Open Letter To Key EU Copyright Working Group Calls For 'Balanced Representation Of Views'

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Back in January, we wrote about the report from the Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda, which made a number of bold but sensible proposals for reforming the EU's 2001 copyright directive. Not surprisingly, the lobbyists have been hard at work, and no less than 556 amendments to the report have been proposed (pdf), many of them clearly aiming to undermine some of Reda's ideas completely -- for example, those seeking to rein in DRM. One of the important players in the revision process is the European Parliament's Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright Reform, which describes itself as follows:

The aim of the Working Group is to reflect on IPR issues and especially to pave the way to the upcoming reform of the EU legal framework on copyright. The Working Group will meet once a month and will exchange views with the widest range of stakeholders and civil society. The result of the work would serve as a starting point for future legislative review in the field and would enable Members to present concrete and innovative proposals to the European Commission.

Of course, one of the problems with reform in this area is that rarely do lawmakers engage with "the widest range of stakeholders and civil society": instead, they tend to listen to what the copyright industries tell them, and act accordingly. Hoping to head off that risk this time, a group of industry and civil society groups has sent an open letter to the coordinator of the Working Group (pdf), Jean-Marie Cavada, calling for a more balanced representation of views. Here's the key section (found via Netzpolitik):

We would like to express our concern with regard to the lack of diversity of expert speakers and the corresponding representation of views. In the digital age, copyright impacts a great variety of stakeholders. Apart from established copyright industries and authors, it is of great relevance to citizens, consumers, cultural heritage institutions, libraries, researchers, universities and the Internet industries. It is also of fundamental importance to creators who are taking advantage of new, digital opportunities and who are not represented by traditional copyright industries.

In that context, we call on the WG to make sure that these views are appropriately represented in the upcoming meetings. Making copyright rules future-proof requires a holistic approach. This can only be achieved if the full spectrum of stakeholders is adequately represented and given a chance to speak in front of Members of Parliament who will ultimately be tasked with passing new copyright legislation.

That pre-emptive call is a shrewd move: it makes the Working Group's coordinator aware that people are watching carefully who exactly he calls to give their views. Whether it succeeds in producing a more balanced representation is another matter.

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Filed Under: copyright, copyright reform, eu, industry, public, reform

London School Of Economics Study Shows, Yet Again, That The Music Industry Is Thriving, Not Dying

from the how-many-more-times? dept

As you may recall, a few years ago, we published a report called The Sky is Rising, which showed how -- contrary to the claims of some -- the entertainment industry was growing (and even thriving) over the past decade or so. More content was being produced, more money was being spent, and artists were able to make more money. We did note, however, that there was a lot more competition, since the barrier to entry was much lower, and the avenues from which the money came were often shifting. That meant that overall, the industry was thriving, and in terms of cultural richness, the public was much better off. However, for some artists, things were certainly a lot more challenging. For many other artists, though, things are much, much better. We weren't the only ones to come to such a conclusion. In many ways we had built on earlier research in the UK (done by PRS for Music), Canada, Sweden and Norway that all showed the same basic thing: if you actually added up all the revenue in the music world, it had continued to grow, not shrink. Yes, recorded music revenue was down (often significantly), but that is only one part of the industry.

It's great to see yet another report make this point, and this one coming from researchers at the prestigious London School of Economics. In many ways, the report covers similar ground, highlighting that the overall music industry continues to grow, that copyright infringement isn't killing the industry, and that policy recommendations -- especially things like the Digital Economy Act -- need to look more closely at what's happening, rather than listening to the moaning and whining of one particular group of special interests in that community. The report includes the following chart: Which looks remarkably similar to other charts we've highlighted in the past -- like this one from Canada: Or this one from Norway: Or this one from Sweden: Point being: the data have been shown over and over and over and over again and yet we still have people insisting that copyright infringement is decimating the music industry. It's not. It may be making it difficult for record labels who focused exclusively on recorded music sales for revenue, and it may be making it challenging for musicians who aren't used to competing in this market. And those are legitimate questions to raise and to think about. But, we still hear people -- often entertainment industry execs/lobbyists and politicians -- insisting that copyright infringement is somehow decimating these industries. It's not. It's changing them. Sometimes in ways that are challenging to certain parts of that industry, but not in a way that harms the public, or the creation of content. Instead, it's quite the opposite.

