Slashdot Mirror
SSSCA Squirms Forward Again Thursday
An anonymous reader writes: "Here we go! Only temporarily tripped up by Sept. 11th (and of course journalists and webmasters calling his office), Fritz Hollings is starting hearings on embedding copy protection in all digital devices and making the removal or circumvention of these protections a crime. Hurrah for freedom!"
Time to leave the country when the SSSCA passes.
Sigh.
Did they consider that other events in 2001 besides increased piracy that might have led to people buying fewer CDs?
If they really pull that off, R&D and manufacturing will spread around the rest of the world, while the US is assembling dumbed down AOL-compliant Warner-Brothers approved cable TV boxes with embedded, digitally rights managed entertainment capabilities.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Hollywood believes that copy protection will spur the use of broadband.
Why do they think this? With copy protection, downmloading movies would require a purchase, and fee-based online music services are already not doing well.
I, for one would not base my conversion to broadband on the fact that I could purchase movies.
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
This is technologically impossible. Dont waste time or money trying to do this. If you do, customers will not buy hobbled technologies. You have been warned
I certainly can't wait to not be able to back up my CDs in case they get scratched! I would much rather buy a new one. Like $20 for the first one wasn't enough...
Only in america!
What are they going to do with all the old computers that don't have DRM? How are they going to force the massive computer companies to comply?
And what kind of technology would they use? What about the legally traded mp3's and movies?
Oh ya, only coporate interests matter these days... pity.
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
i live in south carolina so this fucker is supposedly representing me. last time i checked digital encryption was not on my to do list... south carolina is still 49th in education, the little shit needs his priorities adjusted... all in favor of removing him from office say i. (south carolina high school student skipping school today)
the only person who's for this is jack valenti and probably the few congress folks that the MPAA is dishing out $$ to. it's nice to see intel is not on the same page as jack and co. the MPAA has gone too far folks!
Its been how long since he proposed this piece of $hit law, and he still has no clue? The fact he is resuming now after the mpaa was it wanted this a few days ago makes me think he is on the MPAA bank roll.
the hearing is meant to discuss whether the government must step in and mandate standards -- which Hollywood believes will allow movies to be distributed safely online, spur high-speed Internet access, and boost hardware sales.
A Hollywood spokesman was later heard to also profess strong belief in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and honest politicians.
Fritz Hollings, as old (and wise as he should be) fails to understand that you pass this legislation and you will make many americans criminals, simply because they won't go for the officially sanctioned electronics. Futher the market for old technology devices, which can't be covered by such a law, will thrive. Way to prop up the used VCR market, Fritz.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So if I put my old Win95 CD in my microwave oven and interactively set it to bake for half an hour, at least I can be secure in the knowledge that it won't be getting copied at the same time. That's one less copy of Windoze to worry about!
Time to switch my machine BIOS to the Linux BIOS... :-)
I may even hack around my future systems in order to get them bug-free
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Something to think about:
Post Enron, and all the campaign finance issues that it has brought up, might there be a way to defeat this through bringing to light the contributions recieved by the sponsors?
Or is that even relevant? Should we be looking at the motives of politicians who sponsor bills? IMO, we should when the bills are being passed for the benefit of donors to the pol's campaign. It seems to me that Senators and Congressmen forget who they work for (the people who elect them) and just care about fundraising.
Okay, rant mode off.
I have no friends. Will you be my friend?
" it's nice to see intel is not on the same page "
You misused the saying.
"... not on the same page."
Means someone doesn't know whats going on, e.g. they are not uptodate.
Intel is quite up to date and they just don't agree with the idiocy of Valenti. Recall Valenti supposedly [I don't know first hand] that VHS would crumble the movie industry.... I think nobody should listen to anything he says since obviously he has nobodies best interests in mind.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Here is a good avsforum that talks about copy protection on DTV. It seems that DVI (Digital Video Interface) may be the future and may render current HTDV's obsolete. DVI is one of the copy protection schemes for HDTV (along with a firewire one).
I find it interesting, though, that Intel is on our side in this issue: "We don't think government-mandated technology solutions are in the best interests of consumers or anyone else," according to their spokesperson. It's not too often that big business comes down on our side, although I can certainly understand why Intel would on this issue. Being forced to implement copy-protection in their hardware would NOT be compatible with their business interests.
I also find it interesting that the senator promoting this heinous piece of legislation is a Democrat. Aren't the Democrats supposed be the party that sticks up for the common people as opposed to big media interests like Disney and the MPAA?
"land of the free
home of the brave"
copy protection in my Video Camera!
copy protection in my Game controller!
cool, all this won't cost much
copy protection in my modem
copy protection in my monitor
copy protection in my watch
copy protection in my microwave
one more victory for the lawyers
If it goes through we should try and prosecute the manufacturers of as many digital devices as possible!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Out of interest, what sort of laws/systems would /.ers suggest to protect copyrighted work?
Lets face it, when people can easily copy stuff, they do. So despite my feelings that it would be nice if all information was free, etc., I think it is reasonible for people to try to protect the work they invested time/effort/money in, but am unsure what is the best way to do this, ideas?
Adding this technology will cost money. Every component you buy with this device in it will cost you more money. Why should I pay for somethiing that I am not interested in. The consumers will speak. They will not buy this trash. Well at least as soon as an alternative appears they will stop. I'll gladly buy my technology in Canada if you keep screwing around.
Arent TVs supposed to have some stupid Vchip in them? Its just material trumped up so someone can campaign on the platform of stopping it, and like sheep everyone will vote for that idiot.
Sick of it all.
the Boston strangler to single women") Valenti of the MPAA wrote a depressing editorial at The Washington Post, calling for DRM-enabled OSes to be the (presumably, legally mandated) standard, in order to save Hollywood from the same
terrible fate that befell the music industry while Napster was operating. Depressing because, although his case has more holes than Internet Explorer, it smells of a ploy to get more bad laws passed. Three guesses what would happen to non-compliant (read: Free) OSes once this terrible law goes through...
The Register
has a good scathing response.
When Free software is against the law, only outlaws will have Free software...
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
But in September, a Disney lobbyist defended Hollings' draft SSSCA as "an exceedingly moderate and reasonable approach."
Yikes... if they think SSSCA is merely "moderate", I'd hate to imagine what they *really* want.
Also this week, the Recording Industry Association of America published data saying that music sales were down 10 percent last year and online piracy and CD burning were a "large factor contributing to the decrease."
Let's see, CD sales were rising when Napster was in its hey-day so obviously the dismantling of it is a "large factor contributing to the decrease."
The DMCA sparked controversy after the eight largest movie studios successfully used it to stop 2600 magazine from distributing the DeCSS DVD-descrambling program.
As I recall, 2600 only linked to sites with DeCSS; it didn't distribute it.
The entire article reads like a blowjob for the RIAA and MPAA.
is a good day to be living in Europe.
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Aren't the artists the creative ones, the "industry" are the rich ones. The idea that creativity can be stolen seems particularly stupid to me, but what else should we expect from Valenti? Maybe he should patent creativity, that wat the RIAA and MPAA can control a little more of the entertainment commodity supply chain
From the article:
First, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) created the legal framework that punished people who bypassed copy protection -- and now, the SSSCA would compel Americans to buy only systems with copy protection on by default. Davis says: "I think the DMCA was a first step."
if this passes prepare for another civil war but dont expect to survive
Cmdr - I'd suggest making a new category for stories like this, naming it "Your Lack Of Rights Online" and have a picture of a generic Congressman (maybe one that looks like Hollings) sodomizing you with a legal document. That seems more appropriate than the current icon.
(I say this with a deeply heavy heart. I am honestly scared as to what the world holds for me as a CS major when I graduate.)
PrisonerCX
"a Disney lobbyist defended Hollings' draft SSSCA as "an exceedingly moderate and reasonable approach." "
Well then, I don't see that I have any cause to be concerned... I mean, if DISNEY says it's okay how bad can it be?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Personally, if the government thinks that they can make Linux illegal and stop me from using it, they're going to have a fight on their hands. Senator Hollings and his Democratic henchmen can kiss my rosy red butt. I have no intention of being blackmailed into installing Jack Valenti's favorite OS on any of my machines. If law enforcement officials want to come and try to arrest me (key word there is "try"), they're more than welcome to. They might get me in the end, but I guarantee that I would take more than a few of them out.
I think that we as Linux users have got to start defending our freedoms a bit more assertively. I don't think we should sit back and be complacent: Linux is on the verge of being criminalized, and even if the courts end up striking the law down, there will be a period where our homes may be subject to invasion and search simply because of our choice of OS. I for one do not intend to let this happen to me, and we could collectively make law enforcement think differently if we armed ourselves and made a principled stand for our rights.
MORONS. You cannot force us to make digital device copyprotected. It is the duty of the maker of the end product being copied to do so.
The land of the not-free.
And the arguments posted to my comments yesterday about whining Americans is bullshit. Just so you don't have to bother.
This is about me being forced by the government to use devices that are altered so I can"t do what I please. Soon cars are only going to go 65mph, my stereo will only goto 10 instead of 35, and alcohol will be 0%. b/c god forbid we have some sort of free choice.
BAH.
Just my worthless bitching today.
Last October I wrote Senator Hollings a letter asking about the SSSCA. I suppose since I am a South Carolina resident he took the time to reply. In a letter dated November 13, 2001 from the senator:
Dear Mr. Sattler
Thank you for your recent communication regarding legislation that address copyright protection on the internet.
I believe that any proposed legislation must meet consumers' expectations while protecting intellectual property. Ideally, the private sector will work to solve these problems. While I am considering legislation in this area, I am not intoducing a bill at this time.
You can be certain that if legislation is developed, I will take your concerns into consideration in order to ensure the rights of consumers as well as those of the creators of Internet material.
With kindest regards, I am
Sincerely,
Ernest F. Hollings
So basically he denied that the SSSCA existed at the time. What a blatant lie.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
If implemented correctly, we could have something akin to IPsec -- a virtual, encrypted layer where copy-protected information is transmitted. PGP has had an option for a while for encrypting a text document with a flag set that prevents the recipient from saving it as a file. In theory, something like this could be implemented and actually work.
In reality, it would probably be nothing of the kind... because of the DMCA, you could have an entire movie encoded ROT-1, and breaking that encryption (or even describing, in an educational setting, how to break that encryption) would be a felony. This strikes me as just absurd.
If it was set up like net service, though, with a network-wide DES encryption layer, the content creators could retain some degree of control, and the actual implementation code would not reveal the secret. Thus the implementation code could be opensourced under an artistic license of some sort. In that case, I couldn't see any reason why it couldn't be incorporated into Linux, BSD, etc.
My point is, copy protection would have to be enabled by a techological protection with a degree of cracking difficulty greater than the cost of purchasing the content legally. I am certain that, technically, this can be done.
Unfortunately, I am nearly certain that, from a political standpoint, this cannot be done.
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
Can somebody explain to me what's so amazingly important about broadband. As I understand this, the media companies want to trample on all of our rights so that they can sell us more bandwidth that they can use to transmit to us the movies that they sell. Can somebody please explain to me the compelling societal interest that's being promoted here?
Bandwidth is a wonderful thing, but it seems like inacting legislation to artificially generate demand for it is an ill conceived idea. Fine, if copyright controls aren't built into every single piece of electronic equipment it might mean never watching Lord of the Rings on-line. WHO CARES? Fine, I'll go to a theater and watch it, and there I can get the experience of being with a large audience, getting the big sound and picture that I can never hope to replicate in my home. What is so almighty important to our society to be able to download this stuff?
I guess my feeling is that if the big movie studios don't want to put their stuff on-line, fine, don't, I don't really care. What's the worst that happens? Nothing. Nothing at all. They keep making money the way they always have and we keep watching movies the way we always have. The only risk to them is that somebody else is going to come along and make something of that market without any of this copy protection technology built in. So really, in the end, this is all just an effort to further the monopoly of the MPAA over movie production and distribution. Isn't that grand?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I can rent a movie from a local video store. I can then take it home, place it into my VCR, and record it to a second VCR.
The total cost to me is between $.99 and $3.99 Canadian Dollars, plus $1.99 for the blank cassette tape.
I could also record it to my computer, and eliminate the second cost.
Why do video stores exist? Shouldn't the MPAA be burning them down, or whatever it is that happens to offenders that enable piracy?
Oh, because they generate revenue. Slipped my mind. The MPAA sure are clever fellas, realizing that.
Except that they didn't realize that until after-the-fact. They had permitted rentals of BetaMax, and discovered that they could not legitimately restrict rentals on the basis of the VHS medium. They went with it because they had to, not because they wanted to.
And look at all the money!
The reason that the Internet is so scary to the MPAA and ol' Jack is because it's so big. They think, "My goodness, 400 million people can download our movie and watch it." What they fail to realize is that if they provided a service to download movies legitimately, with no worries about stripped frames or out-of-sync sound, then perhaps 40 million of those 400 million would pay a $5 service fee. Because, hey, $5 is worth saving me a half an hour of frustration. If I could pay $5 for a movie, and KNOW that it would play correctly, and have it certified to run on all hardware exceeding a specific spec, I'd pay it. My serenity in watching a movie is worth a fiver. Really, it is.
This has been said and said and said. Not everybody who downloads something off the internet ever would have purchased it. If I download a Britney Spears song because I'm having an argument over whether she's saying "My loneliness is killing me" or "Fuck me now, Tiger!" with my roommate, I'm not stealing their profit, because a stupid argument isn't worth buying a CD. Although it might be worth a micropayment, if that service existed. Of course it doesn't.
The MPAA and RIAA are both trying to take traditional bricks and mortar businesses online. But, unlike Amazon, they run into a big problem: on-line, for the media formats they're pushing, they run into competition from the illegitimate side of things (Books aren't often pirated). What they have to do is make their service offering more attractive than theft.
You'd think it wouldn't be hard to do that, except that their service offering is, and has been for about 40 years now, theft. They overcharge, they price in a predatory fashion, they artificially increase demand and artificially decrease supply. They constantly reduce production costs and yet constantly raise price tags.
Look at the computer industry: The first computer I bought and paid for with my own money was a 386 SX 20. It had a 20 meg hard drive. It cost me a fucking mint -- over $1000, and I was getting it at a discount.
Now, I can buy a 1 gigahertz computer for that price. Or, I could buy myself a K6 2/300 for $300. An increase in production efficiency coupled with a decrease in production costs resulted in a decrease of the price-to-consumer.
Well, duh.
But a CD? I bought a CD 10 years ago. It cost me $18.99 (Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense). I bought a CD yesterday, it cost me $24.99 (Kristin Hersch, Strange Angels). We all know that the price of pressable audio CDs has been decreasing, right? We all know that the methods of pressing tham have grown more efficient, right?
Q:So why did the price of my CD *increase* instead of *decreasing*?
A: Because the crooks in this equation are the RIAA.
Oh bleh. I buy CDs to support the artists I like. The more copies sold, the more important they are to the label. The more important they are, the more exposure they get. The more exposure they get, the more people listen to them. The more people listen to them, the more shows they play. The more shows they play, the better the odds that I'll get to see them -- except, of course, that the tickets will probably cost enough that I'll have to sell a kidney.
Fuckers.
-l
You're seeing the arrival of yet another black market, suitable for exploit by gangsters, thugs and drug dealers. Instead of drugs, they'll just sell non-copy protected consumer electronics devices.
Has anyone noticed that the companies that are buying up the Internet, don't like it. All they want to do is buy it up and destroy it, so they can replace it with their subscription services.
Pay per play/Pay per view/Pay for advertising. Squeeze every fucking dime out of us they can. It is rediculous. Yeah, companies have a right to make a buck, but not to hold a gun to my head. Which is what they do everytime they get their paid lackies, Congressman, to pass another law that says I have to do what the big corporations want me to do or else. Welcome back to the future! Again we find ourselves approaching an age of robber barrons. Just now they all have acronyms and better marketing.
Congress today approved a grant today towards a medical program that will implant small chip into the brain of every American child shortly after birth. Its function will be to monitor the sounds brought in by the ears and shut them off for a period of five minutes if any pirated music is heard by the implantee.
