University of Southern California Course - Pwned: Is Everyone On This Campus a Copyright Criminal?

October 31, 2006 by Michael Law
Filed under: Law, Law School

New undergrad class at the University of Southern California about DRM, EULAs, copyright, technology, and control in the 21st century, called “Pwned: Is everyone on this campus a copyright criminal?”

The class is being offered as a COMM499 class, open to any student on campus. The main class assignment will be to work through Wikipedia entries on subjects we cover in the class, in groups, identifying weak areas in the Wikipedia sections and improving them, then defending those improvements in the message-boards for the Wikipedia entries.

From boingboing.net:

Every garden has a snake: computers aren’t just tools for empowering their owners. They’re also tools for stripping users of agency, for controlling us individually and en masse.

It starts with “Digital Rights Management” — the anti-copying measures that computers employ to frustrate their owners desires. These technologies literally attack their owners, treating them as menaces to be thwarted through force majeure, deceit, and cunning. Incredibly, DRM gets special protection under the law, a blanket prohibition on breaking DRM or helping others to do so, even if you have the right to access the work the DRM is walling off.

But DRM’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every digital act includes an act of copying, and that means that copyright governs every relationship in the digital realm. Take a conversation to email and it’s not just culture, it’s copyright — every volley is bound by the rules set out to govern the interactions between large publishing entities.

Playing a song for a buddy with your stereo is lawful. Stream that song to your buddy’s PC and you could be facing expulsion and criminal prosecution.

Every interaction on the Web is now larded over with “agreements” — terms of service, acceptable use policies, licenses — that no one reads or negotiates. These non-negotiable terms strip you of your rights the minute you click your mouse. Transactions that would be a traditional purchase in meatspace are complex “license agreements” in cyberspace. As mere licensors, we are as feudal serfs to a lord — ownership is conferred only on those who are lucky enough to be setting the terms. Our real property interests are secondary to their “intellectual property” claims.

When the computer, the network, publishing platforms, and property can all be magicked away with the Intellectual Property wand, we’re all of us pwned, 0wnz0red, punkd. Our tools are turned against us, the law is tipped away from our favor.

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