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Lawrence Lessig On Hollywood's Attack On Fair Use
Richard Koman writes: "Tim O'Reilly and I interviewed cyberspace lawyer Lawrence Lessig about the law and P2P for O'Reilly's OpenP2P site. He makes some great points about the legal and investment climate for P2P (the RIAA's goal is to "guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off") and the full-bore attack on fair use in the DeCSS case (the DMCA says "you cannot crack copyright protection schemes even if your purpose is to allow you to have fair use of the underlying material.")" I disagree a bit with Lessig's statement on the second page about why we don't have book licenses - I think it's because the legal system refused to enforce them, not because the book industry thought it was futile. But overall it's definitely a good read.
This may be great article that has generated some excellent discussion, It won't put a dent into the RIAA's efforts until the story is picked up by the mainstream media, and put into terms that the average American can understand. /. and the rest of the "geek press"; we now need to get CNN, USAtoday, etc to cover the story.
This has had enough coverage on
Headlines such as
"Publishers to prosecute reading children's stories" and
"Hollywood to ban VCRs"
are the way to get the message across. This will be the only way to get to the politicians who right now are aligned with the media if for lack of a strong (ie, voter affecting) counter-lobby.
That's because companies can see this for the legal time bomb that they are, and want no association with them. That is, until they become successful money makers and they can invest without the chance of legal recourse coming THEIR way. I find it interesting that so much emphasis has been placed by the media on the idea that VC money has to go into any new technology. As just about everyone here knows, that simply isn't so. As has been stated many times before, all it takes is one sharp programmer to write a new application that is good enough and wanted enough that it takes off. As for P2P, some may say that the "geek factor" in programs like Gnutella and Freenet will doom them to failure in the mainstream marketplace. I haven't tried them yet, so I can't say how usable they are, but the same was said about things like IP telephony, Netcasting, and even the Internet itself, anf they were all adopted by the masses to one extent or another. Usable or not, VC-backed or not, P2P must continue to develop, if for no other reason than to show the media industry that it doesn't have veto power over technology. And FWIW, when the printing press was invented, it scared the hell out of the monarchies and the Church. These entities had a stranglehold over information, and they were going to either harness this new technology for their exclusive use or crush it if they had no other choice. For a long time, they mostly succeeded, but they ultimately failed, although the unlicensed printers of the day probably didn't see many encouraging developments. The thing is, people didn't give up, and freedom ultimately won, even if it took a few hundred years.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
There was originally a balance struck with copyright. People accepted the rights of authors to have control over their work for a period of time (then 14 years). This allowed the author (and publisher) to make money from his work. In return, at the end of that period of time, the work would become part of the public domain, free for all to use. That bargain is long dead, broken by publishers. They continually lobbied for more control and longer copyright terms, and they got them. Now copyrighted works don't go into the public domain for at least 70 years, and that's only if the author dies right after creating the work. Is it any wonder that many people have no respect for copyright anymore? We haven't seen anything go into the public domain for decades! We're going back to the times before the Statute of Queen Anne in Britain where publishers had perpetual copyright control over works they published. That was stopped by the Statue of Queen Anne, and US courts acknowledged that copyright is a privilege, not a right, and that there were no perpetual rights granted to authors or publishers for control over the works they create and publish.
Today, publishers are still seeking perpetual control over the works they publish. People should understand that if there is to be a bargain, they must keep their end. Why should we create laws that serve only to enrich a few at the expense of the freedom of the rest of us? We grant copyrights so that authors will continue to create new works for us to enjoy and learn from. They will continue to create these things whether we give them 14 years of copyright protection or 1400 years of copyright protection. It is in the best interest of most of us if we limit the term to something reasonable such as 14 years. As things stand today, anything created in our lifetime will likely not go into the public domain in our lifetime. That's just not right and illustrates how the scales are tipped heavily in the publishers' favor. What we need now is copyright reform. We need to roll back the copyright term to the original 14 years (plenty of time to turn a very nice profit). There will be a fight. Highly profitable corporations do not give up money without a very big fight. But we need to restore a balance between the creators and the public. That alone could go a long way towards restoring respect for the copyright system and ensuring that the creators will profit from their creations. Yes, the publishing industry will have to resign themselves to not being able to milk a creation for all eternity, but there's really no reason they should have ever had such a right to begin with.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
During the last few months in France, a debate has been inflamed by some authors and certain groups representing authors which feel that libraries are giving their work away for free, and that libraries should instate fee-based book-loaning. That would be, I think, a quick shut-down of one of the simplest sources of free information.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
ok, i'll bite.
