 Okay, this is Stefan Kinsella. It is Thursday, March 7th, 2013. The Kinsella On Liberty podcast. I am talking to Derek Kana. Derek, say hello. Hey, welcome to Fakes Having Me On. Sure. Yeah, I thought we would just have a quick talk about some of the activities you've been engaged in lately. And why don't you introduce yourself, tell people who you are and what you're doing right now. Sure. So I was a Hill staffer for a number of years and worked on two presidential campaigns. And now I'm off Capitol Hill but leading advocacy for technology reform and conservative and libertarian laws that will facilitate innovation and the free market. Let me ask you, so which campaigns were you working on? I worked for Mitt Romney's O8 campaign and I was in an ancillary capacity for a 2012 campaign. Okay, so would you describe yourself as a, you said conservative and libertarian. Are you Republican, libertarian? What's your kind of philosophical political background? I'm a Republican. I meant that I'm working on policies that are tailored towards the Republican and libertarian audience, but I'm a Republican. You don't mind talking to anarchists like me. I talk to whomever and I find a lot of continuity on all of these issues. Most of these issues are more about those who get it than those who get it, those who don't get it, than partisan issues. Yeah, I'm a big libertarian, radical type, you know, fire-breathing anarchist, government-hating type, and also very cynical about politics and political activism. But I will say that first time in my memory, in recent, say, last year, there's been a couple of actually improvements in politics. One was, well, today was the Rand Paul thing where he got the Obama administration to actually answer his question about bombing and killing American citizens on U.S. soil. That was a slight improvement, I would think, after his filibuster. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. I'd like to hear them. Another one was in the America Invents Act that Obama signed about a year, a year and a half ago. There was actually a slight improvement in patent law, which was the expansion of the prior commercial user defense, which is the only improvement in copyright or patent law that I can remember ever happening in the 200-year history of this country. And then the defeat of SOPA was another huge victory, or at least a preventing of a problem. And then the other one was the thing you were involved with, which was the DMCA interpretation of the rules by the Librarian of Congress on cell phone and now even tablet unlocking. So I wanted to talk to you about that and anything else you would like to talk about. But let's just go back a little bit to the first thing you sort of became noted for that I learned about your name from was when you were basically fired, if I get that right, because of the memo you published on the web, which was hastily taken down, which was a really good, I won't say anti-copyright document, but it was a memo from a Republican caucus or agency in Congress which was arguing about all the harms that copyright does to the economy and why we need to radically scale back or at least reform copyright. And you want to talk a little bit about that episode? Sure. I would just do your characterization of the memo and maybe if you put up a show notes people can read it, come to their own conclusions and see what they think. Yep. But yeah, so I worked for the House Republican Study Committee and I was asked to come up with a new idea and push the box and work on technology issues. And so one of the issues that was obviously important to me was copyright reform as well as patent reform. And so I was asked to write a memo on pro-innovation, pro-free markets, pro-constitution reforms to copyright law. And I jumped into it and I wrote a report on the state of copyright law in this country and several recommendations for how it could be improved. And my analysis was that our current system of copyright is radically divergent from that of our founding fathers. And not only is it radically divergent, but it's radically divergent without any real good reason for being so. So you can imagine that our founding fathers had one system and today we're a different society so we may need to adjust our laws accordingly. It totally makes sense to me. And that's not actually what happened here. It's a situation where content industry lobbyists have perverted the system and to something that doesn't even resemble that of really the Constitution. And so specifically what I pointed out was copyright, I refrain the issue of copyright. We're going back to the Constitution and exposing that the main purpose of copyright is to maximize the content creation rather than giving a windfall to the content producer. And obviously we support profit or I support profit. You want the content producer to be well compensated, but the main purpose of copyrighting of the Constitution is in order to maximize the overall content production. And that means something that may be controversial in today's understanding of this issue. It means, for example, that copyright has to eventually expire because if copyright never expires, then those works never go to the public domain and other people can never build on those works. So those are some of the things that were in the memo that really aren't that crazy going back to the system of the founding fathers was basically what I was advocating. Well, let me ask you, what was your, because you don't think what you wrote was that crazy or that radical, but compared to the mainstream agenda pushed and taught and pushed by Congress and, you know, your republic is Democrats. I think it was pretty radical. What was what what was your influence in writing that was it libertarian writing