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How does this bill compare to what I believe are a reasonable set of rights like this?

Inasmuch as

• the marketplace for purchasing legislation is rather distorted with only two sellers (D and R = $) and is pratically opaque and
• as most voters are more concerned/distracted with the battle over Anna Nicole Smith's burial than DMCA, and
• as most voters probably don't even know what the DMCA is.

It's not the application that makes the DRM wrong, it's the details of the rules enforced by the DRM. If the DRM system enforces rules that are not found in copyright law, then it's wrong.

I have no problem with DRM systems that accurately enforce copyright law. I have no problem with DRM being used as an alternative to legal protection (i.e. copyright and/or contract law). I have a big problem with DRM being used as an end run around the important loopholes encoded into copyright law, particularly given that copyright law now props up the DRM.

The problem with DRM and the current law is that the law supports whatever rules the DRM implements, rather than the DRM implementing the rules the law defines.

What we need is a digital consumer's bill of rights that guarantees our right to format shift, time shift, and make backups. This bill of rights shouldn't outlaw DRM that doesn't preserve users' rights, instead it should simply specify that circumventing such DRM is not illegal and neither is trafficking in circumvention devices.

...it has the potential to become a very bad precedent, and ruin mod-chipping for everyone.

Well, you're absolutely correct on this one. It can go one of two ways. But if it gets the "legs" we all fear, one more right goes down the toilet and possibly gives steam to the anti-analog recording device trouble that's been brewing lately.

Obligatory link to the DigitalConsumer.org Bill of Rights

are very reasonable starting points IMHO.

By intentionally corrupting the error-correction data on DVDs (same as most CD protection rackets), the consumer gets inferior merchandise. Not only is it more difficult to make a backup copy, but it also means that dust and scratches on the disk surface are more likely to cause playback errors. A scuff that would be irrelevant on a normal DVD could render a "protected" DVD unplayable.

So what are you supposed to do when that happens? Buy another copy of the DVD, of course! It's win-win for the MPAA, lose-lose for the consumer.

You're describing the law as it should be, not the law as it is, at least in the US. If what you say were correct, there would be no need for additional legislation to make your claims true.

Fair Use is nowhere near as expansive as you describe it. Read the law. Important sections are here and here.

Actually, it's probably just a bit broader than the law states, due to various decisions in case law. But not much mor expansive, and most of those decisions precede the modification of the law, meaning that using them will require the courts to re-examine the law and the decisions to determine what it means now. Oh, and there have been some decisions that to narrow it, as well.

As I understand it (IANAL, but I am a moderately well-informed layman):

The copyright holder has NO RIGHTS if I make a backup copy.

This isn't clear and probably isn't true. There's certainly nothing in the law that specifically allows it. What you can say is if you make a copy for backup purposes, the copyright holder has no legal recourse. Your civil liabiity for the illegal act is limited to the amount of the damage, which is $0. The criminal provisions added by the DMCA (or was it the CTEA? I forget) only kick in if you make backups of more than $1000 worth of recordings in a six month period, so you're safe as long as you don't back up more than, say, 75 CDs per six month period.

Since the copyright holder's recourse against you is nil, a court would dismiss any such case as "de minimis".

The copyright holder has NO RIGHTS if I want to copy it to a different media/format.

This is pretty much the same story as backups, AFAICT.

The copyright holder has NO RIGHTS if I am copying to parody it.

This one is hard to be sure about. The case law with respect to parody is complex (i.e. I don't even claim to understand it except that I know the courts have okayed parody in some cases and refused it in others).

If you're going to parody something, your best bet is to either (a) get permission (which is what Wierd Al does) or (b) talk to a good lawyer.

The copyright holder has NO RIGHTS if I am copying it for educational usage, either as a student or as a teacher, or for research purposes.

From my reading of section 107, this would seem to be true. On the other hand, I know that schools have been successfully sued for copying sheet music for choir practice.

The copyright holder has NO RIGHTS if I copy to modify it in any way I like for personal use.

