IPI Policy Blog

One thing a lot of people seem to be missing is that this past week's new, stubborn determination on the part of elected Republicans in the House to follow their own strategy calculation and to not cave in to outside pressure groups is a direct result of the disastrous experience House Republicans had the last time they caved into pressure from these groups in the effort to shutdown the government in order to fail at defunding Obamacare.

Leadership knew there was no chance that effort would succeed. It didn't take much smarts to game that out. But a sufficient number of members were intimidated by a small number of outside groups and felt they had no choice but to go down that road and crash into that wall.

Predictably the effort failed, not for lack of principles or courage, but because of obvious political reality that anyone with any sense already knew ahead of time. Elected members got burned by caving in to unwise and flawed strategic pressure from the outside groups.

The strategic mistake here was a small number of outside groups taking a predictably flawed strategic position and then intimidating elected officials into following that flawed strategy. It was a mistake, and the repercussion is that their influence going forward is diminished.

Okay, so it looks like Mr. Wheeler is getting a good start, choosing the IP transition as a major push for his tenure at the FCC:

http://www.fcc.gov/blog/ip-transition-starting-now

He must have read my TechByte from last week, in which I said:

Wheeler should start by recognizing that it is ridiculous for our wireline communications infrastructure to still be required to maintain and operate an outdated circuit-switched network. We are well into the transition from analog to digital communications in every area except wireline, where providers are still required by the FCC to operate a network based on 50-year-old technology.

Here’s hoping the FCC gets on with the business of facilitating, rather than hindering, private sector innovation. We wish you well, Mr. Wheeler.

I have to assume it was my TechByte that did it. Most likely explanation.

Today, IPI submitted comments to the USPTO regarding the U.S. Department of Commerce Green Paper on Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Digital Economy.

Responding to whether and how the government can facilitate the further development of a robust online licensing system, IPI president Tom Giovanetti states in the comments:

Our conclusion is that there is nothing additional that the federal government needs to do to facilitate a robust online licensing environment other than to fully engage in its existing obligation to protect copyright and to ensure an environment where rule-of-law prevails and where rights holders can be assured of justice and enforcement of their rights. 

Specifically and most often this means 1) not allowing the proliferation of sources that offer illegal access to protected works, and 2) not succumbing to activist pressure to weaken copyright protection. 

Apparently the folks over at Engadget sponsored a conference in New York this past Sunday, and of course they did a panel on copyright policy. Of course they did.

But balance wasn’t apparently high on the agenda. In fact, hearing from people who actually create, own, and market creative goods—the main stakeholders in copyright—apparently wasn’t on the agenda at all. Here was the makeup of the panel:

On Friday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) held its 2013 Global IP Summit at its headquarters in Washington, DC. The event was very well attended, at least through its highlight, the luncheon panel on patent litigation reform.

One highlight for me came early in the program when former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez made it clear that attacks on intellectual property rights are attacks on capitalism. You might could tell that this is a pet theme of mine from this recent blog entry.

During the patent litigation reform panel, it was clear that there is some subset of Rep. Goodlatte’s proposed legislation that pretty much everyone could agree upon, though of course such a subset of solutions would not please those who are fond of very broad definitions of patent “trolls,” and who would like to see it made much more difficult to uphold a broad array of patents. As Manus Cooney put it, “to the degree to which you make patent enforcement more difficult, you make patent trolling less risky.”

Yesterday, during testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen announced that their Internet Essentials program, designed to encourage broadband adoption among low-income families, has connected more than 1 million Americans to the Internet.

That's more than 250,000 families in a span of just over two years.

"That's more than the entire population of a city like San Francisco or a state like Delaware or Montana" Cohen said.

The Internet Essentials program offers low-cost broadband at $9.95 per month to families that qualify for the National School Lunch Program (and obviously who live in Comcast's service area). They also offer a computer for under $150 and computer literacy education.

