Slashdot Mirror

As I noted earlier, the President must sign and the Senate (NOT "Congress" -- the House of Representatives has no voice on treaty ratification) ratify this treaty before it would have the force of law. However, given the current climate in Washington (and, I might add, recent comments by presidential candidates as well) against networked technologies, I have little doubt that ratification is likely unless people like us make our voices heard in the House and Senate.

I sent the following letter to my representative. You can email your representative easily by going here
____________________
To the Honorable Lamar S. Smith:

I am a database consultant in your district. I work at the Air Force Recruiting Service Headquarters at Randolph Air Force Base. My work there brings me in contact with technology and information system security issues on a daily basis.

I recently read an article about the Council of Europe's Draft Cybercrime treaty that frankly scared me. The article is available at this URL:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/480734.asp#BODY

Let me be clear: this treaty would be a disaster that would threaten national security and the health of electronic commerce. The idea of the treaty is dead wrong. "Full disclosure" of computer security flaws is essential for system administrators to protect there own systems and it is also critical to eliminate denial on the part of software vendors and to track the effectiveness of responding to security concerns. It is also a First Amendment right to have open discussion on security flaws.

I believe that the U.S. delegation to this treaty is incompetent and should be recalled before serious damage is done. They obviously have little understanding of what it is that they are regulating.

The law that protects Census data is Title 13.

You can read about it on the Census Policy page: (at the bottom of the page)
http://www.census.gov/main/www/poli cie s.html

Or on congresses 'code' page: http://uscode.house.gov/title_13.htm Here's the meat:
(a) Neither the Secretary, nor any other officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof, or local government census liaison, may, except as provided in section 8 or 16 or chapter 10 of this title or section 210 of the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1998 or section 2(f) of the Census of Agriculture Act of 1997 -
(1) use the information furnished under the provisions of this title for any purpose other than the statistical purposes for which it is supplied; or
(2) make any publication whereby the data furnished by any particular establishment or individual under this title can be identified; or
(3) permit anyone other than the sworn officers and employees of the Department or bureau or agency thereof to examine the individual reports.

Or write Rep. Miller. Miller's site cleverly does not include his email address, but according to this site turned up by Google , Miller's email is miller13@mail.house.gov. Seems plausible, since he represents the 13th district in Florida. It won't be his personal email address, however. Ask him or his flacks to explain the apparent inconsistency in his two positions, as indicated by the links in the header. Note that http://www.house.gov/danmiller/census/faq.htm , the official FAQ of the Census Subcommittee, hosted by Miller's office, encourages people to divulge all the requested information to the Census, and states the following to assuage their privacy concerns:

5. Is the information I provide contained in my Census 2000 questionnaire private?

Yes. In fact, it is against the law for Census employees to disclose the information you provide. Information that is gathered and released by the Census Bureau is not connected with your household's address. By law, the Bureau cannot and will not share your households census information with the IRS, FBI, INS -- or any other government agency for that matter. There is no court of law that can subpoena this information, not even the President of the United States.

If you live in his District, write your local paper. Get them to ask him to explain the apparent inconsistency in his public statements. He's up for reelection. Make it an issue if you are a constituent.

You only have yourself to blame for your cynicism and inaction. Bitching on Slashdot won't change the world. At least not in politics. Slashdot is useful to let you know what's going on, but bitching here won't do much of anything except give you some catharsis.

Or write Rep. Miller. Miller's site cleverly does not include his email address, but according to this site turned up by Google , Miller's email is miller13@mail.house.gov. Seems plausible, since he represents the 13th district in Florida. It won't be his personal email address, however. Ask him or his flacks to explain the apparent inconsistency in his two positions, as indicated by the links in the header. Note that http://www.house.gov/danmiller/census/faq.htm , the official FAQ of the Census Subcommittee, hosted by Miller's office, encourages people to divulge all the requested information to the Census, and states the following to assuage their privacy concerns:

5. Is the information I provide contained in my Census 2000 questionnaire private?

Yes. In fact, it is against the law for Census employees to disclose the information you provide. Information that is gathered and released by the Census Bureau is not connected with your household's address. By law, the Bureau cannot and will not share your households census information with the IRS, FBI, INS -- or any other government agency for that matter. There is no court of law that can subpoena this information, not even the President of the United States.

If you live in his District, write your local paper. Get them to ask him to explain the apparent inconsistency in his public statements. He's up for reelection. Make it an issue if you are a constituent.

You only have yourself to blame for your cynicism and inaction. Bitching on Slashdot won't change the world. At least not in politics. Slashdot is useful to let you know what's going on, but bitching here won't do much of anything except give you some catharsis.

If you live in central San Diego (and if you don't, it sucks to be you), you can be proud to know that our local Representitive, Brian Bilbray, fully supports HR 5275. His position statement on the subject can be found here. Of course, MP3.com is a San Diego company, so we should expect his support, but it's still nice to see that somebody in congress has a clue about this stuff.

If you live in central San Diego (and if you don't, it sucks to be you), you can be proud to know that our local Representitive, Brian Bilbray, fully supports HR 5275. His position statement on the subject can be found here. Of course, MP3.com is a San Diego company, so we should expect his support, but it's still nice to see that somebody in congress has a clue about this stuff.

