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SSSCA Hearing
larsoncc writes: "According to this article on CNET, a Senate Bill will likely force the issue of adding copy protection to hardware. They are giving the industry 12 to 18 months to come up with a voluntary solution to the "problem" of copies, and if not... Well, you just have to read the article. Insane." Wired also has a story. The IP list published two interesting documents: an account of the hearing by an attendee, and a letter from Intel published immediately after the hearing. Read the letter carefully - note that the disagreement between the tech industry and Hollywood is not over whether or not copy protection will be implemented into every electronic device, but only whether or not this should be written into law. If the SSSCA isn't passed, Intel (and others) get a lot of leverage over Hollywood. If it is, Intel's leverage disappears. But since both sides want to build copy protection into everything, they only differ over the process, we're in trouble either way.
Do you seriously need copy-protection for your microwave because it has flash rom?
This is so sick. Foul. How can so many people be so blind with greed? So, this is how the end of civilization begins...
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
Now we'll have to reflash our Ipods!
I think we need to remind our congresscritters that in light of the Enron and Global Crossing special interest fiascos, the last thing that would be appropriate for them to do now (especially after their activity on campaign finance reform) would be to pass a bill that should be renamed the "AOL/Time Warner and Friends Racket Act."
As much as I like some of my representatives, I've put them on notice that I'll vote in someone else if they dare pass this scam.
Congress: Quit telling me how to run my business, or I'll tell you how to run yours!
*scoove*
We need a law that says there CANNOT be anything built into hardware to prevent copying.
Computers were getting too useful anyway. I think that we all need to slow down, and take time to smell the roses. After all, very few people do anything useful with computers to begin with. Copy protection is just another way of saying, "I like to inconvenience you and make you pay extra for it."
somebody who works for these companies must be reading these stories. what do they do when their company sucks? this must be why corporate america looooves job shortages- nobody can afford to quit when corporate integrity goes down the drain.
Somewhere on this page I have hidden my signature.
I didn't want to make copies of my hardware anyway... : )
The laws have been in place. And every law has a loophole. It is illegal to murder, illegal to steal. nobody stops. This law will only make life of ordinary people hard, who wont be able to make copies even for personal use. The thieves will find a way.
IF the media thinks it can use laws to curb such things it is mistaken. In a democracy you cant always have what you want, compromises are necessary.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
If the legislation is passed, AMD MUST CONFORM as well...
Pray the SSSCA dies...
It appears that Hollywood and Congress in their ignorance are demanding solutions in the name of copy protection.
It also appears that they are shouting down anyone who objects as enabling criminal activities.
Tech Industry players don't want to be seen as supporting criminals, and don't have the guts to stand up for enabling the user (Other than Intel, who got beaten up for it)
So, in the name of not looking bad, and not getting more bad law, it is a foregone conclusion that we will have copy-protection- it's just a question of whether it will have force of industry, or force of law, behind it.
As much as I hate bought legislation, why didn't the Tech Industry buy off their own Congressmen to compete with this foolishness?
I know MS only started contributing to campaigns in the last presidential election, and they've already patented the DRM OS, and IBM stands on moral and ethical ground of not getting involved- Compaq and HP are too busy fighting to merge to get involved-
By the time they realize what they've lost it will be too late to turn the tide. At least Intel tried.
I'd expect that PC manufacturers will make this protection easy to disable, either by bypassing a chip or removing it, etc... A little solder and or ingenuity and PRESTO! we'll all be modding our PC's! "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless, 1992 -- The same thing applies to hackers and pirates. They will find a way.
Anyone live in the Texas Panhandle?
I sent my representative a angry letter about the SSSCA and got told how important it was to protect the nation's intellectual property against evil theives like Napster and P2P
Translation: Hollywood has been very good to me, so I'm going to continue bending you over to get play from them.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Is that copyright is NOT there to guarantee that people make lots of money, copyright is there to guarantee that society has literature, art, and music, by making sure artists can earn money through creation.
Huge corporations stopping fair use and extending copyright limits for the length of several human lifetimes is unAmerican.
I'm all for REAL copyright that still provides for fair use. I don't trust these goddamn people to do it for me. If it was a legitimate matter of wanting to protect themselves, i'd be more sympathetic, but its not secret that they want to find more ways to fuck you out of your money.
Of course it's been said maybe a million times that piracy (at least in some forms - Napster et al) can actually increase revenues for music/film/tv producers, by stimulating interest, it just seems odd that these people are unwilling to consider this point of view and look at the situation in such a short-sighted way.
I'd like to know how people with so little vision and foresight get to become CEOs of major firms. If anyone can tell me I'm sure I can off load some of my foresight to a passing tramp or general ne-er do well.
Answers on a postcard please.
Does this _really_ surprise anyone? The U.S. government and legal system has long since proved that freedom only means that big corporations are free to supress the will and rights of the individuals.
The effect of this will ultimately result in that no one will buy american made hardware.
Countries that won't feel obligated to comply with this law will get a boost in their sale of non copy protecting harware.
We'll all be using Chinese and Korean hardware if this law is ever realized.
