Hey guys, so I wrote something which could be published on the blog or perhaps sent to the Crimson. (It's below.) If we wanted it published as a letter, it'd probably have to be about 40% shorter. What do you guys think?
Parker --- "A Sensible Compromise," an editorial published in the Harvard Crimson last week, described the actions of the MPAA in urging universities like Harvard to develop a "written plan to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyright material by users" of the university network in compliance with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008. The Crimson's take, as suggested by the title, is that these actions and the law that supports them are reasonable and justified. The evidence for such a claim is shaky, based largely on two sweeping claims about intellectual property. The Crimson states that without an effective intellectual property regime, there will be no incentive for innovation; this statement is provided as a common sense conclusion without any examination of evidence. And as a hypothetical, what evidence could there be? In order to imagine innovation without strong intellectual property laws, one can travel in geography, time, or even subject matter. Around the world, there are well documented examples of innovation and creativity that function in the absence of strong copyright protection: the world's second largest movie industry, in Nigeria, or the booming "techno brega" scene in Brazil were both documented in the excellent "Good Copy Bad Copy," a documentary itself freely downloadable online. And that's to say nothing of all of the innovations that took place before the mid-1700s, the works of Mozart, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and all the others that lived before modern copyright was developed. Lastly, enormous areas of creativity like fashion, cooking, comedy, and even magic tricks operate without copyright protection. Closer to home, the entire academic publishing system functions without authors retaining copyright for their works, instead forfeiting a monopoly for the opportunity to publish. Copyright can certainly provide a motivation for entrepreneurs to create, but in light of these examples, a statement that the absence of IP laws would eliminate innovation carries a heavy burden of proof. One that's not carried by the Crimson. The second overbroad claim in the editorial pertains to a concept called "moral rights." "Intellectual property rights are important," according to the Crimson, "because each person has a fundamental right to enjoy the fruits of his or her mental labor." The fact is that that justification is not uncommon in other parts of the world, but has no basis in American law. The Constitutional "copyright clause," in fact, is the only right enumerated in the Constitution with an explicit purpose, and that purpose was incentivization: Congress may secure monopolies for creators in order "to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." No less than Thomas Jefferson was uncomfortable with the "embarrassment" of monopolies, but conceded that as an incentive, they might be worthwhile. As a fundamental moral right? He never even considered it. Finally, the editorial talks about the concept of "balance," and then gets into a discussion of business models, debating whether the ones that exist today are convenient enough to remove the justification for piracy. This discussion is an interesting one, and has a place elsewhere, but in the world's premiere institution of higher learning—and truly, in any institution of higher learning—the balance seems straightforward. Should Harvard University, at the urging of a media industry that presumes the students to be criminals, reduce the flow of information available to them? The MPAA and similar organizations are comfortable to disregard the educational benefits that technology has brought us and to see the Harvard student body as a group of potential criminal freeloaders. One can take the sympathize with the movie industry which, in spite of consistently breaking annual box office records, purports to be having a hard time, but it's wrong to kowtow to their demands at the cost of Harvard's own students' technological autonomy. --- On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:01 PM, Parker Higgins <[email protected]>wrote: > By the way, I will probably write a longer form response to this. If we > want to put it on the national blog, I'm all for it. I've been in the pages > of the Crimson talking about DRM before: > http://www.thecrimson.harvard.edu/article/2007/12/14/when-judging-amazons-kindle-drm-is/ > > P > > On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 2:31 PM, Parker Higgins > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the writer, who probably >> wrote "IP-rights" and had a clueless editor expand out the acronym, but this >> sentence came across as particularly ridiculous: >> >> "Although these moves are encouraging, however, we still see numerous >> opportunities for Internet Protocol-rights holders to expand in the Internet >> space, particularly in sports programming and back-catalogue access to >> popular television programs." >> >> P >> >> >> On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 6:42 AM, Parker <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/12/13/universities-intellectual-copyright-unauthorized/ >>> chat it up here and in the comments there. >>> >>> And if someone wants to write a good response, we'll put it up on the >>> national blog! >>> >>> -- >>> http://www.madebyparker.com >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Discuss mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss >>> FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> parker higgins >> berlin, germany >> >> http://parkerhiggins.net >> >> gmail / gchat: [email protected] >> twitter / identi.ca: @thisisparker >> skype: thisisparker >> >> please consider software freedom before reading this e-mail on a >> proprietary platform >> >> > > > -- > parker higgins > berlin, germany > > http://parkerhiggins.net > > gmail / gchat: [email protected] > twitter / identi.ca: @thisisparker > skype: thisisparker > > please consider software freedom before reading this e-mail on a > proprietary platform > > -- parker higgins berlin, germany http://parkerhiggins.net gmail / gchat: [email protected] twitter / identi.ca: @thisisparker skype: thisisparker please consider software freedom before reading this e-mail on a proprietary platform
_______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://freeculture.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss
