Slashdot Mirror
Copyright Comments Redux
Andy Oram of CPSR has has a nice reply comment to the Copyright Office's Anti-Circumvention Rulemaking. As slashdot has discussed before, the Copyright Office has a mandate to examine a part of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and decide whether and how to implement it. If you haven't commented, today is your last chance - see the notice for the requirements for filing, and mark your submission as a reply to, say, Time Warner's comment. I just read an article noting that Stephen King would be in violation of this provision of the DMCA if he read his own e-book.
Not only that, they're trying to patent the disassembly listing, even though they didn't write the code, and don't even have much of a clue as to which part of the code does what!
Think about this for a second. Who are you licensing your works too and who is enforcing that license. The people and the government. The police and the prosecutors are the ones protecting your license, and they aren't doing it for free, eventually, after you die etc. they are going to stop enforcing and let everyone do whatever they want with your works.
The only problem now is that corporations are starting to claim this ownership or works, so even after Walt Disney has been dead for years the Disney corporation can control his works. Of course the Disney corporation is going to be around forever, thus Walt Disney's works will probably be copyrighted until no one even remembers who originally created them.
What works of your mind? Did you read a book? Did you learn math? Well then pay all those mathematicians whose ideas you stole. Pay the authors for every passage you have quoted. You do not think in a vacuum. Have you ever had a thought that wasn't influenced by something else. I didn't think so.
Maybe if you were raised by wolves in wilderness you could claim that everything you think of you own soley and completely, otherwise have some humility and remember everyone and everything that has ever inspired you.
Does anyone else have some insight into this? I'm going to have to see if I can find some info about it. Could make this whole mess a bit more interesting.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
>Why Open Source Doesn't Work for Writers: Your suggestion doesn't >work
>for books for several reasons: 1. Writing isn't a group effort. One
>person writes the whole novel himself.
Bullshit. Just look at the Undocumented Features fanfiction project. http://www.eyrie-productions.com
These guys have been doing this since 1991. And they aren't the only such people doing this kind of thing.
i'd just like to take this time to say that I've never had a useless, idiotic post appended to one of mine before. Particularly one that borrowed from (among other sources) my post.
;)
Wow. It's like I truly belong
obCopyright: I don't care if he messes about, with one condition. Don't act fraudulently by claiming to have created this from nothing. Personally I thought it was rather dumb, but I don't get a lot of art either, and I'm an artist. Meh.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
ianal, but fair use *IS* infringement, but you're allowed to get away with it under the law.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Pirates do not break ancient laws of copyright. Copyright is quite new (a couple hundred years).
What they sometimes break are laws regarding fraud. But if a pirate is upfront about their copies having been made themselves, then I don't see any other ancient laws being broken.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well we had an economy before. And it seemed fairly robust. I don't see how middlemen are so easily considered to be vital. I'd much rather support the creators directly and let the MPAA et al get real jobs.
The vital parts of the 'system' are the public domain and discourse (to supply some ideas), the authors (to turn supplied and their own ideas into new works), and the audience (to interpret those ideas and move them back into the realm of discourse and the public domain).
I don't see the need for mass marketing campaigns (if an idea can't stand on its own merit it has problems) nor middlemen who do nothing but collect money to do something that was done directly in the past.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I just thought of this. If the reverse engineering is to provide compatibility between two pieces of software, then it is legal, right?
Well, encrypted data on DVD, or books such as this one can't be said to be human readable text, can they? They are instructions to be interpreted by the computer in ordrer to produce the human readable video, or text.
"Instructions to be interpreted by the computer", repeat that a few times, and if you know anything about computers you'll jump to your feet and say "It's software!!".
IANAL, but as I see it:encrypted material cannot be viewed as a human readable format
in order to to view the content, it must be interpreted by a computer
this makes the content of an encrypted book or DVD more like instructions for the computer to create a video stream, book, song, etc. rather than a video stream, book or song itself.
instructions to be carried out by a computer are software, which should have reverse engineering protection.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
The government doesn't tax property, by and large.
The local governments do get annual property (real estate kind) taxes, but generally other personal property is taxed via transfer taxes only. And I don't think that treating IP the same as real estate is necessarily a fair treatment. IP is something that is produced, so it would be more equitable, to treat it as goods.
(disclosure point - I'm Bill's son. I'm the one that roped him into this forum)
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I, or my school, or my parents would have purchased the books that I drew information from, thus recompensing the authors. You still haven't given any reason at all, why my expression of a particular sequence of thoughts, shouldn't be my property to do with as I wish. I didn't say that someone can't draw inspiration from my particular expressions, just that I think that I should have some property rights over those exact expressions.
I won't deny that it's a very slippery slope to consider. I think it very difficult to draw exact lines of where, and how to grant rights on intellectual property. And I'm not sure where the most reasonable place is, to draw the line. But I do think that there ought to be some protections for IP. And I don't think that the populace of slashdot, or anywhere else, has the right to throw out all the rights to control IP just because they want to copy them freely.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
The people aren't parties to the "contract" of a copyright. Frankly, I don't necessarily see why there should be any defined expiration of the copyright. Why should the creator of a work, have to give away his art after any arbitrary period of time? If I create something, I should be able to do what I will with it, for as long as I see fit. And if you don't approve of the fact that I'm not willing to give it away, then you don't have to support me, by giving me money. I fail to see how you not liking my control over my creation, gives you any right to take it and do whatever you want, regardless of my wishes. If I choose not to share something, that should be my right.
And the Ex Post Facto bit, is a red herring. At no time has it been suggested, that someone be prosecuted for a crime that wasn't illegal at the time of commission. It would have been illegal to copy the works in question before the law was passed, as the copyrights hadn't expired.
I fail to see why everyone on this site seems to think that they have a god given right to take whatever they want, just because it's in an electronic form.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
One can contribute to the intellectual improvement of the country, without having ones specific creation be freely available. You could read what I created, and grow intellectually based on that reading. If you then go out, and create your own works, based on ideas that I helped nourish in your mind, then the body politic as a whole is improved by works that I created. It's not necessary that you have a right to do whatever you please with my exact words.
And I should have the right to license my works, and share them, in any manner that I deem appropriate. I didn't say that I don't want to share them. I merely said that I should have the right to control how they are shared, and to control who derives economic benefits from them being shared.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I was merely trying to point out, that the way that stuff is worded on this site, shows a severe bias on material like this.
And I totally agree that the way that the content providers have behaved, has been atrocious in many regards lately. They are getting very adept at poor customer relations. And it's costing them, and will continue to do so.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Thus CSS discriminates against those who don't own set-top boxes or Windows machines, but wish to play the DVD's they paid for legitimately and have already bought the necessary equipment to do so (namely, a computer and a DVD drive).
I'm supposed to feel sorry for them, because they bought something that was not compatible with their computer? Why in gods name should I pity them, just because they didn't read the instructions before buying???
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
By and large, whenever anyone makes any attempt at all to limit peoples ability to copy digital data, the bulk of the populace of slashdot, and the editors scream bloody murder.
I do agree, that DMCA might night be a panacea, but neither is the system we have now. Look at how excited people were, to have Gnutella. This sites denizens, has fallen all over itself, to promote it, and there is little use for it, other than easing the distribution of stolen digital media. I'm sure that you can come up with some justification where it's a perfectly acceptable sounding tool, but I can't think of anything that couldn't be accomplished just as easily with other tools. The big difference is, that Gnutella does an excellent job of masking who is sharing what, so that it's much more difficult to backtrack who's pirating stuff.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
The line about Stephen King, is a great piece of slanted journalism. Got me curious as heck, when I read the line too. All the article really says, is that Anyone, including the holder of a copyright, is not allowed to use tools that circumvent protections that were placed on that copyright.
Stephen King is only not allowed to read his own work, on his platform of choice (a Mac). And only because someone screwed up, and made it a PC only download. I'm sure that he's absolutely allowed to read the original copy that he typed in.
I do so wish that the editors here wouldn't lean so far to the "make all date free for everyone, and who cares if nobody stops making it when the no longer get paid" extreme.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Why shouldn't there be a natural property right, to intellectual property? Why should the works of my mind, be any less mine, than the works of my body?
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
The problem with this topic, is that there is no way to be over the top. No matter how much you exaggerate a ludicrous point, there are those who say the same thing, but are serious. I'm waiting to see my post end up being submitted as evidence in the DeCSS case by the prosecution :)
I hope they keep the link...
finkployd
Have you ever used Linux?
:)
Using it now at work. Slackware 7.
Have you ever used Star-Office or Gimp?
Gimp is nice, but I prefer Abiword and Gnumeric over Star-Office
Sorry to rile you up like that, I was trying to exaggerate a stupid position and post a parody. Unfortunatly, my parody was pretty close to the radical rantings of the actual defernders of the DVD/CCA
Just because you geeks have can't accept a "real" OS and need some kind of command line only junk
Just to put that comment in prespective, I'm a mainframe systems programmer who works on OS/390.
Anyway, look at my origional post and go to the web site at the bottom.
Finkployd
trolling".
Sometimes it's nice to play for the other team every now and then.
Finkployd
Bell's Second Law of the Internet: No matter how facetious or satirical your message is, someone will take you seriously.
:)
That's great now, where were you an hour ago?
Finkployd
I have sigs turned off, so I didn't even see the link.
:)
I anticipated that, the link was not in the sig, it was part of the message.
Finkployd
It was re-re-extended to the 31st. You can verify this at this link.
> Bell's Second Law of the Internet: No matter how facetious or satirical your message is, someone will take you seriously.
ROTFLMAO!
Ehrm... it works both ways, don't it.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Where the work comes from has nothing to do with it. Physical property is scarce. Intellectual property is infinately reproducable and ownership is subjective (In other words, you make a painting, and I paint an imitation it, who owns my imitation?)
Could it be that they feel that they are ripping us off, and are afraid of the treatment they deserve? IMHO, the cost to price ratio of the audio CD compared to that of the audio cassette tape certainly supports this view.
The situation they are looking for is the one where they have a product that has fixed production cost and no reproduction or distrubution costs to be treated like a normail (i.e. scarce) product and have (nearly) infinite value protected by federal law.
--
+&x
Maybe we'll take you seriously when you give up criminal acts, kid.
Who's "we", sweetheart? Trolling for the industry, are we? And please note that nowhere did I say I use Napster, nor encourage its use. I simply noted that it is EASY to use.
Yes, I did get suckered by this troll.
-Rev.
Amen to that, brother. [Note: The following is NOT an insult.] You sound like Katz. The only difference is that it took you three or four sentences to say what it would have taken him 30 or 40 paragraphs.
But as for your argument: Yes, I believe that this is the case. This is a turf war, and the gangs that currently control the distrubtion turf are fighting tooth and nail to maintain supremacy. Will they eventually succeed? Partially, but never fully. It's just too easy to get a ripper and log on to Napster. And as the availability of high bandwidth connections gets more prevalent, we'll start seeing movies, too.
- Rev.
Not to flame you or anything, but the simple problem was it wasn't funny enough. You have to be more over the top then that to get funny points. I'm not funny either, so I'm not in a position to put you down, but anyways...
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
The right to shift media across time or media is the result of court decisions (and is thus tenuous, subject to other court decisions or law). You would have to ask an IP lawyer to cite cases for you. Pay special attention to the court that issued the ruling. If it was the supreme court, then it is a little more challenging to attack the right than if it was merely a federal court or two setting precedent.
In any case, the DMCA obviously does an end run around this right and needs to be stomped on before it even starts.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
I don't think that the populace of slashdot, or anywhere else, has the right to throw out all the rights to control IP just because they want to copy them freely.
Swell. And how does this relate to the issue at hand? It's entirey non sequitur.
