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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!"
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?
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
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.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
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.
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?
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.
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
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!"
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?)