Intellectual Property

Here are some thoughts on the recent proposed legislation for the protection of digital content:
The television, movie and music industry, especially those who are focused on mass marketing have received a great deal of regulatory aid in defending their businesses against new business models and changing technology. Examples include the repeated extension of the length of copyrights, as well as the provisions in the DMCA which effectively make accused violators of copyright guilty until proven guilty.

In exchange for this protection, I believe they have done very little to compensate the public for these regulatory changes which have directly benefited them. I would challenge them to show that they have increased the quantity of intellectual property they have produced in proportion to the extension in length of copyright. I understand that copyright as a method of protecting intellectual property was originally included in the constitution in order to encourage the advancement of the arts and sciences. 

Past and future enlargements of intellectual property rights should be tied to a public benefit in terms of increased availability of intellectual property. An example of such an exchange of benefits might be to have copyrights expire at the point the copyrighted work has been unavailable from the copyright holder for 3 consecutive years or for 20 years total. The definition of available would clearly be problematic, but clearly this would give an equitable exchange.

Similarly, given current efforts by these industries to mandate intrusive protections for their digital content, some sort of exchange of good should be included. An example might be a requirement that any content protected by a required scheme must be made available in that format for the length of the copyright. Perhaps there should be a requirement that an unprotected version be kept in escrow by some third party. This version could be released to the public either at the expiration of copyright or under specific fair use circumstances.

Finally, one of the major arguments in favor of some recently introduced legislation is that new protection is needed in order to create enough content to make broadband internet access more popular. None of the plans for digital content from proponents of this legislation appear to be anything other than turning the internet into cable TV. Cable TV already exists. It does not need to be recreated on the Internet. If the 3 Billion documents that already exist on the Internet are not enough content, then I question why the government has an interest in forcing dramatic changes to all computers in order to increase Internet usage.

Free Speech

I have always believed that a persons own religious views are personal, and that discussion of the basis of these views can be very valuable in understanding others. As a result I am at least saddened and to some extent maddened by the use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by the Church of Scientology.

I have always thought that affirmative beliefs are the most susceptible to broad generalizations, one can often understand most deeply ones beliefs by examining what one rejects. An example being a person who labels themselves as a practicing Jew, but does not keep kosher or a one who labels themselves a Catholic, but does not believe that priests should be required to be celibate.
I believe that an active dialog between a believer and a dissenter is a valuable tool in creating a diverse yet tolerant society. Unfortunately, there clearly are many who readily believe that an ideal society would be one where every living person has become a convert to that person's individual belief system. 
I am content to live in a world where each of use recognizes the basis for others beliefs, whether they be based on faith, reason, or evidence that is personally convincing to them. Given that, if you are reading this page, you are probably a friend of mine, I think that I can clearly state that you and I disagree on at least one significant religious principle, but I am still glad to know you.

Furthermore, I believe that any religion should be prepared to have its religious principles discussed, even if eventually one must conclude that the difference between it and a dissenter are based on a matter of faith believed unprovable by at least one of the debaters.

Thus I am somewhat dismayed to learn that in March of 2002 the Church of Scientology utilized provisions of the DMCA to get my favorite search engine Google to remove links to many if not most pages on the Operation Clambake website. This website to my eyes appears to be a fairly harsh critique of the value of Scientology. I am not sure any of my friends are Scientologists or disillusioned former Scientologists, so I really have no opinion about it as a religion one way or the other. I further believe that Copyright Law, can be useful in the promotion of creation of useful art. For this reason, I believe that it makes sense to grant limited copyright. That said, copyright is the single strongest tool in existence today for non-governmental groups today. I think the use of the DMCA by the Church of Scientology is an abuse of at least the spirit of copyright law as the original framers of the constitution (who I believe were well balanced in this area) intended. I hope that court cases as well as future legislation will return copyright law to an incentive to create instead of a tool to restrict the exchange of ideas and to generate a perpetual income stream from a single creative idea.