Media Wonk

An educated consumer? - August 3, 2007

Is consumer education the next battle ground in the copyright wars?

Certainly the content industries have made education a priority.

The MPAA has developed a multi-pronged “educational outreach” program aimed at college campuses as well as tots, seeking to inculcate good copyright hygiene early.

The RIAA has sued more than 20,000 Americans and has sought to enlist college and university administrators in an effort to stamp out campus downloading, which I suppose amounts to a sort of education campaign.

Even Congress has stepped up pressure on universities to make “respect for copyright” part of the core curriculum.

But the content companies may not have the field to themselves much longer.

The complaint filed with the FTC this week by the Computer & Communication Industry Assn. against a group of content owners, alleging intentional misrepresentations about the reach of copyright law--while probably a non-starter legally—reflects what looks like a growing backlash against the industry’s “public education” agenda.

“It's time that someone starting pushing back,” CCIA spokesman Will Rodger said.  “Copyrights are not chattel, like cars or houses or other kinds of real property. It's a limited set of rights, with a lot of exceptions, and we need to stop treating it like as if it were like any other kind of property.”

The complaint drew support from public interest groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, as well as from the Consumer Electronics Association, which has long tussled with content owners over where the draw the lines in copyright law.

“Many copyright warnings ignore consumer fair use rights and should be modified to reflect the true rights of consumers who lawfully acquire audio and video content,” CEA president Gary Shapiro said. “Now more than ever, it is essential that all stakeholders accurately educate consumers about our obligations—and our rights—under copyright law.”

It’s probably no accident that the complaint was filed by CCIA, a group that represents Google, among others, which is locked in litigation with Viacom over the extent of Google’s obligations under copyright law to police its YouTube video-sharing site.

According to American University law professor Peter Jaszi, “The majority of what you see in the realm of user-generated video falls comfortably and clearly within the historical boundaries of fair use. But right now, there’s the perception that most of what they’re doing is illegal.”

How did that perception get there?

According to Jaszi and fellow AU prof. Patricia Aufderheide, by a deliberate campaign of “mis-education” by the content industries.

“One conclusion we came to in the study is that people aren’t confused by ignorance, they’re confused by active mis-education,” Aufderheide said. “They’re getting bad advice on copyright, including from their teachers. They’re being told that nearly everything you do with copyrighted material is piracy.”  

Whence the bad advice?

“I think the industry is part of the misapprehension,” Jaszi said. “Not so much by any particular action but by a long communications campaign to convey the idea of nearly everything you do with copyrighted material is theft. But people are also getting that message from authority figures, from their teachers. Grade school teachers, school librarians, filmmaking class teachers, have all been encouraged to convey the message that anything you do with copyright material that isn’t expressly authorized is theft.”

The professors’ solution?

“We in the communications area, as well as law professors, are working on ways to convey a better sense of the balancing acts involved in copyright,” Aufderheide said. “The industry’s efforts at mis-education have been very effective. Every year RIAA and the MPAA send someone to the university film and video departments to make sure everyone knows that borrowing is theft.”

Call it the coming battle for hearts and minds.

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