Auto insurance companies are engaged in a furious fight to stop the next version of the B-chip, which will include the capability to instantly shut down the eyes in a similar manner.
I love technology.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
I suppose a Global recession, the conversion to Euro's in Europe, and the resulting chaos from the Sept 11 attack probally didn't concern CD buyers. [or the fact that the red cross had an ad campaign playing on the radio .. something along the lines of 'for the price of one CD, you can give assistance to aiding the victoms of this grevious event.']
Seems to me that maybe good-ol` America had better things to spend their disposable income on around the holiday seasons last year.
As for requiring devices to have imbedded encryption devices in them .. lets assume for a second that no one would be able to hack them [regardless of all the results you get if you google 'cable descramblers'] How would this benifit the 'Average' American.
Just how does protecting Disney's IP [or Warnerbrother-aol-wwf] help the farmers in the midwest who grow the wheat for Eisner's mid afternoon power-bagel. From what I have seen latley (Return to Neverland, and the upcoming Cinderella sequil) Disney IP isn't exactly cutting edge anymore. Walt - the man who wouldnt let Izzy Isbourne recycle cels in their OLD animation must be pacing his cryo-chamber in angst at not only recycling cels .. but WHOLE MOVIES.
Why corporations like these folks can decide a SECURITY LAW for the rest of america bothers me. Intel hit it right on the nose with their statement. It will not benifit the average consumer .. and to add to that .. WHY ARE COMMUNICATIONS companies deciding what is good for COMPUTER COMPANIES ?? Do they REALLY believe that I use the net (or .. chuckle . the web) to watch movies? Do they think my burning desire is to ignore the big TV box downstairs, or .. god forbid .. the movie theatre, and download a grainy pan&scan that some college kid made with a cam corder ?
I mean .. Broadband must not be widespread because of this .. it can't have anything to do with cable companies haveing exclusivity in their areas with no-competition clauses .. or the fact that when you combine a $40 Broadband charge with your normal $50-60 TV bill .. that puts it out of the reach of the average income family.
They want to see broadband in every house ? drop the fees to $20 a month.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Is all this mess really about protecting a (relatively, when compared to say, the industry being required to bend over backward) small industry's profits, or is it more about creating and/or protecting an end-to-end encrypted, secure channel from the powers-that-be to our ears and eyeballs? What happens if television, the granddaddy of all mass media, is absorbed into the relatively populist and anarchist internet? Imagine the implications of a service like (the now defunct) ThirdVoice, but for the evening news instead of websites. Who would be scared by such a prospect? Makes one go "hmmm".
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
If you can read it, you can copy it
Give me an e-book that I can display on a screen, and I'll make screenshots, paste them together using Adobe, and create a non-protected copy of that work for free.
Oh, you disable screenshots? I'll take a digital camera and photograph it, toss them on my PC, and make a PDF out of them.
Oh, you don't let me take a digital image of it? I'll copy it down onto a piece of FSCKING paper and scan that in.
If it can be read, it can be copied
The government doesn't force car manufacturers to sell cars with goveners to prevent you from speeding (and thus endangering the lives of others). They don't force makers of lawn mowers to install safety devices to stop the blade from turning if the mower deck is lifted off the ground and the spinning blade is exposed. They don't force gun makers to implement technology to make sure you only use your gun at the gun range or to shoot bad people.
So, who is the government really out to protect. It sure as hell isn't the consumer.
I'm also wondering when it was written into the constitution or Bill of Rights that the profits of the few outweigh the rights of the many.
I personally can't wait for the day where a DMCA case gets bumped to the Supreme court just to see how they think it plays with Bill of Rights and common law.
Maybe I fail to see the humor, but if you resort to weaponry to protect your interests in an OS, you need to re-prioritize.
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
I see no reason why every computer should comply with their "standards" just in order to accomodate some business or the other...
If they cannot adapt to the medium then tough luck ! It's not theirs to change in the first place.
Premise one : it is Work to create content, whether it be music, video, the printed word, or computer code. What do I mean by Work? Well, first it requires a portion of the content creator's lifespan to create content. It can be anywhere from 6 months of a book author's life to hundreds of manyears of time to create a major movie. Obviously, the people doing the creating must meet their needs during this time, and more skilled (or at least more popular) content creators must receive proportionally more compensation for their labors. (hence popular content receives more compensation)
.coms run out of money they stop producing anything.
/.ers that will work. In reality, it will take very draconian measures for the content creators to ensure they receive fair compensation for their efforts.
Premise Two : If someone is allowed to enjoy such created content, whatever to media, without paying for it they decrease the incentive the creators of such content have to produce it. If so few people pay for it in some manner that it is more effort to create content than the creators are compensated (measured in subjective terms, of course) then the creator of the content will likely move on to a more productive form of employment. Hence, noone makes a sequel to a movie that fails economically, and when the
Premise 3 : The digital age allows one to make absolutely perfect copies of content, for almost any form. Many people find they can get content for free with perfect quality. The same incentive rule applies : if you can get media for free, why pay for it? Thus, Something Must Be Done. Especially the major media creators who risk billions in making motion pictures (which is why the MPAA is the most strict about copy protection : a movie takes hundreds of times the money and effort as most other forms of content creation).
I have not seen any proposals made by
One last thing to note : some of you will allege that content creators do not in fact receive "fair" compensation...that they make obscene amounts of money compared to the cost of producing the media. That is simply false. First, in the case of music the $15 you pay for the cd goes to the ADVERTISING, which is just as big a part of the content you pay for as the music itself. The advertising makes you "feel good" about listening to the music, even if the music actually sucks. (hence the popularity of Miss Spears. Remember, advertising refers to more subtle forms of expression than mere T.V. commercials). For the movie example, much of the profit studios make on successful movies has to go to pay for the films that flop.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
There's another name for hollywood's version of "broadband"...
I believe it's called pay-per-view cable.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Once again, the content industry is trying to pass off the costs of securing content. As I said the other day, in relation to Jack Valenti's most recent act of public self-humiliation (er... I guess that's what they call PR)
"The content industry has been trying to force the costs of secure IP on everyone BUT themselves. First users, then ISPs, now electronics manufacturers. When the hell will they figure out that securing their content is their own damn problem? It's like they can't figure out how to lock their own door, and instead of building a better lock, they'd rather criminalize the act of using a doorknob - er, excuse me, "wall-circumvention device." Obviously, that was a subversive Freudian slip.
Okay, so maybe recycling comments is bad form, but its even more prescient now than before.
That being said, feel free to call me hopelessly optimistic here... but I sense the tide turning.
Okay, I can hear the collective huh? out there, but I'm saying this seriously. I think there's two indicators that may mean the tide is turning away from the property rights hawks and toward the rest of us.
First, the Senate has gotten into the game. Sen. Boucher has given the RIAA flack recently about copy protection schemes and digital watermarking, and Sen. Hatch has voiced on at least one occasion that the DMCA may not be working. ("Hey, no kidding, Orrin!?")
Second, the Supreme Court has gotten into the game. Last year's Tasini decision (look it up on Findlaw) was the first subtle blow to content owners, and I think the Eldred appeal, if the Court strikes down the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, may be the next.
To paraphrase Churchill, I'm not saying this is the end. It's not even the beginning of the end. It may, however, be the end of the beginning.
Excuse my proselytizing, but where that ends is up to you. Email your Congressperson about the SSSCA. I don't care - tell them you think Hollings is a weenie. Just make yourself heard. If you've got time to peruse Slashdot, you've got time to write the damn email. And that doesn't even have to be in HMTL.
What are you waiting for?
It may be cold, but at least it's clear.
Your subject says to "Use the 2nd Amendment. Protect yourself." How, might I ask, would using one's right to bear arms relate to copyright law? I'm sure you wouldn't be advocating killing people with firearms in order to quell them.
Think of all of the equipment that will become 'unusable' by the masses and therefore discarded. This will certainly help push California's new computer recycling legislation through.
Also, notice there is no consumer representation at this hearing (the closest thing being Intel). The consumers are affected by this law just as much as the tech industry, and probably much more than the recording and film industries (they will push the legislation through and then sit back and watch while everyone else suffers through it, but ultimately it probably won't make them any more money).
The nice thing is that during the transitional phase, they will probably end up alienating the masses who can't afford the equipment required to listen to new music or rent new movies. Then they will complain that piracy has caused their sales to go down. Lather, rinse, repeat...
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
Um for most USAinas broadband = cable
If I have cable, I just order the movie from my cable operator; and I can tape it if I want.
w(hy)tf would I pay for a krappier version from the internet?
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Folks this is tongue in cheek here -
I think we need a law that deals with crimes against the Constitution.
Any person caught proposing a law or voting for a law which is later found to be in violation against the Constitution shall be banned from any government work, either as elected or appointed. If found to be lobbying another elected official after being banned, all those who were lobbied can not vote on the legislation lobbied on behalf of.
Although H.B. Piper had a few good ideas in his books too... Anyone else up for a law that allows up to shoot elected officals that we feel aren't acting in our best intrests?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Hmm...let me think real hard here. How about DAT decks that couldn't make second-generation copies? How about "consumer-grade" DVD writers that can't write to the key sector? Region encoding? Child-proof lighters?
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
The fact we are in a recession wouldn't have anything to do with it of course.
In all fairness to him, what he said was absolutely true - he wasn't "introducing" a bill at that time. He was just getting ready to.
I'm no fan of the SSSCA, but he didn't deny its existance. He denied that it was being introduced at that time, which is true. It's hardly a "blatant lie".
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
I haven't heard much about Title 17 Ch 10 sect 1002 of the US Code that states: Sec. 1002. - Incorporation of copying controls (a) Prohibition on Importation, Manufacture, and Distribution. - No person shall import, manufacture, or distribute any digital audio recording device or digital audio interface device that does not conform to - (1) the Serial Copy Management System; (2) a system that has the same functional characteristics as the Serial Copy Management System and requires that copyright and generation status information be accurately sent, received, and acted upon between devices using the system's method of serial copying regulation and devices using the Serial Copy Management System; or (3) any other system certified by the Secretary of Commerce as prohibiting unauthorized serial copying. Does anyone have any information regarding the enforcement of this? Here is a link to the entire section: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1002.html
"The technology community doesn't want any standards regardless of what form they take. There's an impasse that needs to be bridged if we want to create broadband services and increase consumer demand for those services," Davis said on Tuesday.
Davis is Hollings' spokesman. So, the government believes it has a duty to increase demand from consumers for certain kinds of commercial services?
Frightening.
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
Here's an article from the Washington Post about how a bill in Virginia to recommend families turn off their TVs for a week and talk to each other was basically killed instantly, in large part because of lobbying from the entertainment industry.
But the unanimous vote by the Rules Committee against the resolution to promote TV-Turnoff Week also reflected the growing clout of the broadcast industry, which lobbied each lawmaker to vote against the measure.
The sucker who proposed the bill had the termerity to include part of sweeps week! If the industry is willing to shut down a non-binding suggestion that people spend more time with each other and less watching crap,we can't overestimate how hard they'll try to legislate their way to victory.
Teaching, coding, coffee, revolution.
I also find it interesting that the senator promoting this heinous piece of legislation is a Democrat. Aren't the Democrats supposed be the party that sticks up for the common people as opposed to big media interests like Disney and the MPAA?
You are confusing marketing ploys with true objectives.
No, the Democrats are the party that shakes down big business for campaign contributions/tribute to "allow" them to do a little business. Ref. Al Gore illegally using his official office to tell businesses what to contribute.
The main voluntary contributors are leftist media types (networks, film, music), who are also big business but volunteer "some" money, mostly volunteer celebrity status so that joe-blow saps will make contributions.
They are also the party that wants to extend themselves into royalty status and live off of YOUR money, collected with the threat of a gun (only government owned guns allowed).
I could write more but that more than covers it.
I package software for redistribution in a locked down corporate network. As far as I am aware, we have never violated a license agreement, we are very careful of that.
In order to manage and distribute software we re-package it, configuring it to our specific needs and then load it on servers that deploy it to the intended audience automatically.
There is nothing wrong or illegal with this practice, as a matter of fact, it helps assure strict compliance with copyright and license issues. Yet, if the software were copyprotected we could not do this. It would result in great expense to us as a company because a representitive would have to visit each desktop to install the software and labor prices aren't small anymore!
It seems that the "fix" is far worse than the "problem" to me.
This isn't just about an OS. It's about freedom. The day the government mandates what OSes I can and cannot run is the day I take up arms against that government.
Why does so much evil shit come out of South Carolina?
There is so much wrong with that idea that I can't even believe it would be discussed. I am already annoyed that devices can't be manufactured in the U.S. which bypass region protection, and this is taking that idea a step further in the wrong direction. If you think about it, the next logical step to take if this fails to work after passing is to require everyone to wear headphones so that they are unable to hear any sound they have not expressly paid for. Of course, taking the headphones off would violate the DMCA, since you would be bypassing a technological copy prevention method and gaining unauthorized access to data.
This is the direction we're moving in now; where anything can be legislated if it protects access to intellectual property, despite its complete detriment to personal rights. This sort of idea should never come to pass in a free thinking society. Those that have proposed it are the absolute worst among us. Just complete scum.
I say penguin dung on Mickey Mouse and anybody else who tries to force this type of compliance. They can have my 386 laptop when they pry it from my cold, dead hands... oooooo == Penguin Dung
'A representative for the Walt Disney Company declined to comment for this article. But in September, a Disney lobbyist defended Hollings' draft SSSCA as "an exceedingly moderate and reasonable approach." '
With the exception of posting to Slashdot, how can something be 'exceedingly moderated'?
"Derp de derp."
Sorry consumer X and company XYZ you have unpatched / unupgraded hardware. You will have to buy this $100.00 PCI card or O/S patch to remain legal. Otherwise we will fine you $500,000 a day or throw you in jail. You will have to surrender your old VCR, Tape recorder, CD player and DVD player to the local police and purchase the new $300.00 compliant player. Otherwise we will fine you $500,000 a day or throw you in jail.
So, lets see, every consumer will have to pay $100 per computer + $300 for the player.
Company XYZ you will have to upgrade your 100 servers, because some sneaky Network Admin may be using it as a NAS for all his videos. Or we can throw your CEO in jail. Sorry but the O/S patch is only available on M$ operating systems. You will have to port your whole company to M$ 2000.
Humm. $2000.00 per server for the O/S... Sounds about right.
This is BS!
My right to bear arms means that the government is going to think twice about sending thugs to my house in order to arrest me for running Linux or any other "illegal" operating system that they (or the MPAA/RIAA/etc.) find objectionable. I am advocating defense of liberty; I'm not advocating "killing" anybody. This is our country, not Jack Valenti's.
If everyone would go to www.congress.org and write their senators and representatives I guarantee you it would have an impact.
0 .html
Here is what I wrote - feel free to copy/edit:
-------------
I have written to you before on this topic but I thought I would remind you that the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) is a horrible idea for America, and there is a hearing about it tomorrow morning.
This is a bill that Senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina is advocating on behalf of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). It seeks to severely limit the freedoms of Americans by imbedding Digital Rights Management (DRM) hardware - into every single electronic device.
Not only does this bill limit the freedoms of Americans but it is going to be a nightmare to enforce - which means it is going to end up costing ME, the person who has his rights stripped away, money in the form of tax dollars.
Please do not allow this atrocious bill to ever make it to the Senate floor. I am a VOTING American and you can bet that my next vote will be riding on topics such as this.
Here is a news article on this bill: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50702,0
----------------
Its called a lie of omission ...
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
We can all fight this, but it's coming so we might as well get used to it and get some sleep.
The fact is that technology is created by giant corporations. Can you manufacture a Pentium in your garage? Nope. Hard drives? Monitors? Network cards? Cable? Infrared mice? Nope, nope, nope. Basically the only thing that we have control of is the software, the rest is made by multinational corporations who have very little of our best interests in mind.