I think this is the same situation as backups and format shifting. The law does grant the copyright holder exclusive rights over the preparation of derivative works, and I don't find anything that grants you a personal use loophole. Again, though, any suit would seem to be de minimis.

And on an on and on.

Unfortunately, not only are all of the actions you cited Fair Use, there aren't a lot of other actions that are.

Not to mention the fact that even in the cases where you DO have Fair Use rights, if you have to circumvent copyright protection technology, you've broken the law and "shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; and (2) shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned for not more than 10 years, or both, for any subsequent offense."

That's why it's very important to support the Digital Consumer's Bill of Rights.

I know, I sympathize, I agree.

DirecTV's Content Providers (Newscorp) are extremely concerned about what you could do, or what others could do. Namely, rebroadcast their content for free to other people that aren't paying for that content.

Of course, you and I as customers want some reasonable functionality for our DVR's and I'm going to whatever lengths I need in order to get that functionality, DMCA be damned. But no, I'm not about to rebroadcast their content to the world, as much as I think they're greedy and paranoid and trying to assert more control over my viewing practices than is proper, because I don't think my proper digital rights should include sharing that content with umpteen million "friends".

Probably a good time to mention the Digital Consumer Bill of Rights.

They bitched when cassette tapes were released.
They bitched when VCRs were released.
They bitched when BetaMax was released.
They bitched when DAT was released. (and for the most part, won in the states)
They'll continue to bitch as more and better recording devices are invented.

Get used to it, there's a long history of bitching and whining and moaning coming out of the (MP|RI)AA.

Just be sure that your right to fair use is protected.

But "enthusiasts" haven't done that yet on any widespread basis. Nor has a good case been made that music file trading has cut into profits compared with the situation of no file trading.

The solution is not to hobble the technology (which is what killed DAT in the United States), but to prosecute specific instances of violations of the law (where users assuming the right to distribute copyrighted material to others where they don't own the copyright).

The ability to watch programs outside the home should not be an issue by itself.

Lots of people with RV's bring recorded shows with them on vacation that they've recorded on their VCR's at home. It's natural that they'd want to be able to see those shows somewhere different than where they've recorded it.

Basically, this Digital Bill of Rights summarizes a reasonable view and does not prevent copyright owners from pursuing legal action against individuals that violate their legally-protected rights as copyright owners.

Whether the current laws concerning copyrights and patents are appropriate for society is a separate, larger issue.

I found this bit really interesting (and insightful, actually, more on that below):

Actually in my spare time I had an idea of one revolutionary and ambitious project I can build on top of the trusted computing capable hardware (that project has nothing to do with linux by the way, but for it to run on linux too, linux would need to provide some basic trusted computing support), that's something I wanted to build for a long time but it has never been feasible until they added the trusted computing to the hardware and they filled the gap to make my idea possible, so I'm quite happy about these new hardware features (despite clearly they can be misused for some annoying things too).

I bring it up because this is so contrary to the common opinion on /., which is that TCPA is unabashedly evil and has no utility. Andrea is obviously one very smart guy, and a person who feels the need to have complete control over his machine, but who likes TCPA in spite of the risk of misuse. Contradiction?

The fact is that TCPA *is* an extremely useful and valuable technology for systems that require a high degree of security. It's not clear to me that the average home PC benefits from it, but it's very valuable for cheap, high-performance key management systems and cryptographic accelerators, systems that contain valuable data (like many businessmen's laptops), and systems at critical points in network infrastructure. I'm sure there are other valuable, and non rights-eroding, applications as well.

In my work as a designer and developer of high-security systems, I'm extremely excited about the fact that we can now buy low-end computing equipment that has TCP hardware. It enables so much. The next step is TCP hardware that is tamper-resistant, or even tamper-reactive, but still cheap. For now, really high-security systems still require something better, but TCPA can fill the niche between systems that require serious security and those that can get by with purely software-based security (or no security, which is fine for the majority of desktops and laptops).