Let's face it. If Intel and others integrate copyprotection on the hardware level, then that processor or chipset will loose market share.
We'll all be running some Open Design homebrew
box if this happens. What is the governement going to do,.. outlaw electronics as a hobby?
I think it's time we all boycott the MPAA and RIAA.
So you want to mandate copy-protection? Go ahead and try. We all know it won't work.
So you make it illegal to defeat this 'copy protection'? Go right ahead, it won't stop the most determined out there.
Think For Yourself. Question Authority.
If this gets passed into law, the holywood computers would be illegal! Serves them right...
Maybe these bastards figure if they agree to the charges, they too will get a chunk of the proceeds
And worst of all I just got so upset from the article which only explained and echoed the charges against the technology companies. At the end in two 'paragraphs' it explains that that companys such as Intel and Dell do not agree!
I sig, therefore I was.
I wish there was such a thing as Open Source Hardware.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Aww damn, my hacked up cell phone with rewriteable numbers, my thousands of mp3's, my carjacked lexus, the home I took over with automatic weapons, all gone because my hardware now has copy protection.
..multimedia? Give me a DVD drive that only stores data then. I don't watch movies on my PC! What, because our processors are fast enough to decode movies you think we should?
Here's a hint: I don't give a fuck about movies. I don't want to watch them. I don't care whether or not they encode them. But I do NOT want to deal with more fucking hassle and incompatibilities when it comes to my hardware - it's a big enough issue at the moment. And this type of bullshit will cause just that - more harassment and problems. I can see tech support now: "We're sorry sir but that blue screen only comes up when you try and circumvent the protection and we won't help you fix that." Yea, right. Fsck off!
Like it'll help anyway. If Microsoft, who designs the operating system, can't make their security system safe, what makes you think that THIS will be safe?
My reality check bounced.
They want to convert the internet into the TV.
I'm entirely willing to accept copy protection, DRM, whatever, with one single condition.
All media has a lifetime guarantee against anything I do to it.
Basically, I want to back things up for my personal use. But, if the media companies wish to stop me doing that myself then I feel that they ought to provide me, for free (or the cost of production), with as many replacements of the original media as I want. If they are unwilling to accpet this financial undertaking (it'd be big, I'm a clumsy/forgetful/stupid person) then they ought not be able to stop me protecting my initial investment.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
I think I'll start buying my hardware overseas now. Oh, what? Mr. Tech Industry? You don't like that? Put down this silly business. Guess I'll have to start attending more live performances.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Jesus H. Christ. So any pocket calculator with a M+ key on it is going to be illegal? What a bunch of assholes.
On another note, where do the porn companies stand in this? I think I'm going to start writing the big porn video companies and let them know that movies they make are being shared online. That could be the one thing that could kill this bill. Imagine telling Mary soccer mom that the reason her computer is hobbled is to protect the profits of pornographers. She'll get into her Suburban and drive right over to her Congressman's office with a letter.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
As everyone knows, this is just the application of Hollywood $$$ to the gov. And actually, this law if put in place may get overturned- too far reaching and such. But IANAL.
Interesting how they point out that the Alaskan Senator is a Republican, yet never point out what party Hollings is from....
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The Commission bases this tentative conclusion on the fact that providers of wireline broadband Internet access provide subscribers with the ability to run a variety of applications that fit under the characteristics stated in the ``information service'' definition in section 3 of the Act. The Commission seeks comment on these tentative conclusions and the supporting statutory analysis asks additional questions with regard to the proper classification of wireline broadband Internet access service, including asking parties to offer any factual evidence that would suggest a contrary application of the statute.
In other words, people have power we must seek to take it away.
Read all about it here.
Honestly, I don't particularly care if Windows gets built in DRM - unless somebody can convince me otherwise - because I don't use it.
But, see, the thing is, this mandates DRM - to Hollywood's specs - not only in Windows, but in Linux, *BSD, MacOS, PalmOS, and every single device I own. That's unreasonable.
If I'm told that I'm not allowed to use FreeBSD anymore because the TCP stack doesn't check incoming packets for copyrighted material, and because FFS lets me store mp3's, then I'm going to be really pissed. If I'm told that there are going to be some components that can no longer be 'open source' - or, more importantly, Free Software - I'm going to be really pissed. If every hard drive that I see in the store has built in DRM, I'm going to be even more pissed.
Well, guess what? That's what this bill says. My rights are getting pissed on by this bill, and it pisses me off. I'm calling my reps and telling them that if they vote for it I will not vote for them.
I see some SERIOUS problems with the idea of hardware copy protection. First of all, is it built into each individual components (DVD-ROM drives, CD-RW's, hard drives, etc)? If it is, then how will it know what is copyrighted, and what isn't? How will a DVD player know that the file that is output to the computer is going to a file and not a player? What about scanners? Video cameras/VCR's? Also, wouldn't that be an invasion of privacy, looking into the files you're copying to your hard drive to determine if they're similar to a TV show that was aired last night?
