[DMCA-Activists] NY Times: CED Report on Online "Piracy"

[Seth Johnson]

> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/01/technology/01rights.html


Report Raises Questions About Fighting Online Piracy


By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: March 1, 2004


The entertainment industry's pursuit of tough new laws to protect 
copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for 
the economy, according to a report being released today by the 
Committee for Economic Development, a Washington policy group that has 
its roots in the business world.

Record companies and movie and television studios have fought 
copyright infringement on many fronts, hoping to find ways to prevent 
their products from being distributed free on the Internet. But 
critics warn that many of the new restrictions that the entertainment 
industry proposes - like enforcing technological requirements for 
digital television programming that would prevent it from being 
transmitted online - would upset the balance between the rights of the 
content creators and the rights of the public. 

"We are sympathetic to the problems confronting the content 
distribution industry," said the report, "Promoting Innovation and 
Economic Growth: The Special Problem of Digital Intellectual 
Property." "But these problems - perfect copies of high-value digital 
works being transmitted instantly around the world at almost no cost - 
require clear, concentrated thinking, rather than quick legislative or 
regulatory action."

Until recently, those who opposed strong copyright protections have 
been characterized by the entertainment industry as a leftist fringe 
with no respect for the value of intellectual property. 

"The ideas of copy-left, or of a more liberal regime of copyright, are 
receiving wider and wider support," said Debora L. Spar, a professor 
at Harvard Business School. "It's no longer a wacky idea cloistered in 
the ivory tower; it's become a more mainstream idea that we need a 
different kind of copyright regime to support the wide range of 
activities in cyberspace." 

Susan Crawford, a professor at the Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva 
University and an author of the report said that a growing number of 
business leaders are worried that the trend toward "equating 
intellectual property with physical property" might be hampering 
innovation.

"Bits are not the same as atoms," she argued, contending that the 
distinction is being blurred by Hollywood. "We need to reframe the 
legal discussion to treat the differences of bits and atoms in a more 
thoughtful way."

The chief author of the report, Elliot Maxwell, a former adviser to 
the secretary of commerce on the digital economy during the Clinton 
administration, said that middle ground was hard to find in the many 
conflicts over intellectual property. The report, he said, was an 
attempt "to find a way through this thicket." 

The entry of the Committee for Economic Development into the copyright 
wars, some say, is surprising given its long history as a policy-
setter in the world of economics and business. The 60-year-old 
organization left its intellectual mark on initiatives like the 
Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods agreement, which created the World 
Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In more recent years, the 
committee's policy papers have had a measure of influence on issues 
like campaign finance reform and the movement to set standards for 
public schools through testing. 

Ms. Spar, however, warned against reading too much social change into 
the committee's new stance. It shows that the ideas are "gaining 
legitimacy," she said. "It does not mean that we're about to throw out 
the copyright system any time soon." 

The report was written by an offshoot of the committee, and in an 
introduction to the report, the members of the parent group said that 
for largely technical reasons, the report is "not an official C.E.D. 
policy statement." But they underscored the group's support, saying 
that it "welcomes this report and recommends it to readers as an 
excellent analysis of the issue of balancing intellectual property 
rights and the incentives for long-term growth in the digital age."

One of the most prominent critics of attempts to increase control over 
copyrighted material applauded the new report. "I think it's 
exciting," said the critic, Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford 
Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and 
Society. "The points they are making are obviously right," he 
said, "but the only way people will get it is if more credible, 
mainstream organizations begin to utter it."