Try to be a little less flamboyant with your arguments and you might actually manufacture a stance worth defending.
I don't mean to be entirely mean spirited, but it just seems like you lost your point, so while grasping at straws you reinvented the debate. Nobody wants to "throw out all the rights to control IP." This notion is your invention.
Think a little while longer about the things people have been saying about the DMCA and about your statements. Debate in good faith and we can all learn something.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
I predict: Even if the copyright office strictly enforces the DMCA circumvention provision, this reasoning will become known as King's Conundrum.
High-powered and civic-minded lawyers will be begging for the first chance to try a case under King's Conundrum and ultimatly the law will be ruled an unconstitutioal limitation of free speech or fair use, take your pick.
Anyone willing to be a guinea pig?
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Last I heard, the government was representative of the people, ergo a contract that the government signs is one to which the American public is a party.
I don't necessarily jive with the original poster's argument, but he makes a good point. You, on the other hand are way off.
If you don't want to share something, why are you "licensing" it to anyone? Either participate in your copyright (we'll keep our end of the bargain and give you civil rights for limited duration) or don't bother to use it (lose it, and keep your work to yourself, please). When the law was passed, the assumption was that copyright holders would not survive their works. It was not conceived that corporations would battle for perpetual rights to a work, nor is it appropriate.
Copyright was meant to be a limited duration right, with rights passing to the american people after they expire in compensation for the privelege to make money off the work in the first place.
Knowing that, I fail to see why copyright holders seem to think that they have the god given right to maintain the right to make money off ideas when they made an agreement with America that they'd cede their rights in due time. It's your obligation to contribute to the intellectual improvement of the country, not your right to make money forever.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
I said "the work" not "your work."
Major distinction when we are discussing copyright. Allow me to elucidate, though I've gone over this before.
The gov'mint has decided to grant you temporary protections of the right to financially benefit from a copyrightable work (of which there is a strict definition) by granting you civil rights for a time. When that time is up, the gov'mint no longer has to protect your "right" to make money, and the work becomes public domain.
Making money from goods and services is a right, making money from intellectual property is a hack. That is why your rights expire. I just happen to call temporary rights privileges.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
The cute thing about copyright and fair use is that violations are determined on a case-by-case basis.
Read all about what I am going to explain very poorly here.
Read their starter material and it becomes clear that the point at which you have violated copyright is the point at which you have ticked off someone with enough money to force you to submit.
Fair use, in the strictest sense, applys only in cases of parody, criticism, reporting, and academic use including teaching and research. "Librarians" and "archivists" also have some fair use rights.
Short phrases, single words, etc. are not copyrightable (but may be trademarked, an issue for another day). Nor can you copyright a character or a plot element. You can merely copyright a work in its entirety.
Furthermore, you own the copyright on your work once you create it, you needn't file with anyone.
So, in your example, what was your intention with "broadcasting" those bits? Once they are all put together, the original creator still has copyright because it's still their original work. You were just quoting it.
For you to have your own copyrightable work it has to be original. And we are talking about in its entirety. So using the above knowledge, you can write a book with Sherlock Holmes, using plot elements from a 007 movie and dialogue from Rainbow Bright. Though none of those parts are "original," the final product would likely be original enough to not infringe on anyones copyright, and to get one yourself. Have fun!
Oh, and lastly, as I mentioned in the very first thread, it is not a violation of copyright to create or own a "piracy tool" if it has legitimate uses. So the answer is both, and it is perfectly legal.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
And you've got God's pager number?
Asserting a natural right has always been bunk. Natural rights that didn't make it in to the consitution doubly so.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
He made that statement with the understanding that it had been established that copyright is a limited duration right, and has been since it was created in the United States.
It has also been established that any benefit gained from partial license to a work is eclipsed by the benefit gained from public domain material.
Individuals benefit from copyrights, society benefits from their expiration.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Good point. I think that many people are directly associating copyrighted works with entertaining works, a result of the MPAA instigating the debate in the first place.
However, not all entertaining works have owners that defend copyright, and not all copyrighted works are "entertainment."
Interestingly, and the MPAA knows this, a particular syndrome affects copyright holders that defend their copyright: their work gains value.
Not because nobody's allowed to derive from them and devalue their originality, but because of the perception that a work worth protecting must be worth paying someone to enjoy.
So the established media produce utter dreck and rabidly defend the copyright, for instance Wild Wild West or Star Wars I, because their iron-fisted behavior indicates to everyone that there's something there worth protecting. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Pardon the non-sequitur. Not all copyrighted works are meant for entertainment. So while the value of public domain entertainment is questionable, the value of public domain textbooks and other academic material is not.
Nobody wants to pay $300 a semester for books, for the privlege of learning something you have to learn anyway. Acadmic authors should be compensated for publishing with another model (and often are in the form of tenure at a school), not through royalties. They're chicken feed anyway, and only serve to bring money to the publishing houses. If the material could be freely copied, more people could attend school and afford to learn.
Just an example.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
You can't sell ideas at all. You can sell copyrighted or public-domain fixed/tangible reproductions of ideas.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Check out Sony v. Betamax for the time-shifting issue. An interesting quote from this source: "The sale of copying equipment, like the sale of other articles of commerce, does not constitute contributory infringement if the product is widely used for legitimate, unobjectionable purposes, or, indeed, is merely capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Pp. 434-442." Sounds like a certain piece of code I've heard so much about lately.
I would guess that this judgement is what allows for media shifting too, maybe it was used as precedent in another case.
In fact, that whole domain is an excellent reference.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Question 29, to be answered in comment or in reponse to a comment, asked if you would be willing to testify at the hearings.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
My comment was a little more narrowly focussed on DVD's, but I thought it was pretty good, and not so excited as to be ignored by the staid bureaucrats. Who, I might add, showed some pretty good flexibility w.r.t revising their submission requirements in light of fairness and good sense.
Walt
I am writing in reply to the comment made by Bernard R. Sorkin regarding section 1201(a)(1) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I found his reasoning to be highly suspect on many of the points he raised.
His metaphor on page 1 comparing unauthorized use of a system used to access copyrighted material to stealing a book is absolutely specious. He fails to acknowledge that many of the persons who would be circumventing access controls will already have a license to access the work in a non-infringing way. My metaphor for access control is the photograph changer device. This is a mechanical device that, when a lever is pulled, changes the photo being displayed in a picture frame on the front of the device. It is conceivable that a copyright holder might make available a collection of photographs contained in the device, selling it as a complete package. Now suppose a member of the public purchased this device legally, obtaining all rights under fair use. If they do not like the arrangement of photographs, they may take apart the device and re-arrange them. Furthermore, they may decide to remove the photographs from the device entirely and cut them up for use in a collage. Both of these are non-infringing, I think we can agree. However, if the copyrighted works are digitized photographs, and the picture changing device is a piece of software, both of these uses become illegal. In order to remove the contents of the pictures, one would have to violate section 1201(1)(a). Reverse-engineering the storage mechanism would be required to use all the rights granted under fair use.
Looking at the clause in this perspective makes Mr. Sorkin's statement in the last paragraph on the page that "the public would have continued access to engage in non-infringing uses of copyrighted works" at best questionable, and at worst an obvious falsehood.
I must therefore also object to Mr. Sorkin's claim in the final paragraph of page two that "technological and legal measures are intended to protect the copyrighted work against unauthorized uses. Anyone wanting to make 'fair use' of a copyrighted work need only follow the same steps as he or she would in the absense of technological protections." As noted above, access to the work in its underlying digital form is required to make fair use of a work. The essential problem with Mr. Sorkin's position is that he wants to equate unauthorized access with illegal access, and the two concepts are different and independent. It might be possible to use the access system provided by the copyright holder to make infringing use of the copyrighted work, for example printing out 500 copies of an electronic book and distributing them at a profit. This might be authorized by the access system, but would not be illegal. As noted above, there are cases where access to the underlying data (we assume it to be unauthorized) must not be illegal in order to have fair use.
I would like to refute Mr. Sorkin's claim on page four, response number four that he is "aware of no works or class of works that have, because of the implementation of technical protection measures, become unavailable to persons who desire to be lawful users." I personally have lawfully purchased five DVD movies on disc in the past year, to watch on my fiancee's lawfully purchased DVD player. One of these discs was the movie "The Matrix", which was unavailable on VHS for some time after its release on DVD. When I am not at my fiancee's house, from time to time I still want to watch these lawfully obtained copyrighted works. I do not myself own a DVD player, and yet desire access to the works that I may lawfully view. I do own a VCR, but as I noted the work in question was not available in a form that I could view on the VCR. I do own a computer, but I do not have the Windows or Macintosh operating systems installed on it. Therefore, I do not have access to an authorized player, at least so far as I am aware at this time. In short, without circumvention of the access controls, I would have no way to view the content of the content which I purchased a license to view. It is, in direct contradiction to Mr. Sorkin's statement, unavailable to me, a person who desires to be a lawful user. I would further state that DVD movies are an easily defined class of works, and that they are in general unavailable to those who desire to be lawful users. It may be that Mr. Sorkin is unaware of this class of works, but if he is, he should be regarded as so ill-informed as to be dismissable out of hand. His claim of being unaware is especially notable in light of his many references to DVD movies.
In short, Mr. Sorkin fallaciously tries to equate unauthorized use and illegal use in an attempt to restrict lawful owners from making fair use of the licenses they own for copyrighted works. I humbly request that you recognize the difference and reject Mr. Sorkin's claims that unauthorized use must be made illegal.
Kind Regards,
(signed)
Walter I Nissen III
Maybe if you were raised by wolves in wilderness you could claim that everything you think of you own soley and completely, otherwise have some humility and remember everyone and everything that has ever inspired you.
Actually, even in the case of being raised by wolves, you would owe some intellectual heritage to the wolves. But anyhow....
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
After all, wasn't the Copyright Office designed to protect the individual?
If only. The purpose of both copyrights and patents (and presumably the associated offices) is to encourage the creation of new stuff. Through these laws being an innovator (making new things, be it inventions or 'content') is a financial benefit not a liability (In exchange for the time you spend writing a novel or inventing the megaphone, you gain exclusive rights to that for a while, which hopefully you can sell how you want (in one lump sum by selling the rights, or over time by simply making and selling a product)). Note that this does not care whether "you" are a big faceless mean evil nasty moneygrubbing corporation or an independant visionary. So long as someone's making new ideas, the system is meeting its goals.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
In some countries, speeding will get you shot.
-Vel
Actually, you have a lot *more* power and rights to the works of your mind than to the works of your body, and this has been the case since the very beginning of copyright law, due to the nature of ideas and intellectual works.
Think about it. If you make a chair, you can use it all you want, but the instant you sell it, you no longer have any rights to it at all. It belongs to someone else. If you want something to sit on, you have to make another chair.
Ideas and other works of your mind follow different rules. Sure, you can come up with an idea, and use it all that you want, rattle it around in your own brain, never revealing it to anyone else. It's *yours*, and yours alone, and you can take it with you to the grave, secure in the knowledge that you are the sole owner of your idea.
You can also sell the idea, like you can sell your chair. But, unlike the situation when you've sold the chair, once you've sold an idea to someone, you *still* have it, and you can still sell it to someone else. You can sell the *same* idea to every person on the planet, and still own it. This is immense power.
Also, once you've sold your chair, the person you sold it to owns it. Similarly, the person to whom you sell an idea owns it. So does the next person you sell it to. Once you are exposed to an idea, that idea is yours. "Intellectual property" can be owned by millions of people simultaneously.
To encourage people to sell and share their ideas with others, instead of keeping the ideas to themselves, the framers of the Constitution allowed idea creators a limited time in which to profit from the idea. After that limited time had passed, the idea would enter the public domain, where anyone could do anything with it.
