[Chapter-delegates] Fwd: Copyright violations are a real problem - At least I think we can all agree?
President ISOC Cambodia
president at isoc-kh.org
Fri May 18 20:53:05 PDT 2012
Dear Colleagues reading the [Chapter-delegates] List,
on 29 April 2012, I addresses an email to Mr. Brigner on this
[Chapter-delegates] list (repeated down here), explaining that I could
not find his address on the ISOC website, hoping that he might see this
mail anyway here.
Thanks for the different direct responses I received – but as I did not
get any response from Mr. Brigner, I try again here. I just checked
again the ISOC website: Who We Are – Staff and Advisors
http://www.internetsociety.org/who-we-are/staff-and-advisors
but I find only the addresses of the Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin
America Regional Bureau Directors there.
Could someone reading this list please help so that my mail is forwarded
to Mr. Brigner.
Thanks,
Norbert Klein
ISOC Cambodia Chapter
=
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Copyright violations are a real problem - At least I
think we can all agree?
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2012 18:04:41 +0700
From: Norbert Klein <nhklein at gmx.net>
To: 'Chapter Delegates' <chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org>
CC: Lynn St.Amour <st.amour at isoc.org>, Raúl Echeberría <raul at lacnic.net>
Dear Mr. Paul Brigner,
as you know, on this ISOC Chapters list we have regular and active
exchanges of information and opinion from Chapters from all around the
world. These widely different backgrounds and experiences contribute to
the rich volume of awareness in ISOC.
I found a CNET report “*Comment on: Anti-SOPA Internet Society under
fire for hiring MPAA executive
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57404804-281.html>*” - let me say
that what I write is not about the ISOC hiring and your past role at
MPAA – but there is a reference to copyrights which calls for further
discussion.
(http://news.cnet.com/8618-31921_3-57404804.html?assetTypeId=12&messageId=12154966&tag=mncol&txt)
<http://news.cnet.com/8618-31921_3-57404804.html?assetTypeId=12&messageId=12154966&tag=mncol&txt>
You are quoted there saying:
“To be certain, copyright violations are a real problem, and on that I
think we can all agree. (At least I think we can all agree?) But I've
become convinced that the only way forward is through voluntary
agreements between content and technology communities to deal with those
violations.”
Can we all agree? I think so – but I am not sure if we all mean the same
when we agree.
Is it the “violations” that are the problem – or is the real problem
related to the way in which copyrights are defined and handled?
As long as we, in the Internet Society, proudly work under the
slogan*“The Internet is for everyone”* we seriously should take up the
“real problems” at the basis of the present copyrights regime and the
grave injustices which it creates, calling a very large numbers of
everyone using the Internet to be pirates. Pirates are violent killers.
Jordi Carrasco-Muñoz, working in 2002 for the European Commission,
compiled some economic data showing that – under the present copyright
rules for commercial software - the Internet is obviously not for
everyone (if they would use proprietary software), pleading for
“*FREE/LIBRE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AS OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT AID
*(http://cosgov.ow2.org/xwiki/bin/download/Main/Sessions/munoz.pdf)
These are some of his figures (from Vietnam and from 2002 – surely
prices and salaries have somewhat changed since – though his discourse
is much wider than economics). He does not end up “convinced that the
only way forward is through voluntary agreements between content and
technology communities to deal with those violations,” - but makes a
proposal: “Mass Distribution0f
oneOfficialDevelopmentAid-FreeLibreOpenSourceSoftware CD-ROM.”This is
not our business here, of course; but the economics he researched are:
*a) COST (I) - BASIC DATA*
*Cost Windows XP + MS Office
– Standard Version $560
– Professional Version $800*
As an example, we can use the two most common packages found on a
computer: The MS Windows operating system and the MS Office package.
They cost $560 in the standard version and $800 in the professional version.
*a) COST (II) - VIETNAM*
*(GDP per capita $440/year)
XP+Office = 1 Year 3 months
XP+Office (Pro) = 1 Year 10 months*
To a Vietnamese, that represents dedicating -respectively- 1 year and 3
months of wages or 1 year and 10 months of basically not eating;
depending on the version.
*a) COST (III)*
*Cost-Equivalent for the US
(GDP per capita $30,200/Year)
XP+Office = $38,436
XP+Office (Pro) = $54,909*
For an American, that would be like paying more than $38.000 for the
standard version, and almost $55.000 for the professional version.
*The Internet is for everyone?* Surely not. – And there is not much room
left, to be found “through voluntary agreements between content and
technology communities to deal with those violations.”
To update figures: a high-school teacher in Cambodia today, having a bit
more than US$50 (fifty) per month, does not have much room for
“voluntary agreements”- even if some companies start to offer
concessionary rebated prices. If you compare them with the salary, they
are far from being a solution.
And the public total-loss calculations by the music, motion picture, and
software industry, lamenting how much they lose, giving figures by
multiplying the estimated number of shared but not licensed copies with
the end-user price, are total fiction. Not many people would be able to
but any of their products at the stated prices.
