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...why is Drukqs a corrupt "copy protected" CD in Germany? Was it re-mastered by another company beyond Warp's control or something?

try explaining the 'record breakage fee' of 10%

The "breakage" fee has been called "packaging" for several years. It covers packaging, but it also covers handling returned phonorecords[1] that arrive unplayable. This became less common when Columbia started making records out of vinyl instead of shellac, but it became common once again when record labels began to sell "mostly CD compatible" discs and savvy consumers began to return every single replacement-of-the-same-title that the record store would give.

[1] "Phonorecord" is a medium in which a sound recording is fixed, analogous to a "copy" of a work of any other type. This legal term is not limited to the colloquial sense of the analog phonograph disc format.

I think the CD you're talking about is Chimera. It's not copy-protected; I own most of Delerium's albums, and I've yet to find one that is. I had no problems ripping it with iTunes, and indeed, it doesn't show up on the Corrupt CD List.

I'm mad at Delerium for a different reason, though ... they're only playing at over-21 venues near my area. As much as I'd pay double the ticket price to hear them play, it pisses me off that they can't seem to book a show at a less restrictive place. I've got plenty of friends my age that like them, too, but I guess we just have to hope they stay together for two more years.

"Check out the list at Fat Chuck's"

Interesting to see how Linkin Park have come so quickly to embrace crippled CDs, so soon after they became profitiable on the back of free downloads at MP3.com

Check out the list at Fat Chuck's

Is he on this list? Or that one?

If not, and your point is to encourage people to tell the artist directly, this might help...

You raise some very good points. In retrospect, I wish I could have waited to run the ads *after* the release date of the album. I just don't have the advertising budget to do the media blitz and anticipation that a big studio does.

Problem is, the ad dates were set in February, when the release date was originally set for April 15, and the ads would have run after it was available in several retail stores and Amazon.com. When the album was delayed for a month (unforseen design and printing issues), I think it hurt me significantly, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

The reason I chose emprecords.com as a website address is so it would be easier to remember. My personal site is much harder to spell. *grin*

Last but not least: how does your website handle orders? Do you hid things behind layers of Flash and Javascript? Do you work only with Exploiter? Do you not accept credit cards?

This is the one area where I think we got things right, or nearly so. I used Fat Chuck's Music (which was featured here on /. a few weeks ago) for the ordering pages, and the website was tested with every browser (including Opera, my current favorite) we could think of. It's also designed with the visually impaired in mind, and I think the layout is particularly good. (Just my humble opinion, that last one.) No flash, no java/script, and credit cards are happily accepted.

That's exactly why the flat sales really threw me - from my perspective, there really aren't that many impediments to sales. (The previous lack of retail coverage notwithstanding.) Tell you what, why don't you check out the ordering process and tell me how it is for you? ;-)

It's kind of irrelevant as to where you live (ie which company/division is making your retail music CDs). Although it may well change, so far the record companies' most common practise with copy protection schemes (there are a bunch of them) has been to CP on a batch-by-batch basis.

So, there may well be (for example) many copies of Norah Jones' latest disk for sale in Australia with no copy protection while other retail copies of the very same title do employ it.

For the best information on exactly which titles may have copy protection employed on at least some retail CDs, go to Fat Chuck's.

You could buy your music from FatChucks, where all the proceeds go to the artist... oh, hang on, their catalog is still empty.

You could buy your music from FatChucks, where all the proceeds go to the artist... oh, hang on, their catalog is still empty.

I guess it's too much for Slashdot submitters and moderators to actually read the site they're linking to, but if they did take this extrodinary and nigh-unheard of step, they would see that the the phrase "independent musicians receive 100% of the money that fans pay for their music or merchandise (of course, after the credit card company takes their cut from the payment)" is demonstrable false. Lets look at the other fees mentioned on the site itself , shall we?

"Fat Chuck's Music costs $60 for the first year and $40 per year afterwards. The only other fees associated with Fat Chuck's Music are below:

1. Paid by Check. Getting paid by check in the U.S. or Canada is $4 per check. However, direct deposit is free! Check payment is free outside of the U.S. or Canada since direct deposit is not possible there.

2. Wire Fees. Wire fees change depending on how much is sent to you. Check out the complete chart for more information.

Wire Payment Fees

To wire your payments to you.

$100-$200 Gross Sales -> $33 Wire Fee

$200-$300 Gross Sales -> $30 Wire Fee

$300-$400 Gross Sales -> $27 Wire Fee

$400-$500 Gross Sales -> $24 Wire Fee

$500-$600 Gross Sales -> $21 Wire Fee

$600-$700 Gross Sales -> $18 Wire Fee

$700-$800 Gross Sales -> $15 Wire Fee

$800-$900 Gross Sales -> $12 Wire Fee

$900-$1000 Gross Sales -> $9 Wire Fee

$1000-$1100 Gross Sales -> $6 Wire Fee

$1100-$1200 Gross Sales -> $3 Wire Fee

$1200+ Gross Sales -> No Wire Fee"

Some of these may indeed seem very reasonable (though the wire service fees seem a bit stiff), but it is far, far away from the "100% except for credit card fees" implied by the over-eager submitter. It took me all of 45 seconds to find this imformation. Is it too much to ask submitters and moderators to do likewise?

Hi Grapes!

First, check out the overview. It's $60 for year 1 and $40 year after year 1. You get your *own* Internet merchant account and you keep all the money that the CC processor doesn't take.

Per shipping, the only way to do shipping is A) yourself and keep everything, or B) pay to send your CDs to a company somewhere and watch them keep $4/CD and the shipping charge for each CD.

If you want to pursue your own online transaction capability, I encourage you to. CCNow charges $9.95/month, PayPal does a ~good job for the 30-some countries it accepts payments from, and you're free to buy your own merchant account, but it's a bit expensive.

Speaking briefly, we've tried hard to make this really simple and really easy for artists who shouldn't have to be web design or financial instrument experts. And, at the end of the day, we're the only site around that allows artists to keep 100% of the money that fans pay for their music or merchandise.

Peace.

Under Berlin Babylon, you'll find this.

At the bottom, a guy from the US says he went to E.N.'s website where "Blixa also claims the band wasn't even told about the protection by the label and they didn't know until they saw the finished product. Furthermore, it appears the band will not be applying copy protection to CDs produced in the immediate future."

I dig E.N. too.

What I didn't see is ho well it integrates into an existing site, so theoretically people buy a CD without even knowing they're in a frame on a different site. Maybe I just answered my own question.

Check out the demo page. It probably answers your question.

Bandwidth is cheap. Ads are not cheap since they generally alienate your audience and cost you visitors (pop-ups! pop-unders! egads, the horrors!).

For more info:
http://www.fatchucks.com/about.html

Scroll to the end. No ads.

...there is, among a longer list, "Live Animals", yet fails to mention dead ones. Apparently Fat Chuck has not heard of Ozzy Osbourne.

They do take some money. It costs $60 for the first year and $40 for every year after that (as seen here)

Even if they didn't ask for payment they might still take donations or some well meaning people might choose to fund it out of their own pockets (as with the Wikpedia)

1. Linkin Park is definately not popular in "geek culture".
2. Linkin Park already comes on copy protected cd's according to this: http://fatchucks.com/z3.cd.linkinpark.reanimation. html

Dan

The retailers don't necessarily know that the CDs they're selling are corrupt.

These so-called CDs are usually unmarked, so you might not even know you have bought one. You can check some lists, but they're certainly not complete. The distributors apparently don't even tell CD vendors which ones are broken.

These so-called CDs are usually unmarked, so you might not even know you have bought one. You can check some lists, but they're certainly not complete. The distributors apparently don't even tell CD vendors which ones are broken.

http://www.fatchucks.com/z3.cd.html

listing of corrupt & "protected" CD's here

Here's one:
http://fatchucks.com/index.html

I'll post more lists if I find any.

Fat Chuck's maintains a list of copy-protected. Be careful!!

Government listens to citizens! Peace comes to the world!

More seriously I am pleased that such legislation was dropped. The less 'corrupt' CDs I see the better.

I guess no more Frans Bauer for me then.. ;-)

They're all listed at Fat Chuck's List of Corrupt CDs.

Please also post any new corrupt or DRM CDs you find on that complete list, there.

(While you're at it, boycott the RIAA by buying independent CDs, instead!)

Hey. For what it's worth, I don't carry ads or any other "gimme, gimme, gimme!" devices on my site since I figure it will just piss off site visitors and hurt me in the long run. Besides, 1000s of sites have advertising, would it be so bad if one didn't?

I do make some nice money from providing banned books info with affiliate-paid linked Amazon reviews, and from pointing out really good independent artists at CDBaby that I also make an affiliate free from if you purchase something. That said, if you want your web site to make money from something besides affiliate fees and ad fees, you need to provide enough value to your clients or the public to be worth charging for. Otherwise forget it, IMO.