To be clear, DRM is a bad idea, in general. The business applications (self-destructing documents, confidential documents that cannot be printed) do have potential utility, but I doubt they're worth the complexity they'll create. And Palladium aka NGSCB aka whatever-it's-called-today is an unquestionably evil notion, focused on removing the ability of people to control their own hardware, in an effort to allow a couple of declining business models to prop one another up.

IMO, what geek activists need to focus on is not killing the development of tools like TCPA, but rather on legal and social means of ensuring our rights.

Tools are not evil. Only users are evil.

Heh - I was about to submit this story. I can add a link to the actual bill, though: H.R. 2735. And, if you happen to be a US voter reading this, go here, find your representatives, and tell them that you support the Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act of 2003. Perhaps hint to them that the same rationale could be applied to other things that consumers buy, and might want to fix at some point. Perhaps suggest that, really, some sort of comprehensive Consumers Bill of Rights could be in order. Just a thought.

Digital Consumer

-Lucas

Vote with your dollars people! These days it's all about Special Interests. The solution is to join a special interest. Groups like the NRA and ALCU are comprised of individuals concerned about their rights and liberties.

To start with, donate to the EEF. I'd also like to see a PAC who's 'special interest' is preserving the freedom of p2p, etc. I suppose there's digitalconsumer.org, but they seem more interested in hardware rights.

Democracy costs money people. Don't bitch about it, pay up.

Yeah yeah... 13$ is about the price of a CD... so whatever you don't feed it right back into the machine that is the RIAA... instead go donate it to a good cause like the couple below (no affiliation)

boycott-riaa.com

digital-consumer.org

do something useful and fight this idiotic RIAA crap!

Let's see. There's the EFF, digitialconsumer.org, ..., anyone know any others ?

You mean this bill ?

The alliance is fighting government involvement

Actually, as a group they're fighting just one specific RIAA-endorsed bill, Senator Hollings' proposed CBDTPA. The article brings out that at least one member of the alliance actually favors some sort of government involvement to ensure that the fair use rights US citizens now take for granted will be codified into law.

The alliance is fighting government involvement

Actually, as a group they're fighting just one specific RIAA-endorsed bill, Senator Hollings' proposed CBDTPA. The article brings out that at least one member of the alliance actually favors some sort of government involvement to ensure that the fair use rights US citizens now take for granted will be codified into law.

This will be bad for consumers. Currently, AOL has control over TW. But if the TW side grows more powerful, and Warner gains control over the Internet access of 30 Million Worldwide Members(tm), then Warner can use them as pawns in the battle for DMCA II and Bono Act II in the USA and EU legislatures.

No, you're right, that the topic deserves some careful consideration.

I tend to believe that intellectual commodities are fairly tenuous constructions and that the current legal protections err on the side of generosity to the "holders of IP" rather than on the side of the general public. If my patent (I actually do have one) were to generate a lot of revenue perhaps my attitude might change, but as it stands, 17 years seems appropriate to the 17th century.

The Digital Bill of Rights is a nice start towards defining some of what might make a good society, but it avoids the touchy issue of your right to share your right to listen to a song with friends, acquaintences, or people you don't even know.

I think everyone is missing a fundamental point here: The dam that is technological content protection or access control can be easily burst... as shown by this case (especially if any infringing technology shows up) and the DeCSS case. The development of DeCSS allowed content to be copied by the end-user (even if poorly) and, once the program was out, there was no going back... In this light, it doesn't seem that hard to imagine the entertainment industry advocating draconian legislation like the DMCA, CBDTPA, and the Berman Bill. Yikes...

If we each go to the following URL, enter the essential information, and press "Send Comments to FCC" button, I sincerly hope the FCC will get the impression that Phil Lelyveld does not represent "REAL PEOPLE" and that DigitalConsumer.org is more than just two dot com millionaires.

http://www.digitalconsumer.org/bcastflag/fcccommen t.html

It wasn't mentioned in the article, but the comment period ends TODAY, Dec 6th. It was originally supposed to end on October 30th, but was extended to today.

If you want to submit your opinion to the FCC on this matter, and have them read and consider it, today is your last chance.