The report from the LSE goes even further, highlighting what a disaster policies that focus on ratcheting up enforcement have been in terms of actually having an impact on the overall industry. It also points out that the industry tends to rely on studies it created itself. The report also highlights the growth of things like Creative Commons, and how tools like Soundcloud have resulted in massive output in creativity as people build new works. Its key recommendation is as follows:

We recommend a review of the DEA and related legislation that strikes a healthy balance among the interests of a range of stakeholders including those in the creative industries, Internet Service Providers and internet users. Fitting the digital sharing culture and new forms of cultural production into a copyright enforcement model that is out of touch with today’s online culture will only suppress innovation and dampen growth.

It further suggests "broader fair use/fair dealing provisions, proposals for private copying exceptions" and a focus on targeting businesses, rather than individuals for any enforcement actions.

While there may not be much new in this report compared to other reports (including our own), it's great to see this point being highlighted yet again, and from such a prestigious university. Hopefully the point will finally start to sink in with policy makers.

Filed Under: copyright, growing, industry, london school of economics, music

Survey: Most Italian Internet Users Think Ignoring Copyright Harms Publishers, But Not Society As A Whole

from the hearing-from-the-other-side dept

One of the heartening recent developments in the world of digital copyright is that we have moved on from manifestly biased surveys about the evils of piracy and how the solution to everything is harsher punishment for infringement and longer copyright terms, to independent analyses that seek to understand rather than judge and lecture. There's also been a new focus on learning what the public thinks might be an appropriate balance for modern copyright -- something that nobody cared about in the past.

Here's an example of the latter from the Italian lawyer and academic, Simone Aliprandi, building on work done for his PhD thesis. It's a survey of the attitudes of around 1,300 Italian Internet users to copyright, which explores a number of interesting -- and controversial -- areas (original in Italian). For example, it asked whether Italians online think copyright law trumps the rights of users who wish to use existing materials as a jumping off point for further creativity. Here's what Aliprandi found:

The first of the two questions shows a rather unbalanced distribution [of answers] tending towards disagreement, with 41% in complete disagreement and almost 30% in partial disagreement, which means that more than 70% of respondents were not in agreement with the idea that copyright must be respected even at the cost of limiting new ways of making use of content.

Another key question probed what respondents thought about the harm, if any, that using copyright material freely caused:

sections offered various statement about the real harm caused by the widespread practice of using copyright material freely. The first, which can be summarized as "this phenomenon damages mainly the creators", saw a nearly symmetric response, from which it is not possible to deduce the overall view of respondents, who show themselves divided equally between those who agree and those who disagree.

By contrast, the second [statement] shows a net imbalance of replies, with more than 70% of respondents who agreed with the idea that this phenomenon mainly damages the publishers. When instead the statement "this phenomenon damages the socio-economic fabric" was posed, the replies are distributed in a mirror fashion compared to the previous question, with almost 65% disagreeing.

This mirroring is one of the most interesting pieces of information to emerge from the research: basically, respondents are saying on the one hand that they are aware that using copyright material freely harms the publishers more than the creators, while on the other hand they don't agree that this causes damage to the socio-economic fabric (an assumption that forms the leitmotiv of almost all the campaigns against so-called "piracy".)

The rest of the research provides other interesting information about the attitudes of Italian Internet users in this area, and it's a pity it's unlikely to reach a wide audience in its original Italian. Nonetheless, it's a welcome addition to the growing library of such reports from around the world that provide insights into what the forgotten stakeholder in the copyright debate -- the public -- really feels, does and wants.

