Vested interests have too much say in most areas of public policy, but only in some do they actually have direct control. Two stories today highlight the ridiculous amount of authority which governments all over the world have ceded to entertainment industries when it comes to creating and enforcing intellectual property law.
In the USA, a Republican congressional staffer called Derek Khanna wrote a memo titled “Three Myths About Copyright Law and Where To Start To Fix It” (mirrored here). It was a strong piece, arguing that it was untrue to claim that:
- The purpose of copyright is to compensate the creator of content;
- Copyright is free market capitalism at work; or
- The current copyright legal regime leads to the greatest innovation and productivity.
(The first is certainly mythical, at least in the US context, where the explicit reason for copyright is “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”; arguing against the second, he attempts to appeal to his fellow Republicans by repositioning copyright protection as a big-government-bestowed monopoly; and against the third – really, where the meat lies – he points out that current US copyright law is far more concerned with rent-seeking than encouraging creation of new works.)
Khanna’s paper, while no more anti-copyright than a thousand silicon valley opinion columns, was retracted less than a day later, with the executive director of the Republican Study Committee – the organisation which published it – claiming it was:
Was published without adequate review [and failed to approach the topic] with all facts and viewpoints in hand.
That’s not what the insider story is, though. Techdirt’s Mike Masnick wrote:
The report had been fully vetted and reviewed by the RSC before it was released. However, as soon as it was published, the MPAA and RIAA apparently went ballistic and hit the phones hard, demanding that the RSC take down the report. They succeeded.
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Yesterday, Khanna was fired. The Washington Examiner‘s Timothy P. Carney [explains]:
The reason, according to two Republicans within the RSC: angry objections from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, whose district abuts Nashville, Tenn. In winning a fifth term earlier in the month, Blackburn received more money from the music industry than any other Republican congressional candidate, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Blackburn’s office did not return calls seeking comment.
Again, it’s worth pointing out that nothing Khanna said was new, or outrageous, and his paper was picked up approvingly by other liberatarian-minded conservatives like Virginia Postrel and Alex Tabarrok. His only mistake was writing it while working in a position where the complaints of the entertainment industry could get him fired.
Meanwhile, in the UK, our music industry has been taking an even more active role in the law, hand-picking which websites are allowed to publish. Music website the Promo Bay is a side project of file-sharing website the Pirate Bay which allows independent artists to upload their own songs to be shared freely. Not only is there no copyright infringement going on, there is actually a queue to be featured.
Nonetheless, the BPI – industry body of the British record industry – obtained a court order to block the Promo Bay, listing it as a domain:
Whose sole or predominant purpose is to enable or facilitate access to The Pirate Bay website.
That block which was only rescinded after a petition and complaint from the Open Rights Group.
It is clear that the Promo Bay was wrongly blocked – possibly by accident, possibly due to an overzealous claim by the BPI. What’s less clear is why we should accept a situation where a single mistaken claim by an industry group can censor, without warning or appeal, a popular, useful, and legal site. After all, the New Statesman has linked to file-sharing sites – in an effort to get round the “Great Firewall of China”. Should we be fearing a court order?
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