Slashdot Mirror

So he is immune- he can still DoS them. Hey man - lets post the MPAA and RIAA main sites on slashdot daily so we can slashdot them daily. If we use all their bandwidth for a slashdot style DOS then they cant for their own sinister purposes...

www.riaa.org
www.mpaa.org

I'm a government consultant for a large institution on the east coast, known for its strongarm tactics. We have recently been contacted by some of our constituents about this so-called "file sharing" that's a goin' on on the internet. Our job is to put the kabosh on it, tout suite! However, before we lace up the jackboots, we wanted to know what a bunch of college students and open source advocates thought.

What an utterly laughable idea.

I'm a government consultant for a large institution on the east coast, known for its strongarm tactics. We have recently been contacted by some of our constituents about this so-called "file sharing" that's a goin' on on the internet. Our job is to put the kabosh on it, tout suite! However, before we lace up the jackboots, we wanted to know what a bunch of college students and open source advocates thought.

What an utterly laughable idea.

The correlary to this view is that copyright law (which extends all the way back to the US Constitution) was established primarily to protect those who create and distribute creative works. In fact, it was created as a compact between average citizens and those citizens or organizations that were provided with copyright protections.

The underlying goal of this compact was to strengthen the culture of the United States for all its citizens. The underlying goal was never to provide special protections for copyright holders in some sort of vacuum of privelege.

Interestingly, in their primer on copyright, the RIAA neglects this vial information. As usual, they cite the rights of the copyright holder, without pointing out that those rights are mirrored by specific and explicit rights given to the general public as part of the copyright compact.

The RIAA essentially constitutes a cartel, and as such when they decide to endorse computer-damaging CDs or other nonsense, it's not simply a matter of consumer choice. Unopposed, the RIAA will get what it wants. What it wants in this case is to deny you and me the right to exercise our end of the copyright compact.

As we're seeing now with WorldCom, Enron, et. al., even though the Congress is generally overly-lenient with big business, from time to time the politicians realize that it's in nobody's best interests for these people to be given free rein.

I for one am happy to see at least one member of Congress who is willing to stand up and make this an issue. Cynics will call it grandstanding, or proof that he didn't get enough money from the music industry, and so on. But I see it as proof that the American political system can work.

As others have pointed out, it's not enough to steal songs via Limewire all day in a "protest" against the RIAA. Sometimes you have to *gasp* get to know the issues, vote *double gasp* and stop whining that the system doesn't work.

Actually it's so that lobbyists can make their own crazy laws. Yipee, indeed.

RIAA currently has 806 members:
http://www.riaa.org/About-Members-1.cfm
Does anyone know any big labels that aren't on the list?

Sounds like trouble to me. And if I'm not mistaken, the Joker is behind this...

So might this be an all-out DoS attack looking to shut down the spread of the fruits of the decadent, imperialist American culture? Would they try to clog the networks so that people can't share any type of creative endeavour that represents the freedom that all Americans enjoy? Oh wait. That would be these people. My bad. Move along. Nothing to see here. I get those groups trying to subvert freedom at all costs in pursuit of their twisted ideology confused sometimes. (NB: I am not condoning piracy. But you shouldn't let companies engage in the kinds of activities that terrorits might do. :P) Also, is there a new version of Godwin's law relating to calling someone a terrorist?

He is on V2 Music which is a member of the RIAA. Moby is rich -- why doesn't he start his own label and sell music directly or through independent distributors? In case Moby hasn't noticed, all of us are currently hating the RIAA right now. I will buy this album because I already own all his previous albums. But, why does everyone immediately blame the spectre of "piracy" for their loss of sales? Has he ever considered that mabye all the techies are currently unemployed and don't have $15 to spring for the new Moby album?

Even more disgusting, but certainly not suprising, is the RIAA's response to the announcement, saying, "[the rate] simply does not reflect the fair market value of the music as promised by the law."

Who's up for burning RIAA at the stake?

http://www.riaa.org/Contact.cfm

Instead of -- or perhaps in addition to, depending on how pissed off they are -- perhaps someone should start an open letter to the RIAA. Have enough community knowledge of and input on it, and it could easily get tens of thousands of (virtual) signatures. Then, maybe, just maybe they would start to give a shit.

http://www.riaa.org/About-Members-1.cfm
is a convienient list of labels to avoid. there are plenty of musicians who have nothing to do with them. of course the RIAA is doing everything in thier power to make it hard to musicians to get anywhere without them. thankfully there is alot of good music outside of thier controll.

your right about them trying to take power from us. with the new technology people can make movies without them. people can distribute music without them. musicans can make a living without them controlling it or getting money from it. thats what they dont like. this non sense about piracy is a blatant lie. (if you dont believe me look at record sales when napster was popular, i have other reasons to believe these things, but mostly it just makes sense when you look at what they are doing.)

Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen are crying ...

If I produce software, music, or writings, these are the results of my work and efforts, and nobody is entitled to steal them! Hell yeah if someone where to take the master tapes and recordings leaving you with just the happy memories of the hours you spend in a recording studio (if you still make music becouse you like doing it that is!) That would suck, that would be plain theft. And it is not that far from what some recording companies do with some of their less valued artists. Ie everyone who works their ass of making music and sees most of their money disapear in martketing britney to ten year olds. This while if said coorporations actually looked at the numbers the riaa gives them in research they paid for instead of making "piracy numbers" up to get the dmca-v2 trough, then they would see these ten year olds are not the most likely demographic to buy cd`s, (thats the >20 group btw)

So, the recording companies need to stop thinking of their job as selling cd`s but rather think of it a licencing music and distributing it in any way they customers want it. They could stop the mafia pratices amongst artists, just to see what heapons

If no-one would buy them over $10, the producers would have to lower their prices, simple law of supply and demand.Yesss. but now enter the world of "intelectual property", the whole point of copyright is to provide a "limited" monopoly on a particulair work, do you see any of this magical "same product, ten bucks cheaper" competition for microsoft? Same goes for music, there is no competition amongst these, let alone a supply-and-demand kind of relation. I think its time to discus these limitation on copyright monopolies, and to discus it withous listening to huge copyright holders who simply claim every bit of income they lose in due to "piracy" without even looking if they might simply be having problems with the price/quality of their products (like getting diverse artist to atract a big audiance, instead of marketing the one-size-fits-all,if you push britney bands to everyone).

hundreds of thousands of jobs...

Now can we make a genetically-altered weapon that eats Hilary Rosen, Jack Valenti, and copy-protected CDs?

Comments/questions/etc can be made here.

Subject: Copyright

I recently read an article describing how an unscrupulous individual could use a felt-tip marker to defeat the copyright protection on a CD. Being an artist, I have a large number of felt-tip markers in my possession. Do I risk being sued under the DMCA for being in possession of a device for circumventing copyright protection? What if I lend one to a friend? Is this considered distributing a device for circumventing copyright protection? I'd appreciate an answer on this... I want nothing more than to be an upstanding citizen.

Sincerely,
Nathan Labadie

How would you revise or restructure IP and copyright law to make both sides of the fence happy?

No way Jose. Some people will only be happy when everybody in the world owns them aleph-infinite dollars.

i'm usually more aware of this type of legislation but was caught off guard by this. So I did some digging at RIAA's site (better to know your enemy) and found this spin control document.

My favorite quote:

In recent weeks, the CARP rates have become the subject of an intense misinformation and propaganda campaign (so called "grassroots" but really ginned up by sophisticated lobbyists in D.C.)

nahhh it's not grass roots... it's ginned up by sophisticated lobbyists!

Hil Rosenator is smoking some crack if she expects people to really believe this but it is interesting. Whom did they have in mind?
Well later on in the document they specifically name MTV, Microsoft, AOL/TW. With the exception of MTV (who's parent company may have some quarrels with RIAA) it seems like technology vs. copyright all over again. I just wish the tech companies would realize they are fighting this together and publicly unify against RIAA and other media hordes (whores?) who have clearly put aside internal bickering to concentrate on world domination through Project "Nickle and Dime" the fuck out of everyone.

The RIAA is not the labels.

Um. OK. But really, the RIAA IS the labels. It's a trade association whose most important members are Warner Brothers, EMI, Sony, BMG and Universal. These just happen to be the 5 biggest labels, comprising like 96% of all published music. Oh yeah, and over 800 other labels too.
So. I would propose that an association is made up of its members, wouldn't you?

Yeah, and to just name a few: MPAA, RIAA, and WIPO.

argggg, the riaa does *not* screw the artists, thats the job of the bigger-then-the-empire-state-building labels they represent!(they do most defnantly not represent smaller labels, they cant affort the fees)

These five are the ones screwing artist, they own the copyrights to the recordings, they pay the production cost, they pay the artist they cant afford to lose everything they ask for(bling,bling), they pay the whats left to the rest of their artist after managment and their marketing contractors have had their cut ofcourse. They rather "invest" in martketing the playbacking "teenager" + drumcomputer of the month which they think is attractive for a broad audiance (ie everythng age the statistis the riaa collects for them they would know its the male,age >30 people who buy records, and they like "real" music ;-)

In the US of A, it is perfectly legal for any American to purchase any politician. You don't need to be from Virgina to contribute to Mr. Boucher's reelection efforts. I'm sure certain nefarious organizations will fund his opponents. Do your part and keep this guy from getting crushed for standing up to legalized racketeering.