Chuck

I call Bullshit!
This is nutz.
Well hopefully there will be somebody keeping track of all these crippled CD's like Consumer Reports does for products.
Fat Chucks does.

ok, first off, i am not some ACLU nut. i am not here brandishing my first ammendment rights (i keep that safely in my pocket, out of sight)
i applaud efforts to keep kiddie porn (virtual too... though i realize that virtual porn technically is probly legal... but let us not open *that* can of worms today)

i think the library should carry banned books (like those heinous atrocities, Bridge to Terabitia and Hamlet and others

and i think spammers should rot in that circle of hell that Cerberus pukes all over. (ok, my Dante is rusty, i can't remember which circle, or if i got the puker right.. someone help me here)

but something seems fishy here. the company sued that one guy cos he "black-listed" their firm. the article didn't go into much detail, but it sounds as if that one guy, Joey McNicol, has quite a bit of power. i mean, what if i am a competitor of some company and i can convince Joey McNicol that their IP needs to be banned. as long as Joey McNicol is a true-blue swell guy, there is no way that can happen, but what if he isn't? i am in no way saying we need SPEWS regulated, but i wonder what some rather yucky worst case scenario - long term possible problems could arise from its misuse.

-John

Quote: "Oddly, this bill focuses on notification that you're buying copy-restricted music disks instead of CDs (which is useful, but hardly major)."

Actually, this is more than useful if the warnings disclose *everything* that the CD's "copy-protection" does, like preventing you from playing or copying it with your PC, PS2, mp3-cd player/discman, or consumer CD recorder. Getting the prominent warning on the CD case in front of Joe Public instead of being buried on my site where most people *won't* see it is a great step.

We all know this proposal will not pass during this session, but it's a warning shot for (hopefully) more substantial legislation which will occur at the beginning of next term.

Peace.

She is NOT saying that, at least for her experiment, the label STOP making audio CD's.

She doesn't need to say anything to make labels stop selling Compact Discs. Apparently, Universal already has.

I for one am hoping this case either ends in a positive settlement for the lawfirms involved, akin to the way Charley Pride's label caved in over his CD when a California woman sued them for deceptive trade practices and other goodies.

I run FatChucks.com and get a ton of e-mail over the Corrupt CDs issue every week. It would be nice if this case makes my site obsolete because big, fat warnings would have to appear on the CDs themselves (rather than Joe Public having to know about my site).

Last, the warnings you see on corrupt CDs are so far *not adequate.* They need to warn the potential buyer of the following:
1. Will not play on your computer.
2. Will not play on your DVD player, Discman, CD-Duplicator (like the kind put out by Sony, Harmon-Kardon, Pioneer, etc), high-end stereo CD player, car CD player, game console (PS, PS2, XBox, etc) or MP3-CD player.
3. Using this CD in any of the devices above may damage that equipment.

To see this in action, check out this image for the Rosa CD in Europe:
The Image
In Spanish, it translates to this:
"This disc is equipped with a device to prevent digital copying, which could impede the playback of the recording in personal computers and/or harm such devices, in videogame consoles, in automobile CD and DVD players and multi-changers, as well as other CD-ROM and DVD-ROM players."

The record labels probably have a legal right to corrupt their CDs, but they need to *fully* warn consumers about what they are buying.

Peace,
Chuck

Knowing that retailers are extremely unlikely to provide this service any time soon, may I humbly propose we create a CDNOT.com to catalog all these unplayable discs, and make a plugin available that will warn you, should you attempt to purchase one?

I know this may be stating the obvious (since this link has been made available on Slashdot many times) but there is a site that is taking on the (unfortunately) increasing task of cataloguing all "copy-protected" CDs. It's called Fat Chuck's and it not only lists "copy-protected CDs" in various regions but also, among other things, gives help to indie artists and gives a list of banned books throughout the world. You can also submit errors and comments on "copy-protected CDs".

If you find one in a store, excercise your customer (I hate the word consumer, it reinforces this cattle mentality corporations have about us citizens) rights and take it back, clear and simple. What they sold you is not a CD, according to the Red/Blue Book specifications and you have a right to return the product for exchange or refund unless the store specifically says otherwise. And I damn well hope somebody takes legal action because if this latest news is any indication, the record companies are not only selling you products that won't work in your equipment (ie. play and rip) but will actually intentionally damage your equipment (ie. fucking up firmware and forcing reboots, causing potential loss of data). I'm just so sick of this shit.

So far the soundtrack to Episode II is being corrupted in Europe:
http://www.fatchucks.com/z3.cd.starwars.soundtrack . tml

but there have been no reports out of the Ameircas. Of course, time will tell if this holds up.

