Introduction
Written by Cory Doctorow
The entertainment industry wants to retreat to the comfort of 1996. It was a good year for them. CDs were selling briskly, but no one had figured out how to rip them and turn them into MP3s yet. Music fans were still spending money to buy CD versions of music they owned on LP. DVDs had just been released, and movie fans were spending money to buy DVDs for movies they already owned on VHS.
And most importantly, the laws regulating copyright and technology were almost entirely designed by the entertainment industry. They could write anydamnfoolthing and get it passed in Congress, by the UN, in the EU.
Private agreements with electronics companies guaranteed that all new devices were crippled: Remember the Sony Minidisc players that could record sound digitally, but could only output it on the headphone jack, meaning that you couldn't just record your kid's first words and digitally transfer them to your computer for safe keeping?
1996 is gone, and good riddance.
In 2009, the world is populated by people who no longer believe that "Thou shalt sell media on plastic discs forever" came down off the mountain on two stone tablets. It's populated by people who find the spectacle of companies suing their own customers by the thousands indefensible. It's populated by activists who've figured out that the Internet is worth saving and that the entertainment industry is prepared to destroy it.
And the entertainment industry hasn't figured that out, and that's why they're doomed.
I recently found myself debating the head of the British Phonographic Institute, our local equivalent of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). He's Britain's top lobbyist for the collapsing record industry, and he said a remarkable thing.
An audience member had just stood up and asked one of those rambling non-questions that are really just polemics, words to the effect of, "You people are so evil -- just look at the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, it's full of bad things and it's all being negotiated in secret, away from public input. It's more corporate influence on government!"
And then Britain's top record industry lobbyist said the remarkable thing: "It's perfectly normal for this kind of treaty to be negotiated in private. There's nothing sinister going on at all." That's when I realized that the all-powerful entertainment lobby has developed advanced lobbyist's senility. Lost its tactical marbles. Lost its spine.
And I had to suppress a grin.
Here's some background for you: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a draft treaty among a bunch of rich countries that is supposed to combat "increase in global trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works." It's a private, multilateral negotiation that's taking place without the benefit of the United Nations' World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN agency where copyright treaties are normally negotiated.
WIPO is open to all the world's nations and to lots of non-governmental agencies (activists and corporate lobbyists alike), and it publishes public minutes.
ACTA is taking place in the proverbial smoke-filled room, and its provisions are nominally secret.
Still, though ACTA is nominally private -- the actual treaty language has been classified by the Obama White House as secret due to "national security" (!) -- we actually know rather a lot about its provisions.
Partly, that's because trade agreements like this are visible to "cleared advisors" -- members of the U.S. Trade Representative's advisory boards -- a list of hundreds of people, including many corporate lobbyists. For example:
- Sandra M. Aistars, Esq., Senior Counsel, Intellectual Property, Time Warner Inc.
- Francis (Frank) Z. Hellwig, Esq. Senior Associate, General Counsel, Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc.
- Douglas T. Nelson, Esq., Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary, CropLife America
- Shirley Zebroski, PhD, Director, Legislative Affairs, General Motors Corp.
- Robert E. Branand, Esq., Representative, National Paint & Coatings Association
- Ms. Laura J. Lane, Senior Vice President, International Government Affairs, Citigroup Inc.
That's right -- it's not just Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), the RIAA, and the Motion Picture Association who are in on this deal. It's also beer execs, execs from sinking banks and car-companies, fertilizer salesmen, and the people who make aluminum siding. They all get a seat at the table and get to know what's being said out of the public's earshot.
Well, once you tell hundreds of executives from random industry associations and corporations a secret, it's not going to remain secret for very long.
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