A Global Perspective on the Internet

As many of my readers know, I've been around the internet since before it was ever in the public eye. In fact, I've participated in several technical revolutions as well as several of the industries that technology and the internet have heavily touched over the past 30-40 years: computers, music, TV/video, radio and paper publications. This gives me an interesting set of experiences from which to look at the changes in our worldwide culture that are happening as I write this - and that will affect our lives over the coming years.

I'm a bit late in writing predictions for the new year but that's OK - this isn't really about predictions. If anything it is a bit of a retrospective and then a bit of a prediction but a lot of background that you, my readers, need to have in order to judge the various governments and bureaucracies that have tried and will continue to try to deal with the changes brought about by the internet and its progenitor technologies.

But most of all this is a call to arms, not literally, but figuratively - in that I hope you will do something to tell your various representatives that trying to put the contents of Pandora's box back in the box simply won't work. The world will just have to cope with the new technology order and make the best of it.

More background, or skip to the interesting bits

I'm a writer, I've played around (in my youth) at music, sung in choirs, made movies, participated in theater, produced TV, been a radio announcer, been a professional photographer and videographer, been part owner of a stereo equipment store, worked as both a salesman and manager for Radio Shack in their computer stores, been self employed as a computer software creator and systems integrator, and was co-owner of Canada's first commercial internet service provider, Wimsey.COM.

Along the way I've had formal education in computer technologies, business administration and marketing - and had a whole lot of experience hands-on in these fields.

I've had my picture on the front cover of national magazines, stood in front of the Copyright Board of Canada to testify on matters, written lots of articles about copyright, digital rights management, various copyright bills and initiatives and more recently the ACTA secret negotiations.

My two boys were some of the first children to have the internet full-time in their home. I've been to some of the darkest corners of the internet and also some of the darkest corners of the paper publishing world and film/video world. I won't say I've seen it all, but I've seen enough that little about human nature can actually shock me these days.

I've inadvertently purchased pirated copies of a number of hard goods and been offered all manner of pirated goods online.

I've participated in Peer-to-peer file sharing networks, both for public-domain works and for copyrighted materials.

I own a CD player that can hold packs of 6 CDs at a time - and have several dozen of the packs full of CDs. Last time I used it was many years ago.

I've ripped some of my vinyl records and some of my purchased CDs to disk so I can listen to them in the order I want them and on the equipment I have in my home today (my record player no longer functions). I listen to radio via the internet as well as over the air. I have cable TV, not an antenna on my roof anymore.

My company has participated in the creation of a video jukebox system that died because the content owners' representatives couldn't/wouldn't agree to allow us to rip their content to digital storage (hard disk) - they insisted we put the DVDs in the box, a technological dead end IMHO.

I read daily the writings of others in many of the fields I've touched and many who have similar backgrounds to mine.

What has all this to do with today's technical/internet world?

The fact that I'm a citizen of Canada gives me the right to comment on what my government does and is doing. The fact that I have background in such a broad variety of technical and every-day fields gives me an insight that many people just don't have. Hopefully my ability with words will impart some of the concerns I have about where our world is headed to you, and you'll help do something about it rather than stand by and let it happen or worse, cheer on the law makers in their efforts to stifle technology.

First, let's talk about copyright. 

Paper printing and record/CD/DVD production facilities cost a lot of money. An industry has built up around this fact - the publishing industry. Creators, the musicians, videographers, photographers and writers, have ended up subservient to the publishing industry for hundreds of years because of this. There are numerous stories of creators battling publishers to regain the rights to their own works and get out of onerous contracts.

Today, electronic publication via copying digital media and using networks is part of the technology we all own in our cell phones, PDAs and computers. Some creators, and the number is growing daily, are using this fact to make their living without the help of publishers. This has the publishing industry running scared because the advent of these "disruptive technologies" means the publishers no longer have a monopoly on the copying facilities. These publishing industries and the surrounding hangers-on such as the music and video royalties gathering organizations (ASCAP, CRIA, RIAA and similar orgs in other countries) are in fear for their very corporate lives. The fact is the creators of copyright materials no longer need these publishing companies to make copies - the creators themselves can do this either via a web site or with inexpensive equipment they can own themselves to create CDs and DVDs, etc.

