Copyright Talk

Have you ever felt like this?

Stay Away!

When I was a kid we used to get these little cards sometimes that had a picture on it, but when you tilted it just a little bit, the picture would change, so you’d see, say, a smiling clown and then when you tilted it the clown would be crying. Or maybe it would be a picture of Clarke Kent and when you tilted it, Superman would appear!

If I had a card with a picture of a big media company on it, like the TV networks, or the record labels, and the company spokesperson was talking about the need to prevent piracy and to protect intellectual property so as to encourage innovation and yada yada yada, and then I tilted the card . . . I would probably see something like that little cat. Because while I firmly believe that copyright is good and fair and just and necessary to our society, I also believe that the current “anti-piracy” frenzy - as articulated by large media companies - has in large part been corrupted and is really about extending control and protection of valuable intellectual property far beyond the protection given by our current copyright policies.

I would have no problem with that debate being thrown into the public and policy making arenas. Debate on policies and the viewpoints of diverse groups are essential to democracy and, ultimately, to good public policy. What is not good for public policy and is not good for our society is a debate that is couched as one subject in order to hide the real subject when the debater does not believe it will be a popular position. Instead of doing the work to convince the policy makers that is a good policy, and then accepting the decision made in recognition of the need to live in a society whose needs as a whole may not necessarily match your own personal best case scenario, these media companies are trying to slip one by us in the name of something else altogether.

It’s a “debate” tactic used by teenagers against their parents all the time. In the case of teenagers, it happens because they are not fully developed into adult human beings capable of running a community, be that something as small as a family or as large as the country - notice we don’t let people vote until age 18?

Companies are run by folks over the age of 18. I have no doubt that they would lecture their own teenagers at length about the need for forthrightness and honesty in discussion. Shame on them for being hypocritical in their own participation in society.