Joho the Blog
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November 16, 2006
Gary Shapiro, CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, responds to the op-ed written by Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry of America, in response to the CEA's Digital Freedom campaign. Personally, I think the RIAA's op-ed is probably correct that the right to do what you want with a recording that you've obtained legally—including freely moving it around your digital devices—should not be pegged onto Fair Use. But, I am not a lawyer, so maybe I'm wrong about that. That takes care of the part where I agree with the RIAA. I don't see much in the Digital Freedom campaign about Fair Use, other than a passing reference by former Berkman fellow Derek Slater in a blog report. The RIAA's Sherman goes after Fair Use because he has a better defense against that. The real issue is: We want to be able to use what we've bought the way we want to use it, we want to be able to share music at least as freely digitally as we do in the real world, and we absolutely do not want the government mandating technology be crippled to prop up an industry that can't keep up with the demands of the free market. The urgent issue is the RIAA's current push for a lame duck "Audio Flag" bill that will mandate that technology have built into it the inability to record radio signals without the permission of the broadcaster. This would mean that you just can't save music off the air for personal use. It would also kill TiVo for radio, an option that becomes really interesting if you're an XM or Sirius subscriber (as I am not). [Tags: drm riaa cea digital_freedom audio_flag eff ] Matt McKenzie has an excellent article in Computerworld explaining how Windows Vista turns your machine into a player owned and controlled by Big Content. He doesn't quite put it like that, but it's hard to draw another conclusion. [Tags: vista] Posted
by D. Weinberger at November 16, 2006 10:42 AM
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Comments
Have you ever considered that it might actually be unfair to suspend the liberty of the public in their use of public works?
A few wealthy publishers may have once considered it fair to enjoy exclusive reproduction and derivation privileges for the business model this would enable.
This may have once been acceptable to the public, because once upon a time they did not have the means to enjoy such facilities anyway, and consequently perceived no loss in any grant of monopoly.
Unfettered public use of published, and consequently public works, is fundamentally fair use. This fair use is not unfairly constrained by truth in attribution, nor respect for privacy.
It is however, unfairly constrained by offering the suspension of this liberty as a commercial reward to publishers.
This is further compounded by the reality that despite being offered, the liberty cannot practically be suspended, except in products people eventually learn to avoid buying.
Fair use is a euphemism for a traditional publisher's tolerance of an insignificant infringement of their monopoly.
Given that the public are now all publishers, and have access to all the reproduction and derivation facilities they could possibly want, the traditional publishers know that all infringement is significant and none can be tolerated.
Any notion of fair use that is short of copyright's abolition is tantamount to "Let them eat cake".
Posted by: Crosbie Fitch | November 16, 2006 12:00 PM
and we absolutely do not want the government mandating technology be crippled to prop up an industry that can't keep up with the demands of the free market.
Funny, that's also one of the better arguments against network neutering!
Posted by: Brad Hutchings | November 16, 2006 04:15 PM