shouting loudly

On tonight’s Colbert Report, EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow let Colbert brow-beat him on the topic of intellectual property.

Late last week, EFF sued Viacom for allegedly filing an unfounded DMCA takedown notice, demanding that YouTube remove a MoveOn parody of the Colbert Report. The video, “Stop the Falsiness,” was taken down as of last Thursday but is now back online. More on the suit below.

Tonight, Colbert (the character, of course; more on the actual Colbert’s ideas about parody below) pulled out his very best Bill O’Reilly schtick, shouting over Barlow and preventing any meaningful discussion before it could even get started. Barlow is an eloquent and passionate defender of limited IP protections, but after his inital 12-second pitch, he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

Colbert spouted an amazingly explicit version of the media celebrity’s copyright plea: Pay my company so they can pay me. Of Viacom, he proclaimed, “They own me. I’m their bitch!” He even pulled out a magic marker and whiteboard to diagram how cash trickles down from Viacom to the talent, namely: “Meee!”

Colbert then muddied the line between trademark and copyright, something to the effect of:

COLBERT: Now let’s say I come up with something that nobody’s ever said before, say, “Librarians are hiding something.” There, see, never been said before.

BARLOW: Trademark 2007

COLBERT: Now I should be able to stop you from saying that. I own that. It’s mine.

Barlow had no response on why the law should be any different. (First of all, that’s not the law on trademark or copyright.) This is disappointing. Barlow’s a forefather of the information freedom movement, and don’t take this as a diss on that legacy, but he couldn’t even come up with the lay-up Colbert kept trying to pass him.

Barlow needed to say, “If we use copyright to stop parody, we gag free speech.” Colbert would have obliged with something like, “Corporations should be able to silence parody. There’s nothing a corporation could possibly do that deserves criticism!” If you’re going into the (paper) tiger’s den, you’ve got to be ready to defend yourself! (Imagine if Barlow had done this on an actual shout-down “news” show. Disaster!)

It was funny, but I was just appalled at Barlow’s non-readiness for the “conversation”.

MORE ON COLBERT AND PARODY: To the real Colbert’s credit, on tonight’s show he also invited his audience to construct a video parody of the show.

Colbert gave an extended interview in which he made several quotes that just beg to be taken out of context. He even added painful pauses to make the edit points easier.

As just one example of deliberately baiting the audience to quote him out of context:

There are people who say, “The troops are stupid.” Or, “The troops are idiots.” I want to go on record with that. I’m not one of those people who says those things.

You can download the interview and some bonus material (both .MOV files) from ColbertNation.com. Once you’re happy with your remix, you can submit it here. (This is a neat idea, but the lawyers really tried their best to suck the fun out of it. Read the entire contest rules; I dare you.)

MORE ON THE LAWSUIT: EFF and MoveOn sued Viacom because YouTube sourced the takedown request to Viacom, which owns Comedy Central. Viacom, however, has insisted that it has no record making such a request. (They made over 100,000 takedown requests, several of which were totally unfounded, so they may have also made a mistake on this count.)

Since the suit was filed, Viacom general counsel Michael D. Fricklas has said, “Viacom has no problem with” the online distribution of the video. The clip is an obvious parody, which is recognized as a good basis for a fair use defense, especially since the Supremes’ decision in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music (1994).

MORE THAT IS APROPOS OF NOTHING: All quotations not from the downloadable movie are guaranteed to be at least a little off. Not only do I not own a TiVo, I’m calling this week to downgrade our cable to the over-the-air channels only. I used to be more hardcore, living life without a TV. I often get pushback on this. “Bill, you’re in graduate school in MEDIA STUDIES! How in the world do you not own [insert TV-related item here]?”

Answer: I know how bad TV is for me (and you). I’m uncomfortable with what it teaches me and with how much I watch. For instance, I should have spent the last 4 hours cleaning my office rather than watching, then blogging about TV.

UPDATE: Thanks to Lok for this link to a pretty good remix.