Second, if it's an expansion card added to the computer by Compaq/HP/Dell/IBM/etc, what's to stop people from pulling it out? How about people who build their own computers (like everyone here)?
I don't think anyone should fret just yet, this is an impossible task. Plus, this bill isn't making it illegal to do the copying (it already is!), but is making the computer industry come up with a way of preventing copying. Will this affect the people who are bypassing it?
The first thought that came to my mind when I saw Intel's stance on the issue was not, "We're screwed." Rather this is simply the chance that smaller and possible better companies must seize. Assuming this law is not passed, (I know it's a very optimistic assumption) I believe we will see Intel's (and other companies supporting integrated copy protection) demise. Only in the case that this law passes do we need to really start worrying.
to the bill at all at the congress website. What is the deal, do they really not want us to know about what is going on? I'd love to jump on the phone with my state reps and chew their ear about why this is bad, but I'd like to have some legs to stand on with them. They really don't care to hear about 'some bill called the SSSCA' which I can't even give a bill number for.
"Almost no legal high-quality content (is) available on the Internet" because companies can't agree on one open standard for providing anti-copying features...
If that is true, then all of you are trolls.
[i]Hollings gave media and technology companies 12 to 18 months to come up with their own solution before federal agencies set a standard, according to Reuters.[/i]
Translation: Media companies have to stall negotiations for 12 to 18 months before they can get their law passed.
Please, close your web browser, pick up a pen, a telephone, ANYTHING...go down and TALK to your representatives.
Whining here on Slashdot will accomplish absolutely NOTHING. TALK TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVES. Don't bother emailing them...call them, write them snailmail, or even better, go see them in person. PLEASE.
I'm writing this as a non-American. All I can do is sit here in horror and watch this silly circus of corporate interests that your government has become. All I know is whatever happens to you, will certainly happen to ME eventually.
This is not to pad your ego but, your country AFFECTS THE WHOLE WORLD. Remember that. Call your representatives TODAY. NOW. Please.
Illegalizing something easy and natural is one of the worst things that can happen to a society. It makes us all targets of the police.
Given the money sloshing around from all the big players here, we can definitely look forward to attempts to mandate DRM in every device that can concievably contain it. We'll have to find ways to route around this damage, and it will get tougher as time goes on.
One thing that I find to be interesting is that Intel doesn't really seem to be concerned at all with its customers. They are caving to the shrill voices of Disney and similar corporation that make their living from the institution of the perpetual copyright. It seems to me, and obviously to Vadasz that the music/vid industries are doing everything they can to demonize anyone who simply dosn't want to buy his 15th copy of Dark Side of the Moon.
We need to be more vocal to the public at large about exactly what fair use is and that the music/vid industries are capable of destroying that right and enforcing this destruction on most of the people out there.
Fair Use itself needs an advocate.
This is an ex-parrot!
Jeebus. I better burn all of my MP3s onto non-volatile media.
I sure as hell hope that the Feds don't ratify this one. Holy shit, if they do, I am SO joining the EFF when I grow up...
Nononono. The EFF can't be accessed because it is a site that 'aims to subvert hardware copy protection.' Silly me.
However. An idea. Why can't we just keep our old hardware with no copy protection? Or will the Feds come and take our computers, all our possessions, and throw us in jail while they have a giant LAN party with all of the non-conformant computers?
I have 12-18 months to buy as much non-protected digital media/hardware as I can? I guess this is one way to stimulate the economy.
It hurts when I pee.
I just can't get over the horror of this prospect. If this were to become law, I would seriously consider leaving this country for another... but even then, would I be able to get away from it? How long before the might and power of these people reach across seas, around the world? How long before it will be impossible to buy hardware that does not have protections even in a country that doesn't have this law? It makes one want to go out into the jungle, build a hut, and live far away from all this mess.
Have you read all the article?
The SSSCA also creates new federal felonies, punishable by five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000. Anyone who distributes copyrighted material with "security measures" disabled or has a network-attached computer that disables copy protection is covered.
This means that breaking security measures now is a felony with a huge fine and prison term. Do not pass go, go straight to jail. I believe (IANAL) that this means that anyone with old software/hardware that does not protect/honor the copyright protections and is connected to a network is automatically commiting a felony. In addition, anyone using Napster, Gnutella, et. al. is also committing a felony.
I hope this bill passes. I hope they tag and track every DVD CD and TV Transmission and charge $2.00 per view. Maybe then people will get sick of it and start thinking more about creating rather than consuming.
Days like these, I'm so glad I moved out of the States. I read 1984 last spring, and it just seems so shocking how draconian legislation in the U.S. is become.
Unlike certain European Foreign Ministers, I don't make a huge fuss about the whole prisoners in Cuba thing. I have spent plenty of time around military personnel and done enough logistics work to understand the rationale behind that.
However, the creation of new bureaus to handle security, the pursuit of new ways of finding criminals, and the push of labelling anyone and everyone with a differing opinion is rotten. That's not justice, bravery, or security speaking. It's fear.
The sad thing is that's just what's behind Hollywood's push to make all these anti-copying things as well. It's a matter of fear. Someone else migh have control. It's sick, it's twisted, and it's wrong.
