Copyright Taxes Are Killing Democracy

I have a question for Bill Moyers, but before I get to that...

America was founded by patriots who were sick and tired of, "taxation without representation." Why today do we find no patriots defending America from draconian and unconstitutional copyright taxes. Our collective imagination, our creative endeavors, our soul as a nation -- and our ability to compete in the new digital century -- is locked up on private corporate balance sheets and we find ourselves economically disadvantaged and fighting a corporate occupation as did our forefathers who fought against the British Monarchy and the British East India Company.

One of the most egregious acts of pro-copyright, anti-Americanism came during the Clinton presidency.

Law scholar Chris Sprigman, in an article published in 2002 writes:

"Prompted perhaps by the Disney group's lavish donations of campaign cash -- more than $6.3 million in 1997-98, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics -- Congress passed and President Clinton signed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. The CTEA extended the term of protection by 20 years for works copyrighted after January 1, 1923. Works copyrighted by individuals since 1978 got "life plus 70" rather than the existing "life plus 50". Works made by or for corporations (referred to as "works made for hire") got 95 years. Works copyrighted before 1978 were shielded for 95 years, regardless of how they were produced."

America is the most rapaciously copyright-taxed country in the world and these high copyright taxes (aka term extensions) hurt us as a people -- with a shocking example being the NASDAQ crash of 2,000. America at that time was poised to become a 21st century digital powerhouse with majority ownership of a global fiber optic network that was helping spur 20 - 30 % annual growth in internet traffic. It never happened due to Bush's appeasement of the copyright cartel (and OPEC).

Keep in mind that when America was founded, copyright monopoly tax lasted only 14 years. Any more monopoly-time allocated to copyright holders was viewed as incompatible with the public good and anti-democratic.

The American egalitarian broadband revolution was ready to explode in the year 2,000, something our Founding Fathers would have loved. But it never happened because the heavily subsidized copyright industry lobbied against it. As a result, the NASDAQ plummeted, taking 5 trillion in investor wealth with it. To 'fix' the problem the Fed inflated the real estate bubble. Now that bubble has burst and the only way America can pay its bills, needing to borrow from abroad more than 3 billion dollars a day to do so, is to invade, slaughter, and colonize our creditors.

I agree with Bill Moyers, who said in his recent speech at the National Conference for Media Reform, that freedom of the press is the linchpin issue for all progressives and activists. So why did he never mention the linchpin-of-linchpin issue of copyright reform?

Moyers made the point of connecting lack of media freedom with lack of democratic freedom. "The fourth estate has become a fifth column," he said, implying that embedded Pentagon-hired spin-assassins on the battlefield and on TV are holding democracy hostage.

Agreed.

Moyers said that the current crisis in journalism in America is a once in a 200 years crisis.

Agreed.

He also named a monarch; naturalized U.S. citizen Rupert Murdoch, as a fountainhead of dangerous, un-American, imperial media aspirations.

Agreed.

Let's add all this up...

Democracy under threat by monarchs, plus draconian, monopoly-subsidizing taxes, plus a common belief that resistance, not compliance, is our only hope.

Can anyone explain to me why Bill Moyers is not advocating a digital insurrection against the corporate copyright occupation destroying our press freedom and Democracy?

If Bill Moyers truly believed a captive press held hostage by 'a fifth column' threatens America's freedom why not call for a global boycott of copyright -- with a universal call to download immorally copyrighted material outside of the channels controlled by the abusive copyright cartel -- as a way to assert American independence.

If Moyers is right, than the choice for true patriotic Americans is clear. I've listened to Moyers speech a few times and it seems to me as though he is carrying the message of a 21st century, digital Paul Revere.

UPDATE:

Further evidence of the copyright cartel's attempt to shut down freedom and democracy in Ameirca and on the Internet;

Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic

UPDATE:

I forwarded this blog to Lawrence Lessig, this is his reply.

Lawrence Lessig to Max Keiser: "this is brilliant. it is precisely the question I had when watching his speech. when is public broadcasting going to become PUBLIC."

Lessig
Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610

Follow Max Keiser on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maxkeiser

Comments

[salimfadhley]

I've often argued that faced with this kind of digital tyrany it is our duty to rebel: The weapons of this rebellion will not be shovels and shot-guns - it will be bit-torrent and encryption tools that cut into the corrupt commercial media's profits.

Next time you have a choice of going to see a movie in the theater or buying a DVD of the latest action blockbuster think again: You are putting good money into an industry that is funding the MPAA, RIAA and other organizations that lobby government against the best interests of you (the customer).

If you love Lost or BattleStar Galactica - dont subscribe to cable - those cable companies are trying to kill off net neutrality. Is a few episodes of your favorite saga worth ruining the Internet for your kids? Heck no.

The only ethical thing to do is pirate the content as it is the only way to guarantee that you are not funding this continued attack on freedom of media.

[scottellington]

That policy authorizes and validates a permanent war on piracy waged by studios, networks, ISPs developers, and government.

It also dams the revenue trickle that wends its way to talent and content creators, past the IP owners and the various agents of tyranny.

