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ACM vs. RIAA
stinkbomb writes "The venerable Association for Computing Machinery has posted a legal brief on it's site regarding Felten vs. RIAA. The ACM position is: 'ACM believes that the application of any law to limit the freedom to publish research on computer technology will impose a cost not only on ACM's members, but also on the academic community, the process of scientific discourse, and society in general.'"
WARNING:
The RIAA's surgeon general has determined that process of scientific disclosure can be detrimental to the health of your bottom line, and your chances of re-election.
In the United States, Congress has the right "To Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts, by Securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the Exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Sec 1, Art 8, Cl 8.
Someone explain to me how outlawing science and research in order to protect overextended copyrights (life+70 only helps Disney...) "promotes the progress of science" or the useful arts.
It's in the plain language, kids. Someone else want to try to explain that to Congress and the Supreme Court?
Note: a good history of Copyright is available at http://netizen.uoregon.edu/documents/ethics.html (I have nothing to do with that page, but found it and it's pretty good)
WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMEN. All the EFF has is money. The ACM has people who can reasonably explain whey they, as a voter, think the congresscritter needs to do something. Believe it or not, as idealistic as it sounds, enough people writing letters can still overcome large amounts of money in deals like this.
Let them join forces together and send a strong message to the politicians in Washingtom and the European Parliament.
Seeing as there wouldn't be much to sell if science and research didn't exist, the RIAA would be prudent to listen. Studio technology is one of the most important aspects of (at least many genres') selling a hit record (unfortunately), and probably wouldn't be where it is today without that good old unbridled R&D. Just to expand on that, for those who don't understand what I'm getting at, studio production values are to music what happy endings are to hollywood.
Of course, we all know that no business can see past the end of it's wallet, so it's unlikely they'll suddenly grow the foresight to recognize that laws they have sponsored or are pursuing will hurt them in the long run. Ah, ya gotta love cycles.
It's much like the oil and gas industry; what exactly do you expect to be selling when you're inadvertantly being detramental to the very thing that makes you money?
History doesn't teach us anything, it seems. It teaches us about 2 or 3 heros and villains, and usually with a better ending. And you can quote me on that.
"Old man yells at systemd"
ACM has chapters in MANY universities, has MANY professors and such as members, hosts the MOST prestrigious and important conferences (SIGGRAPH, SIGMICRO, and the like). I would have to say that the EFF is not in the same league as ACM by far. I know MANY college libraries and professors offices with BOOKSHELFS devoted to ACM proceedings. I would have to say that ACM holds a lot of clout (and besides, they have my dollar, hehe).
I am a proud member of UPE and ACM.
Last time I checked, the RIAA was in the business of copyright enforcement.
Perhaps
Sincerely,
Vergil
Insects and Grafitti Photos
I know this is somewhat offtopic, but oh well...
Whether you agree with the politics of these websites or not, it is pretty repugnant that the law is now being used to squelch criticism. The story is HERE.
Also here is a rough draft of something I am writing to address the DMCA and to explain the problems with this law to Joe and Jane sixpack. Please suggest changes, criticize and flame etc.. and also feel free to use it. Thanks.
RIAA may have the money, but the ACM has a much greater degree of prestige and trust in the eyes of the public. Every computer science and computer engineering professor, and all of their students as well, will line up behind the the ACM against the RIAA as this conflict gains media exposure. The public will trust the scientists and college professors over the corrupt music industry moneyboys. Most politicians will be forced to fall in line. The key to this happening is that this conflict is brought to the forefront, in full view of the public, by every means possible - public protests, bumperstickers, letters to the editor, internet forums and mailing lists, word-of-mouth...
The public is going to trust the smart people??
Where the hell have you been for the last decade??
No one EVER pays attention to the smart people. If they did the public would be smart themselves, but they aren't and so the RIAA grows and grows.
Ain't life grand.
(That code of conduct is, generally, in my opinion, excellent, and well worth reading and abiding by, to the extent it's possible.)
Unlike most any other industry, the computer industry is one in which research on the technology is often presented as the technology itself. In that sense, even well-established, free, "production" software like GNU Emacs, GCC, and the Linux kernel can be reasonably considered "research" as well -- they're distributed as source code, and everyone is encouraged to study it, learn from it, modify it, and distribute what they learn and/or their modifications.
