Protesting DMCA

I spent yesterday morning in Washington D.C., observing (and taking part in -- no claims of objective journalism here!) a protest of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act signed last year and now partially in effect. Here's what I saw. [Updated with pictures 29 Mar 2000 by timothy.]

It began in David Niemi's head early this year.

Niemi is a Washington D.C. system administrator who decided he didn't want the restrictions embodied in last year's Digitial Millennium Copyright Act to sweep into effect unnoticed, and organized a protest demonstration that took place this morning outside the U.S. Capitol building. Speaking a few days before today's event, he explained that the idea took hold of him "[a]bout two months ago. It started when I had just read the DMCA, and realized what exactly the problems were, and gave a short talk to DC LUG and later to NovaLUG, after which I enjoined people to take a day off of work and help protest. If we have even half of those people [who said they would come], it'll be great."

The chance to show up in person to show dissatisfction with the law and start spreading the news of its dangers ended up attracting an interesting cross section of the software community -- between 20 and 25 people -- and one observer for the Copyright Control Association. Members of the DC, Virginia and Maryland LUGs which helped publicize the event, and others who heard about the event (here on Slashdot, or through mailing lists and forums which were forwarded the information) showed up to create and hold signs with messages like "Restore Fair Use -- Repair the copyright law" and a banner reading "The Digital Millennium Copyright Act Promotes Digital Monopolies." Most of the demonstrators were professional programmers or sysadmins, students, or both.

Why spend so much time and energy fighting a law that was passed last year? In part, because not all of the provisions of the law have yet been enacted, and their implementation can still be altered. And, as Niemi points out, "[t]he DMCA is actually fairly readable -- it's quite easy to see why it's unreasonable. UCITA is quite a bit harder [to understand], especially as amended by Virginia, which was done as edits to a long piece of code." Efforts to curtail DMCA's effects will be good practice in fighting the other laws which no doubt will follow, starting with UCITA and stretching into the forseeable future.

University of Maryland researcher and some-time instructor Peter Teuben was the only representative today from the University of Marlyand's LUG. "Probably because the others have classes to go to," said Teuben with a smile. "I just took off because I didn't have to teach. The software that I write is open source, so I have been been an active participant for at least 15 years in the whole idea of open source. I come from an academic background where that's normal." But there is another reason he was in Washington today "This is near to my heart. The simplest reason is the fact that I bought a DVD player, and now that I've bought it, suddenly I 've learned that I can't play the DVDs that I buy in Holland. I was totally shocked -- I didn't know that. It makes no it makes no sense to me, because it's digital, just like CDs -- even the same size." Something as simple as watching a movie purchased or shipped from abroad is made complicated by the restrictions the DVD license holders have attached to the medium. "The funny thing is that software allows you to do that [switch region settings] five times, but that's still limited. There's ways around that, but they're illegal."

Economist Doug Galbi also took time off work to show up on the street west of the Capitol building. Galbi said his interest was mostly philosophical. "I don't do that much programming, but I have a sense that this [isuue] is huge." Galbi said that for consumers, "The fear is that reasonable, common-sense fair use would be outlawed ... that their actions would be vulnerable as a felony act under the law. What if I'm going down the street singing a Beatles song, are they going to arrest me because I don't have the rights to it?"

Marsha Wilbur, studying at Connecticut's Three Rivers College and about to continue her computer science studies at Arizona State, hopped on a train when she heard about the demonstration on a mailing list from the Open Law project at Harvard's Berkman Center. "I said 'Oh, I'm there!' Also, there's a guy in Connecticut who's being sued, and they're using this -- " She gestured at a copy of the law -- "to harrass him. That's my feeling. And I don't think it's right. That's why I'm here."

Because seniors at his school graduate in 3 1/2 years instead of four, Lenny Grover spent the morning in Washington, while he waits for responses to both job and college applications. "I'm always interested in things that affect the technological community. And I think the provision that products with, I believe it says, limited commercial potential which circumvent copy protection, would also have prevented the VCR. And that turned into billions of dollars a year! These people are so shortsighted -- they don't even see the benefit it could bring." Pointing out that programs like Napster/Wrapster and Gnutella are essentially content-neutral distributed file systems, Grover said, "The question is, where do you draw the line between innovation and breaking copyright?"

Discussions among the participants about the nature of software and the best ways to balance individual, public and corporate rights simmered throughout the protest, which ended at noon with a walk that took us from the Capitol past the Supreme Court. During the hike network engineer Rama Kant voiced a thought about the perceived lack of tolerance among copyright holders for what has traditionally been called fair use: "I feel that it impinges on your ability to watch or listen to what you paid for. I sort of disagree with that. If I buy a CD, I want to be able to listen to it at whatever time I want, whatever conditions I want." Kant, who does contract work for various organizations in the area, heard about the event through his membership in NoVaLUG. "I've been a Linux user for a while, and that's how I got into this. I use Linux, and Unix also. I use a lot of Linux boxes in my work."

Perhaps the least-expected person to show up this morning was Penny Kozakos, an employee of public relations firm Burson-Marsteller who came to observe and collect literature from the protesters. Kozakos seemed puzzled by the demonstration, and listened curiously to an explanation of what computer operating systems have to do with watching the movies her agency's client keeps encrypted, and why the DCMA was poised to drastically change the scope of what consumers and computer scientists could do legally and without asking industry permission. "This is all new to me," she said, explaining that she was merely doing a favor for the Los Angeles branch of the company by showing up to make a report. "This isn't what I deal with normally at all."

