Patent Law

Is Copyright Protection One of the Interests We're Willing to Give Up Net Freedom For?

By Les Weinstein, Michael Young, John Leo Wagner, Eric van Ginkel, and Victoria Pynchon

I don't purport to be an expert in the field of internet monitoring for the prevention of copyright infringement -- though the word "prevention" does suggest prior restraints on free speech.   Because we are here at the commencement of the development of the law in regard to internet freedom, all lawyers, not just IP lawyers, should take an interest and let themselves be heard.

That said, I am providing our readers with links to the conversation taking place at the Concurring Opinions Blog and New York Times "Bits" Blog on internet neutrality.

Concurring Opinions alerted us to this Bits debate between Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, and Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School. Full debate here and highlights here.  Further insight on this issue from Concurring Opinions here.

The issue in more detail as described by Bits' January 8 post, AT&T and Other I.S.P.’s May Be Getting Ready to Filter below.

For the last 15 years, Internet service providers have acted - to use an old cliche - as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet.

But I.S.P.’s may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop.

At a small panel discussion about digital piracy at NBC’s booth on the Consumer

Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and the telecom giant AT&T said discussed whether the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.

Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.

Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright.

“What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T.

Mr. Cicconi said that AT&T has been talking to technology companies, and members of the M.P.A.A. and R.I.A.A., for the last six months about carrying out digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level.

“We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” he said. “We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.”

Internet civil rights organizations oppose network-level filtering, arguing that it amounts to Big Brother monitoring of free speech, and that such filtering could block the use of material that may fall under fair-use legal provisions — uses like parody, which enrich our culture.

For full article click here.

Full post as published by IP ADR Blog on January 23, 2008 (boomark / email).