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DMCA Worldwide: Canada, New Zealand, USA
cdlu writes: "Citing the need for up-to-date digital copyright laws, the Canadian government is starting hearings into our own version of the US's DMCA. Do you still wonder why people protest at the G-8 and other such summits?" Meanwhile, New Zealand is also planning to reform its copyright laws to include DMCA-like restrictions, and in the USA, Congress is planning to double the number of FBI agents and Federal attorneys devoted to pursuing copyright cases.
This idea is laughably broken - and anti-capitalist - what is next? Perhaps they will tax walking and give those taxes to Exxon, after all, it hurts oil companies when people don't drive.
Why should someone who uses CDRs for, say, duplicating software such as Linux, have to pay money into the coffers of the record industry?
Where is the competition that is supposed to drive capitalism when companies are being paid directly from government imposed tarrifs?
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It's not so bad, when you allow for the fact that the media up here will cheerfully crucify any politician who shows any weakness. Witness Stockwell Day.
Also, our ruling party, the Liberals (who are actually conservatives) doesn't have that big a majority in Parliament. If the four opposition parties ever get their act together, and if some Liberals vote against their party, the opposition could defeat the government's bill.
Theoretically.
But the Bloc will just argue over what the bill gives to Quebec, the Alliance will continue to commit suicide, the NDP will give very eloquent speeches but will end up making no difference at all, the Conservatives (who may or may not be conservatives, depending on whether their flipped heads or tails that morning) will do nothing, and John Nunziatta will whine.
And the bill will go through, and Teflon Jean will get away with everything.
Hey, kids! Let's play "guess which of the opposition parties the poster is a bitter member of!"
This is from the Amnesty International 2001 World Report, the section on the U.S.
~ Leilah
Did you forget the sarcasm tags or do you really feel that way about our country? Calm down.
Having lived in the United States most of my life (including the last 8 years or so), and having lived for many years elsewhere (including Europe and Japan), and having travelled around the entire globe on two seperate occasions, I am under no illusion whatsoever that our country is the "freest" country on Earth: it isn't by a very long shot. Nor is it the worst place on earth.
It does, however, have much more in common with most "third world" countries I have visited than with the democracies of western Europe or even Japan. Western Europe (the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany in particular) has a much higher level of personal freedom than is accorded Americans by our government, and while Japan for various cultural regions isn't a bastion of democracy, it joins western Europe in providing basic amenities to all of its citizens (that dirty word "socialism" again).
The squalor one sees in the major cities of the Unites States (including tens of miles of it not too far south of my own home in Chicago) is matched only in places like Delhi, Mexico City, Istanbul, Sao Paulo, and the like. Not by Tokyo, not by Berlin, not by Paris, not even by London.
Corruption? Yes, it exists everywhere, but not with the flagrance of the United States. Again, to come close to matching the kind of things one sees here, such as the DMCA and dissappearance of engineers who upset large corporations, you must travel to places like Indonesia, El Salvador, and Russia.
The only thing keeping the United States out of the list of "third world" nations is our raw wealth, 98 per cent of which is controlled by less than 1 per cent of our population.
Factor in human rights, political corruption, environmental policies and by many people's reconing the United States would already qualify for third world status, our notorious wealth notwithstanding.
"Calm down." Good Lord, that is what Americans have been doing for over thirty years, and that is why we have become fat, slothful, and too lazy to even consider speaking out to defend our own basic rights, much less the rights of foreign visitors taken into custody by our own, home grown, secret police, and then held incommunicado for days, weeks, months, sometimes years, and in at least one instance executed in direct violation of international norms and the Geneva Convention without having ever been allowed to speak with his consulate.
Don't believe me? Do some research. The information is there, it just isn't being spoon fed to you on the evening news by Dan Rather.
