HD-DVD Key post mortem
There’s a lot of post-mortem analysis of the cyber-revolt that intimidated Digg.com into their current stance of allowing an HD-DVD key to be left on it ssite. It’s not over at all. Digg and the AACSLA will have a lot more interaction in the future.
There are three views I’ll highlight here:
(1) REPORTING. The NY Times got a part of the reporting wrong re: Wikipedia. They mentioned firms getting “letters” from the AACSLA:
Last month, lawyers for the trade group began sending out cease-and-desist letters, claiming that Web pages carrying the code violated its intellectual property rights under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Letters were sent to Google, which runs a blog network at blogspot.com, and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. [ref]
According to all reliable sources, the Wikimedia Foundation has never received anything from the AACSLA on this matter. Though the Times acknowledged this in the “Corrections” part of the site [ref], they should include a correction on the article page itself. Also, the IHT still has the erroneous claim, as of this writing. [1, 2]
(2) MEATSPACE. Fellow blogger Ryan Shaw points out these cyber-revolters should actually engage in something useful in the real world to effect change, instead of simply cyber-wilding:
If the Slashdotters and Diggers of the world spent their time engaged in real activism, instead of getting their kicks being part of a mob, maybe we’d have seen some progress on DRM issues by now. But that would involve doing more than just clicking on posts while you’re in your parents’ basement waiting for torrents to download. [ref]
(3) THE VALUE OF DIALOGUE. On Wikipedia, there has been a running debate whether the call by admins “in the field” to delete the HD-DVD key “on sight” was correct.
In Wikipedia-related mailing list debates, some thought having the key in articles was legitimate. Some expressed disgust about the DMCA making “a number” illegal, while others said the Wikimedia Foundation board should chime in with an “OFFICE” action (which would actually be an incorrect use of that doctrine). But for now, the policy holds — the insertion of the full key is treated as spam and disruption, because it likely runs afoul of DMCA law.
As for the rationale, Kat Walsh (User:Mindspillage) had an excellent distillation of the issues. It shows why Wikipedians, as a deliberative and thoughtful community that thinks VotingIsEvil [1,2], came to a more reasoned stance than Digg.
If deleting something illegal is “out of process”, process is broken and should be ignored. (And possibly changed. Either way, the result should be the same.)
I see posts further in the thread going on about how admins can’t be trusted to determine what’s illegal. This is no argument, however, for not requiring that what actually is illegal shouldn’t be deleted. If someone makes a mistake in judging that, correct it. The world doesn’t end if something is down for a few hours or a few days that in the long run shouldn’t be.
Look, I’m no fan of the DMCA anti-circumvention rules; neither, I suspect, are most of us. But Wikipedia is not a venue for unrestricted free speech or for copyfight activism through civil disobedience; that’s just not what we do. We’re a venue to create an encyclopedia under a free content license, as an alternative to the content only available within the current heavy-handed and wasteful system of copyright, and we’re actively trying to encourage more content be created with the same freedoms — which people on all sides of these disputes should be able to support.
Hosting illegal content doesn’t help us do that. For one thing, it would divert our resources from our primary goal; for another, it’s just not what we set out to do. We delete things we believe to be illegal; this is not a new development, though it strikes more of a nerve in some cases than others.
To the extent that Wikipedia is fighting the current system of copyright, we do it through making alternatives viable — accepting only free content that can’t legally be locked up with DRM, using only formats that don’t require proprietary software or patent licenses. That method is weakened if people try to take on the current system
head-on through the site, also.
(Reproduced with the permission of Kat Walsh. She posted in her own capacity and not that of a Wikimedia Foundation board member.)
