I find this just a little disturbing. Fast-foward about 10 years. There's a show on TV that I enjoy watching, but will be missing because of a prior engagement. I used to be able to tape it and watch it later. Now? Tough luck... Will this also kill the Tivo market as well as the VCR market? If my VCR can't transmit to HDTV.. can I rent movies still?
-- {} ------
When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
This is the shortest description of an article that I've ever seen on slashdot in the last 2 years..;-)
--
--
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
If you haven't already done so...
by
mav[LAG]
·
· Score: 5
...join the EFF. If you live outside the US, then do whatever you can to make sure that your government doesn't bow down and accept any stupid IP recommendations from the US.
And if you're a pissed-off journalist, attend Sony press conferences and tell them they can shove their products up their corporate backsides. It make not make much difference but it _will_ make you feel better. Nothing better than seeing the grin freeze on some smart lackey with all the Playstation buzzwords after you tell him his company can go fsck themselves.
And if you're a pissed-off techie and you work for anyone of these scum-buckets then I have just one question: WHY? Don't give me that "well I have to earn a living" shite. Go and work for someone else and get a clear conscience.
The rant hits a few important points, but i think the most important is this: The media giants don't want you to be able to be a content provider. Not only do they want to put out their music on uncopiable formats, they don't want you to be able to use your own 'free mp3/get paid touring' business model because it could prove to other artists that the record companies are squeezing them dry. If they can keep you locked out of portable music players, home stereo components, and desktop software then their monopoly is assured.
-- e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
Jargon file says it best!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5
copy protection n.
A class of methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers from using it.
Considered silly.
Re:Is there an understandable, non-technical summa
by
Metal+Machine+Music
·
· Score: 3
Briefly:
copyright exists in artistic works
patents exist in processes
Whenever you produce a work, it is protected by international treat and you own the copyright in it. You don't need to apply for copyright - you own it immediately.
However, the copyright might belong to someone else under copyright. For example, under your contract of emplyoment, your work will probably be owned by your employers, and some websites might have as a condition of your agreement with them that they own the copyright.
Fair use applies for criticism and study, broadly. Thus it is legitimate to post a few lines from a book in order to review it, since that would be fair use. Posting the entire book, OTOH would not be fair use.
Reverse engineering OTOH, is not illegal as such, since copyright does not exist in ideas (only in expression of those ideas). Thus when Rob Malda said that he wouldn't sue
Kuro5hin 'in the spirit of open source', he was wrong, since the idea cannot be copyrighted. Software code is treated as a literary work (although most code is not very poetic),
and so is protected by copyright.
There do exist design rights however, and the look and feel may be protected under copyright. So if you produced something that looked to similar to Slashdot, that would be breach of copyright.
Patents exist in respect of processes - in particular there is a requirement for a novel and innovative way of doing something (with a particular requirement for absence of prior art). These can affect software, if the software includes a novel process.
Finally, there is passing off - if a product is confusingly similar to another well-known product it will be passing off, provided they are in the same market sector.
Thus a McDonalds construction company has no chance of confusion with the burger chain, whereas the cafe owned by Ronald McDonald was, since they were in the same business.
In conclusion, the copyright holder owns the work, and can do what he likes with it. He can sue if you do anything, excluding fair use that breaks his owners rights.
Just treat any modern form of IP (DVD, software, music) like you would old world IP, a book.
Can I make copies of my book for myself? Yes.
Can I take my book apart? Yes.
Can I modify my book? Yes.
Can I loan my book out? Yes.
Can I read my book in any order? Yes.
Can I read my book when I want? Yes.
Look at all the HORRIBLE things I can do with books, and yet I dont see people claiming that modern copy machines are hurting book sales.
If you can show me one person who has not been able to pursue legitimate recording activites
because of copy protection I will eat my words. Otherwise I stand by what I say.
Easy. From the article (which I can tell you did read because of your quote later on):
By private agreements behind the laws and
standards, such as the unwritten agreement that DAT and MiniDisc recorders will treat analog inputs as if
they contained copyrighted materials which the user has no rights in. (My recording of my brother's
wedding is uncopyable, because my MiniDisc decks act as if I and my brother don't own the copyright on
it.)
John Gilmore wanted to pursue a legitimate recording activity and was unable to because of copy protection. Start eating.
And people seem to think no-one gets hurt by these things.
They are wrong. The people working for record and computer companies have jobs and families
too.
Boo-frigging-hoo. So the entire population must accept crippled technology and a steady erosion of its constitutional rights so that a small minority of sharks and their dependants can survive?
As for the rest of your comment - copyright does not mean "owned by" and it is not the same as property. It means the copyright holder has a limited time over the distribution and use of his or her work.
-- ---
Hot Shot City is particularly good.
This all leads to mono-culture technology.
by
crovira
·
· Score: 4
Ask the Irish about the dangers inherent in mono-culture.
They became dependent on a single kind of potato even though the new world had dozens of them.
The end result was the famine, the death of millions, economic disruption Ireland still hasn't recovered from and some stern lessons which are being ignored at the peril of those who would repeat history in technology instead of agriculture.
Mono-cultures are forever poised on the knife edge of catastrophy. One slip leads to oblivion.
Has anyone noticed that infection incidents are becoming more severe? Melissa is spawning faster and spreading much wider using ruses programed into it.
Changing the vector from diskette to e-mail is part the reason. Using larger 'active' content is another part. Now imagine a exploit of content files, infected media. I'm sure someone's already getting hard at the thought.
One particularly complex and capable computer virus which could be carried over the expanded communications channels in place now could conceivably wipe out everybody without a set of uninfected backups.
The Luddites would win. But at what a cost...
-- MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own.
If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Get ready to eat your words. Backup. I have children. Every once in a while CDs tend to get ruined. At the moment with most CDs that I have I can have a backup. I have a VCR at the moment I have backups of many of the tapes. The ones that I can't backup piss me off. One of the reasons I have not gone to a DVD yet is because of the backup issue. At the moment, and due to brain dead schemes like this, I buy a shiney new DVD and if by chance it should fall into the hands of my daughter it is going to be gone, bye-bye, sorry. I have *no* way of backing it up, my only choice is to buy it again. So yes I am being hosed at that point. And oh BTW "piracy" does not mean that great software never reaches me. I don't use software that is not free (as in speech) to start with. So why is that not a good use?
--
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics.
Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
What it quietly neglects to say is that you can't use it to copy or time-shift or record any audio or video
copyrighted by major companies.
And then you say:
This is just my point. Why the hell shouldn't companies be allowed to protect their property? The big word there is
copyrighted - like 'owned by'.
Which makes no sense. Even if we accept your spurious interpretation of copyright as ownership, copyright law explicitly permits copying (e.g., for backup) and time-shifting.
The fact is that piracy makes companies go bust.
Name one.
Next thing the free software guys will be trying to tell me that I can't put a chain on my bike!
Information is not at all like a bike. If i use your bike, you can't, so you better lock it or walk home. But I can use your information and you can use mine all at the same time. We just like it when we compensate each other for the effort it took to create that information. That is what copyright is intended to do.
In the "olden days", your bike analogy worked quite well. The only way for me to get compensated by consumers of my info. was to have them pay for copies. Now, the cost of making copies is essentially zero. New economic models are going to have to be created to deal with this. Someone mentioned a "'free mp3/get paid touring' business model". Why can't that work? Because it takes Time Warner and Sony out of the loop... Now does that sound right?
All CDs have "no copy" bit. Why no DMCA lawsuit?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5
Check the redbook format for audio CDs. It actually defines, on a track by track basis, a "no copy" flag. Naturally this bit is set for all commercial audio CDs. It's also set by every CD burning program I've seen.