Once you've informed yourself a little bit I suggest you get out and see a some of the world outside of this one country you seem to place so much blind faith and trust in (and no, the hotel room, the lobby, the taxi, and the office of your branch office in Madrid don't count, any more than they would if that were all you'd seen of the United States. Then again, perhaps it is that very deficiency which prompted your knee-jerk reaction to my earlier post. Or perhaps it hit a nerve, being so close to home.)
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The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
And they want your bitch ass back on the couch absorbing their spoon-fed message, not ferreting out uncomfortable truths and engaging in public discourse that could upset their applecart, expose their corruption and cost them an election (or a government). [Sorry for the harsh verbiage, but I'm trying to underscore what I think the real motive behind our governments' willingness to sell out our individual freedoms and rights to a bunch of Copyright protectionists is, namely to disempower those who have been so empowered by the internet. Copyright violators aren't the real target
We Americans are indoctrinated from childhood with the mantra "ours is the best nation on earth, there is no place where one can be as free as here in America" and so forth. It is shocking and disturbing to an American the first time we are abroad for any length of time and are forced to either live in blatent denial of the world around us or to acknowledge that, in comparison to most prosperous, industrialized countries we aren't very free at all, and that (aside from cheap living space because of the size of our land) our economic lives really aren't any better than those of many people who live elsewhere and have, on top of that, access to medical care and insurance a good 40% of our working people do not.
Just as you were shocked to discover your government's ill behavior in the 70s (and I would take that coverage with a grain of salt. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but do recall the anti-communist hysteria of the west at the time and consider the "spin" put on those events might well be exaggerating the event, perhaps out of proportion with what happened), others have been shocked and roused to public action as a result of things they have learned outside of the corporate media that has been spoon feeding us these pleasant lies for so long.
The last thing these governments want is for the majority of people to have access to this information, to become interested and active in politics as a result. Their comfortable lives and bases of power are thus threatened. Is it really any wonder they tried to destroy speech on the internet through the guise of "fighting pornography" and, when the Supreme Court shot that down, have turned to the much more potent and virulant notion of "copyright infringement" instead, criminalizing what for the previous two centuries had always been a civil offense and then forming task forces within our secret police (FBI) to prosecute such cases?
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The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Now it has turned out that I'll be doing my post-doctorate studies in the US next year and the Sklyarov case got me thinking if I might be in trouble because of my DeCSS mirroring. After all the MPAA lawyers argued that I was in breach of DCMA.
... unlike most civilized countries we are very bad about letting foreign nationals see their consulates or government representatives (we have even executed people without ever granting them this right, which is supposedly guaranteed by the Geneva Convention). We may be wealthy, but in most respects we are very much a third world nation, one whose corrupt politicians now have it in for programmers and free speech proponents such as yourself.
Why on earth would you do something so foolish as to come to the United States, particularly after Dmitry Sklyarov has disappeared into our Gulag for violating the very same law?
Any ideas?
Yes. Go somewhere else to do your graduate work. Do not risk imprisonment in the United States
Unless you would like to become another martyr for the disappearing liberties of a fat and lazy people who couldn't be bothered to care for themselves, much less some foreigh "troublemaker," I would strongly suggest finding a less oppressive country in which to study and not take the risk.
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The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
They started in the mid 70's and was continuing to the early 90's and then got a bit better. There are however still abuses.
... now there is no tension, because the DMCA, by exploiting a semantic bug in the US Constitution, has guaranteed copyright enforcement through criminal law at the absolute expense of freedom of speech. Copyright is now paramount, and any freedom of speech you might have had comes in a distant second.)
I'm not relying on foreign media, those just made me discover the whole thing. There are lots of information from independent sources in the country if you just search good enough.
That is one of the beauties of the internet, and the primary motivation I suspect for the comming "War on Copyright Infringement." In an environment where ISPs are compelled under legal and financial threat to remove any offending material at the merest assertion that it might be infringing on someone's copyright, censorship by governments and corporate intersts will go from "impossible" (remember "the internet routes around censorship" soundbite of a few years ago?) to being trivial.
