Call me crazy, but I bet the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference won’t discuss Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which reads in part as follows:
“Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.”
In fact – surprise! – it looks like one meeting on the agenda could end up specifically promoting the agenda of Google, which just happens to be a sponsor. Take a look:
Workshop 1: Intermediary liability – What are the freedom of speech and business implications of making content platforms responsible for user-generated content?
The implication seems clear: Holding YouTube responsible for massive copyright violations amounts to a freedom of speech issue. This has been a Google talking point for some time. In October 2010, the company co-hosted Internet at Liberty 2010: The Promise and Perils of Online Free Expression, an event that had several lofty aims including “making sure that platforms like Google aren’t held liable for content they host.” Keeping corporations safe from legal damages – an issue for activism if there ever was one!
The Internet certainly presents important human rights issues, although I don’t think intermediary liability is one of them. I do think too much intermediary liability could curtail innovation, which would be a bad thing but hardly a human rights violation. The truth is that we need to discuss these issues in a much more nuanced way.
Every right reaches some limit when it interferes with the rights of another. The classic formulation is that “your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” The same applies online. Open Internet champions see Apple as a censor, since it chooses what can be sold in its App Store. But one could also argue that Apple’s selection process represents its own freedom of speech. Why does a rejection from Apple interfere with free expression any more than a rejection letter from a magazine? (As a freelance journalist, my rights were violated almost daily, I’m sorry to report) Apple may have too much market power, but that’s another issue entirely.
Copyright issues are also more nuanced than Google would have us believe. As some online activists see the issue, copyright is nothing more than a censorship regime. But that’s nonsense: No one believes that free speech includes the right to charge admission to a screening of “Star Wars” in your living room. In fact, in the U.S. at least, “The Framers intended copyright itself to be the engine of free expression,” according to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor majority opinion in a Supreme Court case. Copyright law doesn’t only limit free expression – it encourages it.
We clearly need to run the Internet in a way that encourages free expression. But I don’t think that involves shutting down YouTube or allowing it to profit from all the copyright infringement it encourages. I think it means writing sensible laws that assign some responsibility to companies like Google – enough to make them behave responsibly but still allow them to thrive. I know a conference on writing sensible laws would not have as much publicity value as the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference – it’s complicated, abstract, and often rather dull. But this corporate pep rally, disguised as a serious conference, only obscures the important issues.