Archives For copyright

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good on Copyright Office reform

Kristian Stout — 7 June 2017

R Street’s Sasha Moss recently posted a piece on TechDirt describing the alleged shortcomings of the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act of 2017 (RCSAA) — proposed legislative adjustments to the Copyright Office, recently passed in the House and introduced in the Senate last month (with identical language).

Many of the article’s points are well taken. Nevertheless, they don’t support the article’s call for the Senate to “jettison [the bill] entirely,” nor the assertion that “[a]s currently written, the bill serves no purpose, and Congress shouldn’t waste its time on it.”

R Street’s main complaint with the legislation is that it doesn’t include other proposals in a House Judiciary Committee whitepaper on Copyright Office modernization. But condemning the RCSAA simply for failing to incorporate all conceivable Copyright Office improvements fails to adequately take account of the political realities confronting Congress — in other words, it lets the perfect be the enemy of the good. It also undermines R Street’s own stated preference for Copyright Office modernization effected through “targeted and immediately implementable solutions.”

Everyone — even R Street — acknowledges that we need to modernize the Copyright office. But none of the arguments in favor of a theoretical, “better” bill is undermined or impeded by passing this bill first. While there is certainly more that Congress can do on this front, the RCSAA is a sensible, targeted piece of legislation that begins to build the new foundation for a twenty-first century Copyright Office.

Process over politics

The proposed bill is simple: It would make the Register of Copyrights a nominated and confirmed position. For reasons almost forgotten over the last century and a half, the head of the Copyright Office is currently selected at the sole discretion of the Librarian of Congress. The Copyright Office was placed in the Library merely as a way to grow the Library’s collection with copies of copyrighted works.

More than 100 years later, most everyone acknowledges that the Copyright Office has lagged behind the times. And many think the problem lies with the Office’s placement within the Library, which is plagued with information technology and other problems, and has a distinctly different mission than the Copyright Office. The only real question is what to do about it.

Separating the the Copyright Office from the Library is a straightforward and seemingly apolitical step toward modernization. And yet, somewhat inexplicably, R Street claims that the bill

amounts largely to a partisan battle over who will have the power to select the next Register: [Current Librarian of Congress] Hayden, who was appointed by Barack Obama, or President Donald Trump.

But this is a pretty farfetched characterization.

First, the House passed the bill 378-48, with 145 Democrats joining 233 Republicans in support. That’s more than three-quarters of the Democratic caucus.

Moreover, legislation to make the Register a nominated and confirmed position has been under discussion for more than four years — long before either Dr. Hayden was nominated or anyone knew that Donald Trump (or any Republican at all, for that matter) would be president.

R Street also claims that the legislation

will make the register and the Copyright Office more politicized and vulnerable to capture by special interests, [and that] the nomination process could delay modernization efforts [because of Trump’s] confirmation backlog.

But precisely the opposite seems far more likely — as Sasha herself has previously recognized:

Clarifying the office’s lines of authority does have the benefit of making it more politically accountable…. The [House] bill takes a positive step forward in promoting accountability.

As far as I’m aware, no one claims that Dr. Hayden was “politicized” or that Librarians are vulnerable to capture because they are nominated and confirmed. And a Senate confirmation process will be more transparent than unilateral appointment by the Librarian, and will give the electorate a (nominal) voice in the Register’s selection. Surely unilateral selection of the Register by the Librarian is more susceptible to undue influence.

With respect to the modernization process, we should also not forget that the Copyright Office currently has an Acting Register in Karyn Temple Claggett, who is perfectly capable of moving the modernization process forward. And any limits on her ability to do so would arise from the very tenuousness of her position that the RCSAA is intended to address.

Modernizing the Copyright Office one piece at a time

It’s certainly true, as the article notes, that the legislation doesn’t include a number of other sensible proposals for Copyright Office modernization. In particular, it points to ideas like forming a stakeholder advisory board, creating new chief economist and technologist positions, upgrading the Office’s information technology systems, and creating a small claims court.

To be sure, these could be beneficial reforms, as ICLE (and many others) have noted. But I would take some advice from R Street’s own “pragmatic approach” to promoting efficient government “with the full realization that progress on the ground tends to be made one inch at a time.”

R Street acknowledges that the legislation’s authors have indicated that this is but a beginning step and that they plan to tackle the other issues in due course. At a time when passage of any legislation on any topic is a challenge, it seems appropriate to defer to those in Congress who affirmatively want more modernization about how big a bill to start with.

In any event, it seems perfectly sensible to address the Register selection process before tackling the other issues, which may require more detailed discussions of policy and cost. And with the Copyright Office currently lacking a permanent Register and discussions underway about finding a new one, addressing any changes Congress deems necessary in the selection process seems like the most pressing issue, if they are to be resolved prior to the next pick being made.

Further, because the Register would presumably be deeply involved in the selection and operation of any new advisory board, chief economist and technologist, IT system, or small claims process, Congress can also be forgiven for wanting to address the Register issue first. Moreover, a Register who can be summarily dismissed by the Librarian likely doesn’t have the needed autonomy to fully and effectively implement the other proposals from the whitepaper. Why build a house on a shaky foundation when you can fix the foundation first?

Process over substance

All of which leaves the question why R Street opposes a bill that was passed by a bipartisan supermajority in the House; that effects precisely the kind of targeted, incremental reform that R Street promotes; and that implements a specific reform that R Street favors.

The legislation has widespread support beyond Congress, although the TechDirt piece gives this support short shrift. Instead, it notes that “some” in the content industry support the legislation, but lists only the Motion Picture Association of America. There is a subtle undercurrent of the typical substantive copyright debate, in which “enlightened” thinking on copyright is set against the presumptively malicious overreach of the movie studios. But the piece neglects to mention the support of more than 70 large and small content creators, technology companies, labor unions, and free market and civil rights groups, among others.

Sensible process reforms should be implementable without the rancor that plagues most substantive copyright debates. But it’s difficult to escape. Copyright minimalists are skeptical of an effectual Copyright Office if it is more likely to promote policies that reinforce robust copyright, even if they support sensible process reforms and more-accountable government in the abstract. And, to be fair, copyright proponents are thrilled when their substantive positions might be bolstered by promotion of sensible process reforms.

But the truth is that no one really knows how an independent and accountable Copyright Office will act with respect to contentious, substantive issues. Perhaps most likely, increased accountability via nomination and confirmation will introduce more variance in its positions. In other words, on substance, the best guess is that greater Copyright Office accountability and modernization will be a wash — leaving only process itself as a sensible basis on which to assess reform. And on that basis, there is really no reason to oppose this widely supported, incremental step toward a modern US Copyright Office.

In Copyright, Intellectual Property copyright, Copyright Office, Intellectual property, Intellectual Property Rights

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.

Copyright and the Public Interest: The Importance of Ensuring that Righteousness of Purpose Doesn’t Trump Principle

Neil Turkewitz — 13 March 2017

I recently became aware of a decision from the High Court in South Africa that examines an interesting intersection of freedom of expression, copyright and contract. It addresses the issue of how to define the public interest in an environment of relatively unguarded rhetoric about the role of copyright in society that is worth exploring. But first, a quick recap of the relevant facts, none of which were in issue.

A well known filmmaker, Ms. SE Vollenhoven, was hired by South African broadcaster, SABC, to produce a documentary film exposing certain governmental improprieties. In her contract with SABC, Vollenhoven transferred all copyright interests to SABC in exchange for compensation. SABC ultimately decided that it was uncomfortable with the product, and decided against releasing it. Vollenhoven initiated a discussion with SABC in an effort to buy back the rights to the film, but SABC refused, leading SABC to seek an injunction preventing Vollenhoven from engaging in any acts that would infringe their rights in the film.

