SAN JOSE, CA:  I'm here at Media Access Project's Innovation '08, the
first of three panels designed to craft tech policy regulations for the next
President. We're at eBay hq in its Town Hall; FYI, the walls and carpeting are
striped with the eBay log's red, blue, yellow and green. It's an interesting
look, but strikes me as more of a day care center than a major corporation.

Anyhow, I was on the first of two panels — it focused on the distribution of
creative works in the digital age, and also featured former FTC Commissioner
Mozelle Thompson, Wikipedia's Mike Godwin, and Microsoft's Jule Sigall. During
the panel discussion I emphasized the importance of having the government stay
out of copyright distribution from a regulatory standpoint; we issued a statement
to that effect. I'll mention a bit more about the panel itself in another post,
but here is my opening statement (as some folks know I speak off the cuff, so
this is my best recreation):

First of all, I'd like to thank Tod Cohen of eBay and Andrew Schwartzman
and Media Access Project for having this forum. I think it's very
important.

Some of you in the audience may be familiar with Stanford University
economist Paul Romer. About 30 years ago, he first posited the notion that we
had shifted to a knowledge economy — an economy based on ideas, on creations
from our heads, rather than physical manufacturing. Twenty years later, Carnegie
Mellon economist Richard Florida took the concept another step. Doing extensive
research, he identified what he called the creative class; people working in
creative industries.

He found that in 1980, less than 20% of Americans were employed in the
creative economy. By 2000 that had risen to about 1/3 of the workforce, 30
million people. On top of that, those people made up nearly half of the wage and
salary income in the U.S., about $1.7 trillion dollars. The creative workers
combined for as much income as the traditional manufacturing and service
industries combined.

Florida identified three T's that allowed for a creative environment. One
was technology. Another was talent; he defined that as being able to think
creatively. Finally, he said a community needed tolerance. That could be the
typical cultural tolerance of different lifestyles, religions and cultural
backgrounds. It could also be an open mind to new ideas.

His study identified the top two creative markets. One was right here,
although you might be upset to learn he lumped Silicon Valley in with San
Francisco in one market. The other was Austin, which as Mozelle knows (as a
former musician) is a major hotbed of performing artists and
songwriting.

The top two creative communities, thus, are big on patents and copyrights,
respectively. And in fact, Florida made no distinctions between different types
of intellectual property. It was all creativity to him. We make those
distinctions sometimes, between copyrighted creators and patented technologists,
but he didn't.

We can agree to disagree on some things. We may have different
interpretations of fair use, for example. And you may disagree among yourselves
as to what should be patented, what should the obviousness standard be, what the
process should be, should it be first-to-file or first-to-invent, what should be
the procedures for appealing patents. All of those discussions are happening on
Capitol Hill.

So we have more in common than we might think. And as Florida points out,
combined we are the industry creating jobs. We are the industry driving economic
growth. We are the industry spurring exports. One would think an incoming
president, especially in these economic times, would be interested in such
things.

There's been a lot of talk in this campaign about the need to be uniters,
not dividers. We can be uniters here. We can recognize our common interests,
namely the importance of spurring innovation. We have in common Article I,
Section 8, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which calls for the promotion of
the arts AND sciences through giving rights to authors AND inventors. It's the
only place in the original Constitution where the word "right" is used.

Florida wrote a book titled "The Rise of the Creative Class," yet he said
members of that class didn't identify themselves as such. Their perspective was
much more narrow. But he wondered what might happen if those creators began to
identify with each other and work together: "The creative class has the power,
talent and numbers to play a big role in reshaping our world."

We should remember that as we talk today.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 4:55 pm by Patrick Ross and is filed under fair use, founding fathers, property rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.