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.

Advocacy or PR from the EFF?

Two posts ago, I helped ruffle many feathers — and awaken a few trolls — when I accused the EFF in general, and attorney/blogger Mitch Stoltz in particular, of producing scare-mongering hyperbole by never passing up an opportunity to ring the pavlovian SOPA bell.  Regular readers of this blog know that I have often been critical of this organization because I believe its communications too often vacillate between public advocacy (its stated mission) and PR/policy work on behalf of the Internet industry.  And the apparent correspondence between these interests is admittedly a bit confusing from time to time. Because the Internet is so thoroughly integrated into most of our lives, it is easy to believe that, for instance, what’s good for Google or Twitter or Pandora, is inherently good for those of us who rely on the flow of digital data for business, entertainment, news, relationships, and even expressions of identity and purpose.  I’ve said it before.  No other industry — not medicine, not petroleum, not even food — has ever enjoyed so much latitude in the ability to associate its motives with the public’s defense of its civil liberties. This is a potent political cocktail, which is why I advocate vigilant skepticism.

So, two days ago, Mr. Stoltz posted an opinion piece written in a dispassionate, lawyerly tone that I had just recently accused the EFF of adopting only rarely.  In this article, Stoltz offers a frank analysis as to why he believes a pre-1972 public performance right, granted in the Flo & Eddie case and now being appealed, will “squelch competition in new music services” if upheld.   Music licensing can be mind-boggling for attorneys, so I won’t be the one to parse any of Stoltz’s legal statements, but will point readers, as usual, to Terry Hart’s historically contextualized summary of this same matter.

But regardless of the legal merits on either side of this issue, the main reason I’m bothering to cite Stoltz’s new post here is that I’m unclear as to why the EFF even views this case as relevant to the general public’s rights in the digital age.  This kind of legal/financial wrangling among business interests has been going on forever, and it is rare that the outcomes set precedents that have much to do with the rights of the rest of us citizens.  As such, this particular story about public performance rights and streaming and satellite services seems much more appropriately the purview of either business reporters or PR agents for one industry or the other.  (So, you see what I’m driving at.)

I like music streaming and hope it evolves into a model that works for both consumers and creators — because right now it does not — but I certainly don’t consider Pandora’s or Spotify’s financial interests as having anything to do with my civil liberties in the digital age.   So, why does the EFF?  I suppose the closest thing to a rights issue would be Stoltz’s thesis that this ruling is harmful to competition, but even that is a stretch vis a vis civil liberties.  Moreover, as I’ve said in the past, and as any observer can can see, the Internet, by its very nature, doesn’t tend to produce multiple competitors in spaces like music streaming.  To the contrary, the Web tends to foster monopsonies (e.g. Amazon, YouTube) that are able to dictate, rather than negotiate, terms with suppliers and creators.  And that’s not the fault of rights holders, that’s just the nature of the technology in its present form.

To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything automatically wrong with vested interests organizing around policy.  It’s how most policy gets done, whether we want to admit it or not.  And often, there are mutual interests and alliances between big and small, between a corporate interest and the everyday citizen or entrepreneur.  For instance, I strongly believe that independent film will not thrive in a market that fails to mitigate piracy, and so independent filmmakers share this common ground with the big studios, which are the only entities with the resources to address piracy in either policy or legal arenas.  By the same token, I guess it is not inconceivable that the interests of music streaming companies can’t be aligned with our civil rights, but it is not readily apparent as to how this might be the case.  Instead, it seems that what the EFF opposes most of all is any policy that looks like an expansion of rights for creators ever. And this is interesting in itself because it implies that the millions of creators in this country are not part of the “your” in the motto Defending your rights in the digital world.

No Borders Does Not Mean No Boundaries

Over this past weekend, it seems The New York Times Editorial Board got together, drank a little Googley Kool-Aid, and then wrote this Op-Ed provocatively titled Keep the Internet Free of Borders.  It is dismaying that, under the imprimatur of a respected name, an OpEd is published that succeeds in drawing such a typically blunt conclusion about an otherwise complex and nuanced issue of great importance.  Here’s what’s going on:

Historically, the U.S. International Trade Commission has the authority to block the importation of articles that infringe the intellectual property rights of American companies.  For instance, a U.S. based importer/wholesaler may not import counterfeits of consumer goods, and the ITC is empowered to enjoin such importation and enforce its authority through agencies like customs and border services.  But this past March, for the first time, the ITC concluded that articles under its purview may include the importation of digital files.  (Cue eerie violins.)

The case itself involves the Invisalign brand of dental aligners, which is a patented system owned by Align Technology.  A Texas-based company called ClearCorrect received data from an entity in Pakistan that contained digital models, design information, and treatment plans, which Align Technology argued can only be used “to infringe or induce the infringement” of its patents.  ClearCorrect argued that the ITC’s authority to restrict the importation of infringing articles does not extend to digital data, but the ITC ruled 5-1 in favor of Align after an administrative law judge concurred that the definition of “articles” in the statute does apply to digital imports, consistent with the ITC’s “legislative purpose to . . . prevent every type of unfair act in connection with imported articles . . . and to strengthen protection of intellectual property rights.”  This case has been appealed and was scheduled to be heard in federal court in Washington D.C. sometime today.