or was it just your own common sense or what led you to become such a. Comparative radical on this issue. Well, you know, I read widely on this issue and these are things that academics both on the left and on, but more importantly on the right have been saying for a long time is that our system of copyright law actually inhibits innovation and actually cycles the free market. And I believe in copyright, but believing in copyright doesn't mean that you have to support the exact system we have in law today. So, for example, I talked about how individuals can be liable for a billion dollars in damages for contacting having an iPod. That's absurd. That's not based upon a rational decision. I talked about how, you know, caught the copyright law today. Your copyright exists for life plus 70 years, which effectively means that it never enters the public domain. No one can ever build upon that work. Right. So I say it's not that radical because these are things that have been well versed and talked about both on the left and on the right. Mainly conservative scholars in the legal community for quite some time. Yeah, I do find in my own experience that left libertarians and even civil libertarians tend to be remarkably good on this issue or at least the left libertarians. And by good, I mean IP abolitionists, you know, I'm in favor of totally abolishing copyright and patent and trademark and trade secret law as they currently exist for a variety of reasons. But any kind of significant move in that direction would be an improvement. So if you had to choose, let me ask you this. If you had to choose yourself from your political perspective between today's copyright and having no copyright, what would you choose? Given that you're not an abolitionist, really. That's a, what's that called? They call it a Sophie's Choice. Yeah, or a Hopsoff's Choice or something. Yeah, whatever. I mean, you know, I'm not a politician. I don't think I'm going to need to answer that question. I think there's a lot of good things in our copyright. I think there is a purpose to copyright. And you and I may disagree on that. I support copyright. I support content producers. And I think that, I think our founding fathers recognize that there is a market failure there and that needs to be implemented. But just because you support copyright does not mean that you support a life-long, 70-term copyright. Well, would you agree, though, that if you're going to have that kind of argument for copyright, that at least the people advocating it, I mean, it is sort of a deviation from the free market, right? It's kind of a temporary monopoly grant to try to fix some kind of market failure. That's the argument that, say, your side is in favor of. And you're just sort of recognizing that it's going too far in doing that. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, my article said it's a government-created, government-instituted, government-subsidized content monopoly. You said your article? What article is this? The report. The article. Okay, the paper. But do you think that the founders, when they put the copyright and the patent clause in the Constitution, do you think they actually had access to the data that supported their kind of utilitarian intuitions, or do you think they just were going by a hunch? No, I think this was an actual choice. I mean, this was what the British had done with the Statute of Anne in 1714. This was actually a choice that this was the most efficient way to proceed. I would say it's a little bit more complicated than utilitarianism. Utilitarianism would simply be looking at what maximizes the overall production. I think they believed in a little bit of, you know, if you create it, you deserve to be compensated for. A little bit of the Lockean ideology. Right. But also the utilitarian ideology. Right. So I don't think that they're always completely divergent. I think it's kind of a blend of the two. Yeah, it seems to me that, I mean, well, I've actually looked into this. I've been studying this for a long time, and I'll be honest with you. I still can't tell when the Statute of Anne was what the right date is on it. It's either 1709 or 1710. I think they started debating in 09. I think they passed it in 10, just like the Patent Statute, which is the Statute of Monopoly, 1623, 1624. I never can figure out the right date to put on it, but it was a while back. It just seems to me that if you're going to come up with an argument that we need this law because it promotes creativity, then you at least need to have some evidence to back up your case. And I agree it was a choice, but it seems to me it should be a choice backed up by data. And, you know, the founders could perhaps be forgiven for making a hunch or a guess. But in the 200-plus years since then, I'm not aware of any conclusive, uncontroversial study that shows that it does even a minimal copyright enhances creativity at all. It seems to me, let me ask you this. You're a law student right now, is that correct? Yes. And are you taking, I'm just curious, are you taking IP courses, or are you just learning it on your own, or what's your way of learning about this? Well, I've done, you know, research and IP issues. I've also had a year-long business fellowship, so I do a lot of published stuff as well and IP stuff. Right. I think taking classes as well. Yeah, so one argument I've kind of played with in my mind, and that I've never seen anyone really respond to, was that copyright and patent, they would seem to be constitutional because there's a clause authorizing it, although I don't think constitutionality means it's legitimate. I mean, there's a lot of things the Constitution authorizes that are, in my mind, illegitimate, like war and taxes and slavery, et cetera, but in the