US Chamber Of Commerce Wants More Censorship, More IP Protectionism
from the it's-all-about-the-protectionism dept
The US Chamber of Commerce is becoming an increasingly sad and deluded shell of an organization. Its main focus these days seems to be about creating protectionist, anti-free market, anti-innovation policies that protect its largest companies from competition and newer, more efficient tools and companies. It's predictable, but sad. The latest is that it has sent a letter to President Obama with its "intellectual property agenda," which could be simplified as "more of it, please."It asks the President to expand the role of the White House's IP Czar, whose existence mainly exists due to the Chamber of Commerce using totally debunked stats to claim that the job was necessary. And, of course, it was no surprise the other day when the IP Czar's first report was more or less a bullet point list of everything the Chamber of Commerce wants. It's as if they have their own office in the White House, so of course they want that expanded.
The report does not mention ACTA, but does mention the new, even more secretive and more ridiculous Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), which of course the Chamber of Commerce wants to include only "the highest IP standards." Along those lines, the Chamber of Commerce also wants the Feds to send more of its copyright cops around the world to enforce US copyright laws, and to put more enforcement pressure around the infamous joke known as the USTR's "Special 301" report (which is basically a way for the lobbyists to "launder" a list of countries they don't like, and have the USTR list them as violating US IP laws based on little more than what lobbyists claim).
Finally, of course, the Chamber of Commerce supports blatant censorship and a lack of due process, in praising efforts to censor websites without any adversarial hearing, just because there might be some infringement somewhere else, but that site links to it.
Notice a pattern? Basically, the Chamber of Commerce supports policies that act as protectionism for a few large US companies, no matter what the overall harm is to the rest of the economy. Protectionist policies harm the economy and the pace of innovation. Censorship and a lack of due process should be seen as an anathema to core values of the United States. It's a shame that an organization that often presents itself as being about supporting American values and capitalism goes in such an opposite direction to protect its own special interests.
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Filed Under: censorship, copyright, intellectual property, protectionism
Companies: us chamber of commerce
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Classic Masnick.
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Good job.
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Is is classic. I am only shocked that he didn't manage to get the TSA and the USPTO involved in the post somehow to really appeal to the weekend crowd.
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Reasoned, logical arguments. That's the way to sway people to your point of view.
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They should really make it 10 years in jail and a fine of $500,000 and really enforce the shit out of it.
100 years! $1,000,000,000!
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It's proven by comment numbers that pissing you off drives the discussion.
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Who should whistle, if they know the tune could be stolen?
Who should light a candle, if they know someone else could see by its light?
Who should create,if the creation cannot be wholly theirs?
The fact that only a website is taken down without a hearing is a mercy, because if it went to court every single one of these websites, without a doubt would be revealed as the slime of humanity that they truly are.
It is not censorship, it is justice.
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Not quite "every single one of these websites":
http://www.rojadirecta.org/
They've already been to court.
I think many of these sites, if given a choice, would decline the "mercy" offered by ICE.
But I encourage you to believe what you want and perhaps attack me personally. I trust you'll have no trouble with that.
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i do not want to even think where we'd be if you maximalists existed in the beginning
if the pirates are the slime of humanity... cripes! holy crap! i'd like to hear your views on murderers and rapists.
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An easy question to answer
Certainly!
History has proven that the motivation of the creative is money. People only create because the hopes of gainful personal income.
Photography, steam engines, heck, The Aeneid! None of these things would never have seen the light of day if their creators knew that they wouldn't make a penny off it.
IP laws need to be strengthened. Artists and inventors deserve protection from having their own ideas, which could come from nowhere else, enjoyed by freeloaders without compensation or stolen and used against them by unoriginal thieves.
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Re: An easy question to answer
In fact everything should be free for me. I want a sandwich. Go make me one and bring it to me free of charge right now.
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Re: An easy question to answer
I'm guessing sarcastic.
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Who should whistle, if they might be infringing performance rights by doing so because someone else may have whistled a very similar tune already?
"Who should light a candle, if they know someone else could see by its light?"
Really? Really? You choose a candle, the quintessential metaphor for sharing knowledge, as an allegory for copyright? That's funny. And by funny, I mean fucked up.
