THE BATTLE OVER DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT: A MULTI-METHOD STUDY OF THE POLITICS OF COPYRIGHT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES Bill D. Herman A DISSERTATION In Communication Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of the Doctor of Philosophy 2009 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. A full copy of this work is available online from the author’s Social Science Research Network author page. See: http://ssrn.com/author=545408 This work is also available on the author’s personal website. See: http://www.billyherman.com ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my wife, partner, and best friend, Christina M. Collins iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to the large number of people without whom this work never would have been possible. Thank you, Michael Delli Carpini, for being a great teacher and mentor as this project has moved from idea to completion. You are a gift to Annenberg and to all who seek to know more about political communication. I hope some day to share half your patience and insight with my own students. Likewise, thank you, Oscar Gandy. You are a treasured friend and mentor whose generosity I cannot possibly repay. When I arrived at Annenberg, I had only a vague sense of the vast areas of knowledge over which you continually exhibit total mastery. Your insistence that I could always think more clearly, write more effectively, and research more thoroughly helped turn me into a scholar. I was honored to sing your praises at the World Café Live, and I may leave Annenberg with no more treasured memory than your congratulatory hug at the news that our article was accepted. Thank you for believing in me. An additional hearty thanks go to the final member of my committee, Bob Hornik. Your input has made for substantial improvements in both the efficiency of my research process and the credibility of the final product. Thank you for taking the time to learn so much about arcane copyright debates so that you could continue to teach me so much about how to be a professional researcher and scholar. Professor Peter Jaszi of the American University Washington College of Law provided valuable feedback as I was developing my proposal. Thank you for your iv suggestions and for your tireless dedication to the right to make noninfringing uses. Without you, this dissertation would tell a very different story. Many others have contributed to this research as well. Many thanks for coding help go to fellow Annenbergers Lee Shaker and Lokman Tsui, as well as Marisa Collins, Tina Collins, Charles Collins, Peter Vardy, and Juan Medrano. Thanks to G. Anthony Benners for help with statistics and generally thoughtful feedback. I would also like to express my gratitude for my professors at Annenberg and at Penn, specifically: Ed Baker (Law), Joe Turow, Paul Messaris, Klaus Krippendorff, Monroe Price, Michael Hennessy, Katherine Sender, Vincent Price, Paul George (Law), and Richard Kihlstrom (Finance). My fellow students have been an invaluable part of my time at Penn. Thank you all. In particular, Mary Bock, Lokman Tsui, Deb Lubken, Nicola Simpson, Jason Tocci, and Ken Farrall have done a great deal to help keep me sane when life seemed intent on a different outcome. Thank you to the Annenberg staff for your efficiency and kindness, including Sharon Black, Rich Cardona, Lizz Cooper, Deb Porter, and Deb Williams. Bev Henry and Randy Robinson, thank you for convincing me that I belonged. I would also like to thank the Annenbergs for their generosity. I am proud to have attended classes and conducted research at such a fine institution. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their bountiful support and love. Thank you to my parents and my niece Trinity, who have patiently waited for what must seem like an eternity to see the day when I could finally stop being a student. v Thanks as well to the Collins family and to my wife’s extended family. Tina, your undying love and support mean the world to me. I could not have done this without all of you, and I hope I can continue to make each of you proud. vi ABSTRACT THE BATTLE OVER DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT: A MULTI-METHOD STUDY OF THE POLITICS OF COPYRIGHT MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES Bill D. Herman Michael X. Delli Carpini Digital rights management (DRM) refers to various technological systems by which copyright holders seek to exert control over the use and circulation of their works. This dissertation explores the policy debate over copyright law as a potential vehicle for regulating DRM technologies. It examines this debate in three separate time periods, between 1989 and 2006, as it took place in Congress, in The New York Times and Washington Post, and online. It answers the question: Which policy actors communicate most regularly in which media about DRM and copyright law, and how has this changed over time? Methods used include quantitative content analysis of documents from all three media, qualitative historical policy analysis, and web graph analysis tools that quantify and map the hyperlinks between websites. This work builds upon and extends the methodology of using web graphs as a tool for identifying the most central actors within a topical cluster of websites. vii Results illustrate the birth and growth of a fairly unified multi-sector strong fair use coalition. Voices of opposition to the regulation of DRM via copyright have moved from profound underrepresentation to approximate parity in congressional access, successfully moved press coverage in a more favorable direction, and dominated the online debate. Policy outcomes reflect this shift; while the strong copyright coalition successfully pushed through two major laws expanding copyright in the 1990’s, by the mid-2000’s, the strong fair use coalition had fought them to a draw, stopping proposed expansions of copyright and winning key congressional allies for a proposal to reduce DRM regulations. This dissertation’s results suggest the substantial power of online issue advocacy. In particular, the web benefits policy coalitions that have a disadvantage in financial capital but a comparatively large base of support. Coalitions still need regular interpersonal communication with policymakers, but online coalition building and advocacy appear to be of substantial help, legitimizing and amplifying the message of under-resourced coalitions. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................1 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ........................................................................................................5 Theories of Policy Stability and Change .................................................................................5 Theories of Mediated Communication.....................................................................................8 Synthesizing and Updating: Toward A Theory of Communicating Policy Actors ..................9 THEORIZING THE COPYRIGHT DEBATE AND BUILDING RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES ..............................................................................................................................11 Theorizing the Copyright Debate ..........................................................................................12 Research Questions and Hypotheses .....................................................................................14 METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................................................15 THE DRM POLICY SPACE...........................................................................................................19 DEBATING DRM POLICY IN CONGRESS .....................................................................................21 DEBATING DRM POLICY IN THE PRESS .....................................................................................22 DEBATING DRM POLICY ONLINE ..............................................................................................23 COMPARING MEDIA ...................................................................................................................25 CONCLUSION ..............................................................................................................................26 CHAPTER TWO: TOWARD A THEORY OF COMMUNICATING POLICY ACTORS 28 THEORIES OF POLICY STABILITY AND CHANGE..........................................................................29 The Iron Triangle...................................................................................................................30 The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF)..........................................................................33 Information Processing and the General Punctuation Hypothesis .......................................36 THEORIES OF MEDIATED COMMUNICATION ..............................................................................38 ix Why Media Coverage Matters: Theories of Media Effect .....................................................39 Media Economics and Information Subsidies .......................................................................43 Punctuated Equilibriums of Media Attention