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.
Fair use is written into law: check out this link, for one.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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
Intellectual property was invented for that reason, to create artificial scarcity. There is no compelling reason for that state to remain permanent for a given work, which is what the original poster is advocating.
If he thinks he has ownership rights to every idea he ever had, I claim an eqivalent right to copy every idea he ever had. Without resorting to violence, which position do you think is going to win?
IP is a tradeoff. It creates an unnatural ecomonic condition in order to reward the creation of new IP. But once the creator is compensated, there is no reason to keep the artificial limits on reproduction. It is cheaper for everyone involved, because the alternative is to be nickeled and dimed by every half-wit with a long dead anscestor who created something you find valuable.
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.
How exactly should you enforce that "right"? Under what you've just said, it should be your "right" and the governements job to make sure that none 'o them damn niggers hear your music, becuase you have a "right" to control how they are shared, and you, being a greedy racist bastard, don't want those people to hear it.
The only right you need protected is your right to "derive economic benefits." Use is not something you should have the least big of control of, as I hope my inflammatory example illustrates. Notice how there IS a difference between the two rights. (use vs. profit)
--
+&x
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.
Er, not exactly -- you were arguing that the previous comment did not make a case for treating IP differently from other forms of property. ("What does the public get from enforcing any other contract, that they do not get from enforcing license contracts on intellectual property? So where is your case for making a distinction?")
When you make the case for treating IP like other forms property, then blow off a corrolary of this principle which happens not to be to your advantage, people will naturally decide that you want to play a game of "Heads I Win, Tails Don't Count".
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
If you're arguing that the government should impose a tax on the worth of intellectual property the same way it does on the worth of physical property, you may have something. If there were no law enforcement, more thieves would be attracted to Bill Gates' mansion than to Joe Sixpack's 2BR brownstone, so it is only reasonable to charge the former more for recieving a greater service -- perhaps the same principle should be applied here (perhaps the exponentially-increasing renewal fee idea somebody suggested).
/.
/. 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.
I can. Intellectual property could easily be copied for little or no cost if not for our government making it illegal. This costs the government money to enforce, and in exchange for enforcing your right and allowing you the opportunity to make money from your creations they expect your creations to be released to the public domain when you croak.
There are many citations of how this helps the nation and society as a whole, but most of them are common sense, so I'll skip to the next topic without wasting space repeating what's been said before.
No, duh. If the government stepped out of it and stopped enforcing the contract your work would be copied and cloned so fast your head would spin. The way it was originally envisioned had the government doing you a favor in exchange for you giving back to society. It actually worked.
What is fair use?
Fair use provisions of the copyright law allow for limited copying or distribution of published works without the author's permission in some cases. Examples of fair use of copyrighted materials include quotation of excerpts in a review or critique, or copying of a small part of a work by a teacher or student to illustrate a lesson.
How can I tell if my copying is allowed by fair use provisions of the Law?
There are no explicit, predefined, legal specifications of how much and when one can copy, but there are guidelines for fair use. Each case of copying must be evaluated according to four factors:
1.The purpose and nature of the use. If the copy is used for teaching at a non-profit institution, distributed without charge, and made by a teacher or students acting individually, then the copy is more likely to be considered as fair use. In addition, an interpretation of fair use is more likely if the copy was made spontaneously, for temporary use, not as part of an "anthology" and not as an institutional requirement or suggestion.
2.The nature of the copyrighted work. For example, an article from a newspaper would be considered differently than a workbook made for instruction. With multimedia material there are different standards and permissions for different media: a digitized photo from a National Geographic, a video clip from Jaws, and an audio selection from Peter Gabriel's CD would be treated differently--the selections are not treated as a equivalent chunks of digital data.
3.The nature and substantiality of the material used. In general, when other criteria are met, the copying of extracts that are "not substantial in length" when compared to the whole of which they are part may be considered fair use.
4.The effect of use on the potential market for or value of the work. In general, a work that supplants the normal market is considered an infringement, but a work does not have to have an effect on the market to be an infringement.
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!
VCRs is a way to make illegal copies, so should that be outlawed?
Coat hangers is a way to steal a car, should it be outlawed?
A beer is a way to get drunk and drive. We all know what happened with prohibition.
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
You're right, but we've been over this before. The DMCA does not allow circumvention of copyright protection. That's the real problem. If the DVD was unencrypted, then you could probably get away with creating a reader to view the contents. Since they put some cheesy encryption on the discs, you can't view them with an unauthorized viewer without illegally circumventing the copyright protection. It's a bunch of BS, but that's why we're writing letters to the Copyright office about it.
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.
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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