Law
Fight the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act
I wrote my representatives:
The “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” introduced by Senators Leahy and Hatch to shut down internet sites accused of violating copyright is fundamentally unacceptable and must be blocked. It is predicated on three failed precepts.
First:
The law would provide for expedited prior restraint of free speech based on a claim of infringement. This extends the already over-broad powers granted by the DMCA, which has been used to silence political opposition (e.g. John McCain’s DMCA takedown of a critical video on YouTube) and shut down legitimate criticism of corporate and financial interests. This bill will further erode free speech in America and thus further delegitimize democracy itself.
Second:
The bill provides for in rem actions against a web site. In rem actions have become one of the most popular mechanisms which police forces have used to enrich themselves by taking legal action against private property (e.g. USA v. $124,700 (2006)). This has lead to massive corruption and even the murder of innocent people (e.g. Donald P. Scott 1992). In rem cases should be limited to acceptable legal situations where the owner cannot be identified, not as a method of prior restraint or as an extrajudicial shortcut that effectively extorts compliance from the target by creating an excessive cost barrier to seeking real justice.
Third:
The bill promotes the fiction that copyright law is a property law. It is not. Limited monopolies on the fruits of inventions are offered to inventors to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. These monopolies are in the form of copyrights and patents. There is no constitutional basis for creating laws to protect the privilege of copyright beyond what can be proven to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. It is an offense to democracy to privilege profits over basic civil rights. American society would not suffer meaningfully without the copyright industry, but American democracy is meaningless without free speech. Unfortunately, the copyright industry leverages profits into campaign contributions and lobbyists while free speech is, by its nature, free and thus profitless. Free speech can only be defended from profiteers by patriots.
This bill must be blocked. Please stand up for democracy.
ACTA: Alliance for Covert Totalitarian Action
ACTA is apparently going into force this month, implementing still secret rules that will make everyone with an internet connection an international criminal in order to protect people with obsolete business models. Since the cost and value of publication, editorial review, and syndication have dropped to near zero thanks to the invention of broad direct distribution, the “recording” industry is obsolete. Why do we need an industry to make records when nobody buys records any more? The industry has changed business plans to extortion.
But the recording industry has historically made a lot of money and people with money hate giving it up and won’t do so without a fight. If the population won’t buy the recording industry’s products any more, choosing instead to shoulder the incremental cost of self-publication in a collaborative model, then the recording industry, naturally, turns to increasingly draconian efforts to preserve their revenue stream. It is far more cost-effective to co-opt the government and exploit public-funded investigatory and prosecutorial resources than to, say, pay private security to break into people’s houses and businesses: as a bonus working though the courts they can seize children’s college funds: keeping kids out of school means they won’t grow up to found competing industries. If there’s nobody left capable of innovating, there’s no point in the government enforcing that obsolete constitutional thing about “promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.”
Peer-to-peer communications and especially self-publication technologies have always been a threat to the copyright industry. The DMCA was a huge victory for a dead industry and helped preserve it well beyond any economic utility at a tremendous cost to innovation and progress. But the copyright industry may still win a losing battle by shifting the cost of prosecuting civil infringement to the public and other industries by creating a new class of crime: not optimizing copyright industry profits.
Fight ACTA
https://www.eff.org/issues/acta