No shit. I take it most people on slashdot have some real or imagined techical skill at various levels. The other 90% of the public doesn't and shouldn't have to in order to play a frigging CD in their computer - it's not rocket science.

I'm hoping that these CDs will boomerang in Joe Public's eyes so that sales drop enough to warrant the banishment of copy-protected CDs which neither protect their audio content nor are CDs. Hopefully "Uou can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time" will kick in at some point between now and Christmas.

In the meantime, if you want to do something now, check out some suggestions I came up with at my site:
http://www.fatchucks.com/z3.cd.action.html
or join the class-action lawsuit:
http://www.fatchucks.com/z3.cd.submit.html .
It's not hard, but it does take a minute to act.

Peace.

No shit. I take it most people on slashdot have some real or imagined techical skill at various levels. The other 90% of the public doesn't and shouldn't have to in order to play a frigging CD in their computer - it's not rocket science.

I'm hoping that these CDs will boomerang in Joe Public's eyes so that sales drop enough to warrant the banishment of copy-protected CDs which neither protect their audio content nor are CDs. Hopefully "Uou can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time" will kick in at some point between now and Christmas.

In the meantime, if you want to do something now, check out some suggestions I came up with at my site:
http://www.fatchucks.com/z3.cd.action.html
or join the class-action lawsuit:
http://www.fatchucks.com/z3.cd.submit.html .
It's not hard, but it does take a minute to act.

Peace.

You're probably just being a smart-ass, which I appreciate. :-D

FYI, Aphex Twin is as bad as Celine too. Check out reports about their latest CD here: Aphex Twin: Drukqs

Yee-ha, let the good times roll.

I will personally forward your info to the group of lawfirms who are already planning a class-action against the record industry. If you have any questions about this class-action or anything else, write me at chuck@fatchucks.com.

Peace.

I will personally forward your info to the group of lawfirms who are already planning a class-action against the record industry. If you have any questions about this class-action or anything else, write me at chuck@fatchucks.com.

Peace.

I will personally forward your info to the group of lawfirms who are already planning a class-action against the record industry. If you have any questions about this class-action or anything else, write me at chuck@fatchucks.com.

Peace.

That's the term I use since a perfectly fine standard (the Philipps/Sony CD standard) is being corrupted to do something it wasn't made to do.

For a listing of corrupt CDs, check out my site at http://www.fatchucks.com. It may be helpful...

Posted by Michael Fraase, 3/23/02 at 9:54:46 PM.

When elephants dance, its best to get out of the way. Thats exactly whats happening now as the entertainment industrythe recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainlyattempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isnt it?

Target number 1 is the average customer: anyone who purchases software, an audio CD, an electronic book, or a movie on DVD. The entertainment industry sees customers as pirates, plain and simple. In their collective minds eye, we all have a wooden leg, eye patch, and a filthy talking parrot on our shoulder. While the Constitution grants customers certain rights with regard to copyrighted material, the entertainment industry very much wants to separate us from those rights.

Target number 2 in the sights of the entertainment industry are technology behemoths like Microsoft, Intel, IBM, and Apple. These companies, in the perverse worldview of the entertainment industry, make the toolscomputers mostlythat allow customers to practice their piracy.

Let me point out that I am a copyright owner, as is everyone else who has ever created a work in tangible form. Thats all authors, for short. Authors are almost never members of the entertainment industry club. The entertainment industry hates authors almost as much as they hate customers. Sometimes, especially when authors get uppity, the entertainment industry hates authors much more than customers. Until recently, authors have always been seen to be at least a marginal threat while customers were seen as merely necessary annoyances.

To complicate matters by at least an order of magnitude, the consumer electronics manufacturersthe companies that make stereos, VCRs, and DVD playershave aligned with the entertainment industry. At least some of them, and at least to some extent.

Unfortunately for usboth authors and customerswere likely to get squished as these elephants dance. The intent of the entertainment industry, believe it or not, is to outlaw personal computers. As security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier explains it to Mike Godwin: If you think about it, the entertainment industry does not want people to have computers; theyre too powerful, too flexible, and too extensible. They want people to have Internet Entertainment Platforms: televisions, VCRs, game consoles, etc.