The digitalconsumer web page for sending comments is here.

Hopefully, geeks on Slashdot will continue to support Disney so that we can get more of this!

If you support Disney, you are also supporting Senator Hollings, the CBDTPA, and other attempts to ban computers to make the world safe for the media corporations' business model.

Don't do it.

I think you mean, it plays jokes on you. ;P

DRM is a very, very different beast. The opponents are much more organized, and much fiercer in their (our) opposition. I have already decided to oppose Dianne Feinstein, my senior Senator, for no reason other than her co-sponsorship of S.2048. (Anyone want to run in the 2006 Demo primary?) I'm sure many others will do the same if necessary.

The point is not that we've won, or even that we're winning; but the battle is by no means lost at this point.

Sorry to single you out but it's sad how many posters on /. feel the need to insert an acronym or two just for the hell of it...[w]ould the fifteen seconds that it would have cost you to provide a little clarity kill you?

When's the last time you heard someone here speak of the American Standard Code for Information Interchange? Discussions on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or worse, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act) would get unnecessarily verbose were it not for the various abbreviations and acronyms that are in common use.

Abbreviations to refer to the various Star Trek movies might confuse in a forum with a more general audience...but in a forum (such as this) that's visited mainly by geeks and with Star Trek as the subject, it's not unreasonable to expect a certain minimal knowledge of common jargon used by that group of people.

(Besides, a simple Google search would point a n00b in the right direction. If you're not willing to do a minimal amount of fact-finding on your own, maybe you'd find this service more to your liking.)

DigitalConsumer.org is sponsering a consumers bill of rights in reguards to fair use. They will even fax your congressman for you.

Electronic Frontier Foundation is heavily involved in protecting civil rights in a digital world.

Even if it passes its obviously unconstitutional and any judge in his right mind will strike it down.

Really? I sure hope so.

What the tech community needs is a united front on the issues. Sure, there's the EFF, DigitalConsumer.org, anti-dmca.org, digitalspeech.org, publicknowledge.org, etc. etc. etc - all with varying degrees of influence, completeness, and scope. It really seems like a big duplication of effort.

Whether you like them or not, we could learn a lot from the National Rifle Association. The NRA has their "protecting our freedoms" issues, and they've managed to unite a group of fairly individualist people for a common goal. Legislators do not defy the NRA lightly in Congress, while they routinely screw over the tech industry. We need a solid lobby like the NRA to watch over our interests in Washington.

That being said: If every slashdot reader were to write a simple letter to their senators & congressmen about fair use, there'd be no stopping us. So go... right now... and write your letter, I plan to. If you don't, don't bitch about losing your fair use rights when it does happen.

I'll second that. At the VERY least, place a phone call to your US Senators and US Representative. This is a 30-second (literally) process, and is the bare minimum that anyone concerned by this issue should do. It at least gets another tick-mark in the "no" column for DRM issues.

By all means, if you're more motivated, write, fax , email, or even set up a meeting with your rep's local staffer. I did that - it's not bad, and you can usually get a meeting with them within a day or so.

If you need to brush up on talking points, Digital Consumer has a lot of great references, FAQs, etc. Make your points in a calm, logical manner, pointing out that DRM A) won't stop piracy, B) will retard the technological innovation that has pushed our economy in the past 50 years, and C) only serves the interests of a few fat-cat media cartels.

But, please, do something to help stop this. We as a community dropped the ball on the DMCA, and look where it's gotten us. We can't afford to do the same on DRM.

At least two judges are on record saying that publishers are under no obligation to "facilitate" fair-use. In the DeCSS case it was suggested people could use VHS recordings instead of DVD to obtain fair-use rights (a truly clueless opinion, given the fact that (a) much material does not appear on VHS, and (b) the VHS tapes now have technology that prevents fair-use too). Another judge suggested that people could use a camera to take multiple still shots from a movie (forget who, it was a recent case).