No one really respected computers before 1995. Only office workers used them and NO one used them for entertainment. The same argument can be made for most digital devices. Now suddenly, everyone gets the clue and realizes what sort thing of thing that Greek chick has let out of the digital box. In the coming years every book, every piece of music, every movie, every television show EVER CREATED will be available digitally. And as it is now every piece of this copyrighted material is free to be transferred between people without cost.
Everyone gets the idea now. And they're going to do something about it.
So, multinationals are going to do what they can to protect their own and the government (especially a Republican led government) will let them. Companies like Sony who once pushed for BetaMax openness will now push for DRM on everything. Even little companies like Blizzard get it and pushes for complete control over it's product and how it's used on the Internet. It won't be long before Microsoft does the same for Windows (want to use the net? You have to use the Microsoft Internet Protocol TM - or you go to jail.)
And what are we, the people, going to do when the corporations do this? Nothing. Because again, we can't create our own fiber-optic cable in our bathroom, we can't create DRAM in our kitchen, etc. We are at the bottom end of the line waiting for whatever digital product these corporations produce.
Normally we would not buy such horrible products and then we would go to our government for protection from such strongarm tactics, but the government is not on our side (and hasn't been for a while). In FACT, they are ASKING the corporations to COLLUDE! PLEASE restrict choice. PLEASE come to an agreement on how to best restrict digital freedoms. PLEASE make it so the status quo can be maintained. THAT is best for the country.
The corporations and the government know NOW that the technology user only has as much power as they GIVE them, so they're going to come to an agreement on the best way to restrict this power.
Get used to it.
-Russ
Me
the hearing is meant to discuss whether the government must step in and mandate standards -- which Hollywood believes will allow movies to be distributed safely online, spur high-speed Internet access, and boost hardware sales.
Companies that find the culture of the digital age to be unacceptable should withdraw their products from the market and stay the hell out of the digital age.
You, sir, fail.
/. is falling nowadays. Sigh....
Even the quality of the trolling on
If this law passes all of our computers will be rendered illegal or at
least new stuff.
Innovation will be stiffled forever.
Linux itself will be illegal.
The computer and all electronics will be ruined.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Last August, Hollings circulated a proposal called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) that prohibits creating, selling or distributing "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies."
/creating/ an "interactive digital device"?
So does this mean that only a *complete* PC counts as an "interactive digital device"? A video card or motherboard isn't interactive by itself.
So, could one could still buy "non-protected" components and build your own clean PC, and thus be guilty of merely
All you need is one guy to connect the analog out of his DVD player to the analog in of his video card, hit play, record, compress and upload, and voila! the movie's on the web being shared by millions of viewers. The most sophisticated copy protection is simply ignored.
MPAA: attack the problem at the root--make DVD's 5 or 10 bucks. I'd rather spend that than sit around waiting for a potentially screwey movie to download. Or make a site where people could download movies themselves that were digitized by the studios and charge a subscription fee to the site. Think, for a minute, will ya?
c-hack.com |
We trust the people enough to sell lethal firearms to anybody who walks in off of the street.
We trust the people enough to let a soccer mom drive a 3-ton truck with no special training.
But we don't trust the people enough to let them have a general-purpose computer.
It's insane.
Movies stink; that's why people won't pay to go see them. Music stinks, that's why nobody is paying for the CDs. And oh yeah, THEY CHARGE TOO MUCH for such crap.
If a movie is good, I'll pay 8.50 to go see it in the theaters. If it seems OK, I'll wait and see it on cable, or rent it at the store.
If music is good, I'll pay for it in the store.
RIAA and MPAA need to learn a lesson that the web learned way back - content! I get more good content from online mags at $24 per year than I get from a DVD that costs more than that or a music CD that costs nearly that much.
- Only one TV show about a bunch of pretty 20-somethings living together with lots of free time, trendy clothing & furnishings and a penchant for drinking coffee together
- Only one TV show about a hard working dedicated bunch of Drs/Lawyers/Teachers who all exhibit a full DSM-Guide of personality disorders and apparently only date or socialize with each other.
- Only one talk show hosted by a comedian with an endless series of "celebrity" guests shilling their latest project.
- Only one band fronted by a nasal-voiced Bob-Dillon wannabe singing about teenage angst and lost love.
- Only one all-girl/all-boy teen band singing out processed harmonies written for them by an ad agency committee.
- Only one swords & sorcerer novel allowed to be pushed at once all using pretty much Tolkien's plot & milieu, set in three parts but with a twist
- Only one religion allowed to claim to be the one true one and all of the others prosecuted as Intellectual Property infringers.
- All books and non-digital media have the same rules applied as proposed for digital media. Photocopiers, scanner, tapes, pens, pencils, carbon paper, all must have copyright-protection devices built in. Oh, mechanical pencils are *very* suspect and will require a license.
- Cameras are of course geo-shuttered unless one gets a permit for the view desired. California will begin charging 10 cents for a Golden Gate Bridge shot, NY, NJ and the Nat'l Park Service will be in court over rights to the Statue of Liberty, France will angle for a cut too.
- Every politician who promises to be tough on crime, cut taxes and restore pride to our great nation will be fined for copying.
- Ownership of saws, screwdriver & T-squares will be regulated to prevent the illicit construction of unlicensed buildings or machines.
- Web-browsers will come equipped with Digital-Media-Rights-Modules determining for how long a page can be displayed and ensuring no copies are made. Webcams with biometrics will be utilized to ensure the identity of properly authorized readers.
Etc.Write your Congress-Critters.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Obviously.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Same Old Shit.
Copy prevention won't work. Digital media are BASED on the principle that anything (physicaly non-existent) can be copied. It's pretty much the same with a book. No matter how hard you try preventing copying it, one can still just use paper and a pencil and physicaly copy it.
which brings the question: why aren't paper sheets fucking expensive and pencils monitored by the **AA ?
therefore paper&pencils are illegal under the dmca. (ok, maybe not, but if you think about it for a moment it ain't far off)
I'm feeling slightly embarassed that i posted this, since this applies to every similar discussion and gets boring. oh well.
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
I agree, what he says is absolutely true. Its an issue of timing, When I wrote him in October, he was planing to introduce the bill, but when he replied in November, the bill had been tabled. It was dishonest of him to attempt to lead me to believe that he had no intent to introduce the bill, but clearly the last few days indicate he did intend to do so.
Also lets not forget who he is. Washington is known for people saying one thing and meaning another. So yes his words were truth, but his message was not. That is the lie. Before you tell me I am not being fair, remmeber, he does represent me therefore I can judge him by a higher standard than just technically true.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
...then they should release their products in an analog format! They should have to change, not the rest of the world. They made a decision to go digital, and they could choose to revert to analog. If you don't like the game, you don't get to change the rules for the other players. Your only option is to quit and play a different game.
"I think nobody should listen to anything he says since obviously he has nobodies best interests in mind."
That would be "nobody's".
To me the most infuriating part of this is the mentality, expressed in Hollings' letter, that the world is divided into content "creators" and "consumers".
If we are not in the business of making money off copyrighted works, then we must be "consumers" of copyrighted works. There appears to be no notion in either government or most major media outlets that some of us might value some of our rights that don't necessarily advance our positions as "consumers".
Clearly it is too much to expect the public at large to "get" open source, but is there no general sense that our rights ought not be pidgeon-holed like this?
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
...about how they're not geting richer! Give me a break. Piracy has been rampant for as long as I can remember! How many of us copied CD onto tape from our friends when we were younger? How much Microsoft software do people have that they have not paid for? How many people have 2 VCR's? I am not saying that all this excuses piracy, but the fact remains that the recording, movie, and software industries have made HUGE amounts of money in spite of all this. So don't tell me they need protection. History does not bear this out. It is distressing to me that our government (at least, it claims to be ours)feels that it is more important to protect the ability of a relative few to make crazy cash than to protect the freedom and options of it's citizens. We need protection from them, not the other way around. As far as music sales being down, correlation sdo not prove cause and effect. Thus endeth the rant.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Of most interest on that page? Top Industries and Top contributors on the left hand side. And yes, big media companies are giving him a lot of cash. And yes, I'd say he's probably just returning the favor.
Hmm. Perhaps it's time to send a couple of hundred dollars to the South Carolina Republican party in the hopes that they can defeat him in the next election cycle.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
this is where I draw the line.
DMCA and UCITA need to be repealed. They're bad, and they're blatantly unconstitutional, but let's be honest: they aren't outrageous in the technical sense. They're certainly a quid pro quo for soft money, and potentially worse, and they're certainly only going to last until their first appointment with a high court.
They are not "let's try to paint the sky red."
The SSSCA is.
And this is where I draw the line.
If this law passes, I will put my current career on hold. I will become a political activist.
Soft money reform is only the beginning.
I will vote against every incumbent in the following election, and I will devote every available bit of my energy towards encouraging others to do the same.
If we, as a nation, can seriously consider bribe-legislation so foul, so odious, so obviously pernicious both to our own economy and our basic civial rights, then it's time for some turnover.
We're on the road to Tycho.
Its called `reading something into something someone said`. You might just as well call him a holocaust denier for not bringing that up too.
According to opensecrets.org, Representative Ernest F. Hollings received $260,034 from the TV/Movie/Music industry from 1997-2001. This was the second highest contributer; the highest was lawyers and law firms. He also received $18,000 in contributions from TV/Movie/Music PACs for 2001-2002. You can read all the details here.
So, yes, Hollings is in the entertainment industry's pocket.
Is Hane's going to start putting chips with DRM into my underwear next?
The US is slowly going to hell...
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Here are a few choice quotes from slashdot's *caugh* *caugh* favorite senator from todays Enron coverage [cnn.com].
"There's a culture of government corruption,"
He seems pretty self aware for a politician.
"I've never seen a better example of cash-and-carry government than this Bush administration and Enron."
I wonder how much cash HE's received from the movie ass of america to carry this?
Let's set aside whether we should have the right to back-up or trade intellectual property. Admittedly it's important, but I have some bigger concerns.
The universal implementation of digital rights protection would be enormously dangerous to free speech as a whole.
Let's just say, years in the future, World Net Daily publishes an article containing information that is very embarassing to the government. Officials want the story squelched.
So, just register a signature for the page in the Digital Rights MAnagement system, and call it proprietary. Pooft! No one can access it. No one can email it. It's gone, for all intents and purposes, excepting for those who have broken the protection system on their hardware.
As I said in the subject "if costs were lower, i would buy more". Right now though, with movies, they cost tens of millions to make and the actors are getting paid million to star in them. With music, the good artists don't get that much. The sellout bands are great for a while then die out while the true bands just keep on pushing making music and holding onto a real job.
I don't think we have to worry too much about this. (Altho don't mistake that comment as 'we don't need to defend ourselves.')
a.) It's unconstitutional. The Gov't is happy to step in and cap prices, but they rarely go for the idea of regulating behaviour.
b.) The people heading this up are asking for measures that are too extreme. This is usually an indication that they have something sneaky going down they're trying to create a loophole for.
c.) Also, the people heading this up are in the position of 'we are a huge corporation who wants to milk more money out of the consumer.'
d.) I seriously doubt that the people backing this up can show they've suffered any serious damage due to piracy. They can't really. They don't even transmit stuff online.
e.) The spirit of copyright is to protect people's works so that they are rewarded to keep creating. The problem is that if they take away abilities to create, then they are working against copyright. If the MPAA and RIAA have their ways, I won't be allowed to be 'inspired' by content. I think if a judge understands this, he or she won't allow this particular form of legislation to take place.
I haven't heard any arguments from these guys that don't sound incredibly extreme. It could be likened to gun control. We all know that guns are primarily used to kill people. (Please please PLEASE don't send me stupid comments about rare circumstances where they can be used for turning off the TV or for shutting up noisy neighbors. I hate when people here nitpick details instead of ideas.) Yet, nobody's been successful at making the acquisition guns illegal. This is probably because the USA refuses to take away one's right to defend themselves. It's for this reason that I don't think this heavy-handed proposal will go through.
Personally, I think the MPAA should just accept that some people are going to make content available. If somebody seeks that content instead of the legitimate ways of obtaining it (which, btw, is difficult today since the MPAA doesn't make it available..GRRR), then somebody will provide a means for it. Instead of fighting it, provide better service. Making it a challenge for people to obtain pirated copies is going to increase piracy.
"Derp de derp."
NO! The Democrats are the party that likes to pretend they're liberal and "for the common man" and whatever other crap they want you to believe, but actually, THIS is a much better representation of the way many Democrats think:
Audiosyncratic - Tipper Gore
Neither of the two political giants are out to serve your best interests. Who was in the White House when the DMCA passed? Better yet, who SIGNED THE THING into law? A Democrat. Billy also signed one of the every-so-often Copyright Terms Extension Acts that Disney likes to shell out $ for. There's your standing up for the common man!
The Libertarians are the only real conservatives, and the Green Party are the only real liberals. Don't let anyone tell you those corporate serving, rights-raping bastards in Congress and in the White House are anything but.
Senator Hollings especially!
Hollings has received campaign donations from Enron, but that hasn't slowed him from raising a stink over Ashcroft recusing himself from the Enron investigation. Ashcroft did receive donations from Enron, when he ran as a senator, so he recused himself from the criminal investigation, to avoid the appearance that the donation had tainted his objectivity.
Likewise, as governor of South Carolina, he signed a bill to fly the confederate flag over the state capitol, and recently tried to use that issue in the 2000 Presidential campaign against the Republicans, for them not insisting that it should come down.
A senator with as much seniority as he has only listens to the highest bidder.
-- Len
That is a better response then I got from my suposed Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). After writing a nice polite letter about the dangers of both the DMCA and the SSSCA, I got a response about how she supported digital signatures for EShopping, "Way to go Kay !". I will not be voting for her in the future, unless she (or the Interns who answer her mail) starts showing she has a clue about the issues at hand. I have wriiten back, I included a copy of my original letter and her response, and advised her to be more careful in the future about responding to letters, as my letter and her response where completely unrelated. I further stated, based on this incident, that I doubted her abilty to properly represent me on matters that were important to me. I have as yet to receive a response.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
www.senate.gov
Use it to find your Senator's sites and send them an email. Both of my Seantors had form built into their site, so it was very easy for me do do so.
Below is the letter I wrote. It's not very well written, but I think the more important thing is that they know people don't like this sort of legislation.
Be sure to write YOUR senators, and include your address. They pay more attention to people in their state. Also, please be civil. I doubt they'll respond well to "tHiS 1Aw suXoRs!!!", or the like. If you don't feel like writing much, just a brief sentence about how you are oppossed to the law will do fine.
Senator Mikulski,
I just wanted to write a brief message to let you know that I, as someone who works in the Technology industry, oppose the "Security Systems Standards and Certification Act" (SSSCA), as proposed by Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings.
This plan is, in my opinion, and MANY others, unworkable. It unfairly places the responsibility of protecting the content of the entertainment industry on the technology industry. It also restricts and unfairly places additional cost on the consumer.
The fact is, the bootleggers will still be able to make copies. This legislation actually does nothing to prevent them from copying discs or making discs with unreleased movies or audio. They have access to professional-grade or modified equipment that, by design or modification, will be unaffected by these new standards. Many of them operate in countries where these laws would not affect them, using equipment made outside of our zone of influence. (Proof of this is that many Hollywood movies are illegally available on DVD and Video CD in foreign countries within days, and sometimes even before, of their release to theaters in America.)
Also, the average user will still be able to find these items in digital format. All it takes is one user who is savvy enough to make a copy, then the information is available. Or, if one person is willing to upload an illegally purchased bootleg that does not have the protections encoded on it, then again, the information is available to those who want it.
This legislation will force excess cost and restriction on both the consumers and the technology industry, as well as stifling innovation. If every technological innovation had to be designed to that it would make piracy impossible, we would not have cassette tapes, VCRS, the internet or even the printing press. Many of these inventions were followed by predictions of doom for copyright holders, but that has yet to come to pass.
If every company has to consider how a new invention will relate to the intellectual property of another industry before deciding to develop that technology it will, at the least, slow down technological development.
