We're very pleased to announce today that global telecommunications provider Verizon Communications Inc. has joined our coalition.  As readers of this blog know, Arts+Labs is made up of leaders in the technology, content, and creative communities to move the ball forward in creating a thriving digital society, so Verizon--a demonstrated leader in bringing access to broadband to communities across the nation--is a perfect fit. 

This is a great opportunity for our coalition.  Cross-industry collaboration is crucial in addressing Internet-related issues, so we're encouraged to see that new companies--industry leaders, no less--are joining us to help reach our goal of enhanced and intelligent Internet infrastructure; safe, legal and accessible distribution of content; and respect and recognition of copyright. 

We're sure to see some great new things out of this collaboration!

This afternoon, Arts+Labs filed reply comments in the FCC's ongoing inquiry on creating a "National Broadband Plan for Our Future."  As the following excerpt indicates, Arts+Labs reiterated in its reply comments that the broadband strategy should be "a matter of practical priorities:"

Importantly, we also must remember that the first goal of our broadband strategy should be to connect every American to broadband service.   Other attributes of connectivity are attractive and important, but we believe premature until we first deal with the more important job of inclusivity. 

As Google observed in putting connectivity ahead of ultra-high speeds in comments filed on June 8:  "Our first priority should be to get all Americans online, enjoying always-on broadband capabilities."   
 
Similarly, Internet Innovation Alliance co-chair Larry Irving remarked just a week ago when discussing the benefits of connectivity:  "But none of this is possible without adoption; you have to log on to reap - and even to recognize - the benefits." 
 
In sum, we urge the Commission to design a national strategy that is grounded in the practical, to listen to what consumers want, and to drive broadband adoption by focusing on meeting the needs of real consumers in the real world.   Esoteric arguments about Internet culture, management, and international rankings may seem to matter in Washington, D.C., but what users in Peoria and Scranton really care about is safe access to affordable broadband
service, and the quality content, information and services that creators make available.  
 

Following up on his recent ArtLab post responding to the Pirate Party representative's attack on copyright, the Financial Times has published a letter from Songwriter Guild President Rick Carnes.  Carnes writes...

Sir, Christian Engström of the Pirates party ("Copyright law threatens our online freedom", July 7) is absolutely correct in his assumption that Elvis's music does not belong to him. It belongs to great songwriters like Otis Blackwell, who wrote so many of Elvis's big hits such as "All shook up" and "Return to sender", and who fought for years to protect and strengthen US copyright law. Without copyright, Mr Blackwell would never have been able to create that "common cultural heritage" that Mr Engström wants to think of as his own.

He forgets that it isn't technology that "opens up new possibilities" - it is the people who create the technology, the very people who earn their livings from patents and copyrights.

Carnes also notes that "The real "restriction" on Mr Engström's access to an Elvis song is a paltry 99 cents for a download on iTunes. For that he wants us to abandon the copyright and patent laws that have been constructed over hundreds of years."

Rick Carnes, President of the Songwriters Guild of America, responds to the Financial Times article, "Copyright laws threaten our online freedom", by Christian Engstrom, Pirate Party Member of European Parliament.

If you search for Elvis Presley in Wikipedia, you will find a lot of text and a few pictures that have been cleared for distribution. But you will find no music and no film clips, due to copyright restrictions. What we think of as our common cultural heritage is not "ours" at all.

If 99 cents for a music file restricts your access to culture you probably have larger issues to deal with in your life than listening to old Elvis Presley records.

Technology opens up possibilities; copyright law shuts them down. This was never the intent. Copyright was meant to encourage culture, not restrict it. This is reason enough for reform.

We had thousands of years without copyright. It's called the 'Dark Ages'. Copyright has undoubtedly encouraged culture. Just look back at the explosion of culture in the twentieth century. The major growth of American music didn't begin until the US began to enforce the copyrights of other nations and restrict the access of 'free' music into the US. That allowed the US songwriters to create what we now call the 'Golden Age' of American music.

File-sharing occurs whenever one individual sends a file to another. The only way to even try to limit this process is to monitor all communication between ordinary people. [...] If you want to stop people doing this, you must remove the right to communicate in private. There is no other option. Society has to make a choice.

To claim that 'Society has to make a choice' between total anonymity or totalitarian control is naive at best. The right choice is neither.  Instead, we need to find a some sweet spot in between. It is simple to conflate the ideas of privacy and theft. I could, for instance, claim that it is my right to wear a ski mask into a bank in order to keep my identity private from the prying eye of the bank security camera. The bank security guards might take exception to that... for good reason. Laws are passed based on history, common sense and hopefully the common good. The internet is a new medium and the world is still trying to come to grips with the balance between privacy and security on the internet. Let's give it a chance by toning down the rhetoric.

