Sent this response regarding: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117467297446947016.html REAL TIME By JASON FRY Consumers Stay Out in Copyright Cold Decision Ruling Against Cablevision's Remote DVR Elevates Tech Fetishism Over Helping Consumers (...which was forwarded by Fitz.) From kfogel Mon Mar 26 02:42:47 -0700 2007 Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2007 02:42:47 -0700 Message-Id: <878xdkbaso.fsf@red-bean.com> From: Karl Fogel To: Jason Fry Bcc: fitz@red-bean.com Subject: Re: Consumers Stay Out in Copyright Cold Reply-To: Karl Fogel Thank you for your piece "Consumers Stay Out in Copyright Cold" in the March 26, 2007 Wall Street Journal. It did a great job of focusing attention on the palpable harm done by overly-restrictive copyright. In response to your question: > Who speaks for us when these laws are made and these cases come before > judges? Why are we reduced to hoping the interests of a cable company, > radio conglomerate or Internet giant temporary align with our own? How > much more of this must we endure before some fairness is restored? And > when that day finally arrives -- if it does at all -- what will we > have lost? In 2006, QuestionCopyright.org went around Chicago with a video camera, interviewing people in the street about copyright. You can see the results at http://www.questioncopyright.org/node/10. What we found confirmed what we've been hearing informally for years: people sincerely believe copyright is how creative artists make a living (even though it's not), and that the right to "own" your work -- that is, to permanently control who can and can't make copies -- is natural and timeless (even though copyright is a relatively recent invention, and descended from a censorship law). People also feel that copyright is largely about protection from plagiarism, even though plagiarism is a non-issue in filesharing cases, since they revolve around attributed copies. What all this means, unfortunately, is that today's copyright laws may be an example of democracy working as designed. We have the DMCA and similar laws not because our legislatures are bought, or hoodwinked by lobbyists, but because constituents truly believe that firm, long-term control over distribution is necessary to support content creation. The good news is that this myth is starting to crumble, as people gain experience with the geyser of creativity available on the Internet, and see that it shows no signs of slowing down despite rampant filesharing. But it won't be enough merely to have someone speaking "for" the people in this debate. The people -- all of us -- need to understand that copyright was designed to support a particular distribution mechanism, and that with distribution costs dropping inexorably toward zero, drastic changes to copyright will best serve the public good. These changes would probably include much shorter terms (on the order of a few years), greatly expanded fair use rights, and much broader rights to make derivative works with or without the permission of the original work's author. But my point is not that a particular set of policy recommendations is gospel, it's that there is a vast gulf between the facts of copyright and what the public believes about copyright. As the public gains better knowledge about modern copyright's effects, however, they will become increasingly skeptical of the more extreme claims made by the content-owning conglomerates. Thanks again for your article, and I hope you continue drawing attention to the underlying issue here: the public good. -Karl Fogel Editor, QuestionCopyright.org