IPI Policy Blog

This item is from a few weeks ago, but Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had a good piece in The Hill where she calls for stronger IP enforcement action by the administration.

An excerpt:

Who is going to take the U.S. seriously if we continue to deny a performance right for sound recordings as the rest of the developed world already does? We’re in a league with North Korea, Iran and China that still fails to recognize these rights. Will other countries take advantage of U.S.-based innovation if we aren’t willing to take reasonable actions against foreign-based rogue websites that threaten U.S. health and safety?

We continue to allow 25 percent of all Internet traffic to go to illegal rogue websites. It helps criminal enterprises thrive but it kills American business and hurts consumers. Creators benefit from the certainty of consistent and strong enforcement.

The story so far, told through a series of links in chronological order:

1. Senator Durbin's letter of intimidation to IPI
2. Wall Street Journal editorial on Durbin's letter
3. Chicago Tribune editorial on Durbin's letter
4. Cato Institute's reply to Senator Durbin
5. IPI blog entry on the Durbin episode
6. IPI letter replying to Senator Durbin

So IPI went out on a limb on the sequester. We wrote a paper praising the sequester and explaining that the sequester represented the mildest down payment on the kind of spending restraint that is necessary if we have any hope of setting our fiscal house in order. We created charts to explain just how small the sequester restraints were. We blogged and gave speeches and did TV and went on the radio to sell the sequester. We got coverage in print media. We did our part--we more than did our part.

And we were right.

Check out Steve Moore's piece in today's Wall Street Journal.

The $150 billion budget decline of 4% is the first time federal expenditures have fallen for two consecutive years since the end of the Korean War.

If you want to know what political intimidation looks like, this link will take you to a PDF of the letter sent to IPI (and allegedly over 300 organizations) about their support of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

I'm not going to excerpt any language from the letter in this blog entry, because you just have to read the entire thing.

Durbin's office probably made a major mistake sending this letter to think tanks like IPI (and the Cato Institute), because we don't cow to things like this--in fact, we see them as opportunities to point out political intimidation. The letter was reallly designed for corporations who are members of ALEC, to make the occupants of the executive suite call up their government affairs office and ask what the heck Company X is doing with this organization that generated a letter from a U.S. senator. It's subtle but strategic intimidation of free speech and freedom of association, and IPI intends to respond along these lines.

The Obama administration has steped in, ignoring the law it passed, to fix a problem of its own making. It has decided it can continue paying the lion's share of the health insurance premiums for Hill staff being forced into the health insurance exchanges.

There is an enlightening (and thus infuriating) article at National Review where a reporter described how she has been issued three free "Obamaphones" in the past month. It's a must-read.

The SafeLink vendor then referred me to his opposite number, a rep from Assurance. She too took down my information, registering me for another Obamaphone.

Traveling to several of the welfare offices in the city, I learned this was common practice. Obamaphone reps come in twos, and both will sign you up if they can.

In today's copyright review hearing, in the heat of his passion to point out that there are many exciting new ways to distribute content that don't involve nasty old paternalistic devices like copyright, one of the witnesses mentioned how enthusiastic the bands Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are for free distribution.

Um, you might want to update your gallery of CopyLeft heroes, according to an article entitled "Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and other digital pioneers sour on 'pay what you want' music":

Not long ago, many hoped the Internet would emerge as a music fan's Shangri-la, a utopian world where any track, no matter how obscure, was available for free, record labels were extinct and artists made a good living because their fans chose to reward them. Acts like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails championed this brave new world. "The way things are," Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails' frontman, told CNET in 2008, "I think music should be looked at as free. It basically is. The toothpaste is out of the tube and a whole generation of people is accustomed to music being that way."

But that dream has turned into a nightmare, according to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

There's a strong and provocative piece in the Australian press today by novelist and author Linda Jaivin on how the proposed changes will cause economic losses to authors.

Jaivin writes powerfully and persuasively about the importance of intellectual property protection for creators. The occasion of her piece is proposed Australian legislation that would remove some author protections in the form of statutory licenses, and in the course expands Australia's fair use exceptions.

Over the last several years the U.S. patent system has received a great deal of attention. However, patent pools, one area that was previously largely ignored, are now coming under greater scrutiny.

This morning, the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet held its second in a series of hearings that form the beginning of a review of current copyright law. And while the first hearing was largely comprised of copyright critics, today’s hearing featured those who make their livings and who are innovating new technologies based on the copyright system.

Along those lines, of particular interest was witness William Sherak, whose company handles the 3D conversion of blockbuster movies. In addition to getting committee members to don 3D glasses, Mr. Sherak pointed out that both the technology his company developed and the workers he employs are all dependent upon the copyright system.

The list of witnesses for Thursday's Judiciary Committee hearing on copyright and innovation has been released:

Sandra Airstars
Executive Director, Copyright Alliance

Eugene Mopsik
Executive Director, American Society of Media Photographers

Tor Hansen
Co-Founder, Yep Roc Records/Red Eye Distribution

John Lapham
General Counsel, Getty Images

William Sherak
President, Stereo D

Webcast link: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/113th/hear_07252013.html

Reporter Claudia Kienzle cites IPI’s copyright piracy study in a comprehensive piece, "What is the cost of free?" examining efforts to curtail online copyright infringement in the June/July issue of Streaming Media Magazine.

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” –Thomas Jefferson

Conservatives get off track on issues like privacy when they lose sight of the fact that government’s first priority is NOT to protect Americans’ security, but is rather to protect Americans’ freedom. If you assume that government’s first job is to protect national security, you are already on the thinnest end of the wedge that eventually leads to a surveillance state, which is simply the last bus stop just before a police state. Our system, including the justice system, by design correctly values freedom over security anytime the two come into conflict, which as it turns out is pretty often.

So public horror at the disclosure of widespread data collection on the activities of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency is entirely warranted. People realize that, while there is always going to be a tension between security and privacy, discovering that the federal government is building massive databases of our phone communication, Internet activity, credit card transactions and God knows what else suggests that the government has crossed the line and is prioritizing security over freedom.

We've just gotten word that the next hearing in the Judiary Commitee's series of hearings on copyright review has been scheduled for next Thursday, July 25, at 9:30 am in 2141 Rayburn. The theme of this hearing is "Innovation in America: The Role of Copyrights."

A good theme. In fact, that would have been a pretty good theme for the FIRST hearing in this series, instead of the near waste-of-time topic that occupied the first hearing. But I've already ranted about that . . . 

While the House Judiciary Committee is certainly busy with a raft of issues these days, sooner or later they will continue to hold hearings about the copyright system in the U.S., considering how it works in an age of rapidly advancing technology, business models, an ever growing pool of content and new means to access that content.