Cory on the secret international world of copyright policymaking

Cory Doctorow has a wonderful polemic on the secret processes by which copyright policy gets made, as per the ongoing ACTA negotiations, and the unintended benefits that accrue to copyfighters as a result.

"I recently found myself debating the head of the British Phonographic Institute, our local equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). He's Britain's top lobbyist for the collapsing record industry, and he said a remarkable thing.

An audience member had just stood up and asked one of those rambling non-questions that are really just polemics, words to the effect of, "You people are so evil -- just look at the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, it's full of bad things and it's all being negotiated in secret, away from public input. It's more corporate influence on government!"

And then Britain's top record industry lobbyist said the remarkable thing: "It's perfectly normal for this kind of treaty to be negotiated in private. There's nothing sinister going on at all." That's when I realized that the all-powerful entertainment lobby has developed advanced lobbyist's senility. Lost its tactical marbles. Lost its spine.

And I had to suppress a grin...

Back in 2003, I flew to Geneva for the first time, to attend the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) negotiation on a proposal called "The Broadcast Treaty."...

This was new ground for EFF -- we'd never gone to the UN before, and we weren't sure what, if anything, we could do about this stuff...

Before all the shenanigans started, I had to tell this incredibly complicated story: "Here's this UN body you've never heard of. Here's this subcommittee of that body. Here's this insanely complicated copyright treaty they're working on, and here's this really difficult-to-grasp but vitally important thing it's going to do to the Internet."

After the shenanigans, the story got much simpler: "We went to Geneva to take part in this Internet treaty negotiation and they threw out our handouts, gamed the system to keep us out of the room, and shouted at us for writing down what they said."...

t wasn't always that way at WIPO, which is the birthplace of the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), collectively called the "Internet Treaties."...

But delivering expensive, corrosive privileges to entertainment companies is bad politics if you plan on getting re-elected. It only works well if all the negotiations take place in secret and no one gets to see the ugly, greedy horse-trading that happens behind the scenes...

The global furor over ACTA shows that every time the entertainment industry screws up the process so that only it gets a seat at the table, it emboldens our side. It sends supporters our way. It makes explaining the substantive points simpler -- "See, this is just like that stupid law everyone in New Zealand was protesting!" -- and it makes the entertainment industry look stupider.

You know what would probably get something done? If the record industry proposed a law through the front door, with public hearings, to find an equitable, simple way to get paid for the use of its material online. A blanket license, say, that users or ISPs could opt into in exchange for access to all the music that's already online, wherever and however they can find it.

Sure, some of the hardcore copyfighters would hate it -- it'd feel too much like a "music tax" for their taste, and they won't rest until the music companies have been killed in vengeance for all the bad stuff they've done since 1996 -- but it'd make the entertainment giants seem reasonable, and it would make anyone who disagreed with them seem unreasonable. They'd have the easy sell: "We want to stop suing your kids, but these crazy infohippies won't let us!"

But they won't be doing that any time soon. In early April, Howard Berman, the powerful Hollywood Congressman, held a town hall meeting on copyright to which he invited a bunch of entertainment industry goons -- and not one advocate for a more moderate copyright stance. Whatever comes out of that meeting, we'll always be able to drum up public opposition to it by making fun of the cowardly way it was convened.

So bring ACTA on, bring on copyright term extension in Europe, bring on the next version of Canada's DMCA, bring on more ridiculous proposals from secret negotiations. The more they act like mustache-twirling villains, the easier it'll be to bring them down."