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Are rules incompatible with the web? Let’s hope not: A response to Tim Wu

Geoffrey Manne & Neil Turkewitz —  2 May 2017

According to Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing, Tim Wu has written an open letter to W3C Chairman Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, expressing concern about a proposal to include Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) as part of the W3C standards. W3C has a helpful description of EME:

Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) is currently a draft specification… [for] an Application Programming Interface (API) that enables Web applications to interact with content protection systems to allow playback of encrypted audio and video on the Web. The EME specification enables communication between Web browsers and digital rights management (DRM) agent software to allow HTML5 video play back of DRM-wrapped content such as streaming video services without third-party media plugins. This specification does not create nor impose a content protection or Digital Rights Management system. Rather, it defines a common API that may be used to discover, select and interact with such systems as well as with simpler content encryption systems.

Wu’s letter expresses his concern about hardwiring DRM into the technical standards supporting an open internet. He writes:

I wanted to write to you and respectfully ask you to seriously consider extending a protective covenant to legitimate circumventers who have cause to bypass EME, should it emerge as a W3C standard.

Wu asserts that this “protective covenant” is needed because, without it, EME will confer too much power on internet “chokepoints”:

The question is whether the W3C standard with an embedded DRM standard, EME, becomes a tool for suppressing competition in ways not expected…. Control of chokepoints has always and will always be a fundamental challenge facing the Internet as we both know… It is not hard to recall how close Microsoft came, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, to gaining de facto control over the future of the web (and, frankly, the future) in its effort to gain an unsupervised monopoly over the browser market.”

But conflating the Microsoft case with a relatively simple browser feature meant to enable all content providers to use any third-party DRM to secure their content — in other words, to enhance interoperability — is beyond the pale. If we take the Microsoft case as Wu would like, it was about one firm controlling, far and away, the largest share of desktop computing installations, a position that Wu and his fellow travelers believed gave Microsoft an unreasonable leg up in forcing usage of Internet Explorer to the exclusion of Netscape. With EME, the W3C is not maneuvering the standard so that a single DRM provider comes to protect all content on the web, or could even hope to do so. EME enables content distributors to stream content through browsers using their own DRM backend. There is simply nothing in that standard that enables a firm to dominate content distribution or control huge swaths of the Internet to the exclusion of competitors.

Unless, of course, you just don’t like DRM and you think that any technology that enables content producers to impose restrictions on consumption of media creates a “chokepoint.” But, again, this position is borderline nonsense. Such a “chokepoint” is no more restrictive than just going to Netflix’s app (or Hulu’s, or HBO’s, or Xfinity’s, or…) and relying on its technology. And while it is no more onerous than visiting Netflix’s app, it creates greater security on the open web such that copyright owners don’t need to resort to proprietary technologies and apps for distribution. And, more fundamentally, Wu’s position ignores the role that access and usage controls are playing in creating online markets through diversified product offerings

Wu appears to believe, or would have his readers believe, that W3C is considering the adoption of a mandatory standard that would modify core aspects of the network architecture, and that therefore presents novel challenges to the operation of the internet. But this is wrong in two key respects:

  1. Except in the extremely limited manner as described below by the W3C, the EME extension does not contain mandates, and is designed only to simplify the user experience in accessing content that would otherwise require plug-ins; and
  2. These extensions are already incorporated into the major browsers. And of course, most importantly for present purposes, the standard in no way defines or harmonizes the use of DRM.

The W3C has clearly and succinctly explained the operation of the proposed extension:

The W3C is not creating DRM policies and it is not requiring that HTML use DRM. Organizations choose whether or not to have DRM on their content. The EME API can facilitate communication between browsers and DRM providers but the only mandate is not DRM but a form of key encryption (Clear Key). EME allows a method of playback of encrypted content on the Web but W3C does not make the DRM technology nor require it. EME is an extension. It is not required for HTML nor HMTL5 video.

