FTC Wants To Straighten Out IP Law

coondoggie writes with this excerpt from NetworkWorld: "What do you get when you mix the government, the court system, company lawyers and Joe Consumer? A serious mess that would send most people screaming into the night. But the Federal Trade Commission is no such entity. It wants to straighten Intellectual Property (IP) out and today said it will hold a series of hearings — the first in Washington, DC on Dec. 5 — it will use to examine IP law and the myriad issues surrounding it. Interested bigwigs from the tech industry, including Cisco, Yahoo and the Computer & Communications Industry Association are expected to testify along with professors, lawyers and other industry players. The patent system has experienced significant change and more changes are under consideration, the FTC said." The FTC held some different, but related hearings this week which addressed topics such as copyright law and DRM interoperability. Transcripts, podcasts, and summaries of the talks are available on the FTC-hosted "Protecting Consumers in the Next Tech-ade" site.

BOHICA?

I sure hope the industry isn't colluding here and the government is looking out for our interests...

vc: buyers

One way to tell...

Do you see any mention of asking every day citizens whether they want to be able to copy a song from their friend? If not, it'll go industry's way.

Straighten out?

When did it go gay?

Re:

Right after they allowed software patents.

Re:Straighten out?

When Mickey Mouse was allowed to decide the duration of copyright.

Re:Minnie

Nonono..

Mickey and Minnie *were* married, but they got divorced a few years back. Disney did an awesome job of keeping it out of the press, but I got the following story from an insider:

While it was happening, Mickey went to his lawyer and explained why things weren't working out between them. He ranted for over an hour, and when he was finished, his lawyer said

"Well Mr. Mouse, while I can sympathize with you, I'm afraid you can't divorce your wife simply because you think she's a bit odd."

Mickey jumped up and shouted "No! I didn't say she was odd - I said she was fucking Goofy!"

Who wants to bet

that consumers and fair use get the short end of the stick at these hearings?

Those are easy odds to figure

Right from the summary:

Interested bigwigs from the tech industry, including Cisco, Yahoo and the Computer & Communications Industry Association are expected to testify along with professors, lawyers and other industry players

I don't see a mention of consumers, and since consumers don't pay for lawyers (except the few who defend IP suits) or professors (who's salaries are paid for by "research grants" from corporations), it sounds like this can only end in tears.

Re:Those are easy odds to figure

imagine putting the beneficiaries of any other taxation scheme in charge of the rates and revenue, without having to ever justify the cost.

Don't worry. They're just having committee hearings. These put two of the most useless concepts in human behavior (committee, meeting) together in one room. It's carefully designed so nothing of substance gets done.

That's for the little get together in the bar after the meeting.

Reminds me of one of the great lies...

One of the three big lies is "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you".

I'd remind you that every time the government gets involved in IP law at every level, it ends up worse for consumers. Every time. So you should be scared when you see this. We'll end up like crazy canadian laws where an entrenched monopoly gets a tax on anything that poses a threat to that monopoly (taxes on ipods, black CD's, and likely ISP taxes).

And that isn't the worst thing that could happen. The monopolies will be pushing for chips inside devices that can "tell" when media isn't authorized. In the name of helping the people of course.

I realize I'm giving worst case scenarios here, but ask yourself this... Is the FTC likely to say "Goodness, none of the current laws are very consumer friendly, therefore, copyright/patent will be reduced in time and scope, there can be no more DRM, and people should be able to use music and video wherever they want, whenever they want". Won't happen, because the FTC doesn't have the authority to make it better. They do have the authority to make things *worse* for consumers though in terms of mandates and taxes.

No thanks.

Re:Reminds me of one of the great lies...

We'll end up like crazy canadian laws where an entrenched monopoly gets a tax on anything that poses a threat to that monopoly (taxes on ipods, black CD's, and likely ISP taxes).

We have a levy on blank CDs, but nothing on iPods or internet service. I imagine many of us view the levy on CDs as a loophole of sorts that allows us to share as many songs as we want without any legal repercussions.

Re:Reminds me of one of the great lies...

We have a levy on blank CDs, but nothing on iPods or internet service. I imagine many of us view the levy on CDs as a loophole of sorts that allows us to share as many songs as we want without any legal repercussions.

What about those that purchase CDs for other legitimate means? I haven't burned music to a CD in years (on the order of a decade). Why should I have to pay a music tax on blank CDs that I'm only ever going to be using to distribute Linux?

Re:Reminds me of one of the great lies...

Why should I have to pay a music tax on blank CDs that I'm only ever going to be using to distribute Linux?

You shouldn't. However a great number of people in countries with a levy system against recordable media, HDD's and such have already decided that if they're being treated as a criminal they may as well be a criminal; and use the system to their advantage. Myself I'm against the mass-criminalization of society by something plenty of people do, nothing is gained except point out how broken or out of touch the law or government is.

20 years ago, no one really cared if you were out passing your mix tapes around. Now hell or high water it's the end of the world if you download an mp3.

A difference of scale

20 years ago, no one really cared if you were out passing your mix tapes around. Now hell or high water it's the end of the world if you download an mp3.

There's a difference of scale. Passing mix tapes took more labor per copy and was more limited in geographic scope than passing MP3s over the Internet is.