This issue is the primary cause of Digital Consumer . They are trying to get fair-use protected (from laws that steal them away) and enforced (from judges like the above that don't see a proactive need to protect these rights). Given the way special interests have stolen rights and property from the public in the last 10 years, I think this is a very necessary action.

One of my biggest upcoming concerns is the fact that DRM protections won't expire when the object enters the public domain. Given the length of today's copyright terms, I guess this is only of interest to far sighted people. The same types of judges who think fair-use does not need any protection are sure to ignore the fact that material only released under DRM protection expiration will never enter the public domain unless copyright holders/publishers are forced to place it there.

Further, a single economical helmet can cover four of these analog holes at once!

I humbly suggest the most cost-effective and reliable solution to the copyright industries' troubles will be DRM helmets, bolted onto each dutiful consumer at the neck. When these helmets sense watermarked audio or video within earshot/eyeshot, they check their local license manager and instantly "fog up" if payment has not been delivered.

This will especially teach people not to listen to unauthorized copies of music while driving.

By fastening suitably-small DRM helmets onto children at an appropriately-early age, the citizenry's consumptive habits can be "arrested" (along with cranial volume) at a revenue-maximizing developmental stage. I'd guess this is around age 13, but I'm open to the latest research. Give and take is what policymaking is all about.

So step up to the plate, senators, lobbyists, and titans of industry. Write this into the next rev of the CBDTPA. We can call it the SNEHNEA: "See No Evil, Hear No Evil Act". Why try to haphazardly plug billions of analog holes, when you can just cap the problem at its far fewer human endpoints? (The end-to-end design principle is your friend!)

If we can put a man on the moon, then surely we can cage every American's mind.

[Intellectual Property Disclosure: The "DRM Helmet" and the "Cranial Arrest Adolescent DRM Helmet" may be covered by patents granted or applied for by Gordon Mohr. Licensing will be available on unreasonable and discriminatory terms.]

We have sensible Internet legislation, as opposed to the U.S. -- after all it's the U.S. who started with the DMCA and the like.

Not completely true. WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) first came up with a DMCA like treaty which countries (like the US) ratified, and then wrote legislation (in the US, the DMCA) to enforce.

The DMCA has an international origin.

Disconnect yourself.

Senator Hollings is going to do that for us.

After CBDTPA passes there will be no Internet in the US, just a TCP/IP based conduit for pay-per-view content from the media conglomerates to the consumers.

I do it too. Every time I go to Newbury Comics, it seems those bastards have upped the price of CD's.

But bitching about it doesn't really do anything. The CD producers can charge whatever price they think the market will bear. Some people actually buy CD's at stores like Sam Greedy and Record Frown, both of which seem to sell everything at MSRP (about $19 now), so it's obvious people are willing to pay.

My answer? I simply buy fewer CD's: at $10 I'll buy almost anything, at $13 I'll buy most stuff, but at $15+ I'll only buy what I really want. The rest of it just isn't worth that price.

However, just because I think they can charge whatever they want doesn't also mean they get to dictate terms. If they want a limited-time monopoly on distributing their recordings, they have to fulfill their side of the copyright bargain, which IMO means that they have to make it easy for me to exercise my fair use rights. It isn't enough simply not to prosecute me for attempting to exercise those rights, such as space-shifting (ripping to .ogg, making a copy for the car, etc.) and time-shifting (taping stuff off the radio to play later); they should not even be able to make it difficult to perform such tasks. This means that copyright should not apply to recordings with fair use interference measures/anti-free trade measures (collectively and inaccurately known as "copy protection").

Go sign the Digital Consumer Bill of Rights and stand up for preservation of your fair use rights. Call your Congressmen. Donate to Rick Boucher and let him know why. Join the EFF. (And if all else fails, join the NRA, buy a handgun, and get ready to defend your liberties with force.) Stop simply complaining, and do something about it.

The DigitalConsumer.org Bill of Rights seems like a great middle-of-the-road choice.

Yeah, I know I saw a Sony-distributed movie recently, but I intend to be more vigilant in the future.

If you really need your corporate media, buy it USED. Half.Com is a good place to start. So is Second Spin and Powell's.

