Misleading Figures Used To Puff Up Importance Of Intellectual Monopolies In Europe

We've noted before attempts to inflate the importance of copyright, patents and trademarks by including a bunch of other sectors that are only tangentially related to them when it comes to totting up their economic impact. For example, last year Mike wrote about a joint Department of Commerce/US Patent and Trademark Office "study" that included 2.5 million grocery store jobs in its definition of "IP-intensive" industries. 

On Techdirt.

US Ambassador To The UN Says WIPO Too Biased Against IP Holders

Back in 2010, Techdirt reported on a fairly remarkable comment from the US ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Betty E. King, who said at a press conference: 

On Techdirt.

The Joy Of Monopolies: Orphan Drug Price Increasing By Nearly 40% Each Year

A couple of years ago, Techdirt carried an article by Andy Kessler about the difference between entrepreneurs who create value, and those who lock it up. The former tend to drive prices down constantly, innovating all the while in order to make a profit; the latter, by contrast, typically enjoy monopolies that allow them to push up prices without offering anything more in return. 

On Techdirt.

Africa's Ancient Plant Diversity And Seed Independence Under Threat, Supposedly In The Name Of Progress

As Africa continues to develop rapidly, Western countries and companies are increasingly interested in bringing it into existing international legal and commercial frameworks, but always on terms that maintain their dominance. One way of doing that is through intellectual monopolies: last year we wrote about proposals for a Pan-Africa Intellectual Property Organization (PAIPO), whose benefits for Africa seem dubious. Meanwhile, here's another plan that is being presented as a vital part of Africa's modernization process, and yet oddly enough seems to benefit giant Western companies most, as AllAfrica reports: 

On Techdirt.

How Publishers Have Fought Against the Treaty for the Blind

One of the most disgraceful manifestations of the callousness of copyright maximalists is their 30-year refusal to countenance any meaningful kind of exception for blind users to convert texts into readable forms. Here's the background:

Even in 2013, blind people and others living with a print disability such as those with dyslexia still have very limited access to books. Only some 7% of published books are ever made accessible (in formats such as Braille, audio and large print) in the richest countries, and less than 1% in poorer ones. This is a “book famine”.

And here's what Fred Schroeder, First Vice President of the World Blind Union, said about the current state of the negotiations to change that:

The purpose of this treaty is to ensure access to books for blind people and help end the “book famine” we face. WBU is alarmed that some of the negotiators have focused their efforts almost exclusively on crafting language around copyright protections that have nothing to do with the ability of authorized entities to produce books for the blind and visually impaired. The shift away from a treaty for the blind to a treaty focussed on rights holder protections has taken up precious negotiating time which should be directed at ensuring a treaty that makes it possible for materials to be shared internationally.

I was naturally interested to find out what the UK's publishers had been doing on this front, so I put in a FOI request to the UK government:

I would be grateful if you could please supply me with the following information. 

Emails, letters and any other written communications from the last six months, between the Publishers Association or representatives of UK publishers, and the Intellectual Property Office, on the subject of the WIPO treaty for the blind (formally, the "Treaty to facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities".)

You can find the full reply here; this is what KEI's Jamie Love wrote about the emails that were made available to me:

Overall, the emails deal extensively with publisher opposition to fair use (fair use is mentioned 40 times), and promotion of commercial availability and requests that the treaty include restrictive three-step test language (even while asserting that other treaties and agreements already mandate the three step test for all copyright exceptions). The emails also demonstrate the close cooperation and communication between the IPO and the publishers in the negotiations.

Although it's frustrating not to be able to see more, the emails provide a handy reminder just how much the UK government is willing to work with publishers to place obstacles in the way of the blind gaining access to even a fraction of the materials that sighted people are fortunate enough to access.

You would have thought that any caring human being would gladly support moves to alleviate the massive suffering this book famine causes to hundreds of millions of visually impaired people across the world, but apparently there are some who are immune to these feelings, because they regard preserving copyright's oppressive intellectual monopoly as far more important than helping the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged.

I find that desperately sad - and further proof of the harm that copyright inflicts on society as a whole, and particularly on the most vulnerable. 

IIPA Wants Canada And Spain On The 'Naughty' Special 301 List Even Though They Brought In Tough New Copyright Laws

Here on Techdirt, one of the things we look forward to each year is the comedy production known as the 301 Report, where the US makes the world line up in a row, and then names and shames all the naughty countries whose intellectual monopoly laws aren't outrageous enough. In advance of the official naughty list, there are helpful suggestions from the fans of monopoly maximalism, including the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), which has just released its 2013 demands. Mostly it's the usual suspects -- China, India, Russia etc. But there's an interesting change from the previous year's list: Canada has moved from the really naughty "Priority Watch List" to the only slightly naughty "Watch List". 

