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DeCSS, From the Beginning
An anonymous reader sent in a link to a presentation given by Tom Vogt at HAL 2001. He reviews the whole CSS/DeCSS mess from the beginning, which makes a it a nice backgrounder for people who are wondering what the Sklyarov, 2600 and other cases are all about.
I heard at one point that it was a voice vote. Now, I would hope that Congress wouldn't be so irresponsible to pass such huge legislation in a way that didn't leave us with any record of who voted for and against it, but if they were responsible, we wouldn't have this damn thing in the first place. And it does serve as an explination as to why it's so hard to find a voting record.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
2600 says it was a voice vote, as well as unanimous.
Today is day one at SIGGRAPH, and there has already been a course on Public Policy issues, including mentions of Sklyarov, DeCSS, the Felten case, and others.
During the presentation, USACM co-chair Barbara Simons announced that tomorrow ACM is going to release a "declaration" strongly in Favor of Felten, and that ACM is going to take a strong stance on the Felten case. The group is starting to worry that the anti-circumvention provisions are getting close to "criminializing" a lot of work being done by ACM members, and they think that some of the papers being submitting for an upcoming conference are close to doing the same thing Felten did and that there could be trouble. They said that ACM is going to take some strong anti-DMCA stances.
Check out the web site in the morning for the declaration. It's not up yet, but it will be up at http://www.acm.org and/or http://www.acm.org/
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
DeCSS was part of an attempt to make a Linux DVD player. The DVD Consortium, however, is using the DMCA to go after everyone who makes a DVD player without buying a $10,000 license from them. That's what it's all about--that $10,000 dollars that they have no right to force out of programmers in the first place. All of this "pirating" nonsense is just the MPAA trying to justify their actions by making the programmers out to be pirates.
The DMCA is a wicked law, and a blatant usurpation of our basic Constitutional rights. It must be fought.
Voting records as well as the complete text are in the Congressional Record, the full text of which is available over the net...one link is here (check year 1998, subject "copyright") The bottom line is that the votes in both House and Senate were essentially unanimous. There was remarkably little discussion on the obvious conflict of the bills (HR. 2281, S. 2037) with the First Amendment, even from those who normally support individual freedoms over government regulation. In fact, quite a number of speeches implied that the DMCA was somehow a key part of defending the freedom of speech. Now that we've seen it actually implemented, it seems pretty clear that the true intent was quite different.
Cogito Tute (desiderata nostra eriximus, vestra nunc erigite)