Stealing from pirates is a reasonable course of action, but it won't repair the corruption in a badly broken system.

[andygaus]

Copyrights of 14-year duration were more reasonable when people were less likely to live past 60. But certainly copyrights should not last any longer than life + 20 or 75 total.

At the same time, the question of copyrights becomes increasingly moot, the more that intellectual and artistic and musical content becomes available digitally. It costs a lot of money to record a CDs worth of songs, and it's a problem if there's no way to control sales--and when it comes to digital property, there finally isn't.

Fairness isn't fairness to the public domain or fairness to creators and copyrights holders. Fairness isn't "to" one side or the other: fairness is a balance. It is unfair that Show Boat should still be a copyrighted work long after its creators have been gathered to their fathers, but it is also a crisis that from now on we have no way of assuring that people who pour their own labor and expense into creating something beautiful will be able to reap any benefit. Bands are increasingly making money from touring, so I guess the rule is: if you're not prepared to go on the road, better not write any music.

[boogieandjive]

Apparently, a similarly oppressive copyright system was over thrown in 1774.

http://www.slaw.ca/2006/04/25/publishers-and-copyright/

Quote:

"From the late 16th century London publishers ran a tightly knit cabal they called the Stationers’ Company. They agreed to recognize one another’s publication rights in perpetuity, and no books in the realm fell outside their grasp. The crown was complicit in their monopoly: they helped it censor, license and tax, and keep dangerous ideas from the rabble. The system eventually crumbled. By the 18th century, others outside the publishers’ circle didn’t share its convenient vision and issued their own competing editions. The publishers went to court. True, legislatures by then had handed them up to 28 years copyright protection, but the publishers, like Oliver Twist, wanted more. They pressed the judges to ignore the legislatures and give them a perpetual copyright as well.

They lost in grand style. The supreme courts of England, Scotland and then (in the early 19th century) the US rejected their claims. In England, Lord Camden called their case a “heterogenous heap of rubbish which is only calculated to confound your lordships and mislead the argument”. In the florid rhetoric of the time, Camden dismissed the idea of a common law copyright in published works, in these words:

[boogieandjive]

. . . continued . . .

Lord Camden's ruling went as such:

'If there be anything in the world … common to all mankind, science and learning are in their nature publici juris [public domain], and they ought to be as free and general as air or water. They forget their Creator, as well as their fellow-creatures, who wish to monopolize his noblest gifts and greatest benefits. Why did we enter society at all but to enlighten one another’s minds and improve our faculties for the common welfare of the species? … The booksellers of late years have forestalled the market and become engrossers [i.e., monopolists]. If therefore the monopoly is sanctified by your lordships’ judgment, exorbitant prices must be the consequence; for every valuable author will be as much monopolized by them as Shakespeare is at present… This perpetuity now contended for is as odious and as selfish as any other; it deserves reprobation and is become as intolerable. Knowledge and science are not things to be bound in such cobweb chains (Donaldson v. Beckett, 1774).'

[boogieandjive]

Down with monarchy! So says a UN report today calling on the UK to abolish their monarchy:

http://tinyurl.com/5ahpp2

[scottellington]

"Can anyone explain to me why Bill Moyers is not advocating a digital insurrection against the corporate copyright occupation destroying our press freedom and Democracy?"

I'm going to guess that inciting people to commit acts of piracy is against the law.

But maybe I've misunderstood what you're asking Bill Moyers to ask the rest of us to do.

[maxkeiser]

If Moyers is right, than the choice for true patriotic Americans is clear. I've listened to Moyers speech a few times and it seems to me as though he is carrying the message of a 21st century, digital Paul Revere.

[scottellington]

"When the state
becomes the guardian of power and privilege to the neglect of justice for the
people who have neither power nor privilege, you can no longer claim to
have a representative government."

The transcript of his NCMR speech is now available here:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2008/06/bill_moyers_speech_at_the_nati_1.html

He sites a great number of current absurdities that insult common sense (reminding me of Thomas Paine, more than Chicken Little), but no calls for insurrection, illegality nor even discourtesy against incumbent power. I hear him saying that special interests and their $uper-$pecial circumstances have managed to seriously damage several systems that work reasonably well (and that citizens who can/will repair those systemic injuries may be more effective if they aren't incarcerated).
"The choice of true patriotic Americans..." is to look VERY carefully at anybody who uses that kind of language to promote...anything.
I agree with you absolutely, that practical copyright puts an abominable lock on the cultural treasury. I don't see support for your conclusions in Moyers' speech, which says there's a LOT of important work to do before we reach the Disney Vault.

[DavidJames]

Crippling our information economy with usurious copyright laws is becoming an economic disaster.

You can be very sure that some of the fastest growing economies in the world are not being held back by unreasonable copyright laws. China, India, and most countries in the Pacific basin have very weak copyright enforcement.

Any software tool that you can think of, is available for the price of a writeable DVD in these countries. Individuals and small businesses in these countries have a much lower cost of coming up the learning curve.