If the ITC’s broadening of the term articles under its purview is held to include digital data, this would certainly set a new precedent that will be attractive to owners of intellectual property.  And of course this prospect has not-surprisingly raised the hackles of digital rights proponents, who predict that granting the ITC this authority will “harm the free flow of information on the Internet.”  Unfortunately, this is the recurring narrative every time any entity, private or public, seeks to remedy any of the new forms of harm that are unavoidable byproducts of the new forms of communication, interaction, and data transmission that most of us enjoy.  Hence, editorials like the one from the Times perpetuate the frankly defeatist notion that our only options are either to accept the predations of bad actors or invite legal regimes that can only lead to censorship.

For a more detailed description of the Align case, I recommend this article written by my colleagues at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property.  In particular, I would draw your attention to the authors’ revelation that the usual suspects in Silicon Valley, who presently oppose upholding the ITC’s authority in this case were just a few years ago vociferously in favor of copyright owners using the ITC in precisely this manner. As part of that industry’s PR blitz against SOPA and PIPA, they widely supported the proposed OPEN Act, so named because it would “keep the Internet open.”  And as a component of this advocacy, OPEN’s corporate supporters recommended that the ITC was an ideal venue for rights holders to seek relief from entities committing infringement through digital data imports.

So, if nothing else, the Times editorial board might have done a little homework and recognized that if the Internet industry was once in favor of this type of ITC authority and is now opposed to it, this contradiction might awaken some dormant, journalistic instinct to a bit of skepticism.  Instead, the article concludes with an all-to-common statement that I would challenge anyone to define clearly.  It states, “The appeals court should strike down the commission’s ruling, which is bound to hamper the exchange of ideas and information on the Internet.”  I’ve encountered that hampering sentiment so many times, and it still doesn’t make any sense.  If the ITC blocks a shipment of counterfeit Nikes, and fair trade in sporting goods continues, why is it impossible to imagine that an equally narrow application of this same authority may apply to digital imports without harming the larger flow of information, let alone anything as esoteric as “ideas?”

At some point, this narrative has to change — the one that insists there is no way we will ever balance civil order and civil liberty in cyberspace — because every user has a stake in seeking balance, whether the concerns are privacy, personal security, or intellectual property that supports a business in any sector.  The Align case is about dental products, the Equustek case I wrote about involved systems communications hardware, and with advances in 3D printing technology, we can be sure there will be more and more trade in infringing trade secrets and  other intellectual property.  Hence, it should be clear that the growth in these unlawful and predatory practices, unique to the digital age, is already affecting interests far beyond the motion picture, music, and publishing industries.

Whatever the remedies may be, we should constantly demand specifics as to what it means to “harm the free flow of information on the Internet” because it’s not sufficient to accept that the definition is whatever the major internet companies say it is on any given day. (See above mentioned flip-flop on this very subject).  In fact, as Stephen Carlisle points out in this piece for Nova Southeastern University, in the last several months, site-blocking has been ordered in specific cases in the US, Canada, Germany, and Australia, yet here we are, using the Internet to exchange information and ideas.  What began as adolescent rationalizations for file sharing more than fifteen years ago has now metastasized into a social and corporate agenda that is attacking vital organs in our market-based economy.  We can do better.  Balancing civil order with civil liberty is what we’re supposed to be good at in this country.  We should not be afraid to try.

The Knights Who Say SOPA

At last count, the EFF has over 40 attorneys on staff* and lord only knows how many communications minions.  So, if this organization is going to maintain its loose relationship with reality, they might at least take a meeting and invent some fresh exaggerations.  But no. SOPA is just too provocative a buzzword to let go. And as part of their unrelenting strategy to keep trying to scare the hell out of people, the EFF has invoked SOPA so many times, I’ve personally run out of colorful metaphors by which to mock them for it and have had to resort to Monty Python references.

For instance, in this recent missive, EFFer Mitch Stoltz uses the acronym SOPA seven times in the first four paragraphs, which might lead the reader to think that the subject of the article has something to do with SOPA.  Of course, it has nothing to do with SOPA.  Heck, SOPA didn’t even have anything to do with SOPA, but let’s not worry about that right now.

What the knights at the EFF are saying SOPA about at the moment is the fact that as part of the major motion picture studios’ litigation against the pirate network MovieTube, they are seeking injunctive relief that would include disabling domains registered to the network and the discontinuation of services to MovieTube sites by third-party providers.  Granting such an injunction, according to the EFF, is reason to say SOPA, meaning that such a ruling by the court would inevitably lead to crippling the Internet as we know it.  Sound familiar?