Copy-protected CDs

The recording industry is selling shiny plastic discs that contain music that cant be copied to or even played on some customers equipment. Philips, the owner of the CD format says these discs cannot be called CDs because they do not meet the standard of what a CD is. Sony, one of those weird hybrid companies that, as a member in good standing of both the technology and entertainment industries, finds itself on both sides of this issue says it cant guarantee the audio quality of these discs. The technology used to protect these discs sometimes prevents the discs from playing on computer CD-ROM drives, DVD players, and other devices specifically designed to play standard audio CDs.

Sales of recorded music are down 10% in the United States over the last year. The recording industry blames this downturn not on the economic recession, not on the crappy music that theyve released in the past few years, but on Internet piracy.

And its only going to get worse. Hilary B. Rosen, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) told Congress on 28 February 2001 that the practice of copy-protecting audio CDs would expand in the United States. If technology can be used to pirate copyrighted content, Rosen wrote in her response to a Congressional query, shouldnt technology likewise be used to protect copyrighted content? Surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use. Her pal, Michael Eisner, head of Disney, said he was tired of being finessed by the technology industry, whatever that means.

Unfortunately for Eisner, Rosen, Disney, and the RIAA, personal useand more importantly the rights associated with that use of copyrighted materialis exactly why copying of copyrighted material is not just allowed, but mandated by the Constitution. That some individuals illegally sell copied CDs or distribute copies of the music on the Internet is immaterial. In fact, fairly casual observation indicates that if customers are treated like criminals they will indeed begin to behave like criminals.

It has become common practice for music-loving computer owners to legally transfer audio CDs they purchase to .mp3 format files on their computers. The copy protection technology employed by the recording industry prevents such transfers by adding distortions to the music of the recordings. The industry insists that these distortions are inaudible when the disc is played on a standard CD player but result in pops when the music is transferred to a computer. In any case, its usually impossible to tell whether or not a disc includes the copy protection technology; in general, the copy-protected discs are not labeled.

Ironically, or probably not, .mp3 player manufacturers could easily defeat the copy protection technology, but they fear doing so would risk prosecution under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which prohibits the bypassing of copy protection systems. In 1999, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that .mp3 players did not violate copyright law because customers have the right to space shift music they have purchased.

Moral rights

Interestingly, the act of using the copy protection technology is much more prevalent in Europe. Most European countries, unlike the United States, recognize an artists moral rights in the work they create.

Moral rights are a package of intellectual property rights granted to the original creator of a work, and include:

• The right of integrity;
• The right of attribution;
• The right of disclosure;
• The right to withdraw or retract; and
• The right to reply to criticism.

These moral rights are separate from the economic copyright that these days generally transfers from an author to a publisher and they can survive the author. The idea originated with the French, who believe that any creative work, by definition, includes the personality and character of the author. Where copyright is a property right that can be transferred, moral rights are part of the authors personality and character and non-transferable.

The first two moral rightsthe right of integrity and the right of attributionare especially important because they are codified as international law in the Berne Convention. The United States claims its intellectual property law complies with the Berne Convention, but this is just two instances where it doesnt.

The most important of these rights is the first, the right of integrity. Basically it prohibits an authors work from being distorted in any way that would harm the authors reputation and dates to the 1957 French law of droit au respect de l'oeuvre. Its a safe bet that a cross-reference over which the author had no control would be seen as a distortion of the work.

Seemingly, in Europe at least, an artist could make an argument against the production of a copy-protected version of her work on the sole basis of moral rights. Especially in the case of an audio CD to which distortion is intentionally added by the publisher.

In the United States, Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) appears to be taking the point position in questioning the behavior of the entertainment industry. He believes that instead of using copyright to obtain fair compensation for the works theyve licensed, the copyright owner industryincluding the recording industryis attempting to exercise complete dominance and total control of the copyrighted work.

And just how much money does an artist receive in the form of royalties? Use Moses Avalons royalty calculator to figure it out.

A DMCA rewrite?

Representative Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) plans to introduce legislation that would regulateand maybe outright bancopy-protected compact discs. Boucher reportedly has concerns about customers buying copy-protected discs without knowing it and the compatibility problems inherent with the copy protection mechanism. In an interview with Wired News, Boucher said, The big problem initially is that consumers have no information that is complete and reliable about the disabilities which attend copy-protected CDs. These CDs will not play in DVD players, not play on personal computers (and) not even play on all CD players.

Boucher isnt talking about what kind of legislation he might introduce to accomplish his goal of protecting audio CD customers, and the possibilities are intriguing. At the simplest level, legislation may require copy-protected CDs to carry a warning label. At a more interesting level, Boucher may try to rewrite the DMCA. In fact, Boucher announced that he would introduce such legislation last July and reiterated his commitment to that approach in early March of this year.