Stop buying new DVDs and CDs. Stop going to movies. Maybe even get rid of your cable service, because the cable companies pay their tribute to the MPAA and the RIAA too. Take the money you would have used on new DVDs, new CDs, movie tickets and cable bills and donate it to the EFF.

And for crissake FAX YOUR CONGRESSCRITTER! And like Zappa always reminded us, Don't forget to vote.

It seems you kind of missed the boat. They weren't up in arms over the ads they were protesting the subscription model. Unfortunatly I can't find a link to the journal now but the deal basically was that the users who supplied /. with the vast majority of its content would also be paying the most because they were also the ones who reloaded the most. Also note many users did infact do something. Did you notice how many users were openly promoting the Blackout, did you notice how sparse the comments were how the first couple days? Most of those were major discussion contributors. Also note that the second day of the blackout this story came out. The editors saw that there was a popular revolt and made concessions, true they didn't make any major changes but they made significant moves towards allieviating the two major concerns. So as opposed to your cynical post the Great Slashdot Blackout was a success. Note also the recent hurdle encountered by Holling's bill. Although I don't recall hearing about DigitalConsumer.org on slashdot I'm sure not a few likeminded individuals were involved, and we were definatly involved in the huge public upcry that halted the passage of the bill. The problem here, as many have pointed out, is that public simply doesn't care, if we got them to understand perhaps we'd get a different reaction, perhaps not, that's capitalism, love it or hate it. If all consumers were as vocal and vigalent as slashdot readers are this would be a much nicer world to live in.

"new legislation would you support which would make those who engage in online piracy easier to track?"

None. First I want legislation to protect me before I vote for any legislation to stop piracy. (And whan I say piracy, I mean true piracy, the kind that causes harm, not the definition that the RIAA has bastardized in order to explain their lousy sales.)

The reason that the CTPBASPAFP is so awful is that there is all this 'protection' for the handful of corporations trying to get it passed, and none for anybody else. I want legislation that protects my rights so that a corporation cannot impede them. DigitalConsumer.org has the right idea. Establish our rights first. This is absolutely necessary to enact before you can go legislating anti-piracy measures.

Why? Because, for one thing, the MPAA and the RIAA have some extremely broad defintions of what piracy is. They think that burning a song from an MP3 is piracy. It's not. They measure any time they don't force a customer to give them money is piracy. By their defintion of the word, a huge portion of the internet population would have to be punished.

So let's say, hypothetically, that our rights are established exactly as DigitalConsumer stipulates. Now we can start talking about legislation because we know what they law cannot say. It's easier to define what Piracy is at this point and determine a suspect's guilt. Once they do that, then they can investigate individuals or groups who are seeking to distribute their content in a way that causes harm to the normal distribution channel.

Let's say that somebody records an episode of That 70's show, which is available on public broadcast (no cable or satellite required...) and makes it available on the web. Is it piracy? By DigitalConsumer's bill of rights, no. It's space shifting. You can't go after people sharing that show. Does it do harm to the industry? That's debatable. If somebody doesn't watch the show on TV they're missing the commercials that make it money. But wait a minute, that's not piracy. If I missed That 70's Show and f'd up the taping of it, the only other choice I have to watch it is to download it. The studios have a real easy way to get me to watch the commercials for it. Provide it, with commercials, for me to download. Simple. That's why it's not piracy. I'm not relieving their ability to make money off it.

The people's rights are far more important than the corporations'. Protect our rights, and then we'll work with corps in order to keep piracy down. Don't keep piracy down at the expense of our rights.

The problem is that the boundary between legal fair use and illegal bootlegging is too fuzzy. The solution is to clarify the boundary somewhat (it's probably impossible to make it totally clear, but there's plenty of room for improvement) by clearly listing some areas which are definitely within the scope of fair use. If this seems too unbalanced, it's easy enough to create a corresponding list of areas which are definitely within the scope of bootlegging (e.g. making copies of an entire copyrighted work or large fraction thereof available to the general public without permission).

is to somehow get the digital consumer rights tacked on to the U.S. Constitution. If you think that's not the appropriate place for it, consider if the entire document were written today instead of over 200 years ago...don't you think that would have been one of the original ammendments?

