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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!"
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.
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
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?
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
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 SSSCA bill, at least the draft that was out in the open, has a grandfather clause that any computer hardware/software made before 2 years after the bill passes are exempt. The 2 years is the amount of time that the bill requires the content and computer industries to decide on a format; else Congress steps in and standardizes the formats.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Simply by making them feel obsolete with abusively power-hungry new applications, like DVD++readers, games, etc.
Actually they give people one more reason to turn to Free Software : Feeling right.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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:
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."
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
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
Have you read "The Future of Ideas" by Lessing? He has plenty of good ideas.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
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
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)
Unfortunately, Senator Hollings has been bought out by corporate interests for some time now. He is basically now the elected Disney representative. He has received almost $300,000 since 1995 in "donations" from large corporations, including AOL/TW, Disney, News Corp (Fox), Viacom (CBS), and NBC. Check out this article on The Register for more info.
If you are a resident of South Carolina, then you are a constituent of Sen. Hollings. PLEASE, contact a rep at any of his offices, and tell them you are a constituent who is AGAINST the SSSCA. Be polite, be firm, give your address, make sure they know you are a citizen & a voter. Only activism by us geeks is going to get these types of things stopped.
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
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.
If going after smal scale violators isn't worth it , why not make it not worth it to be a small scale copyright violator. If CD cost less than the cost of your time finding and downloading a song, why would you bother downloading it (especially if the CD contained only the song you wanted).
You would think they could come up with a business model to support this.
Hell, they sell bottled water for a $1, and most people can get water at their home for damn near free. You can't tell me they can't find a way to sell digital music without finding out a way to mitigate and minimize copyright violations.
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.
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?
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
Also here's a link to the committee itself Commerce Committee. That has names and addresses (including email) for senators who should be at the hearing.
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.
"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.
'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."
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
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
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.
- 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.
So, if the bill passes, we should see a giant upswing in the number of computers purchased. Then two years from that time, the number of computers purchased will have significantly dropped.
Fritz Hollings: "All your computer are belong to us"
...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.
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.
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.
This is why I plan to vote for Green party candidates for the forseeable future -- in addition to having a platform that I agree with (well, 95% anyway), they do not accept campaign contributions from corporations. I'm sure there is a correlation there.
At best, some of them will get elected and actually represent the public good, as opposed to the corporate agendas that completely dominate politics today. At worst, no Greens get elected, but they siphon off enough votes from the Democrats that the Democratic party will be forced to wake up and re-examine what used to be its core principals, before it sold itself like a $2 whore in return for campaign money.
If in the meantime, the Republicans win a few elections, then so be it.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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. $$$.
This is the problem with focus on single issues.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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!"
On the one hand, I strongly disagree with the basic premise of this party - "Big Corporations have too much power and control over individuals. Therefore, we should take the power away from them...and give it to ONE Gigantic, Powerful corporation in the US (the Federal Government)".
On the other hand, however, I have to say - "Good for you. ANY vote for someone other than "the Two Parties(tm)" is, in my opinion, a good start. Anyone who takes off their "I hate 'The Other Party'" blinders for a few minutes can't help but notice that both of the "mainstream" parties are firmly in the pockets of major corporations (Republicans seem to tend towards 'old-school' corporations like oil and steel, Democrats tend towards "intellectual property" and media companies) and neither having power can really be good for the country. (Remember the Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act of Sonny Bono's? Check the congressional record, and you'll find John Conyers (Democrat) on record complaining that Republicans(!) are forcing them to compromise to get the extension passed [despite the fact that it was a Republican who introduced the measure]. BOTH mainstream parties wanted this extension.)
Even if the Greens or the Libertarians (the two parties most likely to win anything, besides the "mainstream" parties) don't take control, even getting one or two of them into positions of influence where they can be seen, and perhaps encourage policy to move in slightly more rational directions can only improve things, and perhaps encourage more people in future to vote for "the candidates who best represent their views" rather than "the candidate opposite the one that I hate in the two 'mainstream' parties."
