WASHINGTON – I spoke on the opening panel here at CISAC’s 2nd World Copyright Summit at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center, which puts the Minoan labyrinth to shame. I had the pleasure of following the opening keynote of Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), whose moving address I will highlight in a separate post.

Responding to moderator Hilary Rosen, I said how optimistic the Copyright Alliance was regarding the new Administration. I noted our pleasure with his appointment process; we joined with forty other organizations in April in a letter to President Obama praising him in that regard. I also quoted bullish pro-creator and pro-copyright comments by Vice President Joseph Biden (a decades-long creator champion in the U.S. Senate), U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. There is no question, based on all of these signals, that the Obama Administration understands the connection between copyright and creativity, jobs and growth.

There were some fireworks on the panel, but I may have disappointed CISAC by not joining in the fun, which even reached questioning what fate various panelists would face in the afterlife. I instead expressed confidence in the deliberative process, knowing the reason undermining copyright will prevail in public-policy discussions.

My fellow panelist Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge highlighted how people can sometimes rush to judgment in an unconstructive manner. She noted how, during the recent stimulus debate in the U.S. Senate, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) sought to add a clarification to a provision on broadband making the reasonable point that broadband funding should not promote infringing activity.

An uproar, stimulated by Public Knowledge, meant the amendment was put aside. The uproar guaranteed there would be no opportunity to have a reasoned debate over the issue, given the speed with which the stimulus package needed to pass.

The whole episode was quite odd. Perhaps the leading network neutrality champion in Congress, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), made clear last year that his legislation in no way was meant to create protection for infringement; network neutrality should only focus on legal traffic. Ms. Sohn, on a panel at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, agreed with another panelist that everyone in the network neutrality debate was united in their belief that network neutrality was not intended to protect infringement.

The Copyright Alliance agrees with that philosophy. We joined with several other rightsholders Monday in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission and made that same argument, namely that policymakers shouldn’t create regulatory safe havens for infringement.

Yet, when Senator Feinstein tried to add that consensus to stimulus legislation, Ms. Sohn raised an alarm, and she boasted of that action today.

At the Future of Music conference, she explained her contradiction on this issue by noting that there are some scenarios that might be used by some Internet service providers to target some traffic believed to be infringing that might not be infringing. In other words, even if an ISP had an appeal process, if there was ever any chance of any false positive in targeting infringement, we can’t have any regulation or legislation that in any way attempts to distinguish legal and infringing works.

There are some rightsholder groups who see merit in network neutrality policymaking but are sincere in their belief that copyrighted works differ in the policy debate from infringing works.

Ms. Sohn, in boasting of the fire she fanned regarding the Feinstein amendment, said it is easier to block legislation than move it. She is of course right.

Now many rightsholders disagree with the need for network neutrality or if enacted how it should be structured, but all rightsholders agree with the public statements of Ms. Sohn and her colleagues on this distinction between copyrighted and infringing works. So I ask her community to take the harder path, the constructive path, to build on the agreement they say they have with rightsholders let us know their vision for a legislative or regulatory approach that does not favor infringement.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 11:55 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under Obama, capitol hill, copyright law, copyright opponents, creators, network neutrality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.