The Dead Don’t Just Vote, They Also Sign Petitions, While the Living Sue

The United Kingdom has proposed overhauling the existing copyright laws, predictably empowering the Gowers Commission to look into the state of intellectual property (IP) in the U.K. and recommend legislative remedies.  While the recommendations call for tougher enforcement of IP infringement (and the allowing of music transfer from one device to another (e.g., from a CD to an MP3 player), it rejects the idea of extending copyright protection for recorded music beyond the current 50-year term.  A group of musicians, 4500 strong including such impecunious artists as Sir Paul McCartney and the Irish band U2, took out an ad in a recent Financial Times arguing for the copyright term to be extended from 50 to 95 years.  This controversy has been simmering for some time.  Lawrence Lessig, an American IP lawyer who opposes such extensions, with pen dripping in irony and sarcasm, has “admitted” he was wrong after finding musicians signing the petition who had been dead for a few years.  “I take it the ability of these dead authors to sign a petition asking for their copyright terms to be extended can only mean that even after death, term extension continues to inspire,” a bemused Lessig wrote. Lessig has also argued this same thing in a more direct fashion.  Incidentally, the British Library has published an IP manifesto that attempts to balance equities in this area.  This manifesto does not address the current debate, but tries to lay down principles under which dispute resolutions could occur. Meanwhile, on our side of the Atlantic, the head of the Library of Congress, James H. Billington, is calling for legislation to protect those intrepid souls who reverse engineer Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes to expose the flaws contained therein. After the Sony rootkit fiasco, DRM schemes have come to be disfavored and some have predicted their swift demise. Recently, the anti-DRM movement was profiled in Newsweek. This is a classic case of greed killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. And it will continue to be a hot story, because Microsoft has embedded DRM into its upcoming new Vista release.  While those possessing decorum make their arguments in decorous ways, the wild wild Internet takes on the task of attack through humor and derision.  Jinx has come up with a unique product aimed at those people who hate the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group that has become reviled for suing grandmothers who wouldn’t know a mouse from a rat, or a rootkit from a rutabaga.  RIAA bumwad is so popular that their stock of it is sold out! For the sake of balance, here is an article explaining, if not exactly supporting, the RIAA’s position. And another that chronicles RIAA’s counterintuitive request to reduce royalty payments; is it a public relations strategy or the dying gasp of the formerly relevant? By the way, DRM is not the only entity declared nearing death recently.  The demise of the VHS tape is almost at hand, according to Variety.