SlashDot is not an activist group, it is a news site. for nerds. not all nerds are into the same things; some of them even have tastes and opinions which conflict with those of other nerds. some nerds want to watch movies. some nerds want to boycott the MPAA. supporting all these diverse interests doesn't make SlashDot hypocritical, any more than your local newspaper is being hypocritical for publishing editorials of differring opinion.
so enhance your calm. Slashdot is a rich tapestry!
/bluesninja
Unlike most people on Slashdot, I am neither pro-Napster nor anti-copyright. IMHO, it would have been disastrous in the long term if Napster had been allowed to spread unchecked because once technology to transfer music easily from PCs to Home Audio Systems to Cars to Personal Devices was perfected [5 to 10 years], no one would ever buy music again and it would kill music as a profession except for a few heavily marketed superstars (Britney Spears, N'Sync, etc) and truly talented groups (Pink Floyd, U2, Metallica, etc) in certain genres who could still make money touring. Similarly with eBooks, a serious disincentive for books being published has been the copyright issues and the creation of a growing underground of book pirates who trade eBooks similar to how MP3s were traded until Napster, Gnutella and Scour.net opened it up for the masses. Few authors are comfortable with spending months or years writing a book just for others to distribute it for free and prevent them from putting food on the table.
On the one hand the "Digital Rights Management" technologies being created to combat these threats to copyright are ominous. Microsoft plans to support digital rights management at the OS level very soon and has started making moves in that direction while hard drive manufacturers have considering adding hard drive copy protection to all systems built in future and Intel has flirted with copy protection for monitors and other display devices. All of the aforementioned technologies are invasive, distasteful and prevent users from exercising their rights to fair use of copyrighted or non-copyrighted works.
Also recent legal wranglings aimed at protecting copyright have robbed consumers of rights that they have had or should have such as the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In the same vein certain rulings against opponents of the RIAA and MPAA such as the $118 million dollar ruling against MP3.com or the ruling against 2600.com are ridiculous.
So my question is this: Is there a middle ground?. On the one hand I am opposed to piracy and "Information Wants to Be Free" has always been a poor justification for piracy in my opinion (whether software or music) but on the other hand it is clear that something has to be done soon about the way in which consumer rights are constantly being eroded. Basically I believe that until advocacy against the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright cartels begins to counter their arguments with reasonable points that can benefit both sides, we are doomed to continue in this downward spiral. As long as our arguments boil down to "I want free shit" or "No encryption can't be hacked", we will constantly be at war with the RIAA & MPAA and since they have more money (and thus better lawyers) than us, they will win.
Grabel's Law
Personally, I believe that the user should be legally entitled to take 720x480 screenshots and extract 22kHz 8-bit stereo sound (if not 48kHz 16-bit stereo). The program would restrict the NUMBER of the screenshots (so as to prevent frame-by-frame piracy, as if DeCSS and DivX haven't already made this obsolete), and one minute of audio per session. The current content-control system (and that's exactly what CSS boils down to: content control) is truly Orwellian (if not also Draconian). Those who control the present control the future, those who control the future control the past, and those who control the movie industry indirectly control the sanity and demeanor of the people.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Will someone please explain to me why copyright and patent infringements are called theft? What has been stolen?
It's just propoganda, or PR if you like. Sellers call it "theft". Stallman calls it "sharing". Both have connotations that the correct term, "copyright violations" does not have. However, the people calling it theft or sharing want people to identify with those connotations.
If you copy an entire piece of commercial software and use the copy instead of purchasing that software, the software vendors argue that you have used their service but did not pay them their demanded fee for that service. That would be theft.
It is the using their product without paying their fee that is theft, not the copying part. It's just that the copyright laws are the best tool in law to protect against such theft, but don't knock them because they also bring useful protection, like the right to make a backup.
Does my bum look big in this?
About thirty years ago it became possible and easily accessible for anyone to copy an entire book on a copier. They could then bind it and voila, a "free" book. This did not herald the end of the publishing industry. My opinion is that, although easy to do, it's not worth the time/cost of doing. It may be that this ability reduced the cost of books to consumers; if a book cost $34,000 one might consider copying and binding it.
Twenty years ago it became fairly simple for someone to copy software using cracking utilities or just a disk copy. Did this begin the downfall of the software industry? At that time, the software industry believed it would but ultimately people continue to buy software. Most readers of Slashdot can find a crack for a demo program and use it. But your cracked demo usually is somehow not quite as good as the purchased version -- there might be stray lines in some graphics or some driver is not supported. It's usually easier and cheaper in terms of time to buy the CD, stick it in and hit install than modify some DLL with a hex editor. Again it is likely that the ability to copy puts downward pressure on software prices which is good for consumers.