Was today's demonstration a success? Perhaps not in any spectacular way; fewer people showed up than Niemi initially hoped for. However, the flyers and DMCA summaries handed out today were mostly to passers-by who expressed no knowledge of the DMCA at all, and most of whom seemed shocked by its brazen assertion of control over purchased entertainment media. Cultivating public knowledge that there even is such a thing as the DMCA seems like a minor success to me. And if more than 20 Linux users can collect themselves at short notice for three hours on a Washington weekday, it bodes well for similar actions in the future.

See pictures of the event taken by Sally Lynch, by Peter Teuben, and by Declan McCullagh.

Comments

I was there, and will be happy to protest again

[mcoletti]

The DMCA outraged me, and so I didn't think twice about joining yesterday's protest. This was the first time in my life I hoisted a placard stating my displeasure at yet another reprehensible government scheme.

There were a few logistical problems caused by, well, the fact that this was the first such protest the organizers had done. We had some difficulty coelescing at the outset and I heard some complaints about lack of proper notice -- particularly more might have come a long distance to the protest if given sufficient warning.

Still, these were niggling issues and I consider the protest a success. We had a lot of curious folk approach us and ask of the DMCA and why it was a Bad Thing. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my behalf, but most seemed to come away better educated and rightfully concerned -- kudos should go to the articulate spokesmen who clearly explained what the DMCA was and its associated problems.

There was casual discussion of another protest. If one should materialize, you can count me in again.

On another note, the hordes of veterans seen swarming the Capitol yesterday were there to lend their support for the anti-American Flag desecration Constitutional amendment. Kinda ironic considering we were defending freedom,and they were there to, in a way, curtail it.

Cheers!

Mark

MPAA's VP of Public Relations says: Sigma

[timothy]

I talked to Rich Taylor, the VO of PR for the MPAA (say that fast!), and he said that there is a "correctly" licensed DVD player for Linux from Sigma.

He seemed unsure about availability, though, and promised to send me more information. He forwarded to me a press release, which can be found on the Web at:

It says, in part:Sigma Designs, Inc. (Nasdaq: SIGM), a recognized leader in digital video solutions, announced today that it will
add Linux support to its new REALmagicâ NetStreamÔ 2000 card and EM8400 progressive MPEG-2/DVD decoder chip."

The Sigma Website, however, still says such support is coming "soon."

The company, and their plans to release a Linux DVD player, have been discussed here on slashdot before.

Re:CNN has a report on this.

[ronfar]

By making a comment such as this it makes us Linux user look like a bunch of whining cheapskates (I mean no offense by this) to the rest of the world.

If all this were about were playing DVDs under Linux, then I wouldn't care. This is about a whole anti-consumer culture that has come into being lately, and has a grip on Washington.

What I want is a re-affirmation of the principal that if I buy a book/movie/tape/CD I own the book/movie/tape/CD and not just a license to use it under certain conditions as decided by the publisher. I am willing to deal with copyright protection, that is to say, "I will not re-publish this item under my own label for fun or profit. I will not make copies of this item and give them away, but I may make copies for personal use, such as archiving or interoperability." I am not willing to deal with, "I hereby admit that I have bought a license to use this item under certain conditions dictated to me by the copyright holder."

This is a fundamentally new idea, it recently saw its most obvious and egregious application with the late and unlamented Divx, but is seeing a rebirth under DVD restrictions. Up until recently, if I bought a book, copyright holders had no way to stop me from loaning it (or giving it) to my friend in Japan. It's my book, if I want to give it away, that should be my business. Suppose I want to do the same with a movie? The current copyright owners want:

1. Technological restrictions to prevent me from doing so.

2. Legal muscle to prevent me from doing so if the technological restrictions fail.

Therefore, I consider if I "buy" a movie on DVD, the people who sold me the movie consider that they still own it. Not just the right to copy the movie (otherwise known as copyright:), but they still own the actual disk they sold me.

Consumers rejected Divx, but the MPAA and its ilk never did. They just realized that Divx went to far too fast, and that they couldn't fool people into believing that a "gold" level Divx, which would play on your home Divx player.... as long as you kept your Divx account open and the player plugged into the phone line... but not on your friends player was equivalent to buying the same movie on a tape.

DVD restrictions seem mild by comparison, but they are still indefensible. There is no reason why geographic borders should be used as tools for censorship and price gouging. There is no reason why control of content should be used to maintain the monopoly of a company like Micros~1.

The DVD CCA may throw us all a bone, and allow a licensed binary for Linux. Heck, they might even give away a free version where you can view the source and just maintain their rights over it (i.e. give it away under there own license rather than GPL it, like AOL/Time/Warner did with the Netscape code). I would hope that the people who are against the MPAA and DVD CCA would see that that isn't the point, and that it was just, "Here, now maybe they'll shut their yaps and we can go back to screwing over the average consumer." They need to rethink their Draconian and absurd position on copyright, and return to fair use and a balanced view of consumers rights. Otherwise, I will resist them until I die. What's the point in buying something if you aren't really allowed to own it?

Re:Excerpt from my Comments to patent office

[swordgeek]

Your "blind reader" comment got me thinking of another analogy.

Consider a device that scans a book and outputs braille, either on paper or electronically. If these things are expensive, our clever blind hacker might decide to make his own.

If this worked the same was as the deCSS case, then that person would be legally prevented by the publisher from using his home-made device to translate into braille the books he's bought!

In one case, the translation is decryption. In the other case, it's a 'known' translation method. It doesn't matter! Fundamentally, you are translating the contents from an unreadable form to a readable one. That's it!

Let's see that addressed by the RIAA and company.