Oh, this is getting better.
We already know that John Edwards, the former Democratic VP candidate who repeatedly wimped out on the elitist DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, is reincarnating himself as a poverty-fighting professor at the University of North Carolina.
Now we find out that an Edwards speech about his new job has even referred to putting “libraries of information on a chip.”
Connecting the dots
Perhaps someone at the UNC Law School or in the Tar Heel press can connect the dots in a school-and-library context. Isn’t it time to find out if the reborn Edwards will actually try to de-Hollywoodize U.S. copyright law, a goal in which he took little or no interest while on the related Senate Judiciary Committee? Shouldn’t schools and libraries be able to spend more money on education and the poverty fight, and less on payments to the copyright heirs born decades after the creators’ deaths? If nothing else, how does Professor-to-be Edwards stand on the related Kahle vs. Ashcroft case? Or the Public Domain Enhancement Act proposal? And just how does the multimillionaire feel when Eyes on the Prize, the classic civil rights documentary, must be withdrawn from circulation because of copyright-related gouges?
Bono and morality
With all the legal parasites and studio greedsters demanding their pounds of flesh, Eyes would have been too expensive to for schools to buy. If, as John Edwards says, it is “wrong” to let poverty exist, why is he so silent on Hollywood liberals’ hypocrisy and the need to rectify it? Aren’t good schools and libraries the ultimate poverty-fighters? I won’t join calls for a defiance of copyright law to copy Eyes illegally; I will join the protestors in anger over heir-optimized copyright legislation passed at the expense of the commonweal. Being pro-copyright, as I am and Edwards surely is, does not mean being pro-gouge. Or apathetic. To be mute is to let the greed go on. A well-stocked national digital library system with fair compensation for copyright owners is one thing and would lead to new rewards for underpaid writers, artist, musicians and others creators. Massive copyright giveaways to studios and heirs are another thing, especially when the most gungho zealots such as Jack Valenti are envisioning eternal copyright short of a day. None other than Mark Twain said fifty years past an author’s death was enough for terms. Get it, Professor?
The DMCA as a poverty-promoter
Then there’s the ugly issue of the DMCA. Does Prof. Edwards really care about the massive collateral damage that the Hollywood-bought DMCA could do to competition in a number of consumer areas? One Carolina firm selling remanufactured laser toner cartridges, for example, had to beat off a lawsuit from Lexmark–based on 56 bytes of computer code that the Tar Heel company was said to have picked up while violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. If the legal tide goes the wrong way, the DMCA as now worded could ultimately cost consumers many billions–even pushing some people over the edge into poverty, through higher living costs. Some recent legal decisions have reduced the threat, but it has hardly gone away. Just what kind of consumer advocacy was it when even a Carolina millworker’s son, a self-described “People’s Senator,” remained silent? Remember, at the time Edwards was mute on the DMCA, he was serving on a Judiciary Committee subcommittee dealing with anti-competitive practices.
Adding to the fun is that Edwards, as reported by the Associated Press, talked up his new UNC poverty center in a speech in New Hampshire “in what appeared to be an early start for the 2008 campaign cycle.” How long until it’s time for him to hold out the cup to Hollywood again? Just how long until the next lunch with Steve Bing, the Democratic sugardaddy?
The path to redemption
I do believe in redemption, however, even for Bing; and I’d love to see Prof. Edwards more populist about copyright law than was Sen. Edwards. Professor? I don’t mind your being rich. But I do mind your being silent about Hollywood-bought transfers of extra billions over the years–from the public to wealthy copyright heirs, entertainment conglomerates and other corporations. I like your overall populism; but is a Faustian bargain with Hollywood really necessary? Perhaps the Democrats just might have come closer to victory with a strong, pro-Net stand on copyright. Be that true or not, the moral questions should transcend the exigencies of election cycles.
UNC is my old school, I’m a former poverty beat reporter, and in ways beyond my involvement in an online library project addressing the famous “savage inequalities,” I take these issues very personally. Through the work of the legendary Howard Odum, Chapel Hill is a name well known among poverty warriors in academia. Will John Edwards prove worthy of this tradition? I fervently hope that the answer will be “yes,” and if members of the Carolina community and inhabitants of the blogosphere can point him in that direction with a little tough love, then so much the better. It will be much easier right now to get Prof. Edwards to speak up for balanced copyright than it will be when he is in the thick of the Democratic primaries and Hollywood cash beckons again.
Edwards and the blogosphere
Let’s hope Edwards will catch on to the positive possibilities here. Significantly, a blogging conference will happen Feb. 12 in Chapel Hill, and it would be a natural setting for at least informal dialogue about Edwards and copyright to happen among activists–potential targets of repressive copyright legislation. With enough Net-oriented activists on his side early on, Edwards could outDean Gov. Blogger. Last time around, I voted for Kerry-Edwards; this time I’d actually like to feel comfortable campaigning for John Edwards.
Reminder: TeleRead as a cause is nonpartisan. I’m eager to cooperate with politicians of every party when it comes to well-stocked national digital libraries.
