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Tech Industry To Hollywood: Slow Down, Camper
negativethirsty wrote to us with a story here at Wired, most of the tech industry heads sent a letter to the motion picture studios, with a nod towards the US Senate. Basically, the tech industry does not want SSSCA to be pased, and want to work out a "technically feasible, cost effective solution" for protecting entertainment delivered in digital form.
This is "ganging up on the consumers".
If these two factions ever come to an agreement, fair use as we know it is dead (even more than it is already!).
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Did two of the group's members (HP Carly Fiorina and NCR Lars Nyberg) not sign the letter? Do they have some ulterior motive in distancing themselves from a group that doesn't want the SSSCA passed (see, I read articles before I post)? Or is this just a coincidence and they were 'out of town' or something when the letter was drafted.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
The letter does not directly state support for passing the law - in fact it says "We have found these voluntary multi-industry standards setting efforts to be optimally effective in reaching workable market solutions." - implying that they think legislation is either unecessary or "sub-optimal". The wired article also picks up on this - somebody change the story text!.
I very much doubt big hardware vendors would be in favor of the kind of copy protection SSSCA seems to demand - it would be very onerous to have government imposed standards here, it could create a huge black/grey market in imported "free" hardware.
This appear to be them "showing support for the fight", not supporting "the weapon".
.sig
It says: yes, "chief executives of IBM, Microsoft, Motorola, Intel and five other corporations said they were eager to work with Hollywood to find "technically feasible, cost effective solutions" for protecting entertainment delivered in digital form".
It also says "America's largest and most powerful tech firms have agreed on one point: Keep Congress far away from digital content standards."
This is not "ganging up on the consumers", it's "ganging up" on congress to make them stay out of this. Sure, they're brown-nosing media companies ("look, we want to protect your copyrights just as much as you do") but the important message is that they want to decide for themselves how to do it. And if there isn't any legislation in place, some other people (Linux developers, say) can do things their way and ditch DRM altogether if they want.
So it's good.
I think.
Not terribly bad, anyway, the way you make it sound.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
It made me want to stop buying music althogether.
I was never an avid music consumer before Napster/mp3s. I would buy one album a year if even that. Then when Napster came along, and I was able to listen to different music and figure out what *I* liked, I have bought dozens of albums. I don't know where the Recording Industry, Movie Industry, and Tech Industry think they're going these days. Why is it that they feel like they have to establish this higher moral stance (when actually it's based on profits, not morality) to preserve a copyright system that clearly doesn't work anymore, and needs to be redesigned?
This is what I see happening if this bill gets passed:
-A wide and growing division of artists from the mainstream, where the Net finally becomes a mainstream place to purchase music or a secondary "rogue" recording industry develops that is more sympathetic to consumers rights and wants.
Now, I know I don't have all the answers. But all I can say is that Recording Industry, MPAA, and Tech Companies had better wake up and decide whether they like making money off their "precious" consumers.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually make my website for other people to look at.
"They can't treat our pledges like that. Only WE can treat our pledges like that."h
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Make no mistake: they are not. Technological protections infringe fair use rights, they prevent the material from falling into the public domain when copyright terms run out, and they greatly increase the cost of entry into publishing. Rather than debating whether technological restrictions should be backed up by criminal law, we should be debating whether works published with technological restrictions should enjoy copyright protections at all.
I think companies should be free to use technological protections for their creations, but they should then not also enjoy legal and copyright protections because they have precluded the uses that were traditionally envisioned for published materials. It's the same with patents: either you publish and get patent protection, or you keep it a secret and don't get patent protection.
Ah, the standard libertarian argument - the consumer / market leads the way. I would agree, if I felt the average consumer / market was concerned enough with the issues in question. The problem is, most users don't care about principles, simply whether it does what they want, and isn't prohibitively expensive. The makers of such devices will make money if they sell something that a lot of people want to buy, whether or not it matches some smaller group's set of principles.
Currently, pretty much every car driver pollutes the air considerably, me included. Even the ones who are ostensibly "green". Same goes for existing societies - I find I have to subsidise (through taxes) various measures that I disagree with fundamentally. I vote for some representative who agrees with my principles, as is my democratic right, but it has no further reaching effect. Why? Because my principles are not echoed by a substantial proportion of the rest of the population.
