IP Matters

Not surprising for the beginning of a new Congress, last week the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus (10 years old this year) was looking for new members via a Dear Colleague letter from Reps. Bob Goodlatte and Adam Schiff. Unlike some caucuses which essentially define who can join, or rather who cannot, this one seems like an easy choice for everyone to join.

Punk musician East Bay Ray of the Dead Kennedys made headlines after sharing his insights on music piracy with college students at California’s Chico State University, warning that some of the biggest victims of piracy are future creators.

The Orion’s Nicole Gerspacher reports the rocker’s thoughts on piracy in the following article, citing IPI’s 2007 publication “The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy on the US Economy.”

IPI is getting the message out that IP theft has real damages, as evidenced by the front page of the Ames High School newspaper which recently cited our 2007 report, “The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy to the US Economy.”

In the report, Ames High School student Alex Qin also interviewed recording engineer Chad Jacobsen on the stark reality that illegal music downloading is a crime. 

The Washington Post’s Hayley Tsukayama says today fewer people are illegally downloading music as the availability of legitimate digital music is growing by leaps and bounds through new channels and subscription services.

It’s welcome news as more and more young people, including high school and college students, gain an awareness of the dangers of piracy and its threat to the US economy.

IPI’s 2007 publication, “The True Cost of Copyright Piracy to the US Economy” reported that widespread theft of copyright-protected products, including motion pictures, video games, sound recordings as well as business software, has cost the U.S. $58 billion in annual economic output and 373,375 jobs.

Several years ago I was at the doctor's office for an annual physical. I noted that this particular physical seemed more thorough than usual and included an electrocardiogram test. After the physical the nurse told me that the doctor wanted to talk to me and that she would be in shortly. I started doing the math and alarm bells went off...extra tests, I am getting older, doctor wants to chat with me. She came back and reported that everything looked fine, that the blood results would be back in a day or so, and then asked me two questions that at that moment I found peculiar—do I regularly wear my seat belt and how good do I feel about my life. Ok, alarm bells again!

As it turned out she was doing what she could to check my health as related to the two most likely causes of death for a 30 something male—car accidents and suicide. Men from 20 - 40 years old commit suicide as much as 3 to 4 times more often than women. Theories abound as to why, from broken relationships to work stress, but regardless the end result is an alarming, heart breaking, sad fact that is rarely discussed much less appropriately focused on.

Three cheers for Duquesne’s Julian Routh, a freshman journalism major. When it comes to criminal acts of intellectual property theft, Routh shows he gets it.

In his Duquesne Duke column, Routh writes that for those college students who illegally download music, the mindset is one of entitlement, calling the crime disrespectful to artists.

Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show, several of the policy track panels discussed copyright but one panel focused on it, a panel titled "Beyond SOPA: Creating a Pro-innovation, Pro-artist Copyright Policy." Unfortunately the panel was very short on discussion as to how to create a pro-artist copyright policy. That discussion could have been quite insightful and thought provoking

I headed out for the Consumer Electronics Show (http://www.cesweb.org/) on Sunday morning full of anticipation, hopeful of seeing all the latest electronic gadgets and must have's for 2013. Having been involved in many capacities in technology, communications, and intellectual property policy for nearly 20 years, my head always start swimming in early January spurred by CES, which may explain why even as I was headed to the show I came across a policy lesson about intellectual property.

Ed Komenda of the Sun-Sentinel cites IPI's music piracy study in the following article about a Delray man who says he profited from piracy for at least seven years. Thanks to global music piracy, the U.S. economy takes a $12.5 billion hit each year.

Komenda writes:

Gregory King told authorities he made a living selling pirated music for seven years - but deputies say his reign ended Saturday at the center of a Lake Worth flea market.

The Pirate Party tried to get accredited with WIPO as an NGO. Right.

A group that rabidly opposes intellectual property, that breaks the law and exists solely to oppose creators and innovators rights to own their creations, wants to participate in meetings of an organization that exists to further intellectual property understanding and protection.

WIPO correctly turned them aside, at least for now.

Our rabid IP-hating friends over at KEI are up in arms because someone at WIPO dared to suggest that it might be a good idea to set aside a day where actual innovators and creators get a chance to interact with and speak with international delegates to WIPO and with WIPO staff.

Predictably, Mike Masnick over at TechDirt could be counted on to amplify and exaggerate this idea, calling it an "IP Maximalist Agenda Day," and asserting that for some reason public interest groups would be locked out of the event.

Over at the Huffington Post (which I hate to link to), there is a good piece about how Internet piracy harms small, independent creators, in this case an independent movie producer.

Some excerpts:

Over half of Internet users admit to pirating movies. As a result, broadcasters and distributors are paying less money for content. In fact, in the last five years dozens of major movie companies, including Paramount Vantage, Fine Line, Miramax, Bob Yari and MGM have effectively stopped making and buying films all together.