Read this testimony on electoral college reform. A few votes in the right place can matter, and can swing an election (in this case though, the example is of how the election could swing to the actual loser).

Check out the following items in the story if you don't want to go there:

• In the 1916 presidential election, a shift of only 2,000 votes in California would have given Charles EvansHughes the necessary electoral votes to defeat Woodrow Wilson, despite Wilson's half-million vote nationwide plurality.
• In 1948, a shift of only 30,000 votes in three states would have delivered the White House to Governor Dewey, in spite of the fact that he trailed President Truman by some 2.1 million popular votes.
• In 1960, a shift of only 13,000 votes in five states (5,000 in Illinois, 5,000 in Missouri, 1,200 in New Mexico, 1,300 in Nevada and 200 in Hawaii) would have made Richard Nixon president.
• In 1968, a shift of 42,000 votes in three states (Alaska, Missouri and New Jersey) would have denied Nixon an electoral college victory and thrown the election into the House of Representatives.
• In 1976, a shift of only 9,300 votes (5,600 from Ohio and 3,700 from Hawaii) would have elected Gerald Ford, even though he trailed Jimmy Carter in the popular vote by 1.6 million ballots.

Nice grab, but the (possible) passage of this bill only makes official what the government has been doing for decades.

One of the few people in government actually working to protect your privacy is Ron Paul. His site is a good resource for this sort of gestapo crap.

Be sure to read Curtis Ganz' testimony before you make up your mind that direct elections are more desirable. If you feel that minority opinions are too easily ignored now, or that the "tyranny of the majority" is something genuinely worth worrying about (as did the Founders when they wrote the Bill of Rights), direct winner-take-all elections aren't the way to go. They sound good, because simple, but in this case they are (to quote Mencken), the solution that's "simple, neat, and wrong."

Actually, if no money is involved, it is most definitely legal. It is precisely because there is no way to pay someone using napster or gnutella that it is protected.

You can download Title 17 of the US code and read it yourself. http://uscode.house.gov/download.htm is the site I used. I printed it out using star office and left it on my toilet for a while, and read more of it each time I took a shit. It's not as hard to read as, say, the C++ standard, or something.

Anyway, it is legal to make copies of copyrighted works if you are not selling them or using them in a business. This applies to software also.

There was a huge propaganda campaign against the fair use of software, which managed to subtlely imply that this type of copying was illegal. Remember the "Just Say No to Software Piracy" posters in school computer labs in the 80s and early 90s ? Remember the ads in magazines ?

If you actually go and read about the cases which came to court, almost no one has ever been sued for non-compensated software copying. All the big cases that were won in court were against people selling software, or against businesses that were using copied software. (Ok, there were a few cases were they brought charges against someone running a distribution site, and then dropped them once they had run them out of money and closed the site -- any one remember that kid at MIT who set up a server on an athena machine in W20 ? His name began with an "M" I think ?)

This effort was pretty successful. Most people today have some sneaky feeling of guilt when they copy commercial software, even if it is for a legitimate use. This type of "thought advertisement" through propaganda and the repeated use of newspeak catch phrases (like "software piracy") was incredibly profitable -- when you think of the amounts of unneeded software purchases this dwarfs Ponzi or Teapot Dome or the russian privitazation or any of those other great ripoffs.

But the dangerous part is that it allows laws to be made, in effect, though TV commercials instead of through our government. The idea that the artificial priviledges provided by Title 17 and Title 35 constitute "property" instead of an entitlement like social security or welfare or crop subsidies is dangerous, but the fact that such attitudes can be manufactured in the populous is more threatening.

So I just want to urge you to refrain from casually suggesting or implying that uncompensated file sharing can be illegal. When you do that you are being used as the tool of those who would enslave you.

--

H.R. 5364 has been sent to the House Committee on the Judiciary.

IIRC, Rep. Boucher represents Virginia's "Silicon Valley" region, in the northern end of VA. It's no surprise that he's coming up with stuff like the Online Music Owner's Listening Rights Act, and this Business Method Patent Improvement act..

I mean, just look at him... glasses, going bald... introducing good legislation... he's one of us!!!

IIRC, Rep. Boucher represents Virginia's "Silicon Valley" region, in the northern end of VA. It's no surprise that he's coming up with stuff like the Online Music Owner's Listening Rights Act, and this Business Method Patent Improvement act..

I mean, just look at him... glasses, going bald... introducing good legislation... he's one of us!!!

IIRC, Rep. Boucher represents Virginia's "Silicon Valley" region, in the northern end of VA. It's no surprise that he's coming up with stuff like the Online Music Owner's Listening Rights Act, and this Business Method Patent Improvement act..

I mean, just look at him... glasses, going bald... introducing good legislation... he's one of us!!!

Fellow Slashdotters, the time to act is now! This is no joke (please don't mod this post as funny). If you ever wanted to make a change in the world you live in, if you ever felt powerless that greedy corporations were stripping you of your rights, here is a golden opportunity for you to fix things.

