Author: David Newhoff

David is an author, communications professional, and copyright advocate. After more than 20 years providing creative services and consulting in corporate communications, he shifted his attention to law and policy, beginning with advocacy of copyright and the value of creative professionals to America’s economy, core principles, and culture.

Online Harassment & The Internet Experiment

In last weekend’s New York Times Magazine, staff writer Jenna Wortham asks Why Can’t Silicon Valley Fix Online Harassment? Citing some alarming statistics from a 2104 Pew Research study, she writes …

“… 40 percent of adult internet users have dealt with online harassment. And those numbers go up among young adults (especially women) and nonwhite users. Women are significantly more likely than men to report being stalked or sexually harassed on the internet, and 51 percent of African-Americans and 54 percent of Hispanics said they had experienced harassment, compared with 34 percent of whites.”

Online harassment is no joke. At scale, it can be emotionally devastating and legitimately terrifying for victims. It has been known to cause economic and social harm and to catalyze both physical assault and suicides. While we extoll the virtues of connectedness fostered by an “open” internet, harassment is the mutant howling in the basement nobody wants to talk about. And Wortham rightly observes that the monster is a byproduct of Silicon Valley’s unique blend of new-money libertarianism built on a foundation of faded, hippie idealism—incongruous doctrines that were, for many, synthesized in the manifesto A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, delivered by John Perry Barlow at Davos in 1996.

But if online harassment is a disease and the first step to recovery is admitting there’s a problem, then perhaps that first step is to properly contextualize Barlow’s Declaration as the naive and petulant outburst it was. A moment of whimsy rather than the foundation for a sustainable, or even humane, proposal. Nevertheless, the belief that cyberspace remains some magical realm beyond the normal boundaries of society continues to delay rational discourse on any number of problems specifically caused or exacerbated by the technology.

Although harassment will occur on a public forum like Twitter, it often begins by brewing on a site like 4Chan, a “discussion” board populated by mostly males from pre-teen to mid-30s, who, in every sense of the cliché, have too much time on their hands. And although everyone on 4Chan is anonymous—it is in fact the site where the hacktivist group Anonymous began—they might collectively be seen as that mutant creature borne by Barlow’s Declaration. Like most adolescents, the thing they seem to hate most is being told what to do—hence the the harassment-filled shitstorm known as “Gamergate.”

Although I would never condone harassment, I think I understand how at least some of it starts. This blog has very occasionally elicited accusations of racism or sexism because there are people in the world who will filter literally any topic through such lenses, even when there is no rational basis for doing so. If I were an adolescent who spent inordinate time among other adolescents in a forum like 4Chan, the temptation to retaliate against these absurd accusations by weaponizing overt racism or sexism—at least for my own amusement—could be very great. And once it begins, it’s easy enough for a little spark to become a flash fire.

In all likelihood, the majority of trolls out there are young men who harass for the lulz—an expression derived from the acronym LOL. Think of this class of trolls as easily excitable chimpanzees who will gather around a target of ridicule and pile on, but who are also easily bored and distracted by the next shiny object. So, if the target of their ridicule or cruelty doesn’t respond, this group usually returns to its natural state of online gaming and metaphorically throwing feces at one another.

But if the target of their ridicule does respond, this only increases the opportunity for lulz, which means the chimps remain engaged and incentivized to keep raising the bar of harassment of their target. Hence, the truly hideous invocations of rape and murder—complete with photographic depictions of these acts—that are so commonly employed by harassers of this nature. From this phenomenon comes the common-sense directive Don’t Feed the Troll, which is fine up to a point but can also be a form of victim-blaming as the volume and virulence of the harassment increases.

Wortham notes the apparent futility of “counterspeech,” which she describes as “the practice of bystander intervention that overpowers aggressors in an attempt to deter them.” I’m not at all surprised the EFF endorses this self-governing tactic as a “solution,” seeing as the organization (co-founded by Barlow) remains mesmerized by the fallacy that the internet naturally enables good to triumph over evil as long as pesky rules don’t get in the way.

I’m also not surprised that the two organizations Wortham highlights as designed to deploy “counterspeech” seem to be finding the method ineffective. If the general rule of thumb is Don’t Feed the Troll, then an attempt to surround a victim in a barrier of Twitter-hugs is like dipping her in chocolate and Cheetos. It’s only going to whip the trolls into a feeding frenzy. As stated above, it is important to remember that a large segment of the people who engage in this kind of harassment HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO. This is a hobby for many a young male, who really needs to get a life; and it is therefore difficult for people who do have lives to outlast or overwhelm the harassers.