Ultimately, the population is only as interested in an issue such as this - prohibition on copying - as they are affected by it. Otherwise, it depends how the media portrays it. Think DMCA, think The Geneva Convention, think The Universal Convention on Human Rights. The US media targetted the DMCA issue at the public by suggesting that "hackers" would benefit if it wasn't in place. The Patriot Act was introduced to wide public acclaim because the media suggested "Terrorists" would benefit if it wasn't in place. The Geneva convention is flaunted in Guantanamo Bay, and the US public lets it past because the media doesn't highlight it.
If the general public - the majority of voters - are not negatively affected by the SSSCA, then it takes too much effort for them to take interest, and too much effort on the media's part to educate them. If I'm not going to copy digital content creatively, then I don't care if someone who does it illegally is prohibited from doing that technically. If I don't understand the technical reasons why someone could do it legally, then I won't want to spend time learning how, or why. It simply will be outside my sphere of interest.
To paraphrase a Civil War soldier, They will win, because they can't abide the way we live, yet we don't care how they live[1]. Until it becomes an issue of general relevance, the voting public won't care, and their liberties will be further eroded until they have a mode of thought equivalent to "newspeak", with only the single state department/media line to go along with.
[1] if someone knows who said that, and when, please reply!
jer
We may be human, but we're still animals
- Steve Vai
OK first things first: I'm an employee of IBM, but I do not represent IBM. This is my personal viewpoint. #include "std_disclaimer.h"
.edu labs and geeks with equivalent home labs, are probably the folks this law is aimed at to begin with)
I called our IP Law group about this law when it first surfaced on my radar, because a lot of the things we do when bringing up a new system would have to change. I was pleased to find out that the HQ people were already up to speed on this.
What would have to change? Like for instance on first power-on the BIOS isn't done and on-board devices aren't fully supported... Well if the SSSCA passes and our very first power-on doesn't have support for their DRM (since there's no exception in the draft SSSCA for systems development or debug) all of us engineers are now guilty of federal felonies. I'm sorry, but I'll change careers and/or countries before I take a job that requires me to break the law.
All of us engineers and programmers know also that hardware diagnostics frequently turn off all onboard devices except for one at a time to attempt to isolate bad devices... guess what? Won't be able to do that anymore. That means diagnostics are less effective, which means more customer downtime and higher customer support costs. Any computer company that cares about their customers will not look forward to that.
And of course, if Sen Hollings adds an exemption for systems development folks the question becomes "Who constitutes a legitimate developer?" The 14-year old down the street probably doesn't, but I know folks who have a home lab that rivals what some hardware OEMs have. And all those college students developing computers for their EE classes then become problematic too. (Since both of these groups, college students with access to
Who knows where this will end? (sigh)
--Rob
Perhaps the tech industry should get together and draft an Act that would restrict the output of Hollywood in order to protect computer manufacturers' profits.
For example, a movie would not be allowed to show computers in a negative light, nor to glorify 'hacking'. And there would be a statutory upper limit on how entertaining films could be, because otherwise people might spend too much time at cinemas and too little time at home playing computer games.
We have allowed the irresponsible 'film industry' to damage our profits for too long. If they can't sort it out, government should step in.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
This is both, but the bad news wins, I think.
The good news is that this sort of thing is very likely to derail the SSSCA. When large, politically respectable (i.e. campaign-contributing) companies tell Congress that they can handle the problem themselves, and that legislation will harm the industry, Congress will listen. A concerted effort from tech giants can stop SSSCA in its tracks.
The bad news is that what the tech corps are promising to do won't happen. Sure, they can design hardware with DRM built in, and they can establish standards and even bring some amount of pressure to bear on companies that build non-compliant hardware, but there will always be a market for non-compliant hardware because that's what consumers want, and they're the real masters of capitalism. As long as that market exists, companies will try to sell to it, and they'll succeed handsomely. By way of example, how many tiny, unknown asian companies made it in a big way in the DVD player market precisely because they were willing to defy the standards (and even break their legally-enforceable license agreements) to make region-free players? Low prices, cool features and suddenly the likes of Sampo and Apex are outselling JVC and Pioneer.
