MediaCon: put best

Posted on May 14, 2003 by Lessig

This is a brilliant cartoon by Toles which captures this whole debate best.

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MediaCon: Donna nails it

Posted on May 12, 2003 by Lessig

The link to link all things important.

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MediaCon: criticism growning

Posted on May 12, 2003 by Lessig

There is growing criticism of the June 2 planned announcement at the FCC. MoveOn.org has joined the fight, as has BoingBoing, ReinRadar, and Aaron.

Posted in free culture | 1 Comment

binary “thought”: Bruce Lehman

Posted on May 12, 2003 by Lessig

Bruce Lehman — the Clinton Administration’s IP czar and a debate no-show (he’s scheduled and not shown at at least two debates that I know of — one with Jamie Boyle, and one with me) — has been doing more good in the world. As reported in Technology Review and commented upon at TeleRead, when a Cairo consortium called WIPO to ask for advice about images of Egyptian artifacts that they wanted to place on the web, Lehman’s new international organization sent a lawyer to Cairo to advise them against spreading such knowledge freely. Better to copyright and control access to such knowledge. The images, he is reported to have said, “should be licensed.”

We’d suggest a Creative Commons license, or at least some way to keep Mr. Lehman at home.

Posted in bad law | 1 Comment

MediaCon: A view from down under

Posted on May 8, 2003 by Lessig

An Australian sent me this interesting rant about “deregulation” of the media:

You might like to bring your readers’ attention to the state of the
media in Australia.

Our government has already gone down the path of creeping
“deregulation”. Brisbane, the city I live in, now has only one daily
newspaper – Murdoch’s “Courier-Mail”. Interestingly enough Queensland
Newspapers (which is The Courier-Mail and some regional weekly
advertising newspapers) is the company Murdoch plundered during some of
his cash-flow problems a number of years ago. He was never called to
account by any regulatory body to answer for the fact that QNP employee
pension money that went missing for many months.

Once media concentration is allowed to creep past a certain point you
are in trouble. The media owners can push for more concentration due to
the fact that they control public opinion via TV and print media.

They got their present media concentration allowances by promising
politicians “more balanced reporting in the future”. Everyone knew they
abused the power they had, but the politicians sold the general public
on the belief they could safely trade MORE power for promises of reduced
abuse! Crazy.

Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer are a media duopoly with very close
business ties that ensure that casino, cable-TV, digital spectrum and
broadband operation licenses all go to them. Competitors are removed or
regulated out of the market by politicians who have pressure applied
from the press – owned by these two astute businessmen.

Now that they own a great percentage of media they can, and do, use this
to finish off their quality competitors with their inferior but
ubiquitous newspapers, radio stations and TV stations. Kerry Packer’s
“ninemsn.com.au” partnership with Microsoft ensures that the country’s
PCs roll out with ninemsn.com.au as the default page in their web
browser, thus extending Packer’s reach. Murdich and Packer now own the
rights to all major football codes in Australia, plus cricket and
tennis.

It is a nightmare. Newsworthy events either have to advertise with the
duopoly or risk only negative publicity. If it bleeds, it leads. Be it
red ink or red blood. Financial disaster or human tragedy are your only
hope of making the papers unless you pay or are owned by Packer, Murdoch
or Fairfax in which case your miracle arthritis cure gets front-page
space.

If you want to show people what will happen with “deregulation” study
the Australian experience.

Posted in free culture | 8 Comments

MediaCon: McChesney

Posted on May 3, 2003 by Lessig

Bob McChesney has been studying concentration in media for a long time. His challenge is worth reading.

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MediaCon: Links

Posted on May 3, 2003 by Lessig

This story is beginning to walk. Donna launched it. JD Lasica has collected a bunch of links on his page. JD points to a great little piece by Jesse Walker of Reason. And Amy from the Harvard blog has been writing about this for a while.

It is a month till D(eregulation) Day. We’ve given them the language (how is it “deregulation” when it will produce 3 companies owning everything?); there’s much more to do if the call mediageek has echoed is to have any effect.

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REDUCE Spam Act

Posted on May 1, 2003 by Lessig

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren today introduced her REDUCE Spam Act. That Act is in part based upon the idea that I have bet my job on. This has led some friends to write that they hope the law is not passed — some because they believe it won’t work, some because they don’t like this or any regulation. To the first group, I appreciate the concern, but remain unworried. To the second, I understand the concerns, but remain convinced.

The general idea of the statute is that spammers must label UCE, and if they don’t, then the law enables a bounty system to pay people who hunt down those who fail properly to label. I’ve been getting lots of questions about how this would work, and as many are similar, it would obviously help to post a FAQ. It would be great to get more questions beyond the first wave, and a FAQ would certainly help.

This final draft does have a nice modification that was suggested by a particularly skeptical friend. The label requirement initially is a simple ADV: in the subject line. There are obvious problems with mandated protocols, and so the modification requires either an ADV: or “an identification that complies with the standards adopted by the Internet Engineering Task Force for identification of unsolicited commercial electronic mail messages.” This is a nice modification that both creates an incentive for the development of other protocols, but vests that process within a body that so far has resisted capture. I was originally worried that any industry standards group would be open to capture. But I have lots of confidence that the IETF will be able to suss out spammers.

The key to this idea is, as Congresswoman Lofgren puts it, that the Act would enlist a bunch of 18 year olds in the battle against non-complying spammers. “Between the 18 year olds and the spamsters,” as she puts it, “I’ll bet on the 18 year olds.”

Me too.

Posted in ideas | 12 Comments

To those respectful and polite sorts:

Posted on April 30, 2003 by Lessig

Who kindly email to ask whether they can link to my content on my blog: The permissions for my site are expressed in (1) human readable form, (2) lawyer readable form, and (3) machine readable form in the Creative Commons license linked at the bottom of the page. The whole point of this is to enable people to build upon other peoples’ work without signing a contract. (Here’s a nice flash to make the point.) So please excuse me if in response to your request, all you get is a link back to this post. If you need express permission, then I’m sorry: CC-express is the best I will do, because a world that better expresses freedom is the space we are trying to build.

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We’ve seen it all before

Posted on April 30, 2003 by Lessig

There’s a standard dance that the IP extremists do well: When they lose in Congress, they go overseas and negotiate a treaty that imposes on the US the same obligation they just lost in Congress; then they come back and say, “we must do this to live up to our international obligations.”

So here we go again: The US Trade Representative is negotiating trade agreements with Chile and Singapore. The agreements essentially require these two countries to adopt the DMCA, and make it a violation of “our international obligations” if we were to change the DMCA. Representatives Lofgren and Boucher — who both have bills introduced to amend the DMCA — have written a strongly worded letter to the USTR asking for clarification. For consistent with this policy making process, just what is being promised is never made clear — until it is too late. Here’s the letter.

Posted in bad law | 4 Comments