Why? Because this bill is very important. It needs to get passed. But it takes people like you and me to pass it. How? Like this:

• First, read the bill. You'll make a fool out of yourself if you don't do this first. Unfortunately, as another posted noticed, it's not currently available on Thomas, so you'll have to find another source or wait.
• Send a letter to Representatives Rick Boucher and Howard Berman. Tell them that you applaud them for submitting the Bill, and that you support it wholeheartedly. Tell them that you're going to write your local Representative (if neither Boucher nor Berman is your Representatives) and Senators, asking them to approve the Bill if it comes before them (or whatever the exact phrase is). It's late at night for me now, so I'll be posting my letter as a reply to this post, once I write it.
• Write your Representative and Senators. You can find their web pages here and here.
• If you want, post your letters as a reply to this post, for other people to use as a guide.
• About 1-2 weeks after writing your Representative and/or Senators, call them. Ask them if they've gotten your letter and heard of the Bill. Make sure you've thoroughly read and understood the Bill yourself before you call!. Ask them what their position is. If you think they don't agree with it, try to change their minds. Tell them that this Bill is so important to you, that it is the first time you've written and/or called a Congressmen (if it's true).
• Spread the word! Ask your geek neighbors to do the same as you have.

If 10% of the people who read Slashdot were to follow this advice, that Bill will become Law.
--

Fellow Slashdotters, the time to act is now! This is no joke (please don't mod this post as funny). If you ever wanted to make a change in the world you live in, if you ever felt powerless that greedy corporations were stripping you of your rights, here is a golden opportunity for you to fix things.

Why? Because this bill is very important. It needs to get passed. But it takes people like you and me to pass it. How? Like this:

• First, read the bill. You'll make a fool out of yourself if you don't do this first. Unfortunately, as another posted noticed, it's not currently available on Thomas, so you'll have to find another source or wait.
• Send a letter to Representatives Rick Boucher and Howard Berman. Tell them that you applaud them for submitting the Bill, and that you support it wholeheartedly. Tell them that you're going to write your local Representative (if neither Boucher nor Berman is your Representatives) and Senators, asking them to approve the Bill if it comes before them (or whatever the exact phrase is). It's late at night for me now, so I'll be posting my letter as a reply to this post, once I write it.
• Write your Representative and Senators. You can find their web pages here and here.
• If you want, post your letters as a reply to this post, for other people to use as a guide.
• About 1-2 weeks after writing your Representative and/or Senators, call them. Ask them if they've gotten your letter and heard of the Bill. Make sure you've thoroughly read and understood the Bill yourself before you call!. Ask them what their position is. If you think they don't agree with it, try to change their minds. Tell them that this Bill is so important to you, that it is the first time you've written and/or called a Congressmen (if it's true).
• Spread the word! Ask your geek neighbors to do the same as you have.

If 10% of the people who read Slashdot were to follow this advice, that Bill will become Law.
--

Fellow Slashdotters, the time to act is now! This is no joke (please don't mod this post as funny). If you ever wanted to make a change in the world you live in, if you ever felt powerless that greedy corporations were stripping you of your rights, here is a golden opportunity for you to fix things.

Why? Because this bill is very important. It needs to get passed. But it takes people like you and me to pass it. How? Like this:

• First, read the bill. You'll make a fool out of yourself if you don't do this first. Unfortunately, as another posted noticed, it's not currently available on Thomas, so you'll have to find another source or wait.
• Send a letter to Representatives Rick Boucher and Howard Berman. Tell them that you applaud them for submitting the Bill, and that you support it wholeheartedly. Tell them that you're going to write your local Representative (if neither Boucher nor Berman is your Representatives) and Senators, asking them to approve the Bill if it comes before them (or whatever the exact phrase is). It's late at night for me now, so I'll be posting my letter as a reply to this post, once I write it.
• Write your Representative and Senators. You can find their web pages here and here.
• If you want, post your letters as a reply to this post, for other people to use as a guide.
• About 1-2 weeks after writing your Representative and/or Senators, call them. Ask them if they've gotten your letter and heard of the Bill. Make sure you've thoroughly read and understood the Bill yourself before you call!. Ask them what their position is. If you think they don't agree with it, try to change their minds. Tell them that this Bill is so important to you, that it is the first time you've written and/or called a Congressmen (if it's true).
• Spread the word! Ask your geek neighbors to do the same as you have.

If 10% of the people who read Slashdot were to follow this advice, that Bill will become Law.
--

--

--

Still, I wonder if there's more to this bill that Wired isn't telling us yet...

Still, I wonder if there's more to this bill that Wired isn't telling us yet...

From Rep. Boucher's web site:

• Download a PDF version of the bill
• A summary of the same
• Boucher's statement about it.

There doesn't seem to be anything in Thomas, probably because it hasn't been assigned a bill number yet...

From Rep. Boucher's web site:

• Download a PDF version of the bill
• A summary of the same
• Boucher's statement about it.

There doesn't seem to be anything in Thomas, probably because it hasn't been assigned a bill number yet...

From Rep. Boucher's web site:

• Download a PDF version of the bill
• A summary of the same
• Boucher's statement about it.