Presumably, there are casual harassers as well—people who don’t spend time seething on 4Chan, but who obey an impulse to add their 140 characters of vitriol when they see a trend piling onto a target they don’t like or who has pissed them off. And I suppose we have to assume at this point that people can be harassed by bot swarm as well. But the fact that a real human being can be remotely and anonymously hounded to the point of being harmed or harming herself is a very real problem we have yet to confront in any substantive way. What is the responsibility of one voice in a million that feeds the proximate cause of a suicide? I don’t know, but it sure as hell belies Barlow’s dreamy assumptions.

Of course the thesis question Wortham asks is this: Can Silicon Valley do anything about online harassment? In theory, why not? As stated in several other posts, the internet companies are telling a half truth at best when they claim to have free speech obligations. They may wish to support free speech, and that’s fine, but the individual platforms are no more bound by the First Amendment than a retail store or restaurant in the physical world. Wortham is right to view the deciding factors as both ideological and financial, and in that order—a story of what happens when hippies become billionaires.

The policy positions and Terms of Service that still flow from Barlow’s Declaration have made the internet into a computer model of a social experiment which—to an extent—places people in philosopher John Locke’s hypothetical state of nature. Like Locke, the model then asks whether or not Man really needs to make a bargain with the State in order to protect his sovereignty as an individual. In 1996, Barlow declared the internet to be a “home of Mind,” a place where the legal conventions of statehood (namely law) have no purpose—an ideal based on the assumption that people are basically good and law is exclusively coercive.

But in 1689, in his Second Treatise of Government, Locke argued that Man in a state of nature (i.e. without government) is more free but also more vulnerable to human predators, who may enslave him, kill him, or take his property. Hence, the bargain one makes with the State is to trade as little freedom as possible in exchange for relative security. Thus, if a woman in a Target store were harassed in Twitter style (i.e. told by a swarm of men that they hope she gets raped and killed), the security and police who will soon arrive on her behalf are a manifestation of that Lockean bargain.

In principle, the major platform owners can take steps to mitigate online harassment, and they will likely discover this ability the moment there is a financial incentive to do so. But in the meantime, we might learn something from the computer model, which reveals exactly what can happen in a stateless and lawless “community.”

Consider the rash of hate crimes and threats following the election—all presumably committed by people who believed Trump’s presidency granted them permission to act upon latent antipathy. But how many Swastikas have been spray-painted by committed Nazis and how many by teenagers doing it for the lulz? Hard to say, but it’s likely that both motivations are present and that this is one way in which real life comes to resemble cyberspace rather than the other way around. And that may prove to be the most dangerous phenomenon of all.

Critics Build House of Canards to Trash USCO Bill

Photo by jeancol1503

Well, here we go.  The network of copyright critics seems to be working out their main talking points for hating on H.R. 1695, which proposes to make the Register of Copyrights a presidential appointee (with Senate approval) rather than an employee of the Librarian of Congress.  Mike Masnick, founder/editor of Techdirt, has written a piece for The Verge that comprises (I think) all of the Greatest Hits from the anti-copyright songbook, including the popular jingle referred to in my last post about Mickey Mouse being the major force behind the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act.

While it’s tempting to respond to each of the window-dressing fallacies deployed in Masnick’s article, it would also be tedious. (I just can’t come up with any more ways to mock the invocation of SOPA by that crowd.) As usual, Masnick wants to sell us an epic tale of Copyright vs. The Internet with statements like, “The copyright questions raised by the internet are existential.” He says this as though copyright law has never contended with technology before, or as if to imply that the internet is just a litigation or two away from being shut down.  And, of course, this “existential” threat will be masterminded by Hollywood and the RIAA through the new Register of Copyrights if the position were to become an appointee of the Executive.

This defies both historical evidence and common sense, concluding with the fact that the major rights holders are, at this point, all-in on this whole internet thingy. Like those companies that said “no thanks” to Trump’s EPA rollbacks because they’ve already invested substantially in going green, the proverbial, sinister Hollywood really has no interest in “breaking the internet.” Again, in reference to my last post, how much has Marvel invested in growing its franchise just on the Netflix platform alone?  Right. So, let’s put the doomsday hyperbole back in the crazy drawer where it belongs and talk about reality.