On Techdirt.

Will Proposed Pan-Africa Intellectual Property Organization Enable The West To Impose Its Monopolies?

Back in May, Techdirt pointed to a presentation from Mike Palmedo listing a wide range of research that demonstrates the lack of a connection between policies introducing stricter IP laws or enforcement and economic growth or innovation. Apparently, the African Union Scientific, Technical and Research Commission didn't get around to reading that post, since it has produced a draft statute for the creation of a new Pan-Africa Intellectual Property Organization that seems based entirely on assuming this link exists. 

On Techdirt.

Does Guernsey Really Want To Become Famous -- And Ostracized -- For Introducing Image Rights?

Just as the original term of copyright has been constantly extended from the original 14 years in the Statute of Anne, so the the scope of intellectual monopolies has been widened by the introduction of new ways in which people assert ownership of abstractions. Here's the latest idea: a right to protect your image. 

On Techdirt.

SABAM: A Turning Point in EU Internet Law?

One of the most striking - and disturbing - trends of recent years has been the assumption by the copyright industries that protecting their intellectual monopolies outweighs the rights of the public.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Misleading Metaphors That Drive The War On Online Sharing

Certain terms crop up time and again in the arguments around copyright infringement and file sharing. Words like "theft" and "stealing" clearly represent an attempt to frame the debate in a certain way. That's hardly a new insight: many posts on Techdirt have pointed out these attempts to manipulate the discourse. 

On Techdirt.

Which Causes More Harm: Copyright Or Patents?

One of the recurrent themes on Techdirt is the harm caused by intellectual monopolies – copyright and patents – to the economy in particular, and to society in general. Stephan Kinsella has raised an interesting question: which of them is worse? 

On Techdirt.

What Exactly Makes A Pop-Up Mall A Pop-Up Mall? On Second Thought, Who Cares?

One of the pernicious effects of once-obscure legal issues surrounding copyright and patents seeping into everyday life is the belief that even the vaguest ideas can be owned, and that such ownership is a thing worth fighting over. Here, for example, is a sorry tale from Christchurch in New Zealand, which suffered a massive earthquake in which 181 people died back in February of this year: 

On Techdirt.

Brazil Drafts An 'Anti-ACTA': A Civil Rights-Based Framework For The Internet

One of the striking features of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is that it is mainly being signed by Western/“developed” countries – with a few token players from other parts of the world to provide a fig-leaf of nominal inclusiveness. That's no accident: ACTA is the last-gasp attempt of the US and the EU to preserve their intellectual monopolies – copyright and patents, particularly drug patents – in a world where both are increasingly questioned. 

On Techdirt.

Why We Should - and Can - Abolish All Patents

As long-suffering readers will know, I've been warning about the growing problem of patent thickets in the field of software for some time now. Until relatively recently, I and a few others have been voices crying in the wilderness: the general consensus has been that patents are good, and more patents are better. But in the last few weeks, the first hopeful signs have appeared that at least some people are beginning to realise that software patents not only do not promote innovation, they actually throttle it.

On Open Enterprise blog.

To Defend Android Google Must Attack Software Patents

Android is under serious threat. Not so much commercially, where it continues to trounce its rivals and take an ever-larger market share around the world, but through legal threats. Of course, that's not just a problem for Google: as Techdirt's handy diagram illustrates, practically everyone in the smartphone space is suing everyone else. But the big difference is how the others are addressing this.

On The H Open blog.

The Great Prize: Innovating Without Monopolies

Last week I was in Brussels, talking at the European Parliament - not, I hasten to add, talking to the Parliament. This was a more intimate gathering in one of the smaller (but still quite large) conference halls, discussing a rather interesting matter:

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Guardian: Yes, but of What?

I wrote last week about a curious article in the Guardian calling for “caution” on open source. And now we have another odd piece:

The sad truth is that while the UK has the creativity and technological know-how to produce the next Google, the relatively smooth road to patent protection in the US isn't mirrored here - and that's a stumbling block that will hinder the growth of the UK software developer.