Internet radio

Under the U.S. Copyright Offices interpretation of the DMCA, Internet radio may be a thing of the past. KFJC, KPIG, and RadioParadise may all be goners. Why is this tragic? Because any of these stations are orders of magnitude better than the sorry excuse for radio available on the traditional dial.

Internet radio is routing around an obsolete and unaccountable industrys safely padded environs and making a difference. Corporate radio sounds exactly the same from coast to coast because it is exactly the same. Sit and watch that website for a few minutes; if it doesnt nauseate you, itll damn sure hypnotize you.

Adding to the arsenal of tools deployed by big media is the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty Panel (CARP). CARP met secretly for the past several months and issued the CARP Report in late February. The keystone of this report is steep licensing fees for webcast music. Lets be clear: compulsory licensing is a good idea, consistent with the intent of copyright law. Usury licensing fees for small webcasters is not.

KPIG responded almost immediately with a plea to save the Pig from the digital slaughterhouse:

Independent webcasters such as KPIG are facing a grave threat to our existence. It may be an evil conspiracy on the part of the big record companies and corporate webcasters, ormore likelyits just a dumb mistake. In either case, KPIG could soon be liable for huge music usage fees ($5,000 - $10,000 per month) that would make it impossible for us to stay online. For background on the issue, see The Death of Web Radio? below and the SaveInternetRadio.org website.

Doc Searls, in his article Bizarre vs. Bazaar, eloquently sums up the combination of DMCA and CARP as the destruction of the Net as a commons and its replacement with a plumbing system for the distribution of content (a word hardly used in a shipping context before Big Media got all drooly over The Promise of The Net).

A brief history of copyright

Copyright, until this recent entertainment industry power-grab, has always been a delicatemaybe even precariousbalance between the rights of the author to benefit from his or her work for a short period of time and the rights of the rest of us to innovate and benefit from those works when they fall into the public domain.

The Constitution granted Congress the power to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Originally, the Copyright Act of 1790 established the limited times of copyright protection of 14 years with an option for the author to renew the copyright for an additional 14 years if he or she were still alive. That copyright term was good enough for the first 100 years of intellectual property in the United States. During the next 100 years, Congress extended the copyright term 11 times.

Certain uses of a protected work that would ordinarily be seen as infringing are specifically allowed for education, criticism, etc. These uses are allowed under the fair use provision. The core concept of fair use is that, in general, any use that does not exploit the commercial value of the original is permissible.

The fair use statute recognizes four criteria by which a use can be determined to be fair or unfair:

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. The nature of the copyrighted work;
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted wok as a whole; and
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

William S. Strong, in The Copyright Book: A Practical Guide , provides an interpretation for working writers:

As a general rule a critic or reporter should not quote at any one point more than two or three paragraphs of a book or journal article, a stanza of a poem, or a solitary chart or graph from a technical treatise.

The Net allows ordinary citizens to exercise their fair use rights in ways never imagined by the entertainment industry. Subsequently, the reaction is to pressure innovation by extending the copyright term for any given work. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case that will likely determine the legitimacy of the most recent copyright term extension, the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. This law extends the copyright term to the life of the author plus 70 years. In the case of works made for hire in which a corporation owns the copyright, the copyright term is now 95 years.

While one side of the entertainment industry was pushing, an activity that eventually became the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, the other side was pulling. That activity eventually resulted in the DMCA. Designed specifically to control the uses that can be made of published works, the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technology. The result: the entertainment industry controls not only what you see and hear but the methods and devices with which you see and hear it. Even if the copy-protection is circumvented to enable the fair use of a published work, it is prohibited and deemed to be a criminal act.

Digital TV

According to Mike Godwin, digital television is the tipping point in the war between the entertainment and technology industries. Never mind that every time the entertainment industry shoots itself in the foot, the technology industry comes to its rescue. Remember in the 1970s when the movie industry was in a deep funk and that vampire Jack Valenti said that VCRs would kill it for good? As it turns out, the VCR revived the film industry. The film industry was failing not because of customer VCR usage but because they were putting out epically craptacular films. Just like the recording industry todaywhen in doubt blame those dang customers.

Anyway, Godwin says digital television is the flashpoint because its quality (technical, not artistic) is way too good and unlike DVDs, its unencrypted and has to stay unencrypted to be useful. Oh, and the pesky FCC regulations say that broadcast television signals must be sent unencrypted.

The purveyors of digital television think they have the answer: digital watermarks. They think thats the answer for the online distribution of music, and any other digital content as well. Unfortunately for them, in order for a watermark to be used to restrict copying of digital content, consumer devices used to play the content will have to have technology included thats capable of receiving those watermarks. That would require the cooperation of the technology industry, and that cooperation has not been forthcoming.

Godwin cites the theory of Edward Felten, a computer scientist at Princeton, holding that any sort of tagging system that is undetectable by the user will likely be easy to remove.

Digital rights management

Perhaps the weirdest part of all of this is that the technology industry is just as enamored of protecting intellectual property. Theyre just going about it in a minimally different way. Digital rights management (DRM) is the battle cry of the techheads. And where they differ from their entertainment industry brethren is the question of government mandates. The technology industry wants to lock up published content just as badly as the entertainment industry; they just dont want the government (or anyone else) telling them that they have to. Remember that the entertainment and technology industries both lobbied heavily in favor of the DMCA.

And then there are the schizoids, the companieslike AOL Time Warner and Sonythat are so large that they find themselves on both sides of the fence depending which way the wind blows.

SSSCA > CBDTPA

The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), kept on a leash but regularly trotted out by Senator Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, can best be thought of as a sort of appendix to the DCMA. It is clearly designed to further extend legal protections for digital content owned or licensed by enormous media conglomerates.

According to the draft language of the bill, it would be illegal to create or distribute any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies approved by the Commerce Department. Even though MIT professor and RSA Data Security co-founder Ron Rivest has referred to the proposed legislation as the Digital Rectal Thermometer Security Act its really just mandatory corporate welfare for media conglomerates subsidized by the actual creators and consumers of intellectual property.

Felony penalties for distributing copyrighted material without the certified security technologies fully enabled or using a computer that circumvents those technologies are up to five years in prison and fines up to US$500,000.

Even worse, the proposed legislation calls for manufacturers of digital devices and the media conglomerates to collaboratively develop a copy protection system. If, after two years, they cant come up with a mechanism both industries can live with, the federal government will specify a standard. Hollings bill fails to include the actual creators or users of content in any of the machinations.

Should we be surprised that four of Hollings top campaign donors are media conglomerates?

Predictably, the politicians split along party lines over the SSSCA. Or, more accurately, the split is along the lines of entertainment industry campaign contributions. Democrats, who received US$24.2 million in contributions from the entertainment industry tend to support the idea of legislating the protection of copyrighted material in digital form. Republicans, who received a relatively paltry US$13.3 million in entertainment industry contributions usually oppose the SSSCA, claiming it is too interventionist.

In mid-March 2002, the other shoe dropped. Senator Hollings, better known as the Senator from Disney, transformed the SSSCA into the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) and ceased his tip-toeing around. The CBDTPA is real legislation, and enjoys the support of five other co-authors: Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), John Breaux (D-Louisiana), Bill Nelson (D-Florida) and Dianne Feinstein (D-California). Just think, one more author and they could have been the seven dwarves. The CBDTPA would require all digital deviceseverything from fax machines to MP3 players and computers (as well as the software that runs on them)to be equipped with embedded copy protection schemes, approved by the federal government.

Whats most disturbing about this is relatively paltry sum it took to buy this legislation. During the 2002 election cycle, only two of the dirty half-dozen were in the top 20 recipients of soft money from the entertainment industry. So far in the 2002 election cycle, Hollings has received only US$19,000 and Stevens has taken only US$39,621. To get the real story, we have to look back several election cycles:

Senator

2002

2000

1998

1996

Total

Fritz Hollings (D-South Carolina)

$19,000

$32,750

$215,284

$43,300

$310,334

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

$39,621

$69,900

$109,521

Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)

$49,852

$49,852

John Breaux (D-Louisiana)

$120,920

$120,920

Bill Nelson (D-Florida)

$47,550

N/A

N/A

$47,550

Dianne Feinstein (D-California)

$211,638

$211,638

$849,815

Theres no question why Fritz Hollings carried the water for this puppy, is there? But check those senatorial links in the table carefully because they tell the even bigger story of who the top contributing industries were for each politician. In every case, the entertainment industry scored big in the top 20 contributors for every Senator. And remember the 2002 campaign cycle isnt over yet. Not hardly.

So, how much does it cost to get your bill through the Senate? Looks to me like itll come in right around US$1 million.

Enter DigitalConsumer.org

The technology industry was quick to respond to the CBDTPA threat by launching DigitalConsumer.org and its attendant Consumer Technology Bill of Rights. Launched by two of the co-founders of Excite, DigitalConsumer.org is basically trying to protect the fair use rights of customers in digital media. The groups principles, outlined in the Bill of Rights are deceptively simple:

1. Users have the right to time-shift content that they have legally acquired.
2. Users have the right to space-shift content that they have legally acquired.
3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.