As long as there's no legal enforcement, it's actually in the interest of hardware manufacturers to cut corners and leave loopholes that allow the end user to work around the DRM.
So, the bad news is that after the tech companies succeed in stalling Congress for a few years, the likes of the RIAA and MPAA will come thundering back in, saying "See! They promised to stop this and they failed!" and Congress will nod sagely and pass the SSSCA.
The really bad news is that this action by the tech companies legitimizes the goal. IBM (my employer, BTW, although I don't speak for them, #include <disclaimer>) and the others are basically supporting the content distributors' point of view that this is a problem that should be fixed.
I guess what we can hope for is that by the time Congress realizes that industry self-regulation has failed, the rest of the world has realized that the correct solution is not to hamstring the technology and the technologists so that the old business model can continue to succeed, but instead to find new business models. Unfortunately, I doubt that the members of the RIAA, in particular, will ever realize this, because all of the obvious new business models make them unnecessary.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Did you make the same apologies for the DMCA, and were then surprised at Dmitri?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
It's been 4 months since you passed 'USA PATRIOT Act'!
If this error seems to be incorrect, please provide the following in your report to the Majority Leader:
* Please choose 'formkeys' for the category!
Thank you.
sulli
RTFJ.
Anyway, the speech made clear to me that we are arriving at the most revisionist moment in history since writing was restricted to the priesthood. That's right, that speech at the Grammys was the most culturally backward moment in 3500 years. Sure, that sounds extreme, but consider this; in the year 3000, do you really believe that digital rights management is going to be a cornerstone of culture? And do you honestly think they'll be able to look backwards at 2001 and say "Thank god they stopped that Napster or we wouldn't have survived!" We are actually being asked to cripple the foundations of the technological future so that a small band of carnies i mean executives can keep their jobs holding the keys to the gilded cage where they keep Lars Ulrich.
No, pull the band-aid. Hard. Steal all the music you can and see what happens. It'll hurt for a minute, and then you'll see how much better everything is. All technology is theft; theft of power from above. Ever heard of Prometheus? It's trickery to get the power of the gods. So we found a powerful new fire and Rosen and Valenti are doing their best to say in booming voices "Put that back! Only the priesthood may hold an uncovered flame! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
A number of people have claimed that the market won't accept crippled devices and that people will simply buy the uncrippled ones. I ask: given that the RIAA and MPAA are more than willing to pass Draconian laws to protect their oligopoly on entertainment media, what on God's green earth makes you think they won't go further and outlaw all devices *not* approved by them? It's silly to believe that 'the market' will take care of the problem when the folks vested in the old way of doing business are capable of buying legislators and laws to make any alternative a felony.
Furthermore, others have stated that different ways of doing things will put the RIAA/MPAA out of business, e.g., more and more bands selling their cds directly using the internet as cheap advertisement. Let's wise up a bit, shall we? If this becomes a popular way of doing business - cutting the RIAA out of the picture altogether - do you really think the powers that be will stand aside and let this model edge them out of the market? Hell no, they'll once again buy the laws needed to make the sale of music cds via the internet, or without RIAA approval, or both, a crime.
As ridiculous as this sounds the loons that run the music business (and now the movie business) have shown themselves to be quite capable of backing Orwellian laws and buying the support required to pass them. They'll do anything to retain their power even if that means imprisoning anyone who defies them, using the U.S. government as their tool.
What's more than a bit ironic here is that if a new technology comes along that eliminates my business and my job, I don't get to go crying to Congress to set up a protection racket for me. I have to learn new skills for a new job at a new business - that's called 'capitalism'. The RIAA, however, if presented with a market that makes their way of doing things obsolete, simply buys the legislation required to outlaw the technology that threatens their favored status. Now that's fair, American style!
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
That's a cave-in to the entertainment industry. The reply could have read something like "The computer industry is a major engine of economic growth in the United States. Interfering with its freedom to innovate purely to help a small number of entertainment companies maintain their monopolies is harmful to the nation." But that's not what the computer ndustry representatives said.
That's what the promoters of the SSSCA really wanted. That legislation isn't going anywhere, but introducing it has intimidated the computer industry into doing what the RIAA and MPAA want - putting in hardware copy protection.