Scrutiny

Ah, to get back on topic… The “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property (PRO IP) Act” was just signed into law by President Bush, after passing the Senate and the House last month. I haven’t looked closely at this bill yet: here are two commentaries from William Patry (before he silenced his public blog) and Cyrus Farivar at Machinist. The main contributions of this bill are two: to massively increase the kind of financial penalties that can be sought in a copyright infringement claim, and to create an “IP czar” position inside the White House.

The first change is curious, but not surprising. The justification for the change is to signal that the US government is serious about piracy. But I think I agree with Patry, that the main thing it does is give the music and movie industries a phenomenally better position from which to pursue their tactic of punishing individual downloaders. In the one case that has been seen through to a monetary award, Capitol v. Thomas, the record labels received $222,000 for 24 songs that Jammie Thomas had made available on a peer-to-peer network. This kind of damages award helps a record label make the case to a downloader that they should “pre-settle” with them before a lawsuit ever occurs, for somewhere between $3000 and $5000. What will that pre-settlement number look like, now that the possible damages have increased 100-fold? What’s curious about this, in my mind, is that many have argued that the existing damages were too high — set to penalize traditional pirates, stamping CDs in a warehouse, they were too large for the case of online file-trading. Part of the question is what the damages represent, and how should they be set: some (i.e. the record labels) argue that the online fil-trader can do more damage, passing their song to millions with one click. The other way to look at it is that the punishment should fit the crime, and putting a few songs in your upload folder is a much smaller violation, in terms of criminal intent or effort, than setting up a street-corner piracy network.

As for an IP czar, I can only imagine. Maybe, in an Obama administration, it could be his friend Lawrence Lessig?

There has been a movement afoot to convince Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law professor and thoughtful copyright activist, to run for Congress in the 12th district in California, a seat just vacated by the death of Democrat Tom Lantos. Apparently, he has heard the call; in a video available here, at Lessig08.org, he makes announcements: the second is that he is considering this move, and will have some answer by March 1. The first, and arguably just as important, is the pre-announcement of his project “Change Congress,” a grassroots movement to change the “economy of influence” in Washginton. This stems from the scholarship he has taken on since his work on copyright and free culture, about the power of lobbying and money in our political process.If you think highly of Lessig and his work, say so — on his site, or by joining the “Draft Lessig for Congress” Facebook group. And whether he runs or not, look into the Change Congress project. You can add your email and be alerted when the project itself goes live. I believe this issue is the most important issue today for free speech and character of the public discourse, and is a crucial piece of the puzzle of why every major political issue of our day is conducted on a far-from-level playing field. I have long said, when asked what needs to change in copyright law, that the answer is campaign finance reform. Lessig can take this point right to D.C.

While you’re at it, you might also be interested in Lessig’s video explaining his support of Barack Obama. (If nothing else, Lessig’s particular gift for lucid talks and weirdly compelling Apple-Keynote presentations would itself be a welcome addition to our nation’s political discourse. Gore-Lessig for Powerpoint-President, 2012!)

Update: Lessig has announced in his blog that he will not run for Congress, but will focus his efforts on developing the “Change Congress” grassroots project. I suppose being in Congress is not the ideal way to move one issue forward — even when that issue is endemic to all political concerns — since you would be spread across so many issues. Fair.