The rise of the digital technology ‘Meritocracy’: Legal rules and their impact

Abstract

For many thousands of years, human beings have used various technologies to record thoughts and ideas. The technology used has, over time, become increasingly complex. Today, we use complex digital technologies such as computers. The increasing complexity of technology requires that individuals have increasingly high levels of skill in using such technology. However, many of the abilities of right holders to use digital technology are no longer related to the use of technology to create works. Increasingly, it is focusing around the ability of individuals to circumvent Digital Rights Management (DRM) mechanisms. Both digital technology and legal rules are the cause of this. A solution to the problem might be for legal rules to turn copyright from a ‘negative right not to copy’ into a ‘positive right to copy’.

Notes

1 See, inter alia: http://witcombe.sbc.edu/ARTHprehistoric.html#general; http://donsmaps.com/cavepaintings.html; and http://www.students.sbc.edu/ogborn03/prehistoricart.htm

2 See infra p. 212.

3 See infra p. 216.

4 See infra p. 217.

5 Putting to one side the natural ability of the artists which could also be a factor.

6 E. Eisenstein (1979) The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), p. 121.

7 M. Rose (1993) Authors and Owners (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press).

8 See inter alia J.P. Barlow (1994) The economy of ideas, Wired Magazine 2.03. Available online at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/economy.ideas_pr.html

9 Tecmo, Inc. and Tecmo, Ltd. vs. Mike Greiling, Will Glynn, and Does 1 through 100[US District Court for Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, 05C 0394]. Available online at: http://www.joegratz.net/files/tecmo.pdf

10 See inter alia B. Shneiderman (2002) Leonardo's Laptop (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press).

11 There are programs available such as freeme.exe, but these programs only chip away at the edges of the protection. In freeme's case: ‘It works only with the most recent version of Microsoft's DRM technology. … You must already have a valid license to listen to the song before cracking the anti-piracy code’. See Anonymous (2001) at: http://www.infosatellite.com/news/2001/10/j201001ms_screamer.html

12 E.g. Valve Software recently banned 20,000 users for breaking their EULAs. See BBC News (2004) at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4041289.stm

13 ProCD, Inc. vs. Zeidenberg[86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir. 1996)].

14 Word Intellectual Property Organisation Copyright Treaty 1994, Article 11. Available online at: http://www.wipo.int/documents/en/diplconf/distrib/94dc.htm

15 17 U.S.C. §1201(b), §1201(3) contains the equivalent (and very similar) provision for rights controls.

16 17 U.S.C. §1201 (a)(1)(A): ‘No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title’. Note that there is no corresponding section on rights controls. However, DRM mechanisms are nearly always ‘access controls’, but for further details, see J. Griffin (2005) The changing nature of authorship: Why copyright law must focus on the increased role of technology, Intellectual Property Quarterly, 2, pp. 135 – 154.

17 See inter alia E. Ferrill & E. Moyer, A survey of digital watermarking. Available online at: http://Elizabeth.ferill.com/papers/watermarking. An example of a commercially available system such as this may be found at: http://www.digimarc.com/watermark/imagebridge/faq.asp#quest20

18 E.g. it is extremely difficult to find functioning versions of Windows XP hacks, or Half-Life 2 hacks, from p2p networks (e.g. inter alia search by the author using KaZaA in June 2005).

19 See inter alia 321 Studios vs. MGM Studios[United States District Court Northern District of California, No. C 02-1955 SI, 19 February 2004].

20 There are notable exceptions, however—especially the Safe Disc mechanism, which users could disabled by pressing down the SHIFT key on computers when the audio CD was inserted into the CD drive.

21 See Note 17. Similarly, it is not possible in many photocopies to make colour copies of banknotes. The photocopier will refuse to copy the note. This is the same technology at work. For further details, see J. Honeyball, Opinion, PC Pro (April 2004), p. 304.

22 See inter alia S. Vaidhyanathan (2004) The Anarchist in the Library (New York, Basic Books), pp. 76 – 80.

23 See inter alia Anonymous (2005). Available online at: http://www.greatdeal.co.uk/Operation/ItemLookup/ItemId/B00005Y3OJ/

24 See discussion in Slashdot.org (2005) ‘Tecmo Wins Naked Kasumi Case’. Available online at: http://www.slashdot.org

25 Note that the copying alleged in the complaint is private in nature.

26 Chamberlain Group, Inc. vs. Skylink Technologies, Inc.[381 F.3d 1178 (October 2004)].

27 L. Lessig (2004) Free Culture (New York, Penguin), p. 61, building upon the ideas in E. Felton & A. Appel (2000) Technological access control interferes with noninfringing scholarship, Communications of the Association for Computer Machinery, 43(9), pp. 21 – 23.

28 See generally Note 7.

29 W. Fisher (2004) Promises to Keep (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press), p. 31.

30 Universal City Studios Inc. vs. Corley[273 F.3d 429 (2^nd Cir. 2001), at p. 459].

31 See J. Griffin (2005) The ‘secret path’ of Grokster and Corley: Avoiding liability for copyright infringement, Journal of Computer, Media and Telecommunications Law, 10(5), pp. 147 – 151.