Oram: Time for a Data Transmission Summit

> http://oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3989


Time for a Data Transmission Summit

By Andy Oram
Nov. 20, 2003 08:41 AM


In a widely circulated weblog, software designer Dave Winer has called on
major Democratic presidential candidates to issue statements about current
intellectual property battles. Winer is backed up by another weblog by noted
law professor Lawrence Lessig. Their goal, which I and most other people in
high-tech support, is to to "keep the Internet free of interference from the
entertainment industry," as reflected in the DMCA and its harsh application,
the anti-KaZaa lawsuits by the RIAA, the recent broadcast flag required by
the FCC on digital reception and playback equipment, and so forth. 

I would go further and say it's time for a broad-based but officially
sanctioned summit on information transmission involving Congress, relevant
agencies such as the FCC, technology leaders, and content providers. These
would not be the stacked hearings and closed-door negotiations that usually
drive policy in these areas, but a frank examination of what technological
change is doing to our data. It would not be restricted to the field known
as intellectual property. (The term is not really appropriate, of course,
and technological change is making that more and more obvious as time goes
on.) 

Don't think that current IP battles are just large entertainment firms
defending turf. We will all eventually be towed in by the deep currents that
the content providers are struggling with now. 

The plummeting cost and increasing ease of transmitting material changes
everything about information. But policy got off on a bad footing back
around 1995 in the first serious government examination of the issues, the
notorious document "Intellectual Property and the National Information
Infrastructure: The Report of the Working Group on Intellectual Property
Rights," by Bruce Lehman and the Information Infrastructure Task Force. This
report founded the original sin of digital policy, defining the movement of
bits within a computer as a "copy" of a work and therefore as a
copyright-infringing act. 

Lehman's report essentially declared that the government's approach to
protecting copyright holders' interests would be business as usual. The
Clinton administration hereby set itself inexorably against the
technological tide and committed itself to a philosophy totally out of touch
with reality, a course that led to the dismal results we see today. And yet
the doctrine of the infringing computer copy has spread throughout the world
and is being urged by copyright holders on governments everywhere. 

Similar defenses of business as usual have distorted policy in just about
every other area of "intellectual property," including trademarks, patents,
and trade secrets. While the World Intellectual Property Organization and
its adherents claim to balance technological change with the interests of
current big business, decisions always slant toward the latter. 

But we must not lose all discernment in our fight against abuses by large
intellectual property interests, because they are touching on to something
that affects us all. The ease of storing and transmitting information that
essentially takes on an eternal existence is a social issue that we all must
face. One current manifestation of the problem is the recent decision by
many health clubs to ban cell phones because some contain cameras that can
catch members in compromising positions. 

The spread of cameras, sensors, and wireless networks will lead to more such
dilemmas that will make us wish we could sit down with the intellectual
property interests and discuss what we all have in common. Too many people
fall back on the oft-discredited but easy phrase "information wants to be
free," which is no more appropriate to the situation than the "get over it"
response to violations of privacy. 

We can't stop the spread of information, but we can try to establish norms
and ground rules for its use. We have to celebrate what we can achieve with
the potent combinations of new technologies, but try to remain masters of
them. And that is why it's high time for a summit. 

Right now, we're in a battle where those with the most social and political
power benefit at the expense of the rest of us. This means large
corporations having free rein over information transfer where it benefits
them, while they legally restrain its transfer where they sense a loss. A
summit will necessarily have to raise questions of power, which are the
questions powerful interests are most loath to address. We must push all the
harder to make the issues explicit. 

Andy Oram is an editor at O'Reilly & Associates, specializing in books on
Linux and programming. Most recently, he edited Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the
Power of Disruptive Technologies. 

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