But true to form for the EFF, Stoltz neither acknowledges that MovieTube is doing any tangible harm nor the fact that the relief being sought by the studios is far from unprecedented legal territory.  It is well-settled law that injunctions against a named party, which is directly harming a plaintiff, can also bind third parties that may be contributing to, or facilitating, ongoing harm.  And although this principle is nothing new in legal terms, it is a chronic sticking point for Internet companies because they are frequently facilitating harm, whether they mean to or not.  But, in another case involving injunctive relief, the British Columbia  Supreme Court demonstrated in the Equustek case that Google may be ordered to de-index on a global basis all sites (and not just pages) belonging to a business that was engaged in counterfeiting the plaintiff’s products and using its websites to hijack Equustek’s likely customers.  And still the Internet hums along.

Of course, Silicon Valley doesn’t like this sort of thing, but not because of anything to do with your freedoms so much as with their bottom line. News flash:  industries don’t like regulation.  And so, the Web industry likes to portray every prospect of this type of legal action — especially when it involves the motion picture industry — as the beginning of the end.  They say SOPA, and hope the peasants cringe. (And make no mistake, to the wealthy .01 percent of that industry, we are all peasants.) Thus, the EFF invests tremendous energy in this strategy, breathlessly warning us about the inevitable doom that will surely follow if, heaven-forbid, the rule of law might apply to trade across our precious tubes.

Stoltz’s post implies a lack of due process and a dangerous slippery slope, despite the fact that injunctions are court ordered on a case-by-case basis.  And just because an entity is granted this type of relief in one case does not mean it will then have free reign to seek random, baseless injunctions at will. (Or is the real problem that the Internet companies are acutely aware of how much global traffic is driven by piracy, that they really don’t want to go there; and they can always rely on millions of people who like free media to help evangelize their erroneous legal claims?)  If so, they should at least call it what it is and lay off the pretensions to be upholding some principle for the greater good.  Yet,  Stoltz writes:

“If the court signs this proposed order, the MPAA companies will have the power to force practically every Internet company within the reach of U.S. law to help them disappear the MovieTube websites. Regardless of whether those sites are engaged in copyright infringement or not, this is a scary amount of power to confer on the movie studios. And it looks even worse at scale: if orders like this become the norm, Internet companies large and small will have to build infrastructure resembling the Great Firewall of China in order to comply.”

Of course that makes perfect sense. Because what could filmed-entertainment companies want more than a completely dysfunctional Internet and a “wall” of censorship? Filmmakers love censorship! And they certainly don’t want their products to be seen by the paying public via the growing number of legal streaming services that are entirely dependent upon a well-functioning Internet. Naturally, the MPAA is looking for a legal wooden shoe that it can wield to the ultimate sabotage of these distribution portals for studio products.  And in a related story, the Teamsters are going to lobby to defund highway maintenance.

But to put it less sarcastically, if Internet companies truly cannot help to foster a web ecosystem that honors certain rights, including intellectual property rights, without “building a Great Firewall of China,” then maybe they just suck at what they do.  Because, in the long run, we don’t need an Internet that remains the proverbial Wild West, we need one that matures into a vital component of a functioning civilization.

Anyway, if you want a proper (and admittedly calmer) legal analysis of the relief being sought by the studios in this case, I recommend this post by Terry Hart because he actually knows, y’know, legal stuff. I’m mostly being a smart-ass because this kind of fear-mongering is at least as offensive as it is repetitive.  Above all, I resent the tone the EFF consistently takes with regard to piracy — as though it’s some adolescent prank that doesn’t hurt anybody. I and others have cited volumes of data that proves piracy is a big, black-market business that causes tangible and multi-faceted harm to real people.  I will also add that during the anti-SOPA campaign, organizations like EFF, as well as the Googles of the world, implied in their populist messaging that they cared about ending piracy, but the bills SOPA and PIPA were too flawed.  Where in the last four years, have we seen any substantive indication that anyone speaking for the Internet was remotely sincere when they made those statements?

So, if as a general rule, any of EFF’s writers framed these articles by stipulating that a site like MovieTube is — and damn-well should be — illegal and deserves to be shut down, then by all means they should play the role of the public advocate they claim to be.  Instead, the organization’s thesaurus appears to favor repeating SOPA as often as possible and using calculated, provocative language, like the way Stoltz uses the word disappear as a verb to imply that MovieTube is akin to a political dissident being silenced by an authoritarian government. (If nothing else, this kind of rhetoric is just irresponsible in a world with real dissidents and real tyrants.)  For all the attorneys on staff at the EFF, they rarely seem to produce an even-toned, nuanced analysis for public consumption regarding cases of this nature.  I guess it’s just easier to be The Knights Who Say SOPA.  Maybe if somebody brings them a nice shrubbery, they’ll knock it off.

*To be fair, and at last count, the EFF had what I counted as over 40 attorneys spread among staff, board, special counsel, and advisors, which is not exactly the same as 40 staff attorneys.  But in the spirit of this post, suffice to say, they have a buttload of lawyers to keep coming up with the same talking point over and over.

NOTE:  Within an hour or so of TorrentFreak citing this article, I received comments from anonymous trolls with handles including Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden calling me “faggot.”  I think the EFF should be proud to have such erudite supporters.  I don’t know what I was thinking by criticizing their rhetoric, which has clearly elevated the debate.