Yet all CD ripping software, including that made by "big name" companies ignores the no copy flag. And the CD reader hardware happily extracts digital audio from tracks with the flag set too.
How come no one is getting sued for circumventing this copy control? I think this should qualify as abandonment of the DMCA or selective enforcement. Take your pick, either is sufficient to have the DMCA stricken from the lawbooks.
One point about this whole thing that I haven't seen mentioned:
The MPAA/RIAA and other "big media" "content owners" are operating under the assumption that their content is their's into perpetuity. This is wrong, per the Constitution which only grants "limited time" ownership. By behaving in a manner which assumes that content can never fall into the public domain, perhaps the EFF can seek to overturn all Copyright Extentions back to the original 14 + 14 year one.
None of these players takes into account "content protection" expiration, and as such should be forced to include such features.
Re:The heart of the matter
by
Doc+Hopper
·
· Score: 3
The chances of us getting back to the original 28-year copyright are slim to none. The United States is bound by treaties requiring we adhere to international copyright standards, which require a copyright be valid for at least 50 years after the death of the last living author.
Thanks largely to the efforts of major copyright holders, the U.S. requires an additional twenty years beyond that and grants 120-year copyright on works made for hire.
It makes me physically ill to realize that Socialist France dictated national copyright policy to the land of the free and the home of the brave; the leaders of the land (when I was 5 years old, in 1978) did nothing to prevent it, and the current representatives are moving to strengthen the poorly-crafted dictates of earlier misguided legislators.
If you're interested in knowing what really happened to fair use in the USA and form an intelligent opinion regarding the legality of these technological measures to discourage fair use, I strongly recommend you consult some resources linked from http://fairuse.stanford.edu, particularly A History of Copyright in the U.S..
Why would anyone buy a VCR/DVD-R which didn't allow them to record from the TV? DVDs sell because the consumer rarely feels the effect of multiple regions, but if they cannot record Friends while out at a party, they will stick to non-protected VHS. I can't see the manufacturers that were burned by the DAT fiasco wanting a repeat performance with digital video devices.
My one problem with this.
by
Ergo2000
·
· Score: 3
While I completely and absolutely agree that the restrictions on digital mediums (i.e. the crippling of DAT) are absurd and should not exist, I think the article took a turn for the worse near the end when it sort of proclaimed that we're in a brave new world where everything should be free, etc, because it can be copied.
Firstly there is absolutely nothing stopping any of you from recording your own CD and sticking it on an FTP server. Note that I'm talking about an original work of art created by YOU with your banjo and Casio SK-1 keyboard, not ripped from your Kid Rock collection. Easy and free distribution! There is nothing stopping you from burning it on CDs and giving it away at the local homeless shelter. There is nothing stopping you from taking a DV camera and recording your own movie, mixing it down on your iMac, and cranking it to MPEG and putting it on your FTP server. NOTHING. Create all you want and you have to right to do whatever you want with it.
However rather than pursuing that people like to look to the hard work and creations of others and say "Because I CAN copy this therefore it is my RIGHT to copy this....yoink!". For all the claims about legals rights, blah blah blah, let's get to the root of the matter which is that people think everything should be free. Everyone else should be busy making movies and great CDs and because we can, we have the almighty given right to distribute it for free. Napster, despite manys claims that it would be a replacement of big music (i.e. letting bands grow independantly through this brave new world) ended up being almost entirely (i'd wager >99.999%) about RIPPING OFF the music of big music. Uh, if you own the CD why are you trying to download it from someone else? That's one of the poorest excuses I've ever heard. Lots of free rippers to MP3s so no one can claim they can't do it themself.
The matter is quite simply that people feel that if they CAN that they SHOULD. I could look on the net I'm sure that I can find a "How to steal a Chrysler" manual. Does that give me the right to go out and `borrow' Chryslers? Of course this gets into the "Well in that case you're depriving someone of something...but me I'm just making a copy! I've deprived no-one of anything!" That of course is complete bullshit that is the excuse of the thief. "Well that old bag had lots of money anyways!"
I would love to see a free world of people creating movies, music, etc., but you can see by example that it DOESN'T WORK. Without the capitalist incentive these reams of independants don't seem to be bothering. Somehow this would be resolved by raping the media companies and depriving the only ones who are creating viable entertainment of the right to control their creations? How utterly absurd and foolish. The proof is all there right in people's faces but people ignore it under the pretense of righteous indignation.
Re:My one problem with this.
by
Dirtside
·
· Score: 3
Wow, you're full of shit.
The bit about copying data being some old thief's excuse? What the hell is that? If I steal a Chrysler, that's a Chrysler the owner no longer possesses. If I make a copy of a song, the original owner still has the song. They have lost nothing. You've made no argument; you've simply stated, de facto, that this argument is wrong, without stating why.
Furthermore, it's people like you who make what the content providers do socially acceptable. "You shouldn't be copying! You're just doing it nefariously to your own ends!" Napster's a bad example because of the way it's constructed: you can't really use it to do anything but search for songs or artists you already know exist. But what the content providers are trying to do is PREVENT ANYONE FROM GETTING A PIECE OF THEIR PIE. They want it to be their exclusive right to create and control popular media; they want to make it impossible for people to do what the Internet and cheap hardware have made it possible to do: create and distribute alternative media.
Sure, I can go create a CD, like you said. But I can't create a DVD. Why not? Because the content providers don't want me to be able to.
It's not about little people "stealing" from the big media companies; it's about the big media companies trying to control everything so they can make a little more money. And it fucking blows.
-- "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Re:My one problem with this.
by
jandrese
·
· Score: 3
Did you read the article? Many of these schemes being devised WILL prevent you from publishing your own work digitally unless you get a contract from one of the big recording companies or work in a movie studio.
While current technology allows you to make copies like this, you can't expect people to use this technology forever, eventually most CD players will be replaced by DVD players or whatever the newest hottest technology is (how many of you still use cassette tapes?).
The worst part is, these big companies are still exercising an economy of scarcity in a world with nearly free limitless copies. Instead of cutting out the middleman and setting up a system where bands are paid to produce music (but not charged to "publish" it, as the publishing is free), you could have thousands of happy bands making more money and selling their content for a fraction of what it costs today. The only companies that lose out in that scenero are the publishing companies that don't want to switch to the new, more efficent business. I can see why too, since they have carefully engineered a system (and even had parts of it set into law) where they can rip off not only the band/actors, but the general public as well.
This is why these "Extremely low duplication/distribution costs can only be stealing!" posts really bug me.
--
I read the internet for the articles.
Re:My one problem with this.
by
Dirtside
·
· Score: 3
Justify anything to deprive someone of payment for their work? I guess that explains the more than $2,000 I spent last year on entertainment. Going to the movies and the theater. Buying books. Buying music. (Not DVDs, however.)
The point isn't that I want to steal media. I, and most other people here (not you though) are aware that if someone is doing something to make money, and they don't make money, they will eventually stop doing it. IT IS NOT TO MY BENEFIT TO DEPRIVE THE CONTENT CREATORS OF PAYMENT FOR THEIR WORK.
Sure, some people don't realize this, and it would be nice to educate them. I feel perfectly fine with paying for most media, most of the time.
But when the big media companies decide that in order to squeeze every conceivable penny out of the people that they can, by buying laws that restrict our freedoms and conspiring to introduce hardware that restricts our abilities to do WHAT WE PLEASE with THINGS WE PAID FOR, THEN I get upset and angry.
You would have us all lie down and do whatever the media companies say, because you believe they have some God- or law-given right to make money!