You know, a smart, brave, free land would support differing ideas. It would support that people can build on ideas. It would state that an idea may well come from an individual, but eventually that idea become one upon which others can freely build.
The BSA argues constantly about how piracy is destroying business. Now, I know that some businesses have been ruined by it. I agree it should be illegal. However, haven't these same businesses grown dramatically within that context?
The same can be seen within other areas as well.
But here we are, in a slump, and we want to make more money. Instead of pursuing good ideas, let's crack down on things. Instead of pursuing better real security, let's try to pressure people to conform to ideas. Yeah, right!
I was born an American and believe very strongly in the ideals of the nation. However, I find it sad how quickly a media-frenzied nation can panic, and how much might a corporations can have in what's supposed the most powerful nation on earth, the once great "land of the free and home of the brave".
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
http://congress.org/congressorg/issuesaction/lette rs/
Luckily, one of my Senators is on the Commerce committee. I urge you to write now.
That's the really ugly side of this, it stretches far beyond simply having a chip in the PC. It would require software to prevent copying as well.
If they are really going to implement this, then Linux - and actually any open source OS - would have to be illegal.
I just hope I'm mistaken here, or something.
You know, how hard would it be for the MPAA to make an example out of somebody who really is offering pirated copies of the latest movies? How difficult would it be to get on Morpheus or Gnutella, look up something like "The Fast and the Furious (DivX)", and trace the offender through his or her IP address? Has anybody heard of the MPAA actually doing anything like this? Aren't these the people that the MPAA should really go after? How many questions can I squeeze into one paragraph?
With legislation like the SSSCA, the movie and music industries are seeking to impose draconian (some might say dictatorial) on everybody as a result of the actions of a small percentage of the users. If these people had any interest in protecting their profits, they would actually go after the pirates who are swapping ripped movies on the Internet and selling bootleg copies on street corners. The fact that they are (apparently) unwilling to do so speaks volumes about their true intentions.
Brave men have died to protect the fundamental freedoms that the MPAA/RIAA and their corporate thugs are now bribing Congress to take away. What's most sad is that (apparently) nobody in Congress recognizes or cares about this, as long as their "charitable funds" are being properly supplied by the movie industry. Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Jack Valenti. In future history books, all of these names will appear in the same paragraph.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Instead of the "War on Drugs" it'll be the "War on piracy" We'll hear rethoric on tv, about those horrible people who are smuggling illegal non-copyprotected products over the boarders. They'll speak of people smuggling motherboards under baby blankets, and people swallowing processors in condoms...
We'll hear great stories about CEA (Copyright Enforcement Agency) busting into back alley motherboard labs. We'll hear about the Taiwanese motherboard cartels...
We'll see great pictures of smiling agents standing behind fold out tables covered with confiscated non copy protected harddrives wrapped up in plastic wrap as the press huddles around.
Not that were that far off from this right now...
"insert wacky hijinks..."
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
If they build copy protection in at the hardware level, it will still be relying on whatever software that you have to utilize it, correct? I mean, M$ Media Player et. al. will surely be making certain that whatever you are trying to listen to is "legal" or whatever.
Open Source software should be free to ignore whatever protection schemes may be built into the hardware.
Until it becomes illegal to write software that doesn't utilize the hardware, I guess. Won't that be a wicked twist! As it is right now, it is illegal to "circumvent" someone's copy protection scheme; the next step will be to make it illegal to not implement such schemes in your software!
Just my thoughts on the matter...
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
There is one important thing to remember here in this situation: Republicans are not a fan of Hollings. And that especially includes the President, who Hollings has been publically criticizing heavily for his involvement with Enron.
Sure, our government is largely corrupt, and IMHO, neither Hollings or Bush should be in office. But if Hollings does introduce this bill, and it passes through Congress, there would be a good chance of Bush vetoing it. Of course, since the Senate is so closely split with Republicans & Democrats, I'm hoping that with the right pressure placed by us geeks, this bill won't pass in the first place.
You mean that unconstitutional shit they gave to the left to shut them up?
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
http://www.opencores.org/
Deleted
This whole effort is somewhat like trying to outlaw the laws of physics. If they could, these guys would try to slow down the speed of light because it allows copying to happen too fast.
Copying is how computers work. Would somebody with some influence and a clue please tell them this?
Well, I guess it's going to be game over then for all the file sharing on the internet.
;-) will find a way to circumvent all the copy protection stuff.
Until... the day that some smart 16-year old (probably from finland or something
All this SSSCA crap shows us a few things:
- congress members are all corrupt. so's thepresident. power corrupts.
- greedy people stay greedy forever, and will wipe their asses with the constitution if it could make them *more* money. money corrupts.
- groups of greedy people are dangerous (ag: the motion picture ass. of america and the recording ass. of america). the combination of money and power is just plain evil.
don't let them get away with this!!
H357
The monetary costs alone are reason not to do this. Besides, you're only hurting the actual consumers, not those determined Asian pirate operations that are the source of most of the problem in the first place. Maybe if we would declare war on China for stealing all our copyrights we could solve this problem. Oh, it's not worth going to war over? Then why the hell are you screwing over your own citizens???