For the purposes of this analysis, let’s assume that all equities are with Vollenhoven, and that the public would gain from the release of the film. I am not in a position to make such a judgment personally, but certainly my sympathies would be with a filmmaker whose own expressive work is relegated to the dustbins due to a decision by a business partner to keep the film out of the public eye. Her frustration is clearly understandable. Let’s further assume that the government pressured SABC into not releasing the film—not because in fact I assume this, but because it is certainly possible, and I want to examine the copyright questions in a light least hospitable to the assertion of copyright. There is an axiom in legal circles that “bad facts make bad law,” but sometimes bad facts allow us to observe legal principles without artifice or obstruction in ways that are useful for our understanding of fundamental principles of law and justice.

This is just such a case. Much as we might sympathize with Vollenhoven, the arguments presented by her counsel would require us to believe that the rejection of free will that undergirds freedom of contract and self-determination is a legitimate price in the quest for perceived freedom. I believe that is a fundamentally flawed proposition, and that willingness to constrain free will that allows a person to determine the scope of her consent undermines rather than advances the public good. The ends, even assuming that they are noble and just, do not justify a means that eliminates consent while seeking to improve the human condition. Vollenhoven and amici (we will get to them later) ask us to reject free will to achieve freedom. But there is no freedom at the end of that road. As the Court brilliantly and succinctly observed: “a limitation of freedom is irreconcilable with the right of choice.“

There are a number of equitable doctrines under which contracts may be vitiated, for example when they are the result of duress or where the consent required for formation of a contract is found to be absent. But here, no such equitable doctrines would apply. Vollenhoven was an accomplished filmmaker who freely negotiated a contract with SABC for her services. There is no suggestion from any party that the contract was somehow unfair, nor are we talking about the application of a non-negotiated provision of law vesting copyright in an employer or commissioning party. Vollenhoven herself does not assert anything different. Her unhappiness with the result of the contract is understandable, but doesn’t justify the attempt to circumvent it through a novel and dangerous mischaracterization of copyright laws and exceptions thereto.

This is where things get interesting. Since the contract under which SABC obtained the copyright in the documentary was unassailable, Vollenhoven and her supporters determined to “free the film” by asserting an implied exception to copyright laws to permit dissemination of information in the public interest. This took a variety of forms, all of which eventually defaulted to the proposition that the public’s interest in access superseded the copyright owner’s interest in protection. I take particular note of the participation of the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI) on behalf of Vollenhoven since they most perfectly articulate the position that copyright is a form of censorship, having written in their 2015 copyright reform submission to DTI that: “FXI believes that copyright law and free speech are fundamentally in conflict. It should come as no surprise, at all, that both governments and the private sector use copyright law to suppress speech and dissent.” Vollenhoven’s counsel, as summarized by the Court, argued that the Copyright law exists, inter alia, “to promote the free spread of art, ideas and information, not to hinder it and to regulate copyright so as to enhance a vibrant culture in South Africa. Thus on a purposeful interpretation of the Act, so it is argued, it is not just to protect owners of copyright but to advance the public good.”

The Court was unimpressed, finding that: “There is nothing…to support the meaning of public good relied on by the Respondents. Their construction of public good or welfare is equated to dissemination of ideas and this is nowhere to be found or implied….The view that copyright aims to promote public disclosure and dissemination of works cannot be regarded as a true reflection of the purpose or intent of the Act and is not part of our copyright law. The Respondents’ conception of the purposes of the Copyright Act is overbroad. The Act by no means purports to regulate or promote the free spread of ideas although it undoubtedly is a mechanism by which this result may be effected. It is straining the proper limits of the Act to find some kind of implied condition of dissemination in the conferral of copyright.”

And of course, the Court is absolutely correct–enjoining the distribution of the film doesn’t prevent the distribution of the information/ideas contained therein, only the specific original expression of said ideas. Vollerhoven, or anyone else, remains free to tell stories through separate vehicles. As the Court explained: “[Vollerhoven] concedes readily that the respondents have right to tell the story in a different work and have not attempted to stifle this form of expression. In truth the respondents’ freedom of speech is not impinged at all. What is impinged is the use of the work which the respondents sold to the applicant and were substantially rewarded monetarily. The copyrights are vested by law in the applicants. This cannot be conflated with an infringement of freedom of speech. Vollenhoven shows that she is alive to the distinction between the work and the underlying story or idea and does not shirk from asserting her rights to exploit the story as she is well entitled to do.”

The contrary rule argued by her counsel and by FXI is untenable, and would require embracing the perverse logic that the protection of expression is itself a restriction on freedom of expression, a proposition worthy of Wonderland’s Red Queen. If the right of access enjoyed by the public always supersedes the individual’s right to control the uses of her property, then copyright is truly meaningless. FXI’s position essentially acknowledges this. While I think that FXI is mistaken, and fails to capture how copyright serves to democratize the production of original cultural materials for the benefit of society, I will at least give them credit for their directness. Perhaps they believe that state support for the arts is a better tool for sustaining creators. Perhaps they believe in private patronage. But unlike many of their copyright-skeptic peers in the west, they at least own their narrative and don’t feel the need to say that they believe in copyright while rejecting any modality for its protection. It’s a flawed vision that fails to reflect that the interests of the public are served by sustaining creators, and by protecting fundamental human rights in connection with the creation of original works. But it is a vision. Hopefully one that will evolve through an increased recognition that ensuring consent in a technological universe that celebrates lack of permission is central to advancing our humanity and retaining and celebrating our cultural differences.

In Copyright, Intellectual Property, Truth on the Market copyright, film, Intellectual Property Rights

Fair use’s fatal conceit

Geoffrey Manne — 21 February 2017

My colleague, Neil Turkewitz, begins his fine post for Fair Use Week (read: crashing Fair Use Week) by noting that

Many of the organizations celebrating fair use would have you believe, because it suits their analysis, that copyright protection and the public interest are diametrically opposed. This is merely a rhetorical device, and is a complete fallacy.

If I weren’t a recovering law professor, I would just end there: that about sums it up, and “the rest is commentary,” as they say. Alas….

All else equal, creators would like as many people to license their works as possible; there’s no inherent incompatibility between “incentives and access” (which is just another version of the fallacious “copyright protection versus the public interest” trope). Everybody wants as much access as possible. Sure, consumers want to pay as little as possible for it, and creators want to be paid as much as possible. That’s a conflict, and at the margin it can seem like a conflict between access and incentives. But it’s not a fundamental, philosophical, and irreconcilable difference — it’s the last 15 minutes of negotiation before the contract is signed.

Reframing what amounts to a fundamental agreement into a pitched battle for society’s soul is indeed a purely rhetorical device — and a mendacious one, at that.

The devil is in the details, of course, and there are still disputes on the margin, as I said. But it helps to know what they’re really about, and why they are so far from the fanciful debates the copyright scolds wish we were having.

First, price is, in fact, a big deal. For the creative industries it can be the difference between, say, making one movie or a hundred, and for artists is can be the difference between earning a livelihood writing songs or packing it in for a desk job.

But despite their occasional lip service to the existence of trade-offs, many “fair-users” see price — i.e., licensing agreements — as nothing less than a threat to social welfare. After all, the logic runs, if copies can be made at (essentially) zero marginal cost, a positive price is just extortion. They say, “more access!,” but they don’t mean, “more access at an agreed-upon price;” they mean “zero-price access, and nothing less.” These aren’t the same thing, and when “fair use” is a stand-in for “zero-price use,” fair-users moving the goalposts — and being disingenuous about it.