And we *HAVE ALREADY MADE OUR OWN MEDIA FORMATS* you troll! Vorbis! DivX (the video codec one, not the stupid Circuit City scheme)! It's not about making new media formats, it's about these companies trying to VIOLATE OUR LEGAL RIGHTS. Because of the media companies, Minidiscs are fairly useless, when they could have been an awesomely cool technology. Because of the media companies, it's possible to legally buy a DVD, and legally buy a DVD player, and they won't work, not because they're incompatible, BUT BECAUSE SOFTWARE IN THE PLAYER SPECIFICALLY PREVENTS YOU FROM PLAYING DVDs BOUGHT IN OTHER REGIONS!
Perhaps you could bother to educate me on why, exactly, there's no difference between me stealing a Chrysler, and me copying a CD (yet leaving the original CD with its original owner, undamaged and intact). You keep acting like it's a foregone conclusion, yet you refuse to provide any reasoning why (people who say, "If you don't know, I'm not going to deign to tell you" are just being assholes by refusing to shed any light on something they know is indefensible. Usually. Why don't you prove me wrong?).
-- "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
If you can show me one person who has not been able to pursue legitimate recording activites because of copy protection I will eat my words. Otherwise I stand by what I say.
Not to slam you for what you think, but here is my example:
I copied a CD which I paid full price for several years ago onto.wma format on my 400Mhz PII computer last year because the CD was starting to get a little scuffed up and hard for CD players to read due to some scratching that had occurred on its surface (I loved that CD and listened to it A LOT!). I then bought a new PIII 500Mhz computer with an even better sound system attached to it. I transferred all my music files, including the.wma files, to the new computer. Well guess what, now I'm not allowed to use them because I, quote "didn't purchase them", when in fact, I did. I would rather listen to the.wma files on my computer and let them get corrupted, than further scratch up a now out-of-print CD that can be copied over and over. Let me reiterate this: I CANNOT RE-PURCHASE THIS CD! The band has more or less broken up, and no longer puts out this CD. How else am I supposed to listen to these songs once my CD finally bites the dust?
P.S. - As indicated in my sig, the 77's are the group I am referring to, and Pray Naked is the now out-of-print album.
Re:Is there an understandable, non-technical summa
by
puppet10
·
· Score: 3
Here is a link to the International Fedration of Library Associations and Institutions with a huge bibliography of resources, not a summary but a great source of links to a large number of documents on current IP laws and regulations and some of the problems with the system.
One interesting link is about common myths of copyright.
And here is the copyright FAQ (a bit hard to find since the orignial link from the IFLAI is dead.
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This space intentionally left blank
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WTO, GATT, etc. on _our_ side?
by
gilroy
·
· Score: 3
Hey, here's something the article sparked in me that I'd never thought of:
Movie companies insisted on a "region coding" system for DVDs, because they would make less money if DVD movies were actually tradeable worldwide under existing free-trade laws.
Why use use free-trade laws to attack things like regional encoding? IANAL, but it sounds reasonable that encoding might violate numerous trade agreements.
Minidisc's employ the SCMS (Serial Copy Mangement System) copy protection scheme, which basically means you can't make a digital copy of a digital copy. You can read a short CDR versus Minidisc review here and you can find out information about the Prospec MSP-730 SCMS "stripper" right here. The MSP-730 basically outputs unlimited SCMS bits to allow you to copy digital copies. I believe the article is a bit old, so there may or may not be other products like the 730 available. According to the article, the DMCA made this product illegal, but perhaps you could find someone somewhere still selling them, I haven't looked so I don't know. If you're intested in knowing more about the Minidisc, you can also check out the Minidisc FAQ.
There are no consumer or civil rights representatives in the SDMI consortium.
The problem in a nutshell, and a signal of an alarming trend not only in consumerism but in politics also. Although these practices violate the concept of a free society by keeping the ways and means of electronic discourse (free speech) in the hands of the 'landed gentry' (corporate monoliths), governments around the world allow this to happen because they have been corrupted. At least this is the only plausible explanation I can find. That plus the possibility that they are just a little too stupid (actually even smart people don't have time to keep up on these things) to understand how the technology is being used to disenfranchise people.
Fact is, rights are being curtailed in many (all?) areas of daily life and we allow it. Why? Because we are used to being disenfranchised and powerless and our rage is almost always impotent. Rage cannot sustain itself for a long time, but lawyers and judges can file briefs, torts, and rulings forever.
I imagine that this feeling I am getting deep inside can't be much different than that which ignited the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution. Not quite a "Bastille Day" level of angst, but sufficient to call to action at least one Patriot who waits patiently for the General Alarm to be sounded.
This is a lot like Taxation without Representation.
People ask me why I get upset about such things. What should I tell them? They seem blissfully and willfully ignorant of such matters, happy with their little SUVs and yes, DVDs... What watershed event could possibly provoke Them (about 95% of this country) to action? Can anybody help me here?
-- SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Everyone is missing the real problem.
by
tgd
·
· Score: 4
The problem isn't that laws are being passed that are stealing our rights and selling them to corporations. The problem also isn't that manufacturers are building hardware to do what the laws aren't able to do.
These are all things that are easily under control of the people. We like to believe in these conspiracy theories that secretive business and government agents are developing these laws and technologies, but the fact is these businesses have money to do this because consumers buy their products, and these government officials are elected.
The true problem is twofold -- lack of understanding on the part of the general public, and a lack of caring on the part of many who do understand it. Does anyone on here think more than 1% of the population is aware of the DeCSS case? That's probably high by an order of magnitude! Does more than 1% of the population even know what DMCA is, much less how it affects them? I doubt it. And 99% of the people you could ask about restrictions like not being able to copy digital content at better than VHS quality wouldn't care, because they neither appreciate or have equipment capable of the higher quality.
Public ignorance and apathy are the reason we're losing these freedoms, not corporate greed and governmental corruption. Neither of those would have any power at all in a world of educated people who care about their rights.
"intellectual property" "ownership" are misnomers
by
burris
·
· Score: 3
The constitution and the writings of some of the framers of the consititution make it abundantly clear that copyright holders do NOT own the work. All copyrightable material is duly owned by the Public. Copyright only grants a temporary right to control the creation and distribution of copies (but not beyond the "First Sale"). It most certainly does not grant ownership in the same way I own pysical property.
Yes, in fact, there is book piracy. Lots of it. I used to work for a bookstore across the street from a major engineering company. Every week, eight or ten engineers would come in and _each_ buy $800 or so in mechanical engineering, programming, UNIX administration, and database books. The following week, they would return all those books, having freshly photocopied them, and purchase more. We had a three-ring binder full of names of people who were never allowed to return books at our store for this reason.
Do I think there should be more legal restrictions on book piracy? No. I think, for example, that teachers should be able to make copies to distribute in classes, especialy for book excerpts. You want to keep a photocopy of your book to read on the bus and not risk ruining the original? Go ahead. Want to type up an HTML version of your book and read it from any of your computers? Just don't advertize it to the general public. Loan your book to a friend? Feel free. Copying books is not much more difficult than copying software.
And book publishers don't labor under the delusion that they still own the book after you buy it. Copyright doesn't work that way, contrary to what music and video publishers would have you believe. You buy the *right* to view/listen to/read the material packaged in the media. The media itself is irrelevant. If I buy a book, I simultaneously buy the right to put that book's text on audio tape, CD, DVD, mp3, video of me reading, other paper, transparency, braille rock carving, and whatever other media I find convenient for getting that text into my head. If I buy a DVD, I buy the same package of rights, but the manufacturers and publishers have decided that I can't be trusted to have the tools to exercise those rights.