Now, thanks to the DMCA, if they really want to get you (rather than merely silencing your voice on the 'net) they can arrest you on criminal charges for copyright violations (for the first time in our nation's history! Prior to the DMCA one could only be sued for copyright infringement, never arrested. There has always been a tension between copyright and freedom of speech
What, you say you didn't violate anyone's copyright, you merely posted information emberrassing or irritating to [insert your favorite Government or Corporation here]? When the evidence is an electronicly stored file, planting it is trivial. Indeed, manufacturing whatever evidence the Feds want to manufacture, for whatever purposes, is trivial. How on earth can you prove that that Metallica MP3 wasn't on your hard drive until after the Feds shut down your anti-FBI site, for example? It comes down to your word against their's, and unfortunately, here in the United States, people are very strongly conditioned to believe the word of a well groomed FBI agent over that of a "radical" "hacker" (well groomed or otherwise). What do you think all those Hollywood action films have been indoctrinating us with all those years?
It is interesting your government ceased its wholesale theft in the early nineties. Wasn't that about the time the internet came into widespread use and information began flowing freely as never before? Perhaps merely a coincidence, but if so, an interesting one.
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The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Domestically, some copyright stakeholders have indicated that in the absence of a prohibition against the manufacture and traffic in circumvention devices, would-be infringers can legally access the means that enable infringement. With respect to the possibility of sanctioning acts of circumvention alone, these stakeholders have also expressed the concern that attempts to seek legal recourse on the basis of such acts are costly and may not always be effective in providing a strong deterrent to infringement in a globally interconnected world.
The departments acknowledge the concerns of these copyright stakeholders, but must consider these concerns within the framework of Canadian copyright law, where certain uses of works and limitations on copyright protection are recognized as serving legitimate and important public policy objectives. Such limitations are evidenced by the finite term of copyright protection, the fair dealing provisions and the exception provisions. These elements of our copyright law have been the outcome of extensive debate, consultation, jurisprudence and legal obligation, both domestically and internationally. Any attempt to affect that balance may require a reconsideration of the current extent of the exceptions provisions.
The departments have considered the possibility of restricting or prohibiting the traffic in circumvention devices, while at the same time permitting devices that have, as their primary purpose, an activity that qualifies as legitimate, such as the enjoyment of an exception or access to material in the public domain. The difficulty is that devices which are suited to infringing uses are, by and large, equally suited to non-infringing uses. For example, a device used to circumvent a measure that prevents unauthorized copying will not distinguish between materials that continue to benefit from copyright protection from those that have fallen into the public domain.
Under these circumstances, the departments question whether it is possible to establish a legal framework which, on the one hand covers virtually all activities that undermine the use of technological measures, but at the same time continues to reflect the policy balance currently set out in the Act. Such a change in the Copyright Act could potentially result in a new right of access, the scope of which goes well beyond any existing right, and would represent a fundamental shift in Canadian copyright policy. It could serve to transform a measure designed for protection into a means of impeding legitimate uses. In essence, a change of this nature would be tantamount to bringing within the realm of copyright law, matters (e.g., restrictions on use) which may be more properly within the purview of contract law. Given the rate at which the technology underlying protection measures is changing, it is difficult, under present circumstances, to evaluate the public policy implications of such a step. Perhaps the role of technological changes warrants a careful study to examine what will be the dimensions of the intersection of anti-circumvention measures with the current Act.
In 1995, the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) had filed a proposed tariff (Tariff 22) whereby ISPs were asked to pay royalties for the communication of the musical works in SOCAN's repertoire over digital networks such as the Internet. In its decision of October, 1999, the Board asserted its jurisdiction to certify such a tariff. The decision is currently under review by the Federal Court of Appeal.
Blair: Ohhhhhh, but mummy, i want a Digital Millenium thingy law too...