There doesn't seem to be anything in Thomas, probably because it hasn't been assigned a bill number yet...

From Rep. Boucher's web site:

• Download a PDF version of the bill
• A summary of the same
• Boucher's statement about it.

There doesn't seem to be anything in Thomas, probably because it hasn't been assigned a bill number yet...

What if you don't own Bubba Jones's Greatest Hits CD, and neither does your friend, but you have mp3's you found on the net and you give copies of those files to your friend ? Is that illegal ?

What if I own a CD, and I rip it into mp3's, or heck, just burn a straight copy with my cdrw, and then give that to a friend who never has and never will buy that CD ? Is that legal ?

You can download Title 17 and read it for yourself. The truth is, it is legal so long as you don't take any money for it, or otherwise do anything commercial with it.

MP3.com's requirement that you have the CD is just confusing the issue. I think that they were trying to insert some air of legitimacy, or buy off the RIAA in someway, because they are actually a commercial entity, and so they fall under much stricter rules. Napster got it right by just distributing the software to do it with, but in this day and age you can't actually make money writing software. ( That's a bit of an overstatement, but you can non-commercially copy software like napster or windows also; even better, if you tried to sell napster, the free linux versions would be ported to windows and offered for free. )

If you think about it, it is certainly legal to do what MP3.com is doing, and not charge money. You can set up a server and allow people to upload their songs and download them from other places later. It's when you charge for it that you get on the shaky ground.

So if you join this campaign to legalize what MP3.com is doing, realize what you are arguing for. Your current rights may be extensive enough that you shouldn't feel threatened by a judgement that MP3.com has to pay royalties. Do you really care if MP3.com goes out of business, as long as no one challenges your right to gnutella ?

Hmm...

I type my zip code into this page and it sends me to this page listing my Representatives and Senators. I can now send them a form letter or...click on one of the ProfileHis email address!

The law reserves to the copyright holder pretty much any type of action that makes money. You can't rip mp3's and sell them. But the kind of massive, uncompensated copying that napster and gnutella make easy is not restricted.

This applies to copyrighted software as well. You can make copies of commercial software and give them to your friends, or use them on machines at home, as long as you aren't using them to do consulting work or stuff for your employer or anything besides enthusiast/hobbiest type stuff.

The big software copyright holders had a very successful propaganda campaign to convience people otherwise. Remember all those "Just Say No to Software Piracy!" posters in school computer labs back in the late 80s and early 90s ? There were ads in magazines and even on TV as well. But Microsoft and the enforcers they funded were too smart to ever take anyone to court for giving away software; the court cases were all legitimate cases of people copying and selling, or using a copied version in a company or other commercial enterprise. ( Ok, there are a few cases in which someone running a server with commercial software on it was legally harassed just to shut it down; usually after running them out of legal fees, some secrete out-of-court settlement would be agreed upon. ) This adertising and propaganda campaign resulted in enormous numbers of people like you buying software that they didn't need to. Ponzi had nothing on these guys; immagine the amount of money involved here.

So the RIAA and MPAA are going for the same move. And thanks to dupes like you, it's working. We probably live in the age with the most unfettered access to and desimination of information ever. The fact that you can download the law in question off of the web and read it for yourself is amazing. But you didn't do it, you just used the internet to parrot your enemies' propaganda. Hey, I got an idea -- why don't you go tell every one to send ME ten bucks ? And when am I getting a check from you ? Cause that's what I'm charging to read this message, and you little post-pirate! Feel guilty and send me a check!

Ok, back to serious mode. When you download that thing, the fair use section is going to be very vague and loose. (It definitely includes napsterizing mp3's though.) This is why:
Congress wanted to give the copyright holders the ability to profit from their work beyound the first sale. So they gave them the right to be the only one's to sell it. But they said that you had to really sell it, you couldn't license it for a particular purpose. (Of course that is exactly what the RIAA and friends want to do -- they'll sell you a copy for each position of the volume knob, or make you pay each time you play it, if they can.) The reasons for that, from Congress's point of view, are probably well thought out and pretty clever. The whole copyright structure is pretty much self-administering, in that the remedies for breaking the rules are usually enforced by the copyright holder in a suit, so we don't need to have the BATF of copyrights soaking up the budget, and copyrights which aren't worth anything are not enforced. If we start allowing use-based control, then we get away from that lean, efficient self-administering system, because we have to support a lot of monitoring of people, a lot more legal actions, etc. Remember, Congress is allowed to give away our rights to copy things only for the "advancement of the Arts and Sciences", and a use-based control system would probably retard things as much as it encouraged people to make more music or whatever.

So that's why you have the fair use exemption. So why didn't Congress spell it out and take away all this uncertainty ? Well, if you think about it, it is pretty hard to do. If you make an itemized list of fair use activities, then the big copyright businesses will invent some medium or method of distribution so that you pay for something, and then have to pay again to use it. If you make an itemized list of things a copyright holder can charge for, some new technology will present a new medium which can't benefit from the copyright system (and the copyright system is a very beneficial setup, over all), and this new medium will languish until congress notices it and adds it to the list. Obviously, it is better to use the gray words "fair use", simply saying that you can use what you buy, and let the courts sort out the details as they arise. And then you get some dinosaur-brain like Kaplan, but hey, no system is perfect.