"Intellectual property" enjoys a lot more protection, and gives owners a lot more power, than physical property. It must be balanced against the needs of the society.
This reply started out as a sarcastic flame, but I cooled off and want to argue it logically.
Looks to me like sorehands is arguing for the repeal or nonpassage of bad laws, not just direct disobedience of them. Thing with law in a democracy is, the people make it, and if they don't like it they're supposed to change it. These laws aren't dropped down unalterably from God or something.
You appear to conflate law and justice in your mind. In the real world, these things can often diverge, although vigilance and effort might help to keep them similar.
The issue of whether an unjust law should be obeyed if it can't be repealed is a tougher one. It weighs the potential damage to the mechanisms of society done by disobedience against the private harm caused by compliance with an unjust law. Whatever the correct choice, it comes through careful consideration of the results, not through blind obedience (or blind disobedience, for that matter) to authority.
There is a judicial standard of ruling on such cases that is known as "fair use." I don't think it's been officially written into law. There are a number of educational links about it that I found from a quick google search, but none that are authoritative...at least, none of the first few pages.
It's especially telling when this law professor makes the statement "Let's call it by it's real name, Hollywood Pork..".
Could there be anything more to the point than a learned expert in his field stating publicly that the only point of *this* is to bilk the customer to the maximum possible..
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
Yes, illegal mp3's are illegal. But if you'll read the parent post again, it never said anything about illegal mp3's. It merely said that just because a file is in .mp3 format, that doesn't make it illegal. I have several dozen mp3's on my hard drive that I copied from my own CD's and have never distributed. Those are perfectly legal under fair use doctrine. MP3.com has quite a lot of non-copyrighted (and therefore legal) mp3's. Distributing (or downloading) copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission is illegal. Recording and using mp3's is not.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
Oops. Thanks.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
"They were unlawfully reverse engineering my code," said the Almighty. "Goodness knows... they might have even been tempted to try and defeat my copy protection!"
We're on the road to Tycho.
I went out and bought Heavy Gear 2. It's a great game. Unfortunately, the copy protection on this game doesn't agree with my DVD/CD reader (a Pioneer DVD-113). The reader makes a lot of awful grinding and clicking noises, and I soon get a BSOD because of an "Error reading drive X:\."
So, I went out and about on the net, looking for a crack. After finding and installing a no-cd crack, the game runs just fine. It's a great game, and I encourage everyone who likes Mech-style games to try it out. I intend to buy the Linux version as well to help support Linux gaming.
Oh hell, I just broke the law! I defeated an access control to a work to view a work! Cuff me and stuff me now. No matter that I actually bought the game...Obviously I need to rush out and buy all new computer equipment to play this $40 game.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
I would contend that very few people who pirate things on a regular basis really care about this law. Oh, we have our opinions on it, we don't think it's right, etc., etc.
But the truth is that we really don't care. It makes the things we do, which are illegal, illegal. So what. It won't change the legality of what we do at all.
What it will do instead is remove rights from people who do care about the law. They then can either choose to become a criminal and continue to do the same things, or they can choose to stop. Please, don't let people fool you into thinking this is about piracy, because it isn't. It's about taking your rights away.
If you believe that those rights are undeserved and should be taken away, then by all means, support the DMCA.
You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than THAT.
-- J.R. "Bob" D
Your interperetation of -the- word "promote" is quite liberal, wouldn't you say?
Regardless, it seems the founding fathers felt "but people who really want to will do it anyway" felt that wouldn't cut it to the point they put it into the consitution.
This is certainly true. This is true, but there's a difference between thoughts and explicit works. Hence the difference between patent law and copyright law. In the case of explicit works, IE - a song, I have a hard time finding the rationale that the person who brought it into existence has no logical "ownership" of it. It certainly doesn't seem any more absurd than you claiming you own a piece of land. Men with guns years ago took it from others, claimed it, then through a process of transactions involving the exchange of artificially valued paper units (mostly anyway), it's now "yours". How do you envision it getting bigger? Any artist can currently can freely release their work if they so choose. So as far as "pure" art goes, I fail to see how it'd have any positive effect. On the other hand, all those artists that currently do help support their hobby (or in the lucky cases, career) via the sale of their work, you do not think this would have a negative impact?Stanley Lippman probably does get some joy out of writing C++ books. However, I have a strong, strong feeling that without economic incentive, he'd be far less inclined to spent the enormous amount of time he has writing them (and he'd have less time to do it!). I think we're going to need to dip quite a bit under 10 years regarding software PATENTs, don't you?As far as copyright goes - quite frankly, I don't have a problem with the original creator retaining copyright for a lifetime, I do have a problem with transferring copyright to others and enforcing similar limits. Despite his death, I do stil get a sick feeling when I hear Jimi-Hendrix songs playing as background music in Tommy Hilfiger ads and the like.
Already slashdotted to oblivion.
Next on FOX... When nerds attack!
Man, you are lame! I hope you are full of sarcasm in your post, if not then just listen to yourself here...
You have the audicity to claim that you should have some kind of "fair use" nonsense. Let me explain something, these media companies work their arses off to provide you with top notch, affordable entertainment. If they want to limit how you view their media, then by golly they have that right.
If it were not for 'fair use', the internet would not exist as we know it. In fact, network admins like myself would not be able to make tape-backups every night!
If you want to read about how wrong you are, please read this article.
Just because you geeks have can't accept a "real" OS and need some kind of command line only junk doesn't mean you have to right to break laws.
Command line only? X-windows? WTF are you talking about? Ignorance aside, do you really think that the world revolves around what you decide you like? I happen to dislike Windows, but I am not going to tell you that you cannot use it.
you don't "own" a DVD you buy, you just get to listen to it. The only people who would want to make copies are criminals, and DeCSS is ONLY GOOD FOR MAKING COPIES.
You are really showing your true intelligence now. First off, I do own about 10 DVDs. I can light them on fire, I can play frisbee with them, and I can watch them. I bought them. I want to watch them, but I do not want to buy the software to watch them when it exists for free. MPAA should be happy that DeCSS exists because I bought some DVDs to watch on my Linux workstation at home as a result!
Next point is that DeCSS has N-O-T-H-I-N-G to do with solely copying. That is like saying that the CD-Player in Windows is for copying. DeCSS just unencrypts the data. I can copy the data with or without DeCSS if I wanted to. If you know anything about digital media, it is all 1s and 0s, and you can copy those.
I read somewhere on ZDnet that all you guys do is break encryption laws and pirate MP3's anyway, it makes me wonder if Linux even has legimate uses! I hope the DMCA gets you all for this kind of ungrateful, illegal, nonsence.
I read somewhere that on Jan 1, 2000 the world was going to come to an end. Watch what you read boy, because it is not always true. Do you know anything about Linux? Have you ever used Linux? Have you ever used Star-Office or Gimp? Did you know that I can pirate CDs in Windows 95, NT, 2000? In fact, Adaptec made burning and ripping audio CDs really easy with EZ Cd Creator 4.0! Did you know that there is (was) a program last summer called DVDrip (or something like that) that ran only in Windows.
Makes me wonder if all you guys do is pirate MP3s and DVDs and break copyright laws too!
I have sigs turned off, so I didn't even see the link.
I suspected sarcasm because I have seen you post a bunch before, but I could not let it go.
You really got me though!
Napster - which can used legally; the current trend seems to be to assume that _any_ effort to access digital material except through a standard commerical product is piracy. 2.The Section should not prevent users who have lawfully purchased or licensed the product from choosing a device or medium to view a work other than ones approved by the copyrighted work's vendor.
You by the disk, you can legally make an 8-track tape from it for _your own use_ ; you print out a paid-for ebook in a large typeface to make reading it easier, and that lets you scribble notes on the text as you think of them. Again, the copy is not illegal, it takes away no sales (unless you feel that the publisher should restrict your access to their material to only those they support, and that you should be required to buy a copy in each format you wish to use).
3.The Section should not prevent users who have lawfully purchased or licensed the product from accessing that product in new ways for their own innovative purposes.
IE - the TLCs' DVD player software doesn't run on your machien ,and even when it can be run it's tupid and ugly. You write your own player, that works the way you want. You use it to play products that you've purchased. Your friend like it, you put it up on the Net for others, and the TLCs' jump on you. The CSPR and I say that's not right, you have stayed within the law. 4.The Section should not be used to suppress the use of material for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research.
Mattel and the revised blocked URL list, the ongoing "reform" of uniform software licensing - which if applied to tangible goods would allow companies to prevent you from reporting on unsafe products.
Given the trend to skipping over many new artist/writers, except possibly when they are virtual clones of current successful artists, have as much access to the previaling distribution methods is A Good Thing, I believe. Generally this may mean reverse engineering a format, or using alternative distribution methods (Napstr vs disks)
I think that many of the larger comapanies in the media world are afraid of electronic media both from the easy-of-copying, which is truely new to mass produced media (photocopies are fairly slow and expensive), and from the possiblity of new, small, responsive publishing companies providing alternatives to clone-media-stars.
Low cost photo-offset printing doomed older print shops, electronic editing and laser printers are making serious inroads on current printshops. Cheap magnetic tape audio recorders made anyone their own "recoding studio", VCRs and lower cost cameras did it for video.
But the publishing houses took little damage from these changes. People still bought records, went to movies, bought books. Now the publishing media industry is facing a threat to the way its business works, it could be very cheap to become a publisher and distributers of books, music, videos. I think they're afraid, the last time there was a change of this magnitude was when sound recording became practical, before that when movies were devised. They're fighting back against the new technologies while trying to use them. Thye see the basic tech changes, and adjust to them, but fight the market changes that go along.
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
--
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We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
It would be real cute to see hundreds of companies filing lawsuits against Mattel.
Fight Spammers!
His response seemed as though it was in the corporate line of Mattel. Maybe I assumed that this person could not misunderstand the issues that much.
Anyways, the easy way to make money off the list (if it was accurate) is to sell it as a Hot list.
Fight Spammers!
I used Linux on one of my machines. I also run OS/2, Windows NT, Windows Professional.
Fight Spammers!
You claim that people who wrote CPHACK were distributing Mattel's list. Or helping in the distribution of the list.
Now, you switch to saying we are now picking and chosing the laws that we want to obey.
Fight Spammers!
It's all detailed on my site.
Fight Spammers!
OK, so people work hard to make their intellectual property and deserve to be paid. But your comments about the Mattel Cyberpatrol blocklist are completely clueless.
The people who decrypted the Cyberpatrol blocklist are ANTI-CENSORSHIP ACTIVISTS, not pirates who want to steal the list to make a competing product. With an encrypted blocklist, there is no accountability for what material is blocked. By exposing the list, people can see exactly how well or how badly the software performs. CP wants people to believe they sell effective software that blocks porn and allows other content. The truth is human screeners can't possibly keep up with all the new porn sites popping up on the net. A lot of legitimate educational content is blocked. And many non-offensive anti-censorship sites that are critical of CP are deliberately and specifically blocked. That, my friend, is false advertising.
Sure, the company acts vicious to keep consumers from skimping them out of a $25 DVD or a $18 CD (both of which are priced WAY above cost), but look where the money goes! Not to the developers, the thinkers, who are skimping by at ~$30k a year...
That's why your "worker-bee"s don't care... and those workers are still consumers themselves...
The problem I have with e-books, mp3s, mpeg video, etc. is that it's all electronic. How do you expect it to survive your hard drive? If you upgrade every three years, are we supposed to be expected to reload all these things too? What happens if you have to format your drive? Magnetic media doesn't have a very good life expectancy. Am I expected to pay each time I read, hear, or watch this stuff if I don't feel like creating the storage to keep it?
