Voter registration deadline

Reminder: today (December 30) is the deadline to register to vote for the January 19 election.

Preventing wasteful health care spending

I was chatting with a doctor about how to cut costs in health care, a rather topical issue, and she told me this: one of the reasons there is wasteful spending in health care is because it is so difficult for one medical provider of a patient to access that patient's other medical provider's records. Electronic (or worse yet, paper) medical record systems between providers are so awkward and difficult that it's often easier (and in the best interests of the patient for expediency's sake) to simply perform a particular medical test again locally rather than try to order the records from a remote previous provider who had also performed the test. And so there's wasteful spending in health care.

What does this have to do with Free Culture? Well, let me spin a fanciful tale -- who knows if it would have been true, but it's an illustration of how technology develops.

Imagine if, in 1999, the recording industry had not sued the peer-to-peer file-sharing software pioneer Napster (and its founder, Northeastern University student and Brockton, MA native Shawn Fanning), and copyright law permitted file-sharing.

In such an alternate universe, file-sharing technology would have thrived and grown over the past decade. Peer-to-peer technology would be able to reliably and correctly deliver any file that someone had chosen to share online (these are technically difficult challenges still not completely solved in our real universe because no one wants to develop file-sharing technology for fear of getting sued like in MGM v. Grokster).

At some point, in this fanciful alternate universe, a medical professional, possibly a medical information technology department, might wonder, "Why is it easier to access a song from someone else's computer over a peer-to-peer file-sharing network than it is to access a patient's medical record from some other medical provider?" And the solution dawns on them, to piggyback medical records sharing on the this reliable, robust, easy-to-use peer-to-peer network that music files are shared on to make it just as easy.

Of course, medical records will have an additional layer of encryption and authentication so that only authorized people can read a patient's record.

And thus, in this fanciful alternate universe where Napster wasn't sued, we prevent the same medical test from having to be performed again (and again) because one medical provider can easily access the test results of another over a file-sharing network. We save wasteful health-care spending.

This is how technology develops. There is an initial application (in this case, music), that spurs the development and growth of a new technology (in this case, peer-to-peer file sharing exemplified by Napster) until it becomes pervasive. Then technology spreads to other applications (in this case, medical record sharing) ultimately improving the lives of everyone well beyond the initial "killer app".

But alas, this fanciful alternate universe is not our universe, because, through copyright lawsuits, the RIAA and big content owners killed file-sharing technology before it could grow. This has been an illustration of how copyright enforcement today is directly stifling innovation, and how it affects everyone's lives, even if you are not interested in file-sharing music.

Why I am running for Senate, an illustration for swing dancers

To my swing-dancing friends, who make up the bulk of my personal friends, here is an illustration of "Free Culture", the single issue I am running for U.S. Senate on:

You make a video of a swing routine and post it online. Perhaps it is a routine you've spent months choreographing and practicing, or perhaps it was one of those magical moments of an improvised dance where everything "just clicked", and you danced awesome. You post the video online so others may enjoy it, others may learn from it, others may be inspired by it.

After posting the video, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) contacts you about the copyright infringement of the song that is playing to your dance. Normally, they just ask you to take it down, but perhaps the RIAA is feeling particularly vindictive today, or they want to make an example of you (like they did with Joel Tenenbaum and Jammie Thomas), so they proceed directly to a lawsuit. They sue you for the legal maximum of $150,000 in damages for "willful copyright infringement". Is that right?

You could think about defending yourself, perhaps saying that your video is protected by "fair use", but do you really have the tens of thousands of legal fees it will cost to fight the RIAA in court? Can you risk the up to $150,000 judgment if you lose?

You might mute the audio track, hoping to avoid direct confrontation with the RIAA. But that might be removing an essential part of your dance -- maybe the reason your dance is awesome is not because of any particularly awesome moves, but because you've put together standard moves in a way that "goes" with the music in a particularly awesome way.

