DMCA 2, Freedom 0

Politech is featuring this press release from EFF stating Judge Garrett Brown of the Federal District Court in Trenton, New Jersey, threw out the EFF-Felten case challenging the DMCA after less than 25 minutes of debate. DoJ and RIAA both made motions to dismiss the case, which the court granted. We'll have a story about what occurred at the hearing tomorrow. EFF plans to appeal. In addition, 2600 is reporting that they've lost their Appeal in the 2nd Circuit court.

Comments

Re:cry me a river you CRIMINAL

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Face it: The whole world is against you. No one cares. The DMCA outlaws things that most people think should be outlawed.

Funny, I've talked to a lot of people who are far from geeks, much less "pirates". I've told them about the attempt to place unexpirable "access controls" on material slated to be public domain. I've told them about the arrest of a foreign national for writing a program legal in his country. I've told them about the intimidation and outright threatening of scientists who dare to expose flaws in a sham security system. I've told them about being blocked from watching a movie they've bought wherever they want on whatever machine they choose. I've told them about losing their time-honored rights to Fair Use, to First Sale, to archival copies...

You know what? They don't think any of those things should be occuring. They don't think that reverse engineering for system interoperability should be illegal. They don't think allowing backups should be illegal. They don't think allowing you to read an eBook on whatever machine you choose, should be illegal. They don't think control over your own movie collection should be illegal. They don't think that quotation from a digital source, for the purposes of scholarship, should be illegal. They don't think that scientific research should be illegal.

So don't get on your high horse and tell me what people think should be illegal and what not. You don't know a thing about what people want. When the mists are lifted, when the DMCA and its implications are laid bare in ordinary language, and not swirled up and hidden behind copyright-lawyerese, then even the "ordinary" people do care.

In this fight, the problem is not that the majority understand the issues and are against. The problem is that they do not understand the issues. They stand neither against us nor for us, for they have not yet thought it through. In my experience, when they do stop to think about it, when the shape of things is made clear, then the rational citizens I encounter invariable end up quite upset with the DMCA.

People are only as stupid as you seem to think they are, when they listen to you tell them how stupid they are.