Me, I'd rather be an honest and ethical person, rather than a rich one. At least I enjoy whatever little money I have!

Are you really so naive as to believe that unethical people who have a lot of money don't enjoy it? That sounds to me like something that people without money tell themselves to console themselves, sort of like telling your kid that the school bully is actually miserable, when in fact he's probably having a great time picking on other people.

Well, enjoy it while you can, because the people with money and power are looking to make sure you have even less money to enjoy than you have now, so that they will have even more money and power to enjoy.

Feel free to bury your head in the sand and tell yourself that it's okay, while legislation like the DMCA and SSSCA gets passed and enforced. Yes, it'll all be okay, even if you no longer have any money and are living in a corporate run police state. Because at least you'll still have your ethics!

(And yes, I despise those people without ethics and am sickened at how they seem to be able to do so much better than people with ethics, but I'm not naive enough to believe that the fact that I have any ethics makes one damned bit of difference in the real world. In fact, I know it puts me at a significant disadvantage, and sometimes wish I didn't have these ethical beliefs that prevent me from doing something about that).

RIAA Propoganda: The Cost Of A CD

Lifted:
Then come marketing and promotion costs -- perhaps the most expensive part of the music business today. They include increasingly expensive video clips, public relations, tour support, marketing campaigns, and promotion to get the songs played on the radio. For example, when you hear a song played on the radio -- that didn't just happen! Labels make investments in artists by paying for both the production and the promotion of the album, and promotion is very expensive. New technology such as the Internet offers new ways for artists to reach music fans, but it still requires that some entity, whether it is a traditional label or another kind of company, market and promote that artist so that fans are aware of new releases.

That's why it costs $18 for a CD instead of $1.50? Right.....

That is so lame.

Bad service is the one thing that will drive me away from a company, even if the product/service they are selling is good.

Exhibit A: RIAA
Exhibit B: MPAA

Divestiture: Removing state investments, usually pension funds for retired state workers, from entertainment companies producing music with what some politicians consider "objectionable" lyrics.

This may seem like a nitpick, but it isn't. It goes to the heart of RIAA's bogus notion that it has a "right" to make a profit. Well, no it doesn't, and neither does anybody else, because no such "right" exists. (They do, of course, have the right to attempt to make a profit and the right to publish. Both of those are genuine rights, which are unfortunately undermined by association with the counterfeit "right" to a profit.)

Speech given to Senate Government Affairs Committee

RIAA's summation of anti-censorship stuff - obviously biased, but hey

Response to hearings in '98

First-hand account of Senate sub-committee testimony in '97

And while not artist related, there's also that little matter of helping found Rock the Vote

She's also active in gay rights circles, but Google wasn't as helpful in digging up stuff about that.

Speech given to Senate Government Affairs Committee

RIAA's summation of anti-censorship stuff - obviously biased, but hey

Response to hearings in '98

First-hand account of Senate sub-committee testimony in '97

And while not artist related, there's also that little matter of helping found Rock the Vote

She's also active in gay rights circles, but Google wasn't as helpful in digging up stuff about that.

SOMEWHERE IN A DUNGEON FAR BELOW RIAA HEADQUARTERS (AP)-- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced it is introducing a bill tin Congress making it illegal for artists who are not members of RIAA or associated with RIAA member-labels to record songs for public listening.

The RIAA believes that such independent recording "unfairly and unnecessarily deprives" their lawyers, executives, and artists from future revenues. In an unrecorded telephone interview, Hilary B. Rosen, President and CEO of RIAA, said that "we believe our industry has a right to expect that our ideas for new compositions will not be stolen or usurped by some fool kid getting the idea first. Remember, Elisha Gray, an established expert in electronic media, was unfairly deprived of profits from the invention of the telephone simply because Alexander Graham Bell, an amateur, got to the patent office a few minutes sooner. It's foolish to think that someone without experience or affiliation with the recording industry could come up with a creatively written song and have the right to profit from it when it sells in the millions. It's unfair to RIAA members to expect them to sit back and idly watch the money fly past into the pockets of independent artists."