These rules will also present a significant barrier of entry to new, smaller firms who wish to try and compete in the technological arena. It is difficult and expensive to develop a technological product or piece of software as it is. If companies have to build various artifical safeguards into their products to protect the work of other companies from activities that are already illegal, then it may become to costly for them to compete effectively with the other, larger, companies in their field.
Beyond these factors is the fact that citizens and consumers should not be faced with these restrictions, as they will not effectively prevent piracy, only fair use.
Piracy is a bad thing, yes, but the fact is, piracy is already illegal. Please don't force the consumer and the technology industry to pay through the nose AND accept heavy restrictions on their activities and business to fight this impossible fight to stamp out piracy.
Thank you for your time,
Joshua A Sisk
I wonder how much that guy knows about computers or like he likes to call them PCs (btw. maybe somebody should tell him there are also Macs, *nix workstations...).
I also wonder what is his great plan; is RAID 1 going to be illegal? hell, what about backup? is MPAA going to send some of their cyborgs to enable my backup device and then take my tapes to their vult?
I've been in the states for almost 6 years, but since last year I'm really considering leaving this country. I'll tell you, there is more freedom even in the post-communistic countries than here.
Oh, sorry, I forgot about something, sure there is freedom; you can always take someone to court, but make sure he doesn't have more money than you.
IANAL, but it seems any manufacturer who does not have the money or will to comply with this law just needs to incorporate some piece of analog technology into a product, and the need to comply with this law disappears.
After all, if a device has some dirty old analog technology, it's not *truely* digital, correct?
Really, this could just fall upon lawyers looking for ways to define how a digital device isn't truely digital. Lots of hair splitting.
As usual, the only people who win are the lawyers.
C-SPAN only covers some committee hearings & they might be covering this, but their website is misbehaving right now so I can't tell for sure.
Capitol Hearings will have it via Real audio starting at 9:30 A.M. (I assume that's Eastern time).
They don't offer archives.
I'm glad I got streambox before it was sued out of existance!
Why is it that the government is always being asked (or doing so without being asked) to step in and implement legislation that nobody but big business asked for. I don't remember ever hearing about Joe Schmoe in Louisiana saying hey, I think Digital Copyright protection legislation needs to be beefed up. lets create some pseudo real organization like the DMCA and the RIAA. Does anybody ever remember that happening? I never saw the petition that was organized by /. ers saying that they needed their rights infringed on more and more on a daily basis. If I had I at least would have had a good laugh. But my biggest concern, question, rant, whatever you want to call it is why is it that corporations always start out ahead of the general public. It seems we are always on the losing end of proposed legislation and are continually fighting an uphill battle to bring the truth to light. I mean come on, how long can greed and corruption prevail over the people who know better?
As for why the cost of CDs keeps going up, that's because the RIAA's a price-fixing cartel that artificially inflates prices. I bought a few CDs from mp3.com a while back, at $8 a pop and they were better than most of the crap that the RIAA promotes. You know why they were $8 a pop instead of $16-$25 a pop? Because mp3.com was outside the RIAA cartel and could therefore set their own prices.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
If you are a constiuent and a voter, call today to register your opposition to this proposed bill. Don't wait--the committee is scheduled to meet on this tomorrow.
You can find this list at http://www.senate.gov/~commerce/members.htm
202-224-5115
508 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510-6125
Democrats Phone Number Fax Number
Ernest F. Hollings, SC (202)224-6121 (202)224-4293
Daniel K. Inouye, Hawaii (202)224-3934 (202)224-3934
John D. Rockefeller IV, WV (202)224-6472 (202)224-7665
John F. Kerry, Massachusetts (202)224-2742 (202)224-8525
John B. Breaux, Louisiana (202)224-4623 (202)228-2577
Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota (202)224-2551 (202)224-1193
Ron Wyden, Oregon (202)224-5244 (202)228-2717
Max Cleland, Georgia (202)224-3521 (202)224-0072
Barbara Boxer, California (202)224-3553 (202)228-1338
John Edwards, North Carolina (202)224-3154 (202)224-3154
Jean Carnahan, Missouri (202)224-6154 (202)224-6154
Bill Nelson, Florida (202)224-5274 (202)228-2183
Republicans Phone Number Fax Number
John McCain, Arizona (202)224-2235 (202)228-2862
Ted Stevens, Alaska (202)224-3004 (202)224-2354
Conrad Burns, Montana (202)224-2644 (202)224-2644
Trent Lott, Mississippi (202)224-6253 (202)224-2262
Kay Bailey Hutchison,Texas (202)224-5922 (202)224-0776
Olympia J. Snowe, Maine (202)224-5344 (202)224-1946
Sam Brownback, Kansas (202)224-6521 (202)228 1265
Gordon Smith, Oregon (202)224-3753 (202)228-3997
Peter G. Fitzgerald, Illinois (202)224-2854 (202)228-1372
John Ensign, Nevada (202)224-6244 (202)228-2193
George Allen, Virginia (202)224-4024 (202)224-4024
Davis is a moron. Without the standards he seems to feel technology companies don't like you wouldn't be reading this post. That being said, and the obligatory SSSCA is a bad thing statement, we can move on to a real issues.
One problem is that it is so easy to make perfect digital copies of stuff. So I can go out and make 100 copies of a Brittney Spears CD and hand them out at about $0.50 a copy. You can't argue that this isn't bad for the current way content providers market content. Movie investors need to make money for their shareholders. Publishers need to make money for their shareholders. Otherwise we wouldn't have movies like The Matrix, or Lord of the Rings. We'd have cheap crap like Plan 9 from Outer Space.
However, making CDs that I have to register, or discover I can't rip to MP3 only after I purchase it, will piss me off. In fact I now feel a slight sense of revulsion every time I walk past the music section at Best Buys. In addition artists make their money off touring - not CD sales. Recording companies make money off CD sales. They tell us one reason CD's cost $17.00 a pop is because of piracy - but don't look for a price drop if the SSSCA gets passed.
The real problem is that content providers haven't figured out a new way to make money off the new technology. So, rather than embracing it, they're rejecting it or trying to control it. Trying to legislate it out of existence is at best going to fail. At worst it will probably make free software illegal and add costs to every electronic gizmo we buy.
The content providers need to agree - among themselves - a standard for real encryption. They need to work out a system that isn't easily breakable (like DVD encryption). They need to put out content that plays only on players that use that encryption. That will cause people to buy players in order to view the content.
Those of us who want to be left alone won't have to worry about it - we just won't be able to listen to music on our laptops because our CD rom drive doesn't have the 'chip' or whatever in it to unlock the content. If I really want to listen to music on my PC I'll buy the upgrade. I'll know if a CD is copy protected because it plays in one of the new fan-dangled players. This would naturally be phased in gradually as content providers release content with the encryption standard and as devices become avaialable. Instead - those lazy bastards want everyone else to figure it out for them and to pay for it.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
I'm just wondering what Slashdotters think the reason is that the music and movie industries - with a combined revenue of 22 billion dollars/anum -- are allowed to get away with throwing a three trillion dollar economy into a tailspin. Further, why do you think they are allowed to bully around the consumer electronics, computer and software industries at will? Further, why do you think are they are allowed to threaten the rights of 300 million Americans?
I'm just curious. It's got to be more than lobbyists, everyone has those. Why are these guys able to push everybody around so easily? Anyone have any ideas?
Night
You talk about making stuff, and covering the cost of mistakes. Allow me to over simplify...
If I make a hamburger.. the best hamburger in the world... and it costs $200, I'll charge $225 for it, OK?
Now, after I've gotten my $225 how many more times should I charge for it? Should I charge for each burp the original eater gets later in the day? Should I charge the bacteria that digest the burger? Six months later, should I be collecting royalties from the cows that ate the grass that was fertilized by the hamburger?
My point is, that once I've done something and gotten paid for it, I need to do something else to get paid more... except when I am a record label or a movie studio.
What if I make a crappy hamburger? I don't get paid for it.
How many times over should anyone get paid for creating something?
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
This sounds like a job for Ted Kazinski!
Just like your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, one could could argue that your freedom to copy data ends when it's someone else's data. If this is done well, it should not hinder legitimate use, but I bet most people here are more interested in whether or not they will still be able to rip those rented DVDs.
If you think about it for a moment though, you'll realize that something like this is bound to happen some time. Instead of protesting and hoping it won't, you need to accept that it will, and try to shape and influence it so that it doesn't become a nuissance for legitimate uses, make sure it doesn't become a Windows-only thing, etcetera.
Secondly, far too much legislation is going on with no point beyond making these tax money toilets look busy. Career politicians should be dumped out of office and have to work at Walmart for the same number of years they wasted in public office making worthless laws. That way we are sure they know what life is like for the bulk of the population.
Thirdly, how many people vote? Politicians don't want you to vote. They will tell you what you want to hear to get into office, then suck on the corporate/public teat for 35 years, occassionally popping up to rant about an unimportant public issue (so Joe Public can say 'good job, Senator Dick Head!') Learn about the issues, educate others, and Vote!
I will introduce a bill. Six year term limits, mandatory voting (crazy, I know!) and all canadates for office (ANY party) get to spend exactly the same amount of money, Television coverage, and a web site with all issues clearly spelled out for each canadate. Time for our government to represent the people and not Business. sigh.
Listen, there is only one way you're going to get this copy protection thing off the ground, Mr. Music Mogul. But first, you'll need some equipment:
1 (one) voice synthesis/recognition package
1 (one) lie-detection package (try Makh Shevet)
1 (one) heavy duty electrical cable
Now this is how to go about it. You build the voice synthesis and lie detection stuff into the DVD drive or whatever other kind of device you want to make safe for Joe Public.
Then you put instructions in the manual explaining how to hook up the electrical cable to the main power grid. This should be arranged so that the other end goes into the drive.
It should work like this, Mr. Mogul:
(User inserts DVD and begins to copy it)
(Voice Synthesis Package): "I have detected a disc being copied. Is this for personal backup or piracy purposes?"
(User): "Umm. Backup, of course."
The device should now parse the response in its lie detection module. Failure in this step means we proceed to the final step:
(Device closes the circuit between the main power grid and the Pentium IV tower.)
This way, the device won't be hacked Mr. Mogul, since you're basically killing off would-be libertarians.
Hope this helps, Mr. Music Mogul. I couldn't think of anything else that would keep your copy protection schemes from being hacked.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
...is to hold on to your old hard drives and computer equipment.
It may be slow but it doesnt have DRM built in and should still work in the future.
-"The early bird catches the worm, but the late bird sleeps the most"
Big deal. Most of us here can build our own players! This way there's no circumvention.
You are to blame for this too. Microsoft has a patient on a DRM OS and will bow down to the MPAA/RIAA on this issue. You are to blame for this too.
I've decided to mispell one or more words in all my correspondence. If you don't like it then don't read it.
Even apart from the donations buy votes theory, just remember -- If Jack Valenti can get a fee from you, Congress can tax that transaction at the same time. $$$.
I mean, the whole Copyright thing is based on the assumption that when the time is up, the whole content is made public. Digital Media are a great way to make it so... but ALL PROTECTION FORBIDE IT! and thrus aren't they all illegal?
Just my 2 cents... but may happen i'm wrong...
I remember when I was reading 'Atlas Shrugged' (yes, it's a bad novel, but it's interesting too) and thought the whole "moratorium on brains" thing was just too ridiculous and unbelievable. It was like an over-the-top exaggeration badly told, to make a religeous point. Nobody is that crazy, I thought.
And now stuff on the same scale of stupidity is happening in Real Life. This is one of the most stupifying, amazing things I have ever heard of, which leaves the most imaginative fiction in the dust. And supposedly grown-up people in positions of power are taking this seriously. Even passing a law that outlaws tinfoil hats would make more sense than a law to outlaw general-purpose programmable computers.
I hope that the people who pass it have to live with the consequences, while the rest of us openly break the law. "Sorry, you cannot print or save the letter that you just typed."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Probably since you didn't include a fat soft-money contribution.
sulli
RTFJ.
The first round for SSSCA ended in October of 2001 with it being postponed indefinately. Microsoft actually came out (mildly) against it. On December 11, 2001, Microsoft was granted patent 6,330,670 for the "Digital rights management operating system". (Microsoft also has 19 other patents on the subject of DRM.)
.Net and everything in between.
One of the initial concerns over SSSCA had to do with the fact that Windows XP already had DRM built in, and so the law would give it an unfair advantage. "Unfair advantage" has now become a gross understatement. Microsoft has patented what the SSSCA would require of every OS. This leaves Apple, Linux, etc. with only three options:
1) Try to license DRMOS from Microsoft, and MS refuses: your OS is history.
2) Try to license DRMOS from Microsoft, and MS lets you. Be prepared to pay through the nose. Also, realize that MS is going to throw all kinds of things into the agreement, from IE to
3) Try to break their patent. Good luck.
I would strongly suggest fighting SSSCA tooth and nail, now while we still can. Give Apple and the various corporate allies of Linux a heads-up, they can help. Raise the alarm in the world outside Slashdot.
If we don't stop this, Microsoft (and the MPAA and RIAA) will have their Millenium (thousand year rule).
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have got to pay!
New Kirk calling Mothra: "We need you today!"
I like the way the register calls valenti "the industry Ass. President". oh man that cracks me up.
The reason is..
After 9/11 the government asked hollywood to make more propoganda films showing american soldiers being big heroes. The new bruce willis (harts war)and mel gibson (we where soldiers) flicks are the first of these.
Well now hollywood wants it's back scratched.
This one is goin through.
You have to give your propoganda machine what it wants.
A little history lesson:
Great Britain started the Industrial Revolution and passed all sorts of laws that protected IP to keep its dominant position. We see that this worked...for a while. The early 1800s had massive leaps in development and inventions and the 1900s started with the British on top of the world in a global empire.
Also at the start of the Industrial Revolution, consider the US. It was not by any means a global power, recently seperated from the British. However, it enacted laws and gave incentives to steal as much IP as possible and the talent who created it from Great Britain. The beginning of the 20th century saw the US emerging as a contender in world affairs. After WWII, they were the last ones standing (that did not have their manufacturing centers ravaged by war) and continuing to coast from the war build-up.
Now the US is passing laws to protect its IP and dominant position. When Britain was dominant, history shows that they were unable to successfully force thier interests across the Atlantic. To reach the same situation in the modern era, a similarly unreachable outpost must be found where monopolistic IP laws don't have effect. Since the US is the global superpower in war, economics and culture, I don't think that there is anywhere on the planet that is safe.
So...it's time to cross the new Atlantic--and reach accross the solar system.
science is a religion
if by "honest" you mean "for sale to the highest bidder."
sulli
RTFJ.
nobody's => nobody is
body, bodies
nobody, nobodies
Actually nobodies is slang, it should be "no one". Or better yet I should have rephrased the whole thing.
The point though is take a break! who gives a load about small grammatical errors. I was correcting a statement of fact not grammar or spelling.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Is that who the Ass Master reports to?
Gotta love this quote from the article (bolding mine):
Valenti wrote: "What's keeping the movie industry from making its creativity theft-proof? Simply put, in order to transport movies as agreed to by the consumer on a rent, buy, or pay-per-view basis with heightened security, computers and video devices must be prepared to react to instructions embedded in the film."
Who wants to bet that, should Valenti get what he wants, downloading and playing a movie from a "MPAA-Approved" site will result in something like the following message:
"Accessing bank account.... Transferring money to MPAA.... Checking system for pirated material.... Possible copyright violation found, alerting police now.... While you wait you may play the downloaded movie (only once though)."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Lets just throw some situations out there and see how they equate
Which one of the scenarios above doesn't seem to belong. "Which one of these things is not like the others, not like the others, not like the others. Which one of these things is not like the others, which one of these things doesn't belong"
How are we supposed to grow as individuals and as a society if everything is strictly controlled by the government or corporations? I'll give you one more analogy.
