SAN JOSE, CA:  As I mentioned previously,
I'm here in Silicon Valley to participate in Media Access Project's Innovation
'08, a series of discussions designed to result in tech policy recommendations
for the next President. My fellow panelists were former FTC Commissioner Mozelle
Thompson, Wikipedia's Mike Godwin and Microsoft's Jule Sigall. When MAP's Andrew
Schwartzman, the moderator for our panel, asked me the key question of the
panel, namely what government should do to ensure the flow of creative works to
consumers, my answer was simple: "Get out of the way."

"Would you like to elaborate on that?" Andrew asked? I'm always happy to
elaborate, so I did. I cited my experiences
at Digital Hollywood last week, where it was a veritable bazaar of
technology providers seeking legal ways to distribute creative works in a
digital age. I also noted that most of those business models likely would fail.
But the activity was a sign that the market is working, that consumers can't
imagine how many licensed, legal services they have coming to them. Government
action, other than increased enforcement of existing copyright law, could only
get in the way.

To my delight, there was general agreement on this point, with Godwin
emphasizing how more of his time in Washington was spent stopping things he
didn't like, such as most provisions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act,
than in promoting new regulations. Even Thompson, a former regulator himself,
acknowledged the danger of interfering with the market. That actually isn't
surprising, since at the FTC he was a strong promoter of an efficient, fair
market. Sigall is a former regulator himself, formerly at the US Copyright
Office, and he noted how little accurate information policymakers often have
when making decisions. An activist policymaker and lack of solid information can
be a dangerous combination.

Please note, this wasn't a conversation about net neutrality or network
management or whatever you call it. That was the second panel, and I'll touch
briefly on that in another post. It was more about fair use, DRM and other
obstacles to new consumer expectations, although Schwartzman didn't specifically
spell it out like that. It was refreshing to hear how supportive other panelists
were of the need for basic copyright protections for creators.

In my previous post I included my opening statement, which was an olive
branch to my compatriots in the tech community. I called for unity, and I
believe we largely found it, because when being interviewed afterward for
Investor's Business Daily the reporter complained that there was no "hook" for
her story because there was so little acrimony. As a former reporter I feel her
pain, but there is too much acrimony in tech policy debates; perhaps we just
need to step out of Washington and breathe in some fresh northern California
air. Let's hear it for the state's strict emissions policies.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 5:46 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under market forces, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.