For the record, lots of people might still light a candle even if it might help someone besides themselves. That’s kind of the reason it’s a great metaphor for sharing.
"Who should create, if the creation cannot be wholly theirs?"
Someone who wants more fulfillment than simply patting himself on the back, that’s who. The minute you allow someone to experience your creation, it exists in his or her mind and is no longer just yours. Or maybe you mean, “if they cannot control every single reproduction, performance, or mention of it.” In that case, that dumbass William Shakespeare would. As for Metallica: they’re too smart to fall for that.
Well done, Trolly. I really can't tell if you're serious with these.
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Stupidity doesn't excuse your ignorance of fair use.
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And FYI, Coldplay had to own up and settle with Satriani, as their song was indeed a ripoff of Joe's.
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That article was written by someone who is a performing musician.
In your rush to attack people you get it wrong... again.
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Why wouldn't stupidity excuse ignorance?
I'd hate to be your kid. What a hard-ass.
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Come on guys, no need to get riled up over a missing sarcasm tag :)
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AC you fucking asshole. Even if a site is blatantly infringing, selling counterfeit goods etc, there is DUE PROCESS. What is happening now is a slap in the face to every American, and just pissing on everything this country stands for. Yeah asshole they may be outright guilty, but you still have to follow the law. Ever hear of lead by example?
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Are you referring to the ICE seizures? There was due process there. Sorry.
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The only "fucking asshole" here is someone jumping the gun without understanding the basics of legal action.
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Like the shill^W person above me, writ large.
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You know what?
People are risk-adverse in general, and business people in particular. If you have a copyright-free picture next to a copyright-encumbered picture, which will you download? The chamber is not going to coerce people into buying their members products, they are going to coerce people to shop elsewhere.
There's plenty of creative commons and public domain media, and it's easy to find. Maximalist legislation will simply drive people to it.
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US Chamber of Commerce
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1.Copyright is bad.
2.Any attempt at enforcing copyright law is censorship.
3.Piracy hasn't had any negative economic impact.
4.Anyone that disagrees with rules one through three is a troll or paid industry shill.
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2. Any attempt at enforcing copyright law is not censorship.
3. Piracy has had a negative economic impact.
4. Anyone who agrees with rules one through three is not a troll or industry shill.
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Hear, Hear!
That's right. The only problem with Bills of Attainder was that they were executed by Kings, and not by democratic consent.
We should bring those back, and really show pirates that we mean business on protecting our precious ideas.
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Re: Hear, Hear!
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Remember?
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And if you really can't tell by now?
;)
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Yeah, IP laws that were created in the late 1800's? I wonder what humans were doing in the millenia before that...sitting in caves and hunting woolly mammoths no doubt (oh wait, they didn't invent spears yet either, because no IP laws).
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The speed of human progress has only increased over the ages. It took a long time to get from a simple telephone to an automated exchange (the chunk chunk dialers were amazing to see in action). It took a shorter amount of time to go from there to touch tone, and short still to the cell phone. Shorter than that to a pocket sized phone, and even shorter to a pocket sized phone / computer combo with about the same processing power as an early Cray supercomputer.
Through all of that, we have had IP laws.
It amazing me how people can spew out rhetoric like "patents block innovation" as they sit typing on their ultra lightweight laptop with the high end display, the quad core processors, over a high speed wireless connection.
Indeed, process has been blocked at every turn by the mythical "patent thickets" that supposedly hinder us at every turn guided by out smart phone's GPS.
Indeed, our time with IP laws have been horrible, with absolute no advances since the 18th century at all, for fear that they might violate someone else's horded work.
Yeah. but but Censorship!
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Yes, of course. But I will add the asterix that we have had significantly more progress since the IP systems have been put in place. In fact, considering that the largest countries who did not support IP (India and China) have been playing catch up because they didn't progress as much without them would be good enough for a "Masnick Effect" linking.
We also have to remember that the speed that ideas spread (aka, the ability to pirate an idea) was very slow. A 20 year patent 300 years ago might not have been long enough for the idea to travel the world. Today, 200ms gets you almost anywhere. Such is our progress! IP becomes a larger idea when the products can be more easily duplicated, the development becomes more dear, and the time span to exploit your development is short.