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Filed Under: copyright, economics, harm, industry, italy, publishers

USTR Only Wants To Hear From You If Some Foreign Country Isn't Maximalist Enough

from the biasing-the-comments dept

For years, we've pointed out how ridiculous the USTR's Special 301 Report is. The report, which the USTR is required to put out each year, is basically a chance for copyright and patent maximalists to launder their complaints about certain countries through the USTR, allowing such complaints to get the official stamp of the US government, such that diplomats can pressure countries to implement really bad laws. The whole thing is a joke. Everyone admits that there is no actual objective process that the USTR uses to figure out who has been "naughty" and who has been "nice" when it comes to intellectual property laws. There is just the USTR going through submissions from copyright and patent maximalists, and deciding who has been named enough to be shamed.

Three years ago, we actually tried participating in the open comment period and submitted a comment highlighting the value of not creating a monoculture of maximalism around the globe on these issues, and why merely stamping the industry's claims as legit was probably not a good idea. The end result? The same exact crap as before. Given that this seems to be standard operating procedure for the USTR (and, it's only gotten worse with things like ACTA and TPP), I've not even bothered to submit comments any more. However, if anyone would care to try, the comment period is open through Friday... but it's interesting to note that the instructions for commenting already show that the USTR doesn't want to hear from you. It's really quite incredible. The very explanation of what they're asking for pre-supposes a whole bunch of things, and effectively says "only use this to complain about countries who haven't done enough to help your industry -- that's all we want to hear about."

USTR requests that interested persons identify those countries that deny adequate and effective protection for intellectual property rights or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property protection.

What about comments from people pointing out countries whose copyright and patent policies are too protective? Not wanted?

Written comments should include a description of the problems that the submitter has experienced and the effect of the acts, policies, and practices on U.S. industry.

Not the US public. Not on US culture. Just on US industry. Yes, the USTR is focused on industry, but the very purpose of copyright and patent law is supposed to be to benefit the public. Shouldn't their interests matter?

In other words, the USTR doesn't care about the public or your interests. All it wants to know is how it can better force other countries into over-protectionist policies that benefit a few legacy industries. You can still submit your own comments, but it seems pretty clear that they don't want to hear from you.

Filed Under: comments, copyright, industry, maximalism, patents, public, special 301 report, ustr

As BPI Tries To Block The Pirate Bay From The UK, Dan Bull Explains Why Musicians Should Block BPI

from the tpb-v-bpi dept

With Newzbin2 getting censored in the UK, BPI -- basically, the UK wing of the RIAA -- has been looking to have courts order many more sites blocked, with The Pirate Bay being target number one. Dan Bull, the UK-based musician who we've written about many times for his consistently awesome songs about the music industry, file sharing, copyright laws and the like has now put together another wonderful song, called Bye Bye BPI. You can watch it here: Like his SOPA Cabana song, Dan had a bunch of his Facebook followers participate in the video by taking pictures of themselves with the various lyrics. This time, since the song is about why musicians don't need (and don't want) the BPI, he sought out musicians to take part in the video, so everyone you see is a musician who doesn't need BPI. Yes, they're mostly amateur musicians, but the point of the video is that it's misleading to suggest that BPI supports musicians. It supports a tiny percentage of musicians. The rest get along just fine without, and wish that it wouldn't muck around with the technology everyone else uses.

Oh yeah. It's also worth noting that Dan's got a new album coming out, which (of course) you can download for free. You can also buy it to show that you support the artists you like.

* Bonus points if you can spot our own Leigh Beadon in the video somewhere.

Filed Under: dan bull, industry, music
Companies: bpi

House Judiciary Committee SOPA Hearings Stacked 5 To 1 In Favor Of Censoring The Internet

from the what-are-they-afraid-of dept

Apparently the folks behind SOPA are really scared to hear from the opposition. We all expected that the Judiciary Committee hearings wouldn't be a fair fight. In Congress, they rarely are fair fights. But most people expected the typical "three in favor, one against" weighted hearings. That's already childish, but it seems that the Judiciary Committee has decided to take the ridiculousness to new heights. We'd already mentioned last week that the Committee had rejected the request of NetCoalition to take part in the hearings. At the time, we'd heard that the hearings were going to be stacked four-to-one in favor of SOPA. However, the latest report coming out of the Committee is that they're so afraid to actually hear about the real opposition that they've lined up five pro-SOPA speakers and only one "against."