Such is the infinite Grace of Popeye.
I was just working on my PC today and humming a track that I'd heard on the radio. I haven't bought it, but yet I'm getting the pleasure of hearing it and depriving the artist of their revenue. I expect jackbooted American goons to kick my door in at any moment. Roll on brain-encryption, so I can't do anything the American corporate empire doesn't like.
Good argument. But this is the real point in regard to MP3s -- people love music, people want to share music, people think the record companies are fulla shit. No law is going to stop them from sharing music, no self-righteous speeches from wealthy rock stars will make them stop sharing music. Walk up to anybody on the street and ask them a question: do you think it's wrong to make a tape of your favorite CD and give it to a friend? Do you think it's stealing? Chances are they'd say no, it's not stealing, it's sharing. OK, it's "legal" to make an analog tape copy of a digital CD, but not a digital copy of a digital CD... huh? What's that all about? After you shell out 16 bucks or more for a CD, do you own it? No, according to the law, the record company still owns it. You're just borrowing it. If you copy it, you're a criminal. We're a nation of criminals. Music lovers, sharing, are criminals. Same with DeCSS. What right do those pesky Linux users have running DVD on their machines? They should be running Windows or some other proprietary OS. You know, Linux users can't be trusted -- if they hack DVD software, you just know they are going to make copies of American Beauty and give 'em away for free on the net. Stupid laws, indeed. Worse, stupid arguments.
Maybe it's just me, but i don't see the difference between the rights that a user has to the plaintext encoded in an eBook and the rights that a user has to the video encoded on a DVD. The opinion of this lawyer on the DVD fiasco seems to be that the MPAA was right, but that eBooks are somehow different than DVD. This is completely insane and only goes to show the impracticality of this law. How in the world could it be legal to limit a consumer's access to property that he has paid (quite well) for? The more this law is analyzed, the more people will realize its flaws, and it will eventually fall.
So since I'm behind on my EFF dues (ha ha) I'm not really up on what law it was, specifically, that protects one's rights to view any piece of information they bought in whatever form they like. Could someone please spew in a link here someplace pointing out where that lives? Never mind the DMCA for the moment.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How is it determined if and how a copyright is violated?
I'll clarify a little:
"0110100110"
That happens to be a fragment of a digital picture I took. So I guess the copyright is mine. Or maybe you could argue that this bit sequence is so common that it cannot possibly be copyrighted. Of course, if you were to copy the whole 1.2 Megs that my picture is made up of, you would be violating my copyright. Right?
The above bit sequence is actually part of a WAV file that I ripped off a CD I bought. Or, part of a highly useful .EXE file. But in reality, I just made it up.
So the question is: where does it stop being common or fair use and where does the copyright start?
This is nothing new, of course. The word "the" is used quite a bit in the English language, so you can't copyright that. You can get a trademark on "Bookshelf", though.
Can I write a novel where my main character is called Sherlock Holmes? What if he is a bartender? What if he is a detective?
Can I distribute files that are 'striped' MP3s, i.e., I just distribute the first bit of every byte, tomorrow I distribute the second bit, etc?
Of course, one of the most scary aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is the Anti-Circumvention part.
If I were to write a piece of software that could decrypt strong encryption (yeah, right... :-) , would I be violating the Anti-Circumvention clause of the DMCA? Even if I don't have a clue what DVDs are? Or what if I find a mathematical method to quickly factor large numbers (not large primes, as Bill Gates once envisioned :-) ? Am I in violation then?
Is Napster a pirating tool or a file distribution system?
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
Do you think John Gilmore or someone from EFF would/will?
"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." (A. A. Milne)
MP3
IS NOT
A CRIME
-m
"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." (A. A. Milne)
No, I wasn't. Nor do I wish to comment on the idea.
I was only pointing out that the previous comment failed to make his case for less protection for IP.
I would not describe my response a "blowing off a corollary". I did not say it was a bad idea, nor that it does not reasonably follow from the premise, only that I was not particularly interested in discussing it. And I'm still not.
Is it a reductio ad absurdum argument intended to deal a death blow to the idea of treating IP the same as physical property? Or is there some other reason that I should be particularly interested in digressing onto taxes?
As for my advantage, I own no IP of any note, nor do expect to. I'd rather go open source. So taxes on IP would not appear to be to my disadvantage financially. Nor do I see how the idea of IP taxes would be to my disadvantage as a point in this argument. Did I miss something?
If you feel I'm slighting your import point, I'm truly sorry that you feel slighted, but I still don't feel compelled to discuss everything brought up in response to a post of mine.
Thank you for taking an interest in my post.
"The copyright contract is a contract between the government, the holder of the copyright, and the People. That contract goes into effect when the copyright is granted. Like any other contract, those terms are fixed at the time of the contract." Seems to me that Congress, acting as our representatives, made a gift to copyright holders. Gifts by the gov. ought to be unconstitutional, and here in California, they are (Tho the courts might not agree with my perception of this a gift.)
As you have suggested, one can make a reasonable argument that a creator ought to be able to set his own terms on the licensing of his creation. When you license your creation to a prospective user, you can I suppose demand that the user keep it confidential in perpetuity, and pay damages if he reveals it. But suppose now that you have just invented the cotton gin, and you have licensed it on strict terms to a user; and suppose further that that user in violation of his license leaves your machine in a public place, and open so that anyone can see how it operates. And suppose a tinker sees it and builds a similar machine, and markets it. Now clearly, your licensee owes you a lot of money, and probably can't pay it. But in the absence of a copyright or patent imposed by the government, does that tinker owe you anything? If so, why? Is a copyright or a patent not a reasonable and convenient way to protect your creation against third parties when you otherwise have no legal or moral claims to prevent their exploitation of your creation? When Congress, acting as an agent of all those prospective third parties, contracts to restrain its citizens for a limited time, in exchange for eventual free usage, Is this not a reasonable form of contract?
(1) Ideas and information cannot be copyrighted, only the form of expression can, so an unlimited copyright has only incidental impact of ideas and information.
(2) The copyrights under discussion have little to do with information and a whole lot to do with entertainment.
"There isn't. Under the Constitution ..."
If it's a natural right, how can it depend on the constitution? Your appeal to the constitution has no force against a assertion of natural right.
To pick a small nit, no, you can't *sell* the same idea more than once, only sell non-exlusive licenses to every person on the planet.
So, making money off my work is now a privilege? I need the permission of the government to contract with others to sell the fruits of my labor? Do I exist solely at the convenience of the state?
Why should the state enforce any contract? What does the public get from enforcing any other contract, that they do not get from enforcing license contracts on intellectual property?
True, but important, useful new ideas are scarce and valueable, and those able to produce them should be rewarded appropriately.
Yes, they are infinitely reproducable, but how does that affect the logic of compensation?
Is the constitution now the revealed word of God, by which all rights ought to be solely judged?
Clearly, expiration of a copyright or patent affects the price at which it may be sold today, and the value it has to my heirs after my death. So of course it matters to me what is expected to happen after my death!
OK. You have now made it clear that intellectual property is somehow different than other property. That it ought to be considered perhaps a gift from the state. But you have not shown why intellectual property ought to be considered different. Is there a better reason than because you say so?
So, making money off my creations is now a privilege? I need the permission of the government to contract with others to sell the fruits of my labor? Do I exist solely at the convenience of the state?
Bell's Second Law of the Internet: No matter how facetious or satirical your message is, someone will take you seriously.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I have a question about this (specific portion is bolded):
It might be possible to use the access system provided by the copyright holder to make infringing use of the copyrighted work, for example printing out 500 copies of an electronic book and distributing them at a profit. This might be authorized by the access system, but would not be illegal. As noted above, there are cases where access to the underlying data (we assume it to be unauthorized) must not be illegal in order to have fair use.
Am I misunderstanding or did you state that distributing 500 copies of an electronic book would not be illegal?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
1. I like music. 2. I like movies. 3. I like books. 4. I like software. And the DMCA's intentions are to ensure that I keep getting all four of those things.
So far, the DMCA has prevented me from accessing 2 of the 4 things you list (which I also like). I cannot read the new book because it's reader only works on Wintel machines, and I don't have one (And I don't WANT one). I have 3 computers and 2 PalmPilots, but apparently, that's not good enough. Without DMCA, it probably wouldn't be all that hard to buy the book and make it work on all of my machines. Note that I said BUY the book. Before the users of Windows laugh too hard, do you know if it will work with Windows 2000? What if that 4 year old hard drive gets replaced? The official response to that question is get your reciept and call the publisher. Given the number of books I own, if they were all electronic, it would be cheaper to move to Mexico (or anywhere else without DMCA) and hack the books, after all, time is money. What if the publisher is no longer in business, or can't find a record of your transaction? It could easily happen in 20 or 30 years (or perhaps around five: see DIVX).
I guess I should just stick to dead tree publishing or give up literacy eh? Of course, dead tree publishing will eventually be about as common as new hit 8-tracks and hit singles on 78s.
You know, Mr. Silverstein, I thoroughly understand your reasons for being ticked off at Mattel, but that question seemed like a non-sequitur to me. The A.C. you responded to seemed to me to be using CPHack as yet another example, not his main point. I don't think he's a "Mattel shill" at all; he seemed to me to be just someone who hasn't yet understood how dangerous the DMCA is.
Not everyone who disagrees with you is your enemy, or even on the side of your enemy.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
The people aren't parties to the "contract" of a copyright.
The government is nothing more than elected representatives of the people. Indeed, in criminal cases, you'll find that "the people" are listed as the plaintiff, with the accused as defendant. So the people are parties to the contract of a copyright.
Frankly, I don't necessarily see why there should be any defined expiration of the copyright.
As far as you or any individual is concerned, there is no expiration. Well technically there is, but the time limit only starts once the copyright holder dies. So as far as you are concerned copyrights expire, because a dead person neither knows nor cares about intellectual property.
Corporations are another matter. But I'll cover them later.
If I create something, I should be able to do what I will with it, for as long as I see fit.
Yep. And that's how it works for individuals. What do you care about what's done with it after you're dead, and it no longer benefits you?
And if you don't approve of the fact that I'm not willing to give it away, then you don't have to support me, by giving me money.
Boy, you really don't get it. The fact is, you don't own thought. No one owns thought; as a nontangible and infinitely reproducible thing it cannot, by definition, be owned. That's what copyrights are for. They give you the exclusive right to a given thought, as though you did own it. The price you pay for that is that the copyright eventually expires. But since that doesn't happen until long after your death, why do you care?
And the Ex Post Facto bit, is a red herring. At no time has it been suggested, that someone be prosecuted for a crime that wasn't illegal at the time of commission. It would have been illegal to copy the works in question before the law was passed, as the copyrights hadn't expired.
Ex post facto means any retroactive law. The phrase "ex post facto" in fact means "after the fact." In other words, a law can affect the present and future, but it cannot constitutionally affect actions done in the past, including the granting of copyrights. Someone really ought to take that to the Supreme Court...
I fail to see why everyone on this site seems to think that they have a god given right to take whatever they want, just because it's in an electronic form.
No one here has ever argued that (miscellaneous trolls notwithstanding). But the DMCA corrupts the copyright system beyond its original purpose. We might not have a God-given right to take whatever we want. But in a system where people have the right to sell, they also have the right to buy. And if they have the right to buy, they have the right to use the things they have bought for legitimate purposes. Many copyright protections, such as CSS, seek to curtail that right in a discriminatory manner. Take DVD playing software, for example. There is no good DVD playing software for any platform outside Windows (yes, there's MacOS software, but the quality of it is extremely poor; it can't even keep the audio and video synced). Thus CSS discriminates against those who don't own set-top boxes or Windows machines, but wish to play the DVD's they paid for legitimately and have already bought the necessary equipment to do so (namely, a computer and a DVD drive).
