Copyright

Copyright and the Blank Media Levy

/ Christopher Parsons

mediaplayer2I’ve been watching with some interest the new Artist 2 Fan 2 Artist project, recently started up by Jon Newton and Billy Bragg. The intent of the site is to bring artists and fans together and encourage these parties to speak directly with one another, without needing to pass through intermediaries such as producers, labels, public relations groups, managers, and so on. It will be interesting to see how the dialogue develops.

One of the key elements of the site that interest me the discussion of paying artists (and other content creators); how can we avoid demonizing P2P users while at the same time allocating funds to artists/copyright owners in a responsible manner. On October 5th, this topic was broached under the posting ‘In Favour of a Music Tax‘, and I wanted to bring some of my own comments surrounding the idea of a music tax to the forefront of my own writing space, and the audience here.

I think that an ISP-focused levy system is inappropriate for several reasons: it puts too much authority and control over content analysis than carriers need, puts carriers at risk when they misidentify content, and would make carriers (for-profit content delivery corporations) in charge of monitoring content without demanding consumers that pay ‘full value’ for content moving through their networks. This last point indicates that an ISP-based levy puts ISPs in a conflict of interest (at least in the case of the dominant ISPs in Canada). Another solution is required.

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The Business of Infringing Content

/ Christopher Parsons

CreepycopyrightinfringementWhen people are about to download content from the ‘net that is copywritten, many often ask ‘will I get caught doing this?’ For many, the response is ‘no’ and then continue to download that episode of Seinfeld or whatever. Given that there are so many people downloading, and that record companies in the US have claimed to have abandoned filing new lawsuits against individuals, then things (in North America) appear to be getting better.

At issue, however, is that filing lawsuits is big money, and in Europe especially it looks like Digiprotect has moved in to assume first-mover advantage. Digiprotect gets “the legal rights from the companies to distribute these movies to stores, and with these rights we can sue illegal downloaders. Then we take legal action in every country possible, concentrating on the places where such action will be profitable” (Source). They avoid demanding too much money from infringers, on the basis that few judges like the idea of imposing million dollar fines on individuals – usually opting for suits demanding in the vicinity of 500 Euros. This amount of money ‘teaches’ individuals and provides enough money to keep the employees paid. No staff member has a fixed salary – they are paid according to the ‘cases’ that are won. The actual method of determining the financial burdens are based on the business expenses, profit, and money to be distributed to artists. In effect, the company sets up a honeypot and then sues whomever it is profitable to sue.

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Universities Struggle to Cope with Anti-Piracy Requirements

/ Christopher Parsons

copyrightussatireUniversities in the US have been deeply burdened by the Higher Education Opportunity Act that President Bush signed into law last year. In particular, the Act require that “schools ensure they are doing all they can to combat illegal file sharing among students. The new rules, according to the wording contained in the legislation, requires institutions to develop plans to “effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including through the use of a variety of technology-based deterrents.” Schools must also “to the extent practicable, offer alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property.” Any institute found to be non-compliant could lose federal funding” (Source).

To combat unauthorized distributions, technological solutions such as bandwidth shaping and traffic monitoring need to be implemented. Such solutions need to be integrated with advanced DMCA response practices. Of course, some of the companies that are being courted to meet these demands are those that incorporate DPI into their copyright ‘solutions’. I’ve discussed, generally, how these technologies work on campuses from iPoque’s position when writing about one of the company’s whitepapers. In that post, I wrote, Continue reading →

Draft – Who Gives a ‘Tweet’ About Privacy?

/ Christopher Parsons / 4 Comments

twittercapacityThis is a full draft of the paper on Twitter and privacy that I’ve been developing over the past few weeks, entitled ‘Who Gives a ‘Tweet’ About Privacy?’ It uses academic privacy literature to examine Twitter and the notion of reasonable expectations of privacy in public, and is written to help nuance privacy discussions surrounding the discourse occuring on Twitter (and, implicitly, similar social networking and blogging sites). The paper focuses on concepts of privacy and, as such, avoids deep empirical analyses of how the term ‘privacy’ is used by particular members of the social networking environment. Further, the paper avoids delving into the web of legal cases that could be drawn on to inform this discussion. Instead, it is theoretically oriented around the following questions:

  1. Do Twitter’s users have reasonable expectations to privacy when tweeting, even though these tweets are the rough equivalent of making statements in public?
  2. If Twitter’s user base should hold expectations to privacy, what might condition these expectations?

The paper ultimately suggests that Daniel Solove’s taxonomy of privacy, most  recently articulated in Understanding Privacy, offers the best framework to respond to these question. Users of Twitter do have reasonable expectations to privacy, but such expectations are conditioned by juridical understandings of what is and is not reasonable. In light of this, I conclude by noting that Solove’s use of law to recognize norms is contestable. Thus, while privacy theorists may adopt his method (a focus on privacy problems to categorize types of privacy infractions), they might profitably condition how and why privacy norms are established – court rulings and dissenting opinions may not be the best foundation upon which to rest our privacy claims – by turning to non-legal understandings of norm development, degeneration, and mutation.

Paper can be downloaded here.

Newspapers: Effects of Closing their Content Ecosystem?

/ Christopher Parsons

whoownsknowledgeI rely on other people to produce content for me to consume, and I reciprocate by providing my own content (via this blog, government submissions, submissions to alternative news sites, interviews on radio, etc.) to the public. I see this as a reciprocal relationship, insofar as anyone can come here and use my content so long as they abide by my creative commons license. Unfortunately, most advocates for newspapers would see what I do (i.e. blog, think publicly) as unequal to their own work. I’m just an amateur, and they’re the professionals.

One of my colleagues recently linked me to a statement that David Simon presented to Congress about the life or death of newspapers. His argument is (roughly) that bloggers and other ‘amateurs’ cannot be expected or trusted to perform the high quality journalism that these ‘amateurs’ then talk about online (Note from Chris: clear case in point, the critical analysis by journalists of the Bush administration and Iraq compared to bloggers. Oh…wait…). You need dedicated professionals who are professionally trained to generate consistently high quality and accurate content. At the same time, the for-profit model of newspapers has led them to cannibalize their operations for profit. Newspapers will perish if capitalism and the market are seen as ‘solutions’ to the demise of newspapers, just as amateur culture and their appropriation of media will destroy content producers. Something must be done.

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EU: Judicial Review Central to Telecom Disconnects

/ Christopher Parsons

elpalaciodejusticiaI’m perhaps a bit idealistic, but I think that there are clear contemporary demonstrations of democracy ‘working’. Today’s example comes to us from Europe, where the European Parliament has voted to restore a graduated response to copyright infringement that pertains to when and how individuals can be disconnected from the Internet. Disconnecting individuals from the ‘net, given its important role in citizens’ daily lives, can only be done with judicial oversight; copyright holders and ISPs alone cannot conspire to remove file sharers. This suggests that any three-strike policy in the EU will require judicial oversight, and threatens to radically reform how the copyright industry can influence ISPs.

What might this mean for North America? If policy learning occurs, will we see imports of an EU-style law on this matter? Do we want our policy actors to adopt an EU-model, which could be used to implement a three-strike rule that just includes judicial review at the third strike? In Canada, with the tariffs that we pay, there are already permissible conditions for file sharing – do we really want to see strong American or WIPO copyright legally enforced on our soil?

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