So, where does the "copy protection" go in my computer? If its in the OS, I will just run an open source OS like Linux, and remove all the copy protection crap (if congress can get it in there) from my kernel and recompile. If its in hardware, its probably in the BIOS, or another chip on the mobo. When do the diagrams for soldering jumpers to your mobo for bypassing copy protection (I probably just violated the DMCA for suggesting a "circumvention" thingie) come out?
/usr/games/fortune
One of the quote of a content provider from the article says:
"The truth is, if you cannot protect what you own, you don't own anything."
Unfortunately for the consumer:
"The truth is, if you cannot do whatever to things you own, you don't own anything."
From the Wired article:
"I believe the concerns of content providers are justified," said Arizona's John McCain, the panel's top Republican. "They invest creativity, effort, and capital into producing high quality films and programming and should be able, adequately, to protect their investments. I am apprehensive, however, of proposals that select technological winners and losers and mandate government intervention in the marketplace."
Geez, he makes an excellent point here!
Will someone explain to me why he backed out of the 2000 Republican Primaries?!
I'm a 2000 man.
For the love of Pete, the situation is not going to change until we, all of us, remind Congress that they work for us, not Disney, and that we will remove them from office if they do stuff like this. There are plenty of sheep out there who will just believe the corporate line, but I'd like to think that the readers here have a little more sense.
Call your representatives, especially if you have one on the Senate committee considering this. I called John Edwards office on Wednesday. It took all of 30 seconds. Did my call make a difference? Probably not. Would 500-1000 calls that day have made a difference? Possibly.
We, the technologically inclined, need to get off of our comfortable, Quake-playing asses and realize that there's a world out there. We're so caught up in ourselves that if an issue doesn't affect us personally this very day, we ignore it, aside from some grumbling on slashdot. Well, Congress doesn't read slashdot, so we need to get our message out.
Rise up, geeks. Organize. I find it hard to believe that a group that can build Mozilla can't get itself together enough to organize efforts against laws that affect our very livelihood. The only way we can even have a chance of stopping this is if we all work together.
Can we?
"We're in trouble either way" is a bit of an overstatement.
If Intel or anyone else does this voluntarily, than we can still buy from other companies. They may be cheapo knock-off companies with crappy products, but we'll have the option since they'll have the option to produce DRM-agnostic products under the law. And in 5 years Intel would still have the option to change it's mnid, if it sees fit. And open source software doesn't run into the legal hassle.
If this becomes enforced by law, we're SOL. We'll not only have to accept technologies we don't want (or ethically support), but we'll have to pay higher product costs because DRM will take a shitload of money to impliment on this scale. And we won't have anywhere - anywhere at all - to turn for alternatives.
The EU will copy the SSSCA the instant the US tells us to do so. There will be no place to by non-SSSCA compliant equipment I bet.
-- From Denmark
At one point, Eisner badgered Vadasz, asking him, "Can you protect open content on the Internet that's been stolen and now (is) sitting on a file. Is there a technological way?" After several half-answers, Vadasz eventually replied: "No."
That exchange led to a letter that Intel sent to Hollings late Thursday. It accused Eisner and Chernin of injecting "a point of confusion" into the hearing.
Vadasz wrote in the letter: "It is important for the committee to understand that content, once captured in 'unprotected' form, can never be put back in the 'bottle' and protected against copying on the Internet. This is because this unprotected media looks no different to digital devices than a home movie that you would send to a relative or friend."
This is the Fair Use point we should be talking about -- not that we should have the right to copy other people's work willy-nilly, but that if legislation like this gets passed, we won't have the right ot view our own home movies on our device (which was bought to play back that content) because our movies don't have Disney's blessing, and their device can't tell the difference between video of your kids and a bootleg copy of Snow Dogs, and will refuse to play either!
The Intel guy basically admitted that digital devices can't tell the difference between these types of legal and illegal content, so the Entertainment industry wants to ban both! Now, that has to be against the spirit of the Copyright law, and I plan on explaining this to my senators, although I doubt Hillary or Chuck will listen.
But since both sides want to build copy protection into everything, they only differ over the process, we're in trouble either way.
So if I understand correctly, it's about time to start stocking up on 1GHz processors and build shizer-loads of beowulf clusters.... sounds good to me...
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
from opensecrets it's pretty obvious that Hollings is in the pocket of Hollywood.
Gee,
Movies are not free. Sure it takes 25Million
to film a movie and they make 900 million.
And later they make a gaizllion dollars on video cd and tape. I don't personally use my box to
download video and create video CDs. But I do use
my computer to create home movies and video cds.
I resent the fact that there's a tax on CD/DVD media because the Hollywood want to recoup some of their losses. It's not fair at all.
Don't these idiots relize that any form of copyprotection can eventually be broken.
If there's a few bits in the header of a file to
identify the data as a MPAA movie or perhaps a few bits that repeat in the datastream. big deal this can be cracked. If this is implemented on the hardware level, the manufacturer suffers because
no one will buy the crap, And regardless of what Operating System one uses, the will be cracked.
