Swedish attorney and writer Mikael Pawlo, in Professor Fisher and the Red Eye, comments on the news of the professor's proposal of a system where "the creator of a recording would register it with the U.S. Copyright Office and would receive, in return, a unique file name, which would be used to track Internet transmissions of the work. The government would tax devices and services used to gain access to digital entertainment. The primary target of such a tax would be ISP access." The professor's own draft explication of his proposal is online at Berkman Center.
Pawlo warns that a Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme and prohibition of copying for what would otherwise be "fair use" is implied in the proposal. He argues that such DRM would sacrifice privacy in favor of copyright protection. Pawlo argues instead for levies on recordable media, such as blank CD-Rs, with the resulting revenue being distributed to copyright proprietors by the collecting societies based upon statistical measures comparable to Nielsen ratings. Conceding that levies are less efficient than a DRM system, he favors their greater protection of individual privacy rights.
William Fisher is a professor at Harvard Law School and the director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
From "Unintended Consequences" at DougSimpson.com/blog
Posted by dougsimpson at August 5, 2003 08:58 AM | TrackBack