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-Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
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Copyright lasts 95 YEARS, longer than the average life span in any country, even though in many cases the material will become lost and forgotten in less than 30.
Tell me again how we need to expand IP laws? Why do they need to be even more draconian? We already see that they aren't being respected. Making the punishments more severe won't help. Increased enforcement will only piss people off.
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I don't think anyone (even the dreaded IP maximalists) are pushing for "expanded IP laws". They are pushing for more uniform laws, and better tools to apply those laws and make them function as intended.
in many cases the material will become lost and forgotten in less than 30
That may have been true in the past, but the current all digital world means that it is easy to keep copyright material available if the owner so wishes. We can right now turn on the TV and watch shows from the 50s and 60s, listen to music from the 40s and read books from the 30s. Some things are lost and forgotten over time, but plenty of it lives on, and continues to be popular and in demand. That's not so bad, now is it?
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Or even if the owner doesn't wish it. God bless human nature.
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If history can teach us anything, it's that art and science have always thrived when civilisations were at their peak. Look at the Greeks and the Romans -- they didn't have copyrights or patents.
As for your second point, I can assure you it takes a bit longer than 200ms to bring a product to market, even if you are just copying somebody else's product.
Though I'm glad that you seem to agree that today intellectual monopolies are only useful for halting competition for their duration.
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I didn't say that at all. In fact, my feeling is that patents in particular actually drive companies to find alternate solutions in order to be in desirable market places, and that often leads to advances that otherwise might never happen.
It doesn't halt competition - it makes smarter, harder working competition coming to market not with a replica product, but with a new product, possibly a better product, and a product that achieves the result in a different way.
In that respect, we got double the development and competition, with products competing on their merits rather than their ability to replicate each other.
It's the reason why we have Ipads, Samsung Galaxy, HP pads, and everything down through the Kindle: Different technologies, different operating systems, different designs, different functionality. There is no patent or copyright getting in the way of innovation here, if anything it has encouraged people to take different paths and we are blessed in a very short time with a wide selection of products that operate in this new niche market.
As for your second point, I can assure you it takes a bit longer than 200ms to bring a product to market, even if you are just copying somebody else's product.
200ms is the time it takes to connect from a remote location almost anywhere on the internet today. Secrets start moving that fast. All the design and research documents for that new product you are planning can be "accidentally" transfered to someone on the other side of the world in minutes, all because the delay from here to there is 200ms or less.
Look at the Greeks and the Romans -- they didn't have copyrights or patents.
No, they had no need for them - they had communication at the speed of a man walking, it might take years for information to spread. They didn't have any pressing economic reasons to have IP laws. But they were also both societies and times that were filled with secrets, scientists as kept pets of the rich, and so on. The true values of a man's discoveries in that time may not be discovered until long after his death. Secrecy is many times worse that a patent system.
But to add an obelix to that, there is of course absolutely no way to tell if the speedup of human progress was because of the patent system.
That is true, but it is also true that there is no indication that there is any significant impediment put in place by the system. As I said, Mike will toss up his needlessly complicated "patent thicket" graphic every so often to try to make a point, but he rarely addresses the facts of rapid development of cell and smart phones. He won't look at not only competitive products, but also the competing technologies that have rapidly advanced the market place. For all the hand ringing going on by the IP deniers, progress is going gangbusters, and your two year old cell phone is already incredibly far out of date.
Reality is right there to grasp, it is just amazing that Mike chooses to ignore it.
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Good thing we don't need to rely on your "feelings." We have actual studies. And they say you're wrong.
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Yeah, scientific indeed!
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As for finding "other" solutions, why not let competition determine which solutions are examined? Instead of forcing progress to travel laterally for 20 years before it's allowed to go forwards, why not let it go forward until there's a need to go back and revisit alternative methods of doing things?
If companies want to improve their position in the market, simply copying others won't keep them going forever. At some point, even copycats will be forced to innovate to stay current.
"It's the reason why we have Ipads, Samsung Galaxy, HP pads, and everything down through the Kindle: Different technologies, different operating systems, different designs, different functionality. There is no patent or copyright getting in the way of innovation here"
The reason all those exist is because a bunch of different companies are battling to push their technologies forwards. The patent wars between them are costing billions, and that cost trickles down to the consumer. Where is the money going? To the lawyers, of course.