But here is where things get even crazier: Even with the audio muted, the video your choreography, being based on copyrighted music, is a "derivative work", and copyright law protects the copyright owner against unlicensed derivative works. (This is why a movie must buy the rights to a book.) Even with the audio muted, you could still be sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement, again for up to $150,000.

Once again, you could think about fighting in court. To my limited knowledge, nobody's ever been successfully sued for "derivative work" copyright infringement for the video of a dance to music. Maybe there's a provision in the law, or some a previous court case which established precedent. But once again, can you afford the thousands of dollars of legal costs to fight off the RIAA?

So it looks like, if you really don't want to risk getting sued and losing tens of thousands of dollars whether you win or lose, it's better not to post the video of your dance online at all. Now the question is, is the world a better place because fear of the RIAA has thwarted you from sharing the video your dance?

Of course, this has been a parable. The moral of the story is, the power and extent of intellectual property owners has grown tremendously (historically) in recent years, so much so now that it is stifling creativity and squashing innovation, the two greatest forces for good and progress in human civilization. The fear and uncertainty, the worry of being sued, is causing people to be cautious about their creativity, choosing not to share, choosing not to build.

But let's end this story on a bright note. What happens when culture is instead allowed to be free? Let's take a look at jazz.

Probably by tradition, and because the RIAA did not exist in the early days of jazz, musicians in jazz were free to build upon the works of other jazz musicians and composers. And of course swing dance, which co-evolved with jazz, dancers were free to copy, build upon, and develop old and new swing moves. Dance can be copyrighted, but they didn't. Where would Lindy Hop be today if there were a copyright on the swing-out, and anyone who performed it had to negotiate a license with the creator of the move? Where would swing dance be today if every swing band had to negotiate a "derivative work" copyright license for every familiar "standard" they performed? Or wanting to avoid extortion by the copyright owner, every band had to have a completely different repertoire, never "covering" another song with their interpretation?

The "free culture" of jazz, the ability to share and build upon other's creativity, has given us a live an active swing dance community, a community I am thankful to be a part of, given me so many friends, and something I do for fun sometimes every night of the week.

Cards

I now have 1000 business-card-sized campaign "posters". This will probably be the limit of my campaign spending.

Let me know if you would like some to distribute.

Shakespeare in the public domain

If you have enjoyed the American Repertory Theater's "The Donkey Show" (a disco re-telling of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"), or "The Best of Both Worlds" (a Gospel and R&B re-imagination of Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale"), then be glad that Shakespeare's works are in the public domain, allowing today's authors, playwrights, directors, and producers complete freedom to create these modern derivative works of awesomeness.

Hypothetically, if a Shakespeare estate still held copyright on Shakespeare's works, it's unlikely they would have permitted an adaptation entitled "The Donkey Show", or they may have demanded a king's ransom of a licensing fee because, hey, it's Shakespeare.

Fortunately, this is not the case, for Shakespeare lived, actually thrived, in an era where copyright lasted 0 (ZERO!) years. When our nation was founded, copyright lasted 14 years -- it was easily possible to see a work published, and see it reimagined and improved in the public domain within your own lifetime. Nowadays, that number is 95 years, because repeated extensions by Congress, most recently the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act ("Mickey Mouse Protection Act"), thanks to the lobbying efforts of a few extremely rich and powerful copyright holders.

Ninety-five years. And that's assuming these copyright holders quit lobbying today, and there no further extensions.

You won't live to see a work that was published this year enter public domain, unless you are reading this at a very young age, or you break the record for human lifespan. Chances are (according to life expectancy and demographics), neither will your children. Only your yet unconceived and unborn grand-children, and only very late in their lives, will have a chance of enjoying, say, a disco re-telling of "Harry Potter" or a Gospel and R&B re-imagination and improvement of "New Moon", or (hopefully) derivative works so awesome that I cannot even begin to imagine them.

This is why I, Ken Takusagawa, seek your write-in vote for Senate on January 19, 2010.

The campaign begins

My campaign officially begins today. The major-party candidates on the ballot will be Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown. Election day is 41 days away.