When asked about the possibility of independent artists distributing their works through free channels such as KaZaa and independent websites, Rosen commented, "we have undercover agents who may be paying them a *cough* visit."

Asked about future legislation that the RIAA may introduce, Rosen added, "we understand that some churches and other houses of worship sanction musical performances without demanding royalties. Accordingly, we are investigating this to make sure RIAA's rights and potential profits are not infringed in any way."

EDITOR'S NOTE: The above interview was not recorded because the RIAA demandes that royalties be paid for all recorded telephone conversations, especially if they are encoded in mp3 format and distributed via the Internet.

SOMEWHERE IN A DUNGEON FAR BELOW RIAA HEADQUARTERS (AP)-- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) today announced it is introducing a bill tin Congress making it illegal for artists who are not members of RIAA or associated with RIAA member-labels to record songs for public listening.

The RIAA believes that such independent recording "unfairly and unnecessarily deprives" their lawyers, executives, and artists from future revenues. In an unrecorded telephone interview, Hilary B. Rosen, President and CEO of RIAA, said that "we believe our industry has a right to expect that our ideas for new compositions will not be stolen or usurped by some fool kid getting the idea first. Remember, Elisha Gray, an established expert in electronic media, was unfairly deprived of profits from the invention of the telephone simply because Alexander Graham Bell, an amateur, got to the patent office a few minutes sooner. It's foolish to think that someone without experience or affiliation with the recording industry could come up with a creatively written song and have the right to profit from it when it sells in the millions. It's unfair to RIAA members to expect them to sit back and idly watch the money fly past into the pockets of independent artists."

When asked about the possibility of independent artists distributing their works through free channels such as KaZaa and independent websites, Rosen commented, "we have undercover agents who may be paying them a *cough* visit."

Asked about future legislation that the RIAA may introduce, Rosen added, "we understand that some churches and other houses of worship sanction musical performances without demanding royalties. Accordingly, we are investigating this to make sure RIAA's rights and potential profits are not infringed in any way."

EDITOR'S NOTE: The above interview was not recorded because the RIAA demandes that royalties be paid for all recorded telephone conversations, especially if they are encoded in mp3 format and distributed via the Internet.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic but the RIAA is not a "governmnetal law enforcement agenc[y]". From riaa.org:

The Recording Industry Association of America is the trade group that represents the U.S. recording industry.

Basically it's just the Big Five trying to bilk everyone (including the artists) to make as much profit as they can for its member companies. True, though, that the RIAA is enough of a collusive monopoly power and paid off enough politicians that it might as well be a government agency.

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.

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.

Which, by the way, they responded to with the biggest load of crap I've ever read.

This case might make industry think twice about the DMCA if the copyright work in question were owned by, say, Bertelsmann or another AOL-Time-Warner competitor. But as the suit was brought by some puny individual (no offense, Mr. Ellison, but you're not a mega-media conglomerate) and the Right Side won, this won't change the opinions of Anyone That Matters.

proprietary extensions/applets/applications built around the .net framework.

Isn't the .net framework an ECMA standard now?
Isn't someone working on a free implementation of that standard?
Are you calling it proprietary just because it comes from billy boy?

No longer will new features be added directly to office, but will be available on the web - provided the user has Windows and is using IE...

That sounds to me like it would primarily affect office users, not web surfers, and considering office's main platform is windows, so what if they use windows/ie for web-based updates/upgrades?

Heck, MS execs are even talking about how http's days are coming to an end...

You got a link to back that up?

I'm not necessarily defending microsoft[1], just questioning the statements you present as fact.

C-X C-S
[1] Although I don't think they're any more evil than any other money-grubbing corporation.
Media conglomerates and trade groups, now those scare me - they have hundreds of times more governmental influence than billy and friends will ever have.

Since this will now result in the total demise of copyright infringement, the movie, recording, and video game industries then immediately pay taxes on the hojillions of dollars they claim to be losing per year, at the prevailing highest corporate tax rate, with no writeoffs on this amount. These additional taxes should be a small price for industry to pay for the increased profits that would result from all that sudden demand now that their material isn't available for copying in digital form, now that general purpose computers would be outlawed.

Oh--you mean they aren't going to sell all that, because the people they claimed as having been costing them money wouldn't have bought the product anyway? That's OK--we can just sell the assets of the companies benefiting from the SSSCA to take care of the taxes, then.