Why is the Judiciary Committee so afraid to hear the concerns of the wider internet industry?

The five "pro" speakers are the Register of Copryights, someone from the MPAA, someone from Pfizer, someone from MasterCard, and someone from the AFL-CIO. The choice of MasterCard is deliberate, since Visa is against the bill -- because Visa recognizes that supporting a bill that requires them to cut off customers based on accusations of infringement is going to be a huge burden, and one that isn't good for their own customers.

Furthermore, the "one" against SOPA is going to be Google. This is a strategic choice, because the pro-SOPA folks know that Google is easy to dismiss on this topic, because they'll claim (not accurately) that Google just wants to profit from infringement. Google is already under a lot of scrutiny in Congress, and so it makes it much easier for pro-SOPA supporters to say that "ah, the only opposition is Google." And, yet, that's not true. Companies throughout the tech and internet industries have expressed concerns. Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, eBay and over 160 startups have all come out against the bill. This isn't "just a Google issue." This is an issue of the entertainment industry trying to change the fundamental legal and technical framework for how the internet has functioned -- and in doing so, creating tons of liability and compliance costs for the part of the economy that is growing and has been creating jobs. Just because Hollywood is jealous, doesn't mean that they should get to use Congress to punish the industry that's doing well.

Either way, it's quite stunning that the Committee has decided to go so far in stacking the deck, and it shows just how unwilling they are to hear the real concerns about the bill.

Filed Under: copyright, fairness, hearings, industry, lamar smith, sopa
Companies: afl-cio, google, mastercard, mpaa, pfizer

Double Standard On The Special 301 Report: Industry Is Allowed Vague, Unsupported Statements; Consumer Advocates Are Not

from the funny-how-that-works dept

We've already pointed out the general ridiculousness associated with the USTR's "Special 301" report, which is widely regarded as a joke. The report, which allows the administration to name which countries have been "naughty" when it comes to intellectual property enforcement, has no methodology. It has no objective measures. It has no accountability. Basically, industry groups submit their own reports on what countries are bad, and the USTR rewrites them as its own report, doing nothing to actually fact check the claims or to even quantify anything. In the past couple of years, the USTR has been more open about having consumer rights organizations -- and even consumers themselves -- submit their own reports, but there's been little indication that anyone at the USTR has actually listened to any of those reports.

And, in a rather striking demonstration of how this all works, Stan McCoy, from the USTR (and apparently a top candidate to take over the Copyright Office, despite not being an expert in copyright law), presided over hearings concerning the Special 301 report recently, in which both industry groups and consumer groups appeared. Yet, as one observer noted, McCoy appeared to have a total double-standard concerning how he viewed the comments of each:

The burden of proof was very obviously on the public interest, civil society groups. Stan McCoy of the USTR, who was presiding over the hearing, joked about the two-phonebook-sized submission by the International Intellectual Property Alliance. (Lol?) Sadly, there is no independent verification of these industry reports and there were no tough questions for industry regarding their testimony. Several times, McCoy interrupted civil society groups’ testimony to chide them on speaking too generally about IP policy, but refrained when industry witnesses did the same.

Testimony from groups like Global Health Organization, the Forum on Democracy and Trade, Oxfam, Public Knowledge, and others were met with aggressive push back and questioning on how criticism on the Special 301 process was at all relevant to the committee’s ability to render judgments on individual countries.

But that’s exactly the problem. The report is written so vaguely, and industry complaints taken at such face value, that specific criticism of the report is near impossible. I was surprised to learn that the report doesn’t include a list of criteria used to evaluate countries or even clear explanations on why specific countries are placed on the watch list, nor does it say which industry-submitted comments were the basis for citation.

So if you're from industry, it's absolutely fine to make vague, totally unsubstantiated statements -- even if they've been widely debunked by actual experts and researchers. Yet, if you're representing consumers, you need to have specific points to make or you get chided. And, of course, you can't make any actual specific points because the USTR doesn't have any specific criteria on which it bases the overall report. Brilliant.