Federal Reserve. But first of all, the clause says that to promote the progress of the arts and the sciences. So you could argue that's merely precatory, as we say, or you could argue that it's a condition of the grant of power, so that if you can prove, or if the pro-IP guys can't prove, that copyright promotes the progress of the sciences, which was the word they used back then to refer to the literary arts. Then the copyright statute is totally invalid because it hasn't fulfilled the purpose that conditions the grant of power. But I think a better argument against even the constitutionality of copyright would be that the copyright clause was enacted as part of the Constitution when it was ratified in 1789. And then the Bill of Rights was enacted in 1791 two years later, which had the First Amendment, which basically prohibited federal government laws that restrict freedom of speech and expression. And the courts have clearly recognized, and common sense would show that there is a conflict or a tension between freedom of speech and expression and the copyright law, I should say, the Copyright Act. Copyright clearly limits what you can say. And so as a prima facie matter, it seems to me that copyright law restricts freedom of speech. And because it was enacted later, if there's a conflict between the First Amendment and the copyright clause of 1789 that the later amendment or the later constitutional provision would govern, just like prohibition was outlawed by the later amendment that overturned the earlier amendment outlawing alcohol, right? I mean, so I would argue that if there's a conflict between freedom of speech and copyright, then copyright has to fall. And that clearly copyright does prohibit freedom of speech. And so it's unconstitutional on those grounds alone. What would your kind of just gut take be on that argument? Yeah, I mean, the freedom of speech and copyright issue is something that's been talked about in legal circles for quite some time. Mike Maznick just had a piece on that that was pretty bulleted in his website, TechDirt. It's a fascinating way of looking at copyright. I'm not sure if I'm in that camp of fully buying that argument, but it's something I'm still taking a look at. It's a relatively novel approach. Yeah, got you. So when you wrote the memo, were you just trying to crash the party or did you think you were okay? Or did you know you were being subversive? Or what was your thinking when you just released that? No, no, no. So I didn't release it. It was, you know, went through a normal process of review. In fact, most people in the office read it to get their change as well. And our policy director signed off and revised it. And then we took it to our executive director, because it's normally read policy briefs, but just because we wanted him to be fully aware, he actually revised the document. Okay. So was it more radical in this earlier draft, if you feel free to talk about that? In some ways, it's actually less radical. My original article just said these are some of, I call it the three myths about copyright. Okay. And those myths were that copyright's primary purpose is to... Copyright's primary purpose is to... Incentivize creation or whatever. No, it's to pay the content owner. It's all the primary purposes to create the subject using the art. And then the other myth was that this leads to the maximum level of innovation and productivity and growth. And then there was a third myth in there that I forgot offhand. But that was how the original paper was. And they asked me to add in additional section on what exactly I see as the prescriptive reform. And that's when you start itemizing out what potential bills could look like. That's when you really get much more controversial. I don't think that the original myth was all that controversial. The proposals were a little bit more controversial. But yeah, that's what I was told to do. Sorry, say again. What was more controversial? Could you say that again? Yeah, the proposals are a little more controversial. Proposals like running statutory damages or limiting the term of copyright to something more analogous to the Constitution. That's a little bit more controversial. And so we got approval and I emailed it out to staffers and the Republican Study Committee was the one who put that publicly on their website. So then what happened? How did they get taken down and what were the repercussions? And do you regret it? I'm just curious what your kind of take on the whole episode is. Sure. So within 24 hours, the Republican Study Committee decided to take the memo down. And I was not so sure with that decision, of course. But no, I don't regret having written the memo. I was asked to write a memo on this topic. I went to the literature. I wrote a conservative argument for a pro-innovation policy towards copyright law. And I think it put the issue out there and put it on the table. They got endorsed by every major tech website and many major conservative groups. And libertarians, I would say. A lot of us libertarians loved it, yes. So it got pretty wide overwhelming support from a lot of actors who really hadn't solved these issues critically through a conservative lens. So I don't regret having written it. Obviously it was written quite quickly. There's a lot of things you do in the Hillard. I may have revised some of the language that was used. You have to get the memo for many documents that people write. It was meant to be an internal product for house staffers to use to formalize legislation. Some people have read it as a sort of a published document, which kind of was, but not in the same way. What do you think was the cause of it being taken down so quickly? Was it the content owners like the music industry, the Hollywood movie