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US Copyright Office Releases DMCA Advisory Report
snogwozzle writes: "The US Copyright Office's congressionally-mandated advisory report on the effect of the DMCA is in, and at first glance it doesn't look too good. They're against undoing the definition of temporary RAM buffer copies as possibly infringing (which Jessica Litman in Digital Copyright pegged as perhaps the central dirty trick in the DMCA as it opens the door to technical access control by publishers) is turned down, so is a first sale doctrine for digitally distributed works, and the DMCA's effect on fair use is called out of scope for the report. On the other hand, they think everyone should have a backup right for media bought in digital form, like we have for software." Keep in mind that this is only looking at the DMCA's effect on the "first sale doctrine" (once a work is sold to you, the copyright holder can't stop you from re-selling it) and on the legal right to make backup copies of a computer program.
What I find Strange about this is that it says about halfway through that the Copyright office and the NTIA both issued a Notice of Inquiry (a request for public comment). In response to this notice, the recieved 30 comments. Only 30!!! How many people on slashdot alone has the DMCA brought to a raging boil?? A shitload. Why only 30 comments then?? Another example of how the bureaucracy that has taken over in this country makes it nearly impossible to take part in the process. How do you find out about things like this? I've written my congressman about the DMCA, but this may have been a better forum in which to voice these particular concerns... AAARRGH.
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
Rights? We don't have rights. We exchanged those old useless things for free school lunches and Medicare.
The next time you get stopped at a DUI checkpoint and asked for your papers and destination, ask the uniform about your Fourth Amendment rights. You'll be grabbing the trunk and wishing you had kept quiet.
Rights! You guys are so cute.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
My next step was to email microsoft about this, and find out what was the problem. As it turns out, you cannot sell this particular software without the original box and install manuals. I explained that I have never kept a box, and the manuals are useless. So, I still have a Windows NT 4.0 CD that I will not use again, and am unable to sell it or transfer ownership to another company.
I tell this only to let you all know that our abilities to resell items can be hindered by licensing. Legislation like DMCA will give unnecessary power to license-givers, and the consumer will suffer. Imagine if you are next told in your end-user license agreement that you can never resell the software you have purchased!
Click here or here.
Copyright Office Needs Comments On DMCA By March 31
Posted by timothy on Saturday March 18, @09:09PM
from the calm-collected-rational-and-persuasive dept.
Best Slashdot Co
...because if I move with my Zone 2 collection to the US, 98% of the people there can't play my disc, if I tried selling them. Of course they can buy it and use it as a coaster if they like, but...
What really pisses me of is Californian law. If I, a norwegian citizen, choose to exercise my right to transfer a DVD to a different medium (e.g. a CD) explicitly granted to me by norwegian law, on my property (my DVD record), in Norway, being under no contract (or AUP, or EULA) with anybody, you would think that is legal right?
Wrong. Under Californian law, I can be sued there because it is considered an attack on the MPAAs interests which reside in California, to create a tool, *which is nessecerry to exercise my norwegian rights*, that can convert the DVD to a different format, because such a program must circumvent the copyright protection. In other word, I can be sued by a state in a *foreign* country for making a tool that *if* spread to foreign countries *could* be used for piracy.
In fact, this is reducing my fair use rights, and everybody outside California's rights to those granted in California. I believe the DMCA to be blatantly unconstiutional in the US, but that is besides the point. I find the law to be violating national soverignity, by extending it's domain to the entire world.
The only intern- and transnational courts I will answer to, are those granted authority by us, specifically the EU/EFTA-courts, and the international court in Haag. If I am ever arrested based on Californian law, I will consider them hired bandits acting for the MPAA under cover of practicing justice.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
CSS and first sale issues are completely ripped apart. They argue that the requirement to view DVDs on non-licensed devices is akin to requiring VHS tapes to be watched on Beta machines. The analogy is so poor and revealing of how clueless the Copyright Office is to the issue that it makes me despair.
So far the report has been, imnsho, uninsightful and focused on the here and now. The DMCA is doing what it is "supposed to be doing" and all that hippy protest stuff isn't very relevent. This is what your congress-critter is going to get out of this report after it is digested by some staff member. I reserve the right to change my opinion once I'm done with the other 98 percent of Section III but my initial reaction is no, this is bad news.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
And Digital Media is not the same as tangible items.