New parents have a child. In order to protect that child they cover every plug in the house, lock every cabinet, lock every door, put all of the nick nacks away, keep the animals outside, they avoid toys that could be thrown or fallen off of, they bar the use of toy guns/swords/etc, violent cartoons, and anything but G rated movies. What kind of life will the child have? How will that child become an adult? What kind of adult will that child become? My personal experience with children raised like this is that they end up one of two ways:1) anal retentive, afraid of the world, afraid to try new things
2) completely unaware and ignorant of boundaries both social and moral. While visiting another persons house they go through every room touching and getting into anything that they can, taking things that they don't have at home, etc. As an young adult outside of their parents watchful gaze they try everything that their parents have said is bad and engage in every activity that's not allowed in the home.
It's like holding water in your hand - gently cup your hand giving some boundary for the water to rest naturally within and you retain control. On the flip side though the tighter you close that fist around the water the more control you lose and the faster it all runs out of your hand.
The US was founded on principals based on it's fleeing oppressive and rigid governmental control. 225 years later we are seeing the same form of control taking shape again. Our government was founded to protect our individual essential liberties and to provide a framework of protection not a cage. We should be demanding that they repeal and stop requesting new laws that do nothing to fulfill their governmental duties.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
Dear US,
We shall incorporate Your stupid laws in our legal systems in order to not be competitive against You ASAP.
Yours, Rest of the World.
I just called Sen. Boxers office and didn't even have to wait.
I see three ways to deal with this:
A) lay down, grease up and let them use us
B) vote, write letters, and someone might listen
C) Let them pass the law, and when they send
out the C&D letter, respond with "FUCK YOU,
Come and get me". Sometimes an armed resistance
is the only way to draw public attn.
Personally, I'm going with option B. But hey,
GreenPeace is a good example of an organization
willing to go that extra mile to stand up
to corporate interests. We need an organization
that will stand up for freedom of information.
Maybe call it the ACLF, American Civil Liberties Front.
I like it.
Doesn't really matter anyway, we'll all be
having wars for natural resources in 30 years
anyway.
But in September, a Disney lobbyist defended Hollings' draft SSSCA as "an exceedingly moderate and reasonable approach."
Disney also indicated that Hitler's "Final Solution" was another example of "an exceedingly moderate and reasonable approach."
The Center for Responsive Politics provides a break down of who filled his treasure chest in 2000, you can see where the proposed legislations is really comming from.
keep me posted eh
i hate pansy republicans
As you can see, corporations are legal bodies. In essence, corporations are (almost) people. Incredibly rich powerful people made up from rich and powerful component parts with less than six degrees of separation between the major components of one corporation and any other corporation, including the government. Wonderful, isn't it? :)
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
In the very early Eighties my older sister went to Smith College in Northampton, MA. Back then as now Smith was a hot bed of leftist True Think with a frightening mixture of rabid feminism and incipient Political Correctness. For four years she slaved away after her degree in Mathematics, finally returning home with her diploma.
As you might imagine, she also came home with a slightly more left-of-center worldview than she had departed with. My father, a curmudgeonly fiscal Conservative, alternated between amusement and despair whenever politics were discussed at dinner. He finally fell back in to the old standby of "when you can't show 'em, shock 'em." One exchange I remember quite clearly came when my sister and her live-in boyfriend of the time stopped by for dinner. My parents are not prudes so this was not an unusual thing, and they actually liked Geoffrey a lot, despite his socialist take on the human condition.
That evening we were digging in to Chicken Parmigiana while Geoffrey waxed philosophical on the failure of government to effectively deal with poverty. Dad, never one to pass up a good straight line, began taking him to task over the multiple billions of dollars already spent to aid the poor. What did Geoffrey want to do, throw more good money after bad? Then Geoffrey made the mistake: he asked my father what he thought the government should do.
My father looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Just make me Emperor for two years. Give me complete control of society and in two years there won't be any more poor people."
Looking for the entire world like a deer in the headlights of an on-rushing Mack truck Geoffrey asked him how that would happen.
"Simple: After two years the malingerers will have jobs and all the others will have starved."
My dad is a nice guy. He paid to have Geoffrey's shirt cleaned after he spit a mouthful of chicken and marinara sauce all over himself. Eventually
my sister was forced back to reality by the Great Equalizer: she got a job, saw all that cash being sucked out of what should have been an impressive
paycheck for all that hard work and began to wonder just what she was getting for her money. Welcome back, sis.
The reason that particular episode sticks out in my head is that it was the first time I was clued in to a Basic Truth: where governments are concerned tinkering around the edges rarely fixes problems. Even Thomas Jefferson noted that a healthy government probably needs a good revolution every now and then just to keep it fresh and vital. With everything that is and has
been going on in Washington I think this idea deserves a new examination, so here I am to toss out a proposal.
First, Presidential Elections piss me off to no end. Screw this Campaign Finance Reform stuff; let's just do away with the election all together. Let the Senate elect the President and then he can appoint a Vice President with the approval of the House of Representatives. Let them serve six or seven years and then they are replaced. We should also ease the rules for
removing anyone who turns out to be a bum. This change accomplishes a couple of things: it removes the Presidential Election as a source of corruption, and it restores the proper perspective to the relationship between Congress
and the Executive. The Imperial Presidency that most of us have grown up with is a hold over from the end of World War II where the President
retained an inordinate amount of power due to the semi-state of war that existed between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This was never the intent of the
Founding Fathers who wanted most of the political power to be in the hands of Congress.
As for the Senate, I think it actually works pretty well as is in that it was designed to be the stabilizing force in the Legislative branch. The House of Representatives is where the real change needs to come. People seem to think that because Representatives only serve two-year terms they have no real power, but nothing could be further from the truth. Collectively the House outweighs the Senate and the Presidency and as such it needs to be more accountable to the people. I would make it so by simply returning it to the people. Do away with elected Representatives and institute a draft.
One fine day, there is a knock on your door. There stand two Federal Marshals. One of them hands you a letter. "Congratulations!" the letter
would read, "You have been chosen by the Selective Service Administration to serve your Congressional District as its Representative to the House for a period not to exceed three years." They give you five minutes to pack a
small overnight bag, kiss the spouse and kids goodbye, and then they bundle you off to do your duty.
We could run a draft every year, replacing a third of the House each time so that there would always be a group of Representatives present who were familiar with the way things worked. As far as restrictions go, I would limit eligibility to any citizen over age 21 who has not been convicted of a crime in the past five years and I would also suggest that no one be allowed to serve consecutive terms. You might be drafted again (unlikely, given the numbers) but never twice in a row. A final restriction that is almost always suggested by anyone with whom I have ever discussed this: no lawyers in the House.
Beyond the very simple restrictions I would add dispensations for extreme medical situations and the like, but I would still make it very difficult to weasel out of serving. We also would need to take a close look at compensation, job retention and the fulfillment of contracts and other obligations that might have been entered in to before the prospective Representative was drafted. While this might seem a daunting task we must remember that we would only need to deal with about 150 people a year. Somehow I have to think that the government has the resources to deal with this.
Why do I like this idea? As I understand it (and I freely admit that I am not a Constitutional scholar) the House of Representatives was supposed to be the voice of the Citizen in our government. It was intended that Representatives be ordinary citizens who served a term or two then returned to their normal lives. As anyone can plainly see this is no longer the case and has not been for some time. A drafted House rectifies this situation in a simple, brute-force fashion. Spare me the smarmy, glad-handing politician seeking my vote- I want my Representative dragged kicking and screaming in
to office. They would be housed in comfortable condos in Washington and when in session the Representatives would wear identical lime-green jump suits with their name stenciled on the front and their Congressional District number on the back.
Assuming we could force this idea through the existing political process, what would the over-all effect be? First, the President would at least have the support of the Senate, and he would be very much aware that he served at
the Senate's pleasure. The President would be merely Commander-In-Chief and leader of the Executive, as the Constitution intended. The House would be about as non-partisan as one could imagine since the selection process would be free of any consideration of party affiliation. The People (that's you and me) would be spared most of the Election Year displays of Lying and
Corruption as the only officials actually elected would be the Senators. The country could save a lot of money and angst.
Another very positive effect would be that a lot less would get done in Washington DC. With the House in the hands of citizens unbeholden to any
outside forces or special interests what is the incentive to act on anything but the most critical issues? Remember: it is in the House that all spending and budget bills originate. Who better to assess the costs and predict the benefits of programs than those who struggle day to day to make ends meet and who often find themselves at the mercy of laws passed by a
Legislature that felt it just had to Do Something? It frightens me to think of a Congress that feels it has to make new laws every day to placate its money-laden masters. Furthermore, since we take away the need to keep
an eye always turned to the re-election campaign our Representatives should feel liberated to vote their conscience based on their understanding of the law and the Constitution. We would still have the Supreme Court to correct any egregious mistakes, but since we should see fewer laws being passed in the first place there shouldn't be too many mistakes to deal with.
A President who is very much aware that he is not king, a House peopled with Representatives from every sector of society, absolutely devoid of the
corrupting influences of Special Interest money and election year grandstanding. Yes, I could enjoy living in that America.
Now, about that pesky 16th amendment...
---------------
"Melt the ice; eat the moose; drill the oil; get it over with." -Max Boot
The economy will soon do just fine without Enron but this bill will affect us for decades if it is passed.
The SSSCA, too, is a scam. It is the same scam, sold with the same line. The astounding thing is that people are falling for it again. What is wrong with these people?
It's like watching somebody play three card monty over and over, convinced that they can find the queen. The question is, who is the sucker, the congressman or the voter?
This makes me ill.
I remember a time when a big corp put a serial
number in an entire product line (Intel Pentium3).
I also noticed at around the same time... a bunch
of people bought AMD chips... now even if they
make it so ALL computers/pdas/toasters/etc have
this technology, I have to say, my dual P3 system
will do until they get their heads our of their
arses. And I would like to know who else feels
this way.
L8rs
I don't know whether you're just stupid or whether you need to be put up against the wall and shot as a traitor to the Constitution.
~~~
And it will be turned down by every single member of the House, let alone the Senate. Welcome to Washington. Thanks for playing. Have a nice day.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
If they get this passed, could we sue them for impeeding upon our right to pursue happiness?
"Can't sleep. Clowns will eat me"
"anyone who distributes copyrighted material with 'security measures' disabled or has a network-attached server configured to disable copy protection."
But neither distributing copyrighted material with security enabled nor distributing software to disable aforementioned security is mentioned...
What I really want is what other people have said they want: a micropayment system with the majority of the payment going to the musician. I don't think such a system will work without DRM. If this system were in place the file-sharing clients could ignore files without DRM information.
I am opposed to the SSSCA though. I would prefer to have things worked out without anyone being forced by law to do anything.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
It said "exceedingly moderate", not "exceedingly moderated".
Last August, Hollings circulated a proposal called the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) that prohibits creating, selling or distributing "any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies."
Hmm. A new car contains about 80 microprocessors, on average. They certainly qualify as "digital device". Most of them are maybe not interactive, but things like radio/CD player, GPS navigation system, on-board computer and probably anything that interfaces with the controls and/or dials could be argued to be "interactive". Even an ABS system could be called "interactive", with a little imagination (after all, what is the definition of "interaction")?
So, does this mean that the car makers have a lot of work to do?
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
http://capwiz.com/norml2/home/
Ave Molech Setting
> Green Party are the only real liberals
Sorry, you mispelled communist.
It doesn't matter whether they publish it digitally or not. As long as there is any content whatsoever, you will be able to get rips for free. Copy protection is useless.
Repeal the DMCA!
Didn't Clinton do something like that during his deposition, carefully choosing his words so that he could give a denial that was truthful because Monica wasn't under the desk servicing him at that moment?
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
486 - pre SSSCA = ~$2.56
486 - post SSSCA = ~$priceless (or >$2.56)
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
I have *never* understood these claims that if Hollywood put movies online everyone would run out and get broadband. Last I checked, the vast majority of households in America already had access to a technology that does a great job "streaming video to the home" called freaking cable TV.
The only advantage I could see on the Internet is watching what you want on demand. Welll, my cable system is practuically there now. I can order PPV movies with my remote control. I'm sure I will be eventually able to just order what I want. The PPV systems already have Macrovision, so they have the MPAA's precious copy protection. (even though it is easily defeatable)
I hear this assertion that online movies will "save" broadband constantly, and never once have I heard a coherent argument about how it would be any more compelling than PPV Cable TV.
Well, in your analogy the equivalent would be : I make this burger, and it costs $50 to make. I charge $225 for it, but there are other items on the menu I make every day in my posh restraunt that I lose a LOT of money on. So I have to charge the 225 to make a reasonable profit. But, I can't charge people all at once for this 225 hamburger. Its too expensive to get the average joe to eat it. So I charge $125, and get the rest later. (i.e. the movie goes to DVD)
But what would we say if we called? This is a hearing, there's no proposed legislation on the table here. Yes, I know and you know that Fritz has the SSSCA in his left pocket and Disney money in his right, but until legislation is brought up, I'm not sure what I could tell my Senator.
Do you think that we should object to these hearings?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I also find it interesting that the senator promoting this heinous piece of legislation is a Democrat. Aren't the Democrats supposed be the party that sticks up for the common people as opposed to big media interests like Disney and the MPAA?
Bringing up Democrats vs. Republicans in this context is simply asinine. A Republican congress and a Democratic president ratified the DMCA and the Sony Bono Copyright Extention Act. Both parties are equally in the pockets of Hollywood's copyright cartels and equally contemptuous of the public commons and, indeed, of their constituents in general.
The same BTW is true when speaking of cryptography restrictions, which were enacted (and enforced) under Democratic and Republican congresses, and by the Republican and Democratic chief executives.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Please see The SSSCA, Microsoft's Answer to the DoJ?. It walks through the terms of the SSSCA and analyzes exactly how it gives Microsoft a complete lock on the market, and a complete exemption from anti-trust law.
No one would tolerate a soldier living in their house preventing them from breaking the law. Why should we tolerate license management enforcement technologies?
US Constitution, Amendment III:
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
3rd Amendment
If everything has to have DRM stuff in it in the future, I guess I won't be buying much more in the way of gadgets. To be honest there's only so much more I need, the PC is fine, the TV, DVD, Tivo, VCR, Home Cinema etc etc is all there. I'm happy with it all. So they bring in a stupid law to stop me doing things I don't do anyway (I never saw the point of watching films on a PC monitor) and hey presto they lose my $20k a year gadget habit. Guess I'll take up a new hobby
People - vote with your wallets. You all have this stuff,
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
At this point, it's a bit of a stretch, because it requires quite a bit of processing power to decode movies. But if Moore's law holds, it won't be long before an MPEG decoder can be written in java - thus defeating any hardware level copy protection.
Remember the Commodore 64? What about the NES? Yes, you can still play your old pirated games on PC's with the emulators available now. While I don't like the prospect of copy-controlled hardware (because I'm an OS programmer), I realize that even these measures won't prevent pirates from writing an emulator and watching illegal movies anyway.
Remember the Matrix? The time may come when the best software is passed hand-to-hand through a layer of underground and black market sources...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Here in BC our education system now actually refers to students as future "consumers", not citizens.
Be afraid.
And to the lawmakers that pass this, we will send them all a device that has this copy protection built in. and they will wonder why they can't do the simplest things.
Sure, these dont exactly need copy protection, but they do seem to be covered by the language of the bill.
I'm a consumer AND producer of music. (Yeah, straddling THIS particular fence really hurts sometimes). The SSSCA is harsh for the consumer, obviously, but I only began to get really nervous when I read : The draft SSSCA creates new federal felonies, punishable by five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000, for "anyone who distributes copyrighted material with 'security measures' disabled or has a network-attached ..."
Does this mean I can't distribute a non-DRM-enabled version of my own copyrighted work? Seems like the SSSCA strips away part of my rights as the copyright holder to control the use of my work as I see fit.
Any other "producers of copyrighted works" out there with insights?
--matt
Much like the situation where everyone refers to material escaping from its copyright protections as "falling into the public domain", I think "copy protection" is a bit euphemistic.
I think instead it should be referred to as what it is - "copy prevention" (prevention of copies, legitimate or otherwise) or "read prevention". Anyone have any better, more accurate euphemisms?...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Using the latter technique esclusively is undesirable, of course, because it means that the possible escrow services have to be hard coded in the equipment.