industry, the interest, were they putting pressure, was there just a big freak out about it? What do you think actually happened that caused it to be taken down so quickly? Well, I heard that at least one of our members was very displeased with it. At the same time, many of our members were very excited about it. I was up till 2 in the morning working with several influential staffers about introducing bills early as the next week and actually enact these reforms. So these were hypothetical things. These are things that started to get some real momentum there. So I can't really speak to exactly what happened, but there's a lot of media accounts on kind of what went down. Exactly, okay. So let me ask you, do you think, who do you think would be best positioned for the sort of Internet freedom copyright reform agenda? Would it be the Republicans or the Democrats right now? Because I've heard conflicting arguments on this side and I have conflicting feelings myself about which party... I mean, like Ron Wyden, for example, is one of the leaders on this and he's a Democrat, I believe. But on the other hand, my understanding is the Democrats are more in the sort of sway of the California Hollywood content producers influence. Well, I mean, there's two things. So yeah, it's going to be up to Republicans and conservatives and even libertarians to leave the charge in this issue. If Republicans decide that they actually believe in being against regulation, that they actually support small businesses, that they actually want economic growth, they're going to have to decide that. If they decide that, which they haven't, then they need to promote policies that go in that direction and first and foremost smart intellectual property laws. So that's one of the... Go ahead. Well, within the Constitution, it's going to be one of the enumerated towers and one of the primary ways the federal government is involved in the private sector in a productive way. By the way, do you have any views on the Lanham Act, the trademark law, the federal trademark law, which in other words, the copyright clause authorizes basically patent and copyright law. It doesn't authorize trademark law, which is why the Lanham Act has to affect only trademarks that are involved in interstate commerce, and that's why there's still a big body of state trademark law. I don't want to put you on the spot, but do you have any thoughts on the federalization of trademark law? No, it's a fascinating topic. It's not something that I have that much familiarity with. I tried to get your domain expertise in a few areas, and I thought one of them, but it's an interesting thing you bring up. Have you looked into patents itself? Do you have any thoughts on the patent system as it exists right now? Yeah, so patents are... I mean, the problem with patents is the solutions are extremely complicated, and our system right now is clearly not working. It's clearly led to a troll-like system where you have a lot of bad actors who are shutting down innovation, and it's completely dysfunctional. What I came to point was that Apple and Samsung, apparently in 2011, spent more money on litigation and buying patents than they did on research and development. Yeah, you have to admit there's something wrong when basically hundreds of billions of dollars are being lost or spent on patent and copyright lawsuits. People are going to jail. We have the U.S. raiding houses in New Zealand and trying to put British grad students in jail for things that are legal in their country and internet freedom is being threatened. Let me ask you this. Were you involved in the SOPA fight or just observing? Did you have any involvement in that? Sure, so I was very strongly against SOPA. I was working for Senator Scott Brown at the time. Senator Scott Brown came out against SOPA. SOPA was quite bad news, and for most of us working on that Capitol Hill, we were very disappointed in expecting it to pass. So we were quite pleased to see this groundswell of support for what many of the younger staffers believed in, which was, you know, this was completely out of lefty. It made no sense. Yeah, I'm a little bit concerned about that was just a temporary victory for our side and that these types of provisions are going to keep creeping back at the behest of the big content providers in the form of, you know, ACTA and the TPP and other things. It's just the pressure is unrelenting. Have you looked into this or following the TPP or things like that, which is a trans-specific partnership? The TPP treaty is really bad news as far as the IP stuff goes, and this is a good playbook. This should not be surprising. After SOPA, that coalition kind of started to wither away a little bit, saying, okay, we won here, but the NPA, the RA, they didn't stop. In fact, the next day after SOPA, they confiscated mega-upload, and DOJ confiscated mega-uploads once in their servers. So they've been able to enact a lot of the policies that were within SOPA through law, whether it be through shutting down websites or setting off payments to payment providers. They're able to accomplish that as well, and now they're negotiating on the TPP treaty. And what they do is they ask for things in the treaty that are major next steps, steps that they want, steps that they know that Congress won't approve, and then they go back to Congress and they say we have to pass a law to abide by this brand new treaty we just passed, and they did that with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They said, you know, nothing to see here. We just have to update the law in order to abide by these international treaties. Well, the international treaties are the ones that you had negotiated for. Yeah, I think this is one problem with the Constitution and our system is