Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Office Needs Comments On DMCA By March 31
mdonaghy writes: "The EFF and the U.S. Copyright Office are looking for [further] public comments on the DMCA, as stated in this EFF alert. The deadline for comments is Friday, March 31. This should be a good place to voice our concerns about copyrights that several readers have previously voiced in Slashdot forums." (more)
Though the DMCA was signed into law in 1998, the rules of engagement are still being debated. This is your chance to make "reply comments," and address the arguments raised by the entertainment giants. The EFF link above sorts important previous comments straightforwardly into "pro-freedom" and "anti-freedom," for obvious reasons.
If you haven't yet added your voice, you now have nearly two weeks to do so. You might want to read the thread about the last round of comments on the same issue, and emulate the comments you find most persuasive.
To see an example of the output, read my comment (a trojancow_a) on http://www.loc.gov/copyright/120 1/comments/201.pdf, the copyright office's web site. (The cow's at the bottom.)
Please don't use this service unless you are submitting a comment, generating one PDF places a real load on the server. Thanks.
Have a cow man!
Karl <kop@meme.com>
It probably would help the economy. If your life goal is to help the economy, let me offer you a few pointers:
1. Buy everything that is marketed to you, to the limits of your income.
2. Extend the limits of your income with credit cards.
3. Question nothing, it slows down your consumption.
4. Work really long hours.
5. Buy stuff online while at work.
6. Help the efficiencies of capitalism, buy only popular products, media etc.
7. Encourage conformity.
Yay! you're helping the economy!
Cooperation works.
:)
Only when people want to cooperate. If they don't, they either won't do anything or worse, they'll sabotage you. How will you ensure that people cooperate in your utopia?
Competition is destructive, wasteful, and deadening. Competition generates products whose purpose is to be sold; cooperation generates artifacts whose purpose is to be used.
Is there much difference? In the end, not really. Consider that every product to be sold is still an artifact to be used. You're simply talking about the same object in two different ways.
Compare most modern products of factories to anything handmade and old. The difference in quality and durability is astonishing.
Yes, but the handmade object is not always the better one. I challenge you to build, say, a computer completely from scratch. Consider that any factory-made product would violate your previous statement, so you cannot use any currently existing parts. I'll bet what you make yourself won't go near the quality of anything I could buy today.
Sure, factories produce so much crap that the rotten quality of it all is not a short-term problem: We can throw it away and replace it, again and again. Is this a valid long-term strategy? Personally, I doubt it.
I say it depends on what "it" is. There are things for which this strategy is appropriate. Not as many things as there are to which this strategy is currently applied, but some nonetheless.
My belief is that we've only been trying this "oceans of trash" approach for a very short period of time, and we'll get over it. In 100 years, we'll be back to making things by hand, because factories are unpleasant to work in and live near, and they produce nothing that's of any lasting worth. A time will come when people wake up and smell the coffee.
I'd be impressed if you could come up with even a single shred of evidence to support that view. I do agree that factories are unpleasant to work in and live near, but I have yet to see anything that works better.
There are a few products of industrialization that can't be duplicated with handcrafts, and some of those are worth keeping: Computers, for example. Networks.
But you just said that there would be no more factories. Who, then, would make these?
Some of what the pharmaceutical industry is doing may be worth keeping, if they can learn to behave themselves and if the FDA starts doing their job right: Detect the poisonous shit (like they did with Thalidomide -- if you have two arms and ten fingers, thank the FDA), but stop there.
Right now they spend 10% of their time and budget policing the drug companies, and the other 90% attacking anybody who dares compete with the drug companies.
I see absolutely no evidence to support that at all. By the way, you speak of the FDA "attacking those who dare compete with the drug companies" as though this were a Bad Thing (and I believe it is). But I thought you said competition was bad, therefore according to your own ethics you shouldn't care about the FDA attacking competition. Is this perhaps a double-standard? It sure looks like one. How, by the way, does the FDA do this "attacking"? I've seen nothing that would support that.
I don't expect that my great-grandchildren will have to breathe filthy air and eat petroleum byproducts (there's ample reason to suppose that the petroleum will all be gone by then anyway).
