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How Will The DMCA Be Implemented?
bl968 writes "Wired has an excellent article entitled "Fear of a Pay-Per-Use World" on the upcoming Librarian of Congress decision on granting exceptions to the DMCA anti circumvention provisions. The DMCA, which was enacted in 1998, bans the circumvision of technical protection measures like encryption systems and other methods designed to prevent access to copyrighted works. When the DMCA was passed it contained, a delay to the date the anti-circumvention provisions take effect. This delay is about up and your comments are needed"
While at the time the lawsuits were filed DeCSS was still legal for the authors to create and use, the problem is that it is "illegal" to distribute circumvention tools, and that provision didn't have a delay on it. The MPAA didn't go after Johanson or 2600 et al for using DeCSS, they went after them for distributing it.
If you look at the last paragraph in this article they mention this problem, that even if broad exceptions are granted for circumventing content locks, it's still illegal to hand out the code to do so. Sucks huh?
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
It's always been illegal for me to borrow tapes/cds from friends and libraries and record them, but it is easy to do, so everyone does...
What a lot of the DMCA does is provide for a technical implementation for existing laws.
Forgetting for a moment the fair use issues, which can probably be resolved, this would seem to be quite fair.
Except that it isn't. This is really more about power than anything, about the freedom to live relatively freely, to misquote Sabrina (Teenage Witch), 'Every Law Shall Have a Loophole'.
The DMCA is giving dictatorial control over certain aspects of life to corporations (cough, spit, wash yer mouth out with soap) who really don't have the maturity/morality/whatever not to abuse it.
In a way it is quite amusing, anyone can have shares, companies exist to profit the shareholders and are willing to go to pretty much any lengths to do so. We are becoming our own goalers.
For instance, a DVD sold in Japan will not play on a DVD player sold in the United States because of technical protection measures employed by the motion picture industry.
How does this work the other way, I thought that regional encoding was illegal in NZ, but since then a scary source sez it ain't.
This goes way beyond fair use I'd have thought.
(been interupted so many times writing this I'm not sure what I was thinking though, it was way better than what I said though!! :)
~ppppppppö
Umm please don't, a riot composed of geeks waving bar scanning dildos would be way more humour than my heart could take....
~ppppppppö
Looking at the text of title 17, section 1201...
Subsection (c)(1) reads Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title. so the "fair use" defense is unaffected by this measure.
As for DeCSS I'm guessing the defense lawyers are hammering real hard on subsection (f) which explicitly permits reverse engineering any access control AND distributing the means to do so so long as it is solely for the purpose of allowing interoperability. Of course the corporate weasels didnt like this so they are claiming DeCSS in "purely a piracy tool." IANAL but from reading the actual letter of the law it seems that all it should take to defend against the suit is claiming "I made this code to allow interoperability between the firmware code on commercial DVD drives and the linux OS since nobody else had made a driver for it." - that fulfills the requirement in (f)(2) that it is for the purpose of enabling interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs, if such means are necessary to achieve such interoperability and also of (f)(3) where the information gained may be made available to others ... solely for the purpose of enabling interoperability
In the absence of the MPAA being able to prove that any of the coders intended DeCSS for piracy or actively used it for such (and since "fair use" remains intact their lawyers should be able to argue that the presence of decrypted movie fragments in old temp files on their disks is simply evidence they played them, not that they copied them) whilst the MPAA may throw more and more money and lawyers at this they should eventually lose.
# human firmware exploit
# Word will insert into your optic buffer
# without bounds checking
I had a
One of the major reasons why I hate the DMCA is because of how it became law: a joint venture between the MPAA, RIAA, and the government.
Not to mention being passed by a voice vote so that we can't even tell who voted for or against it. (Safer to assume that it was unanimous and vote the whole lot of them out.. if only we can convince others of the disgusting nature of this law.)
Do I sound a little like Henry David Thoreau? Good! It's nice to know that I'm the only remaining Transcendentalist in the US.
Let's not get too full of ourselves here.
