Hillary Clinton’s campaign has posted an extremely long document listing all of Clinton’s talking points on the subjects of “Technology and Innovation.” And while the document is long enough to make your eyes glaze over, it does touch on a couple of points of particular interest to TeleRead.
For example, there’s this, about copyright. Clinton calls for an
Effective Copyright Policy: Copyrights encourage creativity and incentivize innovators to invest knowledge, time, and money into the generation of myriad forms of content. However, the copyright system has languished for many decades, and is in need of administrative reform to maximize its benefits in the digital age. Hillary believes the federal government should modernize the copyright system by unlocking—and facilitating access to—orphan works that languished unutilized, benefiting neither their creators nor the public. She will also promote open-licensing arrangements for copyrighted material and data supported by federal grant funding, including in education, science, and other fields. She will seek to develop technological infrastructure to support digitization, search, and repositories of such content, to facilitate its discoverability and use. And she will encourage stakeholders to work together on creative solutions that remove barriers to the seamless and efficient licensing of content in the U.S. and abroad.
Orphan works have been a subject of no small amount of contention over the years—just look at how the Google Books settlement hinged on letting Google sell ebooks of orphan works, leading Judge Chin to throw it out for overreach. It’s nice to see a Presidential candidate finally taking public notice of the controversy and pledging to try to do something about it.
But it’s unclear exactly how much Clinton will be able to do about that, even if she does get elected—especially if she ends up facing a hostile Republican Congress. It’s true that Obama was able to bring about exactly the sort of universal health care he pledged as part of his campaign, but that’s an issue that’s a lot more important to a lot more people than copyright. (Also, all the moneyed lobbies—the health insurance industry who wanted to make more money—were on Obama’s side. The moneyed lobbies around copyright all want more of it, not less.) And then there’s the matter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose copyright provisions could stop any attempt at copyright reform cold.
But, again, having a Presidential candidate even want to have a conversation about it is a pretty big advance from what we’ve had so far. Perhaps it will make it easier for orphan work legislation to gain some traction in Congress. Who knows?
There are a few other areas of potential interest in there, too. Hillary wants to “close the digital divide,” offering “the option of affordable broadband” to 100% of American households. She wants to deploy 5G and next generation wireless services, and repurpose more unused spectrum. She wants to promote STEM education and fight for an open Internet abroad. All great stuff, to be sure. And given how Trump’s been polling lately, we might well have a chance to see what she’ll do if she makes it into office—though that may be counting our chicken in every pot prematurely.
But all things considered, who would have expected that copyright and intellectual property issues could ever be a major cornerstone of a Presidential campaign? If nothing else, it goes to show just how important information has become in this new digital age.
teleread.org 
Ignore anything Hillary says. She and her hubby have been screwing the public and doing whatever enriches them since their Arkansas days. They’ll sell copyright policy to the highest bidder, which is likely to be a blend of what enriches Hollywood and high-tech firms such as Google.
“Closing the digital divide” will simply be another example of crony capitalism (much as solar power has been under Obama). Those who’ve lined the pockets of Clinton and the Democratic party (think Comcast) will get huge subsidies. Those in cities will pay more for broadband. Those in rural areas will get poor to non-existence services.
Under Hillary as under Obama, the very rich will benefit. That’s why the top thirteen billionaire political donors in the 2014 all put their money on Democrats. You’re down to #14 before you find a Republican donor and the Koch brothers, both of them together, are way down the list at #24. Stories like those should be all over the news. Every wonder why they’re not? Note that this story is on Politico, hardly right-wing:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/blue-billionaires-on-top-114151
Keep in mind that Bill, with Hillary next to him, was governor of Arkansas for a decade. At the beginning of that period, the state typically ranked 47th in schools in similar areas. At the end of that period, it still ranked near the bottom but the Clintons were far richer. That’s why the wiser voters in the state—i.e. those where weren’t loyal Democrats—called Bill “Slick Willy.” He contantly lied to enrich himself.
Anyone who thinks either of the Crooked Duo have changed is a fool or worse. Sometimes I wish we could split into two countries. A hellish banana republic for those who believe Bill and Hillary, and a decent, well-run country for the rest of us.
I might add that, while I support orphan works legislation, I wouldn’t even put it in my top 10,000 list. Getting back to honest, capable government is what really matters. You’ll never get that from Hillary.
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Unfortunately we’re not going to get honest, capable government from Trump either. Whoever wins, we lose. Maybe we’re just going to get the type of government we deserve.
There will be no meaningful IP reform, either way.
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Let’s ignore everything Michael W. Perry says. Nearly every bit of his anti-Clinton rant is hyperbole. I looked at that Politico article and I find it hard to believe how wrong his claims are from what Politico said., and here’s a couple comments from it:
First paragraph: Democrats spent much of the 2014 campaign castigating Republican big money, but, it turns out, their side actually finished ahead among the biggest donors of 2014 – at least among those whose contributions were disclosed.
Third paragraph: Of course, that edge doesn’t take into account contributions to deep-pocketed non-profit groups that don’t disclose their donors. They heavily favored Republicans, with reports showing conservative secret money non-profits outspending liberal ones $127 million to $33 million. While that’s just a fraction of the overall undisclosed money spent in 2014, it’s indicative of a dramatic imbalance in a type of big money spending that likely would close the gap between Democratic and Republican top donors, if not put Republicans ahead.
My comments: Yes, the Democrats had higher number of donors contributing in ways that required disclosure, but the Republicans had far higher donations to organizations that did not require disclosures. When you add the $174 million of the disclosed Democratic donors and $33 million of non-disclosed donors given to non-profits ($207 million), you’ll see that it’s far less than the $140 million disclosed Republican donors and the $127 million given to the non-profits ($267 million), and that same Politico article claims that through all of the PACs and donations, the Koch brothers actually spent about $290 million in 2014, which is almost 4 times as much as the top Democratic donor. Do we get better government when donors are open about their political donations, or when they hide their donations through a third party?
While it would be nice to do something about the 40 years of orphan works so that people could in good faith publish books that appear to have had their copyright lapse, I have my doubts whether Ms. Clinton would pursue this. First of all, any changes need to be enacted into law by Congress, and between Congress being in gridlock and the number of Congress members in the back pockets of the media conglomerates, I don’t see any reason to expect any legislation on orphan works, even though it’s unlikely that the media conglomerates would lose any income in the event that an orphan works bill were to pass. Call me cynical, but I’ll seen too many times where politicians claim to support something they know will never pass.
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If you want to know how Hillary feels about copyright, read about how it will fare under the Trans-Pacific Partnership – which she was calling the “gold standard” of trade agreements, at least until the threat from Sanders on the left forced her to temporarily flip-flop.
https://www.eff.org/issues/tpps-copyright-trap
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