Red Hat puts out Legislation Alert on the SSSCA

the_2nd_coming writes "Red Hat has announced a legislation alert for the SSSCA. They are collecting comments to hand to lawmakers. Get those comments in while you can, but make sure you give them some thought."

Comments

Justification for Legislation?

[debest]

I seem to recall that the DMCA was "justified" because it was written to be compliant with the WIPO / WTO treaties that the U.S. signed.

Does anyone know if these international treaties proposed anything like the restrictions called for in the SSSCA?

SSSCA Loophole

[Apreche]

Just as with the DMCA DCSS loopholes of turning the code into a prime number, and making songs out of the source code, there is a loophole in the SSSCA as well. If you previously owned non-secure electronic equipment then it's ok. Oh, look plextor has to re-design all of their plexwriters, I wonder what will happen to the old ones? ^_^
The big problem with the SSSCA is that newer faster computers will have to have built in security against copyright infringement, and it is illegal to break that security. It is also illegal to remove security stuffs from a copyrighted file, like one of those secure windows ones. What do we do about this? We write a java program that goes into your system and cracks all the security. Then we have it run off an obscure web server in another country. Visit website, java runs. You didn't do it. You thought the site was something else. It doesn't say anything about files that originally had no security. The SSSCA is all about making new stuff illegal, not already existing stuff. So you change the dates on all your files.

The real reason the government gets away with stuff like this is because we /.ers are the only people who understand what's going on, and pay attention to it. We have to bring this to the attention of the general public. Tell people that mp3s wont play correctly on a new computer with windowsxp. And that if this law is passed it will be illegal to download winamp. See what happens.

Yeah so buy up a bunch of hardware and download software now, that way it wont be illegal.

Why would anyone think this is a good idea?

[mttlg]

Okay, so the idea here is to make every possible data storage device and the associated software play nice with copyright. The benefits are:

• Copyright infringement in the original digital form is theoretically impossible.
• Content providers, software manufacturers, etc. can sleep well knowing that their profits are secure, as long as people keep buying their products.

And some of the problems are:

• Copyright "theoretically" expires, but protection methods don't.
• Fair Use will be outlawed through technology.
• Infringement will just require an analog capture method or good old reverse engineering (which of course is already illegal in some cases, even though it isn't...).
• Hardware and software will be more expensive/less useful and there will be less to choose from, resulting in slower sales of new products and a surge in the used equipment market.
• Content will be less useful, and therefore will have less value, meaning lower sales if prices do not fall considerably to compensate (take a look at the sales of e-books).
• Updates must be made mandatory to prevent vulnerabilities from being exploited once they are discovered, meaning that the government must have access to your computer for this to work.
• The feeling of the government trying to regulate or control every aspect of our lives will increase dramatically, adding fuel to the anti-government sentiment that has temporarily faded in the past month.
• The acronym "SSSCA" doesn't even have the warm and fuzzy feel to it that "DMCA" does.

So why would someone support this?

• Ignorance
• Stupidity
• Bribes
• Greed
• Totalitarianism
• A general desire to screw people over

Am I missing something here, or could this show us what our lawmakers really think of the people they represent (assuming that they actually record the votes this time...)? We've seen much of this before, but this time they aren't even trying to make it look good.