"Assume Impositions"

 
Copyright Law Must Die

About a week ago, the RIAA filed yet another bundle of lawsuits (537 of them, to be precise) against yet another cohort of Internet file sharers. This act was not prominently featured in national news, apparently because the RIAA's lawsuits against file-sharers have become part of the nation's political landscape, just as surely as the practice of file-sharing itself.

Technology and politics may have reached an uneasy balance. People continue to file-share music in record numbers, and the escalating popularity of Bittorrent and similar programs may well create the same effect with motion pictures. It would appear, then, that Americans like this technology. Record companies, on the other hand, despise it, as their frenzied attempts at lobbying and the recent flurries of lawsuits would seem to suggest.

When two vital interests are in opposition like this, ferocious political battles are generally around the corner. But no lobby for file-sharers has emerged. The assumption appears to be that filesharing is theft, and that no responsible politician would ever lend his good name to such crass injustice.

Personally, I think that's sad. There really SHOULD be a massive political fight over this issue, and the question of just who's "stealing" what from whom.

The preamble to the 1909 Copyright Act (which, by the way, set a maximum copyright period of 56 years in total) described the purpose of copyright law as a balancing act, which it described succinctly:

"The main object to be desired in expanding copyright protection accorded to music has been to give the composer an adequate return for the value of his composition. . .and at the same time prevent the formation of oppressive monopolies, which might be founded upon the very rights granted to the composer for the purpose of protecting his interests" (H.R. Rep. No. 2222, 60th Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 7 [1909]).

America's first explicit copyright law, the Copyright Act of 1790, granted authors copyright protection for a period of fourteen years, with a right to renew for another fourteen. That's a 28 year maximum.

The duration of copyright protection was gradually extended, and at present provides copyright protection for the life of the artist plus 70 years.

In spite of the rapid expansion of the media market, which one might assume makes it possible for artists to receive "adequate compensation" for their work more quickly than was the case in the past, copyright holders have spent generations in rapaciously extending and expanding the period of copyright protection. If bluntly asked, I suspect record company executives would say that the appropriate length of a copyright, to offer them a bare minimum assurance of their rights, would be approximately from now until the end of time, when the last stars flicker and grow cold in the heat death of the universe.

Good for them; but why are they the only lobby on this issue?

Intellectual property is not sacred writ. There are many different ways of balancing rights.

Compare and contrast the copyright regime with patent law. Under patent law, new inventions are only protected for 20 years from the date the patent was filed. Mere design patents (innovations to the shape or appearance of an item) are protected for only 15 years.

So get this: twenty years of patent protection is sufficient incentive for Intel to sink billions of dollars into chip design, and for pharmaceutical companies to sink tens of billions of dollars into developing new drugs. . . but we're to believe that more than five times as much copyright protection is required to keep Britney Spears and N'Sync at the grindstone?

Personally, I hope the RIAA keeps filing these law suits, and really pisses some people off. The only reason that there's no pro-file-sharing lobby is because it's so childishly easy to circumvent the law (assuming that peer-to-peer file-sharing is, in fact illegal, which is a whole other issue) that lobbying to change the law seems like wasted effort. Also, millions of P2P filesharers are inherently disorganized. The RIAA is a single unified lobby.

Society obviously needs some sort of copyright regime to function; but the RIAA and others who bewail the immorality of society should look inward and wonder whether there'd be more public support for their position if they were a bit less rapacious in their lobbying efforts.
posted by Proconsul at 7:46 PM

 
Well, Glad That Other Shoe Dropped. . .

This morning, George W. Bush (affectionately known through the Blogosphere as "Baby Awol") shocked absolutely nobody with a televised announcement that the United States Constitution isn't good enough for us, because "judicial activists" stand poised to grant equal rights to gay people, even as we speak!

Well. . . who can blame him? I suppose the only way to keep these shadowy activists from using the Constitution from giving equal rights to people is to change the Constitution so it doesn't.

The open question, though, is how this spasm of bigotry will affect the Presidential race. Poll numbers at present appear to favor the Bush Amendment (as I suggest we all call this fine piece of lawmaking; let History's blame fall true), but Certain people are apt to spend a lot of time crowing about their victory in public, and I think the press should rush to give them all the airtime they could possibly want.

Generally speaking the Republicans fare worst when they go public as the party of bigots and bloated, evil plutocrats. . . but then this Administration has broken ground in terms of showing the country just how far a good Republican can go to enrich the wealthy without anyone lowering the boom on him. Perhaps the bigot branch of the GOP thinks it's time they got a big fat slice of the pie as well.


posted by Proconsul at 12:16 PM

 
The bullets were flying before the second half of the Superbowl had even begun. How, CBS executives wanted to know, could such a travesty have occurred? In a family broadcast, aired (in California, at least) in the dinner hour, whether through careless omission or malicious design, a terrible and tragic thing was allowed to happen. For the first time in Superbowl history. . . perhaps even in the entire history of the NFL, a halftime show had been broadcast that was entertaining!.

Worse: it had been sexy! In a sporting event intended to be dominated by the sight of grown men clutching at one another's ponderous, quivering, spandex-clad buttocks, a female breast had been displayed. Worse. . . oh, even worse than that. . . the breast had a nipple, and the nipple was pierced!

