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.'"

Comments

The surgon general...

[Pig Hogger]

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.

Science and the useful arts

[swerdloff]

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)

DMCA is being used to squelch non profit websites

[teatime]

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.

What About Research That IS Computer Technology?

[cburley]

Years ago, I dropped my membership in the ACM, mainly because they came out enough in favor of software patents that I felt unable to (morally, practically, effectively?) abide by their code of conduct requiring members to treat them as valid.

(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:

• 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:

  • 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?

  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?

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.