To recap: the escrow service either has to be known to the equipment, or the escrow service has to know the equipment's private key.
You could've hired me.
by drastically limiting the scope of the proposal / bill / law, even if it still hits the places where it most matters. (Unlikely you'll be playing a movie on most of your car's microprocessors, so they can give that up easily and pretend it's a big concession.)
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
If you really are concerned about what garbage like the SSSCA is going to do to you you need to do the following.
1. Stop supporting companies and media giants who support this kind abuse towards end users of their products. This means forgeting about the next coolest movie that comes out, the next coolest cd, dvd, etc. The more you buy from them the more they'll take YOUR MONEY and walk all over YOU!
2. Write your state senators and congressmen. Tell them you will stop buying products of the entertainment industry and technology industry if garbage like the SSSCA gets passed through. BACK UP YOUR STATEMENTS WITH ACTION!
3. If you have the money to do so, support organizations like the EFF or other companies or groups who fight this kind of crap off and look out for the general publics interests.
4. When they finally wise up, buy the products and give them positive reinforcement. Don't pirate software, don't pirate music or movies. Pay for it. And while they are still pushing laws like the SSSCA don't pirate their crap either. That just gives them a reason to go on.
Now that I've ranted and raved there are two more things I'd like to say.
1. This needs to get out in the general publics eye. It needs to be in printed papers and media outlets. I know that could be a challenge but it needs to be done.
2. The reality of my ranting above is that a lot of the people who read it probebly won't care. They will still buy their movies, cds, dvd; let the entertainment industry walk all over them, and when it's all said and done fair use will be shot to hell.
Thank you for letting me excersize my right to speak.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
It seems like any (computing) device not equipped with speakers should not be affected - so much for 'sky is falling'.
Well, I called my Senator, and the staffer who answered the phone was not terribly interested in my trying to explain my whole theory of danger in the hearings.. she was just hot to get me off the phone. Once she figured out that I was against a specific piece of legislation, that's all she wanted to hear.
Of course, that piece of legislation has not been introduced, and it may well have been significantly changed since Declan McCullagh got ahold of the draft, so I don't know if the staffer really had any idea what I was talking about.
So, I'd definitely commend people to call, but try and make up a pithy script ahead of time. I figure they'll give you about 30 seconds before they start looking at their watch, tops. ;-)
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
If you decrease the cost of your burger, more people will be able to buy it. I gave the analogy in another post and it applies here: I won't buy a CD for 18 dollars, but I _will_ buy two CD's at 12 dollars a piece. By lowering your price 1/3, you actually increased your revenue by 1/3. I'm all for people, including the RIAA and the MPAA, getting what's due and making a profit, but leeching the consumer more and more every year and then crying when the consumer gets sick of it is BS
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Me too.
I got that exact same reply to my letter. It just shows that there is nothing we can do to change Sen. Hollings' feelings on the subject.
It's up to other senators to kill this, so we need to forget about Hollings and move on to other senators and house members.
That means everyone who lives in the US, so get on it everyone.
Phathead
Wanna download media on-line from us? You gotta buy this dongle (similar to USB and parallel port software locks) and client software. If people don't want it, they don't have to buy it.
Instead, they blow all this money on trying to implement "protections" which will be useless by the time they get to market. The worst part that protecting the interests of these companies is almost all on the taxpayers dime. Let the industry work it out for itself.
*sigh* too bad it's a pipe dream. Sometimes I wish the companies would fail and then both sides will see what happens when compromises can't be reached.
Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant
> Sorry, you mispelled communist.
Not at all! To be "liberal" in the simplest sense means that you want to change the way the system works. (this is why it is opposed to "conservatism") The Green Party is not actually even a real political party if you examine them - they are just a conglomeration of extremely loosely affiliated smaller groups of people whose only common thread is that they have SOME problem with the way things work. ("the MAN"). Their arguments for why things aren't working and what should be done about it tend to be not at all well thought out, since none of them can agree on these things, since they are all pursuing separate agendas. If you read their official party platform (there are actually 2, good luck there!), however, it would appear that their goals are clear and well-defined. But make no mistake, despite their poor organization, they are the only real liberal party in this country. And a happy medium between their ideas and the Libertarians' would be a lot more easily definable and appealing than trying to do the same thing with the Republicrats and Demoblicans.
Copyright law faces a big problem that we cannot legislate around... legitimacy. People regularly circumvent copyright law beacuse they feel that it is not right. The true solution to fixing the illegal-copying problem is to give copyright more legitimacy so that people will respect it. If 99% of the people respect the law and what it stands for, then 99% of the people will abide by the law. Right now Copyright law is a micky-mouse joke law and lacks respect. It's not fair and people will continue to illegally circumvent copyright law untill it is fixed. This will only lead to one thing, more draconian laws. And this cycle will reduce our freedcom and lead to a police state... the exact opposite goal of copyright law.
1. Write first, fax second, call third. But because of the Anthrax, faxing is quicker and usually just as good as sending a letter.
2. Only contact *your* Congresscritters. If you're not in their state and/or district, they don't give a sh*t. Congressional offices have a hard enough time answering their constituent's mail than to answer everyone else's. You'll just be wasting their time and your's.
3. Be specific and include other issues. Refuse to let your letter be pidgeonholed into a specific category for a form letter. That increases the chances your letter will get read and answered by an actual legislative aide who is most likely the person in that office that's dealing with the legislation in question.
4. Sending form letters guarantees you'll get a form letter response.
Would it not be conceivable that these clowns (as in bozo) could produce a decryption adaptor that can read and understand hidden instructions within a video stream? I'm not an encryption or security guru but if they want it in hardware, let them put it in their OWN damn hardware as expansion cards. We did it with serial/ide/audio/video/capture boards. Let them do it with their own hardware that they can then ship to those interested consumers (all three of them).
The only restrictions I want on my hardware are the ones imposed by technological boundaries. EVER!
Regards,
PO'ed
CONFIG_DRM=y
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
You forgot... To 90% of the republicans out there, anything left of "let's blow that deer's head off for fun" and anything more liberal than "let's run over some prarie dogs with tractors 'cause God don't like 'em" is communist.
In short, if you are not religious conservative, then you are a communist. If you don't like giving big oil $$ to rape the earth for their benefit, you are communist.
That's communism in a nutshell (at least to GOPs).
Ciao!
I wrote the following to my senator, which captures the sense of my concerns far better than a 30 second phone call could ever do:
I am writing to you to express my opposition to any new legislation regarding digital copyright as sought by the film and recording industries. In particular, I am a computer programmer in vehement opposition to any legislation that would make it a crime to create or distribute any digital devices that do not include government mandated Digital Rights Management software. The point of such legislation, in conjunction with present law, is to attempt to give the film and recording industries absolute power over how anyone may view or use copyrighted material, without regard for the Supreme Court's finding in the Betamax case that citizens may engage in certain fair use practices.
Further, if such legislation were passed, there are grave dangers having to do with establishing a patent-based monopoly on the DRM standard, and grave dangers having to do with effectively outlawing any computer device that could be programmed by the user. The DMCA already makes it illegal to distribute tools to break protection, regardless of fair use. That is controversial, but manageable.. systems that don't touch protected material need not be affected, and would simply forego access to such content. An affirmative duty that all digital systems include DRM content controls would be incredibly far-reaching, and could be construed as banning any system (such as a PC running Linux) in which the user has complete control over the configuration and details of their system.
Hollywood and the recording industry are asking for a tremendous amount of control over technology in the United States (and the world, through their lobbying of WIPO), and it is not at all clear that it is in the nation's interest that they be given it.
I'm writing this on the occasion of tomorrow's upcoming digital copyright hearings of the Senate Commerce Committee. I hope you will be extremely vigilant in assessing the industry's claims in this matter.
Thank you sincerely,
Me
City, State
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Well,
It looks like we'll go back to the old days where you had to get schematics from a magazine and build your computer yourself. Although, eventually they will outlaw distributing plans to build these computers (although you will still be able to distribute plans to build a nuclear bomb) before that happens we'll all be back to the hobby days of computers in order to get the processing we want.
While it talks a bit about copyright, everything in the proposed bill that I saw has been written in terms of regulation of commerce. That means that the power enabling them to pass the bill comes from the Commerce Clause, and not the copyright/patent clause. For instance instead of saying that copyrights must be protected, they make it illegal to sell "digital devices" (a class which includes software) without copy protection built in. Note, what is regulated here is having a product that does not meet their spec. This is no different in principle than laws mandating that cars have seatbelts.
This is good for them in many ways. Not the least of which being that there are no pesky "fair use" or "limited times" exemptions that need to be respected. And another is that this clause is pretty much blanket power, and it is interpreted very much in the favour of the federal government. For details on how it is interpreted, read FindLaw's explanation.
Imagine this - - Hollywood is trying to get people to pay for stuff over the net. During the last actor's strike one of the major items was being paid residuals on internet work i.e. films, shorts, ads. Hollywood refused. Actors get paid once for clips that get passed around the world. Now Hollywood wants us to pay for something they wouldn't do themselves.
They can not tell us how to use our equipment as long as we are not doing anything illegal!
Which is why they need this law, so that it *will* be illegal for manufacturers to sell hardware that doesn't contain the proper "protections" for the copyright industry. So you can stick with your current stuff and be fine, but if you ever want to upgrade...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I live in Arizona, so I will be contacting Senator McCain, who is also on the Commerce Committee. And I'm going to tell him something very simple:
I am a citizen, not a consumer. I consider my rights as a citizen far more important than my desires as a consumer, and it would be nice if my elected representatives did the same.
No matter what possible benefit I could possibly gain, as a consumer, from the implementation of the SSSCA (if there even are any, which I doubt), those benefits would never be worth the rights I will loose as I citizen.
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, its too dark to read.
If they enact this as law, the only way to be
compliant with the law would be to turn off
(permenatly) all things electronic, until the
hardware and software could be certified as compliant.
This would entail Airliners, buses, hostiptal equipment, politicians personal vehicles etc.
I think this law would create a government inflicted REAL y2k disaster.
I remember reading just a few weeks ago that M$ (the great satan) was just granted a PATENT for a "Digital Rhights Management Operationg System" which without a better name for it ill call (scarcasticly) Microsoft Windows Freedom.
... ONLY M$ would be able to provide the OS.
... but the evil billy gates and his ilk in redmond never make small plans.
The original form of the SSSCA wanted every type of computersystem to include digital rights secutity (which means only
Please read the above paragraph again and think a little.
Not tom mention the disaster this will have in the Industrial Control software business where my company is engaged (Imagine a sewage pump station controller that had to use M$ software (thinking of backed up toliets all over the country when it BSOD's ))
It will be the END of linux, aix, solaris, EVERYTHING non M$.
I know this concept is a little hard for amny of you to grasp
with the support of the riaa, mpaa, disney, intel, and hardware companies like billy gates boot licking lackey Micheal dell, this could happen.
Givin the current administrations to let big $$$ do what ever they want regardless of what that pesky constitution say, this is very possible.
The usual response to this is write letters to our reps , which i plan on doing in spite of its real world futility, and donating $$$ to the EFF which is prolly more effective , which i will also do, it looks like the fix is in.
The only way to actually fight this is to change the patent laws to stop M$ from being able to enforece their will with (M$ Windoze Freedom)
I hope others here can see the danger of this
thanks all
* Carthago Delenda Est *
In a way I kind of hope this law gets passed. It's like when Felten brought the RIAA to court, he couldn't show any actual damages so they wouldn't repeal the DMCA. In the same way, things aren't going to get better until things get really fucked up and people see what that's like when it's that fucked up. A few months ago the put this law on hold. But that's not because they suddenly realized how stupid the thing was, and until it's actually tested, most people won't. That's kind of the idea behind civil disobedience you do things that are technically illegal, but anyone who has any concept of freedom thinks..."hey, that shouldn't be illegal."
Many posts are on track... this legislation sucks... so if you are a US citizen (or legal alien for that matter) take part in the political process contact your legislators. It angers me to no end when people complain and do not follow up. Write, email and call your congressmen/women.
http://www.senate.gov
http://www.house.gov
The proposed bill defined it quite clearly as:
If Linux cannot comply, then not only is it unable to run on hardware that implements the standard, but Linux itself will be illegal.
Note that what I just said about Linux applies to every piece of software in the standard Unix toolkit as well.
Now you can feel free to get upset.
IANAL, but it looks to me like Congress' authority to pass this stinker falls under the Commerce Clause and not the Copyright Clause.
That is a much broader grant of power, and comes without any irritating details like concepts of "fair use" or "limited times".
US is the global superpower in culture?
Just because you don't know anything about the rest of the world, it doesn't mean it isn't out there...
You wouldn't know culture even if it was fucking you in the ass...
Here's a clue to everyone who doesn't understand the nature of power. There is no conspiracy to subvert laws. The laws are there to protect the powerful and the monied. As long as the laws do that, they are "good laws". The moment something happens which prevents the powerful from getting their money, something legal has to be done, and there are armies of greedy short-sighted fools willing to step in and help to right any injustice against the monied and the powerful. And if the reality doesn't mate up with the injustice, there are small armies of people willing to step in and paint any picture they're paid to. Yes, it happens everywhere, regardless of the legal system, laws of the land, etc..etc...
Regardless of what anyone says, might makes right, and that's a natural law. Natural laws don't obey false frameworks, like the Constitution; no matter how nicely written and fawned over. And at the end of the day, only the mighty win--everything else is a compromise in the favor of the mighty. So for all our whining about politics (which is just like watching football and bitching about an outcome) unless people are willing to somehow rework human nature, nobody here is going to change anything involving the political process.
And on the issue of hardware-based encryption...if one monkey invents it, another one will figure out how to circumvent it. Hardware solutions only work if they explode when you do anything other than use the unit as intended, and we know that's not going to happen.
The bottom line to all this is that unless every media capable device on the planet is suddenly rounded up and melted down, people are still going to be downloading illegal movies and music forever. It's no more stoppable than a sound, or a thought. Unless the government starts a massive campgain of implanting nerual shunts in our optic and retinal nerves which respond only to frequencies emitted by a perfectly decoded signals from audio and video media that enable us to enjoy the product (Get a free player and free implants for the whole family! Limited time offer!!), nothing they do is going to make a difference--other than make the prison budgets bigger and create an even more elite criminal class.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
What the hell are we all supposed to do if this passes? We'll be in deep shit.
This really scares me, honestly...
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
The RIAA and MPAA do not represent creators. The actual creators are usually paid only once, if at all, and (except for a few big name Hollywood stars) not even paid very much. Its the companies that continue to get paid for 70+ years.
I find it somewhat ironic that I, as an American citizen, would be considering a move to England in order to keep my freedom,.....
I've been called a "Fucking Dick" by better people than you.
Corporate Revenue Service agents today apprehended a 28-year old male consumer-citizen (Mr. Adam Jones - credit ID 104-2349-1803) and seized from his apartment (688 Maple st / Apt 404D) a substantial cache of more than 500 illegally imported Eurasian computer harddrives and approximately 150 DVD burners all lacking content protection (safety) mechanisms federally mandated under the SSSCA American Antiterrorist Patriot Consumer-Citizen Act of 2002.
These so-called "open" harddrives and burners are sought by Unpatriotic communist/liberal/terrorist "open source" hackers who use them in unregistered computers for storing atomic bomb secrets, unaccountable open source operating systems, Terrorist plots, child pornography and worst of all, illegal and unprotected duplicates of cherished corporate intellectual property works such as Britney Spears music CDs and Tom Green movies.
"Open" drives and systems also lack federally mandated tracking and monitoring devices which precludes corporate and federal agents from remotely conducting weekly lawful spot checks for DMCA/SSSCA/patriotic compliance among our consumer-citizens. Without such tracking devices the corporate government also cannot accurately profile thought/behavior patterns of consumer-citizens, which precludes targeted patrotic advertisements.