I don't think that will be the case either. By the way, you imply that we're doing these things now. Breathing filthy air I'll give you (well, actually that depends on where you live). And we probably will be out of petroleum in another few generations, at least given the commonly-accepted theories about where petroleum originates. But I'd like to know what petroleum by-products we're currently eating. Except, of course, for SPAM and staduim hot dogs
The bottom line with all of this is the undenyable fact that the "competitive" property based worldview has produced a river of shit and damned few goodies. I say we keep the good parts and to hell with the rest.
I'll agree with the "river of shit" part. But "damned few" goodies? That I can't agree with. I'd say there's been as much good produced by the system as bad. The older systems you propose returning didn't produce much bad, but that's because they didn't produce much good either.
You can spend two years fighting with a contractor and have a house that'll last for fifty years, or you can have a house-raising with your neighbors and have something that'll be around for two hundred years and be better to live in the whole time.
One: I doubt I'd be living in that house "the whole time." The oldest human of verifiable age didn't last nearly that long.
Two: You really think a house built by means of a house-raising will last that long? In the past, perhaps. But no longer. Houses have gotten significantly more complex since house-raisings were common. Size has increased, as has the common number of floors and rooms. And let's not even talk about electrical wiring, plumbing, and insulation. Take it from someone with some experience in the field. It's also worth noting that when house-raisings were common, everyone knew how to build houses. This was partly because the design was simpler, but also because of necessity: people had to know this because
Anybody who prefers the former of those two options is missing the poing about life in general.
Unless you actually intended to have a Sluggy Freelance reference in your quote (which I doubt) I think you were talking about the "point" of life. What is the "point" of life? Nobody knows. I'd like to think that a large part of it has to do with enjoying life, wouldn't you? But the times you speak of going back to are, generally speaking, not going to enrich people's lives. You are right that "things" do not bring true happiness. I won't argue against that. But those "things," if used correctly (as tools, not as crutches) can be what enable you to go out and find just what true happiness is. In the past, people couldn't do this as a general rule; they were tied to the land by backbreaking labor day in and day out, all their lives. They could never seek real happiness; to even have one or two happy times in one's life was considered a true blessing. And a few people still managed to stumble into happiness, but these were very few people indeed.
Nowadays, we are no longer tied down as we once were. We are free to seek real happiness. The problem, perhaps the great tragedy of our society, is that people haven't done that. They've become too wrapped up in their things, thinking that possessions are the end, not the means. They forget that while things may let you seek happiness, they don't bring it themselves. In essence, they've become chained by exactly what makes them free.
It seems to me as though you've seen a lot of this. That's not surprising; I'd be more surprised to find someone who hasn't seen a lot of this. But you've made the inductivist error; you see a black swan and decide, having seen no other swans, that all swans must be black. You've oversimplified the problem, and in so doing you've oversimplified the solution.
Each time period has its own things going for it (and going against it for that matter), but all things considered this is still probably the best time to live in, at least so far. And as long as our governments don't screw things up too much more, things will only get better in general; there'll be ups and downs, sure, but looking over the long term things will only improve. Have a little faith in humanity. They'll come out all right if you let them.
I don't think anyone's claiming that data is physical.
Simply put, when you make a copy, the original entity is neither damaged or destroyed.
That's a fairly short sighted viewpoint. The problem is this -- how should the costs of producing intellectual work be distributed ? And copyright provides a way of sharing the said costs. It basically dictates that everyone who uses a copy pays an equal share ( though the copyright holder may choose to exercise some discretion here ). This seems reasonably fair. There is competition to constrain prices. It is true that copying is easy but creating the intellectual work is hard, and the question is how should the cost of creating such work be distributed ? And copyright provides a fairly good answer. Copyright does not prevent other models from coexisting, and no other model has truiumphed over the copyright model. This would suggest that copyright is superior to other models.
We should be allowed open access to the unrestricted copying and redistribution as long as the originals are unchanged, undamaged whatever and that all subsequent copies keep their integrity. Published or in the wild data should be immanently shareable,
Well that's a nice idea. Let's just make everything free. The problem is that it fails to answer tough questions such as -- what financial incentive is there to create intellectual work under your proposal ? If there really is a better way, why is it that the copyright model dominates ?
