Delighted to see Mark Frauenfelder in BoingBoing blogging the DRM outrage from Sony, just as we have repeatedly. I agree totally with Frauenfelder's observation that an Associated Press writer--although critical of the Librie's DRM--wasn't harsh eough. The DRM that makes books vanish isn't just annoying. It is infuriating. Also see Will our grandchildren be allowed books? in the half-pie blog, as well as the Richard Stallman story The Right to Read.

Reminder: This is the Japanese incarnation of the Librie involved here. I'm rooting for an American one to appear and be better.
posted by David Rothman at 4:04 PM | permanent link

"Hollywood's Internet Avenger?" is what a Washington Post headline called Dan Glickman, the newly appointed president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America.

But you never know. Is there at least a small chance that Glickman can avoid being Jack Valenti II? Can he help Hollywood befriend the Internet, not just the politicians it buys off with massive campaign donations? Here is some germane history. Puppetmasters from the biotech industry pulled Glickman's strings during his term as secretary of agriculture under Bill Clinton. But he was sensible enough to show sanity in the end and acknowledge his role as a dogma-spreader.

Now perhaps the director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government can see biotech-style parallels in the copyright debate that Hollywood money has directly or indirectly stymied on the Hill and even in the Presidential election.

"You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view on some of the issues being raised," Glickman recalled about the biotech questions that emerged during his Agriculture days. "So I pretty much spouted the rhetoric that everybody else around here spouted; it was written into my speeches." I applaud Glickman's honesty. Now perhaps Glickman can smarten up and look ahead before Hollywood cons him into repeating Valenti I's massive mistakes.

In fearsome ways Valenti I was more of a lawyer-celebrity pandering to the fears of his clients than an astute businessman attuned to Hollywood's true needs. This is the prophet, after all, who believed that the VCR would be the death of the industry. By so often thwarting consumer-friendly tech, mightn't Valenti and his handlers have done Hollywood a disservice? So now I would ask Glickman to remember the true role of a lobbyist, not to repeat the party line, but to maximize profits for his industry without serving time in Allenwood. Isn't it just possible that Valenti and friends have made some major policy mistakes that, if left unfixed, will cost Hollywood many billions?

So here's my advice for The Avenger and the studio heads who will tell him what to do and say:

1. Stop fixating on the several billion dollars that accountants say that Hollywood is losing to piracy--and look ahead to the most promising endeavor: growing revenue online. Most adult Internet users in the U.S., a third of all Americans of legal age, already have access to high-speed Net connections at home or work, and in some countries, broadband use is even greater. But Hollywood still is out of touch, with limited selections online from legal sources. What's more, the sites can be overpriced or else just plain stupid in other ways. With Time Warner's Netscape browser, you can't even use Movielink, just Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Perhaps Hollywood should moralize less about theft and more about the need for and adherence to good technical standards.

2. Realize that Hollywood's current dominance in Washington is not necessarily eternal. The revenues of the telecommunications industry dwarf those of Hollywood, and, via the Baby Bells, those folks have more than their share of state and local connections. Now consider, also, the tens of millions of people who are swapping music online and would love to do the same with films, not the worst news for the telecom companies. The next-generation Internet will make this astoundingly easy. And "next generation," by the way, does not just apply to the technology, but also to voters accustomed to file swapping.

So I would urge you to stop trusting the usual crew of self-interested legal experts and take a good look at Prof. Lessig's Free Culture, as well as the authoritative legal writings on the Net such as in the Yale LawMeme. Look at the job that Ernest Miller and others have on the proposed INDUCE Act, as well as analyses of existing horrors such as the DMCA. Now, combine all these legal brains with the determination of many in Silicon Valley to de-Valenti-ize our copyright law. Can Hollywood really build sustainable business models around laws that high-tech executives and tens of millions of other Americans either hate now or will learn to?

