The Register reports that the CBO is advising Congressmen that Digital Rights Management is good for America. Well, for American business anyway.

It is surprising (well, maybe not surprising, perhaps just disappointing) that the CBO completely ignores the central questions at the core of current discussions about copyright and instead lodges their heads firmly in the… pockets of current large media consumers. Nothing in this report does anything to discuss what I think are the core issues behind current copyright discussions:

1. First, copyright terms have been extended retroactively for all works. While some works have continuing value, the vast majority are not being exploited in the marketplace. These works were simply kidnapped to provide companies like Disney an additional extension, and the public foots the bills for this governmental largesss.
2. Even for works which retained some commercial value, the intention of the Framers was clearly that such works would eventually be put into the public domain. This is part of the balance between trying to encourage creativity and yet keeping our collective culture free.
3. Regulations surrounding copyrights have increased dramatically, as have the protections offered to copyrighted material. This makes the potential inclusion of any material which you did not author yourself incredibly perilous: you simply can’t be sure that you have really aquired all the rights to the work you are deriving from. To secure these rights is expensive and fraught with peril, and pushes many creative works out of any realm of possibility.

The CBO report addresses none of these issues. It doesn’t address the possible economic boom that could occur if large numbers of creative works entered the public domain. Given the frequency that studios like Disney derive stories from works in the public domain, there is some reason to believe that the effect could be large. The CBO report does not address (as is admitted by the source listed in the Register article) that their report does not consider the costs of enforcement in their estimates.

What the CBO echos is precisely what the content industry really wants: new market opportunities to sell their works under the umbrella of a government sponsored and continuously extended monopoly. They hypothesize that there exists some markets which are currently not exploitable (perhaps in the form of single use DVDs or CDs) which will provide consumers with new products. The problem is, of course, that nobody wants single use CDs.

Like it or not, if you are a member of the traditional content industry, change is coming, and you better be ready for it. The more you work to outlaw the actions of your consumers, the more quickly you will hasten your own demise. You can continue to expand the already Draconian penalties for “piracy”, you can introduce new technologies which interfere with fair and unregulated uses of your copyrighted works, and you can continue to loot the public domain by paying off Congress to expand copyright terms indefinitely. The result isn’t good for America, and ultimately, it won’t be good for your companies. Ultimately people with a bit more vision than yourselves will start listening to consumers, and will be able to exploit the new market efficiencies that you only shake your heads at.

You can read the CBO’s report Copyright Issues in the Digital Media and decide for yourselves.

News.com is running a story about the BSA’s new mascot, a ferret who lectures children about the perils of the copyright infringement. Children will play games where they destroy pirated software and collect licensing agreements.

Oh good lord.

How about teaching them the real facts of our absurd copyright system? That if they go into a record store and steal a cd, they may be arrested and subject to a fine of up to $1000, but if they are hit by a lawsuit from the RIAA, they could be fined for millions in damages? Try to explain to them that taking an intangible object is worth thousands of times more than taking the same object in tangible form.

Why not teach them about the public domain, and all the resources available to them which are in the public domain?

Why not teach them about the Creative Commons and the culture which promotes sharing and collaboration rather than ownership?

It’s simple: because the BSA is simply about promoting fear, not education.

No thanks to Snitch the Weasel.

The Internet has been abuzz with comments about Senator Orrin Hatch’s INDUCE Act, which would criminalize any activity that “induces” copyright infringement as if it were actually copyright infringement. I doubt I could say anything about it which has not been said elsewhere, but it’s a law that would eviscerate the 1984 Supreme Court decision in the Betamax case, which established the criteria that devices are legal if there is a substantial, non-infringing use for the technology in question. During this time, electronics manufacturers as well as movie and music producers have reaped the rich rewards of providing media to an entire new audience of listeners. While they may have squawked in the beginning, revenues from DVD sales exceed the money from box office receipts. Far from bankrupting media companies, this finding actually created an entire market with rich opportunities.

But if Hatch, Leahy, Frist, Daschle and the like have their way, that’s about to end. Do you enjoy your iPod? I rather like mine. I digitize my CDs, my own music, audio books, and even some boodler audio. I am loading it currently with lots of five dollar CD’s from the bargain rack (currently my favorite is naxos.com’s Best of Puccini). What can I say? I’m a cheapskate. As the EFF points out, the INDUCE act would enable copyright holders to bring lawsuits against electronics manufacturers like Apple. After all, my iPod can hold 10,000 songs, an amount which vastly exceeds the capacity needed by the average consumer. Clearly, since they’ve sold hundreds of thousands of these, they are trying to encourage people to illegally acquire music.

None of this is new, but I was reading the Yahoo! news story linked above, and extracted this gem:

Hatch urged supporters and opponents of the bill to help him develop a compromise that protects legitimate manufacturers while allowing copyright owners to protect their rights.

“If you help us, we just might get it right, but if you don’t we’re going to do it [anyway],” Hatch said.

Allow me to translate: “Bend over folks. We know this isn’t a good law, but it’s coming anyway. Our corporate masters think they need it, and we are just the slack jawed bunch of ignoramuses to give it to them.”

Idiots.

The BBC is reporting that there will be no Daleks in the latest incarnation of the Dr. Who franchise. It appears that talks between the BBC and the estate of Terry Nation have broken down.

At least here in the United States, copyrights and patents were intended as incentives for individuals to create and extend the useful arts and sciences. Unfortunately, excessive terms (approaching infinite in the case of copyrights) have eroded this idea. As far as I know, Terry Nation will never write another Dalek script. He can’t. He’s dead. No incentives are likely to change this fact in a significant way.

For the past 40 years, Terry Nation and his estate have exercised editorial control over exactly how the Daleks are portrayed in film. That’s my entire lifetime. Is it too much to ask for them to think up some new pony, and cede control of these characters to the public that originally made them popular in the first place?

I know, I know, I’m not talking about what’s legal. I’m trying to talk about restoring the ideal behind the power granted to the government by our Constitution. It was never intended to establish a ceaseless monopoly for authors, artists or inventors. Excessive copyrights have a chilling effect on artistic expression. We all borrow from our collective experiences and cultural icons, and when we are denied access to a large part of our collective experience, ultimately we miss out on experiencing it. Instead, we get to experience only the narrow slivers that IP owners decide to give us. No work which was written in my lifetime or even my mother’s lifetime will enter the public domain for decades, if ever, given the Supreme Court decision to give carte blanche to Congress to indefinitely extend copyright terms.