I'm not a big fan of the DMCA, but on the other hand, I don't see copyright as a "thing of the past". You certainly haven't provided any evidence that there's "comething of the future" to replace it.
Property of *any* kind is morally indefensible.
Cool! Please tell me your residence address. Maybe when I'm in the area I could stop buy and help myself to any food in your fridge, piss on your rug, and drive your vehicle back home with me.
Or perhaps that is not what you meant. Perhaps you meant that you really believe in property, but that it should be all owned by a "benevolent" dictator who would parcel it out according to his omniscience to those in need. If so, please say so.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It's apparent you can't differentiate between sarcasm and mental imbalance. I prescribe an avoidance of all humour until you determine the source of this malady.
I came from a small town and I am unfortunately still in the habit of not locking anything here in Metropolis by the Bay. I have come home several times to find my front door not locked (though never swinging wide open).
However, I have been robbed on occasion. I am well aware of the actions of sociopaths. How will your property-less society prevent sociopaths?
Here in Metropolis by the Bay, one city had the brilliant idea of providing "public" bicycles. They were for the express purpose of anyone to use who needed them. Within a week they were all missing or ruined beyond repair. However, my several of the local employers in the area provide free bicycles for their empoyees to use on the "campus". Occasionally one will turn up missing, but by and large they don't. The difference between the two is that one set of bicycles are not owned and in the other they are.
But perhaps a better example of the consequences of property-less society can be seen with housing. Although there are numerous exception, by and large, those who own their own homes take care of them and those that rent do not. This observation applies equally well to either wealthy and poor neighborhoods. Extreme examples of this can be seen on college campuses.
Property-less society is like any utopia. It looks good on paper but it can't possibly work in accordance to human nature. If people are not allowed to allocate resources amongst themselves voluntarily, the only other alternative is the dictator.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Your experience and your practical questions demonstrate rather clearly just how poorly this law was thought out.
The entire thing so unworkable that it would not be imposed on an older (that is, better understood by our representatives) segment of our society. Unfortunately for us, cyberspace is changing too fast for non-specialists to understand it. Further, it is threatening another established niche every day. This is a recipe for serious trouble, and we will see more and more of it in the years to come.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
You Da Man
Literaly
In the following example, you're the man who makes decisions at a company called XYZ. You da CEO.
Your company has been wracked with 2 unprofitable quarters in a row, and cutbacks (layoffs/downsizing) seem like the only way to keep the company afloat. The tteam you assembled to help you with the problem is recomending you start by firing some of the research staff.
You hesitate, of course, because you're an engineer yourself and still have a lot of friends in research that you don't want to see go hungry.
Then, one day, like a gift from above, the same research team you were considering laying off makes a startling presentation. They've been working on a new process that would allow you lower your price to the consumer by 25%. All they ask is 2 more years of research dollars to complete the task.
The problem is, with the recently passed "Freedom from IP" act, you have no garantee you will ever see one thin dime out of the 2 years of research you're about to fund. You fight to keep your engineers by taking the idea to your board, but they vote you down because they know that without protection for intelectual investment, the company will never see any return on the 2 year investment.
You're company sinks further into debt, and your forced to layoff your team of engineers.
You're not the man anymore.
This is just one small example of why IP exists and why it's a good thing for help research move forward.
_________________________
If we're going to see many more of these, maybe someone should bang up a LaTeX style for the comment format they're looking for :-)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
4. I am aware of no works or classes of works that have, because of the implementation of technical protection measures, become unavailable to persons who desire to be lawful users.
with fair use on non-standard/OSS platforms but what other compelling arguments can we make?
We can protest the monopoly creating effects of CSS with regard to hardware for content playback in that only companies with the blessing of the MPAA can produce playback hardware which then stifles competition in these markets and keep new players from entering. All in all it puts too much power in the hands of a few groups that do not have the interests of everyone in mind.
Also, the hindrance to academic research that needs access to digital media in these protected formats and requires computer analysis on *nix systems.
Can anyone else add/improve these arguments, it would be good to collect them in a thread to assist letter writers.
no sig.