Beware! The economic climate and industry du jour will eventually change. Once farming was holy. Now none other than Barry Myer, CEO of Warner Brothers, has alluded to the "tax parasites of the agriculture industry." While U.S. films predominate overseas, just what happens if consumer tastes undergo a mass shift, especially given the growing tendency of people in the States and abroad to favor niche products? With new technology driving down production costs, movies will be cheaper and cheaper to produce, especially those with special effects. Is it really impossible that someday Bollywood and equivalents elsewhere could even eclipse Hollywood, given the growing prosperity of the Third World? Much of Hollywood's predominance hasn't a thing to do with talent or Manifest Destiny, just the fact that Americans are perceived as richer and more glamorous, and hence more fit as fodder for motion pictures.

3. Work toward more realistic intellectual property models. As early as 1991 I was proposing a television tax to pay for a well-stocked national digital library system. Times have changed. I would argue instead for payment from either general tax revenue or, if that isn't possible, from a minor tax on sales of recordable CDs and perhaps computer equipment, just as some others have already suggested. Don't wait for the hard copy, download a Free Culture now and have your flunkies print it out, and read why the present intellectual property models are not working. You're just postponing the inevitable--just like the Kremlin trogs who warred against Xerox machines--if you think you can permanently thwart technology with laws to protect the present business models.

4. Be open to mitigation of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Under the proposed Public Domain Enhancement Act, Hollywood would be able to discover many forgotten films and promote them into blockbusters without paying a cent to anyone associated with the original films. Not the worst deal. Too, Hollywood's cost of adapting novels and recycling old films would drop. And best of all, you could be doing a favor to young writers and film makers. The longer are copyright terms, the more out of touch the creators will be with the great works of the past. I don't how the math works here. But it is just possible that in ways the accountants cannot calculate, Bono is a negative? I think so! If nothing else, do you really think that people many decades from now will care about all the junky action flicks that Hollywood seems to specialize in? Just because Bono hurts education and consumers doesn't mean it always helps Hollywood in the long term. If nothing else, as Bono's true costs become known, especially as digital libraries grow in importance, sentiment against the law will build. Better to compromise now.

5. Besides the Public Domain Enhancement Act, consider another idea--discussed in this blog: The Walt Disney Text Access Act. It would create shorter copyright terms for text than for movies, another way studios could save money. After all, the total investment to put out a novel is far less than for a movie; and the law should reflect that. Consider, too, that the Walt Disney Text Access Act would make it easier for young creators to develop as writers. Forget all the bunk about copyright terms and creative incentives. Do you really think that Bono caused F. Scott Fitzgerald to leap out of his grave to finish up the Last Tycoon.

6. Worry less about dead people's estates and more about living authors and other creators, the true Golden Geese of Hollywood. A TeleRead style national digital library system could pay fair compensation to living, breathing writers and provide them with true incentives to create books that Hollywood could adapt. In TeleRead, my own focus has been and will be on text. But not everyone feels that way. Such a library system might even help finance small productions--of the kind that the big studios now shun--and providing another incubator for talent. As an Atlantic article observed, Hollywood has fixated on the world market to the extent that American movies are less American than ever. A TeleRead-style system would be one more source of income to help struggling young creators by way of the Net and would fit in well with the Digital Promise proposal from former FCC Commissioner Newton Minow and others. But Jack Valenti has been too busy being a destroyer--of the Internet--to take an interest in alternatives like Minow's.

Simply put, technology and the Net should have a symbiotic relationship, not a hostile one. Over at the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle is developing storage systems with many times the capacity of those commonly in use today; imagine the benefits for Hollywood. But Draconian copyright laws could well get in his way. If you really care about the prosperity of Hollywood, including that of your son, the young film-maker, you will applaud the efforts of people like Kahle rather than saddling them and the rest of us with such malarkey as the threat of near-eternal copyright (isn't that one Valenti-ism you can speak up against, now?).

Rather than being just a mouthpiece, a label that even the Hollywood Reporter has applied to you ("Glickman Relishes Role as Hollywood Mouthpiece"), perhaps you can actually encourage the industry to reconsider the soundness of its strategies. Is a master lobbying operation the be-all and end-all? Is it really helping Hollywood investors realize their highest returns? A motivational speaker once wrote: "Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing." Mightn't that be a maxim for you to follow in your new job--not just morally but even in terms of Hollywood's own self interest?

posted by David Rothman at 9:56 AM | permanent link

Dan Glickman, an ex-congressman from Kansas and ex-secretary of Agriculture, is replacing Jack Valenti as head of the Motition Picture Association of America. I've got a few constructive suggestions for the new guy. Coming in the next day or two.