that the Constitution elevates treaties to the level of the law of the land, and some presidents even argue that they can just do something similar by executive agreement. And, you know, I don't know if you have studied this issue, but there's something called the Bricker Amendment back in the, I think, 50s, where Senator Bricker was trying to get an amendment passed to clarify or to change to make it clear that no treaty could override the civil liberties and other things provided for in the Constitution, and it was defeated narrowly, unfortunately. So I think the treaty power is one very dangerous thing. We have this international web of treaties, WIPO and GATT, things like this, which, you know, America joins in and foists on the rest of the world. We twist the arms of other countries to sign on to and then we join it, and then we use the excuse, well, we have an international obligation to reform our municipal, our domestic law to conform to these treaties, which we, of course, passed at the behest of the content industries. I think the treaty power is a very dangerous thing. It's starting to help undermine the rights protected by the Constitution. So let's turn now to the other issue. So your most recent activity was being instrumental in the petition, the White House dot gov petition, I believe, to, so let's back up a little bit. The copyright law has a fairly recent addition about 15 years old, the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which, along with the copyright law itself, the regulations for implementation are interpreted and construed by periodic three-year decisions of the Librarian of Congress, which is an agency of Congress. And I think it's an agency of Congress, although the President appoints the Librarian of Congress if I understand how that works. And three years ago, he or she, I think it was a she, said that you could unlock your cell phone and that would not count as a violation of copyright law under the DMCA, because otherwise it looked like it would, because the DMCA outlaws anti-circumvention technology or techniques, things you can do to get around digital, I'm sorry, encryption technologies, things like this, even if the underlying act would not be prohibited by copyright law. So for three years, we had a window where unlocking your cell phone wasn't prohibited. Excuse me, I'm going to have to call you back and complete this interview. I got jumped on a radio program this minute. Okay. Is that all right? Sure. Yeah, we can connect up shortly. Sorry, I'm being beat right now. We'll finish this one second. It's fascinating conversations. Okay, bye. Okay, we're back online. Actually, I was just about to ask you about the media attention you've been getting and our diversion was a good illustration of that. So tell me what's, we're about to get to your involvement in this petition, the White House.gov petition, which by the way, you and I talked about it a few weeks ago when you were thinking about it. And then all of a sudden you did it and you got the number of votes or subscribers you needed. And then the White House responded. It was incredible because most of these petitions, the White House ignores or has BS language, you know, like the Texas wants to secede petition or whatever. So I'm very impressed by this because you had the right instinct. You found a narrow but important issue to push. So why don't you talk a little bit about your petition and the outcome of that and the media interest since then? Absolutely. So I wrote the main article on this issue for the Atlantic and it was something that had always been on my radar and had influenced me quite a bit. And basically what happened for your readers to understand a little bit more, the Digital 1M Copyright Act bans entire classes in modern technology. And every three years, proponents of being able to use those technologies can petition to the Librarian of Congress to ask for a special exception. And this process is completely dysfunctional and very unfortunate. And this year the Librarian of Congress decided to allow an existing exception for unlocking your phone to expire. And unlocking your phone is where you change the settings to allow for you to use an 18D phone on another network by switching out the SIM card. And this was asked by the big wireless companies, a lobbying association, CTIA, the Wireless Association. So this quite infuriated me. The idea of the federal government was saying what technologies you could and couldn't use and banning a commonly used technology because of being asked by these large companies where there are over 100 wireless carriers with all petitions saying, we like unlocking. That's pro-competition. And the idea that individuals could go to jail for doing this for five years, really, you know, they might hear her on fire. And so I wrote the article for the Atlantic on this and it got over a million hits and knocked the Atlantic off line. And I said, hey, I guess that there actually are people out there who also care about the issue as much as I do. And so we started a national campaign on this issue. And it started small at first, but it started to grow up bigger and eventually we got to 114,000 signatures in the White House petition. And that meant that the White House was required to respond if we got over 100,000. And not only did the White House respond, but they responded in spate. They came out saying that they are strongly in favor of unlocking in the FCC and asked if they're investigating the situation. And this is a pretty serious reversal because only 30 some days before the Librarian of Congress's rule went into effect, the Librarian of Congress was in a rulemaking function of the executive branch. So the administration actually changed their mind in about 35 days because