The world is at a crossroads. The internet and new information technologies are so powerful that no matter what we do, society will change. But the direction has not been decided. The technology could be used to create a Big Brother society beyond our nightmares, where governments and corporations monitor every detail of our lives. [...]  The same technology could instead be used to create a society that embraces spontaneity, collaboration and diversity. Where the citizens are no longer passive consumers being fed information and culture through one-way media, but are instead active participants collaborating on a journey into the future.

The world is not standing 'at a crossroad'. We will not face the apocalypse if people have to pay for music again. Uncontrollable forces of evil will not be unleashed if you have to subscribe to a digital music service and pay a few bucks a month. What could and already is causing some serious cultural damage is the failure to enforce copyright law on the internet. As a songwriter I have lived out that vision of a world where citizens aren't simply passive consumers. I made my own music and when people liked it they bought it and I created a career from it. Then my career was stolen by internet music looters. The real threat isn't from 'Big Brother' it is from your little brother stealing music on the family computer. He is destroying the future of music for all of us, including himself.

The internet it still in its infancy, but already we see fantastic things appearing as if by magic. [...] But where technology opens up new possibilities, our intellectual property laws do their best to restrict them.

It isn't technology that 'opens new possibilities' it is the people who create the technology, the very people who earn their livings from patents and copyrights. Computer code, songs, art work, and drug patents don't appear 'as if by magic'. People invest their lives, their dreams, their money, their time and all their hopes for the future in them.

We intend to devote all our time and energy to protecting the fundamental civil liberties on the net and elsewhere. Seven per cent of Swedish voters agreed with us that it makes sense to put other political differences aside in order to ensure this.

Before you start claiming 7% is a mandate I think I would consult the other 93% of the electorate. They might not be that enthused about in putting their differences aside, especially the artists and inventors and the millions who are working in IP based industries.

Will we let our fears lead us towards a dystopian Big Brother state, or will we have the courage and wisdom to choose an exciting future in a free and open society? The information revolution is happening here and now. It is up to us to decide what future we want.

Once again, the choice is not limited to dystopia or utopia. We just need a world of sensible laws where commerce and community can both survive. We will get there eventually but not by dividing the world into Us vs. Them. To find the solution we need practical people that will engage in a reasonable dialog, not ideologues who want us to read their Manifesto and join their revolution.

The writer is the Pirate party's member of the European parliament.

The comments are from an old broken down songwriter, member of no party, in fact, not even invited to the party...

- Rick Carnes, President, Songwriters Guild of America

I haven't been able to get my hands on a review copy of Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, so I'll pass on making any commentary about its contents, but I do want to point something out that I found interesting in Mike Masnick's review of the book at Techdirt.

Mike discusses the various ways in which "free" can be sustainable, including bundling, cross-subsidizing, and other typical solutions to goods with a declining marginal cost.  But he also mentions non-monetary payment, which Anderson apparently talks about a bit in the book:

You can pay people to write -- just as Encyclopaedia Britannica does. Or you can get other people to write for non-monetary rewards -- as Wikipedia does. The latter is a lot more efficient a solution, and the difference in productivity and output is quite evident. It's not saying that there is no business in paying people to write, but it's a very different business than the indirect business model, and it's the economic efficiencies that come into play.

Money, at times, is a transactional lubricant. It helps us make transactions faster than bartering three pigs for two trees, a goat and a bushel of corn. At other times, though, money can be friction. It can limit transactional effectiveness by acting as a kind of crutch. That's where non-monetary benefits can suffice (or do a much better job) in rewarding people for their actions. In those scenarios money gets in the way and actually makes a transaction less efficient.

Fair enough.

But what I found interesting is that at the end of the post, Mike addresses the accusations of plagiarism that have swirled around the book and concludes, "If Chris can take the works of others and make it into something more valuable, aren't we all better off because of it?"  We very well may be.

But even if building on someone else's work is a net good and carries a price tag of $0.00, there is a customary form of non-monetary payment in formal writing --the kind of payment that is critical to Mike's and Anderson's arguments.  That payment is proper attribution.  Academics have standardized formats for attribution; bloggers offer "hat tips" to attribute sources and ideas; and twitterers "retweet" clever or insightful comments to credit the author: attribution is the "transactional lubricant" that rewards good ideas in written work.

Mike says he "would have preferred it if that such mistakes in attribution did not happen, mainly because it's a distraction, but the issue is a minor one." He also says, "I don't think it takes away from the quality of the overall work at all."

But the very opposite should be true if we accept the idea that non-monetary payment is the best way to compensate authors for the use of their words and ideas.  The book is certainly still valuable if for no other reason than that it sheds light on many of the difficult business decisions that face content creators, but it should definitely weigh in our assessment that the author doesn't recognize a real-world application of the very concept he espouses.