Anyway, this law was bought and paid for by corporate interests. The average citizen had no input on it, nor did the government care to even attempt to see how people felt about it. They slipped it through as quickly and quietly as a bill this attrocious can possibly be slipped through. By using a voice vote, everyone in favor got to get the bill through while avoiding attaching their names to it. Sneaky as hell. How does a bill this big and important get through on a voice vote? It's called corruption. We need to fight this and we need to make people understand what it means to them. Explain how it will affect them. I'm just not sure how to go about doing that. Most people I know just kinda shake their head and say something to the effect of, "Well, that's the government for ya." I'm beginning to despair of ever finding enough people who give a damn about this to make any sort of difference at all.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
RIAA, MPAA, et. al. like to bounce around on the notion of relizing or losing revenue, however they have never backed up a single one of their speculations. In fact, more content is available on DVD now than ever before. Are there entire warehouses of DVDs waiting for the 28th to roll around to release them? No. Additionally, everything available in DVD format is available in other formats as well (VHS, LD, even beta) And in many cases, the VHS versions hit the market first -- sometimes by months; this has nothing to do with law, it has to do with DVD authoring time... the VHS tape is exactly what you saw in the theatre.
The issue with DeCSS is of it's "piracy tool" nature. Yes, every idiot on Slashdot is going to argue it's to allow playback under <insert non-windows OS here>. HOWEVER, that arguement is full of holes and you know it. DeCSS has done more harm than you can imagine for those trying to bring DVD to alternative OSen. Never argue that you are helping Linux by creating and sharing windows programs.
As for DVD playback outside their circle, they don't like that idea. Any unlicensed DVD player would be beyond the DVD CCA's contractual scope. "Fair Use" has become "however we say you can use it." They are afraid of losing control over content that can be perfectly and indistingishably duplicated. It's all digital data; you cannot prevent copying -- even Microsoft has been unable to stop it (argueably, they don't want to.) The best you can hope to do it make it trackable. Physical means of media control like watermarks and eliptical tracks can help to stop the small time theft, but nothing will ever stop the "pros".
It doesn't matter for what purpose you intended your creation. A screw driver isn't a hammer nor is a hammer a screw driver but each can fill either job.
Initial written comments in this rulemaking were due February 17, 2000. The Office received 235 comments. All 235 comments are now available below for viewing and downloading. Copies of comments are also now available for inspection and copying at the Copyright Office
So,if the DMCA "bans the circumvision of technical protection measures like encryption systems and other methods designed to prevent access to copyrighted works" then I can copyright my Emails and encrypt them! If carnivore or the NSA decrypt my Email, then they are breaking the law and they will have to stand up to Jack Valenti!. Ha! Valenti and his lawyers will protect me!
/me hides his stack of 2600 mags.
What? Uh, No sir. Never heard of DeCSS, nope, never bought a T-shirt of it neither. Nope nope!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I regret to inform any new Slashdot readers that the comments period at the Library of Congress has been well expired. They had public hearings regarding those comments in May, and even the post-hearing-comment-rebuttal-comment window has passed.
All that's left to do now is wait. Virtually all the scheduled opportunities for public comment (read: your rare chance to not be ignored) have passed, as most slashdot readers probably know.
What this thread should provide an opportunity for Slashdot readers to do, is organize and take action should the LOC rule in Big Copyright's favor. We have until October 28th to prepare, and once the ruling comes down, anyone interested in the enrichment of the public domain and the rights to fair use of copyrighted material needs to be ready to stage an information campaign the likes of which has never been seen.
Prepare fliers and protests. Get ordinary people's attention focused on why this abuse of the limited copyright monopoly harms them. I'm trying to compile an HTML archive of important documents and arguments that can inform people about their relationship to copyright and it's place in society. Burn stuff like this to CD and distribute it near theaters, video rental shops, Kinko's, or other areas where people are likely to be in a receptive mood regarding their rights as individuals. If you're interested in knowing the URL when my compilation is done, send me an email with 'dmca' in the subject line.
Make the argument heard, because if the LOC rules to delete fair use and copyright expiration, we have the hardest argument yet to make to change what will be the status quo.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Slashdot (not to mention other sites such as Technocrat) have been covering this since early 2000; this particular article says that comments "are due Feb 17 2000". Add this to the earlier story about Mojonation, which is a repeat from July 30, and one can only conclude that the Slashdot editors are suffering from an acute problem which makes it impossible for them to retain any kind of long-term memory. This illness is caused by some form of brain damage.
OTOH, so the Slashdot editors are brain-damaged... what's new about it?
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.