"200ms is the time it takes to connect from a remote location almost anywhere on the internet today."
Thanks very much. How long does it take to bring a product to market? Months. Sometimes even years.
"No, they had no need for them - they had communication at the speed of a man walking"
Not the case when they lived in the same city, as was the case in ancient Athens for example. Cue in Socrates stopping Plato from writing his dialogues... No, wait...
"That is true, but it is also true that there is no indication that there is any significant impediment put in place by the system. As I said, Mike will toss up his needlessly complicated "patent thicket" graphic every so often to try to make a point, but he rarely addresses the facts of rapid development of cell and smart phones."
I dunno, could the rapid development of those things can be because it's driven by the market? A huge market for smart phones was discovered, and a bunch of companies are trying to fill that market. Simple as that. As for the "patent thicket", it's there regardless of what you think of Mike's (or anyone else's) diagrams.
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Without patent or copyright, people would simply copy someone else's idea, and wouldn't have the need to be creative, original or innovative.
This is the simplest concept in the world, yet you people want to ignore it. Because you somehow think piracy will be saved if you can just get rid of copyright.
Which isn't going to happen. :)
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Bringing a product to market is not done overnight. Even if you are just copying somebody else's product, it can take months until you have something for sale in shops. Keep in mind all the relevant considerations, including marketing and even the strength of your competitor's brand by the time you enter the market.
Also remember that the more complex a product is, the longer it takes to reverse-engineer. Simple innovations that are not really worth anything will be easily copyable, but larger innovations will take skilled labour and significantly more time.
And in case you haven't noticed, I've been talking about patents. :)
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I think you place yourself in a very tiny minority when you say that creativity does not happen without intellectual property. Are you alleging that the creative human spirit that powered ancient times and the renaissance has been killed off by patents and copyright? How, in your opinion, has human nature changed since then?
"This is the simplest concept in the world, yet you people want to ignore it. Because you somehow think piracy will be saved if you can just get rid of copyright."
Again, I think that even most supporters of the current IP system would disagree with your assertion that people "wouldn't have the need to be creative, original or innovative..." if we didn't have patents or copyright, so I hardly think that it's "the simplest concept in the world." Rather, the simplicity lies, most likely, in your understanding of the subject. Since the vast majority of recorded history disagrees with you, you might want to revise that statement so that we can begin a substantive discussion.
Are there any other IP supporters who want to express their support for such a simple truth?
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Innovation, ultimately, is sparked and guided by our imagination and wants. And the best place to apply our efforts is in those directions. To expend work on *avoiding* artificial barriers is effort wasted, wholly unneededly.
New things are created because people *want* to make new things. Where work is devoted to re-inventing things that could otherwise easily be copied is effort and resources wasted.
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In order to encourage more than just a few people from coming up with ideas on their own, incentives must exist. People demand incetives, it's human nature.
And the greatest incentive to the human race is money. You might not like it, but it's a cold hard fact.
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A larger cost, you mean.
Communication of info and ideas is good. So as tech allows us to do more of it that is a real gain. Yet IP, by definition, obstructs the flow and use of info. The more we *can* communicate info, the more gain IP is obstructing.
The difference between the actual distribution and the desired possible distribution equals the loss to the public due to copyright. And as that possible distribution increases, the loss is greater.
Of course it is completely normal to wholly ignore that side of it: IP is for paying corporations plenty of money, and that is it. But when you *do* take care to remember the basic premise of IP -- that it is a tradeoff of *two* good things -- you inevitably reach a different conclusion. The increase in ease of copying does *not* simply mean *more* restriction is right. It means the essential tradeoff is ever more unreconcilable, and the basic mechanism is ever more broken.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Feb 11th, 2011 @ 2:51pm
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And he, of course, will not be able to stamp it with his seal of approval fast enough. He probably won't bother reading it after he sees who sent it.
As such, the next logical step would be to request the ability to order nuclear strikes on countries that make the Special 301 report. They'd probably get that, too.
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Lobbying by US Chamber of Commerce
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UCA has replaced USA
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