I have a DVD of a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert. I bought it. Legally. In a store. The right to consume that content is mine. And it's damn cool to see the way his hands fly over the guitar. But I'd like to take the audio portion, put it on CD, and listen to it in my car. Law lets me do this. I'm not selling, renting, giving, loaning, etc. this material to anyone else. I'm taking audio that I have paid for the right to hear and putting it on another medium that is more convenient for me. Nothing is wrong with this, except that companies won't make hardware that does it for fear of getting their asses sued off for selling something that *could* allow someone to make illegal copies. Time to ban Xerox machines. Throw out the pencil, you could transcribe the lyrics to a Popular Band(tm) song with that. It's dangerous!
--
To go outside the mythos is to become insane...
Important Point: This is Just the Beginning
by
burris
·
· Score: 4
John Gilmore drives home a very important point in this essay that is easily missed even though most of us are quite familiar with nanotechnology.
What is happening now to the movie and music industries will soon happen to EVERY industry. When we can build universal assemblers (matter compilers) that can turn dirt into nourishing food at the push of a button, will we mandate copy protection to save the farmers? Will we ban these machines to protect the jobs of carpenters, skilled laborers, machine tool manufacturers, etc ad nauseum?
John Gilmore is one of the few people who truly understand what is happening and where this is all heading.
Burris
Re:I can live without recording content...
by
pallex
·
· Score: 3
"that has things called trees and birds and sidewalks and parks and grass and stuff in it... it's amazing!"
There are `girls` there too - sort of like the `female` characters in anime, only more interactive!
In this text John Gilmore brings a number problems with the "new copyright". First it prevents legal copies like backup, quotes, and satire. Second it removes the Constitutional end to a copyright. Third if prevents others from publishing by creating a barrier to entry into the media. He also brings up that it prevents the user from using there property as thy wish and it makes a joke of the 5th amendment by making search without probable cause a fact of life.
I would like to add that to maintain this "new copyright" there will need to be more, bigger, and more powerful "police" like organizations. The SPA and the MPAA are already moving into these new roles. These "Police" will not only cost us money they will cost us liberty.
Please explain this to your friends and associates. Even if they don't understand or with remain free, at least they will have a clue if they wakeup latter. If not we will have at least tried.
Now even the poorest Americans have cars, television, telephones, heat, clean water, sanitary sewers -- things that the richest millionaires of 1900 could not buy. These technologies promise an end to physical want in the near future.
We should be rejoicing in mutually creating a heaven on earth!
Heaven on earth indeed! Technology doesn't make the world substatially better. Stuff does not make people truly happy. It's true that with the advancement of technology individuals have to face less hardships, but that doesn't mean the world is any better off. Hardship is not enjoyable but is a necessary part of growth. Weight training makes a person's body strong. Hardship makes a person emotionally strong. Mind you I am not advocating hardship and pain in quantities that it destroys or disrupts a person's growth, but a little bit in easy to swallow quantaties is healthy. I don't want people to become the emotional equivalent of veal.:)
Too often I see people heralding technology as the answer to everything. Let's not overextend it here. TV, MP3's and DVD's are not the answer to Pain and Suffering. Emotional strength is. DVD's will not end physical want, they increase it!
Other than this one point I agree with this article.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
-- The truth is more important than the facts. -Frank Lloyd Wright
But eventually your OWN content will be restricted
by
Frank+T.+Lofaro+Jr.
·
· Score: 4
Read the article more closely. With MiniDisc the author could not make copies of HIS recording of a wedding. Even though HE owned the copyrights to it.
If he were to circumvent the protections, would he be violating the DMCA. Maybe not, since the circumvention would be "with the authority of the copyright owner".
If he made a tool to do it, would that be a violation? Maybe, maybe not?
If he were to distribute that tool, intending it to be used only to allow use by a copyright owner to circumvent protections to their own content? Likely to be treated as a violation since it could be used for bad purposes, in spite of the exemption for use with "authority of the copy right holder". THe judge would likely assume the intent was not for a legal purpose. Look at Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS lawsuit - he ruled against the defendants, saying that the intent of DeCSS was bad, and even if it was good he STILL would have ruled against them, saying it would STILL be a DMCA violation.
If he were to distribute it, intenting it be used for any "fair use" reason, the would very likely be a DMCA violation. Heck, even if he crippled his tool in such a way that it COULD only be used for a "fair use" reason, it would still be likely to be illegal. Judge Kaplan would rule it so, for example. We will see what happens to an open source LiViD DVD player for Linux without copy ability, whether it is ruled illegal. If Kaplan gets the case, it will be. Then people can see that exercising "fair use" rights is illegal.
Maybe the best we can hope for is things get bad enough, fast enough to wake people up and make them fight back. Throw a frog in boiling water and it jumps right out. Put it in cold water and heat it and it will stay until it dies. People and their rights are like that too. Take rights away slow enough and they won't notice until it is too late. It seems fast to us, but it is slow enough to trick the public.
Perhaps Bush, unlike Clinton, will be so aggressive and fast at "protecting" industry, and so inept at doing it and making it look good, that the people will notice.
Anyway, anyone care to comment on which of my scenarios above would be safe, which ones would get one sued, but one would win, and which ones would get one sued and where one would LOSE? Any coments on what we can do? Anything an independant content producer should know or do to protect their right to release unprotected content?
-- Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Even that tounge-in-cheek solution doesn't really work well at all, because when you use one raster-scan device to record another raster-scan device, you get a nasty flicker unless you have
some specialized equipment to sync the scan of the recorder with the scan of the TV screen.
(It's basicly the looking-at-something-cyclical-under-a-strobelight effect. You can get anything from a false impression that it's standing still, to a false impression that it's moving backward, to a false impression that it's moving slower forward than is is - all depending on minor changes in timing between the cyclical activity (like spinning a wheel) and the strobelight speed.)
Camcorder recordings of a TV screen look terrible.
--
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:All CDs have "no copy" bit. Why no DMCA lawsuit
by
Frank+T.+Lofaro+Jr.
·
· Score: 3
Wouldn't it be simpler for the EFF to get a "declaratory judgement" by a court that it is legal, rather than having a whole suit?
-- Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You have fallen for the snow job.
by
DunbarTheInept
·
· Score: 3
You have fallen for the snow job given to us by the existing media moguls. They have tried to paint these technolgies as only being about pirating, when they also have other uses.
1 - If you *already own* a legal copy of a song, it is perfectly legal and ethically correct to copy that song to some other format. (For example, I have no CD player in my car, so I often make cassette tape compilations of some of my CD's so I can use them in the car. There is nothing wrong with this. I should not have to buy a song *twice* just to change its type of recording media. I've already paid the copyright holder for the right to listen to his intellectual property when I bought the song in its first form (CD). Therefore, If I use Napster to get an MP3 of a song *I already have* in CD form, I've done nothing wrong. This is the problem with the Metallica suit. They assumed falsely that everyone trading their songs was doing it illegally, when some of them probably were not. (They also arrogantly assumed that any file with a title that looked like one of their songs must be one of their songs, even though, for example, there are lots of artists with songs called "One".)
2 - DeCSS was written to allow people to view DVDs on opensource software. Because of the restrictions on getting the decrpytion information from the MPAA, this *required* that the encryption be reverse-engineered - the MPAA's non-disclosure agreement prevents people from showing their decrypting source code to the outside world, so if they wanted to make an opensource player they had to do it without signing that NDA, hence the reverse-engineering. DeCSS was *NOT* written for the purpose of pirating, although admittedly it can be used in that fashion.
