[cc-community] Last chance to comment on DRM!
Greg London
email at greglondon.com
Wed Apr 23 21:49:16 EDT 2008
posted here:
https://www.openmediacommons.org/forums/showthread.php?t=470
> This is what I posted:
>
>
> Hello. My name is Greg London. I've written a book on intellectual
> property called
> "[URL=http://www.greglondon.com/bountyhunters/index.htm]Bounty
> Hunters[/URL]: Metaphors for Fair IP law". I'm not a representative of
> Creative Commons, but I've been active on the Creative Commons email lists
> for a number of years now, helping people understand CC licenses,
> answering their questions, and so on. I've been working as an electrical
> engineer for more than a decade. And I've been dabbling in writing fiction
> recently.
>
> While I'm not a lawyer, I believe I'm somewhat familiar with the concepts
> of intellectual property to make some semblance of an informed opinion on
> your DReaM project.
>
> In short, I think you're missing a fundamental point about Fair Use.
>
> Copyright gives a limited list of exclusive rights to the author of a
> work. No one may exercise these rights but the author. The author is given
> these rights as an incentive to create new works, with the intent usually
> being that the author would leverage these rights into some form of
> monetary reward.
>
> In my book, copyright is to authors, the way that reward posters are to
> bounty hunters. Incentive programs to encourage individuals to create new
> works.
>
> If copyright can be viewed as a reward system to encourage bounty hunters,
> then Fair Use could be compared to a list of inalienable rights promised
> to the public, rights which the bounty hunters cannot restrict in their
> operations.
>
> Authors can use their exclusive rights to get payment for creating works.
>
> Fair Use is a list of rights that is promised to the public that authors
> cannot take away.
>
> Your DReaM project appears to view Fair Use as something that authors
> enforce. That would be like designing the law enforcement system in such a
> way the police are primarily responsible for ensuring that a suspect's
> Miranda rights are respected by the police, rather than the courts.
>
> Fair Use is a restriction on Author power. Fair Use is a list of public
> rights that have been deemed too costly to make exclusive rights of the
> author. Fair Use makes public the very rights that would allow an author
> to over-monopolize their works, to the detriment of the Public Good.
>
> This is the key measure of what is and is not under the umbrella of Fair
> Use: whether or not giving the rights to the author would harm the public
> good.
>
> DRM, no matter how it is designed, first and foremost grants the author
> technical means to override legally protected Fair Use. DRM, no matter how
> it is designed, requires author permission to override, even when those
> rights were guaranteed to the Public via Fair Use. For DRM to achieve the
> actual purpose of Fair Use, it would require that the Author actively
> surrender to the Public the very rights that would allow the Author to
> over-monopolize his position at the expense of the Public Good.
>
> One might as well trust the Fox to guard the Hen House.
>
> The separation between the rights granted Authors via copyright and the
> rights promised to the public under Fair Use could be viewed as a
> separation of powers. The author acts as the Executive branch. Copyright
> law is only enforced if the author pursues legal action. Fair Use is a
> function of the Judicial and Legislative branches. Fair Use is a safeguard
> against the overzealous author enforcing extra restrictions on a work that
> copyright does not grant him, whether he try to enforce those restrictions
> through technological means, or overly restrictive End User License
> Agreements, or attempts to prevent reverse engineering.
>
> Fair Use prevents power from being centralized into the hands of a few.
> Fair Use prevents an Author from becoming judge, jury, and executioner of
> copyright law.
>
> DRM is exactly an attempt to centralized all rights to a work, even the
> rights of Fair Use, into the hands of the author. DRM is, at best, the
> author dribbling out the rights he is willing to part with, and at worst,
> the author attempting to kill Fair Use. Because DRM puts control of all
> righst into the hands of the author.
>
> There is no means by which the diametrically opposed concepts of DRM and
> Fair Use can coexist. One calls for a separation of powers. the other
> calls for a centralization of powers. There is no way to negotiate a
> settlement between mutually exclusive goals.
>
> I would ask that you reconsider your DReaM project. It is a DRM project.
> It cannot be a Fair Use project so long as it is a DRM project. It cannot
> defend the Public Good from overmonopolization of rights by the author by
> handing the author technical measures to monopolize all rights. It cannot
> create a separation of powers that is inherent in Fair Use by centralizing
> all powers in the hands of the author.
>
> If you wish to continue pursuit of an Open Source DRM project, that's your
> perogative. But you ought to be clear with the public that it is a DRM
> project only, not a Fair Use project.
>
>
>> Not really, but close to last chance to comment within the official
>> two month comment period on Sun's proposed support for CC licenses and
>> fair use in their DReaM.
>>
>> Read this long intro first:
>> http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8080
>>
>> The relevant documents are at:
>> https://www.openmediacommons.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&f=12&page=1&pp=20&sort=lastpost&order=desc&daysprune=-1
>>
>> I had hoped a number of people would come forward with comments on
>> this, whether to do as Rob Myers suggested --
>> http://www.robmyers.org/weblog/2008/02/28/help-cc-fisk-suns-dream/ --
>> or to proclaim a major breakthrough -- but nobody has, at least
>> publicly.
>>
>> Is DRM *so* dead that nobody even cares? :)
>>
>> Mike
>> _______________________________________________
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>> cc-community at lists.ibiblio.org
>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-community
>>
>
>
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