[Nettime-bold] James Boyle: A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism For the Net? [2/3]

[Pit Schultz <pit@klubradio.de>]

                                     IV

                 A Brief Case-Study: Copyright on The Net

If the information society has an iconic form (one could hardly say an
embodiment) it is the Internet. The Net is the anarchic, decentralised network
of computers that provides the main locus of digital interchange. While
Vice-President Gore, the Commerce Department and the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration were planning the
"information superhighway" the Net was becoming it.

Accordingly, if the government produced a proposal that laid down the ground
rules for the information economy, that profoundly altered the distribution of
property rights over this extremely important resource and that threatened to
"lock in" the power of current market leaders, one would expect a great deal of
attention to be paid by lawyers, scholars and the media. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The appearance of the Clinton Administration "White
Paper"(27) on intellectual property on the National Information Infrastructure
produced almost no press reaction. The same was true of the introduction and
eventual stalling of the White Paper's legislative proposals in both the House
and the Senate.(28) Given the potential ramifications of the legislation, this
alone, it seems to me, would be strong evidence for the proposition that
greater scrutiny of our intellectual policy making is needed. But the problem
lies deeper.

Elsewhere I, and many others, have written about the problems with the White
Paper's account of current law, its distressing tendency to misstate, minimise
or simply ignore contrary cases, policy and legislative history, its habit of
presenting as settled, that which is in fact a matter of profound dispute.(29)
There have also been thoughtful analyses some of the potential negative effects
of the White Paper and its implementing legislation, particularly focusing on
the consequences for libraries, for software innovation and for privacy.(30)
Defenders of the White Paper have argued that its proposals are necessary to
protect content on, and encourage fuller use and faster growth of, the Net.(31)