Heaven itself would have trembled, if the arena's ceiling had been left open. As if Kid Rock desecrating the Flag and saying "Methadone" wasn't enough of an affront, must Americans be subjected to the sight of Janet Jackson's nipple? At the whims of Justin Timberlake, of all people?

Needless to say, the phone lines were immediately deluged with complaints, CBS solemnly reported, from viewers shocked by the travesty. MTV, they intoned, would be "unlikely to be invited to produce a halftime show ever again."

Justin Timberlake was a picture of contrition, blaming a "wardrobe failure" for the "incident," as if the O-rings holding Jackson's outfit together had sequentially failed, or her bra-strap had been struck by a falling piece of insulation.

Viacom was unmollified, blaming MTV and ruing their inability to protect their helpless audience from a .3 second glimpse of Jackson's jiggly bits.

Who, I wonder, are these people who "flood the phone lines with complaints?" Do you have a phone number for CBS on hand? The vision that comes leaping to mind is a legion of crotchety old codgers, ever vigilant for a hint of tits, ass, or profanity, their arthritic hands poised and ready to dial like a striking lightning bolt of Jove.

Personally, I wish I'd had the foresight to get that number, whatever the hell it is, so that I could call them just as quickly to say, "Hey! Nice piercing! Bring MTV back next year!"

Actually. . . maybe that's a good idea in general. Call it the "Legion of Indecency." Every time there's some nudity, profanity, or sex on television, we could "flood the phone lines" with complements and thanks for all the awesome nudity.

Otherwise, these stupid network gits will never, ever learn. The sooner Viacom realizes that Janet Jackson's nipple is not a public safety threat, the better the likelihood that there may, possibly, some day, be a Superbowl halftime show worth watching.
posted by Proconsul at 3:30 PM

 
Nothing like not posting for a year to make me want to. . . post something. Like a brief statement about how I haven't posted for a year.

I'm working (I know- this is so original) on a novel that I'm trying to get into a first draft form. It's kind of a treatment of the quintessential Revolution, the way that Lord of the Rings was a treatment of the quintessential Just War. Odds are, it's never going to be finished, and if it *is* finished, it's probably going to suck.

Days like this make me wish I was a political fanatic of some sort. Fanatics have it made. They know what they believe in, and they know what they need to do.

Likewise drug addicts, come to think of it. There was a line about that in Trainspotting, something like, "Nothing brings mental clarity like a good, sincere addiction."

And religion. And gambling. And probably drinking.

Just my bad fortune to have pitiful *little* addictions that don't provide directions. It's like running a mosquito farm.



posted by Proconsul at 3:19 PM

 
In 1986, one week ago today, the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff. Six hours ago, the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart in a shockingly familiar spread of white skeletal fingers, as it bore seven astronauts home. The two disasters seem almost to form an arc, lead to the horrible thought that the Challenger, at last, has come home.

When that earlier disaster happened, I was in French class. A teacher from another room rushed in and told us about it, and my initial reaction was incredulous disbelief. In the world of 1986, things like that just didn't happen. Symbols of science and progress and order functioned as advertised; and the death of seven astronauts was a tragedy. The news mourned them for what seemed like forever; we were told that this would be a defining moment for our generation, our Kennedy Assassination. The one day in our lives when we would all, forever and always, remember where we had been.

Of all the happy lies I grew up believing, the death of that one hurts the most.

We have fallen quite far since then. The world where exploding space shuttles is historic has passed away, slipped beneath the waters, and vanished. Against the backdrop of terrors past and wars yet to come, this does not stand out. It's almost expected. It's news.

It's a latecomer, noisily getting taking its seat in a crowded theater of tragedies already hungrily watching us, halfway into the second act. And even the details of the disaster don't stand on their own. They are woven through with the spirit of the age. The image of the Israeli payload specialist, framed with the crew between the American and Israeli flags, makes us wonder: what will this mean for the Middle East? We see the craters, staked out by the Department of Homeland Security, and we wonder: how did they get so much power?

While we were sleeping, the skies have changed. We have entered an age of crisis, akin to the buildup that preceded the Civil War and World War II. We may not have known it, but for some time now there has been an empty seat at our tables. We have reserved that space for tragedy, preparing ourselves without knowing it for disasters yet to come.

We are not the Americans we were in 1986, and this is not their country. When we are asked, as we may or may not be, where we were when the Columbia disaster happened, many of us will not be able to tell them. Many more, without that clue, will be unable to recall that the second shuttle to explode was in fact the Challenger. Too much has intervened; there are too many marks on the canvas.

This has been a harsh century for Americans, thus far. A century of lessons learned, commencing with a Decade of Limits. On this day of endings, I plan to reflect on the deaths of those seven brave men and women, on the grief of their families, and on the future of this country and the world.

But even more than that, I wonder at all that we've lost, how many hopes and dreams and certainties, on how much has quietly slipped away without our knowing.

posted by Proconsul at 12:16 PM

 
I keep wondering what happened to Suck.com. Actually, if you read Pravda's website, I have a suspicion they all migrated there.
posted by Proconsul at 8:53 PM