Is it right to take away a technology becuase it *can* be used harmfully, even if that is not its main intended purpose? If that is truly how you feel, then I suggest you try outlawing automobiles, since they can be used for drive-by shootings, or running people over, or getting away from the cops after a robbery. The fact that their intended primary use is simple transportation doesn't matter to you apparently.
--
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Birthday parties and copyright
by
yerricde
·
· Score: 4
If proprietary formats are going to "prevent" people from copyright their own creations (such as the example "birthday party" video)
<IANAL>
At most birthday parties, the copyrighted musical work "Happy Birthday to You"[?] is performed. Thus, Warner-Chappell Music (a division of AOL Time Warner and the "Happy Birthday" copyright owner) has the right to claim your birthday party video (which includes a performance of "Happy Birthday") as a "derivative work" under copyright law. And no, the copyright on "Happy Birthday" hasn't expired; because it was copyrighted on or after January 1, 1923, it's under perpetual copyright in the US and WIPO states.
</IANAL>
[[Ordinarily, I don't feed the mentally-handicapped trolls, as it rewards the wrong kind of behavior, but there are certain misconceptions being thrown around that, alas, are mistakenly taken as axiomatic by far too many people, and need correction just on general principles.]]
Your homework is as follows. Answer the following questions. Be specific; give examples. Points are not given for bombast or ad hominem attacks.
Economics: Explain the fundamental difference between transfer of a resource and duplication of a resource.
Ethics: In a world where it is physically possible to copy anything, what is wrong with copying anything? (You may assume the existence of either Star Trek-like (energy-based) or nanotechnologically-based matter replicators.)
Mathematics: Since, by law, it is the responsibility of a publisher to ensure their work does not infringe against any other copyrighted work, the new work must be searched and tested against every existing work to assure non-infringement. Assume, either by law or by technological operation, copyrights never expire. Plot the curve of the search/test time as the number of already-copyrighted works increases. At what point does the curve exceed the physical ability to conduct the test?
Social Studies: In a world where a creator's artifacts can be duplicated by anyone anywhere, what intangible property or concept will still be crucial to reward jobs well done?
Politics: A dozen or so entities tried to provide input to the drafting of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but only two actually had any meaningful effect. Name them.
Computer Science: You attempt to write a block of data to a hard disk, but the operation fails. Describe the steps that can be taken to determine with 100% certainty if the failure is due to a flaw in the drive (necessitating replacement), or due to properly operating copy control measures.
Answers (ROT-13):
Genafsre bs n erfbhepr vf gur onfvf bs gursg, naq vf n pevzr jura cresbezrq vaibyhagnevyl. Qhcyvpngvba bs n erfbhepr vf gur onfvf bs qvyhgvba, juvpu vf abg n pevzr (gubhtu terrql, guvpx-urnqrq crbcyr tehzoyr nobhg vg).
Abguvat. Fvapr rirelbar jvyy unir npprff gb gur fnzr novyvgl gb pbcl, gurer jvyy or ab fbpvny arrq gb pbafgenva pbclvat, fvapr gur "nttevrirq cnegl" pna fvzcyl znxr gurve bja pbcvrf bs jungrire gurl arrq.
Vg nyernql unf.
Gur pbaprcg bs erchgngvba jvyy or prageny gb gur shgher vapragvir fgehpgher. Juvyr pbcvrf bs negvsnpgf jvyy syl nebhaq yrsg naq evtug, gur perngbe'f erchgngvba jvyy or jryy-cebgrpgrq ol ynj naq fbpvny pbairagvba.
[[Concerning his pooh-poohing of DeCSS's legitimate uses, it would be nice to mention that I'd rather like to write an OpenGL screen blanker that takes whatever DVD is in the drive, maps the movie on to a sphere, and bounces it around. It would be nice to point out that such use of a DVD is perfectly legal -- even cool -- but utterly impossible without DeCSS or something like it. But somehow I doubt he'd be able to grasp the concept.]]
Too many issues clouded together
by
RalphSlate
·
· Score: 3
John Gilmore lumps too many things into one rant. What he is calling for will never be implemented, but his criticism is definitely justified.
People who use the "information wants to be free, create a utopia of information" argument won't win. People deserve to be paid for their creative works, and anything that contributes to the mass dissemination of content without the consent of the copyright holder should rightfully be stopped.
However, access to digital content shouldn't be completely controlled by the copyright holders just because they can do it, and the circumvention of these controls shouldn't be illegal.
That's where Fair Use comes in. Fair Use protects someone from time-shifting a TV program or video. It protects someone from quoting a passage of a book to make a point or to write a review. It allows you to make a tape of a CD and give it to your friend (but not to your 100,000 other Napster friends). Basically, it allows us to do petty things with the content that won't hinder the sale of the content.
John Gilmore is right on some things though -- there are plenty of copyright holders out there whose mentality is "if you read my book twice, you should pay me twice". Those people are the antithesis of the Napster crowd, and should likewise rightfully be stopped too.
I think that this copyright control may be happening in response to the Napster crowd. In order to stop their content from being distributed everywhere for free, they lock it down so no one can get to it, and they make laws making the cracking of their restrictions a crime.
Can there be a happy medium? I don't know. If the material is available for digital copying, then Napsters will pop up and everyone will be breaking copyright. To stop that from happening the publishers break fair use. How can you balance the two? I don't know.
Slashdot Mirror
I find this just a little disturbing. Fast-foward about 10 years. There's a show on TV that I enjoy watching, but will be missing because of a prior engagement. I used to be able to tape it and watch it later. Now? Tough luck... Will this also kill the Tivo market as well as the VCR market? If my VCR can't transmit to HDTV.. can I rent movies still?
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
This is the shortest description of an article that I've ever seen on slashdot in the last 2 years .. ;-)
--
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
And if you're a pissed-off journalist, attend Sony press conferences and tell them they can shove their products up their corporate backsides. It make not make much difference but it _will_ make you feel better. Nothing better than seeing the grin freeze on some smart lackey with all the Playstation buzzwords after you tell him his company can go fsck themselves.
And if you're a pissed-off techie and you work for anyone of these scum-buckets then I have just one question: WHY? Don't give me that "well I have to earn a living" shite. Go and work for someone else and get a clear conscience.
Aah - I feel better already...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
The rant hits a few important points, but i think the most important is this: The media giants don't want you to be able to be a content provider. Not only do they want to put out their music on uncopiable formats, they don't want you to be able to use your own 'free mp3/get paid touring' business model because it could prove to other artists that the record companies are squeezing them dry. If they can keep you locked out of portable music players, home stereo components, and desktop software then their monopoly is assured.
e x p e c t d e l a y . c o m
copy protection n.
A class of methods for preventing incompetent pirates from stealing software and legitimate customers from using it. Considered silly.
Briefly:
copyright exists in artistic works
patents exist in processes
Whenever you produce a work, it is protected by international treat and you own the copyright in it. You don't need to apply for copyright - you own it immediately.
However, the copyright might belong to someone else under copyright. For example, under your contract of emplyoment, your work will probably be owned by your employers, and some websites might have as a condition of your agreement with them that they own the copyright.
Fair use applies for criticism and study, broadly. Thus it is legitimate to post a few lines from a book in order to review it, since that would be fair use. Posting the entire book, OTOH would not be fair use.
Reverse engineering OTOH, is not illegal as such, since copyright does not exist in ideas (only in expression of those ideas). Thus when Rob Malda said that he wouldn't sue
Kuro5hin 'in the spirit of open source', he was wrong, since the idea cannot be copyrighted. Software code is treated as a literary work (although most code is not very poetic),
and so is protected by copyright.
