Entries from March 2009 ↓

It’s worth reading the latest piece of the Digital Britain report, which asks ‘what role for a Digital Rights Agency?’.

Now the report does claim to be setting up a straw-man Rights Agency to spur discussion – but that seems to me more of a tactic by which they can ignore any real criticism, a tactic to gain what we might generously call wriggle-room.

The most interesting claim for me was their suggestion that a Digital Rights Agency should have ‘a commitment to explain to the public the consequences of unlawful use of copyright material. ‘

In the same paragraph, it’s clear what the report writers expect such an agency would say and to what effect: we will stop ‘engaging in piracy’ if we ‘understand the damage’ caused by infringement to artists.This agency would be set up not to ‘explain the consequences’ as such, but rather to unequivocally say that copyright infringement is bad. And I mean, really bad.

But, and here’s the rub, what if I disagree? What if I were to say that actually the unlawful use of copyright material sometimes and often has great value. If this new Digital Rights Agency took seriously the commitment to ‘explain to the public the consequences of unlawful use of copyright material’ I don’t know they would come down on the side of copyright at all.

I valued the records I borrowed, and yes, taped when I was a bit younger. I enjoyed, with friends, watching pirate videotapes. I learnt how to play the guitar by playing songs that I didn’t write, without paying any royalties to the song-writer. Will the Digital Rights Agency also have a duty to explain the consequences of my piracy: my life-long love for music and film?

Even straightforward claims, like that of copyright encouraging production, have counter-evidence.

For example, Frederic Sherer’s recent paper on the emergence of copyright in Europe suggests that the evidence for a link is anything but clear: he argues that “Verdi, enriched by copyright protection, reduced his compositional effort” and he concludes that “the world would be full of glorious music even if copyright laws had not come into being.” (more discussion on TechDirt)

Will the agency have a duty to point to Sherer’s research?

Will the agency explain that copyright infringement may benefit music education, as music teacher Jane Underhill suggests?

What about the good of putting orphan works back into circulation? Out of print books online and read again? Sampling and remixing? Archiving for future generations? Photocopying a newspaper clipping and posting it to your grandparents?

You know, I’ve been selective here with the examples and research I’ve chosen to highlight. But I do think that the debate over the merits or otherwise of copyright is not well concluded. And that matters. We cannot have a government agency created of which the sole purpose may be to peddle a lie.

Tom Watson MP tweeted to congratulate us on the Rewired State event last Saturday: “want to see British talent? Look at the list of projects created at Rewired State. Simply extraordinary. Thanks all.”

I felt a bit uncomfortable about the ‘British talent’ remark, and at first I wasn’t sure why it affected me so. On one level, it’s just not true – one of the winning entries was headed by a kiwi friend, but while his particular nose was put out-of-joint, that didn’t quite explain fully my unease with and surprise at the remark.

Now, I realise that I’m reading too much into an off-hand tweet, and I don’t think for a minute that Tom was trying to appropriate our efforts, or spin them in any way. In fact, that he took the time to thank us is much appreciated. But, that said, my discomfort is real and bears examining.

The more I think about it, there’s just a cognitive gap in my mind between what we were doing and any kind of nationalism or jingoism – even though in this case all the projects were around and about UK government.

I think the reason Tom’s remark seemed so out-of-place may have something to do with the social and no-border nature of open-source software.

The project I worked on used bits of technology that directly come from Denmark, the USA, Germany, Japan, Australia. Being largely open sourced it would have had contributors from just about every country I could find on a map; and likely some I couldn’t.

What’s more, software like everything else it seems has become social. I’ve met many of the people that built it, if not in person then on irc or on mailing lists (or, if you insist, on twitter). I have a different relationship with open-sourced tools than I do, for example, with the Japanese TV I own. The software is whoever built it, from wherever they come. British talent? I just don’t care.

If we had completed something useful on the day, we would have shared that code with whoever wanted it, of whatever nationality. I just don’t recognise national borders in this work. It wouldn’t have been British code, just code. And, the environment into which it would have been released is a pan-national one.

I remember, when I was CTO of a tech start-up, there were people whose code and libraries we used, that we would have liked to have employed, but who were on visas that either prevented it or that required them to earn a certain amount annually, or were only around for another couple of months on a time-limited visa. It always seemed a bureaucratic nonsense to me.

I don’t want to seem all Star Trek about this – what next, abolish money? – but I think I’m privileged to work in a no-borders industry. I like this world where software doesn’t get exported and imported. Software gets written and then used. And, tackling comments like Tom’s when they pop up is an important part of maintaining this good.

What if Tom had said ‘want to see open-source flourishing in Britain?’ Ooh. That would have been good.

(Wish I hadn’t mentioned export tariffs for software. Who knows what crackpot ideas this government will come up with next.)