WIPO Director General Against Draconian Anti-Piracy Punishment... But For The Wrong Reasons

from the not-quite-there-yet dept

We were a bit surprised, recently, to hear at a WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) meeting that they actually appeared to be taking more of an evidence-based approach to copyright, rather than just assuming that "more is better." And now, the Director General of WIPO, Francis Gurry, gave an interview where he explained why he thought that high fines and jailtime weren't the answer to piracy. He's exactly right, which is a bit surprising. But as you read the details, it sounds like he might be right for the wrong reasons -- which isn't all that surprising.

It's not that he thinks that the better approach is for companies and content creators to adjust their business models -- but that he's afraid the draconian punishment schemes are basically a PR nightmare for WIPO's continuing fruitless effort to convince people that infringement is evil:

"I don't believe we are going to win this, (to) find the solution by putting teenagers in jail," Gurry said in an interview on a visit to India. "I think that is not going to win public sympathy."

"Part of the battle here is to sensitise the public to the fact that there is a real issue involved. It is not simply a victimless crime...."

Amusingly, the whole reason the RIAA kicked off its lawsuit strategy was based on similar thinking: that it was an "education" campaign that would convince people that there was "harm" done from file sharing. Of course, it didn't work. At all. And no education campaign is going to work, because it's just the basic nature of economics. If the technology has made the product infinite, it's not a moral issue or a legal issue: it's a business model issue. The answer is to change business models, not hope and pray that you can somehow convince people that it's "bad" to do something that obviously can be done quite easily.

So, yes, Gurry is correct that draconian punishment has created a massive PR backlash that has helped make things even worse, but an education campaign isn't going to make a difference. Only a business model change can fix a business model situation -- and we're already seeing that happen just fine in many parts of the world. It's not an education campaign that will help the content industry. It's smarter business models.

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How Do You Ban Someone From Posessing A 'Recording Device'?

from the seems-to-rule-out-a-lot... dept

Michael Geist points out that a guy in Canada has been convicted under an anti-camcording law for recording a showing of the movie Dan in Real Life (I'm sure it was big on all the torrent sites). However, what struck me as interesting was the punishment handed out. The guy is on 24 months of probation, has to perform 120 hours of community service, is barred from entering a movie theater or associating with anyone involved in movie piracy. And... he is barred from owning any recording device.

That seems a bit broad. After all, most mobile phones these days are recording devices. Any computer is a recording device. An iPod can be a recording device. I can understand the thought process that went into such a ban, but it seems to overreach in its intended impact.

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Convicted Spammer Claims Anti-Spam Law Is Unconstitutional

from the well,-he-would-say-that,-wouldn't-he dept

A few years ago, the state of Virginia convicted a notorious spammer under its state anti-spam laws, and sentenced him to nine years in prison. The spammer, Jeremy Jaynes has been appealing the decision ever since, without much luck. Last year, an appeals court upheld the conviction and noted that a nine year sentence didn't seem excessive. However, it appears Jaynes is now trying a totally different route to fighting the conviction: claiming that Virginia's anti-spam law is unconstitutional. The idea is that it violates first amendment free speech rights by banning even spam that's non-commercial in nature. The state, however, is responding that the law doesn't ban any kind of speech at all -- but it does ban falsifying information in order to trespass on others' systems for the sake of advertising. There may actually be a fairly fine line that's worth distinguishing here between banning the specific kind of speech and whether or not the "speaker" is falsifying information in order to get across that speech. It seems unlikely that the courts will rule against the anti-spam law, but if it does it would be interesting to see if spammers in other states follow suit.

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