There do exist design rights however, and the look and feel may be protected under copyright. So if you produced something that looked to similar to Slashdot, that would be breach of copyright.
Patents exist in respect of processes - in particular there is a requirement for a novel and innovative way of doing something (with a particular requirement for absence of prior art). These can affect software, if the software includes a novel process.
Finally, there is passing off - if a product is confusingly similar to another well-known product it will be passing off, provided they are in the same market sector.
Thus a McDonalds construction company has no chance of confusion with the burger chain, whereas the cafe owned by Ronald McDonald was, since they were in the same business.
In conclusion, the copyright holder owns the work, and can do what he likes with it. He can sue if you do anything, excluding fair use that breaks his owners rights.
Just treat any modern form of IP (DVD, software, music) like you would old world IP, a book.
Can I make copies of my book for myself? Yes.
Can I take my book apart? Yes.
Can I modify my book? Yes.
Can I loan my book out? Yes.
Can I read my book in any order? Yes.
Can I read my book when I want? Yes.
Look at all the HORRIBLE things I can do with books, and yet I dont see people claiming that modern copy machines are hurting book sales.
FunOne
FunOne
Easy. From the article (which I can tell you did read because of your quote later on):
By private agreements behind the laws and standards, such as the unwritten agreement that DAT and MiniDisc recorders will treat analog inputs as if they contained copyrighted materials which the user has no rights in. (My recording of my brother's wedding is uncopyable, because my MiniDisc decks act as if I and my brother don't own the copyright on it.)
John Gilmore wanted to pursue a legitimate recording activity and was unable to because of copy protection. Start eating.
And people seem to think no-one gets hurt by these things. They are wrong. The people working for record and computer companies have jobs and families too.
Boo-frigging-hoo. So the entire population must accept crippled technology and a steady erosion of its constitutional rights so that a small minority of sharks and their dependants can survive?
As for the rest of your comment - copyright does not mean "owned by" and it is not the same as property. It means the copyright holder has a limited time over the distribution and use of his or her work.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Ask the Irish about the dangers inherent in mono-culture.
They became dependent on a single kind of potato even though the new world had dozens of them.
The end result was the famine, the death of millions, economic disruption Ireland still hasn't recovered from and some stern lessons which are being ignored at the peril of those who would repeat history in technology instead of agriculture.
Mono-cultures are forever poised on the knife edge of catastrophy. One slip leads to oblivion.
Has anyone noticed that infection incidents are becoming more severe? Melissa is spawning faster and spreading much wider using ruses programed into it.
Changing the vector from diskette to e-mail is part the reason. Using larger 'active' content is another part. Now imagine a exploit of content files, infected media. I'm sure someone's already getting hard at the thought.
One particularly complex and capable computer virus which could be carried over the expanded communications channels in place now could conceivably wipe out everybody without a set of uninfected backups.
The Luddites would win. But at what a cost...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Get ready to eat your words. Backup. I have children. Every once in a while CDs tend to get ruined. At the moment with most CDs that I have I can have a backup. I have a VCR at the moment I have backups of many of the tapes. The ones that I can't backup piss me off. One of the reasons I have not gone to a DVD yet is because of the backup issue. At the moment, and due to brain dead schemes like this, I buy a shiney new DVD and if by chance it should fall into the hands of my daughter it is going to be gone, bye-bye, sorry. I have *no* way of backing it up, my only choice is to buy it again. So yes I am being hosed at that point. And oh BTW "piracy" does not mean that great software never reaches me. I don't use software that is not free (as in speech) to start with. So why is that not a good use?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
You quote:
And then you say:
Which makes no sense. Even if we accept your spurious interpretation of copyright as ownership, copyright law explicitly permits copying (e.g., for backup) and time-shifting.
The fact is that piracy makes companies go bust.
Name one.
Information is not at all like a bike. If i use your bike, you can't, so you better lock it or walk home. But I can use your information and you can use mine all at the same time. We just like it when we compensate each other for the effort it took to create that information. That is what copyright is intended to do.
In the "olden days", your bike analogy worked quite well. The only way for me to get compensated by consumers of my info. was to have them pay for copies. Now, the cost of making copies is essentially zero. New economic models are going to have to be created to deal with this. Someone mentioned a "'free mp3/get paid touring' business model". Why can't that work? Because it takes Time Warner and Sony out of the loop... Now does that sound right?
Yet all CD ripping software, including that made by "big name" companies ignores the no copy flag. And the CD reader hardware happily extracts digital audio from tracks with the flag set too.
How come no one is getting sued for circumventing this copy control? I think this should qualify as abandonment of the DMCA or selective enforcement. Take your pick, either is sufficient to have the DMCA stricken from the lawbooks.
One point about this whole thing that I haven't seen mentioned:
The MPAA/RIAA and other "big media" "content owners" are operating under the assumption that their content is their's into perpetuity. This is wrong, per the Constitution which only grants "limited time" ownership. By behaving in a manner which assumes that content can never fall into the public domain, perhaps the EFF can seek to overturn all Copyright Extentions back to the original 14 + 14 year one.
None of these players takes into account "content protection" expiration, and as such should be forced to include such features.
Why would anyone buy a VCR/DVD-R which didn't allow them to record from the TV? DVDs sell because the consumer rarely feels the effect of multiple regions, but if they cannot record Friends while out at a party, they will stick to non-protected VHS. I can't see the manufacturers that were burned by the DAT fiasco wanting a repeat performance with digital video devices.
While I completely and absolutely agree that the restrictions on digital mediums (i.e. the crippling of DAT) are absurd and should not exist, I think the article took a turn for the worse near the end when it sort of proclaimed that we're in a brave new world where everything should be free, etc, because it can be copied.
Firstly there is absolutely nothing stopping any of you from recording your own CD and sticking it on an FTP server. Note that I'm talking about an original work of art created by YOU with your banjo and Casio SK-1 keyboard, not ripped from your Kid Rock collection. Easy and free distribution! There is nothing stopping you from burning it on CDs and giving it away at the local homeless shelter. There is nothing stopping you from taking a DV camera and recording your own movie, mixing it down on your iMac, and cranking it to MPEG and putting it on your FTP server. NOTHING. Create all you want and you have to right to do whatever you want with it.
However rather than pursuing that people like to look to the hard work and creations of others and say "Because I CAN copy this therefore it is my RIGHT to copy this....yoink!". For all the claims about legals rights, blah blah blah, let's get to the root of the matter which is that people think everything should be free. Everyone else should be busy making movies and great CDs and because we can, we have the almighty given right to distribute it for free. Napster, despite manys claims that it would be a replacement of big music (i.e. letting bands grow independantly through this brave new world) ended up being almost entirely (i'd wager >99.999%) about RIPPING OFF the music of big music. Uh, if you own the CD why are you trying to download it from someone else? That's one of the poorest excuses I've ever heard. Lots of free rippers to MP3s so no one can claim they can't do it themself.
The matter is quite simply that people feel that if they CAN that they SHOULD. I could look on the net I'm sure that I can find a "How to steal a Chrysler" manual. Does that give me the right to go out and `borrow' Chryslers? Of course this gets into the "Well in that case you're depriving someone of something...but me I'm just making a copy! I've deprived no-one of anything!" That of course is complete bullshit that is the excuse of the thief. "Well that old bag had lots of money anyways!"
I would love to see a free world of people creating movies, music, etc., but you can see by example that it DOESN'T WORK. Without the capitalist incentive these reams of independants don't seem to be bothering. Somehow this would be resolved by raping the media companies and depriving the only ones who are creating viable entertainment of the right to control their creations? How utterly absurd and foolish. The proof is all there right in people's faces but people ignore it under the pretense of righteous indignation.