The companies who can understand this shift have a significant advantage on how we are going to be doing business tomorrow. The same goes for DMCA if they apply the same "Old School" model to today./tomorrows technical environment problems, the problems will not get addressed, they will increase ten fold. I don't thing the folks behind DMCA are nessasarily evil, they just simply are using the wrong tools, the wrong model and for some reason forcing a round peg in a square hole.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Yes, it actually does. The copyright office is generally and IMO sincerely interested in fixing this. The DMCA and all it encompasses was a bad move pushed though congress much like pork on any other bill. I doubt that anyone in the political (read nontechnical) areana really knew of it's implications. Now that were stuck with it, and it has received so much flame, they have to look at it, because the political community is beginning to learn just how far reaching this is. Your posted comments, letters and communications with the copyright office, elected representetives and lobbies like EFF do have an impact. Write that letter.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
Do these comments have any impact on the outcome of any legistlation that the beaucracies adopt? It seems to me that we have been asked to give such comments in the past as well, but haven't seen any results. Will the Copy right office post an acknowledgement saying that the overwhelming response was negative or positive or non comittal? Therefore we will or will not or further consider this legistlation? Is there any means of getting feedback on weather our comments are being heard or not? -- YAH00
Send to 1201@loc.gov a message containing the name of the person making the submission, his or her title and organization (if the submission is on behalf of an organization), mailing address, telephone number, telefax number (if any) and e-mail address.
:P
Efficeincy is beauty, efficeincy is art. Can you dig it? -- Clutch
They coulda just posted that in the body of the story, and not made us go thru three links.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
You still definitely should respond though, intelligently! These are our rights they're taking away. Every time any one of our rights are taken away, even in smallest, it makes it easier for our rights to be taken away in the future. If an abundance of people don't stand up and say "NO!" I foresee a time when we will be almost devoid of rights. And for those of you who say "I don't count," EVERY comment on this counts. If everyone decided they would not voice their opinion to protect their rights, no one would, and this would lead to a very horrible future...
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
The MPAA has exploited the DMCA to architect CSS licensing in a way that completely manipulated and controlls the publishers and DVD player manufacturers. If the MPAA wins out over DeCSS, a precident will be set that will set back the MPAA a long way.
Also don't just submit one comment. They are public and you can respond to other comments already received and posted. (See the last /. story on this). Lastly don't stop at just the copyright office. Support EFF,and also write you elected represetatives and let them know how you feel, Make sure that in all your verbal or written communication to either an elected official, industry lobby or industry exec that you be nice. Elected officials really don't respond well to flames, spam, mail floods or harsh language. You will come off as a script kiddie and be completely ignored. For a loose reference, re-read the Linux Advocacy Guide, it will give you the right sort of flavor for your communications.
The house of representatives has a search facility to find your representative:
http://www.house.gov/writerep/
The senates listing is here:
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index.c fm
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
The DMCA can be interpreted to put ISPs out of business if they don't respond quickly to requests. Several weeks ago, I recieved an email from the RIAA telling me that a customer of ours had an illegal site up, and that we could be help responsible for ANY OTHER copyright violations, now that they have informed us. This was not a site hosted by us, but a customer with a broadband connection. This brings up the following questions...
1.) How does the RIAA go about finding these sites, do they scan networks for port 21. Do they hop on IRC to find these sites?
2.) How am I, as a network admin, supposed to prevent any single user from setting up a server that violates any provision of the DMCA?
3.) If I, as a network admin, am unable to determine whether or not the material on a server is indeed violating any law, am I required to shut it down until I am able to determine this?
4.) Am I, a normal user, allowed to make back-up copies of music that I own. What formats am I allowed to make these back up copys in. Can I make a duplicate of a CD, for my car. According to the DMCA, I can'tIf we don't do something about these issues now, we lose our opportunity to do so for 2 years, then 3 years after that.
perl -e "print(pack('H37','4d65726b7572795a40676e7572642e6e6574'))"
If you wish, we'll also make suggestions for how you can improve your comments for maximum effect.
Just send your message to:
Copyright_reply@hotmail.com
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Washington, D.C.