It really galls me to play the discrimination card, actually. So often it's used by the terminally paranoid to scam various things off of other people or corporations. In this day and age, legitimate cases are very rare, but every once in a while a legitimate case occurs. This is one. And while you may have the right to do what you want with your so-called "intellectual property," no one ever gave you the right to commit a crime with it.
1)Sure, but how do the arts and sciences progress if you have to constantly dole out usage fees to people. Or worse, are prevented from making even incremental, but improving changes to work that has been created elsewhere? If there was no reason for works and inventions to enter the public domain, the monopolies might as well last forever. The language of the clause isn't even vague on that point: the time MUST be limited. Given that copyrights were a pretty new idea at the time (and that their copyrights were originally IIRC 14 years long) I suspect that they too felt that progress comes about through building on a public foundation of ideas, works, inventions, etc.
;)
2)You Bet
3)Well it's very easy in terms of the property rights that you have on any explicit work's container (e.g. the recording of a song).
At best I'd say that there should be (and this ties into part 4 of your comments) something like squatter's rights for copyrighted/patented material.
That is, if you can 'improve' something, and do so before that improvement is also done by the original owner, then you should have the right to do that. Highly derivative works can in fact be considered to be more than just novelties.
How many people here think that they could have written a better Star Wars I than George Lucas did? Or other stories that are plainly set in that 'universe.' I suspect that a fair number of fans could. I'd like to try my hand at 'C3PO and R2D2 are Dead'
But seriously, I think that it's possible to make a derivative work that furthers the progress of the arts. I've seen tons of fanfics which rely on well-known characters, settings, plots, etc. which other people wrote. A lot are much better than their sources. But you can't change the names to something original and expect people to respond to it, because it relies on other people's foundations.
Waiting a hundred years to use a wheel is just as bad as having to reinvent it. Particularly if you wanted to write about *that* wheel.
I suspect that a model like this, which expands fair use infringements greatly would serve to expand the total amount of material being generated. It would very likely even expand the amount of original material that's created as new talents are discovered in the 'minors' of derivative works, and encouraged to write on their own merits. Plus sales of works infringed upon may increase as even more people need to understand the basis of the derivative works than before.
A second idea which might serve to promote the arts and sciences might be to treat copyrights like patents and require them to be registered to exist. The revenues from copyrights and patents could be used by the government to fund works which would go directly into the public domain. But presently everything gets copyrighted for free.
5)I'm still on the fence as to whether or not software patents are even good at all. It's a tricky idea.
6)Like I said, I don't think that copyrights need to last for a lifetime. Artists who are highly successful are probably likely to coast on their successful work, rather than create even more stuff. A flat length of time for copyrights seems better. Add in the requirement that copyrights have to be registered and paid for (so that not every stupid little thing gets copyrighted, much like patents) along with some form of the squatter's rights I discussed, and we might have something really good.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The article about Stephen King linked on the story is a MUST read, it brings up some very good point that show us /why/ the DMCA is such a scary, frightening thing.
We hardly have any rights under current copyright law as it is. And the DMCA is just trying to take away that little bit that's left....
One of the benefits of copyright is that a copyright holder can use the power of the state, ultimately big guys with guns, to enforce the copyright. Why should the public give copyright holders this power if they get nothing in return? As can be seen by the wording in the Constitution, the creators of the Constitution did not believe in an absolute right to "intellectual property". Patents and copyrights are limited monopolies granted by the state to further the public interest.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I'm glad someone caught that. I usually post serious comments, but I thought I'd rile some people up today :)
Finkployd
That's OK, my karma is too high anyway :)
Finkployd
Even leaving aside Project Gutenberg, there are still many ebookeries that don't go in for this sort of encryption. For instance, Alexandria Digital Literature and Mind's Eye Press have been selling shorter works by reknowned SF authors (Vonda McIntire, Spider Robinson, Robert Silverberg, Greg Costikyan, etc.) in open formats (ASCII, HTML, Palm/AportisDoc, etc.) for quite some time, have never had problems with piracy, and seem to be doing well enough to stay afloat. (And Alexlit even has a nifty collaborative filtering book recommender that is worth visiting the site for all by itself.)
And yet these sites are never mentioned in any of these articles. It's just the flashy newcomers like King and the big spenders like Fatbooks who get the publicity, while these high-quality smaller providers languish in obscurity. Feh.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Well this explains it all, but accually it doesn't anyone check the link at the bottom of his comment, its to a copy of DeCSS. HAHAH obviously a troll intended for humor, but almost crossing the line of sanity
I have one question: if everyone had attitudes like that, would anybody have bothered to create what you now so gleefully steal in the first place? I thought not. Or even Mattel - you so zealously defend those who steal their list of blocked websites - Mattel's OWN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - and give anyone else the means to steal this same list and create their own software which simply leeches off Mattel's list maintenance staff and budget!
How fair is this?
Very fair. I have a right to do with code what I will on a machine that I have bought, with software I have bought. While the IP lawyers might consider their position to be morally correct, this does not necessarily make it so. If I wish to see what, exactly, software is doing on my system, through my Internet connection, then I have that right, whether the software be Installshield, Cyber-Patrol, Win2K Active Directory, or whatever. It is in my best interest to be able to determine, should I feel the need, what exactly software is doing. This is true from a security standpoint and from a personal property standpoint. As such, while Mattel et al might not like the fact that people will decode their black list, the fact is that it will AND SHOULD happen in the spirit of full-disclosure.
I know this is cliched, but information wants to be free. This is just another example of it. The older I get the more I think that that old hacker axiom is true. And IP lawyers can go screw themselves.
- Rev.
Your straw man is aggrivating my sinus congestion; please drag it away and burn it.
To equate the various /. criticisms of specific abuses with a desire to "throw out all the rights to control IP" is intellectual dishonesty of Clintonian proportions.
To drag the discussion back to the actual issues:
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Putting sugar pills dyed blue in a bottle and sticking a label on the bottle that says "VIAGRA" is not a form of intellectual property. It is a form of fraud (even if the placebo effect does stiffen the resolve of the user). I have no legitimate case against someone who analyzed my pills and announces their actual content.
Putting a powder that will make a cat's hair fall out in a bag and printing "FLEA-B-GONE" on the bag is not a form of intellectual property. It is a form of fraud (even if it does kill some or all of the fleas along with its depiliatory effects). I have no legitimate case against someone who warns the public that my product will aggrivate their cat's shedding problem (at least in the short term).
Writing software that blocks an eclectic mix of sites for containing sex, violence, left-wing politics, criticism of my product, etc. and sticking a label on the box that says "PORN/VIOLENCE BLOCKER" is -- well, what part of this progression eludes you?
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The basic issue here isn't really intellectual property laws; it's the spectre of new technology destroying the monopoly on content distribution that the big media companies have spent the last decade creating. When musicians can sell mp3s from their own websites they have no need for Time Warner. And the whole DECSS fight is about forcing small companies to pay huge license fees to create DVDs.
Decades ago the hollywood studios were forced to sell their theaters. (For example here in Seattle there is an old "Paramount Theater".) Since the people who made the movies and the people who owned the theaters were the same people... well you get the idea. Now if movies can only be watched on authorized viewers, isn't that pretty much the same situation?
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
Of course you should! The fact that the state does or does not want me to take certain actions has nothing at all to do with whether the action is right. I've chosen to break dozens of laws in my life, laws that want to restrict my speech (in Maryland blasphemy laws are still on the books), my sex life (many consensual acts are illegal), my control over my body (drug laws, including drinking age laws), and more. But none of my "crimes" has ever hurt, or threatened to hurt, another person.
Anyone who thinks all laws should be enforced or obeyed all the time would have made a fine fugitive slave catcher. One must exercise critical thinking, not simply be a law-abiding sheep.
To get down to cases: making a copy of some piece of data is an act that harms no one, therefore there's no way that it should ever be regarded as a criminal offense.
Yes, under our current system, some creators eek out a living on the scraps thrown them by the corporate controllers of state-created "intellectual property"; but that doesn't mean that there isn't a better way. Especially now that technology has made it wholly impractical for government guns to prevent copying.
Let's bust up the distribution rackets - the MPAA, the RIAA, and the like - and let artists share their work directly with their audiences. Let's recognize that people always have and always will share data with each other, and this should never be seen as a crime. (Selling that data, OTOH, may require that a royalty be paid, just as performance royalties are paid on for-profit musical performances today. I think the performance royalty setup is a good place to start for a new model.)
Artists and authors will still find plenty of support - if Red Hat can sell CDs that can be freely copied, why can't your favorite band? And when they get the full price of the CD, not the pennnies on the dollar that trickles down from the corporate bastards now, they'll still be ahead even if they only sell 10% of the volume they do today.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
At present (2000), copyrights granted prior to 1925 should be expiring. But because of the illegal copyright extension, all works after 1923 are granted an extension, in violation of Ex Post Facto.
I agree with you in principle, but that is not true. Ex Post Facto is a prohibition on laws enacted retroactively to the harm of a directly affected party. Extending copyrights issued in the past is in fact a benefit to the holders of the copyright, and thus is not barred under Ex Post Facto.
Of course, it hurts consumers indirectly and it also hurts people who transgress against the retroactively extended copyright, but it does not technically fall within the bounds of Ex Post Facto.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
If I create something, I should be able to do what I will with it, for as long as I see fit. And if you don't approve of the fact that I'm not willing to give it away, then you don't have to support me, by giving me money.
The problem with this standpoint is, that you CAN do what you want with it. But copyright laws prevent other people from doing what THEY want with it, and threaten them with prosecution if they do so.
The reason that copyrights have a limited period is because freedom of information is necessary for free thought. Free thought is absolutely necessary for mental progress of our society, and the common good of humanity. It keeps someone from having a stupid idea, hiding the truth from the public through intellectual property laws, and having the copyrights last forever. Public domain is an important concept for sharing of ideas, and is essential for climbing past the status quo into the next realm of human thought.
There's a lot more to ideas, writing, art, and music than money. If you choose not to share something, purely out of greed, then why should the resources of the public and the laws of the land be utilitized until the end of time to back up your greed? And even after you are dead and rotting, should your greed feed your grandchildren, at the cost of the public enforcing laws?
The government was created by the people, given certain duties and rights by the people, and held under a set of rules - The Constitution - by the people. They can't just make laws about whatever the hell they want, or they've violated the terms under which they were created, and should no longer be able to operate outside those terms. Everything they do must be under a closely guarded and limited scope, or they will inevitably abuse their power. And you'll foot the bill.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
Copyright Office
United States Library of Congress
In-reply-to: Time-Warner's comment on section 1201 (http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/1201/comments/043. pdf)
I will be brief.
First, I concur almost entirely with all the comments of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.
Second, I would like to note that Time-Warner's claims are belied by their behavior, and that T-W's comment is filled with blatant slants and outrageous contradictions. For instance, on page 1 they write:
This begs a number of extremely important questions, to wit:- Why, if "fair use" is so important to Time-Warner, the access-control provisions of media such as DVD's and their licensed playback machinery make no allowance for fair use;
- Why Time-Warner has acted, through the RIAA and DVD CCA, to suppress technologies which allow owners of these media to exercise their fair-use rights; and
- Why, if Time-Warner depends on "fair use", they have acted to make it impossible to exercise without explicit authorization or even special machinery.