The other, related problem, of course, is piracy. Sometimes rightsholders’ objections to the expansion of fair use are about limiting access. But typically that’s true only where fine-tuned contracting isn’t feasible, and where the only realistic choice they’re given is between no access for some people, and pervasive (and often unstoppable) piracy. There are any number of instances where rightsholders have no realistic prospect of efficiently negotiating licensing terms and receiving compensation, and would welcome greater access to their works even without a license — as long as the result isn’t also (or only) excessive piracy. The key thing is that, in such cases, opposition to fair use isn’t opposition to reasonable access, even free access. It’s opposition to piracy.

Time-shifting with VCRs and space-shifting with portable mp3 players (to take two contentious historical examples) fall into this category (even if they are held up — as they often are — by the fair-users as totems of their fanciful battle ). At least at the time of the Sony and Diamond Rio cases, when there was really no feasible way to enforce licenses or charge differential prices for such uses, the choice rightsholders faced was effectively all-or-nothing, and they had to pick one. I’m pretty sure, all else equal, they would have supported such uses, even without licenses and differential compensation — except that the piracy risk was so significant that it swamped the likely benefits, tilting the scale toward “nothing” instead of “all.”

Again, the reality is that creators and rightsholders were confronted with a choice between two imperfect options; neither was likely “right,” and they went with the lesser evil. But one can’t infer from that constrained decision an inherent antipathy to fair use. Sadly, such decisions have to be made in the real world, not law reviews and EFF blog posts. As economists Benjamin Klein, Andres Lerner and Kevin Murphy put it regarding the Diamond Rio case:

[R]ather than representing an attempt by copyright-holders to increase their profits by controlling legally established “fair uses,”… the obvious record-company motivation is to reduce the illegal piracy that is encouraged by the technology. Eliminating a “fair use” [more accurately, “opposing an expansion of fair use” -ed.] is not a benefit to the record companies; it is an unfortunate cost they have to bear to solve the much larger problem of infringing uses. The record companies face competitive pressure to avoid these costs by developing technologies that distinguish infringing from non-infringing copying.

This last point is important, too. Fair-users don’t like technological protection measures, either, even if they actually facilitate licensing and broader access to copyrighted content. But that really just helps to reveal the poverty of their position. They should welcome technology that expands access, even if it also means that it enables rightsholders to fine-tune their licenses and charge a positive price. Put differently: Why do they hate Spotify!?

I’m just hazarding a guess here, but I suspect that the antipathy to technological solutions goes well beyond the short-term limits on some current use of content that copyright minimalists think shouldn’t be limited. If technology, instead of fair use, is truly determinative of the extent of zero-price access, then their ability to seriously influence (read: rein in) the scope of copyright is diminished. Fair use is amorphous. They can bring cases, they can lobby Congress, they can pen strongly worded blog posts, and they can stage protests. But they can’t do much to stop technological progress. Of course, technology does at least as much to limit the enforceability of licenses and create new situations where zero-price access is the norm. But still, R&D is a lot harder than PR.

What’s more, if technology were truly determinative, it would frequently mean that former fair uses could become infringing at some point (or vice versa, of course). Frankly, there’s no reason for time-shifting of TV content to continue to be considered a fair use today. We now have the technology to both enable time shifting and to efficiently license content for the purpose, charge a differential price for it, and enforce the terms. In fact, all of that is so pervasive today that most users do pay for time-shifting technologies, under license terms that presumably define the scope of their right to do so; they just may not have read the contract. Where time-shifting as a fair use rears its ugly head today is in debates over new, infringing technology where, in truth, the fair use argument is really a malleable pretext to advocate for a restriction on the scope of copyright (e.g., Aereo).

In any case, as the success of business models like Spotify and Netflix (to say nothing of Comcast’s X1 interface and new Xfinity Stream app) attest, technology has enabled users to legitimately engage in what was once conceivable seemingly only under fair use. Yes, at a price — one that millions of people are willing to pay. It is surely the case that rightsholders’ licensing of technologies like these have made content more accessible, to more people, and with higher-quality service, than a regime of expansive unlicensed use could ever have done.

At the same time, let’s not forget that, often, even when they could efficiently distribute content only at a positive price, creators offer up scads of content for free, in myriad ways. Sure, the objective is to maximize revenue overall by increasing exposure, price discriminating, or enhancing the quality of paid-for content in some way — but so what? More content is more content, and easier access is easier access. All of that uncompensated distribution isn’t rightsholders nodding toward the copyright scolds’ arguments; it’s perfectly consistent with licensing. Obviously, the vast majority of music, for example, is listened-to subject to license agreements, not because of fair use exceptions or rightsholders’ largesse.

For the vast majority of creators, users and uses, licensed access works, and gets us massive amounts of content and near ubiquitous access. The fair use disputes we do have aren’t really about ensuring broad access; that’s already happening. Rather, those disputes are either niggling over the relatively few ambiguous margins on the one hand, or, on the other, fighting the fair-users’ manufactured, existential fight over whether copyright exceptions will subsume the rule. The former is to be expected: Copyright boundaries will always be imperfect, and courts will always be asked to make the close calls. The latter, however, is simply a drain on resources that could be used to create more content, improve its quality, distribute it more broadly, or lower prices.

Copyright law has always been, and always will be, operating in the shadow of technology — technology both for distribution and novel uses, as well as for pirating content. The irony is that, as digital distribution expands, it has dramatically increased the risk of piracy, even as copyright minimalists argue that the low costs of digital access justify a more expansive interpretation of fair use — which would, in turn, further increase the risk of piracy.

Creators’ opposition to this expansion has nothing to do with opposition to broad access to content, and everything to do with ensuring that piracy doesn’t overwhelm their ability to get paid, and to produce content in the first place.

Even were fair use to somehow disappear tomorrow, there would be more and higher-quality content, available to more people in more places, than ever before. But creators have no interest in seeing fair use disappear. What they do have is an interest in is licensing their content as broadly as possible when doing so is efficient, and in minimizing piracy. Sometimes legitimate fair-use questions get caught in the middle. We could and should have a reasonable debate over the precise contours of fair use in such cases. But the false dichotomy of creators against users makes that extremely difficult. Until the disingenuous rhetoric is clawed back, we’re stuck with needless fights that don’t benefit either users or creators — although they do benefit the policy scolds, academics, wonks and businesses that foment them.

In Copyright, Intellectual Property, Law & Economics, Platforms, Twitter Aereo, contracts, copyright, Diamond Rio, fair use, music, Netflix, piracy, Sony, Spotify, time-shifting

The song remains the same: Exceptionalists against the application of the law

Neil Turkewitz — 8 February 2017

In a recent article for the San Francisco Daily Journal I examine Google v. Equustek: a case currently before the Canadian Supreme Court involving the scope of jurisdiction of Canadian courts to enjoin conduct on the internet.

In the piece I argue that

a globally interconnected system of free enterprise must operationalize the rule of law through continuous evolution, as technology, culture and the law itself evolve. And while voluntary actions are welcome, conflicts between competing, fundamental interests persist. It is at these edges that the over-simplifications and pseudo-populism of the SOPA/PIPA uprising are particularly counterproductive.