Corporate Government analysts have scientifically determined that consumer-citizens who aren't sufficiently exposed to targeted commercials, actually consume less corporate products, which as the Corporate General eloquently explained in a speech last week is "basically the same as helping the Terrorists," and is the beginning of a slippery slope that can lead to unpatriotic-liberal-communist-Terrorist deviant anti-consumerist mentalities. (As an example, Mr. Jones here owned an automobile more than two years old!)
Additionally, at Mr. Jones' property a small cache of contraband liberal-communist anticonsumerist propaganda materials were found and destroyed, as well as a highly illegal time shifting device used ny Terrorists to steal content from entertainment networks and watch it later without adequate exposure to Patriotic Advertisements.
Mr. Jones was detained without incident and now awaits sentencing in the dungeouns beneath the local McSentence corporate law center. If as expected Mr. Jones is succesfully convicted of SSSCA violations he may face up to 20 years in the AOL-Toyota-Boeing-CocaCola corporate prison of California. Serves the bastard right!
Excerpt from The Truth Journal, published by the Information Corporation (a subsidiary of America's Consolidated Entertainment, Legislation and Communications Corporation). Copyright in perpetuity, The Corporation.
Since this will now result in the total demise of copyright infringement, the movie, recording, and video game industries then immediately pay taxes on the hojillions of dollars they claim to be losing per year, at the prevailing highest corporate tax rate.
Oh--you mean they aren't going to sell all that, because the people they claimed as having been costing them money wouldn't have bought the product anyway? Guess we can just sell the industries to pay the taxes, then.
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
Here's a clue to everyone who doesn't understand the nature of power. There is no conspiracy to subvert laws. The laws are there to protect the powerful and the monied. As long as the laws do that, they are "good laws". The moment something happens which prevents the powerful from getting their money, something legal has to be done, and there are armies of greedy short-sighted fools willing to step in and help to right any injustice against the monied and the powerful. And if the reality doesn't mate up with the injustice, there are small armies of people willing to step in and paint any picture they're paid to. Yes, it happens everywhere, regardless of the legal system, laws of the land, etc..etc...
Regardless of what anyone says, might makes right, and that's a natural law. Natural laws don't obey false frameworks, like the Constitution; no matter how nicely written and fawned over. And at the end of the day, only the mighty win. So for all our whining about politics (which is just like watching football unless you are a politician) unless people are willing to somehow rework human nature, nobody here is going to change anything involving the political process.
And on the issue of hardware-based encryption...if one monkey invents it, another one will figure out how to circumvent it. Hardware solutions only work if they explode when you do anything other than use the unit as intended, and we know that's not going to happen.
The bottom line to all this is that unless every media capable device on the planet is suddenly rounded up and melted down, people are still going to be downloading illegal movies and music forever. It's no more stoppable than a sound, or a thought. Unless the government starts a massive campgain of implanting nerual shunts in our optic, and retinal nerves which respond only to frequencies emitted by perfectly decoded signals from audio and video media that enable us to enjoy the product (Get a free player and free implants for the whole family! Limited time offer!!), nothing they do is going to make a difference--other than make the prison budgets bigger and create an even more elite criminal class.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
I want to see the prisons filled with college kids, software developers, music-loving grandmothers, and other good citizens these content fascists want to criminalize. This issue needs to get into the minds of the general public (not just Slashdot) in a direct way. Then we can see some action on copyrights, intellectual property, and get the interests of consumers to the table. Consumers have the votes.
I'm not a U.S. citizen so there's not much more that I can do other than piss & moan about it.
But for the U.S. citizens out there I urge you to write a letter to your congressman/woman (or other elected representatives) to to express you opposition to this bill.
More like 1.5gb for a really nice copy of LOTR. 2x$0.25 = $0.50 for a pair of 700MB CDRs to hold it. Definitely not twenty bucks...
-grendel drago
Keep a close eye on this one guys. If they decide to go through (and with horribly biased people like the ones they selected for the "review"), we're gonna have to retaliate. HARD. As much as I would enjoy starting an underground computer following, we CANNOT LET THIS GO THROUGH. You'd better ALL BE THERE for the protests if this thing comes to vote.
The "Stupid Hollings Bill," (or TSHB) as we have come to call it, is bad for us and bad for America. It is bad because it is blatant protectionism of a small class of persons (who already have received their Constitutional quota of protection with respect to the underlying rights in a Copyright and Patent) at great cost to the rest of us. It is bad for the same reasons that all economic regulation is bad -- it invites capital to go to places other than America.
Whatever can be said about intellectual property laws, they are grounded in a fundamental need to balance conflicting interests -- the interest in giving incentives to talent to create, and the interest of giving those who follow and stand on the shoulders of those giants to innovate therefrom. IP, when properly balanced, stimulates growth and innovation. When unbalanced, one way or the other, leads at best, to stagnation.
But TSHB serves none of these policies. It dumbs down and compromises technologies that are at the very economic core of our modern economy, for no reason at all, but for the litigation convenience of a political constituency that, apparently has more dollars than sense.
This is the same constituency that years ago whined about its death in the face of the piano rolls, then the radio, then the television, then the audio tape, then the video tape, then the DAT, and now the Internet. In every case, they lost their war to regulate technology and media, and despite themselves, profited immensely. Losing the Betamax case was the single best thing that happened to the movie industry, except for the few dinosaurs who liked too much their old ways.
And America benefitted from such changes, despite the whinings of the powers that be. Each new technology meaningfully changed our lives in useful ways, created growth and jobs, and most important, made new and greater incentives for people of talent to create.
Imagine if each and every new medium and technology was subject to regulation and review, subject to vetting by every content provider. Who is going to pay for test-drives of new media? Answer: noone, at least noone in the United States. Capital will be invested elsewhere, and the innovators who brought to us these wonderful technologies will go to medical school, law school or elsewhere.
This much we know. The "parade of horribles" of the RIAA and MPAA against underregulation never happened. None of these industries were destroyed by any of the aforementioned technologies. We have seen regulation, however, keep novel technologies from prospering. (And, although cause and effect is certainly not evident, I take great pride in noting that RIAA had their best year in history the year before the Napster decision, when they were terrified that Napster would kill it, but virtually contemporaneously with their 9th Circuit victory, found themselves suddenly unable to sell records.)
TSHB is bad for America because it is unnecessary trade regulation. It is bad for America because it deters creativity from the very sector that has provided the most vital growth (jobs and GNP) to the new economy, in favor of a whining constituency that has ALWAYS argued they were about to die, but has never really needed the protectionism for which they continue to fight.
TSHB is bad for America because it is, at its heart and sole, unAmerican. We need to foster technology, not regulate it. We need to encourage growth in new media, not to staunch its flow. Hollings would make the Commerce Department the gatekeeper of new media, serving as lapdog to content creators.
And in so doing, will only deprive them of the very success that new media technologists have provided in the past, and can always provide in the future.
New technology is driven by natural market forces. Regulation stops these things from working. Content people are the least qualified of all to vet and evaluate new media, except perhaps, for Commerce Department regulators. (And these remarks are coming from a "left of Che" liberal!)
TSHB will not help anything, for there is no real problem here, but it will cause harm. In my view, grievous harm, to America.
On the other hand, think of the opportunities this will create for EC economic and content development! (Has anyone checked for foreign contributors to Hollings campaigns?)
Do corporations even have charters anymore? Don't they just get a Mandate From God or something?
--grendel drago
well then it is time we do a state to state campagn to get 2/3 of the states to vote in support of this amendment. if 2/3 fo the US states vote for it, then it must be added to the constitution. it can be done by a popular vote in the state or by 2/3 of the senate and house of that state. best be would be a popular vote since a politician would never support anything that put him out of a job.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Hmm... is it better to have every uneducated idiot voting because they have to, or just a few uneducated idiots and those of us that know what is going on?
Heh. "Sneakernet".
Then again, I think all us w4r3z kiddies are going to be too lazy to get off our asses to go dramatically pick up software. More like fetching it off IRC or Usenet or some other great big mass medium.
--grendel drago
although, now that I think of it, it only takes 2/3 of congress to amend the constitution....so if we did get it added, I am sure enough of the politicians would say...hellno...and vote a new amendment that repealed the one we just passed....of cource at that point I am sure the citizenry would be incensed enough to revolt.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
you can reach the Committee at (202) 224-8418.
From the link: Valenti wrote: "What's keeping the movie industry from making its creativity theft-proof? Simply put, in order to transport movies as agreed to by the consumer on a rent, buy, or pay-per-view basis with heightened security, computers and video devices must be prepared to react to instructions embedded in the film." (Emphasis mine.) Sure! As long as you keep your copy protection on film, vaya con Dios, buddy! Just keep those instructions out of the bitstream...!
mmm... yeah... You see, we're putting the cover sheets on all TPS reports now before they go out...
You know, the last time the US Federal Government required specific technological standards, we got a programming language called Ada.
This sig no verb.
Then I begin to think that seriously, there is a very real comparison here to the matress tags. Isn't the very same mentality that would tell someone how they can legally operate a device in the privacy of their own home, the one that says that for my own safety, I must have or not have certain items configured in a certain way?
How can I help prevent this bill from passing? I figure I should do something with my self being unemployed and such. I wounder if this was to be come law, or even close, what are we the oss public going to do. From the looks of it all we do is bitch and sick the EFF on them.
We as IT workers and just general computer users have a great ammount of power.
We are smarter then the general public and I belive as a program I have more protental then the accountent down street.
What if 1,000 5,000, 10,000 people showed up in protest with an well orgnzied agenda(Good I hate WTO protesters).
What if 50% of the IT workers went on strik.
What if all the linux geeks became angre and actuly pushed for political power.
In the 10 years following the Ford Explorer's introduction nearly 13,000 people died in SUV rollovers (only 300 of those deaths are attributable to tire failure). In 2002, there will be an estimated 20,000 SUV rollovers that will kill an estimated 2000 people. This figure on deaths does not include people killed when hit by SUVs. The Ford Explorer is SIXTEEN TIMES AS LIKELY AS THE AVERAGE PASSENGER CAR TO KILL OCCUPANTS OF ANOTHER VEHICLE IN A CRASH.
Even if you're a major automaker and refuse to acknowledge that there are fundamental design flaws in SUVs, these figures should be justification enough to require special training and licensing for using a vehicle, in Detroit's own words, "designed for off-road use", on the public streets.
Its amazing how this doesn't get laughed out of court, but the proposal to ensure sheep are not shaved beyond a 3.5mm limit does.
There are sheep everywhere with severe razor burn, and in-growing hair. This must be stopped.
How does this stupid man expect to enforce this? atleast with the sheep thing you could do hair inspections.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
What you say makes sense until you start talking about it going out into the solar system. Right now the U.S. is the only one who could really get out there.
:)
More likely we will be Great Britian this time and China will be the flegeling U.S. China is already involved in stealing as much IP as they can and they are poised to become a world super power during THIS century. They also have one billion people to back them up if we try to stop them as well.
Eventually we will realize that IP isolationalism is only going to hurt us the way trade isolationism did in the 1920's (leading to the great depression). When China and the rest of the far east becomes serious contenders as superpowers, we will have no choice but to open up and start competing, that or we better start learning Chinese pretty quickly.
Eventually I suppose this will hopefully lead to a more unified world when we are forced to co-operate and share ideas again. Then we can colonize mars, start becoming isolationists again and then your scenerio becomes realistic when those damn Martians start pirating our movies and music
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Now I don't know how much it actually costs to record a CD professionally, but this idea would also extend to software, and I have some idea there.
In that sense, it's more like making (including thinking up how to make it, but that's only part) the first burger costs $250,000. After that, each burger only costs $.10.
So what do you do? Charge the first customer $250,000 (good luck finding that sucker) or charge every customer $20 and hope that you'll sell 13,000 burgers?
Basically, there are two ways to compensate someone for their work. You can pay them in full, which costs a LOT but you then can do whatever you want with their work, including resell it. You own it. The alternative is to license it/pay royalties. In this case the cost is MUCH less, but you are very limited in what you can do with it. You can't have the best of both worlds.
Personally, I would suggest the best option would be for an artist to release one track, then allow people to bid small amounts until some large total amount builds up, then release the rest and take the money. Content is paid for, no royalties, no worries about piracy. If their price is never reached, nobody gets charged and nobody gets the rest of the music.
I can see a reason why hardware companies might like this. Generally, laws go into effect some time after they are passed, and as I understand this would be no exception. After the law is passed but before it takes effect, the hardware companies know there will probably be a rush to buy up "non-content-controlled" hardware, thus giving them a boost. Of course, afterwards, they can charge more for the content-controlled hardware as well, since if it's required by law there won't be competition that's cheaper because it lacks that hardware.
http://www.balorn.net/
?
It obviously worked for DVDs.
"The technology community doesn't want any standards regardless of what form they take. There's an impasse that needs to be bridged if we want to create broadband services and increase consumer demand for those services." What if many of us don't want these "services" if it means the permanent sealing of our personal (I repeat PERSONAL!!) computers?
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
Isn't the computer industry ten times the size of the music industry? Why does this bigger, more influential industry let itself get jacked around like it does?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Email that dumbass before personal electronics are ruined forever. It seems only industry reps are invited, wtf? Does the EFF plan to do anything? How about the ACLU?
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Hate to use this link, but it was the quickest one to find.
Curb weight: 6650 - 6734
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Or "rent-seeking" as it is known in more polite circles.
I think our "rulers" have long ago figured out how to play groups against one another and collect protection money from both.
Gordon.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
Check it out: Security Systems Standards and Certification Act
Other than section 1, it sounds like it would be nice. It has money for scholarships and such for computer security.
Just have to modify section one a bit. <nods>
So.. If I understand this aright, this law applies to America only.
That leaves the rest of the world quite happily able to use 'unlocked' devices.
As not implementing this 'lock' tech is a cheaper option, it's likely to be used as much as possible by the eastern manufacters for sale everywhere else in the world.
Thus, the stuff going to the US will have to be specially modded, and of course, carry the extra price tag, meaning that for once, the US will be shouldering the highest cost for technological devices around.
Higher cost of players/decoders means that it's more likley the 'new' won't be taken up quite as readily. Reduced marked, of course, means that the item becomes more 'specialist', carrying an even higher price tag (companies need to make their money back on a market).
Which of course feeds back into the educational system. Fewer US homes will have up to date equipment, and are thus, less able to take advantage of the latest ideas, meaning fewer people qualified to perform tech tasks readily available to other countries (due to much lower cost of tools).
This goes on to make the US much more a 'consumer' of ideas and products developed elsewhere in the world, thus having money leaving the economy to pay for import. Thus higher taxes to make up this shortfall on export.
Which all snowballs on, leaving the average future US citizen/company unable to compete in a global economy due to cost overheads and lack of skills, paying higher taxes to keep the economy afloat, and thus less able still to keep the skillsets current.
Leaving one unholy mess, much sadness, and a crippled country.
It's sad, really, to see how little the current politicians have learned from history.. Once upon a time, a whole country rebelled at an overly dictatorial regime that taxed everything it could, and gave nothing in return. Then, it was England doing the taxing, and America rebelling.
In the centuries since, the USA grew into an economic giant on the premise of freedom, demonstrating that this very freedom was fundamental to progress, and worked in the marketplace too..
Now, it's trying to stop that freedom, and once again, tax everything in sight, and dictate everything...
Surely, they must have noticed that there is a point where people eventually just throw the tea in the harbour, and go use something else instead.
I sincerely hope this is laughed out, as it deserves to be. Otherwise, the citizens of the US are in for a long hard struggle in the world at large.
Malk
This bill is SR-253 for those of you who didn't look it up on the committee schedule. I just called (4:35 PM EST) and it was in conference.
I urged Senator Max Cleland (via his staff) to NOT SUPPORT SR-253 since it will be bad for consumers and all the other stuff.
The staff member also took my name and address as a "verification" of my constituency.
Ban all non-secure devices. Kicks ass.