Also, it appears that McCoy is somewhat uninformed about his own organization's report (which he is closely connected with):

The best moment of the hearing, to me, was during Sean Flynn's testimony on behalf of the Forum on Democracy and Trade. Flynn argued (for the second year in a row, I might add) that citing countries like Finland, France, Italy, and Japan for "unfair [pharmaceutical] reimbursement policies" was incredibly vague, hypocritical (because the US has similar reimbursement policies), and--most importantly--outside the statutory mandate of the Special 301 process. McCoy retorted that no such citation was in the 2010 report [pdf].

Flynn’s response? "It's right here on page 14..."

And people wonder why foreign governments, and many of us who pay attention to these issues, consider the Special 301 process to make a mockery of the US government on intellectual property issues.

Filed Under: consumer rights, copyright, industry, politics, special 301, stan mccoy, ustr

Why The Major Labels Continually Fail To Adapt: They Can't Take The Risk

from the too-much-risk dept

The site Hypebot is running an excellent interview with Lee Parsons, the CEO of Ditto Music, where he succinctly explains why new music distribution strategies will win (and are already winning), as well as why the major labels have failed so miserably to adapt. Here's a snippet:

Record companies cannot look into problems from a fresh, artist based angle. Problems are often solved but not in the way they were intended...

Shawn Fanning created Napster firstly for his own purpose. The new music models embrace as much technology and revolution as they can contain in a chaotic attempt to find a new and better path. Revolutionaries are prepared to make mistakes on the way; labels do not have this luxury. Many battles win a war, likewise through constant chaotic growth, development will come. Developing a new model for a major label is fuelled with risk so it is more likely they will continue to look for ways of containing technological advancement rather than embracing it as a new way of income....

The labels by being at war with the revolutionaries set themselves up as "The Bad Guy." Major label fat cats aren't going to convince a 9 yr old kid that sharing a song is wrong just because it affects their jobs.

People LOVE free music. Free music is always going to win.

By continuing with their argument instead of reaching out to new technology they push themselves even further behind in public opinion.

Unfortunately it isn't as simple as the "home taping will kill music" argument they thought it might be because the advancement of technology has overtaken even the revolutionaries' expectations. For a new generation of people music is now free. You CAN'T fight that.

You can't fight it, but you can embrace it. Unfortunately, as Parsons notes, the major labels, for the most part, are unable to embrace it because to them it still looks too risky. The problem for them, however, is that others are embracing it, and are willing to take the risks, and by the time "what works" is totally figured out, it'll likely be way too late for the majors to make the jump. Anyway, the whole interview is worth reading. Go check it out (and the link above is only for part I -- which has now been continued with part II).

Filed Under: industry, lee parsons, music, record labels, risk

Should We Be Interested In 'Saving' Any Industry?

from the forward-or-backwards dept

We hear it all the time, whenever anyone talks about an industry being "destroyed" by new technologies: "how do we save x industry?" where "x" can stand for "recording" or "news" or "movies" or whatever. We saw it just recently when a professor wanted to "save" the newspaper industry by changing copyright law in ridiculous ways. It's also why we jokingly called our last event "Techdirt Saves* Journalism." The whole concept of "saving" an industry is so preposterous, which is why we wanted to mock it with the title of our event. I was reminded of this when reading this recap of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) event, where Dan Gillmor was quoted saying:

"I'm not even slightly interested in saving the industry."

And it got me thinking about understanding the mindset of "saving" an industry more deeply. The truth is, whenever anyone seriously (not mockingly) refers to "saving" an industry, invariably, they're really talking about saving a few legacy companies in that industry from whatever disruptive innovation is shaking things up. It's never actually about "saving an industry," because the "industry" almost never actually needs to be saved. The industry may be in the process of being changed (often radically), but that's not the same thing as needing saving.

What's telling is that, through all of this, you almost never hear start-ups talking about asking for help trying to "save the industry" that they're in. That's because they know "the industry" is just fine, and in all of the upheaval there's really tremendous opportunity. So, anytime anyone talks seriously about "saving" any particular industry, challenge them on what they really mean, and see if they're actually just talking about saving a few companies, rather than saving an actual "industry."

Filed Under: industry, progress, protectionism, saving