But that is simply wrong. Of all the major software companies, Google has eschewed taking out software patents the most. That's because it knows that the US patent system is broken, and wants to see it reformed:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Moral Bankruptcy of the Copyright Industry

As anyone who has followed the area for a while learns, the copyright industry has an extraordinary sense of entitlement. It seems to think that it has a right to demand that governments around the world preserve its outdated business models and existing profit margins - and that it should be granted any kind of extraordinary legal protections for its monopolies to ensure that, whatever the concomitant cost to society.

And yet as Rick Falkvinge points out, that's wrong in all sorts of ways:

The copyright monopoly legislation is a balance between the public’s interest of having access to culture, and the same public’s interest of having new culture created.

That’s it. Those are the two values that go into determining the wording of the copyright monopoly.

The copyright industry always demands to be regarded as a stakeholder in this monopoly. But to give them that status would be to royally confuse the means of the copyright monopoly with its end.

If they were a stakeholder, they would never agree to anything that went against their interests. But the copyright industry is not a stakeholder. They are merely a beneficiary of the copyright monopoly. Just because you benefit from something, you don’t get to affect its future.

That unfounded sense of entitlement would be bad enough, but it seems that it engenders something much worse in some quarters: a complete and utter moral bankruptcy, as this statement from the new director of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, Rodrigo Roque Diaz, makes plain:

El tema de la piratería es gravísimo […] brutal para la sociedad mexicana y para el mundo. Las cifras que tenemos del Foro Económico Mundial indican que el comercio ilegal representa el 10% del comercio mundial.

El ingenio lo usamos para violar la ley.

El tema de la piratería es más importante que el tema narcotráfico. El tema de la piratería cuesta billones de doláres al mundo. El impacto económico es muy importante.

[Via Google Translate: The issue of piracy is very serious [...] brutal to Mexican society and the world. The figures we have from the World Economic Forum indicates that illegal trade represents 10% of world trade.

We use ingenuity to violate the law.

The issue of piracy is more important than the drug issue. The issue of piracy costs billions of dollars to the world. The economic impact is very important.]

There we have the view of the copyright maximalists in a nutshell: "piracy is more important than the drug issue" - this from a citizen of a country where the level of violence due to what is here simply dismissed as "the drug issue" is almost incomprehensible for those of us fortunate enough to be distant from it:

Casualty numbers have escalated significantly over time. According to a Stratfor report, the number of drug-related deaths in 2006 and 2007 (2,119 and 2,275) more than doubled to 5,207 in 2008. The number further increased substantially over the next two years, from 6,598 in 2009 to over 11,000 in 2010.

According to the director of the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property, piracy is "more important" than those 27,000 deaths in the last five years.

This is where the insanity of copyright maximalism leads: to valuing the preservation of a government-backed monopoly over the lives of tens of thousands of people. That a high functionary representing the copyright industries can trivialise the suffering of those victims and their families in this way shows how desperately we need to restore not just Falkvinge's "balance" to the copyright debate, but decency and humanity too.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Breaking the Monopoly of Celebration

Today is apparently something called "World Intellectual Property Day". How bizarre to be celebrating government-backed monopolies that lock down knowledge.

According to the WIPO site:

The aims of World IP Day are:

to raise awareness of how patents, copyright, trademarks and designs impact on daily life;

to increase understanding of how protecting IP rights helps promote creativity and innovation;

to celebrate creativity, and the contribution made by creators and innovators to the development of societies across the globe;

to encourage respect for the IP rights of others.

So, that impact would be things like HADOPI, which wants to install spyware on every French user's PC; or ACTA, that will turn enforcement agencies around the world into the content industry's private police force; or the New Zealand legislation that would make even watching unauthorised copies of videos on YouTube enough to get you thrown off the Internet.

So what about that "understanding of how protecting IP rights helps promote creativity and innovation"? Well, I'd certainly like to understand that by seeing some independent, peer-reviewed research into the field, because at the moment what we have is just an unstated assumption that intellectual monopolies promote creativity, not evidence.

And it's certainly clear that those same monopolies do crimp creativity when it comes to mashups that are forbidden by copyright, or to writing software programs when surrounded by impenetrable patent thickets. What we need is some research that actually examines whether copyright and patents *do* promote creativity and innovation on balance.

And I'm all for "creativity, and the contribution made by creators and innovators to the development of societies across the globe", but I believe we should celebrate all kinds of creativity, not just the kind that makes money for WIPO's friends. And that means giving back to the great commons of culture - letting creators present and future do with your content what you have done with the work of the past - something that is impossible when copyright terms are so long most people will never live long enough to create using the raw material of their own culture.

