[Infowarrior] - New US Copyright Alliance hopes to strengthen copyright law

[Richard Forno]

New Copyright Alliance hopes to strengthen copyright law

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070518-new-copyright-alliance-hopes-t
o-strengthen-copyright-law.html

By Nate Anderson | Published: May 18, 2007 - 11:12AM CT

A new industry-backed Copyright Alliance was launched yesterday in
Washington, DC, with the goal of "promoting the value of copyright as an
agent for creativity, jobs, and growth." But the group wants to do more than
simply get the word out about the value of copyright‹it wants to actively
strengthen current copyright law.

Backed by organizations like the MPAA, NBC, News Corp., Disney, Time Warner,
the Business Software Alliance, Microsoft, ASCAP, the NBA, and others, the
Copyright Alliance has already secured initial support from several members
of Congress. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and "Hollywood" Howard Berman (D-CA)
both sent statements of support, and Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC) made sure that
the launch was a bipartisan affair.

The group is headed by Patrick Ross, a former senior fellow at the Progress
& Freedom Foundation, a strongly free-market think tank. Ross has written
about IP issues for years, and in a 2005 opinion piece claimed that he was
"looking for anyone who wants to join me in seeking that elusive middle
ground."

His new gig may be a strange place to fight for that "middle ground" in any
meaningful sense, as the Alliance is dedicated to "strengthening copyright
law" using "bilateral, regional, and multilateral agreements to protect
creators" and advancing educational programs "that teach the value of strong
copyright."

The group does want to "balance those rights with the public good" and hopes
to "enrich our culture through incentives to create and disseminate new and
innovative creative works." To get a sense of what this might mean, consider
the only three documents linked up in their online reading room. The first
claims that "a number of pundits have elevated Newton's observation [about
standing on the shoulders of giants] into a policy argument against
copyright or patents" and supports this assertion by referencing Lawrence
Lessig's book Free Culture‹a book that is copyrighted under a Creative
Commons license and which repeatedly calls for the continued (but reformed)
existence of copyright.

The second linked paper argues that "rampant piracy is costing the software,
movie and music industries (and thus the U.S. economy) billions of dollars"
and that the EFF and Cato are meanwhile focusing only on "minor issues" with
the DMCA. The third paper (from the same author as the second) argues that
most "fair use" claims made today are misleading.

All three papers are authored by free-market think tank scholars; this says
nothing about their rightness or wrongness, but the papers do give us a
glimpse of what the Copyright Alliance is likely to think. The group appears
ready to address copyright concerns from a rights-holder, free-market
perspective that (rather ironically) will appeal to the government for
stronger regulations and an increase in protections for a government-granted
monopoly.

The argument that stronger copyright protection will benefit consumers by
encouraging more creativity is already present in the group's initial
materials and is reminiscent of the argument that DRM enables consumer
choice by making available material that could not otherwise be
accessed‹exactly the argument that Ross was in fact making back in 2005.