The U.S. Government recently formed a task force to enforce intellectual property laws. Now Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, is asking for input from the public about IP policy:
To further these goals, we are working to find ways of measuring these threats and their impact on us. How many jobs depend on the existence of intellectual property? What are the greatest risks to health and safety? We need better data on these questions and it is part of my job to figure out what the answers are. We cannot do that without your help. So, my office is asking the public to give us information about the costs and the risks – and then give us suggestions for what we could be doing better as a government. As a first step, we are issuing a notice to the public asking for your input. Here’s a link to this request (pdf). You can send your comments to intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov. We look forward to hearing from you.
This could be a good thing. Spurious numbers are far too common in IP debates. One of my favorite examples is found in William Patry’s Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, where Patry describes how the music industry and its advocates would often say “American businessenes lose $250 billion every year, and we have lost more than 750,000 jobs because of intellectual property theft.”
These numbers were repeated by many government officials. But when Julian Sanchez, a writer for Ars Technica tried to track down the basis for the number the Chamber of Commerce sent Sanchez to the U.S. Department of Commerce, who then sent Sanchez back to the Chamber of Commerce. After much research, the only basis for the number was found in a comment from a Commerce Secretary in 1986, and that’s where the trail ended. But it’s even worse — the numbers were illogical. $250 billion “is more than the combined 2005 gross domestic revenues of the movie, music, software, and video game industries.”
Hopefully this new intellectual property task force won’t resort to the same tactics of making up large numbers to support stricter intellectual property laws, but that remains to be seen.
Government Seeks Input for Intellectual Property Policy
The U.S. Government recently formed a task force to enforce intellectual property laws. Now Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, is asking for input from the public about IP policy:
To further these goals, we are working to find ways of measuring these threats and their impact on us. How many jobs depend on the existence of intellectual property? What are the greatest risks to health and safety? We need better data on these questions and it is part of my job to figure out what the answers are. We cannot do that without your help. So, my office is asking the public to give us information about the costs and the risks – and then give us suggestions for what we could be doing better as a government. As a first step, we are issuing a notice to the public asking for your input. Here’s a link to this request (pdf). You can send your comments to intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov. We look forward to hearing from you.
This could be a good thing. Spurious numbers are far too common in IP debates. One of my favorite examples is found in William Patry’s Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars, where Patry describes how the music industry and its advocates would often say “American businessenes lose $250 billion every year, and we have lost more than 750,000 jobs because of intellectual property theft.”
These numbers were repeated by many government officials. But when Julian Sanchez, a writer for Ars Technica tried to track down the basis for the number the Chamber of Commerce sent Sanchez to the U.S. Department of Commerce, who then sent Sanchez back to the Chamber of Commerce. After much research, the only basis for the number was found in a comment from a Commerce Secretary in 1986, and that’s where the trail ended. But it’s even worse — the numbers were illogical. $250 billion “is more than the combined 2005 gross domestic revenues of the movie, music, software, and video game industries.”
The original Ars Technica story is here.
Hopefully this new intellectual property task force won’t resort to the same tactics of making up large numbers to support stricter intellectual property laws, but that remains to be seen.