Proposal: “Electronic Media Users Association”

Rough Draft dated 19-November-2009
Your ideas for improving this draft proposal are invited.

Introduction: The Problem

It is obvious that the movie, music and other content and media industries have a quite tight grip on Congress vis-à-vis copyright law. While they do lose some battles here and there, overall they are slowly winning the war in extending the length, breadth and invasiveness of copyright law in their favor.

Why? Because they have power that money (note: our money) brings, plus the motivation and behind-the-scenes political lobbying know-how. Thus, they have the political “in” with Congress and the White House.

In contrast, we who believe in:

don’t even register on the political radar, comparatively-speaking.

We do have the Power

But if we look more closely, we certainly have the Power, and this power greatly exceeds that of media and content organizations such as MPAA, RIAA, etc., combined. Yet we are not properly concentrating and utilizing this power. What is this power? It is the collective power of passionate individuals, millions of us – those who purchase and use electronic and digital media of all kinds: music, video, e-books, radio, cable and satellite TV, mobile phones, etc. – and of course, Internet users who daily access online digital content.

After all, it is you, the content consumer, who wields the ultimate power: the power of your pocketbook and your vote.

How do we tap and focus this Power to overwhelm MPAA/RIAA/etc. and to become the dominant voice to be heard in Congress and the White House?

Example: The National Rifle Association

For tapping the power of the individual, let’s look at the obvious example: The National Rifle Association (NRA), and its opposition to gun-control.

No matter which side of the coin you are on with respect to the gun-control issue, we all have to acknowledge that the NRA has been extremely effective at stopping an entire political party (the Democratic Party), and passionate allied groups, from enacting the level of gun-control legislation they want, at all levels of government. (The NRA doesn’t win all battles, but they are so far holding their own in the war against a politically very powerful opponent, much more powerful and much more passionate than even MPAA/RIAA/etc.)

The NRA has done this by having built a membership of only four million passionate individual members in partnership with several gun manufacturing companies. It has also adopted a program of very strong lobbying of Congress at the political level, just as the MPAA/RIAA has done. The NRA is considered by lawmakers themselves as the most powerful lobbying organization in the country, making the MPAA/RIAA/etc. look pale by comparison.

The NRA is an “in your face” 501(c)(4) (and NOT 501(c)(3)) organization that has found the magic to focus the power of several million ordinary individuals who otherwise would have no organized or collective voice in the body politic.

We have advocates on our side, but they are insufficient

When we look at the current organizations on OUR side, they are relatively small organizations which, by and large, work outside the radar of the body politic, and most do so as 501(c)(3) organizations greatly constraining their political influence, particularly in the legislative arena where the war must ultimately be won. They primarily use the rational argument approach which is, to be blunt, like spitting in the wind when it comes to impacting the legislative process.

Now I’m glad these organizations are there for us, and their approach will continue to be needed – to fight the war on multiple fronts. This article is not intended to disparage them in any manner. But they are clearly insufficient to get the job done. They are being steamrolled at the national political (legislative) level by the big money interests of the media companies who directly contribute to political campaigns.

These small groups on our side may win a few battles here and there, mostly securing favorable court rulings based on existing law (which of course continues to shift in the direction the media conglomerates want.) But, by and large, these small groups are definitely not winning the war which must happen at the legislative level.

In our current political system, money and votes will always trump rational argument with our Congress-folk, unfortunately, and I don’t see any way to change this without significant and unlikely-to-happen changes to our Constitution. We can be idealistic and stay above that reality, and continue to lose the war as we have so far. Or, we can leverage that reality in order to achieve the worthwhile goals we have.

Proposed Solution: An electronic/digital media and Internet users association

Thus, I believe what we collectively need to do is to organize an “Electronic Media Users Association” (not a proposed name, but something to use for discussion purposes in this article.) The EMUA would follow the basic NRA model albeit with several differences (we can also study another powerful organization, MoveOn.org for more inspiration and ideas.) The core power base would (and must) derive from individual membership as it does in the NRA, allied with supportive high tech companies and other non-profit organizations.

(Many high tech sectors, by and large, don’t want legislated controls on their hardware, software or online services. Note, it is important the EMUA not be run by high tech companies; its main power base must derive from the individual members and its bylaws must be such to maintain this power base.)

If we add the possibility of EMUA offering various benefits of membership (possible when we have corporate supporters), I believe we will be able to attract several million passionate consumers and Internet users to join this organization. And we may not even need to offer such perks to grow to this size.

With nominal individual membership fees, plus hopefully larger donations from wealthy benefactors who are on our side, the organization will immediately become a powerhouse and can begin lobbying Congress and the White House on an equal footing with the media interests.

What this organization can do, and should try to accomplish

The EMUA can call upon its membership to light a fire at the grass roots level that the content and media industries cannot do, such as calls and letters to their Congressional delegation, organizing product boycotts, even targeting the re-election of Congress-folk who are hostile to our goals. How many consumers of media are fully supportive of the goals of MPAA/RIAA and willing to take action at their behest?

The NRA is very effective at mobilizing its base since its base is passionate – imagine if we had five million individual members with an equal passion to take action, and do so in an organized manner. What if we had ten million, who all are proficient at using the Internet, and who vote?

In addition, unlike the NRA, the EMUA can also organize boycotts of purchasing digital and electronic media (and related activities such as attending movie theaters) which will hit the media interests right in the pocketbook and thus temper their political aggressiveness. Furthermore, since copyright law is strictly Federal (while fighting gun-control has to be done at all levels of government: local, state, and Federal), the EMUA can concentrate most of its resources at the Federal level. So in a few respects the EMUA has the potential to exceed the NRA in political clout, and do it almost immediately.

I also believe the organization needs to not only be reactive, but to become aggressively pro-active, such as to promote legislation in our favor. For example:

Of course, there are other issues of interest to electronic media and Internet users, outside of copyright, and the EMUA will definitely advocate in these other areas as well. However, most of the issues of interest to content, media and Internet users are connected to copyright law, thus the focus of the organization.

An international version of the organization can advocate new treaties to meet the same goals. I hope in the future when there is talk of world-wide copyright harmonization, it is harmonization to the “I”EMUA goals for copyright law, and not those promoted by the international media and content conglomerates.

Conclusion and summary

I believe with five or ten million passionate members, significant resources, the support of a number of friendly high tech industries, and of course the help of a number of allied organizations such as EFF, we can achieve the goals outlined in this article.

To summarize, the current approach of supporting smaller 501(c)(3) groups fighting for us, such as EFF, is really not working because such groups can never, by their general approach of convincing by rational argument and avoiding actual political-level lobbying due to their 501(c)(3) limitations, exert the needed political power to change the laws in our favor.

We need to leverage ordinary consumer power using an appropriate variant of the “in your face” NRA and MoveOn.org models, combined with the power of the Internet to bring consumers together, in order to balance the power of MPAA, RIAA, etc. If we don’t do this, I don’t believe we have any chance at all to win this war and return proper balance to copyright law – the losers will be all the users of electronic and digital content, plus the grave impact such an imbalanced copyright law will have on our civil liberties and economic growth.

Where do we go from here?

If this proposal intrigues you, even though it is still quite rough around the edges (and certainly could be improved), contact me at jon@noring.name. I have a few ideas for next steps we could take to ascertain public interest, as well as to get more people involved as co-launchers.

This proposed organization should arise as a movement of a number of passionate people dedicated to the general vision outlined above. The final details of the goals and bylaws of the organization will need to be collectively worked out (and certainly others will contribute their own great ideas), and not simply be those of one or two people.

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