Re:Reminds me of one of the great lies...

"So you should be scared when you see this. "

Maybe. The FCC spent the last two administrations catering to every whim of broadcast media owners. Clear Channel wouldn't exist in its present form without their helping, deregulating hand. Broadcasters hate the extra fiscal burden of IP, so this may be a case in which consumers benefit as a side effect of catering to large corporation. Irrelevant but lucky.
How a federal body with an original mandate to regulate broadcast spectrum has any authority over IP law is another question.

Re:

How a federal body with an original mandate to regulate broadcast spectrum has any authority over IP law is another question.

I'm not sure about the FCC either; but the FTC has some authority over interstate commerce.

"Defensive IP" is a big part of the problem

"Defensive IP" is designed to be used as part of a counter-suit in the event that one big company sues another over IP infringement. This eventually gave birth to "IP Holding" companies whose primary purpose is to sue people over IP infringement and they are ultimately immune to counter-suits because they don't actually use or apply IP... just collect money from claims, settlements and law suits.

The problem with IP is that is has become an industry in and of itself.

And by IP, I mean copyrights and patents.

Re:

CLAIMS of Copyright infringement, even when fair use rules are clearly applicable, is a very large problem.

Copyleft must be made into law

Some people want to keep copyright, and for them the copyright law is good. Some other people want to share, but for them there is no law that supports them. Public domain does not exist in all jurisdictions, and in these countries that it exists it is too vague how one can place something into the public domain, plus in some countries it is impossible to give away some rights such as moral rights or the right to get credit. The laws are made with copyright in mind, without contemplating the possibility of someone wanting to share freely.

In most jurisdictions copyright is assigned to the author by default when a work is created, even before publication. Thus, no one can copy legally without having a licence from the author. But writing and giving licences is not always easy: the author has to think about such things as disclaimers, etc. Today there are standard licences such as GPL that we can use, but it was not always so easy. Plus I see no reason why anyone should be forced to write or attach a licence in their words in order to escape from the evils of copyright. Licences such as GPL are good, but very soon we run into problems like being unable to share with people choosing a licence of the same spirit but with different words, such as CC-By-SA or even GFDL.

Recognising that there are two groups of people, one group wanting copyright and the other group wanting to share, and believing that a government must accomodate both groups, I think governments should maintain two sets of laws: copyright for the control freaks, and copyleft for the sharers.

With a copyleft legal framework, one could write some code or a book and just say Copyleft (CL) 2008. No licence required: the law will take care of that, and if the governments prepare their laws after an international meeting like the Berne Convention the laws will be compatible in all jurisdictions. This helps the sharers without doing any harm to existing or future copyright owners (except if you consider free competition a bad thing). Control freaks will still be able to say Copyright (CR) 2008 for their software or books etc to signal that their creation is to be treated with the copyright rather than the copyleft law.

If governments ever do that, there will probably be some fight between control freaks and sharers regarding what the default law will be. Currently copyright is applied automatically. If a copyleft law is added to the legal framework, will everything be considered copyrighted unless it has a Copyleft (CL) 2008 notice? Or should we consider copyleft the default law and only apply copyright to whatever has a Copyright (CR) 2008 notice? That will be a question in the case a copyleft law is introduced somewhere. Another question will be whether the copyleft law should be real copyleft as in GPL/GFDL or permissive non-copyleft as in ISCL/BSDL/X11L. We could perhaps have three legal frameworks: copyright, copyleft, and permissive.

The current laws make it very easy to keep control over one's creations. You don't have to write a licence to have copyright, but you do have to write (or choose) a licence to enjoy copyleft. And choosing a licence is not an easy task because of licence proliferation: there are many licences to choose from, with subtle but important differences, and for many of them if you make an initial choice it will be difficult to change the licence, especially for massive collaborative works with no copyright assignment.

Re:

I don't trust congress to be able to define copyleft correctly. RMS agonizes over whether the FSF has done it correctly, and his heart is in it. Boiling this task down to a yea/nay vote for 535 people who have so many other issues they're supposed to be up-to-date on that many decisions go to whichever party can purchase more of the congressperson's ear time sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Re:Me being a cynic says...

It really depends upon who turns up from the corporations - if the IP lawyers have their say, then expect crazy software and business process patents to be favoured.

If the CFOs and CTOs are involved, then the debate may be more balanced - fighting stupid patent cases as a cost of doing business can't be attractive for the beancounters, and the technical guys are more likely to appreciate how ludicrous the idea of patenting an algorithm is.

This could turn out to be a good thing - the fact that it is being debated at all is encouraging.

Re:no, no, you don't understand U.S. elections!

Obama won't be president until he's sworn in, in January.
THEN everything will magically and instantly be fixed.

Re:no, no, you don't understand U.S. elections!

For some meaning of the word "fixed".

I don't hold out much hope for Obama making things better, but he might slow the rate at which they are getting worse.

Re:no, no, you don't understand U.S. elections!

Weren't you paying attention? YES. WE. CAN!

Re:

Yes actually. I'm quite surprised so many people have been naysaying this situation. But honestly, when else have we had the decision-makers from the government, big business, and the best IP lawyers in the same location at the same time?

Any other bits of space debris scheduled to land during that time?