Time to move beyond ‘sharing’ and ‘stealing’ in the debate over content

In the debate over online content, Robert Levine is a rare honest broker.

The former Wired journalist doesn’t parrot the fear-mongering of major copyright owners and nor does he embrace the tech utopias of the other side. Speaking at the Copyright Clearance Center’s OnCopyright 2012, Levine dressed-down the rhetorical excesses of the copyright industry and its opponents. Levine called out the industry for invoking loaded terms like “stealing” and “child pornography” as a pretext to obtain draconian enforcement powers. But he also had choice words for those who frame any sort of copyright controls as inherently oppressive. “It’s not stealing but it’s also not sharing,” said Levine. “There’s a difference between curation and piracy. Megaupload is not curation, it’s massive illegal distribution.”

(April 3)