Not to slam you for what you think, but here is my example:
I copied a CD which I paid full price for several years ago onto .wma format on my 400Mhz PII computer last year because the CD was starting to get a little scuffed up and hard for CD players to read due to some scratching that had occurred on its surface (I loved that CD and listened to it A LOT!). I then bought a new PIII 500Mhz computer with an even better sound system attached to it. I transferred all my music files, including the .wma files, to the new computer. Well guess what, now I'm not allowed to use them because I, quote "didn't purchase them", when in fact, I did. I would rather listen to the .wma files on my computer and let them get corrupted, than further scratch up a now out-of-print CD that can be copied over and over. Let me reiterate this: I CANNOT RE-PURCHASE THIS CD! The band has more or less broken up, and no longer puts out this CD. How else am I supposed to listen to these songs once my CD finally bites the dust?
P.S. - As indicated in my sig, the 77's are the group I am referring to, and Pray Naked is the now out-of-print album.
Here is a link to the International Fedration of Library Associations and Institutions with a huge bibliography of resources, not a summary but a great source of links to a large number of documents on current IP laws and regulations and some of the problems with the system.
One interesting link is about common myths of copyright.
And here is the copyright FAQ (a bit hard to find since the orignial link from the IFLAI is dead.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Minidisc's employ the SCMS (Serial Copy Mangement System) copy protection scheme, which basically means you can't make a digital copy of a digital copy. You can read a short CDR versus Minidisc review here and you can find out information about the Prospec MSP-730 SCMS "stripper" right here. The MSP-730 basically outputs unlimited SCMS bits to allow you to copy digital copies. I believe the article is a bit old, so there may or may not be other products like the 730 available. According to the article, the DMCA made this product illegal, but perhaps you could find someone somewhere still selling them, I haven't looked so I don't know. If you're intested in knowing more about the Minidisc, you can also check out the Minidisc FAQ.
--It's Pimptastic!--
There are no consumer or civil rights representatives in the SDMI consortium.
The problem in a nutshell, and a signal of an alarming trend not only in consumerism but in politics also. Although these practices violate the concept of a free society by keeping the ways and means of electronic discourse (free speech) in the hands of the 'landed gentry' (corporate monoliths), governments around the world allow this to happen because they have been corrupted. At least this is the only plausible explanation I can find. That plus the possibility that they are just a little too stupid (actually even smart people don't have time to keep up on these things) to understand how the technology is being used to disenfranchise people.
Fact is, rights are being curtailed in many (all?) areas of daily life and we allow it. Why? Because we are used to being disenfranchised and powerless and our rage is almost always impotent. Rage cannot sustain itself for a long time, but lawyers and judges can file briefs, torts, and rulings forever.
I imagine that this feeling I am getting deep inside can't be much different than that which ignited the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution. Not quite a "Bastille Day" level of angst, but sufficient to call to action at least one Patriot who waits patiently for the General Alarm to be sounded.
This is a lot like Taxation without Representation.
People ask me why I get upset about such things. What should I tell them? They seem blissfully and willfully ignorant of such matters, happy with their little SUVs and yes, DVDs... What watershed event could possibly provoke Them (about 95% of this country) to action? Can anybody help me here?
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
The problem isn't that laws are being passed that are stealing our rights and selling them to corporations. The problem also isn't that manufacturers are building hardware to do what the laws aren't able to do.
These are all things that are easily under control of the people. We like to believe in these conspiracy theories that secretive business and government agents are developing these laws and technologies, but the fact is these businesses have money to do this because consumers buy their products, and these government officials are elected.
The true problem is twofold -- lack of understanding on the part of the general public, and a lack of caring on the part of many who do understand it. Does anyone on here think more than 1% of the population is aware of the DeCSS case? That's probably high by an order of magnitude! Does more than 1% of the population even know what DMCA is, much less how it affects them? I doubt it. And 99% of the people you could ask about restrictions like not being able to copy digital content at better than VHS quality wouldn't care, because they neither appreciate or have equipment capable of the higher quality.
Public ignorance and apathy are the reason we're losing these freedoms, not corporate greed and governmental corruption. Neither of those would have any power at all in a world of educated people who care about their rights.
Burris
Yes, in fact, there is book piracy. Lots of it. I used to work for a bookstore across the street from a major engineering company. Every week, eight or ten engineers would come in and _each_ buy $800 or so in mechanical engineering, programming, UNIX administration, and database books. The following week, they would return all those books, having freshly photocopied them, and purchase more. We had a three-ring binder full of names of people who were never allowed to return books at our store for this reason.
Do I think there should be more legal restrictions on book piracy? No. I think, for example, that teachers should be able to make copies to distribute in classes, especialy for book excerpts. You want to keep a photocopy of your book to read on the bus and not risk ruining the original? Go ahead. Want to type up an HTML version of your book and read it from any of your computers? Just don't advertize it to the general public. Loan your book to a friend? Feel free. Copying books is not much more difficult than copying software.
And book publishers don't labor under the delusion that they still own the book after you buy it. Copyright doesn't work that way, contrary to what music and video publishers would have you believe. You buy the *right* to view/listen to/read the material packaged in the media. The media itself is irrelevant. If I buy a book, I simultaneously buy the right to put that book's text on audio tape, CD, DVD, mp3, video of me reading, other paper, transparency, braille rock carving, and whatever other media I find convenient for getting that text into my head. If I buy a DVD, I buy the same package of rights, but the manufacturers and publishers have decided that I can't be trusted to have the tools to exercise those rights.
I have a DVD of a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert. I bought it. Legally. In a store. The right to consume that content is mine. And it's damn cool to see the way his hands fly over the guitar. But I'd like to take the audio portion, put it on CD, and listen to it in my car. Law lets me do this. I'm not selling, renting, giving, loaning, etc. this material to anyone else. I'm taking audio that I have paid for the right to hear and putting it on another medium that is more convenient for me. Nothing is wrong with this, except that companies won't make hardware that does it for fear of getting their asses sued off for selling something that *could* allow someone to make illegal copies. Time to ban Xerox machines. Throw out the pencil, you could transcribe the lyrics to a Popular Band(tm) song with that. It's dangerous!
--
To go outside the mythos is to become insane...
What is happening now to the movie and music industries will soon happen to EVERY industry. When we can build universal assemblers (matter compilers) that can turn dirt into nourishing food at the push of a button, will we mandate copy protection to save the farmers? Will we ban these machines to protect the jobs of carpenters, skilled laborers, machine tool manufacturers, etc ad nauseum?
John Gilmore is one of the few people who truly understand what is happening and where this is all heading.
Burris
"that has things called trees and birds and sidewalks and parks and grass and stuff in it... it's amazing!"
There are `girls` there too - sort of like the `female` characters in anime, only more interactive!
(nice post mate!)
In this text John Gilmore brings a number problems with the "new copyright". First it prevents legal copies like backup, quotes, and satire. Second it removes the Constitutional end to a copyright. Third if prevents others from publishing by creating a barrier to entry into the media. He also brings up that it prevents the user from using there property as thy wish and it makes a joke of the 5th amendment by making search without probable cause a fact of life.
I would like to add that to maintain this "new copyright" there will need to be more, bigger, and more powerful "police" like organizations. The SPA and the MPAA are already moving into these new roles. These "Police" will not only cost us money they will cost us liberty.
Please explain this to your friends and associates. Even if they don't understand or with remain free, at least they will have a clue if they wakeup latter. If not we will have at least tried.
Thanks
Charles Puffer
Now even the poorest Americans have cars, television, telephones, heat, clean water, sanitary sewers -- things that the richest millionaires of 1900 could not buy. These technologies promise an end to physical want in the near future.
