According to others, like Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, quoted in Raw Story this morning as saying it's
"almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile."As I read it, if any state AG finds something you wrote last year was insufficiently attributed or a thought or picture that belonged to someone else -- you're off the air along with everything else you've written. Is it just me, or does that sound as if it had been designed for misuse? Will any website critical of government or government officials or members of the same party as a State Attorney General be sifted for some infraction that can justify it's obliteration or postpone publication indefinitely? Is this bill far too broad to be safe? Were we all born yesterday?
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed this bit of poorly digested legislation yesterday. (there's a metaphor here, look for it) It was passed unanimously and yet it won't be hanging over the heads of bloggers like some bloody sword just yet and we owe it to Wyden who used his Senatorial option to place holds on pending legislation to force proponents to re-introduce the bill in the next session. I hope that by then the opposition will have made its case and shed enough light on the potential for politically based government censorship.
Don Wyden is a Democrat, but Democrats should perhaps avoid crowing about being the defenders of freedom of the press since the bill was co-sponsored by Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, who described it as a bipartisan effort to protect property rights. Obviously there's no lack of support for putting such things above freedom of speech by Democratic Senators.
A group calling itself Demand Progress is circulating a petition they hope will make a difference, and now that we have a brief reprieve, perhaps it will. Perhaps you will agree.
Seems to me that the proposed bill, if it's that broad, would be an overreach and easily liable to abuse. What we have in the Senate is lots of people who apparently think of the net as a system of cups and tubes. The result is enough to make the cyber-angels weep.
ReplyDeleteThe Internets may be too big for them to stop or control entirely, but maybe that isn't even necessary: what we're dealing with in this instance, I suspect, is a generalized "chilling effect" upon the public discourse.
What next -- an law forbidding electronic "murmuring againste the King" like the one they had in Shakespeare's era to keep tabs on any group of people gathering idly at the street corner or local tavern?
Hell we gotta protect copyrights; words and pictures are the only thing this country produces any more since we stopped making "things" and playing the shell game with financial institutions isn't bringing home the bacon it once used to.
ReplyDeleteInteresting dilemma,how to extend basic copyright protections to the Internet without infringing on freedom of expression. Our current copyright laws are woefully inadequate to deal with the Internet.
ReplyDeleteIt appears that the proposed legislation is not narrowly tailored so as not to cast such a wide net as to result in censorship of dissenting opinions. However, I do have concerns with the laissez-faire attitude with which intellectual property is often used without attribution to the rightful owner. If I write an article for a hard copy magazine, unless I sign over republication rights, it cannot continue indefinitely see my work or sell it to other publications. However, people think nothing of finding an interesting article on the Internet and republishing it at will.
I don't disagree with the potential for censorship and the need to craft such legislation carefully; however, I do think that some guidelines are needed. Current copyright law doesn't provide clear legal recourse if the intellectual property that is appropriated by another is on the Internet. Your virtual paintings, photographs, writings etc. may be appropriated and republished or referenced by others without your permission or without proper attribution to the source, something that is not allowed with hard copy material.
As the man said, it's like using a bomb when you need a scalpel. Having mice in the hayloft doesn't demand that you let a lion loose in the barn.
ReplyDeleteYes, if someone swipes a picture, exceeds fair use with a quote or plagiarizes, it should be addressed - but we don't shut down the Times and confiscate all the issues when that happens - and especially not until there is some kind of due process. Where there's potential for abuse, there will be abuse.
Daniel Webster once said - "The strong notion that something must be done is the parent of many a bad measure...especially if it happens in an election year."
I don't disagree, Capt. but it is more than just swiping someone's work or quoting without permission. It's theft. I published some of my poetry online and some months later a friend who was familiar with my work directed me to a site where not only had they published my poetry without permission. I didn't approve of the social slant of the site and I would have never said asked if permission had been sought. In the non-virtual world, that would be clear grounds for legal action; however, because issues of public domain have not been clearly defined when it comes to the Internet, there wasn't a clear cause of action. In the real world I could have sought monetary damages; in this virtual world, it wasn't clear as to whether it was worth my time to pursue the matter beyond a cease and desist letter. You are correct that it is unlikely that an entire newspaper or magazine would be shut down because a reporter plagiarized a story, but they do run the risk of massive fines and other sanctions should a trial court determine that the newspaper or magazine implicitly or explicitly complied in the misuse of the material.
ReplyDeleteTo file a lawsuit, you have to point to the provisions or provisions of law that you believe have been violated, otherwise you have no cause of action. When I first became a lawyer, I had friends and relatives calling me p to tell me of some injustice suffered and requesting that I assist them in suing the perpetrator of the injustice. I found myself repeatedly explaining that although they had been treated unfairly that no laws had been violated and therefore there was no basis for a lawsuit. That's the problem that we have with the Internet. Current copyright law never anticipated materials that only exit in cyberspace and the law has caught up with how to govern Internet violations allowing the violators to act with impunity.
I also think that the media has hyped up this legislative draft as more than it is. The bill hasn't been before the Senate, just a senate committee. At this point, the bill is a draft. Being passed by a committee means that it moves on to another committee and it's still subject to many revisions. It is appropriate that people are tinkering with it now and calling attention to its feelings, but being passed by a Senate Judiciary Committee (there are several SJCs) is a long ways from becoming a law in its present form.
"It is appropriate that people are tinkering with it now and calling attention to its feelings, but being passed by a Senate Judiciary Committee (there are several SJCs) is a long ways from becoming a law in its present form."
ReplyDeleteI think so too and maybe here's an instance of the Senate and the system of checks and balances doing its job and a Democrat leading the way. If it weren't for Wyden, nipping this in the um, bud - we'd have the committee serving the interests of corporate media. I think that's more definitive of what it's all about than the work of an individual being stolen. A rewrite is what it needs.
In no way am I condoning theft, just pointing out that extremism poisons an effort to do the right thing -- and I do believe that anything that can be misused will be misused and that good intentions alone don't make for good law. We've had so many examples.
How come nobody steals my stuff?