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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.
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
You cannot force us to make digital device copyprotected.
If you believe that, then you, sir, are the MORON.
If they pass this law they will require all imports into this country(US) to prove they meet the law, if not we won't let the product in. This means that Asian company will loose BILLIONs of dollars if they don't comply. Do you think they won't add this?
Don't shout MORON you can't do that and then just shake your head about it, you must act, NOW.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Anyone recall Lessig's "Ask Slashdot" answers. He gave us all hell about whining here on Slashdot but doing nothing practical.
I am growing more and more envious of the anti-globalisation people. Hell, at least they DO something else than whine about it!
The owls are not what they seem
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clearly, one solution is keeping copyright data encrypted until it is eventually displayed. This can be strengthened by ensuring that copyright data that is distributed is encrypted only for the recipient. While inconvenient, it becomes trivial if on-line distribution takes off. This allows for tracking each copy, to make sure that that those who possess a copy are entitled to, and provides an audit trail to illegal redistributors. It also reduces the effect of cracking an encryption key. Such technology would mesh well with existing PKI mechanisms for encryption, authentication, and digital signatures: you could keep your home movies secure if you wanted.
Of course, you could still make analog recordings of displayed copyright content, and perfect untracable copies of those, unless all digital content had to be signed, making the copy tracable, at least. Frankly the loss of anonymity this would imply would be worse than the protections it would provide. Of course, if interactive content increases in popularity, such analog transcriptions, losing the interactive components, would be less desireable than "the real thing". Furthermore, they'd have to me made in real-time, further inconveniencing the casual infringer. Commercial infringers, presumably, would be caught by virtue of their distribution volume.
Of course, any such mechanism will require some form of secure DRM in playback, or transcription devices. However, it is not necessary to have it in recording devices, so making backup copies of content, and redistributing them in encrypted form (say, emailing a movie from your city home to your country home) would not be an issue. Laws against circumventing such DRM would, of course, be necessary, and technology making it difficult would be desirable. But, such DRM would not have to be ubiquitously installed in storage devices, only transcoding and playback devices (like video cards, TVs, etc.) Already we are seeing crude forms of this in the form of region-coded hardware DVD decoders. While undesirable for other reasons, at least the technology does not pollute the computer itself.
Of course, besides content backups, one also needs to be assured that defective hardware can be replaced and rekeyed to permit playback of existing encrypted content. Furthermore, the private decryption key needs to be kept secret from the owner (lest he produce unencrypted content for distribution): the owner provides a public key when getting custom encrypted content. Obviously, the decryption should take place in the final digital to analog conversion stages, lest a cleartext signal be available for capture (creative use of epoxy, and tamper switches, can help defeat such casual hacking, though).
Of course, content providers would like to be the ones to control the generation of private and public keys, and the installation of private keys in playback and transcoding hardware. But, this is not practical: there are many content providers, and to burden the end-user with a plethora of key pairs is unreasonable. From the consumer's perspective, they'd like to have (a) a single key pair (or a few at most), (b) the ability to install their private key on new or replacement equipment with little difficulty (i.e. independent of manufacturer, or even product type). One possibility is the installation of a user private key encrypted with the public key corresponding to yet another equiment-specific private key.
The new equipment is connected to an on-line key escrow service, the user's public key is provided to the equipment (say, via a smart card, or other device), the key escrow service validates the public keys of user and equipment, and ensures that neither are revoked, and then downloads the user private key encrypted with the equipment public key to the equipment. This requires that equipment and user key-pairs be registered with a "media key escrow service". This service can generate the user key pairs, and either generate the equipment key pairs, or escrow the equipment public keys for the manufacturer. One can envsion several such escrow services, each escrowing equipment public keys pairs from major equipment manufacturers, and honouring key revocation requests from manufacturers, and courts (who'd revoke a user key upon conviction of copyright infringement).