Related: Hollywood's Internet Avenger?, from Cynthia Webb in the Washington Post.
posted by David Rothman at 8:11 AM | permanent link

The best fix for the Sony Librie, the crippled technowonder that can't even display public domain books in HTML because Sony is so DRM-fixated, would be an OpenReader approach. That's what Jon Noring and I have been pushing.

But what if Sony at least allowed nonDRMed HTML to be imported into the Librie format as a temporary measure--or, better, used a popular reading system like Mobipocket that already permits HTML imports?

Just putting that idea out there. Sooner or later the market will tell Sony that a truly standards-based approach is better. But the importation strategy could work out in the interim.

The monopoly factor: One difference between Japan and the U.S.

Meanwhile it is important to distinguish between the Japanese and American markets. We already know that Sony DRM has POed well-informed consumers in both countries and plenty other places without Sony even marketing the unit outside Japan. Here's the real difference between Japan and America. In the States, I suspect, the publishing monopolies are somewhat less powerful than in Japan. I just wish Sony would show some guts. There are lots of small but excellent publishers, in the States at least, that could help Sony reinvent the e-book industry so it grows from the pathetic $20-$30 million in global sales. A little courage, please, Sony. Otherwise maybe you'd better sell off your e-book operations and venture into paper mills.

Detail: Mobipocket imports HTML and TXT via the included Mobipocket Web Companion. No secrets here. After you click on "Publish," the Web Companion says: "Welcome to Mobipocket Web Companion. It will help you to convert any HTML, TXT or Image file into a Mobipocket PRC file." If the Web Companion botches the job, you can always clean up the HTML file so it does display properly.

The big question: Just why can Mobipocket deal with big publishers while preserving those HTML and TXT importation capabilities but Sony can't, at least in Japan? Public explanations welcomed! Is Sony going to let Japanese publishers dictate the kinds of machines and software sold to English-reading Americans in the future? Whether Sony is DRM fixated on its own because of its Hollywood ventures or because of pressure from Japanese publishing giants, the real losers will be the electronics conglomerate's shareholders. The longer Sony lets Hollywood copyright zealots or Japanese publishing trogs set the tone, the more chance that other technologies will drain off buyers from its E Ink-based Librie.
posted by David Rothman at 9:38 AM | permanent link

Bill Clinton's My Life is already being pirated. So reports Blackmask, one of my favorite e-bookstore sites. Very possibly the piracy is happening from an edition in Microsoft Reader or Adobe Reader or Palm/eReader, all listed on the Random House/Knopf site and all very hackable.

But guess what. All the Digital Rights Management in the cosmos won't do a bit of good in preventing the usual suspects from scanning the paper version. Piece of cake. Let the publishers use DRM if they want to try to keep honest people honest--that'll be the OpenReader approach--but don't ever expect perfect DRM. Software companies have conned the publishers royally. No way that even Draconian protection will work completely.

Main effect of DRM: Lost sales

DRM's main effect is to drive down sales, since readers hate the hassles. Along with the Tower of eBabel, resulting from the e-book format wars, DRM is a big reason why global e-book sales are just $20-$30 million a year. Yes, I know. Larger publishers say they want to protect their big, valuable properties such as the Clinton book. But those are the very works most promising as candidates for scanning from the paper editions.

The best solution? Fair prices, convenient distribution and a willingness to modernize business models. TeleRead-style national digital libraries in the States and elsewhere could at least reduce the incentive for piracy by putting many thousands of free books on the Net--with provisions for fair compensation to content owners. And, yes, I favor aggressive prosecution of big-time pirates. But let's not destroy America's high-tech prowess by confusing crooks with the technology they use, especially when so many are overseas.

Update, 5:12 p.m. Eastern Daylight: I see that the Clinton book is also available in Microsoft, Adobe and Mobipocket formats via RandomHouse.com's e-commerce operation. The price? A whopping $28, just $7 less than the $35 list price for the hard cover. So far--I haven't looked in all the logical places--the lowest price is $22.40 at ebooks.com, which offers the book in the same formats.