This is only a list of questions from one paragraph on the first page!As an example of a slant, here is a sentence from page 2:
On the other hand, the "technological protection measures" advanced by Time-Warner are analogous to printing a book in ink which can only be read underneath an expensive type of lamp licensed only to certain producers. The actions of the DVD CCA, of which Time-Warner is a member, are analogous to attacking people who produce filters which allow such a book to be read by sunlight on one's porch; their suit to suppress the DeCSS software is not unlike filing suit against people who tell others how to create such a filter from colored plastic sheets.If Time-Warner were just one company of many in the market, this would be one thing. However, Time-Warner is part of the DVD CCA, which represents the producers of nearly all films available on DVD. Together, they form a cartel opposed to fair use.
Here are examples of fair use which are impossible under the "technological protection measures" of authorized DVD players (and almost certainly future media formats):
- Quoting. To prevent copying of the whole, they prevent the copying of any part. If I were producing a class on films, I would be in violation of the circumvention provisions if I used software to excerpt a short exchange from both an original work and its remake. Note that there are no protection measures for 35 mm film, so I could make contact prints and audio copies without fear of prosecution.
- Archival copying. I cannot copy the work in such a way as to protect my investment against damage or loss.
- Space-shifting. I cannot make a copy of a work, say, "The Lion King", and allow a 4-year-old to view it while keeping the original stored elsewhere. Even if I never violate copyright by transferring the copy without the original, this violates the anti-circumvention provisions of the law.
Time-Warner has done nothing to address these legitimate concerns of the average consumer. Worse, new hazards to fair use will almost certainly surface under their interpretation of this law.In closing, I would ask the Copyright Office to give the broadest possible scope to the rights of the consumer under the provisions of this law, and give producers such as Time-Warner no power to restrict, police or prevent activities which fall under historical concepts of fair use. Thank you very much.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Theres a very simple solution to the whole copyright problem, simply have copyrights be free for the first 10 years, then 1000$ for the next 10, then 2000$ for the next ten, 4000$ for the next ten and so on. If youre really making tons of money off of something, then you should be able to pay for a good long time, plus the govenment gets money for enforcing the laws. And all we need is somone like Disney to try to keep Mickey Mouse ©(TM)® copyrighted for say 210 years, or 20 doubling periods, and its a billion dollars for another ten years of copyright enforcement. That starts to be some serious change in the govts pocket, granted, it takes 210 years, but maybe after the first ten doubling periods the doubling period changes to 1 year or 2 years or something. This is a more capitalist free market way towards copyright enfocement. Everybody wins. The govt makes money, copyrights that dont produce large amounts of cash become public domain automatically, and it allows giant corporations to keep their copyrights forever, as long as the copyright they hold is more profitable than allowing it to expire. Of course itll never pass, because right now Corporations get copyright enforcement for free, and screw everyone else, but hey, thats what revolutions are for
Yes, voodoo is definitely called for. Fortunately, with the wonders of modern merchandaising, we have a plethora of voodoo dolls available, in plush or plastic, generally for less than $19.95! Although chickens are more economical, especially if you steal them.
Don't try to reverse engineer the chicken, though. They'll lock you up for life, man. Actually, don't even think about reverse engineering your voodoo chicken. Because next year they'll make it against the law to even think about reverse engineering chickens. Retroactively. On pain of lobotomy. Although you might get lucky, and have Ted Turner or Michael Eisner perform the lobotomy on you themselves. Because I hear they like to come down, mingle with the rank and file, and perform a few lobotomies themselves now and again.
Happy hunting,
David
We're on the road to Tycho.
I erroneously attributed the quotes from the Time-Warner comment to David Carson, when in fact they were actually written by Bernard Sorkin on Time-Warner's behalf; Mr. Carson, who represents the Copyright GC/I&R, was the person that the comment was addressed to.
In my anger at the Time-Warner remarks, I hastily misattributed them. Mea culpa, and my apologies to all involved.
--WhiskeyJack
I am talking about having some common sense in laws.
Fight Spammers!
When you have stupid laws, you generate contempt for the law. You cause people to break them.
Do you contend that if you ever went over the speed limit, you can't comment when they make the speed limit of a a section of a highway 3.14159 mph?
Tougher laws do not equate to better laws, or better enforcement.
Did you ever think that we do have respect for IP law? The CPHack situation is a good example, it is FAIR USE, but Mattel being a bully stomps on the rights of the authors to make fair comment. DeCSS is another good example, it was not done to make copies, but so that people who have bought DVDs can play it on their own system without being forced to run Windows!
Fight Spammers!
Mattel is using that list to censor. Do you think that people who are using their product have a right to know what and why something is being blocked? What about people who Mattel intentionally and wrongfully block?
It's interesting to note that there were several ways to bypass CyberPatrol but Mattel didn't make a sound. When the amount of censoring Mattel was doing (or how much they were screwing up) was made public, they cried foul.
Do you think that software companies should file a lawsuit against floppy drive makers?
There was a lawsuit to prevent VCRs or to tax blank video tapes. If VCRs became popular, everyone would make copies of movies and the studios would go out of business.
Are you a Mattel shill?
Fight Spammers!
As I see it, there are two ways we can fight this. The first way is by trying to get DMCA and it's friends struck down. (And while we're at it, someone should go over to MPAA and RIAA and start striking things (people?) down, as well. But I digress) This is one way of fighting this. Fight legislation with legislation.
There is another way.
We can also fight this, even if the law stands, by the other force we have, and which big corperations understand quite well: Economics. But not the way that most slashdot readers seem to think it should be applied. Everyone seems to constantly talk about boycotts, and simply going wihtout that product to make a point. Unfortunatly, there are not enough people posessing that kind of resolve to make such a boycott effective. But there are other kinds of economic forces.
The artical linked to mentioned "people voting with their feet". People will buy whatever gives them the best product for the least money and hassle. This last part is quit important. Cost to value ratios are definatly a factor, but as consumers have demonstrated numerous times, so is convienence! If I am Joe Consumer, and I have a choice between two nearly identical products, except one costs slightly more, but has less restrictions and control measures built into it, then I am of course going to choose the slightly more expensive one. It will be worth it to me. The as the artical mentions, the software game industry already discovered this when they tried making elaborate code wheels and other copy protection measures.
There is one other piece to consider. DMCA can only be legally enforced by the owner of the intellectual property in question! In other words, all that needs to happen for change is for people to start releasing their works without access control measures. All we need here is some version of the GLP that can be applied to other forms of intellectual property!
Well, ok, I oversimplified. There is one other major thing we need here. Enough selection to make the non-protected media a viable alternative to the protected media.
I think that the situation is quite analogous to the whole open source movement, actually... Open source really took off after enough open source programs were released to form a sort of foundation. Then, when it became clear that it was a stable community, people began to join it, and release more work as open source. And the community took off, until it is where it is today, with Linux a serious competitor to Windows.
The analogy, of course, is that we need enough people to release their work as "DCMA-free", without access control measures, and with some legal disclaimer saying that the work should be left in it's original form. You could probably use the sort of thing that shows up at the top of most FAQs as a guide.
If we could get some DVD publishers to start publishing DVDs without region codes, for example, then as soon as the selection of DVDs without region codes got large enough we would almost certainly see a preference on the part of the consumer towards the non-protected DVDs. And you can bet that the companies would notice this as well.
But for this to work, there must be alternatives for the consumers to "vote with their feet" on. Viable alternatives.
So if we can convince enough people to start releasing their work with provisions against the DMCA, then consumers can start the foot-voting, and... Well, with luck we may see a time when the DMCA is as unused as code-wheel copy protection.
If you look at the link to the guidelines for posting a reply, it says they extended the deadline to March 20th, not March 31st.
It's already too late.
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!
Not wanting to be a dick about this (which appears to be my catchphrase these days), but I happen to know you're not a troll. You're just wrong, which is much less glamorous.
Your statement, meant to be satirical, is actually the truth about the economics of the matter. So what if someone stayed up all night in the edit suite for a Disney movie? He doesn't get any of the money. Disney gets it all.
Microsoft does have enough money. And the fact that there are B2B sales out there to pointy haired bosses with compliance departments means that they will always have enough money to survive and produce software. Making a few copies does not hurt society at all. The lesson of economics is that only marginal things matter. Copying copyrighted material doesn't matter. It doesn't effect things at the margin, because the marginal cost of producing an extra unit is literally zero.
Copyright and intellectual property is not a fact of nature. What it is, is a restriction on free speech, put in place at the behest of producers of information, to create an artificial scarcity which allows them to sell ideas as if they were things. Patents have only been around for a short while, and historically have been recognised as "gifts from the state", which is what they are. Copyright on works of art in its modern form is less than a hundred years old.
Nobody knows what model we should have for promoting creative works. But nobody will be able to develop that model if we pass an act early on in the process, which will stunt development and create a powerful interest group. The DMCA is an act of violence by the vested interest, attempting to seize by force something which we currently regard as common property. We're in a situation analagous to the American Indians when they met up with people who (unlike them) had the concept of private property. We should thank our lucky stars that the property-in-speech lobby can grab our property without also massacring us.
Obviously, this is out of tune with the ideology of my employer, and of myself as a corporate blackletter practitioner (with some involvement in IP). Equally obviously, neither this account nor the yahoo email address attached to it can be traced to me. So fuck you, The Man.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
So long as someone's making new ideas, the system is meeting its goals.
There are other goals involved in the copyright and patent systems. For instance, copyright was not intended to provide absolute control to the copyright owner. There is little benefit in that. It therefore explicitly protects "fair use" rights of consumers, so that they may, among other things, quote the copyrighted work for the purposes of comment, criticism, teaching, news reporting, etc. They also have the right to resell what they have purchased, as long as they do not sell duplicates while maintaining a copy for themselves. Additionally, consumers have always had the right to modify their copy of a work in any manner they like. They can tear pages out of a book, highlight passages, make footnotes, etc. Courts have also ruled that consumers have the right to make copies of the work for backup, archival, time-shifting, or space-shifting purposes. Big media companies would like very much to see these rulings viewed in a very narrow way, and have them applied only to the specific technology that the case addressed, rather than taken as a principle of fair use.
Many of these rights are in jeopardy now. The DMCA and UCITA both present a very clear threat to the rights of consumers, as does the lengthening of copyright lifetimes. All this has been done without offering any substantial evidence that the original creators of copyrighted works are in any clear danger of being harmed significantly enough to justify this major rewriting of copyright law to remove many rights of consumers. It seems to be a ploy by the media companies to grant themselves much greater control over the use of copyrighted material, under the guise of fighting copyright infringement, at the expense of consumers' rights, and it still won't do a thing about real commercial copyright infringement by the big "pirate" distributors.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
There's going to be a public hearing on these issues on May 2-4 in DC, and another at Stanford University on May 18-19. Who's going to represent the views of those of us to believe the DMCA is infringing on our rights? This could make all the difference in the world. If the right people speak for us, and enough people show up to support their views, it could make them sit up and notice that we're not going to let them give the corps what they want at the expense of our rights. I'd like to know what to expect. Does anyone know who's planning to attend these hearings?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
A very strong point is the idea of "primary purpose", as the authors note. This generally is used in references to hardware, but the DMCA challenges it's use possibly in software, and this is legally defended, it opens a whole new can of worms. Suddenly, nearly any program, OSS or not, can be pointed to as a tool in piracy, including all basic TCP/IP apps to the Linux kernel to Microsoft Office and beyond. Definitely food for thought.
Unfortunately, we probably can't make the DMCA go away; the best we can hope for is that the Copyright Office makes very clear and favorable decisions in light of fair use, and that when a DMCA violation is challenged at the Supreme Court, they will favor the side of the consumer.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Does this mean that if I took screen captures of the pages for King and then printed them up, all using Microsoft technology that Microsoft would be in contempt of the new Copyright laws?