The depth and breadth of support this lobbying group will receive remains to be seen. Some of the precepts are in direct conflict with the interests of some of the largest technology industry members. Microsoft, for example, almost certainly wants to be the digital rights management company of record and is none too keen on, say, items 2, 3, 4, and 5.

A solution

The solution is actually quite simple and requires only three steps:

1. Revert the term of copyright to 14 years, immediately and retroactive to all existing works.
2. Recognize moral rights in the works authors create, like every other civilized country on the planet. Make it immediate and retroactive to all existing works.
3. Prohibit any corporation from owning a copyright. Corporations create nothing; theyre consensual hallucinations and exist at our pleasure. I dont know about you, but Im not much pleased any more.

The basis of the problem is found in a single court ruling: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. In this 1886 dispute, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a private corporation was a natural person under the Constitution and enjoyed the same protections as a citizen under the Bill of Rights. Corporations from that point forward were granted all of the rights and freedoms of a private citizen, yet none of the responsibilities. We made a mistake; hey, shit happens. Its not too late to fix it.

Check http://uk.eurorights.org they have an updated list of known proteced cd's and their labels. It covers mostly European releases. For info on US a good site is http://www.fatchucks.com/corruptcds/index.html.

There are many many CD's with copy prevention schemes built in. See for example Fat Chuck's for a full list.

My experience is with the recent "No Doubt" CD. Put it in a computer and it launches a very annoying Quicktime video (that does not play properly to boot). Impossible to access the audio track. Hence I can't discreetly listen to this item while at work.

What we need (IMHO) is new laws that give people back fair use. Right now fair use is based solely on precedents.

This is one option. Another choice is to spend your money on products that don't use Digital Rights Management (DRM), and let your friends and family know which products use these and how they affect them and fair use.

Citizens of the US please start writing to your congressmen (M/F). We need to stand up for our rights immediately.
Pretty soon you won't be allowed to own cars, because they make it possible to kill people or escape from the scene of a crime.

This might work, but if you want to make a political difference, MAKE AN APPOINTMENT to visit your representatives' staffs, come prepared with the points you want to make about Bill/Law X, and follow up weekly with phone calls. In-office appointments make a big impact on reps because it signifies that you're very concerned. P.S., it helps to make sure you're a registered voter.

The problem here is that not enough people believe/realise that they are adversly affected by this.

Yep, you're right. Another problem is that techies believe they can bypass any copy protection they meet (they can), but don't care if the other 95% of the public can't hack. The ability to hack is secondary to applying your tech expertise for explaining DRM issues to your non-techie friends and family in terms they can clearly understand and warn others about. One brief example, points 1 and 2.

The ultimate hack isn't technical, it's financial. Anyone can play the financial hack if we warn them...

Good point. What's to really stop a terrorist from changing the tag on a real gun to that of a novelty gun or a pager? Okay...that's an extreme example, but hell somebody got on a plane with a shoe bomb for crying out loud. (Better yet, what about those jokers changing tags to something that would be of a concern to security personnel? If it's that easy to ping the things in the first place, it's probably that easy to change what it replies as well--at least for somebody bored enough--and unless there is some type of recourse/law against changing it, there's not much you can do to people that do this...are they going to make you sign a contract before you buy something? or do you know agree to a license for just walking into a store now? like a store-entrance license (if you do not agree to the terms of this store, exit from the store immediately)

I just can't see this actually helping security at all. It would be too expensive to implement, (not to mention all the old products that don't have them), and would really have no great benefits in terms of security other than to lull naive people into a falser sense of it than we already have. This just seems like another stupid scheme to invade our privacy further, while not really providing any benefits to security personnel or consumers.

The only way I could see this working is if they don't notify consumers about it. I could see them attempting this, but the way the manufacturing process is described (replace the bar-code) I wouldn't think it'd take that long for somebody to figure it out. (How long did those copy-protected CD's go before word was out? Oh yeah that's right.)

Hell even if it does what its supposed to, what good does that do? Uhh...sir, we see that you have a cell phone on you...well...umm...carry on I guess. (and if they actually got the point of putting it on handguns or weapons, then god help us if we need RF barcodes to detect them).

Maybe I'm just missing something really obvious here...please correct me if I'm wrong.

http://www.fatchucks.com

http://www.newpages.com