Mum: No dear, you already have the millenium dome and look at it, you played with it for 5 minutes and now its just sitting in your city making a mess. We're not getting anymore millenium buzzwords OK?
Blair: Ohhh ohhh but please! pleaeeeeese! all my friends at school have their own copyright laws - look even canada is getting one. And Mr Gates and some people from the MPAA said they would give me loads of money if i got one.. and, and i promise to look after it and feed it lots of criminals.... PLEEEEEASE!
Mum: NO! we have enough laws already, look at that "killing welsh people on wednesdays with a crossbow" law, you _still_ havn't got around to clearing it up yet.
Blair: Bloody monarchy
-tfga
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
There is really nothing wrong with the idea of a a world government as long as it is not a fascist one. Fascism has had a long history. The current western world is a continuation of the fascist Roman empire which was a continuation of the fascist Babylonian empire. Only the seat of power has moved over the millenia.
Computers and the internet are the latest tools in the arsenal of the fascist. Record keeping has always been the true basis of their power to control the masses. Now that we have all been numbered (social security numbers, driver's license numbers, etc...) it a simple thing to spy on the citizens of supposedly free countries. By forcing ISPs to spy on everybody, the governments of the world are in fact instituting Big Brotherism as the de facto form of modern government. Why? Because we are all slaves and the slave masters need to have control over their slaves.
"Do you still wonder why people protest at the G-8 and other such summits?"
Yes I do as a matter of fact. I wonder why a bunch of spoiled rich american/eurotrash kids are affected by a political version of Munchausen by Proxy so early in their lives. The key to prosperity for the third world is trade. The economic system is irrelevant, only a handful of nations can even come close to self-sufficiency in this day and age. Even socialist nations must trade with their neighbors to get what they need for survival and economic growth. That point is 110% lost on the protestors in Genoa and Seattle and the whole anti-globalization movement itself.
The American people are to blame for the DMCA as much as anyone. The average American doesn't care what their Congresscritter does so long as they support one or two things the average voter likes. Those of us that actually care what our congresscritters do, must find ways to defeat them even if they have they have popular support. We can do that by giving donations to organizations such as the EFF, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the Individual Rights Foundation. These are the organizations that fight the cases we dislike, but are powerless to stop since our congresscritters pass the laws we dislike anyway.
Printing press and phonograph invented
Copyright is invented, a controversial law from the beginning.
Publishers rise to control physical distribution, pay authors--though not always fairly. There is no alternative.. people need books / records, authors need some cash. This system works relatively well for awhile. Consumers bootleg copyrighted materials by exchanging physical media. Losses are minimal and individuals aren't worth prosecuting.
Copyright law changes at the whim of publishers, effectively eliminating the creation of public domain works by extending the length of copyright indefinitely. Artists and authors increasingly produce "works for hire," which are then owned by the publisher they work for.
Popularization of the Internet and new data compression algorithms render traditional means of disseminating information nearly obsolete overnight. Some artists and authors realize that they don't need publishers anymore. Publishers ignore the Internet, seeing little threat.
Consumers realize that they can obtain copyrighted works on the Internet instead of paying for getting them on traditional media. Publishers for the most part look the other way.
DMCA quietly slips through Congress, in the guise of protecting US businesses and complying with international copyright treaties.
Napster shows the world the power of P2P information exchange with each user contributing a small part of the whole. Publishers get worried, can't sue every user, fumble for recourse. Napster falls and DMCA is challenged in numerous cases, but wins out in the end because money is power and those behind DMCA have lots of it. Consumers watch the Napster case curiously, stop using it after it's clear the end is near.
Publishers finally realize that the future of distribution is online and design crude digital copy control technologies which are protected under the DMCA. Each successful attempt to defeat these measures is crushed legally but is given little attention by the media.
Consumers aren't as comfortable with the new intangible online media and would prefer to keep buying books and CD's. Sales stagnate. Consumers don't realize the implications of future technologies that they have not yet experienced and remain quiet.