Politicizing to Criticize Politics

Masnick asserts two big bullet points in this article, one which coincides with one of EFF’s first responses, and one which coincides with Representative Zoe Lofgren’s testimony on Capitol Hill.  (Rep. Lofgren (D-CA) represents Silicon Valley’s district and is highly critical of copyright.)

The first major point Masnick (and the EFF) asserts is that if the Register position were to become a presidential appointee, this would “politicize” the role more than it already is and make the Register more vulnerable to industry influence.  With regard to bi-partisanship, the bill was introduced by Representatives Goodlatte (R-VA) and Conyers (D-MI) and passed out of committee with a vote of 27-1.  But beyond Congressional consensus, this “influence” allegation is an interesting one coming from a crowd that has already accused the last Register (by way of a smear campaign) of being about as subservient to major rights holders as one might imagine.

Nevertheless, Masnick et al seem to feel the next Register could “go to eleven” and be even more extra totally double-secret “captured” by Hollywood. And the way this will happen is by reorganizing the USCO relative to the LOC.  It’s an argument based on innuendo, laced with emotional triggers for readers (see references to SOPA & Disney); but there is no substantive case being made as to why this reorganization will increase the potential for inappropriate deference to major rights holders.

Let’s clear something up right now.  If you have a fairly high-profile job in the federal government, your role is at least a little bit political.  The Librarian can be politicized as can the Register of Copyrights no matter where he/she sits on the org chart. So, can we cut to the chase and just say that Masnick and other copyright critics are especially opposed to this change at this time because they see Dr. Hayden as a fellow copyright skeptic, and they would really like her to perhaps appoint another skeptic as Register?  In other words, they’re more than happy to have the role politicized as long as it furthers their view of the right agenda.

Meanwhile, there is no reason to assume that a supposedly “more political” pendulum will inevitably swing toward major rights holders like Hollywood studios. After all, the current President has a guy named Peter Thiel among his top advisors who absolutely espouses a world view consistent with the views of the internet industry.  I don’t see anyone from the recording or motion picture industries with such close ties to the White House at the moment; but this bill doesn’t actually give that much power to this or any other President. H.R. 1695 gives more power to Congress (ergo more public oversight than the status quo), and an amendment added by Rep. Jackson-Lee (D-TX) requires that the President choose a Register from a list of candidates approved by both the Congressional leadership and the Librarian of Congress.

As for who might end up on that list, it’s worth noting that in the quiet reality behind all this drama, there are probably a handful of candidates in the country who most copyright experts would agree are even qualified for the job.  Some of these favor stronger copyright protections, others favor copyright’s limitations.  Some are more ideological, others more centrist than the public might expect. And here’s a little secret:  they generally know one another, are in contact with one another, and respect one another’s differing views.

Misrepresenting the Role of the USCO

The second point Masnick stresses in his article is less speculative but not actually relevant to the purpose of H.R. 1695; and it is predicated on a misunderstanding about the role of the Copyright Office. He writes:

“Managing copyrights — effectively a giant database of creative works — is very much a librarian-centric job. Librarians are custodians of information, helping to catalog and organize it while also helping people research and find what they’re looking for. The Copyright Office today, like many old libraries, is filled with card catalogs.”

For a guy worrying about politicizing this issue, this is pure spin. In fact, Masnick is actually mirroring a tactic employed by Rep. Lofgren, who has tried to make this organizational change a referendum on Librarian Hayden herself. First, Masnick wants readers to think of the USCO as performing a library-like function; then he wants to point to past failures to properly modernize that function; and finally he wants to say that Dr. Hayden—and nobody questions that she is highly-qualified in her field—has a plan for modernization that will be disrupted by this organizational change.

But the Copyright Office is not a “giant database of creative works.” The complex, consultative function on copyright policy provided by the CO is an essential role performed by dozens of professionals with vastly different expertise than librarians. And both copyright experts and policymakers have known this for a long time.  To the extent that former Register Pallante, former Librarian Billington, or any past office-holders, are responsible for failures to implement IT initiatives, that’s on them and their tenures; but this has no bearing on the rationale for making the organizational change proposed in H.R. 1695. Moreover, former Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) writes the following in an editorial for The Hill:

“Claiming, for example, that former Register Pallante had done nothing on IT modernization rings hollow when it was Pallante who initiated and implemented a public consultation process, which led to publication of the most forward-looking IT modernization plan in the history of the Copyright Office.