The most recent developments make it possible, for example, to obtain almost any song and play it at near-CD quality. Woe to the music industry! Of course using Napster you have to find the song, wait in a queue for your download to begin, then hope that your song wasn't encoded by some ninny at 20kbps or stops before the last 20 seconds. If, on the other hand, you could say "Stairway to Heaven" into your remote control and 5 seconds later it downloads (and can be replayed ad infinitum) to your Sony MP3 Jukebox thanks to your gigabit connection to Columbia House wouldn't it just be easier to pay $.003?
My point is that the result of these new technologies has not and will not result in ruination of an industry. Instead it will result in lower consumer prices and _possibly_ lowered profits for some copyright-based industries. The RIAA and Hollywood have no right to force profit-protection legislation on consumers. They simply need to make it easier for consumers to buy music/video than to copy it.
The only feature of "P2P" that most every person give a damn about is that it facilitates piracy. This is a common feature of all the (psuedo) P2P methods that the music and recording industry has litigated against. Lessigs statement clouds the matter, the industry couldn't give a rat's ass about "new models of distribution", they care about piracy of their own materials. If these "new models of distribution" didn't, as a matter of fact, focus around piracy then the industry would have a much harder time in court. The innovators of these "models" put more effort into facilitating piracy than they do into stopping it.
I'll grant you that the fundamental idea behind P2P is cool in and of itself. However, realistically, what additional advantage does Napster (et al.) offer to the consumer or the artist over and above the traditional centralized client server architecture (which has the added, and well established, benefit of preventing piracy)? It's actually worse for the artist. Ok, so they can stick their song on their own computer and serve it. Maybe if they get really lucky someone will randomly stumble across and download it. Of course, in the mean time, the song may be renamed, damaged, replaced, etc. A central server can do all of this and more. Storage is cheap, certainly cheaper than the expensive database systems that napster employs. You can still get the "random search"--if you believe that important. What's more, you can insure consistent quality, information on the artist, etc. You can also create indexing systems, web pages, common tastes/suggestions (similar to what Amazon does), etc.
In my opinion, until the proponents of P2P can offer a convincing cost versus benefit argument for society that doesn't thumb its nose at copyright, it won't stand a chance. Like it or not, copyright is an integral and important feature of our society. Limiting or regulating P2P to preserve the intent of copyright may well make more sense than just allowing P2P to ride roughshod over copyright. Sometimes inaction can do far more violence than action. It is ridiculous to assume that inaction of the law is necessarily the safer course just because there are some legal complexities.
Has anybody else been reading User Friendly's recent satire of Hollywood thought suppression? Good stuff, and I'm glad to see the Lessig interview for a serious look at the same subject.
--
This is not my sandwich.
Uh oh...Lessig fell for the "Read Aloud" "right" in the eBook. I think we covered that a while ago and concluded that it was actually phrased ambiguously and should have been more like: "This book is not able to be read aloud by a text-to-speech program".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
. . . the fundamental problem of what is wrong with DMCA, and why strong-IP guys like myself are opposed to it, is that it doesn't protect the plaintiff's intellectual property. In fact, the upshot is that it provides patent-like protection for anti-circumvention "technologies" (an overly generous term in many cases) with unlimited term and virtually unlimited scope.
The irony of the DeCSS case is that the subject matter that was labelled contraband was not written or conceived by the plaintiffs, but rather by the defendants! It was the original intellectual property of the defendants that was restrained. This is why the First Amendment is so clearly implicated in this case.
Businesses that rip off their customers by delivering broken product and not accepting returns quickly go out of business.
You mean like how microsoft is going out of business?
Bullshit. Businesses that don't make money go out of business. Businesses that rip off their customers can make a fortune if they are the only supplier for that product.
0 1 - just my two bits
IP is meant to protect the invention or writing of the inventor or author, respectively. This is done for the supposed benefits derived from giving this incentive, ultimately to promote the Sciences and the Useful Arts. [Sciences mean writings -- Useful Arts means inventions -- go figure!]
But great care must be taken to balance the grant of rights solely to serve those purposes. To this end, the Courts have assiduously avoided broadening the scope of remedies beyond the typical: measurable or statutory damages, and narrowly tailored injunctions to prevent infringement of the work (and nothing else).