It's time to encourage the public to Boycot video.
The days of the MPAA and RIAA are numbered. Imaging artists and musicians able to bypass the
hollywood mafia, they'll be able to publish thier work on the internet, sell for far less money, and
earn more profit. I believe that's what will happen. Copies will be encouraged because that's
free advertising.
Gee.. I was going to go see the Spiderman movie, if this keeps up "forget about it". I'll start a
MPAA/RIAA boycott!
So let the yanks shoot themselves in the foot. /. and most of
Makes life easier for those of us who don't live
there. I do get annoyed when
the people on it seem to assume that just because
a law is passed in the states it will affect the
whole internet. Hello?? Wake up! Your countries
laws have no jurisdiction elsewhere! We don't
care what you do!
Dude you need to check your facts. Bill G and Co have been buying favors in the country for a long time. Not the the right hasnt been cutting them deals. The current DOJ is bought and paid for by M$. BUT to say they havent been buying elected officials before Bush is just plain wrong.
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
The definitions will not stand up in court - it would seem to inhibit me from building any sort of simple digital equipment, eg to interface to inkjet printer, take my blooh pressure etc. here in UK
While it's clear this bill claims to cover any "interactive digital device", whatever that really means, I am quite sure there will be appropriate exemptions given to things like microwave ovens and digital rectal thermomethers. When that happens, I will be quite happy to demonstrate to Mr. Hollings how a PC can and should qualify for such an exemption by demonstrating it's use in the latter role to him personally.
I've been wondering how to shift power away from the masses and into the hands of corporations, all without having to saddle the responsibility of governing on the ones getting the power.
Regulate the private end-user, and deregulate the corporate provider. It was right under my nose the whole time.
*sigh*
Stupid government. Now if I could only get my dangerous, non-regulated electronics through security on my way to Australia.
1. It is already proven not to work, see postings about Sony Playstation 2 and the available mod
2. Order your hardware from Taiwan by the internet, and order the not protected one for speed purpose under a company name (I expect that that there will be a possibility to buy unprotected ones for the industry itself, they need to edit too (-: )
When all the technology companies start hurting because people no longer find their devices useful, the NASDAQ is going to take a bath (that is investment talk for "going to hell in a handbasket").
Then, when the retirement funds that own the mutual funds that own shares in these companies take a dive in a couple years and ruin people's lives, maybe we Americans will get off of our collective ass, take a more active interest in the government and boot out the pre-paid politicians that started the whole mess. Never underestimate the power and anger of a retiree whose money is being fscked with.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
...is basicaly shooting itself in the foot. And not just the tech industry, but also the entertainment and everything else along with it. Honestly, is Intel expecting me to buy their products when their processors for instance won't decode a movie which is not digitally signed to their liking? Or does IBM think I'll use their hdds when they won't allow me to store said movie (or software, or music, etc)?
I live in Canada, and over here we don't have those insane issues, such as this one. At least not yet. But even if we did, there would always be options to bypass the crippled hardware.
I honestly won't care how fast my computer will be if it doesn't do what I expect it to do. And I'll look for other options.
The new Pentium Hollywood edition has copyright protection? Well, VIA is making their Samuel. Slow as hell, but it works. Maxtor, IBM, Seagate hdds don't let me store "illegal" stuff? Fujitsu makes hdds too. nVidia's cards won't display my info? Well, Ati is a pretty good alternative. And if not Ati, well, others.
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. The harder the US is trying to control the use of computers, the less likely are people like myself to buy said computers. Our friends in Asia will definitely have uncrippled hardware, and I have plenty of ways to acquire it. And if not Asia, then Europe. So unless the entire world decides to make it unlawfull to use uncrippled hardware (or software), there's always going to be a way around it.
Listen, I know many of us are cynical, and we believe that most people in Washington are owned by corporate dollars. However, I still have a glimmer of hope for our country. Visit the U.S. House of Representatives website and the U.S. Senate website, find your representatives' e-mail addresses, and give them your opinion. Voice your concerns! If you sit idly by, and these laws get passed, then you have only yourself to blame. We sent 15,000 letters to the DOJ regarding the Microsoft antitrust settlement, and people noticed. Numbers speak to these people.
Instead of posting to slashdot, write to your representatives. We can make a difference if we all do it this weekend. You have nothing better to do.
I liked the wired article where one person mentions "once a copyright protected file is 'out of the bottle', there is no way to put it back in".
It also mentions how a hacked file looks no different than a home movie you might have taken, and want to email to a friend.
So, even if they found some miraculous way to prevent you from ripping protected files through your actual hardware, all you would need is a non-protected device to rip the file, and then put it on your machine or sent it to a friend.
.. and I don't even see how hardware can prevent you from doing a software related function like ripping an MP3. How can it know that the software is calling the CDROM drive to rip the music, instead of calling on it to just play the music? Same with DVD's.. this whole concept illustrates a lack of knowledge and how much these execs have their heads up their asses about a form of media that they CANNOT CONTROL!
www.offshoreBIOS.com
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Good grief.. I think there's really 2 possible outcomes here. We can continue to wage the IP seller vs. consumer war or...