Like many internet commentators, Tim Wu fundamentally doesn’t like DRM, and his position here would appear to reflect his aversion to DRM rather than a response to the specific issues before the W3C. Interestingly, in arguing against DRM nearly a decade ago, Wu wrote:

Finally, a successful locking strategy also requires intense cooperation between many actors – if you protect a song with “superlock,” and my CD player doesn’t understand that, you’ve just created a dead product. (Emphasis added)

In other words, he understood the need for agreements in vertical distribution chains in order to properly implement protection schemes — integration that he opposes here (not to suggest that he supported them then, but only to highlight the disconnect between recognizing the need for coordination and simultaneously trying to prevent it).

Vint Cerf (himself no great fan of DRM — see here, for example) has offered a number of thoughtful responses to those, like Wu, who have objected to the proposed standard. Cerf writes on the ISOC listserv:

EMEi is plainly very general. It can be used to limit access to virtually any digital content, regardless of IPR status. But, in some sense, anyone wishing to restrict access to some service/content is free to do so (there are other means such as login access control, end/end encryption such as TLS or IPSEC or QUIC). EME is yet another method for doing that. Just because some content is public domain does not mean that every use of it must be unprotected, does it?

And later in the thread he writes:

Just because something is public domain does not mean someone can’t lock it up. Presumably there will be other sources that are not locked. I can lock up my copy of Gulliver’s Travels and deny you access except by some payment, but if it is public domain someone else may have a copy you can get. In any case, you can’t deny others the use of the content IF THEY HAVE IT. You don’t have to share your copy of public domain with anyone if you don’t want to.

Just so. It’s pretty hard to see the competition problems that could arise from facilitating more content providers making content available on the open web.

In short, Wu wants the W3C to develop limitations on rules when there are no relevant rules to modify. His dislike of DRM obscures his vision of the limited nature of the EME proposal which would largely track, rather than lead, the actions already being undertaken by the principal commercial actors on the internet, and which merely creates a structure for facilitating voluntary commercial transactions in ways that enhance the user experience.

The W3C process will not, as Wu intimates, introduce some pernicious, default protection system that would inadvertently lock down content; rather, it would encourage the development of digital markets on the open net rather than (or in addition to) through the proprietary, vertical markets where they are increasingly found today. Wu obscures reality rather than illuminating it through his poorly considered suggestion that EME will somehow lead to a new set of defaults that threaten core freedoms.

Finally, we can’t help but comment on Wu’s observation that

My larger point is that I think the history of the anti-circumvention laws suggests is (sic) hard to predict how [freedom would be affected]– no one quite predicted the inkjet market would be affected. But given the power of those laws, the potential for anti-competitive consequences certainly exists.

Let’s put aside the fact that W3C is not debating the laws surrounding circumvention, nor, as noted, developing usage rules. It remains troubling that Wu’s belief there are sometimes unintended consequences of actions (and therefore a potential for harm) would be sufficient to lead him to oppose a change to the status quo — as if any future, potential risk necessarily outweighs present, known harms. This is the Precautionary Principle on steroids. The EME proposal grew out of a desire to address impediments that prevent the viability and growth of online markets that sufficiently ameliorate the non-hypothetical harms of unauthorized uses. The EME proposal is a modest step towards addressing a known universe. A small step, but something to celebrate, not bemoan.

In Copyright, Intellectual Property, Platforms, Standard Setting, Vertical Restraints , , , , , , ,
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Understanding ownership and property in the Digital Age

Geoffrey Manne & Neil Turkewitz —  22 March 2017

What does it mean to “own” something? A simple question (with a complicated answer, of course) that, astonishingly, goes unasked in a recent article in the Pennsylvania Law Review entitled, What We Buy When We “Buy Now,” by Aaron Perzanowski and Chris Hoofnagle (hereafter “P&H”). But how can we reasonably answer the question they pose without first trying to understand the nature of property interests?

P&H set forth a simplistic thesis for their piece: when an e-commerce site uses the term “buy” to indicate the purchase of digital media (instead of the term “license”), it deceives consumers. This is so, the authors assert, because the common usage of the term “buy” indicates that there will be some conveyance of property that necessarily includes absolute rights such as alienability, descendibility, and excludability, and digital content doesn’t generally come with these attributes. The authors seek to establish this deception through a poorly constructed survey regarding consumers’ understanding of the parameters of their property interests in digitally acquired copies. (The survey’s considerable limitations is a topic for another day….)

