Slashdot Mirror
The End of Innovation?
Simone writes: "2001 has been a bad year not just for dot-coms but also for people interested in preserving the public's right to fair use of copyright materials. From the shutdown of Napster and the DeCSS case to the prosecution of Dmitry Sklyarov, federal prosecutors and U.S. courts have acted in support of copyright interests and against the public's ability to use technology to secure fair-use rights. OpenP2P.com editor Richard Koman talks about these turns of events with Lawrence Lessig." Not particularly coincidentally, Lessig has a new book coming out on this very topic.
Man, I like reading Slashdot, but the constant stream of comments about our supposed loss of fair use rights has been tiresome from the start. Now, it's just plain stupid.
For the last time, Napster was not fair use. If you do not own a copy of a copyright-protected song and you download a copy of that song from someone else over Napster (whether they own a copy of the song or not), you are infringing the copyright. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. No question. Zero.
As for DeCSS, imagine you are a very large industry. You have a serious problem with pirated copies of your product being sold throughout the world. You have an opportunity to introduce a new format for your product which is far superior to any previous formats. You come up with a way to prevent those pirates from bootlegging your product in this new format. Then some snot-nosed computer geek blows that protection out of the water by writing a program and POSTING IT ON THE INTERNET. Suddenly, all your investment in protecting your product from mass-scale piracy is gone. You're pissed. What do you do? Damage control: prevent that program from being any more widely disseminated than it already has been, fire the idiots who screwed up the encryption in the first place, and come up with a better way to protect your product. The first part of the damage control is what that DeCSS suit is about. The DeCSS suit is not about preventing Linux geeks from watching DVDs with their preferred operating system. Sorry folks, the world does not revolve around you.
Final, Dmitry and his little program: this guy violated the DMCA. He wrote a program to circumvent a copyright protection mechanism, AND HE SOLD IT FOR PROFIT. Yes, your sweet, innocent, little Dmitry was making money off of screwing authors out of their royalties. Oh wait! You didn't think about that, did you? Yes, kids, for every book, there is some author out there who gets paid to write it. Who do you think ultimately suffers for Dmitry's fun little program? Yeah, you're getting it now: the writer. Not some faceless corporation, but a person, one person who makes a living by writing stuff other people want to read. By the way, the DMCA does not have a criminal penalty for programs distributed for free. Had Dmitry just posted his program on internet for free, he wouldn't have been arrested (although he still might have been sued). Thus, ends today's legal lesson. I hope you have learned one thing: you don't know squat about the DMCA or copyright law. Until you take the time to learn about those things, you should stop claiming that your fair use rights are being trampled.
As a software developer I'm actually offended that there are people who are trying to perpetrate the idea that innovation in software and on the 'Net revolves around violating people's copyright and redistributing the works of others. Of course, it all is put in perspective when one realizes this article is being hosted by the OpenP2P.com which was just another "jump on the buzzword bandwagon" venture whose major proponents are focused around benefiting from redistributing the works of others.
Napster was designed to distribute ILLEGAL recordings, had they gone legit they could have merged with MP3.com and distributed peoples work much like the philosphy of distributing free software.
The whole slashdot concept of DVD's is pathetic. BUY A DVD PLAYER to watch your movies. 99% of the world bought dvd's because of the technology and advancements over VHS. YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THOSE ACHIEVEMENTS and technological improvements. SO FREAKING WHAT if you want watch your DVD's for free. You didn't write the codec, produce the technology, market the products and standardize the industry on formats. That comes to a huge cost and well, DVD's are so awesome for home theater that i don't mind paying that cost.
P2P, again if it wasn't for distributing 99% illegal software, music and files then it may become viable. I have yet to see a P2P solution for distributing "freshmeat.net" or any OSS software which is 100% legally available from anywhere, simply for the fact that free software, free information is already available in very simplistic and standard internet protocols. (hello, HTTP, FTP...) IF i have to load up a P2P network browser then why not load up Netscape and download it off the web to begin with?
"Copying copyrighted information is not stealing. Stealing would mean
that if I took it, you know longer have it. This is blatantly false."
Cool - I'm coming over to your house tonight, taking your car out for awhile, but putting it back in the morning so you still have it....
For me, theft would be using any of my possessions in any way which I don't want you to. Whether you take my car for a drive, take code I've written and use it when I don't want you to, or download and listen to music I've made without my permission.. that's theft