Apart from hard economic facts, there is also another astonishing field
which is hardly ever touched upon, when economic power-holders in the
USA, from the position of a high moral ground, condemn all those who
commit “theft and piracy” related to intellectual property.
Roberto Verzola, in his 212 pages book*Towards a Political Economy of
Information*(http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/infoeconomy-verzola.pdf)
<http://rverzola.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/infoeconomy-verzola.pdf>covers
part of the history how the United States of America fought against the
imposition of copyright protection for foreign intellectual property for
decades – until it became more profitable for the USA to turn around and
fight others. I recopy here almost his whole 3rd chapter:
/= = =
/
/*3. U.S. Piracy in the 19**th C**entury*/
/Nineteenth century America was a major center of piracy. The principal
target of U.S. pirates was the rich variety of British books and
periodicals. The U.S. was a perennial headache among British authors and
publishers, because foreign authors had no rights in America. American
publishers and printers, led by Harpers of New York and Careys of
Philadelphia, routinely violated British copyright and “reprinted a very
wide range of British publications.”/
/James Barnes, who wrote an excellent book on this subject, said that
the Americans were “suspicious about international copyright,” and were
afraid that recognizing international copyright meant “exploitation and
domination of their book trade.” Barnes noted that “as a young nation,
the United States wanted the freedom to borrow literature as well as
technology from any quarter of the globe, and it was not until 1891 that
Congress finally recognized America’s literary independence by
authorizing reciprocal copyright agreements with foreign powers.”/
/Throughout the 19th century, a group of American authors and
Anglophiles led a persistent but futile campaign to get a copyright
treaty between the U.S. and Britain ratified. But their efforts were
overcome by a much stronger lobby for free access to British
publications. Authors like Noah Webster of the U.S. and Charles Dickens
of Britain campaigned vigorously, but time and again, the U.S. Senate
rejected proposed laws or treaties that would have granted copyright to
foreign authors in the U.S. Indeed, strong laws existed for the
protection of local authors, but foreign authors had no rights in the
U.S., and all foreign works were fair game for American publishers and
printers./
/As Barnes put it, “If Americans thought of the topic [i.e., copyrights]
at all they were concerned with protecting domestic copyright and not
the rights of foreigners. As a country, nineteenth century America was
akin to a present day underdeveloped nation which recognizes its
dependence on those more commercially and technologically advanced, and
desires the fruits of civilization in the cheapest and most convenient
ways. Reprinting English literature seemed easy and inexpensive, and so
America borrowed voraciously.”/
/Barnes continued: “In 1831, ‘An Act to Amend the Several Acts
Respecting Copyrights’ was signed. It extended the copyright term from
fourteen to twentyeight years, with the option of renewal for an
additional fourteen. If an author died, his widow or children could
apply for the extension. For the first time, the law allowed musical
compositions to be copyrighted. But not a word on international
copyright. In fact, foreign authors were explicitly barred from
protection, which in essence safeguarded reprints.”/
/Even the U.S. president at that time, John Quincy Adams, was himself
“strongly opposed to international copyright.”/
/In 1837, Senator Henry Clay introduced a copyright bill before the U.S.
Senate. Within days, “a flood of negative memorials reached Washington,”
and objections deluged both houses of Congress. The U.S. Senate’s Patent
Committee rejected “the intention of the measure,” its reasons sounding
very much like the justification today of Third World countries for
their liberal attitude towards intellectual property. The Committee’s
reasons were:/
/- “A copyright agreement would
promote higher book prices and smaller editions. The point was
driven home by comparing the retail prices of new books in England
and America, for it was universally acknowledged that English books
were disproportionately more expensive.”/
/. . .
/
/- Copyright has never been regarded among nations as “property
standing on the footing of wares or merchandise, or as a proper
subject for national protection against foreign spoilation.” Every
government has always been left to make such regulations as it
thinks proper, “with no right of complaint or interference by any
other government.”/
/- British authors only want the U.S. Congress to pass an act which
will enable them to “monopolize the publication here [in the U.S.]
