Another Reason Copyright is Evil

Usually, I attack copyright on very general grounds - it's a monopoly, it's locking up knowledge, blah-blah-blah. But here's a new one to add to the list: it can endanger freedom of expression.

Given the way in which copyright law was transplanted into China without a fulsome cultural understanding of the values that informed the system, it seems the power of copyright can be easily usurped for means that infringe on political and civil rights. And yet, the United States, through the WTO process, is seeking stronger copyright protection in China.

This seeming inconsistency may not currently be a large issue because of the more explicit means of control available to the Chinese government. However, as political pressure mounts on the human rights front, it is possible that the Chinese government may have to be more covert in their attempts to suppress political speech. If that happens, copyright law may begin to look appealing to the Chinese government as a means of control.

Put it in your diaries...

Why ICANN Is Evil, Part 58697

I've been tracking the goings-on at ICANN, which oversees domain names and many other crucial aspects of the Internet, for many years now, and I've yet to see anything good come out of the organisation. Here's someone else who has problems with them:

In this Article, I challenge the prevailing idea that ICANN's governance of the Internet's infrastructure does not threaten free speech and that ICANN's governance of the Internet therefore need not embody special protections for free speech. I argue that ICANN's authority over the Internet's infrastructure empowers it to enact regulations affecting speech within the most powerful forum for expression ever developed. ICANN cannot remain true to the democratic norms it was designed to embody unless it adopts policies to protect freedom of expression. While ICANN's recent self-evaluation and proposed reforms are intended to ensure compliance with its obligations under its governance agreement, these proposed reforms will render it less able to embody the norms of liberal democracy and less capable of protecting individuals' fundamental rights. Unless ICANN reforms its governance structure to render it consistent with the procedural and substantive norms of democracy articulated herein, ICANN should be stripped of its decision-making authority over the Internet's infrastructure.

Strip, strip, strip. (Via IGP blog.)