Since the existence of software patents directly infringes peoples' individual rights to distribute research in that form (free source code), I found the ACM's requirements, as much as I agree with the basic ethical, moral, and practical basis for them (that is, it's generally ethical, moral, and practical to obey existing laws), to be too much for me in the case of software patents.
So, while I'm happy to see the ACM recognize the specific new threat, I wonder how they view software patents today, since software patents can easily render much practical research either infeasible (can't be distributed as free software without authors losing their houses and other property in court due to patent-infringement lawsuits) or illegal?
For example, without things like the DMCA, software patents can be used to prevent (or punish for) distributing things like DeCSS and other "IP-security" softwarez. (I used that term on purpose; "warez" denotes illegal software, it should perhaps also denote immoral, self-delusional, or tyrannical software as well. ;-)
True, ideally, software patents make an invention's nature plain enough for all (adequately schooled in the arts) to understand, and what the ACM's complaining about here is the "security-through-obscurity" approach presently used by certain companies enjoying an artificial, and ultimately too-fragile, legal fence built around it, known as the DMCA.
But, in practice, software patents are not used by typical programmers or computer-science researchers as a source of information on how stuff works; and, further, the lawyers who help write them up apparently try to make sure they are as inscrutable as possible (while still passing muster with the Patent and Trademark Office, or whatever it's called), so as to provide the least useful information, while carving out the most intellectual "property" possible.
So, even absent the DMCA, it seems to me that a much broader problem, including much of what the ACM is presently worried about, is posed by software patents, which too-often amount to inscrutable, unhelpful "explanations" of just what a person (or even a computer program) might, on its own, be doing, that is illegal, because the owner of the software patent a) says so and b) can afford expensive lawyers.
I guess what I'm asking is, given that the DMCA and software patents do exist:
-
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- not publishing software that even might infringe
- not publishing research papers that describe patented properties, if it's fairly straightforward to convert any pseudocode or descriptions in the papers into software (in languages ranging from assembly code to Haskell, ML, Prolog, and so on)
- spending so much time researching the constant stream of software patents which they might otherwise infringe that they have little or no time to actually research and publish computer technologies?
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Of course, these are really general questions of ethics, but since the ACM is making a statement, one which I support, I'd like to see them continue to think through issues like these, so their members have appropriate guidance from them regarding ethical issues, and so they serve as an ethically-consistent "voice", for computing professionals, to be heard by those who take on the responsibility of authoring and enforcing human laws.Does the ACM expect its members to abide by the legal restrictions of the DMCA, even if the result (not publishing weaknesses in a timely fashion) might be loss of property or even life of innocents?
Similarly, does the ACM expect its members to strive to avoid infringing software patents, by:
And does it expect its members to do these things even if doing so prevents them finding and/or publishing security flaws, again, even if the result of withholding such information might include the loss of property or life?
Beyond specifics such as the DMCA and software patents, does the ACM generally expect its members to abide by legal restrictions when the result of doing so could have severe moral repercussions, such as loss of life or property due to inadequate, or even hostile, computing technology being deployed by companies using "intellectual-property" law to protect such deployments against ACM members dutifully informing the public?
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
Sorry, I do not buy into this type of self-defeating cynicism. Note how the RIAA backed down in the case of Prof. Felten, denying that they had ever threatened to sue him. The public perception that the money-bloated purveyors of "decadent" popular music are attacking academics and scientific progress is a sure loser for the RIAA. Our task is to get this picture out into the view of the public.
Though the content companies would love to put a DRM in each and every device they sell, the Consumer Electronic companies have to make the right mix of ease-of-use and protecting the content. But under the guise of the DMCA, the content/record companies are trying to prevent reverse-engineering of the encryption schemes, simply because the present schemes are so flimsy, that the only protection is through keeping the scheme itself as secret. The DVD is a case in point.
The ACM has done a right thing in espousing the cause of research in understanding content encryption technologies.
"Do something man. Right now."
A human brain with a padlock running through or around it?
Try the past 5 Millenia. People don't trust smart people. The sneaky bastards are always up to something.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
However compelling you may find the argument, you are hunting a straw man. Congress expressly based its power to pass DMCA not on the Copyright Act, but upon the Commerce Clause. While indeed DMCA is codified in Title 17, it is most certainly not a copyright law.
