John C. Dvorak

The politics seen in the current copyright-law debates have become more than intriguing. I have to ask, does anyone in power care at all about the public and its needs? For example, when the copyright laws were first written, the idea was that certain creations would belong to the creator exclusively for a limited period of time and then pass into the public domain to benefit society as a whole. New laws see things differently, though. Now, society as a whole is meaningless. The vested interests of a few already rich individuals and corporations dominate the thinking surrounding copyrights.

Believe it or not, newer copyright laws protect an artist's ownership of an impression for 75 years after the artist's death. Originally, copyright laws were designed to protect artists from rip-offs of their work. How is a dead artist getting ripped off? And the worst part about all this is that these laws apply to only a limited number of people—fine artists, big software companies, writers, movie producers, and recording artists, for example. Fashion designers are not protected from so-called knock-off artists. Font designers get no benefit either. When I hear arguments about how all musicians will give up music and become garbage collectors if piracy isn't stopped, I think of the fashion industry, which has no protection from piracy. Gee, the fashion industry sure hasn't died off because of piracy, has it? Also note that writers are protected by copyright laws, but their works are commonly photocopied and passed around the Net, and you see nobody complaining (at least not complaining like the music people). Most writers end up signing away their rights to demanding publishers and wind up with zilch. But I digress.

All you have to do to see how increasingly corrupt these laws are becoming is to examine the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). The primary thing to notice about the DMCA is who is behind it. Or, just look at who parties because of it. Yes, parties—the verb.

Reader and PR man Alan Wallace turned me on to an interesting Web site dedicated to following politics and technology—Declan McCullagh's Politech ( On the site, there is a search engine you can use to look up news on specific issues. This usually reveals numerous items not covered by the mainstream media. So type in DMCA and you'll get en eyeful. What got my attention was an article entitled "DMCA hoedown! Copyright fans party on Capitol Hill on Thursday." This was a press advisory apparently sent out by the proponents of the DMCA in conjunction with some congressional leaders. To read this made me ill. It was an announcement for a May 16 party at the Rayburn House Office Building hosted by the people behind the DMCA, who were listed: Robert Holleyman, president and CEO of the Business Software Alliance; Douglas Lowenstein, the president of the Interactive Digital Software Association; Jean Prewitt, president and CEO of the America Film Marketing Association; Hilary Rosen, president and CEO of the Recording Association of America; Patricia Schroeder, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers; Eric H. Smith, the president of the International Intellectual Property Alliance; and Jack Valenti, president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. Is there even one soul on this list interested in the public's welfare? The invited guests included all the standard Senatorial yes-men such as Biden, Dingell, Hatch, Leahy, and the likes of Barney Frank, a supposed populist.

The party was to celebrate the DMCA falling in line with the goals of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a global body set up by business interests that hope to make it a felony to do reverse engineering or to even openly discuss how software works. A long-term attack on freedom of speech is what is really going on here. Just ask that poor Russian kid who was arrested for doing nothing more than talking about the Adobe copy-protection schemes in a public forum. These are the same folks who want to license software in such a way that critical reviews would be deemed illegal by license agreement. This is serious stuff. The fact that the general news media seems nonplussed by all this concerns me greatly.

The press advisory also made clear that a number of Asian and African ambassadors were invited. No mention was made of Germany or France. They've already signed on the WIPO dotted line. On the invitation list were people from countries like Albania, Burkina Faso, and Croatia. Apparently these were the folks who needed to have a chat. McCullagh evidently got into this event and took some pictures, which are posted on his site. The event looks to have been the typical dreadful gathering of stuffed shirts. The problem is, these are dangerous stuffed shirts that seem to have things their way all the time.

Check it out, and bookmark the McCullagh site.

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