So stop worrying about legal mp3s. I don't think you could find someone charging for mp3's, other than the legitimate artist or publisher, if you had to to save your Mom's life. I have other good news also. That guy named Lars who said you have to come over to his house and clean his toilet ? You only have to do that if you want to be his serf. The same goes for taking out Jack Valenti's garbage tonight. But if you just feel less morally anguished by being a slave, go ahead.

The law reserves to the copyright holder pretty much any type of action that makes money. You can't rip mp3's and sell them. But the kind of massive, uncompensated copying that napster and gnutella make easy is not restricted.

This applies to copyrighted software as well. You can make copies of commercial software and give them to your friends, or use them on machines at home, as long as you aren't using them to do consulting work or stuff for your employer or anything besides enthusiast/hobbiest type stuff.

The big software copyright holders had a very successful propaganda campaign to convience people otherwise. Remember all those "Just Say No to Software Piracy!" posters in school computer labs back in the late 80s and early 90s ? There were ads in magazines and even on TV as well. But Microsoft and the enforcers they funded were too smart to ever take anyone to court for giving away software; the court cases were all legitimate cases of people copying and selling, or using a copied version in a company or other commercial enterprise. ( Ok, there are a few cases in which someone running a server with commercial software on it was legally harassed just to shut it down; usually after running them out of legal fees, some secrete out-of-court settlement would be agreed upon. ) This adertising and propaganda campaign resulted in enormous numbers of people like you buying software that they didn't need to. Ponzi had nothing on these guys; immagine the amount of money involved here.

So the RIAA and MPAA are going for the same move. And thanks to dupes like you, it's working. We probably live in the age with the most unfettered access to and desimination of information ever. The fact that you can download the law in question off of the web and read it for yourself is amazing. But you didn't do it, you just used the internet to parrot your enemies' propaganda. Hey, I got an idea -- why don't you go tell every one to send ME ten bucks ? And when am I getting a check from you ? Cause that's what I'm charging to read this message, and you little post-pirate! Feel guilty and send me a check!

Ok, back to serious mode. When you download that thing, the fair use section is going to be very vague and loose. (It definitely includes napsterizing mp3's though.) This is why:
Congress wanted to give the copyright holders the ability to profit from their work beyound the first sale. So they gave them the right to be the only one's to sell it. But they said that you had to really sell it, you couldn't license it for a particular purpose. (Of course that is exactly what the RIAA and friends want to do -- they'll sell you a copy for each position of the volume knob, or make you pay each time you play it, if they can.) The reasons for that, from Congress's point of view, are probably well thought out and pretty clever. The whole copyright structure is pretty much self-administering, in that the remedies for breaking the rules are usually enforced by the copyright holder in a suit, so we don't need to have the BATF of copyrights soaking up the budget, and copyrights which aren't worth anything are not enforced. If we start allowing use-based control, then we get away from that lean, efficient self-administering system, because we have to support a lot of monitoring of people, a lot more legal actions, etc. Remember, Congress is allowed to give away our rights to copy things only for the "advancement of the Arts and Sciences", and a use-based control system would probably retard things as much as it encouraged people to make more music or whatever.

So that's why you have the fair use exemption. So why didn't Congress spell it out and take away all this uncertainty ? Well, if you think about it, it is pretty hard to do. If you make an itemized list of fair use activities, then the big copyright businesses will invent some medium or method of distribution so that you pay for something, and then have to pay again to use it. If you make an itemized list of things a copyright holder can charge for, some new technology will present a new medium which can't benefit from the copyright system (and the copyright system is a very beneficial setup, over all), and this new medium will languish until congress notices it and adds it to the list. Obviously, it is better to use the gray words "fair use", simply saying that you can use what you buy, and let the courts sort out the details as they arise. And then you get some dinosaur-brain like Kaplan, but hey, no system is perfect.

So stop worrying about legal mp3s. I don't think you could find someone charging for mp3's, other than the legitimate artist or publisher, if you had to to save your Mom's life. I have other good news also. That guy named Lars who said you have to come over to his house and clean his toilet ? You only have to do that if you want to be his serf. The same goes for taking out Jack Valenti's garbage tonight. But if you just feel less morally anguished by being a slave, go ahead.

The rough purpose of the fair use law is to limit the copyright privileges to having a monopoly and control of the commercial exploitation of the work. Congress didn't want to take away our right to make copies of music and video; they only chose to restrict our selling or other commercial exploitation of the works.

This kind of massive file sharing that napster makes possible, and hopefully this codec and faster connections will make possible with video, is actually legal as long as you don't receive any compensation.

You don't have to trust me on this. If you are smart enough to read slashdot, then you are smart enough to go here and download Title 17 of the US code and read it for yourself. It's kind of thick. I printed my copy out and left it in the bathroom, and read a few pages everytime I took a shit. I read it carefully and marked all over it the interesting parts, but I never found where it said that non-commercial uncompensated duplication and distribution of music or video was illegal.

