In a recent Internet Evolution post, Ron Miller likened the current legal battles regarding intellectual property and the Internet to a fantasy universe. While Ron specifically invoked The Lord of the Rings mythos in his piece, new developments on Reddit suggest that this fantasy realm analogy may more properly reflect the DC Comics Universe.
In the DC Comics Universe, there exists a cube-shaped planet known as "Bizarro World." Bizarro World is more or less the exact opposite of Earth (its proper name, "Htrae," is "Earth" spelled backwards); the Bizarro Code boasts, "Us do opposite of all Earthly things!" It is best known as the home of Bizarro, a Superman antithesis; whereas Superman has powers such as freeze breath and x-ray vision, for instance, Bizarro has flame breath and x-ray hearing. There are Bizarro versions of other DC superheroes and supervillains too.
Back in our own universe, important technological freedoms are being threatened by overzealous IP laws, such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) -- a not-yet-ratified multinational treaty. ACTA would, by some accounts, make ISPs spy on customers, allow broad border searches of digital media (although this might not differ much from the present), and result in widespread Internet filtering.
I use the qualifier "by some accounts" in recognition of what may be ACTA's biggest problem: Almost nobody knows for sure exactly what it says. ACTA negotiations have been shrouded in secrecy. In one of the few "public" information meetings on ACTA, one activist attendee was thrown out for live-tweeting the meeting.
Now comes from the Internet what could reasonably be called "Bizzaro ACTA" -- the Free Internet Act ("FIA").
Bizarro ACTA Characteristic No. 1: FIA offers transparency. The brainchild of Reddit users, FIA is a treaty proposal being crowdsourced on the Internet as a Google Document. Unlike ACTA and its double secret negotiations, FIA is viewable to all and open to proposed edits by all.
Bizarro ACTA Characterstic No. 2: FIA is libertarian. Counter to ACTA, FIA has the lofty goal of requiring, with certain exceptions, that "Federal or State Governments... not pass any law, nor ratify any treaty, [that] imposes or administers any kind of censorship on the Internet[.]" Moreover, unlike ACTA's privacy-invasive measures, FIA proposes that Internet anonymity be a human right, while strictly limiting the instances in which a user's Internet privacy can be breached. Furthermore, FIA (as of its February 24 draft) would acutely limit and, in many cases, eliminate liability for copyright infringement. It also attempts to radically broaden fair use doctrine as protecting, inter alia, any use of copyrighted content that is non-profit or non-commercial, while affirmatively extending "ignorantia juris excusat" protection to certain infringers who mistakenly assert fair use. (The redefinition of fair use might be partially inadvertent; as I mentioned in the 7DEE Social Business lecture series, many people do not fully understand what fair use actually is and is not.)
Bizarro ACTA Characteristic No. 3: FIA lacks artfulness. Unlike ACTA, FIA is not the product of professional lawmakers but of laypeople. Unfortunately, this ultra-democratic strength of FIA may also be one of its weaknesses. Although praising Reddit's efforts, TechDirt CEO Mike Masnick recently characterized FIA's legally inarticulate text as "cringe-worthy." Current drafts of FIA remain rife with ambiguities, superfluities, and a few grammatical flubs -- including at least one pseudoword ("includient").
These shortcomings may not matter much, however. FIA's contributors have openly recognized their lack of legal savvy. One of its organizers, "Downing Street Cat," has announced plans to consult legal experts as part of a proposed timeline for developing and implementing FIA.
Indeed, how FIA reads now is not the point. The point is that a large segment of the population is upset and feeling underrepresented -- and is attempting to do something productive about it in an ambitiously organized manner. In this way, FIA is less legislation and more the beginning of a conversation -- one that may bring about real, positive change. What's more, even if FIA fizzles, it may inspire similar political movements in the future (as an improvement upon muchcriticized online petitions).
To these ends, FIA may be Bizarro, but that doesn't make it bad.
— Joe Stanganelli is a writer, attorney, and communications consultant. He is also principal and founding attorney of Beacon Hill Law in Boston. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeStanganelli.
These non-governmental proposals really just indicate that the current representational govt system isn't actually doing the job it's supposed to do. Instead of representing the "people" -- more and more often the govt is representing lobbying groups and corporations (corps that are treated like people, even though, corps can't vote or die).
It would be more interesting if any of these bizarro world efforts were actually taken up by real representatives and elected officials... has any actual elected rep acknowledged that citizens are trying to compose laws outside the official legal system?
Just because it is easier to steal some ones work does not make it right.
It is sad that a person actually has to publish a physical book in order to get their IP protected in the cyber world.
Eco conscious authors who prefer to publish only online, to avoid killing trees, cannot make a living in your cyber world because you do not recognize their IP or their right to earn a living from it.