The article highlights the problems associated with a school of internet exceptionalism that would treat the internet as largely outside the reach of laws and regulations — not by affirmative legislative decision, but by virtue of jurisdictional default:

The direct implication of the “internet exceptionalist’ position is that governments lack the ability to impose orders that protect its citizens against illegal conduct when such conduct takes place via the internet. But simply because the internet might be everywhere and nowhere doesn’t mean that it isn’t still susceptible to the application of national laws. Governments neither will nor should accept the notion that their authority is limited to conduct of the last century. The Internet isn’t that exceptional.

Read the whole thing!

In Copyright, Google, Intellectual Property, International, Jurisdictional Competition, Platforms Canada, Canadian Supreme Court, comity, copyright, Equustek, google, international law, international politics, internet, internet exceptionalism, piracy

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:

Advising Congress on national and international issues relating to copyright;
Providing information and assistance to Federal departments and agencies and the Judiciary on national and international issues relating to copyright;
Participating in meetings of international intergovernmental organizations and meetings with foreign government officials relating to copyright; and
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 advocacy, copyright, Copyright Office, Public Knowledge, rent seeking, revolving door

The Internet Association’s vision for the future looks a lot like the past

Neil Turkewitz — 23 November 2016

Last week, the Internet Association (“IA”) — a trade group representing some of America’s most dynamic and fastest growing tech companies, including the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and eBay — presented the incoming Trump Administration with a ten page policy paper entitled “Policy Roadmap for New Administration, Congress.”

The document’s content is not surprising, given its source: It is, in essence, a summary of the trade association’s members’ preferred policy positions, none of which is new or newly relevant. Which is fine, in principle; lobbying on behalf of members is what trade associations do — although we should be somewhat skeptical of a policy document that purports to represent the broader social welfare while it advocates for members’ preferred policies.

Indeed, despite being labeled a “roadmap,” the paper is backward-looking in certain key respects — a fact that leads to some strange syntax: “[the document is a] roadmap of key policy areas that have allowed the internet to grow, thrive, and ensure its continued success and ability to create jobs throughout our economy” (emphasis added). Since when is a “roadmap” needed to identify past policies? Indeed, as Bloomberg News reporter, Joshua Brustein, wrote:

The document released Monday is notable in that the same list of priorities could have been sent to a President-elect Hillary Clinton, or written two years ago.

As a wishlist of industry preferences, this would also be fine, in principle. But as an ostensibly forward-looking document, aimed at guiding policy transition, the IA paper is disappointingly un-self-aware. Rather than delineating an agenda aimed at improving policies to promote productivity, economic development and social cohesion throughout the economy, the document is overly focused on preserving certain regulations adopted at the dawn of the Internet age (when the internet was capitalized). Even more disappointing given the IA member companies’ central role in our contemporary lives, the document evinces no consideration of how Internet platforms themselves should strive to balance rights and responsibilities in new ways that promote meaningful internet freedom.

In short, the IA’s Roadmap constitutes a policy framework dutifully constructed to enable its members to maintain the status quo. While that might also serve to further some broader social aims, it’s difficult to see in the approach anything other than a defense of what got us here — not where we go from here.

To take one important example, the document reiterates the IA’s longstanding advocacy for the preservation of the online-intermediary safe harbors of the 20 year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) — which were adopted during the era of dial-up, and before any of the principal members of the Internet Association even existed. At the same time, however, it proposes to reform one piece of legislation — the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”) — precisely because, at 30 years old, it has long since become hopelessly out of date. But surely if outdatedness is a justification for asserting the inappropriateness of existing privacy/surveillance legislation — as seems proper, given the massive technological and social changes surrounding privacy — the same concern should apply to copyright legislation with equal force, given the arguably even-more-substantial upheavals in the economic and social role of creative content in society today.

Of course there “is more certainty in reselling the past, than inventing the future,” but a truly valuable roadmap for the future from some of the most powerful and visionary companies in America should begin to tackle some of the most complicated and nuanced questions facing our country. It would be nice to see a Roadmap premised upon a well-articulated theory of accountability across all of the Internet ecosystem in ways that protect property, integrity, choice and other essential aspects of modern civil society.

Each of IA’s companies was principally founded on a vision of improving some aspect of the human condition; in many respects they have succeeded. But as society changes, even past successes may later become inconsistent with evolving social mores and economic conditions, necessitating thoughtful introspection and, often, policy revision. The IA can do better than pick and choose from among existing policies based on unilateral advantage and a convenient repudiation of responsibility.

In Amazon, Copyright, Facebook, Google, Intellectual Property, Platforms, Regulation, Regulatory Reform copyright, corporate social responsibility, DMCA, ECPA, IA, internet, Internet Association, political economy, politics, safe harbors

Truth on the Market welcomes our newest blogger, Neil Turkewitz

Geoffrey Manne — 23 November 2016

Truth on the Market is delighted to welcome our newest blogger, Neil Turkewitz. Neil is the newly minted Senior Policy Counsel at the International Center for Law & Economics (so we welcome him to ICLE, as well!).

Prior to joining ICLE, Neil spent 30 years at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), most recently as Executive Vice President, International.

Neil has spent most of his career working to expand economic opportunities for the music industry through modernization of copyright legislation and effective enforcement in global markets. He has worked closely with creative communities around the globe, with the US and foreign governments, and with international organizations (including WIPO and the WTO), to promote legal and enforcement reforms to respond to evolving technology, and to promote a balanced approach to digital trade and Internet governance premised upon the importance of regulatory coherence, elimination of inefficient barriers to global communications, and respect for Internet freedom and the rule of law.

Among other things, Neil was instrumental in the negotiation of the WTO TRIPS Agreement, worked closely with the US and foreign governments in the negotiation of free trade agreements, helped to develop the OECD’s Communique on Principles for Internet Policy Making, coordinated a global effort culminating in the production of the WIPO Internet Treaties, served as a formal advisor to the Secretary of Commerce and the USTR as Vice-Chairman of the Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property Rights, and served as a member of the Board of the Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center.

You can read some of his thoughts on Internet governance, IP, and international trade here and here.

Welcome Neil!

In Copyright, Intellectual Property, International, International Center for Law & Economics, International Trade, Regulatory Reform, Truth on the Market Chamber of Commerce, copyright, icle, international trade, internet, Internet governance, IP, music, Neil Turkewitz

A Flag On the Play: Gigi Sohn Commits a Copyright Foul

Geoffrey Manne & Kristian Stout — 14 September 2016

As Commissioner Wheeler moves forward with his revised set-top box proposal, and on the eve of tomorrow’s senate FCC oversight hearing, we would do well to reflect on some insightful testimony regarding another of the Commission’s rulemakings from ten years ago:

We are living in a digital gold age and consumers… are the beneficiaries. Consumers have numerous choices for buying digital content and for buying devices on which to play that content. They have never had so much flexibility and so much opportunity.

* * *

As the content industry has ramped up on-line delivery of content, it has been testing a variety of protection measures that provide both security for the industry and flexibility for consumers.

So to answer the question, can content protection and technological innovation coexist? It is a resounding yes. Look at the robust market for on-line content distribution facilitated by the technologies and networks consumers love.

* * *

[T]he Federal Communications Commission should not become the Federal Computer Commission or the Federal Copyright Commission, and the marketplace, not the Government, is the best arbiter of what technologies succeed or fail.

That’s not the self-interested testimony of a studio or cable executive — that was Gigi Sohn, current counsel to Chairman Wheeler, speaking on behalf of Public Knowledge in 2006 before the House Energy and Commerce Committee against the FCC’s “broadcast flag” rules. Those rules, supported by a broad spectrum of rightsholders, required consumer electronics devices to respect programming conditions preventing the unauthorized transmission over the internet of digital broadcast television content.