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Being that it seems only large corporations are for the DMCA, I would hope that the Copyright Office would see the unfair limitations that enforcing the DMCA would impose. On the other hand, large corporations are the largest source of income to the Copyright Office.
Please, please, US Copyright Office, restore my faith that the system really does benefit the "little guy!" After all, wasn't the Copyright Office designed to protect the individual?
--
: remove whitespace to e-mail me
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
-----------------------------------------------
This document is a comment on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Public Law 105-304 (1998), specifically the new Chapter 12 to title 17 United States Code, with special attention to section 1201 provides that "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." It is submitted as solicited
A brief review of the comments posted on the official internet site for the initial public comment period, shows that most of the points I intended have been made, and made well, so in the interests of clarity, I will add only two points that I feel deserve special attention, and which fall into my specific expertise.
[list of profesional qualifications deleted]
Though I do not hold these offices or represent these bodies in an offical capacity any longer, my experience in these positions suggest that there is absolutely no question that making access control a matter of 'vendor right' rather than 'user control of data', invites exploitation in ways that are almost impossible for men of good will to conceive.
The Impact of DMCA on Medical Records, Physician Office Management and Patient Care as a Specific Case of a More General Threat
I. Access control of user data
From the time of the first computerized office management systems (through, I imagine, the present), many physicians have found their office billing, scheduling and patient medical record data held hostage by the companies that owned the billing system. This data was deliberately stored in a proprietary format to keep it out of the hands of the physician, effectively holding it hostage. If physicians did not renew annual software license and maintenance contracts with their original vendor, they would lose access to all their data, despite having physical possession of it
The vendor wished to keep the customer, even if the vendor's product did not meet his or her needs; even if licensing fees had become exorbitant; even if another company's product offered improved patient care, better medical record security; etc. One might argue that vendors of inferior software might be especially interested in "locking clients into" their product (even if it were buggy or unreliable) to stay in business.
To change to better software, while retaining the existing data (to ensure best medical care), the physician was forced to hire a programmer to convert the data from the vendor's proprietary format to a public one, such a field delimited text. Numerous court cases were fought, where vendors argued that this conversion was a violation of their proprietary rights. I will not review them, because the details varied greatly.
Under DCMA, the physician would have no such recourse. His/Her data would forever be the possession, though not the property, of the original vendor, to be read only under the terms of the vendor.
This is just a specific case of a general evil of DCMA.
This abuse could be generalized to any form of program that manipulates or alters data (e.g. graphics program, database, word processor, audio 'studio' program, etc.) and stores it in a proprietary format. In each of these cases, the data clearly belongs to the user, not the vendor, yet the vendor controls access under DMCA. This is an implicit threat of most 'shrinkwrap licenses', come to life: "This program is not warranted for suitability for any specific user purpose, or any general purpose, whatsoever."
When combined with the 'license change' provision of UCITA (below) this creates horrific scenarios.
II. DMCA in conjunction with UCITA
It should also be noted that under the provisions of UCITA (which has already been passed in at least one state, Virginia, and is pending in many others), a vendor may change the terms of licensing, and the new license would apply to grantees under the old license. That is to say, that if a vendor license grants certain rights, the license may later be altered, and the granted rights lost.
Even id a vendor granted usage rights in perpetuity (e.g. allowing a physician to use the program to read the data stored in the proprietary format forever), he can now alter the license to revoke that grant. Under UCITA alone, this only prevented the physician from using the licensed program, but under DMCA, it would permanently ban his/her access to the data. In short, the vendor is granted rights. It also means that formats that are licensed for free public use under explicit licenses such as the GPL (Gnu Public License) could be converted to proprietary licenses at some later data. This would be a data boobytrap for even the most conscientious physician seeking to protect his/her access to his/her data.
The very review process to which this comment is being submitted accepts Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Word 7.0 or older, Rich Text Format (RTF) submissions as MIME attachments, but not a plain text e-mail. Please be warned that if DMCA were in effect, and this comment were initially read in a Virginia office, the owner of these file format could alter their license to deny you the right to open this document, to convert it to another format, or perhaps even to transmit it to another jurisdiction like DC, where the 'access control' could be circumvented. They could even argue that hardcopy created with their word processor, and without their express license (revocable at their will, under UCITA) is a violation.
Today, few documents are created by hand or manual typewriter from inception to final form. Access control can become very effective censorship on any subject.
Companies will and do censor criticism. Earlier this week, Mattel used DMCA to block distribution of a free program that allowed users to see data (stored on their own hard drive) which revealed that a Mattel consumer software program did not function effectively at its intended purpose. Mattel obtained an injunction on the basis that that data was stored in a file on the user's computer in a proprietary format, and acknowledged that it would harm their business if users could read it.
Access control can also be used to co-opt the property rights of any user. Most major graphics, audio, and work processing programs are stored in a proprietary file during the work process of creating a work, and only converted to exportable 'open' form on request. Under DMCA (especially in a UCITA state) any such program could begin to charge me fees to export, distribute or use my own work product.
I have heard testimony from physicians whose data has been held hostage, and read accounts of many more cases. Medical software vendors who invariably advertises the life-saving benefits of instant access to patient data will lock data knowing the effects are potentially lethal (in an ER there may be only minutes to determine previous drug reactions, allergies, and medical history). Put bluntly, though I know of no specific cases, it is easy to see that deaths may already have occurred due to this practice.
I think it is clear that less dramatic abuses of the principle of 'access control' will be the rule, rather than the exception. Why would it not? Access Control will be a legal right, arguably not an abuse at all.
CONCLUSION:
Please do not assume this provision of DMCA is simply about CDs and pirated videotapes. Its consequences could reach deep into you own family at any time, with tragic results.
Freedom of information is among the founding liberties of this nation, and rightfully so. When access to information is controlled, much else is controlled besides. We must act with utmost caution in this area.
__________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
You are making an amazing assumption: that the people that are opposed to DMCA are the same people that pirate. There probably is some overlap, but not much. What the pirates do was already illegal even before DMCA, so DMCA doesn't effect them much.
DMCA mainly just effects legitimate users who do pay for music, movies, books, and software. It places needless restrictions on how we can read/play media. Do you really think that it matters to a content producer, whether his paying customers are watching his content on a licensed player or not? Do you really think the copyright owners get a cut for the playing licenses, and that the license fee -- as opposed to the revenue from selling the media -- is their main incentive to produce content? That is totally ridiculous!
It will never be possible for a technological device to tell the difference between fair use (and I meal really morally fair use, like listening to music that I paid for in my car, while the CD that I bought sits in a cardboard box at home), and piracy. Since the hardware will never be able to know the difference, it will be in error if it just always assumes that copies should be prevented, or if just always assumes that copies should be allowed. It is certain that an error will be made. Apparently, you have decided that it is better to err on the side that inconveniences the buyer.
MPAA hasn't done anything to make sure they get their share. If someone wants to pirate the movie, they will, and it will be easy. The law that they bought, DMCA, doesn't change that a bit.
But that's just the problem with DMCA. It causes the issue to not be whether or not you supported the producers. It causes the issue to be whether or not you paid for a player license, and that you're watching it on "approved" equipment. Can't you see the difference?
Whether I watch the Robocop DVD that I bought on an licensed player, or an open source player, has no effect whatsoever on how "supported" the producers of the movie are going to feel. If I decrypt the DVD, put the master in a safe place, and store the movie on hard disk or reusable tape (maybe even re-encoding it, if I feel that MPEG2 is suboptimal), is totally irrelevant. Or at least, it would be irrelevant, if not for DMCA.
Are you one of those people who actually believed that the purpose of CDA was to protect children?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
> You are making an amazing assumption: that the people that are opposed to DMCA are the same people that pirate. There probably is some overlap, but not much.
Actually, the pirates are breaking ancient laws. Why should they oppose the DMCA? -- they will ignore it just as they ignore the other laws.
I suspect it's exclusively honest people who object to the DMCA, and they do so because it arbitrarily criminalizes things that they think are honest.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
(I'd volunteer, but I doubt the ravings of a longhaired zenarchist freak would help much.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Wow. A bunch of geeks are whining to Congress about a law they just don't like. I bet everyone in Washington is simply dying to hear what 31337 Linux users who have repeatedly shown that they have no respect for IP laws think
.000000001 km/h or mil/h you get a ticket and if this happens enough you loose your liscence. This theoretically could happen.
about this.
Because they are voters. Voters matter to congress. Since people on slashdot are most likely people who are quite intelligent and in control of a large proportion of the nation's IT assets in one way or another we can conclude that their opinions matter in relms where laws are getting passed.
How can you scream about copyright reform when you're running Napster, downloading illegal MP3s?
Not everyone is going things like this and not all MP3s are illegal. Also you have to understand that each and every American including so called "criminals" should have equal access under the law to their elected representatives. That's why you can't have say a torture chamber in even death row. Even death row inmates have rights.
You brought this on yourselves.
Oh so I am walking home because my car broke down on the road and I am walking to a gas station. So guy robs me a gun point. So I guess I brought that on myself too right? How others choose to act in a giving setting is not directly proportional to how I have acted. If others act irrationally I am not to blame.
They saw that you were violating copyright laws, and that those laws were ineffective.
Exacly how have their pinned down the elusive "3l337 Linux users" and correlated them to some nebulous "crime" that's rich. Maybe if you actually looked and say that the main napster binary at the obvious site "http://www.napster.com" is in fact for windows and windows only. I think a fair percentage of napster servers are being run by people on windows platforms and not on linux machines.
As for gauging laws to be ineffective give me a break. Just because crime happens dosn't mean that the laws are ineffective. Right this minute I am running a gnutella client for windows on a windows NT machine. No don't bother tracing it beacuse it's in a public lab and not traceable to a unique id or anything so your dream of busting another "3l337 Linux user" won't work. The point is there are sufficient laws out there to punish pirates and others. Why you obviously don't realize is that it's the lack of enforcement of our current laws that makes the system or the laws supposedly "ineffective".
Imagine if no matter where you are in any country if you violate the speed limit you get a ticket and a fine. No imagine that this law is passed and strictly monitored.
That's right even if you go over the speed limit by as much a
The same goes for copyright and patent issues. You have to actually enforce them with the standard set of laws to your fullest ability before you add more and more oppressive laws to your plate. Until then don't complain that crimes are happening unless you get everyone under the current laws.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
And here are a few reasons why:
:)
Oh this should be rich.
1. I like music.
2. I like movies.
3. I like books.
4. I like software.
I like all four of those things you mentioned.
And the DMCA's intentions are to ensure that I keep getting all four of those things.
I would disagree and state for the reccord that in fact the people who actually insure that you get those things are in fact getting jack shit under the current system. I don't want rich executives getting the money that I wanted to say give to people like Steven King, Donald Knuth, ZZ top, Pink Floyd, or Patrick Stewart. The people who get the money are talentless bums who couldn't cary a tune in a bucket, act if a group of terrorists forced them, write a story for a small town paper, or code their way out of a paper bag.
You think I'm trolling, right? Well, you would, considering that I'm logged in AC and expressing an unpopular viewpoint (people doing that are ALWAYS trolls, right?). Just open your mind (it's not THAT hard, honest) and
listen for a moment.
Still listening. The only compalint about the Ac account is that there is no way to contact the person in question of even believe that he/she will reply in any fashion to any well thought out post. It's depressing really.
As nice as it would be to get everything for free, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't just copy the nearest bit of work and not give the creator anything. Unfortunately, that's what the ravenous band of nascent pirates that
you are seem to want to do. "It doesn't hurt anyone if I copy this CD - never mind that the artist needs every last penny he gets!" "Oh, if I copy this DVD instead of buying it, I'm only hurting the fat cats at Disney, not the guy who
stayed up 72 hours straight in the editing room getting this film ready to go!" "Microsoft has enough money, they don't need mine."