If people want to give their IP away through an open source publishing house that is their deal.But if I am a tree hugging eco conscious author who wants to make a living selling cyber copies of my work, I should be protected.
Those centuries of laws and social moors you want to discard are important to me putting food on the table and a roof over my head.
I agree. The IP laws date back to the physical publishing era and some of them would no longer apply to digital content. There's a great need for revision and new laws need to be incorporated to take care of digital piracy.
@Thread, Kim is right. I'm not against IP laws per se, but they do need a great deal of revising. The idea behind copyrights and patents is that their creators should be able to reap economic benefits from their creative work. How can we sustain creativity in society if artists and authors don't get three meals a day?
That said, we have to remember that creative products are no longer distributed on paper and tape like they used to be—they're less material, if you will. And that totally makes sense because creativity isn't a material thing. IP laws were created in the day when publishers bought licenses to print/distribute books in certain geographic areas. Today, electronic book distribution isn't a matter of geography or printed volumes. It's upload/download, copy/paste. That's why we see a perennial resistance from the Internet community when it comes to traditional IP laws.
Personally, I think we simply need to get back to the roots of intellectual property: allowing creators to enjoy economic benefit from their creative work, both out of justice and also so that they can continue to create. I see a lot of content entrepreneurs giving away a lot of free stuff but, at the same time, sustaining themselves quite well financially.
that Reddit didn't work, say, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation or EPIC or some of the other organizations that might be sympathetic with their aims and yet who might have more nuance in how to write legislation.
I have a partial answer, although I'm sure it won't entirely satisfy you.
Digital media provide us with a set of tools of unprecedented sophistication and power, which are brilliantly designed - among other things - to allow us to copy and distribute files of all kinds. Texts, images, videos, you name it. With a sweep of a cursor and a few clicks, I can take just about anything I can find online and keep it for myself, share it with friends, republish it, like it, tweet it, and so on.
Anyone old enough to remember making copies of documents using carbon paper - and that's in my working lifetime - ought to be duly impressed.
And it's all free! Well, mostly...
From what we know of human nature, are we likely to leave these tools unused?
No: what we need is a fresh look at IP and the relevant law which acknowledges we're not using carbon paper any more.
It is impressive that alternative voices are being bounced within the Internet world about where and how we should create a valuable Internet-space. To this end the efforts of FIA must be commended.
I do agree with you that even if it fails, will will spawn other similar efforts.
The ThinkerNet does not reflect the views of TechWeb. The ThinkerNet is an informal means of communication to members and visitors of the Internet Evolution site. Individual authors are chosen by Internet Evolution to blog. Neither Internet Evolution nor TechWeb assume responsibility for comments, claims, or opinions made by authors and ThinkerNet bloggers. They are no substitute for your own research and should not be relied upon for trading or any other purpose.
As Mitch Wagner discussed today, Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr. The big Internet debate at the moment is whether Tumblr will be good or bad for Yahoo. Regardless of their stances on the future of Yahoo itself, many claim that Yahoo will somehow ruin Tumblr.
At last month's Bio-IT World Conference, speakers and attendees alike wrung their hands at one of the biggest impediments to collaboration -- getting employees to adopt collaboration systems.
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, armchair detectives on Reddit and 4chan tried to "crowdsolve" the case by analyzing photographs of the scene. Reactions weremixed -- as were results.
Leaders in the health and life sciences industry called for more collaboration and new big-data search technologies as this year's Bio-IT World Conference began earlier this week.
The plan for unmanned police drones to patrol traffic and other city conditions in Seattle has sparked a new set of legal concerns about privacy. Law traditionally lags technology, but we can expect now to see a new round of activity in the courts as legal definitions begin to emerge on what "next-gen privacy" will look like.
Ontario's information privacy commissioner explains the unintended consequences of facial recognition technology and how biometric encryption can make it safer.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
Expert Integrated Systems: Changing the Experience & Economics of IT In this e-book, we take an in-depth look at these expert integrated systems -- what they are, how they work, and how they have the potential to help CIOs achieve dramatic savings while restoring IT's role as business innovator. READ THIS eBOOK
your weekly update of news, analysis, and
opinion from Internet Evolution - FREE! REGISTER HERE
Wanted! Site Moderators Internet Evolution is looking for a handful of readers to help moderate the message boards on our site – as well as engaging in high-IQ conversation with the industry mavens on our thinkerNet blogosphere. The job comes with various perks, bags of kudos, and GIANT bragging rights. Interested?
To save this item to your list of favorite Internet Evolution content so you can find it later in your Profile page, click the "Save It" button next to the item.
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
Email This