I mean e-book prices, of course. As I write this, you can patronize an Amazon partner and buy a hardcover in new condition for just $9.75 except for shipping. No DRM, either--or proprietary format to worry about! That means you can keep the dead-tree book forever without worrying about a software vendor going out of business or sticking you with an eventually obsolete format. See why I don't buy DRMed e-books? Much prefer the used p-variety for obvious economic reasons.

Others, of course, rather understandably, prefer to read pirated editions. Bottom line? All too often publishers' prices make suckers of honest e-book buyers, and if this keeps up, you'll just see more piracy. Gouges are a great way to train customers to be pirates rather than grow e-bookdom from the present $20-$30 million in global sales.
posted by David Rothman at 12:19 PM | permanent link

Yo, Brian Levine! Yes, you, the Kerry policy aide. You who would not answer my copyright-related questions even after I left messages twice after talking to you!

I'd greatly appreciate your cooperating now even if you wouldn't several months ago. You and your colleagues will ideally get your man to do right by the schools and libraries. Will Sen. Kerry agree to work toward repeal or mitigation of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the DMCA and other anti-child, anti-Net measures? I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat. I'd like the Party to leave Bill Clinton's copyright messes behind so I can hold my head high again. This is a time for a fresh start. As disappointed as I am by your past silence, Brian, I'm more interested in the future and will have a very short memory of earlier frustrations.

Closing the gap between copyright policy and populist rhetoric

Republicans are hardly copyright paragons, as shown by the name of the Bono act, but we Democrats have a special responsibility to move our copyright policies a bit closer to populist rhetoric. Over the years the Bono act alone will funnel billions from schools, libraries and society at large to Hollywood fatcats and other members of the copyright elite, as well as Time Warner and other huge conglomerates. If it weren't for Bono, U.S. students by now could legally download The Great Gatsby and 1984 for free off the Net. Nothing wild advocated here--just a more balanced approach that respects property rights, but also the needs of ordinary Americans who don't happen to be heirs of F. Scott Fitzgerald or the CEO of Time Warner.

Stolen from today's public domain: One Great Gatsby

Neither George Bush signed the Bono Act. Bill Clinton did, thereby helping to deprive the public domain--as it exists today--of The Great Gatsby. Will John Kerry be different? Will he place schools ahead of elite interests?

Brian, I'm going to see if you're still at the Kerry campaign and will respond. Another Kerry aide assured me earlier that you're could speak with authority. Maybe that's true. Maybe not. I don't know. However, I did poke around the Kerry site just now and saw on a Young Voters for Kerry page that you're 22 years old.

Whatever your age, I'll respectfully appreciate a written reply--substantive and with Kerry's personal authorization--on Bono and the DMCA. It would be especially helpful in the wake of those new millions your guy's gotten from Hollywood. Thanks! Let's get John Kerry to act in the spirit of Profiles in Courage. Just might help at the polls, too. Young people and soccer moms may not be aware of the Bono Act and the rest now; but sooner or later the truth will catch up. If nothing else, students are fed up with high textbook prices that Draconian copyright policies encourage. Moreover, what happens if the Republicans reverse course and listen to Glenn Reynolds? There is one thing Karl Rove and friends on the Bush campaign side value more than big donations. Votes. In a close election, an enlightened intellectual property policy could help the candidate who latched on to the issue first. Copyright is far, far more complicated than simply going after foreign pirates as the Kerry campaign has pledged to do. It also requires careful balances at home and abroad between the rights of consumers and content owners. Thanks to proprietary formats and restrictive DRM today, U.S. book buyers can't even own e-books for real--not when software vendors may go out of business.

(Photo shows Brian Levine with Kerry Policy Director Sara Bianchi, left, and Deputy Policy Director Heather Higginbottom, to Ms. Bianchi's right.)

Related: Copyright excesses worry teachers, scholars, from eSchool News. For a good overview of the issues, Brian Levine and friends would also do well to read Stanford Law Prof. Larry Lessig's Free Culture, available both on paper and electronically. In fact, if the Kerry campaign, is hurting for cash, even after all those Hollywood millions, Brian can even legally download the book for free.