The issue is more than merely academic: NTIA and the USPTO have just announced that they will hold a public meeting

to discuss how best to communicate to consumers regarding license terms and restrictions in connection with online transactions involving copyrighted works… [as a precursor to] the creation of a multistakeholder process to establish best practices to improve consumers’ understanding of license terms and restrictions in connection with online transactions involving creative works.

Whatever the results of that process, it should not begin, or end, with P&H’s problematic approach.

Getting to their conclusion that platforms are engaged in deceptive practices requires two leaps of faith: First, that property interests are absolute and that any restraint on the use of “property” is inconsistent with the notion of ownership; and second, that consumers’ stated expectations (even assuming that they were measured correctly) alone determine the appropriate contours of legal (and economic) property interests. Both leaps are meritless.

Property and ownership are not absolute concepts

P&H are in such a rush to condemn downstream restrictions on the alienability of digital copies that they fail to recognize that “property” and “ownership” are not absolute terms, and are capable of being properly understood only contextually. Our very notions of what objects may be capable of ownership change over time, along with the scope of authority over owned objects. For P&H, the fact that there are restrictions on the use of an object means that it is not properly “owned.” But that overlooks our everyday understanding of the nature of property.

Ownership is far more complex than P&H allow, and ownership limited by certain constraints is still ownership. As Armen Alchian and Harold Demsetz note in The Property Right Paradigm (1973):

In common speech, we frequently speak of someone owning this land, that house, or these bonds. This conversational style undoubtedly is economical from the viewpoint of quick communication, but it masks the variety and complexity of the ownership relationship. What is owned are rights to use resources, including one’s body and mind, and these rights are always circumscribed, often by the prohibition of certain actions. To “own land” usually means to have the right to till (or not to till) the soil, to mine the soil, to offer those rights for sale, etc., but not to have the right to throw soil at a passerby, to use it to change the course of a stream, or to force someone to buy it. What are owned are socially recognized rights of action. (Emphasis added).

Literally, everything we own comes with a range of limitations on our use rights. Literally. Everything. So starting from a position that limitations on use mean something is not, in fact, owned, is absurd.

Moreover, in defining what we buy when we buy digital goods by reference to analog goods, P&H are comparing apples and oranges, without acknowledging that both apples and oranges are bought.

There has been a fair amount of discussion about the nature of digital content transactions (including by the USPTO and NTIA), and whether they are analogous to traditional sales of objects or more properly characterized as licenses. But this is largely a distinction without a difference, and the nature of the transaction is unnecessary in understanding that P&H’s assertion of deception is unwarranted.

Quite simply, we are accustomed to buying licenses as well as products. Whenever we buy a ticket — e.g., an airline ticket or a ticket to the movies — we are buying the right to use something or gain some temporary privilege. These transactions are governed by the terms of the license. But we certainly buy tickets, no? Alchian and Demsetz again:

The domain of demarcated uses of a resource can be partitioned among several people. More than one party can claim some ownership interest in the same resource. One party may own the right to till the land, while another, perhaps the state, may own an easement to traverse or otherwise use the land for specific purposes. It is not the resource itself which is owned; it is a bundle, or a portion, of rights to use a resource that is owned. In its original meaning, property referred solely to a right, title, or interest, and resources could not be identified as property any more than they could be identified as right, title, or interest. (Emphasis added).

P&H essentially assert that restrictions on the use of property are so inconsistent with the notion of property that it would be deceptive to describe the acquisition transaction as a purchase. But such a claim completely overlooks the fact that there are restrictions on any use of property in general, and on ownership of copies of copyright-protected materials in particular.

Take analog copies of copyright-protected works. While the lawful owner of a copy is able to lend that copy to a friend, sell it, or even use it as a hammer or paperweight, he or she can not offer it for rental (for certain kinds of works), cannot reproduce it, may not publicly perform or broadcast it, and may not use it to bludgeon a neighbor. In short, there are all kinds of restrictions on the use of said object — yet P&H have little problem with defining the relationship of person to object as “ownership.”

Consumers’ understanding of all the terms of exchange is a poor metric for determining the nature of property interests

P&H make much of the assertion that most users don’t “know” the precise terms that govern the allocation of rights in digital copies; this is the source of the “deception” they assert. But there is a cost to marking out the precise terms of use with perfect specificity (no contract specifies every eventuality), a cost to knowing the terms perfectly, and a cost to caring about them.