as well as in England, of all English works for the supply of the
American market.”/
/The Committee also explained why international patents were acceptable
but not international copyrights: “American ingenuity in the arts and
practical sciences, would derive at least as much benefit from
international patent laws, as that of foreigners. Not so with authorship
and bookmaking./
/In short, the Americans stood to gain a lot of benefits by recognizing
international patents; and they likewise stood to gain a lot of benefits
by not recognizing international copyrights. It was purely a matter of
national interest.../
/Thus, overwhelming opposition from various quarters, including two of
the largest U.S. publishers, the Harpers of New York and the Careys of
Philadelphia, continued to block any effort that would have granted
copyrights to foreign authors in America. Not even the hired services of
topnotch Washington lobbyists, as well as attempts in 1852 to bribe
members of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. press, could get an
Anglo-American copyright treaty passed./
/The U.S. reprinters advanced their own arguments for reprinting British
publications without regard for international copyrights:/
/They were making available to the
American people cheap books which would otherwise be very costly if
they had to compensate foreign authors. It was generally
acknowledged that the low prices of American books would inevitably
rise after the passage of a copyright treaty./
/Access by the American printing
industry to British works provided Americans with thousands of jobs./
/British authors and publishers
would exercise “complete control over the publication of their works
in the U.S.” Popular British writers “could then exact their own
prices for their books when sold here [in the U.S.]” Thus copyright
would not only enhance the profits of major authors, but at the same
time protect and encourage second rate foreign talent./
/International copyrights “would
also interfere with the laws of supply and demand because it
encouraged monopoly which was never in the public interest.”/
/Tariff duties might be
appropriate for some industries, but they were never intended to
confer a monopoly on a producer./
/Books are “unlike other
commodities”; whereas it took the same amount of labor to create
each new hat or boot, “the multiplication of copies of a book meant
a saving on each additional facsimile.”/
/Authors and publishers enjoy
copyrights “only by virtue of statute law”; copyright is not
“absolute and natural ownership”. The right of individual property
is subordinate to the public good which is “best served through free
competition and cheap reprints.”/
/Several bills were introduced in 1870, 1871 and again in 1872, but they
were all opposed by American publishers and the printing unions, because
they would “make English books more expensive, really benefit American
authors as a class, and permanently injure the interests of book
manufacturers.”/
/And so it went. In the early 1880’s, the copyrights movement gained
more strength, but not quite enough to overcome the more powerful forces
that benefited from free and unrestricted access to foreign publications./
/By this time, however, the U.S. had already accumulated a wealth of
American authored works which were themselves widely reprinted abroad.
American books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin became quite popular in England.
Also, U.S. authors and their publishers had acquired considerable
political clout. The U.S. was ready to “protect” foreign authors, so
that it could in turn demand protection for American authors abroad. /
/In July 1891, the U.S. Congress adopted the Chace International
Copyright Act of 1891, establishing a framework for bilateral copyright
agreements based on reciprocity. While the act granted copyright to
resident and nonresident authors for a period of 28 years, renewable for
another 14, it also set very difficult conditions, reflecting the
interests of the U.S. publishing industry:/
/1. A foreign book had to be published in the U.S. not later than
its publication in its home country./
/2. All manufacturing of books, photos, chromos and lithographs had
to be done in the U.S. (This is the so called “manufacturing
clause”, which is today protested by the U.S., when Third World
governments adopt it to ensure that a technology is actually worked
in their own country.)/
/3. Foreign copyrighted books in English, photographs, chromos,
lithographs or plates could be imported for sale, but not more than
two copies at a time could be imported for use, and these were
subject to duty./
/4. Foreign works published before July 1, 1891 may not be
copyrighted. In 1952, the U.S. joined the Universal Copyright
Convention (UCC), but not the Berne Convention, which was considered
the “premier instrument of international copyright”./
/Under the UCC, the U.S. retained such protectionist measures as the
requirement of manufacture in the United States./
/In the meantime, the U.S. had been exerting tremendous pressures
against Third World governments to adopt strict intellectual property
laws and to strengthen their enforcement. By the late 1980’s, a number
of governments, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea
in Asia, had finally succumbed to U.S. pressure./
/And so in 1989, the U.S. finally and belatedly acceded to the Berne
copyrights convention./
= = =
1989 – that is fairly recently, only about two decades ago – the USA was
already a world super-power at that time. But why is the US copyright
history not remembered more? And not applied to the understanding what
the “real problem” of not respecting copyright legislation is?
More on this issue is in the 208 pages of *The Copy/South Dossier
(*http://copysouth.org/portal/node/1) which say as introduction:
“We are told that we live in the 'digital revolution' era and that we
can communicate across the globe as we never could before. In fact,
restrictive copyright laws still act as a serious barrier to sharing and
learning from each other. *This is particularly true in countries of the
South where three quarters of the population live.” *
*And: The Internet is for everyone?!*
I would be happy to see here some responses from Chapters in the USA –
how they might help to rectify a heavily biased approaches to “piracy.”
And I would also be happy to know how you – on the background of your
experience in the MPAA - plan to help that *“The Internet is for
everyone”* becomes easier to be achieved. As Roberto Verzola pointed
out: When we share material goods, we have less – but when we share
knowledge, we do not lose it, but our community as a whole gets richer.
Norbert Klein
President
ISOC Cambodia Chapter
From our Chapter's site:*
http://www.isoc-kh.org/?p=227*
Mr. Paul Brigner - apologies: as the "Staff and Advisers" section of the
ISOC site (http://www.internetsociety.org/who-we-are/staff-and-advisors)
does not have your address, I share this only through the Chapter list,
assuming that you are reading it anyway.
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