KOL030 | Interview with Derek Khanna

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast, Episode 030.

This is an interview of Derek Khanna, a conservative/libertarian pro-innovation and pro-free market activist. Khanna was the Congressional staffer who authored a copyright reform brief for the Republican Study Committee (the conservative caucus of House Republicans). The brief was entitled Three Myths about Copyright Law and Where to Start to Fix it, and attacked current copyright law and proposed sweeping, significant changes—reducing statutory damages, expanding fair use, punishing false copyright claims, and significantly limiting copyright terms. The brief was immediately taken down, and Khanna no longer works on Capitol Hill. (See House Republicans: Copyright Law Destroys Markets; It's Time For Real Reform; Heroic and Radical Republican Study Committee Copyright Reform Proposal Retracted under Pressure from MPAA and RIAA, Techdirt Interview With Derek Khanna, Author Of The RSC 'Fix Copyright' Policy Briefing, Republican Study Committee Dumps Derek Khanna, Author Of Copyright Reform Brief, After Members Complain, and Copyright Shill’s Defense of the Status Quo.)

Khanna's latest effort was a petition urging the White House to make it legal under copyright law for people to unlock their cell phones. The White House agreed. (See Khanna's article in Forbes.com, White House Comes Out in Favor of Cellphone Unlocking and his National Review Online article, Why the GOP Has to Get Behind Cell-Phone Unlocking; also Derek Khanna: “Taking on real reform in a post-SOPA world – let’s start with cellphone unlocking”; White House Says Mobile Phone Unlocking Should Be Legal; and the TechCrunch piece, How A Fired Republican Staffer Became A Powerful Martyr For Internet Activists.)

We discussed these and related technology and IP issues.

Follow Khanna at https://twitter.com/DerekKhanna.