When we buy digital goods, we probably care a great deal about a few terms. For a digital music file, for example, we care first and foremost about whether it will play on our device(s). Other terms are of diminishing importance. Users certainly care whether they can play a song when offline, for example, but whether their children will be able to play it after they die? Not so much. That eventuality may, in fact, be specified in the license, but the nature of this particular ownership relationship includes a degree of rational ignorance on the users’ part: The typical consumer simply doesn’t care. In other words, she is, in Nobel-winning economist Herbert Simon’s term, “boundedly rational.” That isn’t deception; it’s a feature of life without which we would be overwhelmed by “information overload” and unable to operate. We have every incentive and ability to know the terms we care most about, and to ignore the ones about which we care little.

Relatedly, P&H also fail to understand the relationship between price and ownership. A digital song that is purchased from Amazon for $.99 comes with a set of potentially valuable attributes. For example:

  • It may be purchased on its own, without the other contents of an album;
  • It never degrades in quality, and it’s extremely difficult to misplace;
  • It may be purchased from one’s living room and be instantaneously available;
  • It can be easily copied or transferred onto multiple devices; and
  • It can be stored in Amazon’s cloud without taking up any of the consumer’s physical memory resources.

In many ways that matter to consumers, digital copies are superior to analog or physical ones. And yet, compared to physical media, on a per-song basis (assuming one could even purchase a physical copy of a single song without purchasing an entire album), $.99 may represent a considerable discount. Moreover, in 1982 when CDs were first released, they cost an average of $15. In 2017 dollars, that would be $38. Yet today most digital album downloads can be found for $10 or less.

Of course, songs purchased on CD or vinyl offer other benefits that a digital copy can’t provide. But the main thing — the ability to listen to the music — is approximately equal, and yet the digital copy offers greater convenience at (often) lower price. It is impossible to conclude that a consumer is duped by such a purchase, even if it doesn’t come with the ability to resell the song.

In fact, given the price-to-value ratio, it is perhaps reasonable to think that consumers know full well (or at least suspect) that there might be some corresponding limitations on use — the inability to resell, for example — that would explain the discount. For some people, those limitations might matter, and those people, presumably, figure out whether such limitations are present before buying a digital album or song For everyone else, however, the ability to buy a digital song for $.99 — including all of the benefits of digital ownership, but minus the ability to resell — is a good deal, just as it is worth it to a home buyer to purchase a house, regardless of whether it is subject to various easements.

Consumers are, in fact, familiar with “buying” property with all sorts of restrictions

The inability to resell digital goods looms inordinately large for P&H: According to them, by virtue of the fact that digital copies may not be resold, “ownership” is no longer an appropriate characterization of the relationship between the consumer and her digital copy. P&H believe that digital copies of works are sufficiently similar to analog versions, that traditional doctrines of exhaustion (which would permit a lawful owner of a copy of a work to dispose of that copy as he or she deems appropriate) should apply equally to digital copies, and thus that the inability to alienate the copy as the consumer wants means that there is no ownership interest per se.

But, as discussed above, even ownership of a physical copy doesn’t convey to the purchaser the right to make or allow any use of that copy. So why should we treat the ability to alienate a copy as the determining factor in whether it is appropriate to refer to the acquisition as a purchase? P&H arrive at this conclusion only through the illogical assertion that

Consumers operate in the marketplace based on their prior experience. We suggest that consumers’ “default” behavior is based on the experiences of buying physical media, and the assumptions from that context have carried over into the digital domain.

P&H want us to believe that consumers can’t distinguish between the physical and virtual worlds, and that their ability to use media doesn’t differentiate between these realms. But consumers do understand (to the extent that they care) that they are buying a different product, with different attributes. Does anyone try to play a vinyl record on his or her phone? There are perceived advantages and disadvantages to different kinds of media purchases. The ability to resell is only one of these — and for many (most?) consumers not likely the most important.

