Cornell hosted last week a fascinating (and entertaining) panel (
RealAudio stream) on copyright, featuring three content industry execs, one from Napster versus, and Siva Vaidhyanathan (of NYU) and Fred von Lohmann (of EFF), both articulate voices for a more balanced view of copyright.
Three observations:
- Fred is an extremely articulate and effective debater. Nice job, Fred!
- Some of the guys from the content industry side were downright contemptuous of the students asking questions. They're not going to win friends either among the general public or among lawmakers that way. I was very surprised that these guys, professionals whose job it is to advocate for the content industry's point of view, aren't better trained to respond to unfriendly questions without hurting their own cause.
- I was most heartened by the questions students asked. Many were articulate and all portrayed a point of view deeply skeptical of the content industry's arguments. If the general population of college students thinks about this issue even a fraction as much - and I think they do - then this movement will grow inevitably stronger as these students become engineers, artists, or policymakers.
At one point one of the content industry executives actually said that an environment where innovative companies have to defend their products in court against possible entertainment industry lawsuits isn't so bad, since after all they already usually have to fight numerous patent lawsuits. Nuisance patent lawsuits are, of course, one of the greatest impediments to individuals innovating or creating startups without the protection of a big company legal department. These guys just don't understand that an ideal economy isn't one where a small number of large economic actors of different types are the only ones to engage in innovation or creativity.
