Re: Publisher's association on DRM

[Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A "right of integrity" coupled with mandated support for DRM
(as you find laid out in the WPPT) is a far cry from a
reasonable view of the rights of the public in information
technology, and is a long stretch from what traditional
"moral rights" meant before the digital age.

Unless the trade association addresses the enabling
international legislation, we have to be extremely dubious
of positions that take a stance of opposing (national)
legislated solutions, while turning around and proposing PR
jobs like "DRMs should be positively presented as a
publisher / customer facilitating medium and not a means of
'blocking' access."  The key factor here is, they are
*still* endorsing DRM on the basis of a theory that the
creator's statutory rights trump the public's, and evading
addressing the fact that a "treaty obligation" is already in
place!  They can certainly try to sell bottled up content
for as long as they can, but until they address the WPPT's
unprecedented notion of "moral rights," and until they
address the enabling technologies (TCPA and Palladium) which
operate on these terms, "no mandated DRM" positions have to
be interrogated with a jaundiced eye.

This is not at all an "authors versus publishers" matter. 
The WPPT simply takes advantage of unfortunate authorial
rights analyses to rationalize even more draconian notions,
which enable the publishers to transition themselves into a
new era in which the public's (and all information
producers'!) inalienable right to use information is
ratified and instrumentalized out of existence, all
supposedly for the sake of the creators.  Who do you think
will modulate the inevitable, ludicrous future debates about
where supposed "moral rights" end and the right to use
information freely begin?  Not the authors.  Not the
public.  Figure it out.

Take away the WPPT, then come out against mandated DRM. 
Then we can take this sort of line seriously.

By the way, the WPPT was only ratified on the basis of a
required complement of 30 signatures, including only the US,
Japan, and 28 other less-dominant nations.  None of the
Western European giants signed it, including those that are
the supposed models for the notion of "moral rights" it
implements.

Seth Johnson

Edward Barrow wrote:
> 
> Even if I agreed with your analysis of their position, which I don't, I do
> not see what is wrong with a trade association in the United Kingdom
> adopting a "moral rights" position, where moral rights have been part of
> the law of the land since 1988.
> 
> Edward Barrow
> New Media Copyright Consultant
> http://www.copyweb.co.uk/
> ***Important:   see http://www.copyweb.co.uk/email.htm for information
> about the legal status of this email ***
> 
>  On Mon, 23 Sept Seth Johnson wrote:
> 
> >Their game is to let the WIPO Performances and Phonograms
> >Treaty do the work.
> 
> >The notion they're trying to implement is the idea of "moral
> >rights" -- saying that creators dictate what can be done
> >with information.  The technologies on the table are all
> >based on that ludicrous notion.  Once they get the
> >technologies in place (and they are well underway), they
> >will be able to act as if it's moral to restrict the public
> >from parsing and processing information products.
> 
> >They don't figure on trusting any particular national
> >government.  Just buy them out while they work on schemes
> >built on system architectures such as TCPA.

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