And finally, that "respect": respect for monopolies? Really? Respect for excluding people, respect for refusing to share? Can't we do better than that? How about another, rather different, global day that celebrates generosity not judicial threats, sharing not suing?

Of course, pitting ourselves against the might of WIPO machine and its monopolist friends is no easy task: they possess all the power and money, while we must make do with having only right and time on our side.

Time, because the younger generation know instinctively that sharing is good - it's what their mothers told them, after all. And once they rise to positions of power the old monopolistic dinosaurs will suddenly find themselves superseded and looking very silly for the anachronistic idea that digital creations could ever be treated as anything but abundant.

But how should we organise all this? Well, Leo Loikkanen has knocked up a quick World Sharing Day manifesto - completely open and editable, of course - and invites everyone to help hone and perfect it (with a rather tight deadline....)

But that's just one approach: there are many other ways we can celebrate sharing - and I encourage you to , er, share some in the comments, or on your own site, or, indeed, anywhere. After all, why should the intellectual monopolists have a monopoly on all the fun...?

How Can Your Content Live After You Die?

The current computer scene is notable for the role played by user-generated content (UGC): Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube etc. are all driven by people's urge to create and share.

Most of this is done by relatively young people; this means death is unlikely to be high on their list of preoccupations. Which also implies that they are probably not thinking about what will happen to all the content they create when they do die.

So we find ourselves in a situation where more and more content is being produced - not all of it great, by any means, by certainly characteristic of our time and important to the people that create it and their family, friends and users. Despite that rapid accumulation, no one is really trying to address the issue of what is going to happen to it all as users die.

This is quite separate from the more immediate problem of services shutting down, as is happening with Google Video. At least in these cases, you generally have the option to transfer it to some other site. But what happens when you - the creator, the uploader, the one that is nominally responsible for that content - are no longer around to do that?

You might hope that your heirs, whoever they might be, would carry on with things. But that presupposes that you leave all your passwords with them - in your will, perhaps? There are probably also issues to do with changing over the ownership of accounts - again, something that has not needed tackling much yet.

But is it really realistic to expect your family and friends to carry on caring for your content? After all, they will probably have their own to worry about. And what happens when they die? Will they then pass on not only their own UGC, but yours too? Won't that create a huge digital ball and chain that grows as it is passed on to the unlucky recipient? Hardly a recipe for sustainability.

Doubtless at some point some sharp entrepreneur will interpret this coming need as an opportunity. Just as you can pay a company to keep your cryogenically-preserved body against the day when a cure will be found for whatever ailment you eventually die of, so there will be companies offering digital immortality for your content.

The key question - as for those cryogenic preservation companies - is: will they really be around in hundreds of years' time? Of course, that's not really a problem for those sharp entrepreneurs that have your money *now*; and there's also not much you will be able to do about it if they don't make good on their side of the bargain...

What we need are repositories where content can be stored safely with a very particular audience in mind: posterity. To a certain extent, the Internet Archive already does that, but as I know from my own blog posts, its coverage is very patchy. And that's to be expected: a single organisation cannot hope to archive the entire Internet, including its second-by-second changes.

Moreover, depending on on one organisation is like putting all of the world's knowledge in the Library of Alexandria and nowhere else: after a good fire or two, you have lost everything. No, the solution is clearly to store the world's digital heritage in a distributed fashion.

We could start with national repositories, like the great deposit libraries that have a copy of every book published in their land. Those national Net holdings might also be national - after all, if every country did this, the world's output would be covered.

But clearly that's not a safe option either: ideally, you want multiple backups of national material to build in redundancy. You'd also want vertical markets to be stored by relevant organisations - every architectural site by some architectural body, every fishing site by some suitable organisation. You might have even more local stores of data in local libraries, or in local universities. Obviously the more the merrier (although it would be good to have some protocol so that they could all signal their existence and what they held to each other.)

Of course, none of this is going to happen, because the intellectual monopolists would be squawking their heads off about the inclusion of "their" content· This would have knock-on consequences for UGC, since, as we know, the boundaries between what is fair use and copyright infringement is ill-defined without hugely-expensive court cases. No organisation is going to take the risk of getting it wrong given the insanely litigious nature of the content companies.

And so we must sit back and contemplate not only the inevitability of our own demise - however far off that might be - but also the inevitable destruction of all that really ace content we have created and will create. Because, you know, maintaining that 18th-century intellectual monopoly is just so much more important than preserving the unparalleled global explosion of human creativity we are currently witnessing online.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.