Ms. Sohn and Public Knowledge won that fight in court, convincing the DC Circuit that Congress hadn’t given the FCC authority to impose the rules in the first place, and she successfully urged Congress not to give the FCC the authority to reinstate them.

Yet today, she and the Chairman seem to have forgotten her crucial insights from ten years ago. If the marketplace for video content was sufficiently innovative and competitive then, how can it possibly not be so now, with audiences having orders of magnitude more choices, both online and off? And if the FCC lacked authority to adopt copyright-related rules then, how does the FCC suddenly have that authority now, in the absence of any intervening congressional action?

With Section 106 of the Copyright Act, Congress granted copyright holders the exclusive rights to engage in or license the reproduction, distribution, and public performance of their works. The courts are the “backstop,” not the FCC (as Chairman Wheeler would have it), and section 629 of the Communications Act doesn’t say otherwise. All section 629 does is direct the FCC to promote a competitive market for devices to access pay-TV services from pay-TV providers. As we noted last week, it very simply doesn’t allow the FCC to interfere with the license arrangements that fill those devices, and, short of explicit congressional direction, the Commission is simply not empowered to interfere with the framework set forth in the Copyright Act.

Chairman Wheeler’s latest proposal has improved on his initial plan by, for example, moving toward an applications-based approach and away from the mandatory disaggregation of content. But it would still arrogate to the FCC the authority to stand up a licensing body for the distribution of content over pay-TV applications; set rules on the terms such licenses must, may, and may not include; and even allow the FCC itself to create terms or the entire license. Such rules would necessarily implicate the extent to which rightsholders are able to control the distribution of their content.

The specifics of the regulations may be different from 2006, but the point is the same: What the FCC could not do in 2006, it cannot do today.

In Copyright, Federal Communications Commission, Intellectual Property, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market copyright, copyright policy, FCC, Federal Communications Commission, Public Performance, Section 629, Set-Top Box

Chairman Wheeler’s new set-top box proposal: from unmitigated disaster to plain old disaster

Geoffrey Manne & Kristian Stout — 10 September 2016

Imagine if you will… that a federal regulatory agency were to decide that the iPhone ecosystem was too constraining and too expensive; that consumers — who had otherwise voted for iPhones with their dollars — were being harmed by the fact that the platform was not “open” enough.

Such an agency might resolve (on the basis of a very generous reading of a statute), to force Apple to make its iOS software available to any hardware platform that wished to have it, in the process making all of the apps and user data accessible to the consumer via these new third parties, on terms set by the agency… for free.

Difficult as it may be to picture this ever happening, it is exactly the sort of Twilight Zone scenario that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is currently proposing with his new set-top box proposal.

Based on the limited information we have so far (a fact sheet and an op-ed), Chairman Wheeler’s new proposal does claw back some of the worst excesses of his initial draft (which we critiqued in our comments and reply comments to that proposal).

But it also appears to reinforce others — most notably the plan’s disregard for the right of content creators to control the distribution of their content. Wheeler continues to dismiss the complex business models, relationships, and licensing terms that have evolved over years of competition and innovation. Instead, he offers a one-size-fits-all “solution” to a “problem” that market participants are already falling over themselves to provide.

Plus ça change…

To begin with, Chairman Wheeler’s new proposal is based on the same faulty premise: that consumers pay too much for set-top boxes, and that the FCC is somehow both prescient enough and Congressionally ordained to “fix” this problem. As we wrote in our initial comments, however,

[a]lthough the Commission asserts that set-top boxes are too expensive, the history of overall MVPD prices tells a remarkably different story. Since 1994, per-channel cable prices including set-top box fees have fallen by 2 percent, while overall consumer prices have increased by 54 percent. After adjusting for inflation, this represents an impressive overall price decrease.

And the fact is that no one buys set-top boxes in isolation; rather, the price consumers pay for cable service includes the ability to access that service. Whether the set-top box fee is broken out on subscribers’ bills or not, the total price consumers pay is unlikely to change as a result of the Commission’s intervention.

As we have previously noted, the MVPD set-top box market is an aftermarket; no one buys set-top boxes without first (or simultaneously) buying MVPD service. And as economist Ben Klein (among others) has shown, direct competition in the aftermarket need not be plentiful for the market to nevertheless be competitive:

Whether consumers are fully informed or uninformed, consumers will pay a competitive package price as long as sufficient competition exists among sellers in the [primary] market.

Engineering the set-top box aftermarket to bring more direct competition to bear may redistribute profits, but it’s unlikely to change what consumers pay.

Stripped of its questionable claims regarding consumer prices and placed in the proper context — in which consumers enjoy more ways to access more video content than ever before — Wheeler’s initial proposal ultimately rested on its promise to “pave the way for a competitive marketplace for alternate navigation devices, and… end the need for multiple remote controls.” Weak sauce, indeed.

He now adds a new promise: that “integrated search” will be seamlessly available for consumers across the new platforms. But just as universal remotes and channel-specific apps on platforms like Apple TV have already made his “multiple remotes” promise a hollow one, so, too, have competitive pressures already begun to deliver integrated search.

Meanwhile, such marginal benefits come with a host of substantial costs, as others have pointed out. Do we really need the FCC to grant itself more powers and create a substantial and coercive new regulatory regime to mandate what the market is already poised to provide?

From ignoring copyright to obliterating copyright

Chairman Wheeler’s first proposal engendered fervent criticism for the impossible position in which it placed MVPDs — of having to disregard, even outright violate, their contractual obligations to content creators.

Commendably, the new proposal acknowledges that contractual relationships between MVPDs and content providers should remain “intact.” Thus, the proposal purports to enable programmers and MVPDs to maintain “their channel position, advertising and contracts… in place.” MVPDs will retain “end-to-end” control of the display of content through their apps, and all contractually guaranteed content protection mechanisms will remain, because the “pay-TV’s software will manage the full suite of linear and on-demand programming licensed by the pay-TV provider.”

But, improved as it is, the new proposal continues to operate in an imagined world where the incredibly intricate and complex process by which content is created and distributed can be reduced to the simplest of terms, dictated by a regulator and applied uniformly across all content and all providers.

According to the fact sheet, the new proposal would “[p]rotect[] copyrights and… [h]onor[] the sanctity of contracts” through a “standard license”:

The proposed final rules require the development of a standard license governing the process for placing an app on a device or platform. A standard license will give device manufacturers the certainty required to bring innovative products to market… The license will not affect the underlying contracts between programmers and pay-TV providers. The FCC will serve as a backstop to ensure that nothing in the standard license will harm the marketplace for competitive devices.

But programming is distributed under a diverse range of contract terms. The only way a single, “standard license” could possibly honor these contracts is by forcing content providers to license all of their content under identical terms.

Leaving aside for a moment the fact that the FCC has no authority whatever to do this, for such a scheme to work, the agency would necessarily have to strip content holders of their right to govern the terms on which their content is accessed. After all, if MVPDs are legally bound to redistribute content on fixed terms, they have no room to permit content creators to freely exercise their rights to specify terms like windowing, online distribution restrictions, geographic restrictions, and the like.

In other words, the proposal simply cannot deliver on its promise that “[t]he license will not affect the underlying contracts between programmers and pay-TV providers.”

But fear not: According to the Fact Sheet, “[p]rogrammers will have a seat at the table to ensure that content remains protected.” Such largesse! One would be forgiven for assuming that the programmers’ (single?) seat will surrounded by those of other participants — regulatory advocates, technology companies, and others — whose sole objective will be to minimize content companies’ ability to restrict the terms on which their content is accessed.