Since this will now result in the total demise of copyright infringement, the movie, recording, and video game industries then immediately pay taxes on the hojillions of dollars they claim to be losing per year, at the prevailing highest corporate tax rate, with no writeoffs on this amount. These additional taxes should be a small price for industry to pay for the increased profits that would result from all that sudden demand now that their material isn't available for copying in digital form, now that general purpose computers would be outlawed.

Oh--you mean they aren't going to sell all that, because the people they claimed as having been costing them money wouldn't have bought the product anyway? That's OK--we can just sell the assets of the companies benefiting from the SSSCA to take care of the taxes, then.

Since this will now result in the total demise of copyright infringement, the movie, recording, and video game industries then immediately pay taxes on the hojillions of dollars they claim to be losing per year, at the prevailing highest corporate tax rate.

Oh--you mean they aren't going to sell all that, because the people they claimed as having been costing them money wouldn't have bought the product anyway? Guess we can just sell the industries to pay the taxes, then.

Why complain about RIAA, when there's no need to buy *their* CDs, yet you can still buy CDs. Not every record company is a member. Here is a complete list of members. If the CD you're buying is from a company/label not listed, then it's not from RIAA. Simple.

Big part of my CD collection is released by labels that are not members. Of course, it's not your average pop and radio hits, but a bit more marginal stuff, like progressive rock and metal. Labels like InsideOut, Nuclear Blast and Magna Carta release some *good* music instead of financially calculated products. These bands still have some talent and creativity, they don't even have to be MTV-ready. Small labels also often give way more freedom and flexibility to the bands.

And yes, I buy something like 100-200 CDs a year, paying perhaps $16 for most new CDs and $6-$10 for budget releases and used discs. Oh what a poor student I am. Get a job if you can't afford it, or live without CDs. Music is not required for survival.

• For old dos games, you might need Bochs
• Abandonware: Classic Trash
• ,
• theunderdogs.org, abandonware.universal.av7.net,
• arcade emulation: mame.net, mame.dk, mamefans.metropoliglobal.com
• To code new games that run on DOS/Win32/*nx/BeOS, use allegro.

• MPAA
• RIAA
• NAB
• BSA
• IDSA - stoopid anal idsa protecting 15 yr old dos games LOL!!

BTW, what's the chance that RIAA fudges figures to get their way? I remember them putting out a press release saying drops in sales for 2000 were due to people downloading MP3s, yet a closer look at the figures indicated CD sales rose and the deficit could be attributed to a major fall in tape sales.

BTW, what's the chance that RIAA fudges figures to get their way? I remember them putting out a press release saying drops in sales for 2000 were due to people downloading MP3s, yet a closer look at the figures indicated CD sales rose and the deficit could be attributed to a major fall in tape sales.

Sony is evil too

"Hey, I am doing nothing wrong, and if it helps catch people that are, so much the better." Well, the problem starts when innocent people are accused of doing something by mistake.

Don't forget the possibility of some influential entity deciding that perfectly legal activities should be criminalized to protect their interests.

Crap. That link was supposed to look like: rich, powerful, and connected, not backwards and dumb like it does. I plead lack of sleep.

Don't worry, the Recording Industry Artists of America is cranking out Britney Spears clones as fast as it can. It is expected that the supply of clones should exceed all possible demand by early 2004.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Sincerely,

Hilary Rosen

You're absolutely right. Let's start funding and supporting the biggest supporter of the RIAA and the leading pioneer in the music copy-protection scheme. After all, it's only $199.00, right?

Have you not seen my rants aboutSony blatently and knowingly being in direct violation of the GPL. You can be certain that they are not going to give you a single line of that source code.

After those stories were posted, and my comments made their way around the world, I received HUNDREDS of emails from people who worked with and for Sony, both as employees and contracted partners. They are doing this in a lot of places, not just with the PDA stuff I support and have consistantly called them on.

Here's an excerpt from one of those emails, sufficiently anonymized to protect the innocent:

For what it's worth I don't think that's the only GPL violation Sony is making. I work on [very high profile Sony gaming product] development tools here at [insert very well-known tool development company here] and I have several patches from Sony to [very well known GNU toolchain item here] for the [high-profile gaming product] but not their original sources to patch against. Plus some sources they compile/link into [same GNU toolchain item here] which they claim are proprietary and not provided.

I don't trust them as far as I can throw their Aibo, 43" flatscreen HDTV, and 200 of their PDAs, and I also would not pay them a single dime to help fund their further violating of a license I believe in strongly, and also to line the coffers of the RIAA (note how "proudly" the RIAA touts Sony on that page) and support more of their audio copy protection schemes.

Where do you think this $199.00 really goes?