Prediction
Publishers attempt to phase in online media sales. Some consumers bite, but are quickly frustrated by the inability to read an e-book or listen to music on multiple computers they own. HDTV arrives with its own copy protections. VCR's recording functions stop working. Copy protected audio disks don't work in consumers older players or in car players. Works are distributed in both old and new formats while consumers are encouraged to buy new (and better) hardware that supports the new formats. [This process would likely take at least 10-20 years given the installed base of CD players, saturation of the home computer market, and lack of inexpensive, eye-friendly electronic books]
Just when the publishers think they have won the war over content, a movement similar to Open Source is established that sweeps the world and begins a modern cultural renaissance. Publishers disappear. The public domain expands rapidly. Artists and authors are fairly reimbursed by using alternative business models and handling distribution themselves. (eg. give away music, sell concert tickets) The world is a better place.
Wishful thinking? People said the same thing about Open Source 5 years ago and IT hasn't even fully taken off yet.
There are many issues involved in anti-globalization rallies...wages, sweatshops, environmental laws, police brutality, corporate dominance, biotechnology, racism, classism. Of course, next to all of these, the ability to watch DVD's on Linux computers is also present, but it isn't what has been drawing hundreds of thousand of people into the streets since the Dedication in Seattle.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
So while it is important we get our comments in, it looks like the government already sees the real problems with the DMCA. So let's fire up our word processors and clinch the deal, shall we?
Now, you're suppose to post something like "I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those pesky, meddling kids and their van!"
^_^
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In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
It really sucks that this would be the case. Let's just hope that the poster-boy US citizen who gets nailed by a forgin version of the DMCA is appealing enough that the press will run the story as front-page news.
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In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Now it has turned out that I'll be doing my post-doctorate studies in the US next year and the Sklyarov case got me thinking if I might be in trouble because of my DeCSS mirroring. After all the MPAA lawyers argued that I was in breach of DCMA.
Any ideas?
But the worst the DVD Forum can do, according to the article, is bar the Chinese companies from using the DVD name or logo on their product!
Fine with me. Big whoop. I'll buy a "DVD compatible" player or a "binary video disc player" anyday. Yeah! Then maybe we can get some firewire outputs on 'em too. DVD could be so much better if it wasn't so closed, proprietary, s3cr33t, and litigous at any 3rd party innovations.
This is like the start of the PC clones all over again. And we all know the clones won out in the end and made PCs into deeply discounted commodoties.
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Oh yeah, silly me.....
So that's why DVD's cost about 50% more in the UK than they do in the States.
So tell me again, who's paying ?
People like Jack Valenti have demonstrated they have no understanding of current technology, that they are inefficient and stupid (see his alt2600 deposition - it would be laugable if it weren't so sad). I mean this is a guy who needs more cars and houses at his disposal than whole towns in order to live "comfortably" and he is a small fry compared to others. In other industries (like coal mining, steel production) this state of affairs leads either to the end of whole industries (with mass layoffs) or to a huge reduction in output. But the backers of DMCA want to change the legal system to support their entirely unnecessary industry (Courtney Love's description of which is not flattering) and seem to believe their companies deserve to be protected. They are using their influence to achieve these ends.
I suppose it isn't surprising though - I mean in the US the oil industry names tankers after members of cabinet (a cabinet that is rabidly pro-oil and with zero support for alternative energies) and the government proposes changes to tax laws that will likely save just Bush and his cabinet over a billion dollars. Wealth and power is what it's all about. The wealthy need their power to feel safe about all the money they have and are naturally more greedy (since they have more stuff) - I don't blame them. It's when their greed results in anti-democratic law-making that impedes innovation that it needs to be pointed out and resisted.
Much as we may hate the idea, copyright is a part of the way the world currently works. Take a look at the bottom of this page, notice the "The Rest(c) 1997-2001"? The existing laws were written before they had any idea of what computers would one day be capable of. Updating them to include [to the same degree of fairness] digital forms only makes sense. Otherwise you are left with unequal protection, depending on the media.