The Library has thus far blocked implementation of that plan. While GAO reports have catalogued IT shortcomings at both the Library and the Copyright Office, these reports acknowledge that the problems at the Copyright Office are relatively few. Indeed the GAO has concluded these problems stem from the much larger, fundamental problems with the Library IT department, to which the Copyright Office is beholden.”

This suggests the very plausible conclusion that any past IT implementation failings were at least shared between the Copyright Office and the Library, and this provides no more grounds to abort the organizational change than it would be reasonable to hold Dr. Hayden responsible for past project-management problems.  Still, the over-simple argument Masnick wants to make is that a librarian will be better at the physical, data-management aspect of Copyright Office modernization.  Of course, that’s not why he and his colleagues are criticizing this bill. They’re hoping instead that Dr. Hayden will take a more hands-on approach to copyright policy, which has never really been a role the Librarian has played before or since the USCO was first established.

Masnick and other critics want to argue that the functional relationship between the Register and the Librarian is something more intrinsic than a circumstance of history that occurred 120 years ago.  But this simply isn’t the case.  As I’ve noted in other posts, the first Register was appointed in 1897 after influencers like Melville Dewey envisioned a new, national leadership role for the Library of Congress.  (And Dr. Hayden seems exceptionally well-suited to continue that vision.)

This change in direction for the Library led to the creation of a separate office for handling copyright registrations and, in a fledgling way, advising Congress on copyright policy. No Librarian ever truly performed the function of national expert on copyright as this would be inconsistent with both the function of the Library and the evolution of copyright law in the mid-late 19th century.

Right from the start, the Librarian and the Register were divided according to both function and expertise; and those roles have continued along separate, though related, paths as each department has grown. Attempts to frame this long-overdue, organizational change as a power-grab by Hollywood are unsupported by both history and by the process Congress is implementing to effect this change.

When Copyright Criticism Is Something Else

Photo by Tamagocha

A couple weeks ago, a comment on the Illusion of More Facebook page proposed that the Walt Disney Company was able to get its start in the 1930s because the story for the studio’s first animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was “in the public domain.”  I don’t mean to pick on one particular comment or its author, but there is a lot in this statement that reflects widespread misunderstanding about copyright law and how it works.

First, of course, is that most references to Disney are inspired by the almost universally-believed narrative that the Disney Company was directly responsible for extending the U.S. copyright term in 1998 to its present duration.  Hence, I assume the comment was meant to reveal a hypocrisy—namely that Disney needed access to the public domain that today’s creators don’t have—and they don’t have it because of Disney!  Indeed, that could be reason for outrage, if only it were true.

Disney Did Not Write the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act 

Although, Representative Sonny Bono would eventually become a co-sponsor and strong supporter of H.R. 2589, the legislation did not begin with him. The law bears his name as a posthumous honor bestowed after Bono died in a skiing accident, which occurred two months before the bill was first debated by the House Judiciary Committee.

Nevertheless, the internet loves a scandal and so helps keep alive the myth that Bono personally walked the halls of Congress with pockets full of Disney’s cash charged with the task of extending the copyright term to protect the Mouse. Disney was certainly among the rights holders who lobbied for the term extension, but they were one of many and do not appear to have played any special role or to have spent extraordinary campaign sums relative to typical expenditures of other rights-holding petitioners.

When the U.S. finally joined the Berne Convention Treaty in 1989 (a treaty that began in 1886), this mandated the change in our copyright terms from a fixed 56-year duration to life-of-the-author plus 50 years.  Then, as Europe moved toward formation of the EU (1992), that alliance mandated that all partner nations amend their copyright terms to life plus 70 years. In response, the U.S. Congress proposed the same terms in order to maintain parity in trade. And that was the main impetus for the term extension.* It’s not as dramatic a story as Mickey Mouse button-holing Members of Congress in the Rayburn Building, but it’s a digest version of how things actually happened. The SBCTEA passed with solid, bi-partisan, bi-cameral support and was signed into law by president Clinton in 1998.

Was Disney Relying on the Public Domain with Snow White?