And we cannot ignore the ominous final portion of the Fact Sheet’s “Standard License” description: “The FCC will serve as a backstop to ensure that nothing in the standard license will harm the marketplace for competitive devices.” Such an arrogation of ultimate authority by the FCC doesn’t bode well for that programmer’s “seat at the table” amounting to much.

Unfortunately, we can only imagine the contours of the final proposal that will describe the many ways by which distribution licenses can “harm the marketplace for competitive devices.” But an educated guess would venture that there will be precious little room for content creators and MVPDs to replicate a large swath of the contract terms they currently employ. “Any content owner can have its content painted any color that it wants, so long as it is black.”

At least we can take solace in the fact that the FCC has no authority to do what Wheeler wants it to do

And, of course, this all presumes that the FCC will be able to plausibly muster the legal authority in the Communications Act to create what amounts to a de facto compulsory licensing scheme.

A single license imposed upon all MVPDs, along with the necessary restrictions this will place upon content creators, does just as much as an overt compulsory license to undermine content owners’ statutory property rights. For every license agreement that would be different than the standard agreement, the proposed standard license would amount to a compulsory imposition of terms that the rights holders and MVPDs would not otherwise have agreed to. And if this sounds tedious and confusing, just wait until the Commission starts designing its multistakeholder Standard Licensing Oversight Process (“SLOP”)….

Unfortunately for Chairman Wheeler (but fortunately for the rest of us), the FCC has neither the legal authority, nor the requisite expertise, to enact such a regime.

Last month, the Copyright Office was clear on this score in its letter to Congress commenting on the Chairman’s original proposal:

[I]t is important to remember that only Congress, through the exercise of its power under the Copyright Clause, and not the FCC or any other agency, has the constitutional authority to create exceptions and limitations in copyright law. While Congress has enacted compulsory licensing schemes, they have done so in response to demonstrated market failures, and in a carefully circumscribed manner.

Assuming that Section 629 of the Communications Act — the provision that otherwise empowers the Commission to promote a competitive set-top box market — fails to empower the FCC to rewrite copyright law (which is assuredly the case), the Commission will be on shaky ground for the inevitable torrent of lawsuits that will follow the revised proposal.

In fact, this new proposal feels more like an emergency pivot by a panicked Chairman than an actual, well-grounded legal recommendation. While the new proposal improves upon the original, it retains at its core the same ill-informed, ill-advised and illegal assertion of authority that plagued its predecessor.

In Administrative Law, Apple, Copyright, Economic Theory, Federal Communications Commission, Intellectual Property, Platforms, Telecommunications, Truth on the Market Advertising, AllVid, Ben Klein, copyright, copyright policy, Federal Communications Commission, licensing, Section 629, Set-Top Box

Justice Department Ignores the Benefits of Contracting Freedom in its Crabbed Reading of Music Distribution Decrees

Alden Abbott — 7 September 2016

The Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) ignored sound law and economics principles in its August 4 decision announcing a new interpretation of seventy-five year-old music licensing consent decrees it had entered into separately with the two major American “performing rights organizations” (PROs) — the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (see ASCAP) and Broadcast Music, Inc. (see BMI). It also acted in a matter at odds with international practice. DOJ should promptly rescind its new interpretation and restore the welfare-enhancing licensing flexibility that ASCAP and BMI previously enjoyed. If DOJ fails to do this, the court overseeing the decrees or Congress should be prepared to act.

Background

ASCAP and BMI contract with music copyright holders to act as intermediaries that provide “blanket” licenses to music users (e.g., television and radio stations, bars, and internet music distributors) for use of their full copyrighted musical repertoires, without the need for song-specific licensing negotiations. This greatly reduces the transactions costs of arranging for the playing of musical works, benefiting music users, the listening public, and copyright owners (all of whom are assured of at least some compensation for their endeavors). ASCAP and BMI are big businesses, with each PRO holding licenses to over ten million works and accounting for roughly 45 percent of the domestic music licensing market (ninety percent combined). Because both ASCAP and BMI pool copyrighted songs that could otherwise compete with each other, and both grant users a single-price “blanket license” conveying the rights to play their full set of copyrighted works, the two organizations could be seen as restricting competition among copyrighted works and fixing the prices of copyrighted substitutes – raising serious questions under section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which condemns contracts that unreasonably restrain trade. This led the DOJ to bring antitrust suits against ASCAP and BMI over eighty years ago, which were settled by separate judicially-filed consent decrees in 1941. The decrees imposed a variety of limitations on the two PROs’ licensing practices, aimed at preventing ASCAP and BMI from exercising anticompetitive market power (such as the setting of excessive licensing rates). The decrees were amended twice over the years, most recently in 2001, to take account of changing market conditions. The U.S. Supreme Court noted the constraining effect of the decrees in BMI v. CBS (1979), in ruling that the BMI and ASCAP blanket licenses did not constitute per se illegal price fixing. The Court held, rather, that the licenses should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis under the antitrust “rule of reason,” since the licenses inherently generated great efficiency benefits (“the immediate use of covered compositions, without the delay of prior individual negotiations”) that had to be weighed against potential anticompetitive harms.

The August 4, 2016 DOJ Consent Decree Interpretation

Fast forward to 2014, when DOJ undertook a new review of the ASCAP and BMI decrees, and requested the submission of public comments to aid it in its deliberations. This review came to an official conclusion two year laters, on August 4, 2016, when DOJ decided not to amend the decrees – but announced a decree interpretation that limits ASCAP’s and BMI’s flexibility. Specifically, DOJ stated that the decrees needed to be “more consistently applied.” By this, the DOJ meant that BMI and ASCAP should only grant blanket licenses that cover all of the rights to 100 percent of the works in the PROs’ respective catalogs, not licenses that cover only partial interests in those works. DOJ stated:

Only full-work licensing can yield the substantial procompetitive benefits associated with blanket licenses that distinguish ASCAP’s and BMI’s activities from other agreements among competitors that present serious issues under the antitrust laws.

The New DOJ Interpretation is bad as a Matter of Policy

DOJ’s August 4 interpretation rejects industry practice. Under it, ASCAP and BMI will only be able to offer a license covering all of the copyright interests in a musical competition, even if the license covers a joint work. For example, consider a band of five composer-musicians, each of whom has a fractional interest in the copyright covering the band’s new album which is a joint work. Previously, each musician was able to offer a partial interest in the joint work to a performance rights organization, reflecting the relative shares of the total copyright interest covering the work. The organization could offer a partial license, and a user could aggregate different partial licenses in order to cover the whole joint work.

Now, however, under DOJ’s new interpretation, BMI and ASCAP will be prevented from offering partial licenses to that work to users. This may deny the band’s individual members the opportunity to deal profitably with BMI and ASCAP, thereby undermining their ability to receive fair compensation. As the two PROs have noted, this approach “will cause unnecessary chaos in the marketplace and place unfair financial burdens and creative constraints on songwriters and composers.” According to ASCAP President Paul Williams, “It is as if the DOJ saw songwriters struggling to stay afloat in a sea of outdated regulations and decided to hand us an anchor, in the form of 100 percent licensing, instead of a life preserver.” Furthermore, the president and CEO of BMI, Mike O’Neill, stated: “We believe the DOJ’s interpretation benefits no one – not BMI or ASCAP, not the music publishers, and not the music users – but we are most sensitive to the impact this could have on you, our songwriters and composers.” These views are bolstered by a January 2016 U.S. Copyright Office report, which concluded that “an interpretation of the consent decrees that would require 100-percent licensing or removal of a work from the ASCAP or BMI repertoire would appear to be fraught with legal and logistical problems, and might well result in a sharp decrease in repertoire available through these [performance rights organizations’] blanket licenses.” Regrettably, during the decree review period, DOJ ignored the expert opinion of the Copyright Office, as well as the public record comments of numerous publishers and artists (see here, for example) indicating that a 100 percent licensing requirement would depress returns to copyright owners and undermine the creative music industry.