of the petition. And that kick started a process that's cascading across Capitol Hill of members of Congress who are trying to fix this problem. Yeah, I agree. It was incredible what you accomplished. And I commend you for that because I'm a cynic about political activism, but you actually found a narrow niche thing. You found a way to get it done. I mean, it was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in politics. Let me ask you this. What do you think the next thing is going to be? I mean, because right now the ruling still stands, do you think the Librarian of Congress can change the ruling or will they or can the Obama administration pressure cause them to re-evaluate or do we have to wait for legislative changes or what do you think the next development will be in this issue? Well, we have a number of bills percolating. We have Senator Wyden who introduced a bill. Just today we had Senator Lee and Clobuchar that introduced a bill. We know that on the House side there's going to be several bills introduced, one of them by Congressman Jason Chase that's probably cosponsored by Jared Paul. So there's a lot of momentum across the Hill. But the question is exactly how far are you going to go? Are you actually going to check the box here or are you actually going to fix the problem? And, you know, it's unfortunate in Washington, D.C., but a number of times on issues like this, members of Congress think they can get away with just checking the box. We're going to make sure we hold the pizza fire to say, no, this technology should actually be lawful and that means doing more just checking the box. But I mean that specifically. Senator Wyden's bill, he should be commanded for introducing a bill. The first bill actually on this matter. But the bill only says that if an individual unlocks their phone, then they're not criminally liable. That the unlocking is now allowed. Well, that's terrific. Now we have 114,000 people sign this petition. We have a national campaign and that's not good enough. And it's not good enough because still developing the tools is against the law. Selling the tools are against the law. So a person may be able to unlock their phone, but if the technology is still illegal, then you haven't actually solved the problem. So that's our primary concern with Wyden's bill. But obviously this legislation goes through lots of revisions and they'll probably, or they should fix it. But even beyond that, we've exposed that we have a process that by default, almost like an entitlement system, just by default, we've inherited a legal regime that banned entire classes of technology. And that should be very disturbing and that should require us to take an honest approach to take a relook at our policies to say, okay, so we have laws that have inherently banned whole classes of technology. Let's go through that. Let's have an oversight hearing. Is that really logical without any governmental interest to do so? So let's, you know, some of those technologies that should also be on the table. Yeah, I... GL Break... Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. GL Breaking Your iPhone is another one of those technologies that has to petition every three years in order to be lawful. And until very recently, that was against the law. Well, there's 23 million jailbroken devices. Are you telling me that there are 23 million felons in the United States that's absurd? And in fact, even today, now there's the exception. Again, developing the tools for GL Breaking or selling the tools is still illegal. But GL Breaking Your Phone, as a person is lawful, but GL Breaking and iPad is illegal. Right. So these rules are kind of crazy. So that's the second issue. And the third issue is the most important to me, which is accessibility technology for persons who are deaf or who are blind. We're talking about closed caption technology or read aloud functionality and several other tools. That technology is against the law. Right. So I want you to think about that for a second. There are persons who are deaf or who are blind and we have tools that could help them, but we have laws that make it illegal to sell, develop or use those tools. Right. That's crazy. And so the idea that these things can't also be on the table, now that we're taking a look at this issue overall, these issues should all be on the table. No, I agree. And let me ask you, have you looked into this recent issue, this arising, which is the, and again, I don't want to put you on the spot with something we didn't discuss ahead of time, but in the 1976 copyright act reform, which I think Jimmy Carter was the president signed, which came into effect in 1978, there was a provision which said that starting in 1978, there's a new way that authors of copyrighted works, including books or software or music or whatever, they can liberate their works 35 years after the publication, which starting in 1978 is hello, 2013. So starting this year, starting this year, there's going to be a spate of disputes, litigation, controversies, whatever, where authors of songs and novels and software have the right under the 1978 provisions to liberate their works from the control of the publishers. I don't know if you're aware of this issue, but it's something I'm about to write about. I think it's an important issue. Do you know what I'm talking about? No, this is an issue that wasn't on my radar. Yes. So basically, as of January 1, well, 2013, because it's 35 years after 1978 to January 1, if you have assigned a copyright to some company of a book or a novel or a painting or a movie or a song or a software program, you have the right to request by a certain procedure that you get your rights back. And I actually am very hopeful about this because I think, so this is going