I'm dreaming I know, but I wish I wasn't. If they outlaw useful computers, a black market for useful computers will erupt. Come to think of it, sounds a bit like prohibition.

Ownership of all physical media and devices to read such media, is the sole property of the purchaser of the media, without an expressely negotiated and signed contract between both the copyright holder and the purchaser.

Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

"Doing what I want" is not my point. Doing what I'm legally entitled to is. As long as software transactions take the form of a sale, you have equivalent fair use rights as you do with any other copyright material you purchase. You can't sell it or make a derivative work, but you can make personal copies for time and space shifting and you can reverse engineer it regardless of any alleged "license agreement". Nor can any such agreement grant them the authority to hack your computer any more than it can grant them the authority to place additional charges on your credit card or come in your house and take your firstborn child.

In your vision of the future, then yes, a contract would be possible, but how many people will actually register their eyeballs, or whatever else might be necessary, in order to have the ability to sign their rights away to a software vendor? We need to press our consumer rights until it's clear to software vendors that they do not have some "special" rights beyond that of traditional copyrights.

The Consumer Technology Bill of Rights

1. Users have the right to "time-shift" content that they have legally acquired.

   This gives you the right to record video or audio for later viewing or listening. For example, you can use a VCR to record a TV show and play it back later.

2. Users have the right to "space-shift" content that they have legally acquired.

   This gives you the right to use your content in different places (as long as each use is personal and non-commercial). For example, you can copy a CD to a portable music player so that you can listen to the songs while you're jogging.

3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.

   This gives you the right to make archival copies to be used in the event that your original copies are destroyed.

4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.

   This gives you the right to listen to music on your Rio, to watch TV on your iMac, and to view DVDs on your Linux computer.

5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.

   This gives you the right to modify content in order to make it more usable. For example, a blind person can modify an electronic book so that the content can be read out loud.

6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

   This last right guarantees your ability to exercise your other rights. Certain recent copyright laws have paradoxical loopholes that claim to grant certain rights but then criminalize all technologies that could allow you to exercise those rights. In contrast, this Bill of Rights states that no technological barriers can deprive you of your other fair use rights.

I figured I'd plug the Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Read it, think about it, tell your friends about it, email your government representatives about it. That way we can all have a coherent answer when asked what we want from our digital media.

Of course the IEEE doesnt want to take responsibility for any violations of any law on the part of the author. It shouldnt have to either

But here's the rub: who besides the IEEE is in a position to fight this law, both because of their clout and their position as a "concerned party" WRT to this legislation which buys them a level of instant credibility that many other groups would have a hard time matching?

Face it, right now the IEEE and ACM are the closest things we have to a "geek lobby" (so far; I'm holding my breath to see what kind of influence we can exert through digitalconsumer.org and AOTC/GeekPAC); ACM has done the right thing and taken an official position against the DMCA and the IEEE should follow suit. It would suck for the IEEE to get sued because of the DMCA, but such an occurence would hopefully serve to bring the issue to the fore as much as the Felten case promised to, and one would hope that its membership would step up to make sure that it wasn't financially ruined as a result. I honestly don't think that the IEEE being wiped out as one poster predicted is a realistic outcome at all.

Why, I offered several helpful suggestions in my letters to my senators:

I suggested that protections for fair use rights be written into the bill (appending a copy of the Digital Consumer Bill of Rights as a proposed model), and that the penalties for infringing those rights be made equivalent to those for copyright violation.

I suggested that, to insure that the new standard did not unduly impair independent publishing, the requirements for the final standard would have to include a complete lack of patent, copyright, or trade secret encumbrances.

I think I forgot to suggest that CPR teams be dispatched to watch Jack Valenti, Hilary Rosen, and Bill Gates before the new version of the bill was released for public comment. I can only hope that one of the staffers realized this necessity in time.