[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       dmca-discuss
Subject:    [DMCA_Discuss] Barlow: Fair Use Under Assault
From:       "Seth Johnson" <seth.johnson () realmeasures ! dyndns ! org>
Date:       2003-01-27 22:27:06
[Download RAW message or body]


> http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/01/24/030124hnbarlow_1.html

Fair use under assault
EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow argues the case against DRM
By  Steve Gillmor

JOHN PERRY BARLOW is a retired Wyoming cattle rancher, a lyricist for 
the Grateful Dead, co-founder of the EFF (Electronic Frontier 
Foundation), and an outspoken advocate for fair use of content. In an 
interview with InfoWorld Test Center Director Steve Gillmor, Barlow 
discusses his opposition to DRM (digital rights management), 
intellectual property law, and copyright extension.

InfoWorld: What is the message that you feel needs to be made about DRM?

Barlow: I think that anybody who cares about the future of technology --
 anybody who cares about the future, period -- ought to be awfully 
concerned about this. But people who work in technology have been 
agnostic on the subject so far. They need to recognize that they're 
going to be faced with a fairly stark choice, which is a gradual 
concentration around certain trusted platforms that cannot be broken 
out of and are filled with black boxes that you can't code around and 
can't see the inside of.

You have to get politically active and stop it from happening, because 
Congress has been bought by the content industry. The choice is being 
made at a very complex and subterranean political level. It's being 
done in standard settings, with the FCC, in amendments to obscure bills 
in Congress, in the closed door sessions to set the Digital Broadcast 
Standard. It has very significant long-term effects [for] the technical 
architecture of cyberspace, because what we're talking about embedding 
into everything is a control and surveillance mechanism for the purpose 
of observing copyright piracy, but [it] can be used for anything.

InfoWorld: Don't you think it's ironic that the computer industry is 
going along with this?

Barlow: I think it's unfathomable. But Microsoft and Intel are going to 
make their pact with the Hollywood devil and they're going to create a 
huge, trusted platform that's going to be the institutional platform. 
Apple, every Linux publisher, AMD, Motorola, Transmeta, and various 
different hardware manufacturers are not going to sign on, and there's 
going to be another open platform. But there are efforts under way to 
make that unlawful. There's a bill being proposed that would forbid the 
United States government to use anything that was under a GPL [General 
Public License]. That's significant, and it's obscure. ... I'm not 
saying the GPL needs to be protected, but I think if you're going to 
have critical mass, technological mass around a set of standards, that 
not being able to have the United States government as a customer for 
those standards is a significant matter.

InfoWorld: You obviously feel strongly as an artist about the need to 
protect fair use of content.

Barlow: We can't be creative without having access to other creative 
work. [If] I have to make sure that the rights are cleared every time I 
download something or somebody wants me to hear something, it's going 
to cut way back on what I hear, which is going to cut way back on my 
capacity to create. Imagine what it would be like to write a song if 
you'd never heard one. Fair use is essential. But it is under assault.

InfoWorld: Why is it a difficult proposition to make this case?

Barlow: It's a difficult proposition because the content industry has 
done a marvelously good job of getting people to believe that there's 
no difference between a song and a horse, whereas for me, if somebody's 
singing my song, I think that's great. They haven't stolen anything 
from me. If somebody rides off on my horse, I don't have anything and 
that is theft. Otherwise intelligent people think that there's no 
difference between stealing my horse and stealing my song. [The content 
industry] has also managed to create the simplistic and basically 
fallacious notion that unless we strengthen dramatically the existing 
copyright [regime], that artists don't get paid anymore. First of all, 
artists aren't getting paid much now. Second, making the institutions 
that are robbing them blind even stronger is not going to assure 
[their] getting paid more. And it's going to make it very difficult for 
us to create economic [and] business models that would create a more 
interactive relationship with the audience, which would be good for us 
economically and good for us creatively.

InfoWorld: Do we have to wait for an artist to do this?

Barlow: We need to start giving people a mechanism that they can use to 
compensate the artist themselves.

InfoWorld: Which is?

Barlow: I think there are a variety of ways. They're doing it already 
[with] the performance model, which I don't think is perfect but it's 
actually better than it's given credit for being. Think about it: $17 
billion in CD sales last year [and] of that the artists themselves got 
less than 5 percent. There was $60-some billion in concert proceeds 
last year, and of that the artists got closer to 35 or 40 percent. ... 
There is already a system of compensation that's working, and I think 
that there will be other systems of compensation that can work. ... We 
have the assumption that unless you're selling 200,000 units of work, 
you're not successful. Well that's true -- under the current 
conditions -- because it takes at least that much before [the artist] 
ever sees a dime. But if you're not dealing with this piratical 
intermediary, you can do just fine with an audience of 5,000 or 6,000.

InfoWorld: Demonizing the record companies is easy to do but it doesn't 
seem to have much effect.

Barlow: It's gradually having an effect. New artists don't 
automatically want to go out and find a manager; there's a huge 
defection. The guy who I'm writing songs with at the moment, [he's] in 
a young band; they have nothing to do with the record industry. They 
sold out Radio City Music Hall two nights running in August, so they're 
doing quite well. They've got their own record company, [which] sells 
direct on the Web [and] does quite well but will never make a Billboard 
chart. But they get the whole proceeds. So it's working.

InfoWorld: Why do you see .Net and Web services as another one of the 
dominos being lined up as DRM points of control?

Barlow: .Net is full of stuff to guarantee that the message that's 
[being] passed does not have a copyright flag set on it. All those Web 
services are built to watch what's going through the service. They have 
the capacity to analyze the nature of the material that's passing 
through.

InfoWorld: Why not create an additional flag that's set at the 
discretion of the artist?

Barlow: I think that would be great. [And] I think that the industry 
would fight it to the death and they'd have the money to win.

InfoWorld: Wouldn't they have a hard time fighting a free flag?

Barlow: No, they wouldn't.

InfoWorld: But isn't that what the battle is about?

Barlow: No, the battle is [about] who makes the most contributions to 
Congress. It's that simple.

InfoWorld: Then why are we talking about this, if it's that cut and 
dried?

Barlow: Because we have to figure out either a way to come up with a 
pool of political contributions in defense of the creative common or we 
have to come up with an organized and massive system of civil 
disobedience. We need to start organizing boycotts, and one of the 
first things that needs to be boycotted is copy-protected CDs. I don't 
think anybody should buy one.

InfoWorld: How can the EFF make a difference in this?

Barlow: We're actually at the table for these discussions on the 
Digital Broadcasting [Standard]. And we're fighting copyright 
extensions, which we believe have reached a point where there's no 
possibility of fair use. The problem with intellectual property law is 
that it tries to take something that is extremely difficult to define 
and put hard definitions around it. It's not a system that we want to 
try to embed in cyberspace in the early days of this development. ... 
We're creating the architecture, the foundation for the social space 
where everybody in humanity is going to gather. And if we jigger the 
foundation design to suit the purposes of organizations that will 
likely be dead in 15 years, how shortsighted is that?


Steve Gillmor is director of the InfoWorld Test Center. Contact him at 
steve_gillmor@infoworld.com.


_______________________________________________


------------------------
http://www.anti-dmca.org
------------------------

DMCA_Discuss mailing list
DMCA_Discuss@lists.microshaft.org
http://lists.microshaft.org/mailman/listinfo/dmca_discuss
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]