You see, Congress wanted to make very sure that copyright was not an ability to control how people used things. They didn't want the copyright holders to be able to sell one copy for listening in the car and another copy for listening in the house and special copy for listening on weekends. (Which is exactly what the MPAA, the RIAA, and other big copyright holders dream of.) If Congress had wanted to do that, they could have written it into the law; where is it ?

Of course, this same principle of non-money-making copies being normal use of the medium you purchased also extends to software. Holy Shit! you say. Can I make a copy of that windows NT disk at work and install it on my machine at home ? As long as you are not using that machine to do consulting, work from home, or anything beyound home "hobbiest" type use, yes. (I'd advise against it. There are much better hobbiest OSs.)

But the big copyright holders of programs had a massively successful campaign to convince the average slashbot that this was illegal. Remember all those ads in magazines and posters in school computer clusters in the '80s ? They managed to shame huge numbers of people into buying things they didn't need to. The 700 club, usenet get rich yesterday schemes, Scientology, Albanian pyramid schemes, the Russian bailout . . . it all pales in compairison to the anti-piracy campaign.

The RIAA and MPAA are going for a repeat move on their copyright material. Ironically, inspite of the Jon Katzian "the world will change because small people have a voice on slashdot" theory, all you automatons just help them out by parroting Hollywood's false legal propaganda.

It just goes to show that you can give everybody a voice on the internet, and they'll still just repeat what they hear in TV commercials.

Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000

It is very concise and well written as others have already pointed out. Read it over before you send your vote of confidence to your congressmen.

-----------------

------------------------------------------

I support the legislation being proposed by Rich Boucher (D-Virginia) which is being cited as the "Music Owners' Listening Rights Act of 2000". You can find more information on it here:

http://www.house.gov/boucher/doc s/m olra-leg.htm

As a consumer, I feel that it is my right to listen to my music when, where and how I choose. Too often, large and powerful organizations (like the Recording Industry Association of America - RIAA) are able to pay lawyers and lobbyists to prevent consumers from making their own choices.

I paid for this music, and I feel that it is my right to listen to it how I choose. Many organizations lately are using the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) in ways that the Congress never intended. Individuals and companies are being sued and threatened for alleged "copyright infringement" under the DMCA by organizations like the RIAA and the MPAA.

Actually, what these organizations have forgotten is that the DMCA was written to protect consumers. And, in the long run it is in the interest of consumers (not corporations) to allow "space shifting" of music and other media. If you buy something once, you should be allowed to enjoy it for non-commercial purposes in any medium that you choose.

I believe that the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 and the 1984 Sony Betamax case protect the consumer by allowing them this right to make and share non-commercial copies of their music and movies.

Please support the legislation being proposed by Rich Boucher. And, also please support legislation that is in the interest of consumers regarding file-sharing and "space shifting". Recently this has been in the news a lot with the lawsuit between MP3.com and the RIAA and soon it will repeat itself as Napster and the RIAA resume their battle in court. As a citizen of the US, I support file-sharing and I believe it is my right to enjoy my music in any form or media that I choose.

Digital file-sharing is here to stay and it will only get stronger. Congress needs to create laws that help the public make sense of the legalities of copyrights in the Internet age. After the laws have been passed then the courts can enforce those laws. But, currently they have nothing to go by and the copyright issue in the digital age is being decided by lawyers and litigation with conflicting results. Please encourage the Congress to pass sensible legislation that is in the best interest of consumers while still protecting artists and authors.

Thank you for your time.

------------------------------------------

Your rights as a music buying consumer are at stake. If you think the recording industry has entirely too much power, tell Congress! If you think Hemos should be banned from the internet, tell Congress!

Most issues before congress are decided by members voting in the way they think will get them re-elected, without any input from the constituency. The saddest thing about this is how easy it is to let your views be known.

People all over the world participate in their own governments at levels we in the U.S. are privileged to but don't. Participation in the governing process is a privilege. Failure to use it could be failure to keep it.

If you think G.W. is the greatest thing since sliced bread, register to vote before October 8 and vote in November. Similarly, if you think G.W. is a cocaine snorting, S&L crashing, frat boy weasel, register and vote. If you don't vote you have no right to complain when the candidate you loathe most gets elected.

Code commentary is like sex.
If it's good, it's VERY good.

Having worked on the Hill over the summer, here's some advice for those of you planning on contacting your elected official:

a) Write them a snail-mail letter. There's a sneaking suspicion that one person is sending them all those form emails.

b) If you do want to write an email, include your NAME and ADDRESS. Without your NAME and ADDRESS, you might not be a constituent, they don't really waste the time to figure out the difference.

To contact your representative: Write-rep

I don't see anything specific on his website, but I recall reading elsewhere that Boucher was instrumental in the legislation that allowed the Internet to legally be used for non-research purposes. So he's at least partially responsible for the commercialized Internet of today, as opposed to the elite academic community of ten years ago. Whether that's a good thing or not is a matter of opinion, I guess.

Whoa there feller, read the bill first before going on like that...
Kneejerk reactions only make you look silly.

This is completely false. Separate Titles of the US code lay out remedies and penalties associated with patents and copyright, and they differ considerably from the remedies and penalties for crimes such as vandalism or theft.