Sorta, but not really.  Because the Brothers Grimm were collectors of tales that were part of an oral tradition, it’s a little difficult to view their works through a modern copyright lens and know which elements might arguably have been part of the commons at the time. Regardless, a hypothetical copyright could be granted for their unique telling of a particular tale, and this would apply to the story entitled Snow Drop, which is the underlying work that became Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  But even if we were to imagine a copyright in that work under current terms, then it would have expired 70 years after Jacob Grimm’s death, which brings us to 1933—four years before Disney made the movie.

So, yes, the story of Snow Drop was in the public domain at the time, but not in the way the commenter—or indeed most copyright critics—mean when they seek to argue that contemporary terms are onerously long.  The general assumption is that in 1937, Disney had a richer and deeper well of material to build upon than contemporary creators have at their disposal, and that Disney then used copyright law to close the proverbial door behind them to keep everyone else out.  While it may seem intuitive that copyright’s current terms would stifle the growth in works since 1998 (or some think since 1790), that belief is not supported either by statistical or anecdotal evidence.

Disney May “own” Snow White, but They Don’t Own Snow White

Feeding this false narrative is the idea that copyright “locks up” works for long periods, keeping them out of reach of new creators.  Although nearly every author will confirm that building upon existing works, ideas, tropes, themes is part of the creative process, this fact is not so greatly in conflict with copyright’s boundaries as many a non-creator pundit would have us believe. And Snow White is as good an example as any.

A creator—whether Disney or anyone else—may only protect a unique telling of this classic tale.  Ditto The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pinnochio, and many other titles in the traditional Disney oeuvre. The studio may only enforce copyrights for its versions of these stories; and for Disney, the most valuable aspect of their work is often the pictorial, graphic, or sculptural (PSG) interpretations of the classic characters (see Disney merch).  But the relevance of the idea/expression distinction here is, I suspect, overshadowed by a different phenomenon, which is really a complaint about market dominance.

One could argue that the “Disneyfication” of classic tales can have a homogenizing cultural effect because the company’s vast resources enable, for instance, a single interpretation of Snow White to dominate popular imagination for generations. This is a valid criticism or conversation to have, but it’s one about American culture, business, and marketing that isn’t really influenced by copyright terms as much as people may assume. Nevertheless, I suspect responses to these cultural or aesthetic criticisms tends to color the copyright narrative, particularly when invoking Disney.

If anything, copyright only helps to mitigate creative homogenization by disallowing unlicensed copying of what some may view as corporatized versions of stories and characters. As Harvard scholar Joseph P. Fishman pointed out in his study in 2014, boundaries like copyright tend to be generative for creators, while too much freedom to copy can actually stifle originality. Creators don’t really need a study to know this is true; they can tell you this from experience.

What About the Comics?

Moving on to a different part of the Disney organization, we have the Marvel franchise.  These more contemporary works comprise characters and narratives that many people believe belong in the public domain because they are so ingrained in common culture that it feels like these classic heroes and villains belong to all of us.  But one aspect of this idea that is often overlooked is that these characters attained that place in our hearts and minds because they were controlled franchises.

If you were a Daredevil fan growing up, you didn’t wait with anticipation to hear what your friends thought should happen next, you waited for the next issue to see what really happened next.  Without this common experience shared by fans, Daredevil would not have become a staple of the Marvel universe—and neither would any other character.

The assumption promoted by copyright critics is that when Daredevil falls into the public domain, this will spawn new, innovative ways to build upon the character for more creators.  Perhaps, but not necessarily.  As noted in an earlier post, even with PD works, we tend to see that one version at a time emerges for a period because the market only sustains so many variations at a time.  The example I cited previously is that it would be tough to compete right now with the Sherlock Holmes TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch; and this is true for reasons having nothing to do with copyright.

So, it seems that a lot of copyright criticism, in certain contexts, is tangled up with aesthetic or emotional sentiments associated with popular and famous stories and characters.  There will always be consumers who don’t like the way a popular work is treated, even by its original creator. Just look at Star Wars. For every ten million fans, there are a hundred million opinions about what George Lucas did, or should have done, with his franchise.  But it was his franchise. If you want to decide the fate of a new multi-billion-dollar franchise, you’ll just have to invent your own.  And as many readers know, that’s exactly what Lucas did when he couldn’t get the rights to make Flash Gordon. 

*As a colleague noted since publication, there was more to this than trade harmonization; but without enumerating the various terms of copyright for different works, suffice to say that it still wasn’t about Disney and Mickey Mouse.