This has lead the publishing industry to lobby governments heavily to intrude in the commerce of copyright to the point of mandating the publishing industry's continued existence. In fact the publishing industry has in some cases had law put into place that erodes long-standing public access rights (see the original copyright act - the Statute of Anne from 1709) to works for legitimate reasons, reasons that balanced off the social pact called copyright in the first place. Before copyright law was created (history of copyright) there were no laws governing the copying of creative works. In return for the establishment of copyright law, the public negotiated rights to retrieve creative materials for the public good in cases such as:

• for posterity - the ongoing recognition of historic significance of created works including books, letters, music, etc.
• for news - use of segments or representations of a work to tell the world of its existence and noteworthyness
• for education - use of a work to learn more about the art of creation in general
• for resale and lending (of purchased copies)
• after a period following the death of the works' creator (initially 14 years or 21 years for works published before the Statute of Anne was declared)

These rights have various names and limitations in various countries - but something like them exists or existed when copyright legislation was initially created. They include things like "Fair Use" (USA) and "Fair Dealing" (Canada) and various lengths of time after the work is created or the creator dies before the work comes into the public domain.

The erosions of these balancing items in copyright law that publishers have used or are negotiating include:

• contractually moving copyright ownership from the creator to the publisher
• extending the length of time past death of the creator from 14 years to 50 years (typical) to 70 or more years in some cases
• including public domain works in collections and trying to impose copyright upon them that way
• publishing works under Digital Rights Management (DRM) in a fashion that prohibits fair use and does not release the work at the end of the copyright period (x years after death) and getting government to impose laws that make breaking DRM in any case illegal, even if the work is in the public domain or the use is "fair"
• getting government to pass laws that give unfair powers to the publishers to prosecute and/or punish individuals for alleged copyright violations that are not commercial in nature (i.e. private copying, time-shifting video, moving a purchased work from one playing platform to another, etc.)
• getting governments to pass laws that make your facilities providers or your own hardware spy on your use of copyright materials (see privacy below) and prohibiting you from disabling or bypassing such measures, even if they are trivial, damaging or intrusive or just plain broken.

The above are all in aid of preventing the business collapse of a segment of our commercial society that is becoming as useful as the buggy-whip manufacturers were when the automobile took over from the horse and carriage. I'll note here that there are some publishers who have changed their business focus and are in fact becoming (again) successful in their business without resorting to this legal bullying so it is possible.

Examples of what has been passed include the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the proposed Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Both of these have anti-circumvention (of DRM) sections and both propose or make your ISP spy on you and/or punish you without judicial oversight for alleged transgressions.

ACTA, along with the governments of several countries, most recently France for example, has a "3 strikes" provision where your (and your familiy's) access to the internet may be turned off without a trial or any judicial involvement for alleged copyright violations. Think of this as being banned from the use of any road or telephone or electricity or water - some of the other necessities of today's Western civilization. The internet is no longer a luxury, it is for many of us a necessity. To have access to it removed without judicial oversight is simply not acceptable - yet the publishing industry is lobbying for this very right - and so far they're winning!

If you children's friends use a computer in your house to download a copyright item without your knowledge, or if you have an open (unprotected) WIFI access point and someone in their car at the curb downloads something, you can lose your access - and you might have no recourse and it can be done without your knowledge.

Scary thought. Your ability to participate in the information highway is removed if someone "crashes" their vehicle or does something illegal on your property - because they could drive there on the electronic highway and you have a driveway that connects you to it.

Considering that many people don't have a clue where their computer ends and the internet begins, and that the vendors of add-on technologies such as WIFI access points set them up with defaults that are wide open to abuse by outsiders, and that the vendors of your typical PC operating system and the software on it have left it open to the point where literally millions of systems have been taken over by criminals to do their bidding, such a legal option is premature and overbearing at best, and ill conceived at worst.

This is like the automobile manufacturers and accessory sellers creating a car that can be remotely driven by a criminal (or your neighbour), used in the commission of a crime, and you, the owner end up being punished - yet you have no ability to fix the problem.

At minimum you need to contact your local government member of parliament and express your concern over the continued pandering to the publishing industry and erosion of your basic rights to use and enjoy copyright materials you have legitimately purchased or have legitimate rights to in whatever way works best for you - with no industry knowledge or intrusion into how you accomplish this and no intrusive rights management regime that makes you, the customer, the enemy!

If nothing else - tell your local retailer, or the vendor on the web, that you will not purchase product that compromises your right to use the product in whatever way you deem best. Push back! The vendors of software on floppy diskette stopped using intrusive methods supposed to stop copying (some of the first copy protection schemes) when people simply stopped buying their product.

richard

Part 2 (available Tuesday, January 12, 2010) will deal with how the publishing industry is affecting the hardware you use to read, listen and watch copyright materials. The rights of a purchaser of equipment or services

Part 3 will deal with privacy and the internet and other communications

Part 4 will sum it all up with some ideas and concepts for the future of electronic communications, the internet and publishing

Tag: drm publishing music video tv radio acta privacy