Why don't you go read the code in question ? It's on the web. The site I use is:

uscode.house.gov

You might want to download the entire document of Title 17, in which case this page is the best:

uscode.house.gov/download.htm

Today 600 people are going to post an uninformed post to this story. That's because all of them think the US Congress actually gave Metallica and those other artists a complete monopoly on what is done with a song they record. None of them read Title 17, Chapter 1, sections 106 through 115, especially the various secions whose titles begin with the phrase "Limitations on Exclusive Rights:", and looked very carefully at the different privileges a copyright of a sound recording gives you over a written work.

But you can be the first, Old Man Kensey!

And if you can show me where it says that I am violating any privileges the US government has handed out, when I transfer a copy of a sound recording to another individual and don't receive any money for it, then I will buy you a steak dinner (or equivalent, if steak isn't your thing). I'm serious about this. Be careful, because all the places where it says that you can't do something, it generally says "as allowed in secions 106 through 115" or something similar, and those sections include the "Limitations on Exclusive Rights" parts.

This is completely false. Separate Titles of the US code lay out remedies and penalties associated with patents and copyright, and they differ considerably from the remedies and penalties for crimes such as vandalism or theft.

Why don't you go read the code in question ? It's on the web. The site I use is:

uscode.house.gov

You might want to download the entire document of Title 17, in which case this page is the best:

uscode.house.gov/download.htm

Today 600 people are going to post an uninformed post to this story. That's because all of them think the US Congress actually gave Metallica and those other artists a complete monopoly on what is done with a song they record. None of them read Title 17, Chapter 1, sections 106 through 115, especially the various secions whose titles begin with the phrase "Limitations on Exclusive Rights:", and looked very carefully at the different privileges a copyright of a sound recording gives you over a written work.

But you can be the first, Old Man Kensey!

And if you can show me where it says that I am violating any privileges the US government has handed out, when I transfer a copy of a sound recording to another individual and don't receive any money for it, then I will buy you a steak dinner (or equivalent, if steak isn't your thing). I'm serious about this. Be careful, because all the places where it says that you can't do something, it generally says "as allowed in secions 106 through 115" or something similar, and those sections include the "Limitations on Exclusive Rights" parts.

IANAL (I am not a Legislator), but it seems to me that this 'hack sdmi' challenge may be somehow applicable to RICO (RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS) statutes.

I found the definitions of RICO on the US House of Representatives' site.

The Hack SDMI effort is potentially an attempt to form a conspiracy to commit a federal offense, i.e., to crack an access control device, according to DMCA.

Further, a "pattern" of racketeering can be shown if two things are proven within ten years.

Most laws aren't really fleshed out until there's a legal precedent, and Kaplan couldn't have reached his decision in this civil case without the existence of the DMCA.

Excellent point. And precicely why I hate legislation like that. I suggest writing your representative or senator about it as I have.

--

Here's my letter

I've seen many people talk about writing letters to Congress, and urging others to do so. I think it is far more effective to just post your letter. Otherwise it's just vaporware.

You can email your House Rep from http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Note: the government apparently does as poor a job using PowerPoint as they do securing their networks.

For the detail-minded, here's the report:
Computer Security Report Card

I just wish it was a little easier to read some of the details.

-Sharv

1. Become a member of EFF at https://www.eff.org/support/joineff.html
   They are one of the few folks who are putting their time and money where their mouth is and fighting back.
2. Buy some "stop the MPAA" stuff at http://store.yahoo.com/2600hacker/a ntimpaa.html
3. Order a DVD player with country codes disabled at http://www.codefreedvd.com/dvd_dvdpla yers.htm
4. Write to your Representative in the United States House at http://www.house.gov/writerep
5. Write to your Senators at http://www.senate.gov
   

Write your congressional representative.

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Take any issue you feel he might be ignorant one (you've pretty much got field to run here) and begin a well-written and concise explanation of the phenomena at play. Remember who you're addressing and even if you don't care for him, consider the fact his vote makes your law. Whatever you write will be filtered to countless staffers, and even if it never makes it all the way up the chain then consider how many of those staffers could be educated and perhaps - by osmosis =P - be able to pass on the information.

For example, I felt concerned about the clipper project and I took the time to explain to my representative Norman Sisisky why and how the technology could be abused. I can now say that I have developed a dialog with him in which I will take the time to explain and educate what to many of our public figures is an incomprehensible melange of jargon and pathetic "it's unconstitutional!!!" rants with little basis in either fact, nor -sadly- understanding.

Very Respectfully (this is how you should sign your letters btw =P),
-Tork

Write your congressional representative.

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

Take any issue you feel he might be ignorant one (you've pretty much got field to run here) and begin a well-written and concise explanation of the phenomena at play. Remember who you're addressing and even if you don't care for him, consider the fact his vote makes your law. Whatever you write will be filtered to countless staffers, and even if it never makes it all the way up the chain then consider how many of those staffers could be educated and perhaps - by osmosis =P - be able to pass on the information.

