender’s end, not the
receiver’s.  Criticisms so ridiculous, so off-point should
motivate forming an even clearer message.  But did Dvorak even
look at the CC website?

Filed by Derek Slater at 3:26 pm under General news
1 Comment

I think people have misunderstood reports on the University of Rochester’s survey of on-campus Napster 2.0 Unlimited usage.

Rochester students’ use of iTunes shouldn’t necessarily be seen as
replacing free Napster Unlimited usage.  That’s an unfair
comparison. iTunes
sells permament downloads. Rochester students only get subsidized
access to Napster Unlimited, the
unlimited streaming and tethered download service. That’s not an
adequate replacement for most people, because you don’t get to keep the
songs and you can’t move them to portable players.  For Napster To
Go,
they have to pay an extra 5 bucks per month.  Thus, Rochester’s
Napster Unlimited subscription, rather than a replacement for typical
purchasing habits, is more of a complement to them.

Students certainly have used what they get for free.  As The
Register reports, “To Napster’s credit, University of Rochester
students do embrace the
streaming and tethered download aspects of the service. A healthy 47
per cent of students added a song they liked to their streaming
playlist, while another 39 per cent acquired a tethered
download.”  What we don’t know, and what’s really important, is
whether and how frequently the students use the service over time.

What they’re certainly not doing is buying permanent downloads from
Napster.  And why would they?  Apple has a bigger catalog and
basically everything available in Napster is available there. 
iTunes software is superior.  Apple downloads are compatible with
the iPod, and the DRM is relatively
easy to evade (by burning to CD and ripping) or circumvent (via JusteTune). 
Napster’s price discount for “track packs” is irrelevant, partly because they’re
cumbersome and partly because they’re advertised so poorly.

Nothing about Rochester students going to iTunes suggests they choose
it instead of the Napster 2.0 subscription.  It just means they’re
only using Napster Unlimited for what it is: a complement to
purchasing. 

One might wonder why the students aren’t taking to the dirt cheap To Go
subscription rate, but there are many fairly obvious answers.  For
one, hardly any portable players - most notably the iPod, but also most
others - don’t work with it.  Second, most consumers are still
fairly uncomfortable with the rental model - that’s going to take time.
If To Go were free as well, Rochester students might be more willing to
give it a go.  Third and related, students might find it more
worthwhile to pocket that extra 5 bucks per month and put it towards
permanent downloads.  They might use Unlimited to search for stuff
they want to buy, and there’s a trade-off if they spend more on the
subscription service.

As far as what this means regarding the success of campus subscription
plans, I don’t think we have the data to understand that. E.g., are the
students buying more now?
decreasing P2P usage? how frequently are they using Napster?  The survey doesn’t really cover those in a rigorous way.

Filed by Derek Slater at 2:58 pm under General news
1 Comment

If you’re in the Bay Area, come to EFF’s BayFF event on July 19 starring Dan Gillmor, Mary Hodder, danah boyd, Violet Blue (of Fleshbot), and Jackson West of sfist.com. 

More info:

WHAT: BayFF on Bloggers’ Rights
www.eff.org/bayff

WHEN: 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 19, 2005  

WHERE:
111 Minna Gallery www.111minnagallery.com
111 Minna Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: (415) 974-1719

Please RSVP to (415) 436-9333 x129 or bayff-rsvp@eff.org

This event is free and open to the general public. You must be 21+. Refreshments and birthday cake will be served.

Filed by Derek Slater at 12:00 pm under General news
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I did not expect DeLong to respond at all to criticism below (and Ernest’s follow-up here).  I certainly did not expect DeLong to reaffirm his position that ACSs amount to gulags.

So I ask you: who are the real “fear mongerers” in the copyfight?

I think ACS is not a particularly good response to widespread
infringing file-sharing; it’s better than many alternatives, but I
still think of it as a policy of last resort. 

But DeLong’s assessment here defies all reason.  I often disagree
with DeLong, but at least I can respect his beliefs.  In this
case, he’s either plain deluded or taking the cheapest of cheap shots
to avoid making substantive arguments.  Either way, his comparison
to gulags is outrageous, and, as Ernest puts it, “grotesque hyperbole.”

Ernest tears into DeLong here. His revised Godwin’s law was on my mind as well - Miller’s Law, anyone?

Filed by Derek Slater at 2:25 pm under General news
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So says Jim DeLong.

Someone better tell the artists represented by collective rights
organizations ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.  Do they have any idea how they’re being oppressed?

Artists must rise up and stop Marybeth Peters, whose proposed reform “effectively substitutes
a collective licensing structure for the existing Section 115 compulsory
license.”

Perhaps Delong was only referring to compulsory licenses or
“Alternative Compensation Systems.”  I guess I missed the part in
Professor Fisher’s book where people are worked to death in prison camps.

Come on, guys - do we really want to throw around terms like gulag?  Haven’t we just been over this?

In a related situation, Glenn Otis Brown pointedly framed what’s distasteful about casually using such loaded terms:

Filed by Derek Slater at 1:46 pm under Big Ideas
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