My problem with DMCA is that it does not provide remedies focused on protecting the work itself, but rather on protecting something other than the work. In the DeCSS case, the defendant wasn't enjoined from copying or distributing the plaintiff's work -- he was enjoined from distributing his own original work.
That's where the first amendment is so deeply implicated -- this is original expression that is being stifled, allegedly in a good cause, but it is original expression that is being stifled. It is not derivative of the plaintiff's expression -- indeed, it is entirely unrelated.
But now the real danger is that the recording industry has succeeded in its objective, which as Hillary Rosen (president and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America) said, is to guarantee that no venture capitalist invests money in new modes of distribution unless Hollywood signs off.
This is the guts of it. Media companies don't like the potential that new technologies have for distributing content (and excluding them from the supply chain). So what's their strategy been? Armies of lawsuits to make sure that a) anyone with a good idea has to waste their time defending a legal case and b) anyone who wants to fund a good idea won't - because they don't want to get involved in a legal case.
Ironically, the most dangerous and subversive tools are the ones written by individuals or small teams with zero funding - Gnutella, OpenNAP and Freenet.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Oops - didn't finish: 1201(c)(1) states: Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title. Therefore, if any scheme interferes with your fair use rights, you can legally circumvent those schemes. CSS interferes with the ability to make derivative works (i.e. fast forward when you want to), the ability to excerpt for a review, etc. Since DeCSS is necessary to restore fair use rights, 1201(c)(1) makes it legal.
"DeCSS is akin to a tool that breaks the lock on your house."
;)
;)
This part is ammusing. And correct, much as it pains me to admit it. The ammusing part is that it is a tool to break *MY* lock. That lock is MINE, and I can break it if I want to. Just like a hammer can break the lock on MY house, and it's perfectly legal to do so, DeCSS can break the lock on MY DVD.
Now, if I break the lock on my neighbor's house, I will rightfully be prossecuted. This is as it should be. Just as if I break the lock on my neighbor's DVD. *THAT* is wrong. Unless I do so with my neighbor's permission of course.
Now, whose is the DVD, that is the question. Going by what I understand of copyright law, specificly First Sale, the DVD belongs to me once I buy it. The restriction is that I may not make a copy to give or sell to another person. The content is protected by copyright law, the PHYSICAL OBJECT is mine to do with as I please. This includes renting, loaning, selling, or destroying this object. And I am allowed to make copies for my own PERSONAL, NON-COMMERICAL use. The FBI warning even says that, IIRC.. Or at the least it's not included in the stuff I can't do.
So yes, I do indeed have the right to distribute the tool to break a lock. In my analogy the tool is a hammer. I can buy this at a hardware store. Or I can sell or give away my hammer. If I know that the person intends to use my hammer to break a lock that isn't thiers without permission I suppose I could be an accessory to the crime. However, there are a number of perfectly legit uses for that hammer and as long as the person did not tell me specificly that they intended to do something illegal with it I would not know. Nor should I be held responsible for it.
This applies to DeCSS just as well as my hammer. If I put DeCSS on a website for download, I don't know the people downloading it. I don't know what they intend to do with it. For all I know they are making a backup copy for thier kids to use so that the original doesn't get scratched up. This is legal, so I'm fine. Or they are planning to quote it for fair use, this is also fine. Or they could just want to watch it on a Linux box. Yes, they could intend to pirate it and sell it to thier friends. Just like the guy that bought the hammer could intend to break into houses or kill people with it.
Point is, if the hammer is not illegal, why is the code for DeCSS? The hammer can be used to KILL. The code can only facilitate piracy, and even that is not the only use it has. So the worst case senario for both shows that the hammer is a FAR greater danger to society.
This is INTOLERABLE. We must start a campaign to ban hammers at ONCE! They MIGHT be used to kill someone, the safety of our CHILDREN is at stake!!! Join me fellow Americans, help me lobby Congress!! We must stop the danger that hammers bring to our families!! If corporate profits are reason enough to ban something that can, at worst, be used to steal content, than the protection of our CHILDREN MUST be a good enough reason to ban something that can KILL! WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?!?!?!?!
;)
Lessig mentions the Alice in Wonderland license which states that "This book cannot be read aloud." I believe that this has already been the subject of a slashdot article. But what does that restriction really mean-- does the ebook have the technical ability to read certain "enhanced" texts aloud, or is it an obnoxious loicensing restriction. Lessig is right about one thing. It is unfair and unethical to impose restrictions on the use of a non-copyrighted book-- especially since the text was entered in by Project Gutenberg.