The problem with the DMCA is that it was slipped in by the copyright holders and is way too heavily in their favour (including ignoring various other constitutional concepts). The DMCA isn't bad for simply being an extension of copyright law - it is bad for being a biased extension.
All Canada is doing at the moment is starting hearings about their own version. The idea of hearings is that they give everyone the chance to speak up and prevent the kind of abuses that are in the DMCA. So, instead of complaining that it's happening - it will almost certainly happen whether you like the idea or not - start making your opinions heard; block the copyright holders from simply writing their own law; ensure fair use remains a concept; and produce a sensible version Americans can point their simple minded government towards as a good example.
What's going to happen to Bleem! ? That was one program that would've been definitely illegal under the DMCA, yet they won the court case against Sony. So what happens there?
The DMCA effectively makes it illegal to question bad encryption.
The DMCA is an attempt to accomplish by putting people in prison what should be accomplished by improvements in software quality and in copyright law.
The DMCA artificially ends, or severely hinders, extremely important technical and legal discussions. It is a breach of the U.S. constitutional law of free speech.
Bush's education improvements were
I can just envision a scenario where countries all over the world, under pressure from the U.S., enact DMCA-like laws only to have the U.S. DMCA law overturned by the Supreme Court. Then the U.S. can point to the DMCA-like laws in those other countries as being examples of how those countries don't respect free speech like the U.S. does...
Well, I doubt any one of these "DVD compatible" player could be imported to US, in view of the fact that merely 'discussing' an encryption algorithm would violate DMCA.
:)
I'm currently located in China and we use full-region DVD player for viewing more expensive US and Japanese version of Hollywood's movies, because far east version are always not available.
They delay the release of far east version so that US people wouldn't be able enjoy cheaper version even if they could get a full-region DVD player. So your plan wouldn't work.
Americans want full-region DVD players for saving cost in buying DVD, while Chineses buy them for viewing more expensive US version. Irony isn't it?
Yes, it's called the European Union Copyright Directive.
As a future ex-patriot I'm beginning to wonder where I'm going to go.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
The Canadian government is influenced by business, as is any government. However, this is complicated by a few things. Firstly, the government has been dominated by one party for nearly a decade, while the opposition parties have basically crumbled -- so there is virtually no effective opposition at the federal level. Secondly, information technology issues get little attention from the public -- there are a number of more pressing issues currently facing the government such as aboriginal rights, the poor state of health care, and regional discontent. It's hard to get anyone to pay attention to anything else. Thirdly, US policy has influence over Canadian policy -- since the US is our biggest trading partner, it is difficult for us to pursue economic policies that come into direct conflict with theirs.
Finally, and possibly most importantly, us Canadians don't have a culture of defending rights and freedoms. Many British loyalists settled in Canada after fleeing the American revolution. We were granted independence from Britain peacefully in 1867, under the motto of "peace, order, and good government" (note the lack of mention of liberty). We have gun control and socialized medicine. We had neither a constitution nor bill of rights until 1980 -- they were controversial at the time and many Canadians still think them unnecessary. Sure, we get uptight about freedom of speech and so on, but there's no tradition of "live free or die" -- we like consensus, getting along, and doing what is in the public interest over what is best for the individual. I suspect that new regulations on copyright enforcement will recieve a relatively easy ride in Canada.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Is this the same FBI that lost all those books full of evidence in the McVeigh case? The same FBI that has managed to lose God knows how many government-issued and government-bought pistols and computers (with who knows what on the hard disks)?
The FBI's reputation is going down the tubes right now, and any Congresscritter that actually goes along with this idea is shooting themself in their political foot.
The DMCA was written so the United States could be WIPO treaty compliant. Basically, if your home country's name is on this list, you're in deep trouble.
This