:)
We should be rejoicing in mutually creating a heaven on earth!
Heaven on earth indeed! Technology doesn't make the world substatially better. Stuff does not make people truly happy. It's true that with the advancement of technology individuals have to face less hardships, but that doesn't mean the world is any better off. Hardship is not enjoyable but is a necessary part of growth. Weight training makes a person's body strong. Hardship makes a person emotionally strong. Mind you I am not advocating hardship and pain in quantities that it destroys or disrupts a person's growth, but a little bit in easy to swallow quantaties is healthy. I don't want people to become the emotional equivalent of veal.
Too often I see people heralding technology as the answer to everything. Let's not overextend it here. TV, MP3's and DVD's are not the answer to Pain and Suffering. Emotional strength is. DVD's will not end physical want, they increase it!
Other than this one point I agree with this article.
-pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Read the article more closely. With MiniDisc the author could not make copies of HIS recording of a wedding. Even though HE owned the copyrights to it.
If he were to circumvent the protections, would he be violating the DMCA. Maybe not, since the circumvention would be "with the authority of the copyright owner".
If he made a tool to do it, would that be a violation? Maybe, maybe not?
If he were to distribute that tool, intending it to be used only to allow use by a copyright owner to circumvent protections to their own content? Likely to be treated as a violation since it could be used for bad purposes, in spite of the exemption for use with "authority of the copy right holder". THe judge would likely assume the intent was not for a legal purpose. Look at Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS lawsuit - he ruled against the defendants, saying that the intent of DeCSS was bad, and even if it was good he STILL would have ruled against them, saying it would STILL be a DMCA violation.
If he were to distribute it, intenting it be used for any "fair use" reason, the would very likely be a DMCA violation. Heck, even if he crippled his tool in such a way that it COULD only be used for a "fair use" reason, it would still be likely to be illegal. Judge Kaplan would rule it so, for example. We will see what happens to an open source LiViD DVD player for Linux without copy ability, whether it is ruled illegal. If Kaplan gets the case, it will be. Then people can see that exercising "fair use" rights is illegal.
Maybe the best we can hope for is things get bad enough, fast enough to wake people up and make them fight back. Throw a frog in boiling water and it jumps right out. Put it in cold water and heat it and it will stay until it dies. People and their rights are like that too. Take rights away slow enough and they won't notice until it is too late. It seems fast to us, but it is slow enough to trick the public.
Perhaps Bush, unlike Clinton, will be so aggressive and fast at "protecting" industry, and so inept at doing it and making it look good, that the people will notice.
Anyway, anyone care to comment on which of my scenarios above would be safe, which ones would get one sued, but one would win, and which ones would get one sued and where one would LOSE? Any coments on what we can do? Anything an independant content producer should know or do to protect their right to release unprotected content?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
(It's basicly the looking-at-something-cyclical-under-a-strobelight effect. You can get anything from a false impression that it's standing still, to a false impression that it's moving backward, to a false impression that it's moving slower forward than is is - all depending on minor changes in timing between the cyclical activity (like spinning a wheel) and the strobelight speed.)
Camcorder recordings of a TV screen look terrible.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Wouldn't it be simpler for the EFF to get a "declaratory judgement" by a court that it is legal, rather than having a whole suit?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
1 - If you *already own* a legal copy of a song, it is perfectly legal and ethically correct to copy that song to some other format. (For example, I have no CD player in my car, so I often make cassette tape compilations of some of my CD's so I can use them in the car. There is nothing wrong with this. I should not have to buy a song *twice* just to change its type of recording media. I've already paid the copyright holder for the right to listen to his intellectual property when I bought the song in its first form (CD). Therefore, If I use Napster to get an MP3 of a song *I already have* in CD form, I've done nothing wrong. This is the problem with the Metallica suit. They assumed falsely that everyone trading their songs was doing it illegally, when some of them probably were not. (They also arrogantly assumed that any file with a title that looked like one of their songs must be one of their songs, even though, for example, there are lots of artists with songs called "One".)
2 - DeCSS was written to allow people to view DVDs on opensource software. Because of the restrictions on getting the decrpytion information from the MPAA, this *required* that the encryption be reverse-engineered - the MPAA's non-disclosure agreement prevents people from showing their decrypting source code to the outside world, so if they wanted to make an opensource player they had to do it without signing that NDA, hence the reverse-engineering. DeCSS was *NOT* written for the purpose of pirating, although admittedly it can be used in that fashion.
Is it right to take away a technology becuase it *can* be used harmfully, even if that is not its main intended purpose? If that is truly how you feel, then I suggest you try outlawing automobiles, since they can be used for drive-by shootings, or running people over, or getting away from the cops after a robbery. The fact that their intended primary use is simple transportation doesn't matter to you apparently.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
If proprietary formats are going to "prevent" people from copyright their own creations (such as the example "birthday party" video)
<IANAL>
At most birthday parties, the copyrighted musical work "Happy Birthday to You"[?] is performed. Thus, Warner-Chappell Music (a division of AOL Time Warner and the "Happy Birthday" copyright owner) has the right to claim your birthday party video (which includes a performance of "Happy Birthday") as a "derivative work" under copyright law. And no, the copyright on "Happy Birthday" hasn't expired; because it was copyrighted on or after January 1, 1923, it's under perpetual copyright in the US and WIPO states.
</IANAL>
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Real sued some company that made a product that could copy and save streamed audio and video, won, and it was only protected by a single bit.
-- 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.
[[Ordinarily, I don't feed the mentally-handicapped trolls, as it rewards the wrong kind of behavior, but there are certain misconceptions being thrown around that, alas, are mistakenly taken as axiomatic by far too many people, and need correction just on general principles.]]
Your homework is as follows. Answer the following questions. Be specific; give examples. Points are not given for bombast or ad hominem attacks.
Answers (ROT-13):
[[Concerning his pooh-poohing of DeCSS's legitimate uses, it would be nice to mention that I'd rather like to write an OpenGL screen blanker that takes whatever DVD is in the drive, maps the movie on to a sphere, and bounces it around. It would be nice to point out that such use of a DVD is perfectly legal -- even cool -- but utterly impossible without DeCSS or something like it. But somehow I doubt he'd be able to grasp the concept.]]
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
John Gilmore lumps too many things into one rant. What he is calling for will never be implemented, but his criticism is definitely justified.
People who use the "information wants to be free, create a utopia of information" argument won't win. People deserve to be paid for their creative works, and anything that contributes to the mass dissemination of content without the consent of the copyright holder should rightfully be stopped.
However, access to digital content shouldn't be completely controlled by the copyright holders just because they can do it, and the circumvention of these controls shouldn't be illegal.
That's where Fair Use comes in. Fair Use protects someone from time-shifting a TV program or video. It protects someone from quoting a passage of a book to make a point or to write a review. It allows you to make a tape of a CD and give it to your friend (but not to your 100,000 other Napster friends). Basically, it allows us to do petty things with the content that won't hinder the sale of the content.
John Gilmore is right on some things though -- there are plenty of copyright holders out there whose mentality is "if you read my book twice, you should pay me twice". Those people are the antithesis of the Napster crowd, and should likewise rightfully be stopped too.
I think that this copyright control may be happening in response to the Napster crowd. In order to stop their content from being distributed everywhere for free, they lock it down so no one can get to it, and they make laws making the cracking of their restrictions a crime.
Can there be a happy medium? I don't know. If the material is available for digital copying, then Napsters will pop up and everyone will be breaking copyright. To stop that from happening the publishers break fair use. How can you balance the two? I don't know.
Ralph