And, furthermore, the notion that consumers better understood their rights — and the limitations on ownership — in the physical world and that they carried these well-informed expectations into the digital realm is fantasy. Are we to believe that the consumers of yore understood that when they bought a physical record they could sell it, but not rent it out? That if they played that record in a public place they would need to pay performance royalties to the songwriter and publisher? Not likely.

Simply put, there is a wide variety of goods and services that we clearly buy, but that have all kinds of attributes that do not fit P&H’s crabbed definition of ownership. For example:

  • We buy tickets to events and membership in clubs (which, depending upon club rules, may not be alienated, and which always lapse for non-payment).
  • We buy houses notwithstanding the fact that in most cases all we own is the right to inhabit the premises for as long as we pay the bank (which actually retains more of the incidents of “ownership”).
  • In fact, we buy real property encumbered by a series of restrictive covenants: Depending upon where we live, we may not be able to build above a certain height, we may not paint the house certain colors, we may not be able to leave certain objects in the driveway, and we may not be able to resell without approval of a board.

We may or may not know (or care) about all of the restrictions on our use of such property. But surely we may accurately say that we bought the property and that we “own” it, nonetheless.

The reality is that we are comfortable with the notion of buying any number of limited property interests — including the purchasing of a license — regardless of the contours of the purchase agreement. The fact that some ownership interests may properly be understood as licenses rather than as some form of exclusive and permanent dominion doesn’t suggest that a consumer is not involved in a transaction properly characterized as a sale, or that a consumer is somehow deceived when the transaction is characterized as a sale — and P&H are surely aware of this.

Conclusion: The real issue for P&H is “digital first sale,” not deception

At root, P&H are not truly concerned about consumer deception; they are concerned about what they view as unreasonable constraints on the “rights” of consumers imposed by copyright law in the digital realm. Resale looms so large in their analysis not because consumers care about it (or are deceived about it), but because the real object of their enmity is the lack of a “digital first sale doctrine” that exactly mirrors the law regarding physical goods.

But Congress has already determined that there are sufficient distinctions between ownership of digital copies and ownership of analog ones to justify treating them differently, notwithstanding ownership of the particular copy. And for good reason: Trade in “used” digital copies is not a secondary market. Such copies are identical to those traded in the primary market and would compete directly with “pristine” digital copies. It makes perfect sense to treat ownership differently in these cases — and still to say that both digital and analog copies are “bought” and “owned.”

P&H’s deep-seated opposition to current law colors and infects their analysis — and, arguably, their failure to be upfront about it is the real deception. When one starts an analysis with an already-identified conclusion, the path from hypothesis to result is unlikely to withstand scrutiny, and that is certainly the case here.

In Amazon, Apple, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Law & Economics, Platforms , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Public Knowledge’s Lonely Echo Chamber of Copyright Advocacy

Geoffrey Manne & Neil Turkewitz —  9 December 2016

Yesterday the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee issued the first set of policy proposals following their long-running copyright review process. These proposals were principally aimed at ensuring that the IT demands of the Copyright Office were properly met so that it could perform its assigned functions, and to provide adequate authority for it to adapt its policies and practices to the evolving needs of the digital age.

In response to these modest proposals, Public Knowledge issued a telling statement, calling for enhanced scrutiny of these proposals related to an agency “with a documented history of regulatory capture.”

The entirety of this “documented history,” however, is a paper published by Public Knowledge itself alleging regulatory capture—as evidenced by the fact that 13 people had either gone from the Copyright Office to copyright industries or vice versa over the past 20+ years. The original document was brilliantly skewered by David Newhoff in a post on the indispensable blog, Illusion of More:

To support its premise, Public Knowledge, with McCarthy-like righteousness, presents a list—a table of thirteen former or current employees of the Copyright Office who either have worked for private-sector, rights-holding organizations prior to working at the Office or who are  now working for these private entities after their terms at the Office. That thirteen copyright attorneys over a 22-year period might be employed in some capacity for copyright owners is a rather unremarkable observation, but PK seems to think it’s a smoking gun…. Or, as one of the named thirteen, Steven Tepp, observes in his response, PK also didn’t bother to list the many other Copyright Office employees who, “went to Internet and tech companies, the Smithsonian, the FCC, and other places that no one would mistake for copyright industries.” One might almost get the idea that experienced copyright attorneys pursue various career paths or something.

