Debate 4/Affirmative

In Support of the Resolution

"Resolved: The outcome of the digital intellectual property crisis is crucial to whether or not the use of the Internet ultimately has a positive impact in terms of strengthening democracies."

Note: The outline for our debate should be on a separate page, I created a space here. But continue to dump resources on this page.

See below some preliminary research. I've attempted to categorize these resources in the context of the debate:

• General Resource Dump

-Podcast of Prof. Benkler at Berkman last year: Excellent stuff, almost too much. It's only a half-hour so please listen so that we can figure out the best ways to parse and deliver these themes in the debate.

-Center For Digital Democracy: Relevant links and resources.

-Disney law suit against 'Spank My Marketer': The "SpankMaker," located at http://www.spankmymarketer.com/, helps users create parodies of a controversial marketing campaign in connection with a Discovery television production. The online tool provides images from the marketing campaign and Discovery's corporate websites, and allows users to modify them with commentary. A lawyer for Discovery has demanded that the website operator remove the template, claiming it infringes Discovery's copyright and is used to defame the company. -EFF

• Digital IP and Digital History

Not only does the future of the Internet depend on the outcome of the IP debate, so does its past. If history, how it is recorded, and who has access to it are issues vital to a thriving democracy, then digital IP and its impact on archiving Internet material is important to the future of democracy.

-Internet archivists face heavy litigation as they struggle to document digital history

-Google Books and Fair Use A Lawrence Lessig video lecture on the Google Books project and the implications of copyright terms and fair use in the company's attempt to make the world's literature searchable.

-IP Laws and the Future of the Library I have only skimmed, from the abstract: "At the same time as we have been discovering the Internet's enormous potential to enhance access to information and revolutionize the ways libraries do business, the Internet's high profile in popular media has made it the focus of a wide spectrum of fears about the future. This paper focuses on pending proposals to amend copyright law to enhance the control copyright owners wield over the appearance of their works on digital networks. These proposals would stifle libraries' use of the Internet. Libraries and their supporters must participate in the copyright debate, and think creatively about new models for copyright."

-Berkman Center videos and podcasts on Free Culture and access to knowledge

• Threats to the Read-Write Web

If Web 2.0, enhanced 2-way communications technologies, and citizen engagement with media and technology are good things for democracy, then fuzzy digital IP laws surely are not. Antiquated IP laws also have a chilling effect on citizen engagement.

-Killer of Sheep An American classic that almost no American has ever seen. This is foundational to the argument because it is a sign of what could happen to citizen media produced with Web 2.0 technologies (Killer of Sheep was made pre-Internet but the analogy should be apparent). -NPR

-Citizen podcasting is great for democracy - yeah, good luck with that. Can we measure the chilling effect that an over litigious permissions process will have on the Internet's (and more broadly, Web 2.0 media's) impact on democracy? -Creative Commons

-Lawrence Lessig: "We are well on our way to producing a read only Internet." -Financial Times.

-Cease and Desist, insightful AND poetic - movie on the impact of IP litigation and creativity through technology.

-U.S. Copyright Office Summary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)

• The Need For Truly Digital IP Law

Has the Internet changed the way we create, produce, publish, and disseminate information? We can safely say 'probably.' So, does that mean we need to reevaluate notions of IP to better suit the new environment in which information is exchanged? Much of the debate over Digital IP is really over whether IP law needs to be specialized or wholly restructured when it comes to information on the Internet.

-On Copyright and Youtube Takedowns: Does the fact that companies have so much trouble enforcing copyright in the digital age mean the protection itself, how it is applied, and how all entities address it need to be updated?

-A ton of useful links from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

-Protecting Digital Intellectual Property: Means and Measurements. This book chapter outlines the ways in which we could in fact keep up w/ copyright and patent enforcement in the digital age by utilizing encryption and other enforcement technologies. Essentially, enforcement can keep up, but law can't. The author fears that patent laws in particular are antiquated and the related processes too slow for the digital age. Additionally, there is a sense in which software development is a revolutionary form of production (as opposed to industrial); patent clerks do not know enough about this form of production to effectively govern related patents and the production method itself may depend far too much on looser patent definitions than industrial production did.

-Significance of Globalized IP Regimes and International Harmonization I have only skimmed, but this seems to address the problematics of defining IP in the context of the World Wide Web.

-Why Information Can't Be Owned I haven't read this paper yet, but the abstract makes me think it will be relevant.