For example, I felt concerned about the clipper project and I took the time to explain to my representative Norman Sisisky why and how the technology could be abused. I can now say that I have developed a dialog with him in which I will take the time to explain and educate what to many of our public figures is an incomprehensible melange of jargon and pathetic "it's unconstitutional!!!" rants with little basis in either fact, nor -sadly- understanding.

Very Respectfully (this is how you should sign your letters btw =P),
-Tork

What you forget is that the speed with which this can happen is a function of geography.

There are four INS service centers where you "get the paperwork rolling". Some of them can take upwards of 2-3 months to approve an H-1B transfer from one employer to the next.

If you're in one of the slower regions, finding an employer who's willing to make an offer today, but not have you start work for another 2-3 months -- possibly longer, given INS' continued inability to deal with its backlogs -- can be a considerable impediment to job mobility of an H1-B.

Finally, on the Green Card side, the "fast" route is at least a 2-3 year process. The "normal" route can take upwards of 5-6 years. Since an H-1B is only valid for six years, getting a Green Card is a highly dicey proposition.

The bottom line all comes down to money, culture, and bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy side is self-explanatory - INS has consistently been rated the most dysfunctional federal organization in the Union.

The money side has led to a cultural problem, however, which is this: INS has two mandates:

enforcement against aliens unlawfully present,

services to aliens legally present

How are these mandates funded? Briefly:

Congress funds INS' "enforcement" budget, and INS is legally prohibited from using these funds in the "services" side of the organization.

The "services" budget must therefore come out of user fees, which are wholly inadequate for the number of legal immigrants (and H-1B and TN nonimmigrants, and most importantly, the American businesses who employ them) requiring prompt response times for processing of their requests for services to which, under law, they are entitled.

After many years of this funding imbalance, is it any wonder that INS personnel themselves see the "enforcement" arm as the "cool place to work" and the "services" arm as the "poor bastards in the basement with the dripping pipes?"

And that, folks, is why there's money for a SWAT team equipped with modern body armor and top-of-the-line H&K MP5 submachine guns and armored personnel carriers to go after an 8-year-old kid, but it takes four months for an H-1B guy to say "can I work for SGI instead of Sun Microsystems", and probably over four years before Transmeta can get permission to hire Linus Torvalds on a permanent ("Green Card") basis.

Don't believe me on that last part? Read Linus' own testimony before the congressional hearing last February.

Importing the best and brightest is probably the only way for the US to maintain dominance in intellectual business.

I've considered immigrating to the US through employer sponsorship and have studied the US immigration process for well over two years now. The best and brightest people will proabably do the same and draw similar conclusions to mine before considering coming to the US -- that the immigration system is all one big lottery.

Look at one particularly famous hi-tech immigrant. A Mr. Linus Torvalds, whose H1-B is sponsored by Transmeta. Fortunately for him, his Green Card application is going through a faster route. He's qualified for EB-1 (Employment Based category one) which allows him to forego the lengthy Labor Certification process which would've added at least two years wait. And yet still, Linus complains. The IEEE-USA and Immigration Reform Coalition have even gotten him to sign their letter in support of green cards for new immigrant labor.

What about those H1-B holders whose GC applications don't qualify for EB-1. The EB-2 for jobs requiring a Masters, or the heavily over subscribed EB-3 for any job needing only a bachelors? Waiting times for: Labor Certification + Priority date to become current + i485 processing + Employment Approval Document(EAD) + final ajustment of status to GC holder = in excess of 5 years. Assuming an H1-B is renewed it can only allow a person to work for 6 years in the US.

Technically, once an H1-B holder has reached the EAD stage they can remain in the US indefinitely on their current visa working for the sponsoring employer. The adjustment of status queue itself (the one Linus is currently stuck in) has been bottlenecked for well over a year. Indefinite indentured labor anyone?

And in the space of just 1 year look what has happened to the dot coms. Layoffs, pink slips, bankruptcy. Even well established companies like Shockwave, Qwest and Novell are laying off hi-tech people. Of course, with the labor market so tight, the US citizens and residents will get snapped up by other more successful companies within a weeks. But what of the H1-B holder who now has ten days to find another sponsor or be deported? Even if one is so lucky as to find a new sponsor for the H1-B, the 6 year time limit cannot be reset. 2 years spent at a dot.bomb means only 4 years left at the new company. The GC application must start from scratch, and there simply will not be enough time for it to complete processing.

And even if all the bottlenecks were to magically disappear by noon today, a recent IEEE-USA study suggests that the quota of H1-B's (65,000, or 200,000 if the cap is raised) entering every year would render the Green card process one big lottery for many. Only a tiny fraction of H1-B holders get adjusted to GC in any given year. This number was no more than 25,000 in 1998 due to all the backlogs.

So, No thank you. I don't think I'll be working in the U.S. Maybe, I'll try Canada. From what I hear, a hi-tech professional can get residency within 18 months. Many former H1-B holders from India are migrating northwards taking valuable US hi-tech experience with them.

Well, since there really is no hi-tech shortage in the US, this Computing Science Ph.D. who can program in C/C++, Perl, Java, Python, Tcl/Tk, is familiar with many Internet protocols, OpenGL programming, and gives training courses in Linux/UNIX, will probably not be missed.

Bye