Pin Clinton and Obama down on copyright—NOW
Gasp, Hillary Clinton has held a blogger-only news conference. Will she repeat this? If so, what a chance to pin her down on issues such as the DMCA and copyright-term extension! Anyone have an access to Hillary’s policy advisors?
Her husband’s administration excelled in educating Americans about the potential of technology—wire up the schools and all that—but it sold out to the copyright hawks. Now here’s a chance for Hillary to make amends and show she isn’t just Bill II on this topic.
Reminder: I believe in copyright and fair compensation for creators. The goal here is balance.
The Obama angle: Yes, I’d also love to know Barack Obama’s complete thoughts on copyright. Encouragingly, one of his advisors is Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who has progressive thoughts on broadband—see an On the Media interview—and copyright. He’s the author of Who Controls the Internet? Also helpfully, Obama wanted Democratic debates to be available for free on the Net.
And speaking of rewards for creators: See Mike Cane’s ideas on how U.K. novelist Richard Herley could be get paid for his efforts. Richard’s shareware book experiment, alas, did not meet his expectations, and he’s taken down his shareware site. Here’s to use of a TeleRead-style library model, among others, with people like Richard in mind. As I see it, not enough money is going to creators—how I empathize with Richard! But this needs to happen in a straightforward way, respectful of people’s preference for "free," as opposed to the current DMCA, which won’t even let you circumvent DRM to reposition an e-book in another format for your personal use. A library model—not the only one, just one more approach—could help reconcile the freebie issue with the very real need to pay creators. No, I’m not talking about compensation for Usenet posts and the like. But Richard spent years mastering his craft, won an award, had a movie based on a novel and has drawn favorable reviews and positive comments from Amazon.com readers.
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