Most fundamentally, DOJ’s new interpretation of the BMI and ASCAP consent decrees involves an abridgment of economic freedom. It further limits the flexibility of copyright music holders and music users to contract with intermediaries to promote the efficient distribution of music performance rights, in a manner that benefits the listening public while allowing creative artists sufficient compensation for their efforts. DOJ made no compelling showing that a new consent decree constraint is needed to promote competition (100 percent licensing only). Far from promoting competition, DOJ’s new interpretation undermines it. In short, DOJ micromanagement of copyright licensing by consent decree reinterpretation is a costly new regulatory initiative that reflects a lack of appreciation for intellectual property rights, which incentivize innovation. In short, DOJ’s latest interpretation of the ASCAP and BMI decrees is terrible policy.

The New DOJ Interpretation is bad as a Matter of Law

DOJ’s new interpretation not only is bad policy, it is inconsistent with sound textual construction of the decrees themselves. As counsel for BMI explained in an August 4 federal court filing (in the Southern District of New York, which oversees the decrees), the BMI decree (and therefore the analogous ASCAP decree as well) does not expressly require 100 percent licensing and does not unambiguously prohibit fractional licensing. Accordingly, since a consent decree is an injunction, and any activity not expressly required or prohibited thereunder is permitted, fractional shares licensing should be authorized. DOJ’s new interpretation ignores this principle. It also is at odds with a report of the U.S. Copyright Office that concluded the BMI consent decree “must be understood to include partial interests in musical works.” Furthermore, the new interpretation is belied by the fact that the PRO licensing market has developed and functioned efficiently for decades by pricing, colleting, and distributing fees for royalties on a fractional basis. Courts view such evidence of trade practice and custom as relevant in determining the meaning of a consent decree.

The New DOJ Interpretation Runs Counter to International Norms

Finally, according to Gadi Oron, Director General of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC), a Paris-based organization that regroups 239 rights societies from 123 countries, including ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC, adoption of the new interpretation would depart from international norms in the music licensing industry and have disruptive international effects:

It is clear that the DoJ’s decisions have been made without taking the interests of creators, neither American nor international, into account. It is also clear that they were made with total disregard for the international framework, where fractional licensing is practiced, even if it’s less of a factor because many countries only have one performance rights organization representing songwriters in their territory. International copyright laws grant songwriters exclusive rights, giving them the power to decide who will license their rights in each territory and it is these rights that underpin the landscape in which authors’ societies operate. The international system of collective management of rights, which is based on reciprocal representation agreements and founded on the freedom of choice of the rights holder, would be negatively affected by such level of government intervention, at a time when it needs support more than ever.

Conclusion

In sum, DOJ should take account of these concerns and retract its new interpretation of the ASCAP and BMI consent decrees, restoring the status quo ante. If it fails to do so, a federal court should be prepared to act, and, if necessary, Congress should seriously consider appropriate corrective legislation.

In Antitrust & Competition, Antitrust Division, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Justice Department, Truth on the Market antitrust, copyright, economic freedom, music, United States Department of Justice

No, The FCC Should Not Have the Power to Cancel Contracts

Kristian Stout — 9 August 2016

Copyright law, ever a sore point in some quarters, has found a new field of battle in the FCC’s recent set-top box proposal. At the request of members of Congress, the Copyright Office recently wrote a rather thorough letter outlining its view of the FCC’s proposal on rightsholders.

In sum, the CR’s letter was an even-handed look at the proposal which concluded:

As a threshold matter, it seems critical that any revised proposal respect the authority of creators to manage the exploitation of their copyrighted works through private licensing arrangements, because regulatory actions that undermine such arrangements would be inconsistent with the rights granted under the Copyright Act.

This fairly uncontroversial statement of basic legal principle was met with cries of alarm. And Stanford’s CIS had a post from Affiliated Scholar Annemarie Bridy that managed to trot out breathless comparisons to inapposite legal theories while simultaneously misconstruing the “fair use” doctrine (as well as how Copyright law works in the video market, for that matter).

Look out! Lochner is coming!

In its letter the Copyright Office warned the FCC that its proposed rules have the potential to disrupt the web of contracts that underlie cable programming, and by extension, risk infringing the rights of copyright holders to commercially exploit their property. This analysis actually tracks what Geoff Manne and I wrote in both our initial comment and our reply comment to the set-top box proposal.

Yet Professor Bridy seems to believe that, notwithstanding the guarantees of both the Constitution and Section 106 of the Copyright Act, the FCC should have the power to abrogate licensing contracts between rightsholders and third parties. She believes that

[t]he Office’s view is essentially that the Copyright Act gives right holders not only the limited range of rights enumerated in Section 106 (i.e., reproduction, preparation of derivative works, distribution, public display, and public performance), but also a much broader and more amorphous right to “manage the commercial exploitation” of copyrighted works in whatever ways they see fit and can accomplish in the marketplace, without any regulatory interference from the government.

What in the world does this even mean? A necessary logical corollary of the Section 106 rights includes the right to exploit works commercially as rightsholders see fit. Otherwise, what could it possibly mean to have the right to control the reproduction or distribution of a work? The truth is that Section 106 sets out a general set of rights that inhere in rightsholders with respect to their protected works, and that commercial exploitation is merely a subset of this total bundle of rights.

The ability to contract with other parties over these rights is also a necessary corollary of the property rights recognized in Section 106. After all, the right to exclude implies by necessity the right to include. Which is exactly what a licensing arrangement is.

But wait, there’s more — she actually managed to pull out the Lochner bogeyman to validate her argument!

The Office’s absolutist logic concerning freedom of contract in the copyright licensing domain is reminiscent of the Supreme Court’s now-infamous reasoning in Lochner v. New York, a 1905 case that invalidated a state law limiting maximum working hours for bakers on the ground that it violated employer-employee freedom of contract. The Court in Lochner deprived the government of the ability to provide basic protections for workers in a labor environment that subjected them to unhealthful and unsafe conditions. As Julie Cohen describes it, “‘Lochner’ has become an epithet used to characterize an outmoded, over-narrow way of thinking about state and federal economic regulation; it goes without saying that hardly anybody takes the doctrine it represents seriously.”

This is quite a leap of logic, as there is precious little in common between the letter from the Copyright Office and the Lochner opinion aside from the fact that both contain the word “contracts” in their pages. Perhaps the most critical problem with Professor Bridy’s analogy is the fact that Lochner was about a legislature interacting with the common law system of contract, whereas the FCC is a body subordinate to Congress, and IP is both constitutionally and statutorily guaranteed. A sovereign may be entitled to interfere with the operation of common law, but an administrative agency does not have the same sort of legal status as a legislature when redefining general legal rights.

The key argument that Professor Bridy offered in support of her belief that the FCC should be free to abrogate contracts at will is that “[r]egulatory limits on private bargains may come in the form of antitrust laws or telecommunications laws or, as here, telecommunications regulations that further antitrust ends.” However, this completely misunderstand U.S. constitutional doctrine.

