Patrick Ross

THE COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE

It's official! Yesterday on Capitol Hill we launched a 29-member organization called the Copyright Alliance (which by the way has already grown to 31 in the last 24 hours). What are we? We are creators, distributors and producers across the copyright spectrum. We are artists' unions and guilds, large and small production and distribution companies, sports leagues and trade associations. We are creators and distributors from an array of industries: amateur and professional sports leagues, book publishing, business software, graphic artists, magazines, movies, music, newspapers, photography, radio, television and video games. We are committed to providing education and resources to promote creativity, jobs and growth through copyright.

I am honored to be the executive director of this new organization. I believe collectively we can make a real difference as we bring our positive message of copyright to Capitol Hill, academia, the media and the public at large. We all enjoy creative works, and we all want to see those works continue to be created, so we all want copyright to continue to thrive.

I'll be focusing my efforts on the Copyright Alliance so I don't anticipate posting here in the near future, but I will leave it up as a resource for anyone who wishes to learn a little more about me. If you wish to contact me just drop me a line at pross@copyrightalliance.org.

More to Come!

As some may already know, I recently stepped down from my position at The Progress & Freedom Foundation and its affiliated Center for the Study of Digital Property (IPcentral.info). I'm afraid I can't share the details of my new adventure just yet, but I promise it will be something of note. Stay tuned!

Media Transformation: VON Policy Summit

Yesterday I spoke at the VON Policy Summit, a conference traditionally focused on VoIP-related issues that now is looking at online media as well. My reaction to the panel, and to the show, can be found on the PFF blog. In short, is Internet video the next VoIP? Yes and no.

South by Southwest: Live From Austin

This music festival, SXSW, is everything I expected and more. Read about the bands here, an attempt to turn artists against their own self-interests here, and the panel on which I spoke here. So far, the most entertaining show has been Dash Rip Rock, a "rockabilly cowpunk" band that, among other songs, has a tune based on "Let's go to the Hop" that goes "Let's go Smoke some Pot." They performed selections from a cowpunk opera they did based on Dante's Inferno with Hell as the South, called "Hillbilly Hell."

Defending Authors

Any digital content can be infringed, and any site can set up a YouTube-style format to facilitate that theft. A site called eSnips.com is doing that for a lot of media, particularly novels. I exposed their operation last week on PFF's IPCentral blog, and dozens of published authors leaped to action against the site. Maybe this one can be nipped in the bud before it grows and sells itself to a search engine for $1.6 billion.

Defending Musicians and Songwriters on G4TV

The RIAA is stepping up enforcement efforts on college campuses regarding infringement of copyright, namely students downloading (and more importantly uploading) music they didn't pay for. This is being done on the universities' high-speed networks and is illegal. You would think the universities wouldn't tolerate such behavior, but all too often they look away. I'm glad the RIAA is investing the time and effort to find these violators and is trying to work with universities to stop this behavior. It is also bending over backwards to avoid having to sue these students. I defended the crackdown on unauthorized file-sharing on college campuses on the G4TV network's "Attack of the Show." The clip can be seen here.

Civility Online

When I launched this blog almost a year ago I made a vow to remain civil. I hope I've adhered to the ten tenets of that manifesto, but I'm sure I've fallen short at times. Still, it's clear to anyone that the Internet isn't the most civil of places.

The first time I was a victim of an online attack was in the early 1990s on a Usenet discussion board on The X-Files (yes, I was a real geek). Then, as now, I used my own name online. Someone using an anonymous handle started attacking me mercilessly for some trivial thing; I think he had a different theory on who the "smoking man" was. Another Usenet veteran, Mike Godwin, had a law named after him (among cybergeeks anyway) that says as a flame war goes on the probablility of someone being called a Nazi approaches one. So this isn't new.

But in this era of e-mail, listservs and blogs, it seems the flames are hotter than ever. Why? I've never been called a Nazi to my face, no matter how heated a discussion got, and in the world of think tanks, discussions can get very heated indeed. The New York Times has an answer and it has a lot to do with brain chemistry, as well as the unique characteristics of online communication. You can read more in my blog entry on IPCentral.

The Business of Show Business

I had the honor recently of attending a fantastic conference organized by MPAA titled "The Business of Show Business." It was so refreshing to go to a Washington conference and hear people from the market. I heard from studio executives, actors, directors, producers and entrepreneurs, and learned a lot about the impact of the motion picture industry on our economy. I posted some blog entries on the event on the IPCentral blog (here, here and here).

Defending Markets in The American Magazine

I've written about my impressions of the Consumer Electronics Show, and how visiting policy advocates were eager to blame copyright for we consumers not having the perfect home media experience, while CE manufacturers had no problem with copyright and wanted creators to get paid. I wrote about this dichotomy in an op-ed for The American Magazine.

Reflections on CES

I'm back from the Consumer Electronics Show, and am almost recovered from the overload of stimuli. I chronicled my time there on the PFF and IPCentral weblogs.

I observed that the IP debate is migrating to mobile devices, acknowledged that content and CE will have to find a way to work together, wrote about goofy predictions of the end of DRM in 2007, and noted that in fact DRM is alive and well and embraced by many in CE. I had some thoughts on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's remarks on network neutrality, wondered about the sense of proportion society places on technology, and shared my thoughts on Bill Gates' presentation as well as one of the silliest products I saw on display.