Indeed, this was one of the points made by DMCA's advocates during the hearings in opposition to the fair use amendments.
You don't like software patents. The ACM position is that DMCA is unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds. I'm not sure I see those positions as inherently coextensive.
A reasonable person might well adopt any of the at least four possible combinations of those views.
You have your agenda -- they have theirs.
>But, in practice, software patents are not used by typical programmers or computer-science researchers as a source of information on
>how stuff works;
Agreed ! and most of the times, even if they were published, they won't be of any use; as basic software techniques are often the same ! knowing your classics (The Art of Computer programming) are more than enough to recreate any patented software. So the main reason patents have been done (i.e. disclosure of original information while granting monopoly to it's owner) is caduceus in this case.
I think one of the workaround to this, is to make the publication of the source code necessary prior to granting any software patent; after source code is the equivalent of blue prints, and these are (I believe !?) necessary in areas which need them. This will no doubt limit the scope of abusively wide patents, and will ensure that reimplementation of the idea (which is not patentable) don't violate the patent.
Well, I hope what you're saying happens, but it sounds a bit too idyllic to me. The vast majority of the public has no idea what the ACM is -- I've been a computer geek all my life, and only learned of the ACM in the last few years. But there's a further problem -- the public doesn't tend to trust college professors and scientists at all. The "corrupt industry moneyboys" are adept at manipulating public opinion (look at the girl-band/boy-band phenomenon) and I'd be willing to bet that the average citizen trusts Disney way more than a Harvard prof -- let alone some egghead organization they've never heard of.
From the declaration:
Comment would be superfluous, wouldn't it?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Are you sure you've read the code properly? Just because you don't agree with the executives of the society doesn't mean you can't argue against them. That what scientific debate is for, and from what I can tell having just checked, those executives haven't influenced the idea behind the code of ethics at all.
As it should be with any good society, the ACM does not dictate to its members. On the contrary, the members define the ACM and what it stands for. This isn't rhetoric, it's realtime definition generation and the ACM's code of ethics demonstrates it perfectly.
In the past couple of weeks I've been looking around for papers crossing ethics and databases for some postgraduate work I'm doing. The presence of papers in the ACM digital library was strangely vacuuous, but I did find one paper by Donn B. Parker titled Rules of Ethics in Information Processing. It was published in 1968 in the Communications of the ACM. You can see the abstract here, but you might need an ACM login for the abstract and probably a member to download the pdf.
When he wrote it, Donn Parker was the Secretary of the ACM as well as the Chairman of the ACM Professional Standards and Practices Committee. He was arguing in favour of the first ever edition of the ethical rules of conduct for ACM members that was adopted in 1966.
One of the major points of his argument was that it was important to have guidelines to effectively say that "members must be ethical". On the other hand, the guidelines were very cleverly written so as not to say what ethical was. Everything that mattered was left to the judgement of the member.
The idea was not to impose any specific rules on members, but to simply require them to use good judgement and common sense in what they consider ethical, and abide by it. If, on the other hand, a member did something that they clearly should have known was wrong and couldn't offer a reasonable argument against it, there would be grounds to have them thrown out of the society.
Even looking at it now though, I think it would be possible to argue that it's written in the same form. Consider section 1.5 where it says "Copies of software should be made only with proper authorization. Unauthorized duplication of materials must not be condoned."
Nowhere does it define what "proper authorization" actually is. This is left up to the member to decide, and it's feasible that under some circumstances someone might argue that proper authorization doesn't require consent of the copyright holder.
Section 2.3 specifically says "ACM members must obey existing local, state,province, national, and international laws unless there is a compelling ethical basis not to do so. Policies and procedures of the organizations in which one participates must also be obeyed. But compliance must be balanced with the recognition that sometimes existing laws and rules may be immoral or inappropriate and, therefore, must be challenged. Violation of a law or regulation may be ethical when that law or rule has inadequate moral basis or when it conflicts with another law judged to be more important. If one decides to violate a law or rule because it is viewed as unethical, or for any other reason, one must fully accept responsibility for one's actions and for the consequences."
This is a complete let-off by the ACM if you want to protest against the DMCA with civil disobedience. It's saying that you shouldn't drag other people (eg. employer) down with you unless they consent. But if you seriously disagree with the ethics of the law then go ahead and protest.