/. a while back) and US Customs seized them based on the fact that they were in violation of the DMCA, the Canadian company could sue the American govt under chapter 11 and be awarded damages. Methinks you would have to be a huge company with lots of lawyers to even be considered, but Loewen [funeral assholes] is suing the us govt because a jury trial found the company guilty of fraudlent and malicious business practices, Loewen filed suit against the USA and is currently seeking a $USD 725 million settlement because it was fined by the jury.
r /a rticles.cfm?ID=1207
l es .cfm?ID=1857
& hl =en
c C: ontario.indymedia.org/front.php3%3Farticle_id%3D61 50+nafta+sucks+chapter&hl=en
Do this soon so Canada and Mexico can sue (well, sorta because the actual proceedings are made up of a secret tribunal) the fuck out of the USA under chapter 11 of NAFTA as it is 'tantamount to expropriation'.
Hell, the Canadians are already suing because there is no market for their MTBE poison any more [Cali used to use it as a gasoline additive, MTBE is fairly nasty shit, Cali banned it only recently, Methanex sued for $970 million, pending]
For example - if a Canadian company sold the serial connectors to the ps2 (or whatever was on
If you're bored, look up the Bill Moyers video and watch it, very eye opening.
http://www.citizen.org/trade/issues/mai/Investo
http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/CH__11/artic
http://www.google.com/search?q=nafta+chapter+11
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:KFFJHC4Zdg
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I think everyone reading this should get off their arse and call Senator Hollings office now to 'give them a piece of your mind' or complain.
I just called and the lady said she would pass my message on to the Senator (yeah right)
Do something people !!!
Democrats Phone Number Fax Number Ernest F. Hollings, SC (202)224-6121 (202)224-4293
Help pay for my wedding! Go to my kickass website
Remember that the world is divided like this for a reason- a consumer takes a completely passive role. The most initiative available to a consumer is to choose between things offered him.
The vast majority of people are passive in this role. The reason for this is that industrial production has made the creation of most goods far out of the range of the average person.
This is not the case, however, in information goods. Writing, performing, programming- all these things are very much within the reach of the average person (in fact, in the case of performing, that's how it's always been done!)
The two major industries where we're seeing this conflict first are the most equalized ones, due to their low (often non-existent) costs of entry. Linux has proved that a professional-grade operating system is not out of the reach of individuals working together. Music and the other performing arts have always been within the reach of individuals, and still continue to be.
One element of all of these "rights management" schemes facing us is that they are all bent on raising that cost of entry to the sky. We all know that no DRM system will work unless it's universal and disallows all forms of media playback outside its auspices, so something like SSSCA will eventually lead to universal licensing requirements for everything we create. Surveillance over everything we do with our computers will be necessary. A monopoly media mafia will have to grant you a license every time you want to use your webcam, send an email, or design a program. This is required for the success of any such system.
It is obvious that such a plan will fail, as it will be widely circumvented, disabled, and simply ignored at every opportunity.
The question is, why waste our time, then, when such a plan is doomed to fail?
Oh, it's not "our" time anymore.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
This is exactly why copy-protection can never succeed. What they want to do is stop you from redistributing a piece of information while still allowing you access to it.
This is impossible.
Even if they come up with a perfect audio copy-protection system which no-one can work out how to bypass, if I can hear the music, I can record it into any other format. All it takes is one person out of the 6 billion on this planet with a decent audio rig to turn their sooper-sekret audio file into an ogg which can then be redistributed through your favourite file sharing protocol (Freenet, Gnutella, FTP, HTTP, email...).
If you're thinking about quality, remember that the reason no-one's making a fuss about recordable analogue media (such as cassettes and videos) isn't because a first generation copy is noticably poorer than an original (it isn't). It's because a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy... is noticably poorer than the original. That's why there's no analogue peer-to-peer system.
Once you bypass the copy protection by making a (good quality) first-generation copy, any further redistribution is completely lossless. Compare this with ripping a CD to mp3: mp3 is a lossy format and you lose quality when you first encode (depending on how good your encoder is). Redistributing the encoded file, on the other hand, is completely lossless. That's why the various file sharing networks can work.
So, provided, as you say, the trading of unprotected mp3's or movies (or indeed, any file format) is still allowed, no copy protection scheme can work. The only way around this would be to prevent the sending of any user-generated information over the Internet.
So now the question is: Why are the various media groups trying to get legislation like this passed? Can it be that they are really that ignorant about their own business?
In the article they said something about devices that will respond to instructions embedded in the film. Here are the proposed specifications for a byte called 'SSSCA_DRM' to be put at the start of all files and media by law
Bit Description
1st Disable copying of this data
2nd Disable re-booting while media is in drive
3rd Disable ejecting of media from drive
4th Enable tamper-protection - send GPS position to CIA if device is opened
5th Destroy media in drive
6th Destroy drive
7th Destroy device
8th Destroy user
to combat this system simply: SSSCA_DRM = binary '00000000'
I propose a 9th bit: Destroy Bush, SSSCA_DRM = binary '000000001'
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
This is the same constituency that years ago whined about its death in the face of the piano rolls, then the radio, then the television, then the audio tape, then the video tape, then the DAT, and now the Internet.
And the photocopier. How much smaller would the world economy be today if Xerox's products had all been crippled by some sort of "rights management" or "content protection"? Or prevented from coming to market at all?
Fuck the SSSCA, and the MPAA and DMCA
a.) I Have never watched one movie on my computer because the computer is to get WORK done (write code.)
b.) I have never watched one divx on my computer.
c.) As a musician, I will fucking digitize any fucking song I want to create and to hell with the bastards that say I can't. As a human being I can make a fucking Divx of my roadtrip to SanFrancisco, my Garage Band Practice or my Son's 5th Birthday party and I say FUCK YOU if you say I can't.
d.) Force me to put shit into my hardware? I will just use different hardware.
e.) Force me to put something into my software? Well since I run linux, I could just remove the code. Unless your planning to make Linux illegal and if that's the case then the SSSCA, Senator Hollings, Disney, the MPAA, DMCA, time warner, and all them other motherfuckers are domestic terrorists and deserve to be hunted down.
Now isn't it interesting how the United States has convienently not declared war?
Or those bastards (and many more) would be hunted down.
Enough is enough with this whole money / power bullshit.
I trust a republican about as much as I trust a democrat. They are the SAME! May as well call them republicrats.
Take the money and power away from the situation. Force media to display "Alternative" and the world will be a better place.
The way it's going, the MPAA will effectively execute it's attack on the Constitution. Since everyone knows Media is controled by Liberals, you will get more and more Boxer, Feinstein, Hollings.
I don't see a solution to this except a MAJOR event has to happen. It's the only thing the United States understands. Until millions of folks are killed until radiation is everywhere, these fuckers will go on pretending they don't have a clue. You know some people said that they don't have a clue, I believe they do have a clue, the problem is they are not only clued in they have their own agenda.
The more important question is.
Why is the government out of control? Why is the government attacking it's own people in it's own country? How are we going to stop this? How are the people going to regain control of the government? We can worry about not letting it happen again later, but right now, the whole country is possessed by a nasty demon.
If we had to nuke Canada to protect the profit from some industrial group Id consider it ... I wont consider putting black box security devices in my PC's.
... otherwise you still cant protect against piracy. Its simply not worth it you know.
In the end these things will have to be made capable of autonomously making connections to outside server for each bit of questionable content
The protected content distribution argument used by Disney and others is a smokescreen. They want their copyrights protected and they want someone else to pay for it. There is nothing stopping them right now from developing their own distribution network for their own content with any security precautions they like. If Disney or others believe that their copyrights are being infringed then there are adequate remedies available under current copyright laws. The SSSCA is wrong to require everybody, even unrelated industries and products, to include protection hardware. Never mind the fact that a reliable general-purpose hardware device that detects copyright infringement is impossible.
Been to the library or a copy shop lately? Books get coppied, but it's not generally worth it. You see, people made libraries for books so that the intelectual property there could be indexed and shared. Part of sharing that IP is a fair use of the copy machine for parts you think are worth having and quoting. A vastly different law and philosopy must be operating there, eh? NOPE, the publishers are going after libraries too. Looks like they learned a few things from such classy operators as RIAA/MPAA/Micro$oft. Electronic publication with limits like this threatens society's ability to archive and transfer knowledge.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The fact of the matter is that what you got is just a format letter that gets sent to anyone who mentions things about copyright or the DMCA in their letter. It's not terribly different than the letter I got from Senator Edwards of NC when I wrote about the SSSCA, in that they both say a lot about nothing, and leave the Senator right in the middle where no constituent can be swayed into voting against him in the next election, based on a screw up like his opinions becoming known.
To play somewhat of a devil's advocate, I can tell you there was probably no deception intended; one of his assistants simply read your letter, and correctly reached into the stack of replies that went "Blah blah blah, copyright, blah blah blah (statement supporting both the consumer's and corporation's interests), blah blah blah, I have no bill on this issue at the present time."
The cable and satellite companies seem to do ok selling decoder boxes and not messing with the inside of my television. Why can't the movie and recording industries make internet decoder boxes and leave the pc hardware alone?
Well when ever a new Anime DVD comes out or some geek movie like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings comes out everyone rushes to go see it, so i'd say there is no chance of that happening.
Number 1 digital equipment in the US: a computer. That's right. Your computer, if it does NOT contain code to block illegal copying/accessing/etc will be considered illegal.
I am tired of the copyright industry and the police state they are trying to build to protect their financial and political interests. I am tired of the power of money over our government. Senator Hollings a bought and paid for politician. I sincerely hope that the people wake up to this abuse of power and VOTE THESE PEOPLE OUT OF OFFICE!
If this passes then I become a criminal. So does anyone and everyone who believes in, builds and uses true Open Source. Because there is no way that these protocols will be open or if they are open, that you can force all utilities and programs to be instantly updated or track even track down the ones that aren't. Besides, when your country passes utterly stupid and dangerous laws it is the responsibility of all truly patriotic and freedom loving citizens to break them. If they pass this and try to enforce it then decent people will either be in jail, committing "crime" in breaking this law, or out of the country.
I have twenty dollars in my pocket. I can buy two filet minion cuts, blend them to hamburger and basically waste my twenty bucks, or I can buy a CD. I know that's gonna be the best hamburger I've ever eaten in my life. The CD, on the other hand, is probably utter crap, and if I can't preview it beforehand to see if it is crap...
Well, question answered. Now I'm hungry
\bc
They will break it
I read through all the posts modded +4 and the one thing i couldnt find that is so obvious (to me)
is that if you make it.. some one will hack it. so why bother?
no if ands or buts, if not in US then somewhere else (see wipo post)
The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
Hi all,
I'm a Hawaii resident, and Senator Inouye is on the
committe. I just sent him my comments.... I suggest
that everybody who is a constituent of a committee member do the same...
perhaps we can kill this thing or make it sensible before it even gets to the floor.
cheers!
Whew! I was getting nervous, but now that I realize my religion is constitutionally protected, I know I can worship Linux forever :)
The media is the thing that enables the government to do what it wants. The media can spin anything into something which "makes sense" to the majority of Americans, not because Americans are stupid and ignorant, just that they rely on the media and trust the media. This is not just about media companies making money. It is about control, power; when all communications end to end are controlled by a government standard, they have the power to control what information the people recieve. And when you control what input people receive, you can control their behavior, their thoughts.
They are scared of the internet because of open forums like Slashdot, where smart people get together and share ideas. But you have it all wrong if you think this is about money. It's about silencing people like you and me, who care about our freedom of speech, and are intelligent enough to learn from other sources besides TV and other corporate information sources.
There is never such a thing as being too paranoid when it comes to regulation of communications. Without communications, we can never be sure of the whole of reality.
What the power elite/corporations see is humanity, especially Americans, getting an increasingly CORRECT view of reality. In the past, reality to most people was whatever the media or books or whatever they heard from other people. Of course the media is used to shape the way we think. Look at Sept. 11th; we now have a unified border patrol and "emergency management" agency (The Homeland Security Agency, aka the Secret Police). The president has a veritable shooting license to attack any country he wishes under some false guise. People can be detained for 60 days without trial or even charges, if deemed a terrorist. We are building a missile defense system in violation of a treaty. We are going to start drilling for oil in protected areas in Alaska. The list goes on. But America never really COMPREHENDED any of these changes because the top stories on CNN are all they see, they have no wish to dig deeper.
This is partially their own fault, and maybe we can do something to help them by spreading the word to everyone you know that we are being had on all fronts. The rich have 99% of the money now, and we work for them. It's that simple.
The point I'm trying to make is that there are those of us who wish to have an accurate picture of the real world, who wish to be free-thinkers, who do not want their thoughts influenced by any 3rd party. There are also people in this world who want to be that 3rd party, and influence the thoughts of others. It is they who wish to deny me of my right to think what I want.
That is why this shit is evil. You can whine all day about money and big corportations, correctly, even, but middle America will dismiss you as over liberal. Consider changing your description to something everyone can understand: They want to control what you think. You will continue to think what you want until the day you die, and if they ever try to take away your right to think, you will fight.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Sen. Hollings #1 contributor. You might have something there. You know, the world would be a much nicer place without lawyers.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
The people who vote for him and see him slaving away to stop corporate corruption of congress. That's who gives a !@#$ about Enron.
If you try telling people Sen Hollings is on the take as well, they won't even listen to you.
Like every other copy protection, it will be cracked and the pirates will distrubute whatever it is like crazy. I don't want to have to go and buy a New Computer, a New VCR, DVD, CD Player, etc. I want my current equipment to play future media flawless, and I don't want to be denied my right to far use. If I want to listen to a song on my MP3 player that I have on a CD, I want to be able to make it into a mp3 and play it on my mp3 player or computer.
to draw attention away from his own dubious donations from corporate sponsors!
There's this big monster called the European Commission that's been specially bred to bypass the democratic process, and it's got Britain in its grip. Sorry.
More explanations
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Ok. What about after you sell 13,000 hamburgers? How about after you sell 26,000? 100,000? When does it stop? Should it ever stop? That's the question I'm concerned with getting opinions on.
Sorry to keep this going so much, but I'm really curious about what other folks think on this.
I do like your idea. If 20,000 fans like me each bid $5 for the rest of the CD, then our favorite artist could get a cool $100K and we could get our music. Interesting. Maybe something like that will emerge. Who knows? Modern society is in uncharted territory, I think.
Vortran
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
But for anything involving copyright and digital media -- where the worst harm imagineable doesn't impinge upon anyone's inalienable rights -- everyone is assumed to be a criminal, and is treated accordingly.
Of course, one would have to offer these people quite a bit to get them to leave their niche and join the rolls of the gainfully employed, but that's no problem as they'd obviously primarily be management candidates anyway.
Well, if you're only making an agreement with each person for $20 or whatever there's no reason you should stop selling more if people will buy it. If you have someone renting a house from you, how many months should you charge them before you let them live there for free?
In this case, each copy of the good (the house) is "sold" to a different month rather than a different customer, but it's the same idea. (assuming you bought the house outright, no loans, and all you have to pay is property taxes)
If they stop paying, you kick them out, they no longer get to use your house. Same for these weird burgers, same for information goods. (at least as I see it) That's how capitalism works.
I just now received an ad from IBM titled "The first to integrate a security chip in a PC."
"But what truly sets us appart from the competition is the innovative IBM Embedded Security Subsystem we've built into select new ThinkPad notebooks and NetVista desktops. IBM is the first to integrate an embedded data-encrypting security chip into the motherboard of a PC to help protect critical security information."
Now, this is a good thing in that a lost laptop could have grave $$$ consequences for a company. But it's not too much of a stretch to imagine using such a chip for DRM, is it? Instead of using a password to access encrypted corporate data, you use a certificate verified by the MPAA to access encrypted video files.
More info is here.
I wrote my senator, Stevens (sorry about him) at his local office. Most senators have some local offices in the state they (theoretically) represent, these are usually less busy than the DC offices. Letters sent to such an office are more likely to be read by an actual person, plus with the anthrax scare making mail to DC so slow, it will probably get read faster (PDF'd to DC or something).
AUGAUUUGCGCACAUAUCUCAGCGAAUGAAAGGGAUUAA