"Digital transmission of a work does not implicate the alienability of a physical artifact. When a work is transmitted, the sender is not exercising common-law dominion over an item of personal property; he is exercising the central copyright right of reproduction with respect to the intangible work. Conversely, the copyright owner's reproduction right does not interfere at all with the ability of the owner of the physical copy to dispose of ownership or possession of that copy, since the first sale doctrine applies fully with respect to the tangible object (e.g., the user's hard drive) in which the work is embodied."
In other words when you copy anything in a digital form it's not only as good as the original it's IDENTICAL. Which means...
"The concerns that animate the first sale doctrine do not apply to the transmission of works in digital form."
I.E. Fair use laws DO NOT apply in terms of digital media.
I read Slashdot for the
The worst part about losing the "first sale" qualities of a product is that that product will likely be sold for about the same amount, but carries a much lower value for the consumer.
Basically, this is a HUGE gob of inflation in the ecomomy - but it's inflation that won't be measured or accounted for in "cost of living" calculations, and will slip under the radar. Life will be perceptibly more difficult for consumers, but nobody's going to make an adjustment for it for people who are on fixed incomes, etc.
I believe this is also the main aim of "market segmentation strategies". Lower the value of the product for the consumer so you can give the appearance of not raising prices. Rake in profits for "prosumer" and high-end market segments that can bear the cost, and can't bear the lower value of the product (usually through technical crippling or inconvenient feature-bundling) - though that product has the same manufacturing cost as the low-end version. In effect, you increase profits, and you're getting more money from the consumer per intangible, unmeasurable "units of quality", without being accused of price-gouging, or feeding the inflation demons.
Of course, this kind of strategy only works in the absence of competition. And it's working very well today, and I suspect it will be working extremely well in the future.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
innovate would be diminished. In fact, this issue was so important
to the Founding Fathers that the ability of Congress to protect
copyrights is actually written into our Constitution itself.
Except that the Founding Fathers were wise enough to know that by making the term limit on Copyright too high, they were depriving the People (and further artists, musicians, and authors) of work from which they could build upon and grow new works from. While the Constitution reads "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;", no mention of actual time limits exists within this document. The limits were proposed by Jefferson to be 14 years, which were then extended to 28 years, as is demonstrated by reading ancillary documents of the time.
While your Senator believes that protecting the intellectual property of the US is vital for the economy and provides incentive, it actually has a retrograde effect for content providers who do not hold the Copyright on current work, as they cannot build on existing works until those works leave copyright (A period currently longer than most human lifespans), or until they pay Copyright holders for the privledge of using their work. This effectively shrinks the pool of content creators to those already holding Copyright, or those financially entangled with Copyright holders.
And while those Copyright Holders may provide large donations to your Senator's campaign, they are not the majority of voters in the State of California. It is the will of the Voters that your Senator swore to represent in our Government, and if she is failing in this regard, then she is unfit to hold office.
*wince* I wish you hadn't singled out lock-picking tools in this one. Last time I checked (about 3-4 years ago) lock-picking tools were illegal only in DC, where you have to be a professional locksmith to carry them. In every other jurisdiction I've checked, it is legal to carry them as long as you don't plan to use them in furtherance of another crime. In other words, lock picks are in the same category as we'd like to see DeCSS! (Legal to own and use as long as you don't use it to commit a crime, in which case possession becomes an additional crime.)
I'm in New York State, and I researched the laws carefully before I started carrying around my own homemade lockpicks. Just for safety's sake, I also carry around a copy of the relevant penal code with the lockpicks just so I can keep a police officer who's not up on the law from confiscating them out of hand. (Easier than trying to get them back if wrongfully confiscated!)
The text of the law reads:
The more I look at it, the more I think that this is the route that the DMCA should have taken.... We've said that the act of copyright infringement should be criminalized, not possession of the tools to do it. I wouldn't have any objections to criminalizing the possession of the tools under such circumstances as clearly demonstrate an intent to use them for copyright infringement. Yes, this could still be abused, but it isn't usually a problem with possession of burglar's tools - there are strong guidelines for when you can consider such an intent to be evinced.
For example:
Why, oh why, couldn't the DMCA have gone this way?????
-Need a
--Somebody infect me with a