Pirates only pirate things when it's perceived as less convenient to purchase them. Today, it is more convenient for those so inclined to pirate something that costs $25 a copy and face the possible consequences than it is to pay the $25.
Now, if the same IP didn't come with 4 pounds of land-fillable packaging and permanently scribed onto its own read-only media and was made available online for say $5... then it might be more convenient for those same individuals to just chuck out the $5 and download the thing. Seems like a pretty simple solution to me.
Of course, you could fiddle with the other side and make the penalty for violating SSSCA (or any other copy prevention law) be instant death.. and what with the micro chip implants and all, that would be easily enforcable.
and for what it's worth: My "car" analogy on the SSSCA... Imagine what it would be like if it were illegal to build a car that could go more than 65 MPH? Good bye F1, Indy, CART, etc.
Vortran out
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
"Almost no legal high-quality content (is) available on the Internet"
- Hollings
If we look at the financial contributions listed on opensecrets.org here, we see that the top three contributors to his 1998 Senate campaign were:
Lawyers/Law Firms $1,197,317
TV/Movies/Music $282,984
Lobbyists $185,762
This nonsense in Congress is nothing but the logical conclusion of his campaign payola.
There is an online petition to stop this at stoppoliceware.org. It also has ways to find contact information of your legislator, get the word out.
After reading this article, about how Hollywood studios use Linux to create their movies, one can clearly see that they are going mad indeed.
When will they learn that you can't eat the cake and keep it at the same time.
This is so incredibly stupid. Copyright violation is already a crime. All I can ever hope for is to get jury duty on a DMCA\SSSCA case so I can nullify. What more can I do? I have already written my senators (Fritz H. and Strom T. [neither of which got my vote])
More about Jury Nullification
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
I don't understand how it would be possible to differentiate between content that was once DRM-controlled but no longer is, and content that was never DRM-controlled.
What if I write a story and distribute it? Of course it isn't going to have an appropriate digital signature on it. What am I supposed to do, go to some kind of appropriate authority and somehow publish it through them? What if I can't afford whatever fees they charge? Heck, paying for the right to publish? Talk about a prior restraint on free speech.
But then again, I forget, I'm not supposed to want to publish anything, and even if I do I'm not supposed to be able to do it. After all, the Internet is supposed to be just like television, right?
How long after this passes will the technology be deveolped to make great analog recordings? Albums will defnitly make a comback, and I wonder how long before someone makes a turntable that uses a laser instead of a needle so that nothing actually touches the record.
The good news: It's Friday.
The bad news? Freedom no longer "rings" in America. It's more of a "thud" type sound. Like a sack of potatoes hitting the ground, or a swat team boot impacting your front door.
You might just as well get used to it; you voted for them and you didn't tell them not to do this.
I hope you've all reviewed
Any questions?
Every person who earns more than $10,000.00 in one 12 month period in the US is already a federal felon according to the exact verbage of administrative banking law enacted (by administrative officials, not necessarily passed by congress) under the clinton administration back in the early-mid 1990's. In essence we already are a "nation of criminals" so that if the fads ever want to pick on you for any reason whatsoever, all they have to do is haul you in and stick one of these "cover-everone" charges on you.
I wonder why anybody really want to live in United States. I am glad that I don't. It must be a dread. Warm feelings to you all, I hope you vote.
:-) = I am happy
:^) = I am happy with my big nose
C:\> = I am happy with my OS
"America's creative artists deserve protection." Well what about America's open source community, and hobbiest programmers. They are just as much "creative artists" as anyone else. I suppose their rights are expendable at the whim of the MPAA. I mean what the hell. Companies like the MPAA and the RIAA don't even represent the artists, simply the distribuation companies. They're not trying to protect anything other than their pockets. If congress REALLY wanted to protect artists they'd dismantle these monopolies, but ther aren't willing to give up those big donation checks. As a side note, I'm quite interested to see what happens to politics after some Campaign-Finance reform gets passed. If big business wasn't allowed to buy our representitives with their 'soft money' we might actaully see some meaningful legislation on the floor, issues that actually help the PEOPLE of the country.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
One, admittedly fairly obvious, point here...
If we were to find ourselves in the nightmare position of enforced copy-protection being written into US law, what would be the situation with regards to the international community? What happens when Australia, or the EU or whoever else legislate *against* copy protection?
Would hardware manufactured and sold outside of the US be affected? We all know the answer to this one - Yes it would. No manufacturer is going to have one production line for the US and one for other countries.
There has already been much talk, here and elsewhere, about the legality of schemes such as DVD region encoding. Surely this is another example of the same madness. We already have the position where we cannot buy games, DVD's or god knows what else from abroad and expect them to work at home due to proprietry region encoding. Now, we're facing the situation where we won't even be able to buy things here without being affected by what the US decides is for the best.
To any 'merkins listening - you think you're pissed off? At least you voted for your government. Think how upset you'd be if this story was headlined "Japanese/EU/Australian government legislate for copy-protected hardware" and you _knew_ that it would affect you.