Not content to rest on the laurels of its groundbreaking report of Original Sin, Public Knowledge has now doubled down on its audacity, using its own previous advocacy as the sole basis to essentially impugn an entire agency, without more. But, as advocacy goes, that’s pretty specious. Some will argue that there is an element of disingenuousness in all advocacy, even if it is as benign as failing to identify the weaknesses of one’s arguments—and perhaps that’s true. (We all cite our own work at one time or another, don’t we?) But that’s not the situation we have before us. Instead, Public Knowledge creates its own echo chamber, effectively citing only its own idiosyncratic policy preferences as the “documented” basis for new constraints on the Copyright Office. Even in a world of moral relativism, bubbles of information, and competing narratives about the truth, this should be recognizable as thin gruel.

So why would Public Knowledge expose itself in this manner? What is to be gained by seeking to impugn the integrity of the Copyright Office? There the answer is relatively transparent: PK hopes to capitalize on the opportunity to itself capture Copyright Office policy-making by limiting the discretion of the Copyright Office, and by turning it into an “objective referee” rather than the nation’s steward for ensuring the proper functioning of the copyright system.

PK claims that the Copyright Office should not be involved in making copyright policy, other than perhaps technically transcribing the agreements reached by other parties. Thus, in its “indictment” of the Copyright Office (which it now risibly refers to as the Copyright Office’s “documented history of capture”), PK wrote that:

These statements reflect the many specific examples, detailed in Section II, in which the Copyright Office has acted more as an advocate for rightsholder interests than an objective referee of copyright debates.

Essentially, PK seems to believe that copyright policy should be the province of self-proclaimed “consumer advocates” like PK itself—and under no circumstances the employees of the Copyright Office who might actually deign to promote the interests of the creative community. After all, it is staffed by a veritable cornucopia of copyright industry shills: According to PK’s report, fully 1 of its 400 employees has either left the office to work in the copyright industry or joined the office from industry in each of the last 1.5 years! For reference (not that PK thinks to mention it) some 325 Google employees have worked in government offices in just the past 15 years. And Google is hardly alone in this. Good people get good jobs, whether in government, industry, or both. It’s hardly revelatory.

And never mind that the stated mission of the Copyright Office “is to promote creativity by administering and sustaining an effective national copyright system,” and that “the purpose of the copyright system has always been to promote creativity in society.” And never mind that Congress imbued the Office with the authority to make regulations (subject to approval by the Librarian of Congress) and directed the Copyright Office to engage in a number of policy-related functions, including:

  1. Advising Congress on national and international issues relating to copyright;
  2. Providing information and assistance to Federal departments and agencies and the Judiciary on national and international issues relating to copyright;
  3. Participating in meetings of international intergovernmental organizations and meetings with foreign government officials relating to copyright; and
  4. Conducting studies and programs regarding copyright.

No, according to Public Knowledge the Copyright Office is to do none of these things, unless it does so as an “objective referee of copyright debates.” But nowhere in the legislation creating the Office or amending its functions—nor anywhere else—is that limitation to be found; it’s just created out of whole cloth by PK.

The Copyright Office’s mission is not that of a content neutral referee. Rather, the Copyright Office is charged with promoting effective copyright protection. PK is welcome to solicit Congress to change the Copyright Act and the Office’s mandate. But impugning the agency for doing what it’s supposed to do is a deceptive way of going about it. PK effectively indicts and then convicts the Copyright Office for following its mission appropriately, suggesting that doing so could only have been the result of undue influence from copyright owners. But that’s manifestly false, given its purpose.

And make no mistake why: For its narrative to work, PK needs to define the Copyright Office as a neutral party, and show that its neutrality has been unduly compromised. Only then can Public Knowledge justify overhauling the office in its own image, under the guise of magnanimously returning it to its “proper,” neutral role.

Public Knowledge’s implication that it is a better defender of the “public” interest than those who actually serve in the public sector is a subterfuge, masking its real objective of transforming the nature of copyright law in its own, benighted image. A questionable means to a noble end, PK might argue. Not in our book. This story always turns out badly.

In Copyright, Google, Intellectual Property, Platforms, Regulation, Regulatory Reform , , , , ,
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