For this system to work, most media key escrow services would have to escrow public keys from most manufacturers, but, since the keys are public, this should not be a problem. Ensuring that they properly revoke such keys on demand from the manufacturer is more important. Furthermore, in the event that an escrow service becomes defunct, it is important that the private keys they escrow for end-users not be lost. Howewver, even this is not completely essential, for each playback or transcoding device already escrows the end-user private key: it just needs to be coaxed into reencrypting it with the non-revoked equipment public key of new equipment and transfering it to same. So long as an end user has at least one peice of equipment holding their private key, they won't lose access to their licensed content.
Of course, because end-user equipment is uncontrolled, getting it to reencrypt isn't easy -- it needs to be sure that the public key of the new equipment isn't bogus, and that the corresponding private key is, indeed, secret, and not generated by the end-user himself. One posibility is to have the new equipment actually at the end of a network connection to a new media key escrow service, with the corresponding public key installed in the old equipment when it was manufactured. Obviously, all known media key escrow services would be so coded in equipment manufactured. This moves the point of weakness to the media escrow services, whose very public operation makes it difficult to covertly engage in copyright infringement, and which will likely have deep pockets if they do. Nothing stops a government, for example, from providing this service.
Is the idea of key escrow frightening, in that one's data isn't really secure? Perhaps, but remember that it isn't the end-user's data but that of the copyright holder. The trust relationship needs to be established between them and the escrow service.
This infrustructure is hardly perfect. There are always ways to circumvent copy protection or access schemes. However, this can be made (a) sufficiently difficult to be a strong casual deterrent, (b) ensure that those parties engaging in widespread infringement are likely visible and have deep pockets (if an escrow service goes bad, for example).
Oh, and if anyone else thinks of patenting these ideas... FORGET IT! I GOT FIRST DIBS!!
You could've hired me.
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.
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
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.
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.
I'm not a "leftie", but even I have to say that that comment is bollocks because at having a small percentage of people unemployed is a necessary part of capitalism. If unemployment is 0%, then there's no room left for companies to grow in size, and things stagnate. There has to be a ready pool of people to hire on a moment's notice. Now that doesn't mean there have to be a *lot* of people unemployed, but it does mean that at any given time there will have to exist at least a few people who don't currently have a job yet are not "Maligners".
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Not according to Jack Valenti. Crimeny, when you read his letter printed in the Washington Post you could almost picture him foaming at the mouth while he was blasting (based on, IMHO, a wild misinterpretation of) Lessig's ideas.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
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.
> So I can go out and make 100 copies of a Brittney Spears CD and hand them out at about $0.50 a copy
.. ) on the industries bottom line.) The total misrepresentation of heman behaviour du jour seems to be 'if you can rip someone off, you will'. Untrue. Untrue untrue untrue. Sure, you can come up with tons of examples of people who do rip off [insert whatever]. But think about it - the people that dont are totally unheard. The counter case is the totally silent case, so it's easy to buy the falsity that if people CAN get away with unethical behaviour, they will, and must be stopped by means of force at all costs.
.. The Matrix, or Lord of the Rings. We'd have cheap crap like Plan 9 from Outer Space.
.... they want to keep growing, and they can't accept the reality that Quality of Product does not increase proportionally with scale, size of budgets, size of industry .. etc. It doesn't. It simply does NOT.
/can/, not because the quality of whats being sold (nevermind that tons of the songs are __about__ getting your own and getting the leg up on the next sucker) and that the social climate has changed. I mean, culture seems to be infatuated with America's favorite passtime: ripping someone else off. There is very little discussion of whether this has been happenning all along, all century - and whether or not its always just been a Cost of Doing Business. I content that seeking to 'correct' the 'problem' will do society far more harm than good.
/need/ encryption to keep these industries viable, you have very little faith in humanity and a grossly misplaced faith in the purpoded 'needs' of an already overblown and overrrated model of an economy. The economy should reflect the social needs of the people operating under it - there is no way that people should be forced to BEND for that economy; because the whole purpose of the economy in the first place is to facilitate happiness. Don't you think it's a little twisted to change the laws for 300 million people to help (at most) 60,000 people make a higher standard of living?