Great example of a voluntary program, using no government funding. It's also the kind of program only a company with resources the size of Comcast's could pull off. So remember that when you hear people screaming about broadband companies being too large or too dominant. Big companies can also do big, good things.

Today, a new caucus was formed on Capitol Hill in support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

"Friends of the Trans Pacific Partnership" was formed by Congressmen Dave Reichert (R-WA), Ron Kind (D-WI), Charles Boustany (R-LA), and Gregory Meeks (D-NY). Here's a link to the press release from Congressman Reichert.

As the TPP (hopefully) begins to draw toward a successful completion, it's good to see support for the agreement beginning to form on Capitol Hill.

Okay, so the good guys lost this battle. On to the next one.

With “this battle,” of course, I’m referring to the government shutdown over . . . what was it over again? Defunding Obamacare? Delaying the individual mandate? It seems like it was over three or four things before it was . . . over.

Look, you don’t win every battle. This one, we lost. We tried to take a hill, and we failed. You pick yourself up, you address your wounds, you assimilate the lessons, and you move on.

Some argued that we should not have charged this hill—that we knew there was little to no chance of success, and that we should not lead our troops into a battle without at least a decent chance of winning. Others argued that the fight was a noble one, the cause a just one, and that it should be taken on regardless of the chances of success, which turned out to be a kamikaze strategy. Regardless, it was a debate over strategy and tactics, not principle. A tactic or two was tried, they failed, and now we hopefully learn from it and move on without shooting too many of our own in the process. Because they’ll be needed for the next battle.

Our libertarian friends over at the Mercatus Center have set up a website that bashes the movie industry because it doesn’t release movies according to the schedule that the Mercatus Center thinks it should.

At least, that is the clear implication of the site.

What they do at the site is compare the most pirated movies for a particular week with the legal streaming availability of those same movies. Which isn’t even relevant, despite what Tim Lee thinks.

It IS interesting that TorrentFreak brazenly publishes a list of the most pirated movies. That’s pretty in-your-face behavior, considering that piracy is illegal. As you might guess, the most pirated movies are the most recent successful movies.

But it is utterly irrelevant whether or not a pirated movie is available for streaming. That’s because the release schedule and business plan for the movie is entirely the business of whoever owns the movie, and not anyone else. That’s an implication of property rights that libertarians ought to understand. You and your pirate friends do not get to decide what happens to my property.

My favorite tie is the London School of Economics tie. It’s purple, and my wife likes purple. Plus it’s got black in it, and I like black. No, I didn’t attend the school, but their tie is cool and I wear it.

I know it probably offends LSE grads that someone who didn’t attend the school wears the tie, but I’m about to offend LSE grads with this blog post far more than I do when I wear their tie.

That’s because the LSE dropped a big plop of barbecue sauce on their ties recently. Or, as I put it more colorfully in the title, they wet themselves.

If an institution wants a reputation for credibility and serious analysis, they shouldn’t put out a report like the LSE did in a week or so ago, “Copyright & Creation: A Case for Promoting Inclusive Online Sharing” [PDF].

The paper is yet another iteration in an effort by academics and others not involved in the music industry to define how the music industry should operate in the digital age, which most commonly and most emphatically involves not enforcing copyright. And, lately, in a more focused theme, that graduated response mechanisms should not be implemented.

The latest “wisdom” about the government shutdown is that the impasse is making the U.S. a laughing stock around the world. If there is any country laughing at the U.S., it’s either a hypocrite or it hasn’t looked at its own financial situation—or that of many other countries. 

Late yesterday, after House leaders said that their strategy will be to send separate appropriations bills to the Senate, President Obama derided the strategy as a "piecemeal approach" that he would veto as inadequate. Instead, he demanded a "clean CR" (continuing resolution) to fund the federal government.

This is truly stunning. The "piecemeal approach" President Obama dissed is regular order in Congress. The way Congress is supposed to operate is for thirteen separate appropriations bills to be debated, passed, and sent on to the other body. These thirteen separate bills fund the various departments of the federal government.