Update, 11:55 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time and later: Softened the language somewhat. Honey vs. vinegar and all that. Let's see if the Kerryians can respond constructively and helpfully.
posted by David Rothman at 10:08 AM | permanent link

Right near the battery rack at the local Safeway, across the aisle from the ice cream bars, I perused the pages of My Life--the new book by Bill Clinton. Something inside me balked at the prospect of paying for this thing. Other writers could better use the money; I'd wait for a library copy.

Years ago I had differed with the Clinton White House over copyright policy and the Internet, and I was curious what the word "Copyright" might conjure up from the index. Zilch. I looked for the word "Internet" in the index. Nothing. Actually in the text itself I found a quick mention of the eRate for schools and libraries, of which I approved. But guess what Clinton wanted us to remember him for--the V-Chip. That's right: it showed up five times in the index. Monica Lewisky's lover praised the chip as an upholder of American values.

Left out: Clinton on copyright and the Net

The big question is what Clinton left out about copyright and the Net. Just what political bargains did he and his boys strike with Jack Valenti and the rest of Hollywood crew at the expense of schools and libraries. The damage lingers. Clinton, after all, signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act which ultimately will cost the schools and libraries billions while enriching the copyright elite.

Will we learn? I'm not sure. I admire Larry Lessig for his legal talents, and Ralph Nader, too; but why oh why are Lessig and Nader so keen on John Edwards as John Kerry's running mate, when so many questions linger about Edwards and copyright. Just why is the Senator--a member of a copyright-related committee--not rendered accountable for the million dollars that an Edwards PAC received from just one Hollywood producer early on in the Presidential race? And what about the five million that John Kerry and other Dems raked in recently at a single Hollywood affair? Can't law professors and Net journalists show more curiosity and follow up on items here and in another patch of the blogsphere? On copyright matters, will the very possible team of Kerry and Edwards screw the Net with the dedication that Clinton's boys did regardless of positives such as the eRate? Just what will the Presidential memoirs of John Kerry not say?

posted by David Rothman at 7:32 AM | permanent link

In late 2002 I wrote a TeleRead item called "The Backwards West?"--noting how our medieval-minded politicians are jeopardizing America's superiority in areas such as biotech. Meanwhile countries like China are avoiding such stupidity and creating a reverse brain drain from the U.S. with some cutting-edge researchers fleeing our so-called enlightenment. Might the day come when the real progress happens in non-Western cultures, as when the Moslems led in such areas as science and math--and, in Spain, even the treatment of Jews? There is always hope, though. Even Nancy Reagan, indeed especially Nancy Reagan, is speaking out nowadays for stem cell research. The tide may be turning amid the realization that Washington's stupidity could be delaying the development of successful treatments of Alzheimer's Disease and other conditions.

Needed: A Nancy Reagan of high tech

Now we need a Nancy Reagan of high tech. If legislation like the INDUCE Act passes, would a Senator's spouse please get jailed and fined? Then maybe the bozos across the Potomac from me can finally grasp the dangers of letting Hollywood control American technology.

Tired of the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which limit your ability to crack DRM and make backups of DVDs and e-books and the like? You ain't seen nothing yet, according to Ernest Miller, one of the most prolific and cogent contributors to the Yale LawMeme and other authoritative legal blogs. He has torn apart Sen. Orrin Hatch's defense of the INDUCE act, which, among other things, is Hollywood's nasty way of banning P2P technology or at least making its use far, far more problematic legally than it is now. From iPODs to VCRs, technologies could be harmed in one way or another. INDUCE makes it easier than ever to hold software and hardware developers responsible for copyright-related actions of users. On top of everything else, by creating new legal threats to cash-starved competitors, INDUCE in some ways would make it easier for companies such as Microsoft to sustain monopolies. Even an attorney for a descendant of the old Bell monopolies, however, Verizon, is up in arms over INDUCE. Of course, INDUCE could be catnip for U.S. rivals overseas, not just in Asia but in Europe.

