I was just quietly reviewing the EFF's excellent guide to building your own DRM-free PVR. Casting a glance over the list of their campaign activities, I was reminded of why I think the breadth of their mission limits their success.
There are four parties struggling to capture the value of digital communications: connectivity service providers, hardware and software platform vendors (the "smart" edge), media content producers, and the users (the "really smart" edge).
The "customer" is the user; in any debate the EFF's job is to promote the interests of the public. The problem with the EFF's constitution is that it isn't clear who their friends are in the other constituencies.
For example, everyone wants to disintermediate the rent-seeking connectivity conduit provider. Microsoft would like to have you place all your telephony via MS-powered devices. So on an issue like wireless spectrum reform, Microsoft should be your friend.
On the other hand, when it comes to intellectual property law, Microsoft is Beelzubub's personal emissary. DRM is the fire-soup in the Beast's belly that poisons the air with a foul stench for the innocent public. Microsoft is your mortal enemy.
The problem of selecting consistent friends limits the EFF's effectiveness. They can't leverage their influence by assembling powerful coalitions. It leaves them as an isolated lone voice.
Just as we have identified the need for layered regulation, I would suggest we should have layered campaigning for public digital liberty. Institutionalising the Freedom to Connect concept is likely to prove more effective than leaving it to the EFF. A Californian senator might be quite open to spectrum reform -- either an Intel or Qualcomm lobbyist is likely to concur. But if the messenger is tarred with a techno-libertarian peer-to-peer filesharing brush, the political risk is too high. Hollywood won't pay for your re-election campaign. Copyfighting should be done elsewhere.
Anyhow, what use is a P2P network if nobody has affordable connectivity? There's also a natural precedence to sorting these issues out.
(In a sense this over-broad agenda marks a weakness of the non-profit approach to achieving goals. Where's the M&A for non-profits? How can one good cause subsume or break up another? Where's the futures market for non-profits to send "price" signals that which goals are achieveable, and which means are working? Another day, maybe...)
This may all seem rather critical of the EFF, yet I applaud their achievements. If I didn't have so much Scottish blood, I'd even pay in a few pence to help the cause. We just need more successes -- what they're doing is too important to be left to representative government, since it isn't necessarily representing you and me.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:08 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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