Oooh "the ravenous band of nascent pirates" reading the gutenberg webster's from 1913 are we you scroundrel you
You must understand the ammount of money that the creator of the work receives it almost next to nothing. That guy who stayed up 72 hours straight after he has slept for a couple of days will wake up to receive a check for some small pittance of what the film actually made in any form. I think people should make money in some way but not at the expence of the average person.
I have one question: if everyone had attitudes like that, would anybody have bothered to create what you now so gleefully steal in the first place? I thought not. Or even Mattel - you so zealously defend those who steal their list of
blocked websites - Mattel's OWN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY - and give anyone else the means to steal this same list and create their own software which simply leeches off Mattel's list maintenance staff and budget!
I have one answer: people who really enjoy creating would still create. Writers back in the old days had absolutely no possible way to assume that their works would actually be read. They created for the sake of getting their ideas out and allow for people to read them. The fact that their ideas were bought, accepted, and thought about allowed them to gain popularity and fame.
I assume that if Thoreau was still alive you would call him a red-pinko-commie-bedwetter who was destroying the role of "business" in America.
Secondly considering that a list is not proprietary in nature and that database law has not clearly backed up Mattel's point of actually having complete claim over that list. When you create a list of sites that can potentially break free speach and clients may be harmed it is a noble thing to do.
How fair is this?
In reality if the opensource movement so choosed I believe they could very effectively do something like this much better. Than even mattell. Geeks don't have any need for censorship.
What I want everyone here to do is to head down to the local video store RIGHT now and pick up a brand new DVD, just to show that you appreciate the artists and all their hard work, and what the MPAA has done to make sure
they get their share.
The MPAA is just trying to make shure that the MPAA gets their fair share.
It's not that hard. And the next time you watch the movie, you'll know that you supported all the hard work that went into it, instead of simply stealing from the real producers, little by little, like you usually do. And you'll feel
better for it.
You know I really don't feel better at all. In fact I can just see A group of MPAA execs laughing at this over drinks at a private party and cheering our stupidity.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
How about yours?
Someone else speaks of "Whining Geeks". There are certainly lots of us in there. But there are also librarians, teachers, and even Alladin. (Ghostscript) It turns out that the anti-circumvention measures, misapplied, limit their ability to render fonts.
Herein lies the crux:
Other than the Library of Congress review, there is no check and balance for the anti-circumvention measure. Other than the "Whining Geeks", there are clearly some other problems and groups of people and business with problems.
This is the mechanism.
Now is the time.
I prefer the Motley Fool's (financial newsletter) take on this: How many other industries treat their customers as their enemies? My take: Could it be that they feel that they are ripping us off, and are afraid of the treatment they deserve? IMHO, the cost to price ratio of the audio CD compared to that of the audio cassette tape certainly supports this view.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The unfairly moded poster got it right, you asked for this yourselves. I'm suprised you have been tolerated as long as you have by the law.
You have the audicity to claim that you should have some kind of "fair use" nonsense. Let me explain something, these media companies work their arses off to provide you with top notch, affordable entertainment. If they want to limit how you view their media, then by golly they have that right. Just because you geeks have can't accept a "real" OS and need some kind of command line only junk doesn't mean you have to right to break laws. you don't "own" a DVD you buy, you just get to listen to it. The only people who would want to make copies are criminals, and DeCSS is ONLY GOOD FOR MAKING COPIES.
I read somewhere on ZDnet that all you guys do is break encryption laws and pirate MP3's anyway, it makes me wonder if Linux even has legimate uses! I hope the DMCA gets you all for this kind of ungrateful, illegal, nonsence.
Finkployd
http://earnestdesigns.com/dvd
I've just been browsing Time-Warner's comment, and I'm appalled at the flawed thinking in this document!
For example, Mr. Carson writes:
The problem here is that when I buy a DVD (for instance) I am buying the right to access the material stored on it, as well as the media it is stored on. This means that I am by and large entitled to do anything I want to it, whether it be to copy that DVD for my own personal use or to just toss it into the microwave and watch the pretty sparks. To use Mr. Carson's analogy above, I have for all intents and purposes bought the bookstore the book resides in, and therefore I am within my rights to smash the locks and get inside any time I darn well please, and if someone else happens to have a decent crowbar I can use (DeCSS), all the better.
Mr. Carson goes on to argue that such access controls don't hinder anyone's ability to access the controlled work, as they "need only follow the same steps as [they] would in the absence of technological protections...". Unfortunately, those steps currently force me to buy a product that I don't want in order to gain access to content that I've bought the right to view. This is like saying "Okay, you've paid me for this nice hotel room, but you can't actually get in to use it until you go buy one of our special keys from George over there"; ridiculous! Afterall, I've already bought the access rights, but I'm not allow to excercise them until I pay for them twice.
Mr. Carson further argues that since there are alternative means of distributing content other than DVDs, I as a consumer can freely choose to use the non-access controlled media if I disapprove of the restrictions DVDs might impose on me in order to view them. Admittedly, he has a point here....for now. The problem arises that these alternatives aren't guaranteed to be around in the future (in fact, I strongly suspect that if the current model of access control holds up in court, VHS and other freely accessible media will quickly disappear). Since access controlled media is inherently more profitable (you get the money paid for the access rights plus the licensing for the media reader; on top of that, if the current model holds, then it's only a tiny step to impose a pay-per-view model ala Divex, which we wouldn't be able to do a thing to legally circumvent), the media publishers will have every reason to embrace strong access controls if the DMCA actually holds up.
-- WhiskeyJack, too disgusted to continue.
However the greedy powers that be have bribed our congress. Copyrights have been retroactively ammended twice, once in the 1970s and again in the late 1990s. This is unconstitutional.
When the shylocks who run the media companies realized that many popular albeit older movies, music,and books were going to fall into the public domain, they bribed your congressman to extend the copyrights retroactively. This is wrong. The copyright contract is a contract between the government, the holder of the copyright, and the People. That contract goes into effect when the copyright is granted. Like any other contract, those terms are fixed at the time of the contract. Can you imagine if the terms of your house mortgage were changed without your permission after the contract had been signed?
One of the basic principles of American law is the Ex Post Facto, which means that no individual can be guilty of retroactive violations of the law. For example, if a law is passed saying drinking in public is illegal, you can not be charged with violating that law if it was not in effect at the time you had a drink in public. Retroactive laws are unconstitutional. Likewise, if a copyright is granted, then the length of that copyright should be that in effect when the copyright was granted. At present (2000), copyrights granted prior to 1925 should be expiring. But because of the illegal copyright extension, all works after 1923 are granted an extension, in violation of Ex Post Facto.
Books and music existed before the notion of copyrights. Suprisingly enough, they were quite popular. I suspect that if movies and software had been around at that time too, they would have also been commonplace forms of expression.
Furthermore, you are shortsighted in your appraisal of copyrights/patents in general.
Copyrights and patents DO NOT exist with the intention that the creators of given work or invention will make money. That's entirely secondary. The point, as you'd know just by looking in the relevant part of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8) is to increase the amount of works that enter into the public domain.
In order to encourage the creation of works which are not controlled in their use, Congress can grant monopolies of limited time to the creator. But the intent is clearly not in favor of the creator, and there must be a time limit which additionally favors the public over the creator.
Well suprisingly enough, virtually no copyrighted material has entered the public domain in recent years. This clearly indicates a breakdown in the existing copyright law.
Is there such a thing as a free lunch? YES. Thoughts are not chattel. Any minute amount of 'intellectual property' is not only not real property, but it is not natural in the least. For millenia there have been no significant restrictions on people's abilities to think or create (aside from cultural clashes - religion being a biggie, but that's a whole different kettle of fish)
Given as how a lot of great works were created in times when there were no protections, I sincerely doubt that you're correct in believing that in the absence of copyright the media would dry up. I think that it would just get bigger.
By your standard it is unfair for Disney to make a movie version (a bad one too) of Hans Christian Anderson's "The Little Mermaid."
By your standard it is unfair for Microsoft to make mice and keyboards without paying the creators of those devices, who you must think ought to still hold the patents on them.
By your standard it is unfair for the RIAA to be associated with a recording of "The Star Spangled Banner" seeing as how Francis Scott Key's descendants didn't get a penny.
Or for Mattel to make jigsaw puzzles that weren't licensed from the original creator. Or use games involving dice, which they didn't invent either.
So are you getting the picture? All of the companies involved in extending copyright and hiding behind it are both:
*Unable to compete on a level playing field
*Themselves guilty of building upon other people's works.
Strikes me that things are generally improved when you have the freedom to use other people's ideas. I'd be in favor of limiting copyrights and patents to somewhere between 10-20 years and never extending them. The lack of a never-ending supply of money actually gives people MORE incentive to create. The current system lets creators coast on one or two works, and is itself plainly defeating the purpose for which it exists.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
There's just one generalizable example of the half dozen broad abuses that just occurred to me in five minute's thought: word processors (and other output producing programs like studio, graphics, or databases). Until now, the 'work product' has always separate from the software that made it. However now MS could decide (retroactively) that documents produced with MS-Word could only be viewed with MS-Word, and that conversion to other formats (including printed output for use by anyone except the licensed user) is a 'circumvention of their access control', They could also revoke the license to their public viewers, like Wordpad.
Rrsult: Better hope you had a straight text copy of your Great American Novel and Monday's Big Presentation. Or your company database. Because the word Processor could steal some very major rights to your use of your own work. You wouldn't be able to send your word-processed novel to the publisher, even in hardcopy (e.g. King w/ Glassbook) etc. or allow public access to your previously accessible database-generated data without a specific negotiated license from the publisher. Who cares if you bought the word processor or database to specifically do these things and that you've been doing them for decades? Read your Shrinkwrap licence: the program is not guaranteed to be suitable for any specific purpose. You knew it. Everyone knew it. We all laughed at it. It's been in the SWL for decades. No excuses.
This is not outlandish. This exact thing happened with many medical office administration programs in the 70's/80's/90's. Physicians could not access their own office/billing data or their patient medical info unless they renewed their contract with the original software company. [And a court ruled that booting a proprietary program to erase it or to retrieve/convert the data was unauthorize d access. Fortunately, you *could* remove the hard drive and have a programmer read/convert it on his system. Under DMCA, even this would be illegal!)
There are many similar, more public examples of brazen corporate greed: the sudden demand for licensing fees for usage of GIFs is a very recent one. In short, when they figure out they can do this, the only thing that would stop them would be fear of angering enough people to cause a change in the law -- and even then, they might decide to draw a year or two of profit, since if they didn't risk overturning the apple cart, they'd be left out in the cold when some other company overturned the apple cart. [i.e. MS would 'seize control' of all MS-Word docs, though a new laws would surely be passed in a year or so, because if MS didn't, they'd lose the rights in a year or two anyway, when WordPerfect or Star triggered the backlash]
I don't know how I could have missed this implication (I was deeply involved in physician data issue on a high level many years ago), but I guess we'll be stumbling across unintended consequnces for years
[or is it actually 'unintended'? Whether this specific strategy is planned or not, there's no question that the industry would like nothing more than full control on a pay-per-view basis of all media. Should we be surprised that disparate elements directed at a common end can combine to further that end in unexpected ways? ]
Unfortunately, there is no safe way to change intellectual laws quickly. We'd have to institute a moratorum so that each major change (e.g. DMCA) could be understood and explored in the coursts before the next change (e.g. UCITA) was passed.
And I'd have to admit, in that case, justice defered would be justice denied.
__________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime