The one and only Hilary Rosen, former CEO of the RIAA, is the new political director and Washington editor at large of the liberal Huffington Post. She is a Hillary Clinton supporter.
Post RIAA, Rosen has made some skeptical statements about DRM. I’d be most curious where she stands today on the DMCA—which bans Americans from legally bypassing "protection" to convert e-book to different formats.
Oh, and how about the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, a pretty efficient way of diverting money from society at large to the Hollywood copyright elite? Just how does the Bono Act, a Clinton-era outrage like the DMCA, jibe with the progressivism espoused by most HuffPo contributors and owner Ariana Huffington (second photo)?
Modest proposal for the two Hil(l)arys
But we can dream, no? What if the one-L Hilary could get the the double-L Hillary to show an enlightened attitude toward the Net and demonstrate that Clinton Administration II wouldn’t just be a repeat of CI? Look, I, too, am of the bizarre notion that creative people deserve fair pay for their work. But measures like the DMCA encourage format-based consumer gouges; and the Bono Act, so dear to estate lawyers but anathemic to libraries and the public domain community, fails to provide meaningful creative incentives for living writers. Yes, for those tuning in late, the Act was named after the entertainer Sonny Bono, who became a Republican congressman and dreamed of eternal copyright.
The strategic angle: Remember, Hilary (one L), the Net is a leading source of political contributions for Obama. A progressive Net policy would be one way of catching up with him. I myself am an Obama supporter. But I’ll not let that interfere with my modest proposal. Of course, if Ombama wants to come out against Bono and the current DMCA, I won’t mind.
Speaking of copyright: Map showing how the U.S. as of 2002 was collecting 53 percent of royalty and copyright fees in the world. Fairer copyright law would reduce that percentage but, I suspect, grow fees as a whole, so that even the U.S. still came out ahead. Meanwhile Draconian copyright measures mandated by the U.S. for other countries almost surely have a price beyond international goodwill. We may well have to barter away the rights of blue collar workers and others in noncopyright-related areas. Do you really think other nations pass DMCA-style laws without getting something in return in "free trade" negotiations?
Related: YouTube video of Rosen in action on CNN. Also, as a way of countering the influence of the RIAA and the like, see Jon Noring’s draft proposal for an Electronic Media Users Association.
It is likely that part of the reason Sonny Bono (and now his wife Rep. Mary Bono Mack) promoted eternal copyright terms (“forever minus a day”) is that he was a dedicated Scientologist. The Scientology organization has made it very clear they want perpetual copyrights so they can maintain as much legal control as possible over the writings of L. Ron Hubbard (especially those pertaining to the Scientology “scriptures”, some of which are accessible only to those who advance to a high level in Scientology. Since I don’t want David harassed by the Organization of Scientology over this comment, I’ll refrain from providing links to any information on the Scientology “scriptures”.)
The Scientology influence on the DMCA has also not been widely discussed and again is little known. For example, one can trace the roots of the “take down” provision of the DMCA from the resolution of the Scientology versus Netcom battle over a decade ago. It would not surprise me if the attornies for Scientology worked closely with the attornies for the MPAA/RIAA/whoever to craft the first draft legislation Sonny Bono submitted to Congress, but I have no specific information on this – just speculating.
(Btw, I just noticed in the Wikipedia article on Rep. Mary Bono Mack that she apparently no longer believes in the tenets of Scientology. So it is unclear if she still believes that copyright terms should be perpetual. Anyone here know?)