The child-porn excuse

In case you're wondering about the name of the proposed law, it alludes to the idea that the mere availability of technology can contribute to violations--and along the way lure children to iniquitous porn. But of course! Protect the children. Never mind that P2P could drive down the cost of educational technology and enrich life on the Net in new ways for all generations. Consider Net telephony. Not so coincidentally, Skype, my Net telephone service, which offers better-than-phone quality, uses P2P techniques developed originally for the KaZaA music-sharing service. Needless to say, P2B can be used for distribution of public domain books--in fact, copyrighted ones, too. Ernie Miller isn't the biggest fan of DRM, and I'm not either, but one possibility is the use of accessible sample chapters combined with either (1) locked files that a credit card number or library card number or something else would open or (2) links to e-bookstores. Project Gutenberg is already encouraging file-swapping of its public domain editions. Imagine, too, the potential of P2P for distributing multimedia files associated with education. Those are just a few examples of the promise of P2P as an enlightener of children and the rest of us. But politicians apparently care far more about campaign money from Hollywood, even if the end result is really to be anti-child.

Hatch's P2P-bashing legislation, alas, is on the fast track, with such influential friends as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Minority Leader Tom Daschle; and if you care about technological progress, you really should be writing or phoning your congress member now and attaching the Miller analysis of the Act. If you're with a library or school, send it to your employer's counsel and tell how useful P2B is or could be to you.

Other links:

--The INDUCE Act and the Right to Prepare Derivative Works, Supporting the INDUCE Act, Crawford on the INUDUCE Act: Not with a Sledgehammer, But a Stiletto, Pirate Act + Induce Act=???, EFF's Mock INDUCE Act Lawsuit--in The Importance of..., the Miller blog.

--Stop INDUCE: action web site story on P2Pnet.net (source of the wicket graphic at the top of this blog posting).

--EFF Demonstrates How To Use New Law Against Apple, iPod, from The Mac Observer.

--INDUCE Act is Free Speech Killer, from Copyfight: the politics of IP.

Detail: Alas, Blogger accidentally killed off the link to the "Backwards West," but you can see an excerpt in Jerry Justiango's blog (scroll down to the entry for December 19, 2002).
posted by David Rothman at 5:25 AM | permanent link

Yale LawMeme contributor Ernest Miller points to TeleRead's reference to 1984 as a popular book that should be in the public domain by now. In Australia you can legally download 1984 for free amd keep it forever--but not in the States, thanks to special-interest legislation pushed by Disney and the rest.

Fascinatingly, 1984 is the tenth most borrowed title on a library-related list of best-sellers. Simply put, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act will cost society big bucks over the long run. It's an efficient redistribution of wealth from consumers, schools and libraries to members of the copyright elite in Hollywood and elsewhere.

When will John Kerry and possible running mate John Edwards--the so-called populist, who sits on a copyright-related Senate committee--have the guts to speak out on this? Or is Hollywood money keeping them mute? An Edwards PAC received a million dollars from just one Hollywood producer, and neither the Senator's office nor the producer would disclose to me the reasons for this generosity.
posted by David Rothman at 8:29 AM | permanent link

Dude, Where's My Country? leads OverDrive's list of the ten most borrowed library books if you go by the total stats from Cleveland, San Jose and other cities. In the e-book reader department: "PDF eBooks, read using popular Adobe Reader software, are the overwhelming format of choice for patrons and students while MobiPocket Reader is gaining ground among PDA and Smartphone users."

The TeleRead take: The tenth most popular book was 1984. If we Americans were Aussies, we could download it legally for free off the Net and keep it forever. Alas, this could soon change because of Hollywood's lobbying Down Under for longer copyright terms. As for PDF's popularity, no surprise there. It's simply because many people use Adobe Reader for reading short documents. But Adobe is an inferior solution for reading e-books, especially on PDAs. Good to see Mobipocket gaining in the world of handhelds and phones. It's my favorite proprietary e-book reader by far and displays far, far better on small screens.

Related: Copyright costs under scrutiny in free trade deal with US, from the Australian ABC site. As for readers, although I hate Adobe for e-books, I knoiw that many people must use it in business. If you're one, check out the free PDF Creator, which a PC World reviewer likes.
posted by David Rothman at 4:57 AM | permanent link