Copyright and free speech in conflict

Some very interesting copyright events being reported this weekend. The most concerning is from the New York Times, who report that Microsoft lawyers are co-operating with Russian police to suppress environmental and civil society campaign groups, by taking the groups to court for violations of Microsoft copyright.

The strategy seems to be to pick government enemies exclusively, and raid their premises to find copyright violations; ie, copied, unlicensed software. Since illicit copying of software is rampant in Russia, the chances of success are high, and the penalties are conveniently very severe.

Over in Mexico, environmental protesters are apparently also being attacked through copyright to censor their materials. A Youtube video was apparently temporarily taken down as the result of a regional government complaining their copyright had been violated by reproducing their animation of a planned highway.

Of course, copyright usually includes user rights for criticism and news reporting, which ought to cover uses like this: but that does not seem to stop people from trying, and Youtube and others will automatically remove material when a copyright violation is reported. You can generally get it put back up, so long as you accept that you may be taken to court.

I wonder if this is the first time that John Whitelegg, Lancaster’s transport guru, has been censored by Mexican officials?

Another example of similar behaviour came from EMI in the UK this summer, when they asked that Youtube pull “Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)” (although it keeps being reposted). Is this a violation of freedom of speech? I think it is. The song is a satirical comment on an overblown, overexposed song that really needed to be ridiculed, as well as on Newport.

As has been said elsewhere, this probably would not happen in the USA, where there is a well-established right to satirise and parody copyrighted material, because it is such a clear free speech right. Yet EMI so far has been able to get away with this: in a country that thinks of itself as the home of satire.

What these cases illustrate to me is our vulnerability to abuse of copyright rules well beyond the rights it is meant to protect. This is through a combination of the sheer scope of copyright, covering just about anything you might find online; and the power of corporations and sometimes governments to enforce their legal rights. With ACTA, the DEA and term extension still being pushed, we have real reasons to push back.