Whether it was in 1966 or 2001 and regardless of how many words there are, the ACM code of ethics has been very cleverly written. In so many words, it basically tells people to trust their common sense and don't do anything stupid. That's exactly what ethics are, and the ACM isn't telling you otherwise. I think you should consider rejoining.
In the United States, Congress has the right "To Promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts, by Securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the Exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." Sec 1, Art 8, Cl 8.
I think this point came up recently in the coverage of a Supreme Court case argued by Prof. Lessig.
The lower courts have held that the preamble does not constitute a limitation on Congress's power to establish copyrights. That is to say the clause gives Congress the power and states the reason they were given this power, but they aren't required to use that power in ways that are consistent with the reason.
The SC hasn't had it say on this, but apparently nobody has been willing to take it on. If the constitution were a program, the premble to the statement is a comment that indicates the programmers' (framers') intent but which is ignored by the machine (government) executing the program. Perhaps this is wise from a technical standpoint -- like not having the machine rely on the explicit code rather than to guess the programmers intent from the comments.
Of course, if a programmer routinely creates maintenance problems by ignoring comments abusing absurd possibilities created by the original designer, what do you do? You talk to him, you train him, and if he doesn't shape up, you fire him.
The constitution is a wonderful thing, but it can only do so much. At some point we have to bring our legislators to task. Unfortunately, the people who understand this problem are so few that our politicians can safely ingore them. The question is -- how do we educate the rest of the population to this issue? Rallys and demonstrations are all very good for keeping up morale and preaching to the faithful, but unless they sweep the population by storm they only further marginalize the participants.
While we do need organizations like the EFF working on the legal and constitutional front, what we really need is to be able to hire a competent PR firm to handle the cause of free use.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
dangit, that's so right on. with normal, traditional, patented items, we generally see engineering diagrams showing how the thing is made. with pharmaceutical patents, we get chemical formulae. people who want to patent software should be forced to provide the code: at the very least, pseudocode, but C/Forth (a lot of these patents are in machine control systems) or whatever would be ideal.
another important point to consider, with software patents, is that none have been litigated for infringement yet. the holders have been able to obtain significant financial gain through them, of course, but there haven't been any real tests in court.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Your argument derives more from a rich fantasy life than from the law. The question has already been raised and dismissed without day by several courts.
There is no chance DMCA will be declared unconstitutional for lack of Congressional power to pass it. Its title and locus of codification are irrelevant, and the nature of the treaties it implements likewise. None.
All that the Court addresses in Article I cases is whether the Commerce clause empowers Congress to pass the law. Unless the statute is found not to address subject matter that does not affect interstate or international commerce, they will never read clause 8.
Further, the Article I, Section 8, clause 8 cases to date haven't provided much succor for your argument either. The Courts traditionally defer to Congressional policy decisions on such matters unless there is "no rational basis" for the Act. The test doesn't mean what you think it means -- no "rational basis," means, essentially, no credible articulable reason.
The unonstitutionality argument grounded in lack of authority under the Copyright Clause is, legally speaking, a nonstarter. Its already been tried, and lost. It will never work. Move on.
The strongest argument I have seen for these types of arguments was made in the Law Professor's Brief in the DeCSS case. Similar arguments was also made below, but rejected by the District Court. Because almost all transactions using a computer use a network, the interstate commerce requirement is probably satisfied under the affectation doctrine, though the point you raise is a fair one.
Alas, the Second Circuit didn't seem remotely interested in these arguments, apart from the First Amendment issues.
The article on salon is rather short on details. What was on the website that this company thought was a copyright violation?
I'm also a bit concerned about treating these people like the underdog because it appears as they though are quite violent.
I think you are deluding yourself if you think the ACM has a greater degree of prestige and trust in the eyes of the public.
Scientists and college professors are oftentimes the worst persons to listen to when it comes to discussions of public policy. The reason being that they are very knowledgeable in their narrow field of expertise, but completely clueless when it comes to real world matters.
That's not to say they don't have some valid input, but history has shown you don't want to listen to them without some balance.
The ACM can give you a lot of leverage when you deal with your own PHBs. If you tell him (or them) that an idea is bad because of some stuff you read on Slashdot, he'll ignore you.
