Next week is Copyright Week, and as usual Re:Create member the Electronic Frontier Foundation has done an excellent job laying out themes for each day that are both timely and timeless. We’ll be highlighting Re:Create member contributions to the conversation all week long, but as a preview I thought I might get a head start by doing a two-sentence post for each day. My video game loving son might call it a speed run. Here goes!
Day 1: Copyright Policy Should Be Made in the Open With Input From Everyone
Copyright has a classic public choice problem: a handful of wealthy foreign-owned businesses spend outsized resources in DC pushing for extreme copyright policies, while the public that copyright is meant to serve is disconnected from the process. Re:Create and its member groups can help give the public interest a voice, but only if we are included in policymaking processes from the beginning.
Day 2: Copyright Enforcement as a Tool of Censorship
Copyright creates an attractive nuisance for wannabe censors, because almost everything is regulated by copyright, and the enforcement mechanisms for copyright are so powerful. Policymakers should assume every copyright enforcement tool will be used for censorship and act accordingly.
Day 3: Device and Digital Ownership
The DMCA and digital license agreements undermine ownership rights, tying up consumers, librarians, farmers, and others in legal knots that block them from using, fixing, and preserving their own stuff. The NTIA is right: the DMCA digital locks rules are not fit for 21st Century technology policy.
Day 4: The Preservation and Sharing of Information and Culture
Speaking of preservation, digital preservation is impossible without copying. Balanced copyright powers preservation, but one-sided provisions like Section 1201 of the DMCA tie the hands of preservationists.
Day 5: Free Expression and Fair Use
These ideas are so closely entwined that the theme is almost redundant: fair use is free expression, and without fair use, free expression would be subject to the whims of copyright holders. This is as true in technology cases as it is in parody and critique; fair use-powered technologies advance free expression by enabling new forms of creativity and increasing access to information.