Jessica Litman on Licensing and P2P Distribution

(Forwarded from Pho list.  Jessica Litman's analysis is getting closer 
and closer to directly acknowledging the intrinsic freedom of 
information as such [here, she focuses on the dynamics of sharing 
information via communications technology].  -- Seth)

-----Original Message-----
From: "James S. Tyre" <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 11:44:42 -0800
Subject: pho: Jessica Litman on Licensing and P2P Distribution

Phoster and Law Professor Jessica Litman (Hi, Jessica) has weighed in 
with "Sharing and Stealing," an early draft of a paper discussing 
licensing and P2P distribution.  Jessica discusses the work that 
precedes her (including that of Neil Netanel and Terry Fisher, both 
discussed here at length), offers her own take.  Definitely worth 
reading for those seriously interested in the field - not that any 
Phosters would be.  '-)

Full (draft) paper available for free download at 
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=472141.  Sayeth the 
Abstract:

Abstract:
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the creation and mass 
dissemination of a wide variety of works. Until recently, most means 
of mass dissemination required a significant capital investment. The 
lion's share of the economic proceeds of copyrights were therefore 
channeled to publishers and distributors, and the law was designed to 
facilitate that. Digital distribution invites us to reconsider all of 
the assumptions underlying that model. We are still in the early 
history of the networked digital environment, but already we've seen 
experiments with both direct and consumer-to-consumer distribution of 
works of authorship. One remarkable example of the difference consumer-
to-consumer dissemination can make is seen in the astonishing 
information space that has grown up on the world wide web. The 
Internet has transformed information and the way we interact with it 
by creating an easily accessible, dynamic, shared information space.  
Its success derives from the fact that information sharing on the Web 
is almost frictionless; individuals are free to post information they 
learned from others without having to secure their permissions. This 
paper proposes that we look for some of the answers to the vexing 
problem of unauthorized exchange of music files on the Internet in the 
wisdom intellectual property law has accumulated about the protection 
and distribution of factual information. In particular, it analyzes 
the digital information resource that has developed on the Internet, 
and suggests that what we should be trying to achieve is an online 
musical smorgasbord of comparable breadth and variety. It proposes 
that we adopt a legal architecture that encourages but does not compel 
copyright owners to make their works available for widespread sharing 
over digital networks, and that we incorporate into that architecture 
a payment mechanism, based on a blanket or collective license, 
designed to compensate creators and to bypass unnecessary 
intermediaries.

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James S. Tyre                               mailto:[email protected]
Law Offices of James S. Tyre          310-839-4114/310-839-4602(fax)
10736 Jefferson Blvd., #512               Culver City, CA 90230-4969
Co-founder, The Censorware Project             http://censorware.net
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