But if you can cite position papers from the ACM and IEEE, it's a lot harder for them to brush off your concerns as ill-informed ramblings of a bunch of geeks with no grasp of business or the law. If it comes down to it, you can even use this as the basis for a resignation if they insist on proceeding with something that you feel strongly about. If you do it for your own reasons, unfortunately, a lot of PHBs will just call you a flake. If you do it while citing an ACM "Code of Ethics" and position papers, it should be a wakeup call to them. It's hard to implement and maintain a program if the most knowledgeable workers resign over it!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
So, you're right, the ACM has already answered the most important of my questions, leaving only my belief that software is close enough to speech, aka research, that software patents pose a greater and longer-term threat to secure systems than the DMCA.
(Remember, the DMCA applies only to software distributed under it, while software patents apply to all software, even free software, so while we can theoretically avoid "DMCA-contaminated" software in our research -- as impractical as that might be -- we can't avoid working with software that might be "contaminated" with algorithms already, or being, patented, without leaving the field of software altogether...something I often consider doing myself, to be honest.)
At this point, I consider my concerns about the ACM's recent position to pale in comparison to the good they've done by highlighting the risks posed by legislation such as the DMCA, especially in the short run.
Ultimately, as the ACM's own section 2.3 says, it's not, to me, a matter of "software patents are bad" or "the DMCA is bad". I believe it's simply a matter of helping everyone, especially those involved in deciding the acceptability of such law, understand the long-term, possibly unintended and/or unforeseen, consequences, so they can see more clearly what they are already accepting responsibility for.
(I guess what I am saying is that, while section 2.3 specifically identifies those going against some laws in favor of higher moral/ethical laws as bearing the risks and responsibilities of doing so, I believe that's true of everyone, regardless of whether they're "playing by the rules", violating the rules, or writing the rules. Not that everyone's "equally guilty", but since everyone has the capacity to decide how to proceed, they have to recognize that they have a responsibility for the freedom to make whatever choices they make. The more enlightened they can be about the potential outcomes, the better, is how I see it.)
Practice random senselessness and act kind of beautiful.
However, being violent is a reason for action. Talking about it isn't supposed to be. There are good reasons why the First Amendment was given the broad scope that it was given. It periodically gets narrowed down in one place or another. Usually it eventually recovers.
There are definitely sites out there that I find repugnant and inflamatory. I can't think of a safe-for-me way to justify shutting them down that is based on what they say rather than on what they do.
There are good reasons why the First Amendment was written with such a broad brush. The people who did it had experienced unreliable governments and shifty lawyers.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It doesn't matter what else they are doing, if the issue at hand is that their freedom of speech is being attacked, then stick to the issue! It seems pretty clear that they are using the DMCA to close down their freedom of speech in this case.
The freedom of speech has never been nor was it ever intended to be restricted to "popular speech." Frankly, I'm all for "cruelty to animals" especially when it comes to laboratory testing. I'm very against acts of violence when it comes to fighting for your cause and that includes "threats" as well. I will not defend that. But I will defend their rights to say what they want to say. That's freedom of speech, baby, and if I let people get away with removing those rights from an unpopular group just because they are unpopular or even hated, then what's to stop others from singling YOU out in the future?? Jeez! Think about anything unique about yourself, now classify yourself as that, form a peer group and see if at some point you might become hated for it? In the U.S. middle-aged-white-males are a pretty-well discriminated against group!! With all the laws designed to support people not of this group, it's pretty clear that we're being singled out now.
For anyone who thinks I'm going a bit too far with my reasoning, think back a few decades! "Water!" People pay for water now!! It used to be a public thing and now people pay for it if they really want to enjoy it. What next? Air? How about television? "Cable!" Now just abotu everyone who watches T.V. is a cable or satelite subscriber. It used to be free to anyone who has a television set but now the quality of the signals (just like the quality of tap water) is so poor that if you wish to have reasonable quality of service, you have to pay a private vendor of the service. Air is free now, but for how much longer?
It happens slowly... really really slowly... but it's happening.
Oh, I agree that being repugnant and inflammatory is no excuse for censorship.
I'm just concerned as to what the real content was that was shut down. If it's like the company logo's and stuff, then that's not fair.
But in recent years some groups have resorted to terrorism because their words are not being heard.
I just want to know whether they have crossed that line or not.