Who Will Obama Choose As Copyright Czar? 174
seanpark writes "Who will President Elect Obama select for the recently established post of Copyright Czar? Biden has a longstanding relationship with Big Content, and he was partly responsible for the PRO-IP Act that created the position. The short list according to the article includes a few lobbyists (who would likely be disqualified by stringent ethical guidelines) and Lawrence Lessig, who was a technology adviser to the Obama Campaign."
He had the good sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of having lessig on his team. Lets hope he still has that now that he is heading to The House.
Re:Not the good professor (Score:5, Insightful)
I see it going down one of two ways. 1. Obama is able to use the capital that he has gained an push this through rather quickly and having congress act as a rubber stamp.
2. There are bigger priorities than this in the Obama administration (economy, war). As a result this is placed on the back burner. Corporate interests therefore have more time to react and press members of congress to vote against making a copyright czar have any real power. As a result this initiative dies or must be used as a bargaining chip once things get harder to push through congress.
I think we should not be asking who he will chose yet, but rather how large of a priority is he going to make this.
Re:Hey Barack! (Score:1, Insightful)
Nah, Scarlett Johansson.
NYCL (Score:4, Insightful)
I, despite not being American (but I do live nearby), nominate Ray Beckerman [blogspot.com] (NewYorkCountryLawyer [slashdot.org]). He seems to have lots of relevant experience in this field.
Any seconds?
Re:Here's an idea: NO ONE (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that enough? On the other hand, czars are important for bureaucratic rationalization: drug policy requires a lot of cooperation between federal law enforcement, state/local law enforcement, the medical system, foreign interdiction efforts etc. (assuming you accept drug control policy is rational, which it isn't. I think the idea of the drug tsar gives tsars a bad name. Aside from the original tsars, that is.)
The main problem with interdepartmental plenipotentiaries, or "Tsars" if you will, is they don't really have any authority: they're supposed to be the expert in the field and know more about how to do the job than anyone, but they're beholden to the existing baize cloth routine and can't make people do anything without the president's personal intervention. Even if Larry Lessig was a "Copyright Tsar," all he could do is talk shop with Obama about what should happen and then testify to congress a lot. He might have a voice in the appointment of FCC commissioners, and in copyright office policies, but he can always be overruled by a law.
Re:RMS (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not so sure about RMS. Yes, I agree with most of what he says, but not how he says it, and he comes across as a nutter to the non-techie public, and most of the techie community as well.
Besides we'll have him refusing to read emails that are sent from an insufficiently free *GNU*/Linux distribution.
hard choice (Score:2, Insightful)
hopefully he will choose someone who understands the futility of applying copyrights to digital media.
Re:Not the good professor (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC, you have it in reverse: the entertainment industry wants a strong copyright czar.
Strong when in their interests, not against them.
"You should never hand someone a gun unless you're sure where they'll point it. Your mistake." -- Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair; Babylon 5: "By Any Means Necessary"
Re:Not the good professor (Score:5, Insightful)
He's a wise choice, a rational voice is a sea of stupidity.
Lessig is a very moderate voice. While he generally opposes copyright term extension, he supports DRM. He feels that people who say copyright law is utterly broken are extremist. He seems to think that the current scope of fair use provisions is adequate and just needs to be better respected. He feels that "something like the DMCA that protects adequate space for fair use and doesn't attempt to regulate technology directly is needed." (http://lwn.net/2001/features/LawrenceLessig.php3)
I have a lot of respect for the man but you can't meet the extremism of Big Media with moderates willing to compromise. The DMCA should be dumped and language written into the law the specifically protects reverse engineering. Fair use provisions should be expanded to reflect that way we use media in our lives and to provide better protection for educational use.
We don't need a moderate - we need somebody who will make dramatic changes to re-align the law with common sense.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not the good professor (Score:3, Insightful)
It won't matter, the DMCA and all copyright laws in the last century or so are represented by international treaties and in order to change them drastically, you will have to change the treaties or withdraw from them. The copyright extensions for instance, they were part of the signing onto and coming into conformance to the Berne Convention, and then later, the Uruguay round table agreements that resulted in the EU's harmonization directive. I know people want to blame Disney and the entertainment business because they actually supported the changes too, but the reality is that we will either have to change the minds of the entire world or pull our of treaties that like it or not, protect our interests in other nations as well as bring us content from those countries.
I say this not to start and argument that always seems to come where someone can't believe that I neglected to look at their foe of the day but to actually make sure people know what they are up against. It isn't just a matter of changing the laws, it's a bigger matter then that and there will be no change until that is addressed. So if change seems to be what someone is after, then they need to address the points that can be changed in order to get the change they want. Otherwise they are blaming the dealership for the color of the car when the factory does the paint job.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not the good professor (Score:3, Insightful)
How is appointing a lunatic with an opposite bent to Hollywood's going to result in the law being re-aligned with common sense?
Exactly. If you only have lunatics on either side, what you end up with is bound to be lunacy. What we need is lunatics on both sides who shout extremist positions at each other and a pragmatic moderate in the middle who ignores them both equally.
Re:Not the good professor (Score:3, Insightful)
But I feel the first question we need to ask is will this position have any real power.
There's power, and there's power. Whether or not such a person has an real legal authority is an issue, of course, but no matter what they will have influence. They will also have far more of the public's ear than ten million Slashdotters ever could. The right person (and that's the real trick) in this slot could do much to put copyright back on track. I'm not sure who that person would be. Lessig is an excellent choice, looking at his credentials and his stance on the issues. Whether he's the right person from the PR/political perspective I wouldn't know.