DMCA creator Lehman admits failure of DMCA
Submitted by jrjacobs on Sun, 2007-03-25 12:02.
Bruce Lehman, who, as the Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks under Bill Clinton, was one of the main architects of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, gave a presentation at a conference on copyright reform at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. During his talk, Lehman admitted that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright control have not been successful" and laid much of the blame on the recording industry for not adapting to the changing marketplace.
Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has more on his blog including video of the Lehman's presentation.
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Good reminder that info restriction is bipartisan
Thanks for sharing this story. I think it is important for people to realize that the push to give the content industries total control over the copyrights they hold is a bipartisan effort. The DMCA copyright Act with its DRM provisions and 20 year extension of copyright have been some of the more harmful attacks on the public domain.
It passed under a Democratic President and a Democratic Senate. And wasn't it the Clinton White House that wanted to define the mere display of an item a copyright infringement even if the item wasn't stored on the user's computer? Glad that didn't make it through.
Rep. Patricia Schroeder of Colorado had a reputation as a very liberal Democrat, but as President of American Association of Publishers she pursued a "pay per view" vision of the world and was deeply suspicious of libraries.
With the current Administration's fetish for secrecy and corporate power, it's understandable that some folks feel that Republicans want to control information and Democrats want to liberate it. But stories like Lehman's show that the truth is more complicated. We need to fight anyone restricting the public domain and join anyone attempting to expand it!
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"And besides all that, what we need is a decentralized, distributed system of depositing electronic files to local libraries willing to host them." -- Daniel Cornwall, tipping his hat to Cato the Elder for the original quote.
bipartisan copyright reform
I'm trying to remember an earlier copyright reform (1978?), but recall librarians complaining then that librarians needed to face down the publishers on this issue instead of going along and insisting that our patrons follow the guidelines. I think we showed 30 years ago that we knew which side of the bread had the butter.
I always quote a Clinton appointee/cabinet member (can't remember which) on poverty statistics and the importance of marriage of the parents for children. Nothing that powerful has come out of the Bush administration.
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