forward. So starting this year, you're going... I think it's going to affect soon. Yes. So it's in effect now. So right now you have a lot of music artists who are requesting famous musicians, et cetera. They're starting to send these letters back to their publishers saying, I want my rights back. And you have to have a two-year window. You have to have a certain procedure, et cetera. So I think this is a positive development. I just wonder, what do you see as the... What do you see going forward? What do you think is going to happen with the DMCA process that you and the unlocking issue? What do you think will happen? Because Obama has already responded positively. The Obama administration has responded positively to your petition. So I don't know what sway they have over the Librarian of Congress, but do you think it will change or do you think... I mean, what do you think is going to happen? Well, I think it's going to require legislation to fix this. And in fact, that's what the White House statement was, is that they support legislation to fix this. And now we know that there's many bills in Congress that's bipartisan support. Many of the major leaders in this issue, such as Patrick Leahy, for example, who's a very influential member on the Democratic side as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, they've signaled that they're supportive of this. So it's starting to get real momentum on Capitol Hill to actually address this unlocking issue. Now, where we go from there is this question up in the air. I think that there are many other issues that also need to be addressed in this manner. Now, it's unfortunate on Capitol Hill, but many people think on Capitol Hill that piracy is a real problem. So therefore, anything that we do to copyright, we can never change copyright because changing copyright means you're soft on privacy. Right. But that's a stupid argument, which is we can be strong against piracy and support copyright, but take an analytical look at our laws and the books and evaluate if it's the most effective way of protecting copyright. And I think that this is what the cellphone issue forces us to do. It forces us to realize that we've created copyright policies that are so broad they're actually impacting them. They have nothing to do with piracy or copyright. So those other issues I mentioned before, like jailbreaking and the acceptable technology, if those aren't included in this bill, you'll probably see another petition from me to push on those issues because those are just no-brainers. But after that, there are other issues that need to be addressed as well. I think the most egregious beyond those would be what I call the heckler's veto. It's not what I call the heckler's veto, but this is the pinnacle of the heckler's veto, which is under the DMCA there's this takedown-request process where anyone could file a takedown with a website and the website's supposed to take that content down and you're supposed to say, this is infringing upon my copyright and then they just abide by that request. Right. Well, what happens in effect is it creates a heckler's veto where the websites just takedown the content without piracy online because they don't like is extremely problematic and runs the file of the First Amendment. Exactly know that it's been liable to use for this example is in 2008-2012. Go ahead. So we got cut off, but you were talking about the heckler's veto, which is an expression I really like. Go ahead. Sure. So there's a William Copper Act for anyone to do a takedown request and then most providers just takedown that content and it's supposed to protect copyright but in effect there really isn't a safeguard system and so in 2008-2012 campaign videos for John McCain people filed takedown requests against them on YouTube saying it violated their intellectual property and Google took the website that goes down in the weeks preceding the election and the same thing happened with Governor Mitt Romney's campaign in 2012 with campaign videos and in neither of those times was there any legitimate or even arguable copyright claim. It was a clear example of a heckler who didn't like Governor Romney and he didn't like Senator John McCain trying to inhibit their presidential campaign and it's a very dangerous precedent and those aren't the only examples but those are perhaps the most egregious examples. So those are some other lawful reforms that could be on the table going forward. Yeah, yeah, no I agree. Well I think we've exhausted this topic and I appreciate your time so let me ask you what do we have going forward for Derek Conner? What's your next project? Because you've been amazingly effective in what you've done so far. What are your future plans? Well you know it's now, I think it's two months since I left Capitol Hill and it looks like we have a bill in Congress and I'm going to be continuing to run across Capitol Hill to get this bill across the finish line but also to have some really solid hearings and I think the hearing is almost more important is actually bringing in the people talking about this law and having a conversation on it. So I'm going to be continuing to work on technology reform issues and I have a website up which is called fixcopyright.com and your listeners can continue to follow me there and also follow me on Twitter my handle is at Derek Conner and Conner is called KHA NNA. Well that's great and look I commend you for what you've done you've done great service for Liberty and the free market and property rights and just keep going and I look forward to watching you in the future and see what you produce because I think you're a rising star in the Liberty movement. You're too kind to say that, thank you. Thanks for having me on. Thanks Derek, I appreciate it.