Wow! Really! You can! Man, you must be able to make a killing! Wow, everyone must be doing this! Geez, our whole economy is going to collapse, because suddenly everyone can copy shit really easily! (Unlike cassettes, of course.) Oh boy! The sky is falling! Hey, and I just figured out that you could sneak out at night, paint everyone's car in your neighbourhood green with a 5$ can of paint, and sell them 'Original FInish Recovery' systems the next day for 50$ a pop! OH MY GOD! THE WORLD IS GOING TO GO CRAZY UNLESS WE MAKE SURE CARS HAVE ROBOTIC ARMS THAT SLAP AWAY PEOPLE APPROACHING THEM WITH A PAINT CAN!
(Ok, get my drift? If it's so easy to burn and profit off other people's work, why have I yet to see __anyone__ selling Britanny Spears' CDs? Sure, we copy them for free, but I've yet to come into contact with any kind of piracy-for-profit story that has a significant impact (cause its always been going on, bootlegs, et al
>
Yeah! And we get Pearl Harbour, and Roller Ball, and Jar Jar Binks! Man, am I glad we dont get any cheapo movies like "The Sting" or "Oceans Eleven" or "Being John Malkovitch"! You're attitude is the very reason the industry is scrambling
I mean, holy crap dude. Do you really believe the garbage you're spewing here?
Ever since we started coutning things and writing them down, we act like piracy et al never existed before we started tracking it. And as piracy increases, we act like its only because people
If you really beleive we
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
CONFIG_DRM=y
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
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
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 some muntant form of the SSSCA passes, I will personally liquidate some of my savings and stock up on enough hardware to last me several years and perhaps sell on the black market at great profit to myself. Sure E-machines suck, but Geeks everywhere will be paying top $$$ for them if some form of the SSSCA passes.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
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.
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
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.
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
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?)
...richie - It is a good day to code.
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
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 know, the last time the US Federal Government required specific technological standards, we got a programming language called Ada.
This sig no verb.
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.
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.
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.
I'm sure they'll find a way. It's just that the language seems overly broad ("any interactive digital device"). Might be a good thing, it would increase the changes of being declared unconstitutional. My example was deliberately silly, of course.
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
"chances", not "changes". Darn Preview Button...
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
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
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& 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
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
The authority to pass it might be under the Commerce Clause, but...
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. "
If software is speech (still up for debate) the SSSCA is unconstitutionally abridging the freedom of speech.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
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.
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."
Clearly, one solution is keeping copyright data encrypted until it is eventually displayed. This can be strengthened by ensuring that copyright data that is distributed is encrypted only for the recipient.
And this is how you do it... Implant everyone with a microchip that acts as a private key. It solves a lot of problems. The device can act as a key for unlocking digital content, it can serve as a GUID for a national ID system, and it can fulfill biblical prophesy as being the "mark of the beast". With that last part you could probably even get Bill Gates and Microsoft to develop it.
But seriously, if you could get the media giants to buy into something like this you'd have every Southern Baptist from Alabama to North Carolina marching on Washington DC to where it would be political suicide for a politician to even listen to the special interest groups that want this. That dog just wouldn't hunt.
And I think I may have lived in the South just a little too long.
'Same speed C but faster'
Even if such a device were implantable, it would serve little other purpose.
Though, I will grant the temptation to use it for other, less benign purposes, would be great. One solution to mitigate this risk is to encourage multiple escrow services so that there is no guarantee that such a key is, in fact, unique, but that the liklihood of there being an excessive number of holders of the same private key be acceptably slim for producers of keyed content. This would render such a key essentially useless as a form of identification.
As with all technologies, this can be used for good, evil, and convenience. Whether convenience becomes evil depends greatly on deployment.
You could've hired me.
"The RFC for that will be bigger than my phone book..."
Or "2048 times Rot13 encryption"... (!!!)
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
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.