While Canadian bloggers continue to sound the alarm over the possibility that our own government may move ahead with some really bad proposals concerning copyright, U.S. legislators are poised to demonstrate how much worse it can get.
The American entertainment industry is lobbying hard to get Congress to push through a comprehensive piece of legislation during the current "lame duck" session. I guess they're in a hurry because they don't want anyone to look too closely.
The Senate might vote on HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement. The bill would also undo centuries of "fair use" -- the principle that gives Americans the right to use small samples of the works of others without having to ask permission or pay.The bill lumps together several pending copyright bills including HR4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act, which would criminally punish a person who "infringes a copyright by ... offering for distribution to the public by electronic means, with reckless disregard of the risk of further infringement." Critics charge the vague language could apply to a person who uses the popular Apple iTunes music-sharing application.
The bill would also permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited. The proposed law also includes language from the Pirate Act (S2237), which would permit the Justice Department to file civil lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers.
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The entertainment industry has been lobbying hard for quick Senate passage during the lame-duck session, with opponents gearing up for a tough fight.Hollywood's involvement has even irked the American Conservative Union, which holds considerable sway with conservative Republicans in Congress. The ACU plans a major print ad campaign this week to oppose the bill, mainly because some provisions would require the Justice Department to file civil copyright lawsuits on behalf of the entertainment industry.
"It's just plain wrong to make the Department of Justice Hollywood's law firm," said Stacie Rumenap, ACU's deputy director.
While digital technology certainly poses a challenge to the established entertainment industry, the proposals put forward both in Canada and in the U.S. go far beyond meeting that challenge. The industry wants to take advantage of the situation to entrench its ability to monopolize content and enlist everyone from the government to ISPs as copyright cops.
And we lose, not just as consumers but as citizens. We lose as consumers because the corporations will be free to find ways to ensure that we pay more for content because we're not buying it anymore, we're just renting it and paying for it again every time we access it. We lose as citizens because legislation like that proposed here puts the corporate right to profit above even the individual's right to free expression.
Nice work if you can get it, eh? Pay a creator the minimum you can get away with for the copyright to something, then sit back and collect a royalty every single time someone accesses it. Forever. Throughout the universe. With the onus for enforcement on the ISP and the government and any accused infringer treated as guilty until proven innocent.
That's the direction we're heading in.
I would like to know more about that reference to undoing the principle of "fair use," which would have enormous implications to scholarly work, to publishing any kind of research or criticism.
Canadian writers and researchers often assume that they are protected by "fair use" doctrine too, but that is not at all clear in our copyright law. If the American principle is repudiated as well, that could make things tougher for us all.
I work in book and magazine publishing -- it is sad but true that the industry representatives who should, in my view, be fighting legislation like this are (1) not up to speed, and (2) living with conflicts of interest.