In particular, as Geoff Manne and I discussed in our set-top box comments to the FCC, using one constitutional clause to end-run another constitutional clause is generally a no-no:

Regardless of whether or how well the rules effect the purpose of Sec. 629, copyright violations cannot be justified by recourse to the Communications Act. Provisions of the Communications Act — enacted under Congress’s Commerce Clause power — cannot be used to create an end run around limitations imposed by the Copyright Act under the Constitution’s Copyright Clause. “Congress cannot evade the limits of one clause of the Constitution by resort to another,” and thus neither can an agency acting within the scope of power delegated to it by Congress. Establishing a regulatory scheme under the Communications Act whereby compliance by regulated parties forces them to violate content creators’ copyrights is plainly unconstitutional.

Congress is of course free to establish the implementation of the Copyright Act as it sees fit. However, unless Congress itself acts to change that implementation, the FCC — or any other party — is not at liberty to interfere with rightsholders’ constitutionally guaranteed rights.

You Have to Break the Law Before You Raise a Defense

Another bone of contention upon which Professor Bridy gnaws is a concern that licensing contracts will abrogate an alleged right to “fair use” by making the defense harder to muster:

One of the more troubling aspects of the Copyright Office’s letter is the length to which it goes to assert that right holders must be free in their licensing agreements with MVPDs to bargain away the public’s fair use rights… Of course, the right of consumers to time-shift video programming for personal use has been enshrined in law since Sony v. Universal in 1984. There’s no uncertainty about that particular fair use question—none at all.

The major problem with this reasoning (notwithstanding the somewhat misleading drafting of Section 107) is that “fair use” is not an affirmative right, it is an affirmative defense. Despite claims that “fair use” is a right, the Supreme Court has noted on at least two separate occasions (1, 2) that Section 107 was “structured… [as]… an affirmative defense requiring a case-by-case analysis.”

Moreover, important as the Sony case is, it does not not establish that “[t]here’s no uncertainty about [time-shifting as a] fair use question—none at all.” What it actually establishes is that, given the facts of that case, time-shifting was a fair use. Not for nothing the Sony Court notes at the outset of its opinion that

An explanation of our rejection of respondents’ unprecedented attempt to impose copyright liability upon the distributors of copying equipment requires a quite detailed recitation of the findings of the District Court.

But more generally, the Sony doctrine stands for the proposition that:

“The limited scope of the copyright holder’s statutory monopoly, like the limited copyright duration required by the Constitution, reflects a balance of competing claims upon the public interest: creative work is to be encouraged and rewarded, but private motivation must ultimately serve the cause of promoting broad public availability of literature, music, and the other arts. The immediate effect of our copyright law is to secure a fair return for an ‘author’s’ creative labor. But the ultimate aim is, by this incentive, to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good. ‘The sole interest of the United States and the primary object in conferring the monopoly,’ this Court has said, ‘lie in the general benefits derived by the public from the labors of authors.’ Fox Film Corp. v. Doyal, 286 U. S. 123, 286 U. S. 127. See Kendall v. Winsor, 21 How. 322, 62 U. S. 327-328; Grant v. Raymond, 6 Pet. 218, 31 U. S. 241-242. When technological change has rendered its literal terms ambiguous, the Copyright Act must be construed in light of this basic purpose.” Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U. S. 151, 422 U. S. 156 (1975) (footnotes omitted).

In other words, courts must balance competing interests to maximize “the general benefits derived by the public,” subject to technological change and other criteria that might shift that balance in any particular case.

Thus, even as an affirmative defense, nothing is guaranteed. The court will have to walk through a balancing test, and only after that point, and if the accused party’s behavior has not tipped the scales against herself, will the court find the use a “fair use.”

As I noted before,

Not surprisingly, other courts are inclined to follow the Supreme Court. Thus the Eleventh Circuit, the Southern District of New York, and the Central District of California (here and here), to name but a few, all explicitly refer to fair use as an affirmative defense. Oh, and the Ninth Circuit did too, at least until Lenz.

The Lenz case was an interesting one because, despite the above noted Supreme Court precedent treating “fair use” as a defense, it is one of the very few cases that has held “fair use” to be an affirmative right (in that case, the court decided that Section 1201 of the DMCA required consideration of “fair use” as a part of filling out a take-down notice). And in doing so, it too tried to rely on Sony to restructure the nature of “fair use.” But as I have previously written, “[i]t bears noting that the Court in Sony Corp. did not discuss whether or not fair use is an affirmative defense, whereas Acuff Rose (decided 10 years after Sony Corp.) and Harper & Row decisions do.”

Further, even the Eleventh Circuit, which the Ninth relied upon in Lenz, later clarified its position that the above-noted Supreme Court precedent definitely binds lower courts, and that “fair use” is in fact an affirmative defense.

Thus, to say that rightsholders’ licensing contracts somehow impinge a “right” of fair use completely puts the cart before the horse. Remember, as an affirmative defense, “fair use” is an excuse for otherwise infringing behavior, and rightsholders are well within their constitutional and statutory rights to avoid potential infringing uses.

Think about it this way. When you commit a crime you can raise a defense: for instance, an insanity defense. But just because you might be excused for committing a crime if a court finds you were not operating with full faculties, this does not entitle every insane person to go out and commit that crime. The insanity defense can be raised only after a crime is committed, and at that point it will be examined by a judge and jury to determine if applying the defense furthers the overall criminal law scheme.

“Fair use” works in exactly the same manner. And even though Sony described how time- and space-shifting were potentially permissible, it did so only by determining on those facts that the balancing test came out to allow it. So, maybe a particular time-shifting use would be “fair use.” But maybe not. More likely, in this case, even the allegedly well-established “fair use” of time-shifting in the context of today’s digital media, on-demand programing, Netflix and the like may not meet that burden.

And what this means is that a rightsholder does not have an ex ante obligation to consider whether a particular contractual clause might in some fashion or other give rise to a “fair use” defense.

The contrary point of view makes no sense. Because “fair use” is a defense, forcing parties to build “fair use” considerations into their contractual negotiations essentially requires them to build in an allowance for infringement — and one that a court might or might not ever find appropriate in light of the requisite balancing of interests. That just can’t be right.

Instead, I think this article is just a piece of the larger IP-skeptic movement. I suspect that when “fair use” was in its initial stages of development, it was intended as a fairly gentle softening on the limits of intellectual property — something like the “public necessity” doctrine in common law with respect to real property and trespass. However, that is just not how “fair use” advocates see it today. As Geoff Manne has noted, the idea of “permissionless innovation” has wrongly come to mean “no contracts required (or permitted)”:

[Permissionless innovation] is used to justify unlimited expansion of fair use, and is extended by advocates to nearly all of copyright…, which otherwise requires those pernicious licenses (i.e., permission) from others.

But this position is nonsense — intangible property is still property. And at root, property is just a set of legal relations between persons that defines their rights and obligations with respect to some “thing.” It doesn’t matter if you can hold that thing in your hand or not. As property, IP can be subject to transfer and control through voluntarily created contracts.

Even if “fair use” were some sort of as-yet unknown fundamental right, it would still be subject to limitations upon it by other rights and obligations. To claim that “fair use” should somehow trump the right of a property holder to dispose of the property as she wishes is completely at odds with our legal system.

Archives For copyright

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Process over substance

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Property and ownership are not absolute concepts

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

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

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

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Plus ça change…

From ignoring copyright to obliterating copyright

At least we can take solace in the fact that the FCC has no authority to do what Wheeler wants it to do

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Look out! Lochner is coming!

You Have to Break the Law Before You Raise a Defense

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