Cheers
Chris
or are the rest of us free to go ahead and copy software, and use illegal programs, etc..... If so, what is to stop someone from hosting these "to be illegal" movies, etc. on a server on the net outside of the US???
or does Billy G and your government have some god given law that they can walk into any country and shut down your apache server hosting files????
hell, i guess so.... just look at how they took it upon themselves to bomb the shite out of afghanistan when they werent even 100% sure it was Al Queda, etc... (off the topic, but im not saying it wasnt the Al Queda,... but they seem to have come to that conclusion miiiiiighty quickly....)
its high time the the US government woke up from their 9/11 induced paranoia and smelt the coffee....
Jason
This is only happening because the politicians are getting a huge wad of cash from special interests, and chances are any of us techno-geeks have yet to contribute to a political campaign.
Money talks. I'm hoping with the passage of campaign finance reform, maybe we'll see that toned down a little bit. But in the meantime, looks like we'll have to fight this one out in the courts again. Click below to donate to the EFF, they need cash to represent us effectively!
http://www.eff.org/support/
Guess we will have to start buying all our "free" as in freedom hardware from mainland china.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
What everybody fails to see is with the proposed law cache engines would violate it. Routers might violate it. In general the focus is wrong P2P networks work you dont need to stop them you need to authorize the playback of the content who cares if I have a copy of the latest james bond on my laptop and my desktop. Well first issues with this is EVERYTHING needs to be connected to the net to authorize all the time. They seem to be missing the fact I can legaly give a CD to a friend to listen to as long as I'm not listening to any of my backup copies at the same time I purchaced the right to listen to it with 1 consurant use. Now with this all said without degrading the sound or the video nothing will stop somebody from recoding down there SPDIF output to a copy that dosent need authorization same thing goes with the new digital outputs on video cards you cant stop people from making copies you can just make it illegal in this country now when somebody sets up a server in the Camens or Iraq whatever contry that dosent care about or has a loophole (there are a few that require that you copyright within so many days of creation in country so it's legal to copy the things there and store them if people outside of the country get the info well you had the right to distribute the info there.
Also remember there are things like Libraries and free use I have the legal right to play snipits on a news program and shouldent be forced to ask them maybe it's bad press or an investigative report.
Personaly I grab Anime over the net constantly and I also own everything that I watch thats avalible in it's orgional language on DVD. Thats the format I want it's reliable and keeps as much of the origionals quality as possible. I then rip them and throw them on the Media server so all my TV's can pull it up and archive the media into a box in the basement with the rest of the relics. Drives are cheap raid and HSM is a workable solution (cmon you can make a tape changer out of Lego's 100 gig's on a tape aint bad either cost more than 30 cheap PC's though disk is cheaper up to a point) and when I have a flight or a long train ride the laptop has a pile of Divx on it. This is all currently fair use and needs to remain so (OK not the Dling realy but most places dont go after fansubs but rather use them to determine the viability of a full release)
Congress is considering a law to mandate that all digital content be rendered on puch cards with "Do Not Copy" printed on them.
The MPAA applauded them move. "Now that digital movies weigh 300lbs casual piracy will be elimiated and we can safely distribute films without concern of terrorists." Blockbuster announed that all new members will receive a free pallet jack.
Chinese peasents who have been hoarding illegal CDR technology in their villages were gleefull. "Perhaps Lik-Sang will buy this @#$%% for paper to cdr converters for hackers". The I-Pod Mafia could not be reach for comment.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
They are giving the industry 12 to 18 months to come up with a voluntary solution to the "problem" of copies
But auto makers get all the time they want to solve the problem of millions of humongous fossils... er, fossil fuel powered machines... that belch filth into the air we breath every day. Go figure.
Stop freaking about this. Whatever copy protection is put into hardware and/or software, it will be broken.
It will never be cost effective to put really strong protection measure in hardware. They will have to compromise at some point. This will make the scheme weaker.
And for digital media, who cares... As long a we can copy via an analog link, event if we loose a bit of quality (which current compression method, for audio and video, do anyway) the copied content can still be distrubuted in a digital form without any other generation loss. It may make the process a little bit more difficult, but not enough to prevent large scale infrigment.
On the software side, the data will be in an unprotected state somewhere along the pipe. So with some hacking, it will be possible to make perfect copy.
To make copy protection scheme hard to defeat would requires the protected content to be moved in a protected fashion from the persistent support (hard disk or whatever) to the display device. I doubt that all the industry players that need to be involved will be able to agree on a common scheme.
You don't use money in your country?
Because maybe there's still hope for the people here in europe :-) (at least until UE approves some shit alike here)
My weblog in spanish
While I have been a long time supporter of the Democrats for thier liberal viewpoints....it looks like the Republicans have my vote next time around. Man, some choice we have here.
100 ice cream flavors, 22 donut chains, 4 different Coke flavors......2 political parties.
Well, I for one support the industry's ability to come up with their own scheme.... why? Because, if the federal government legislates it, it makes it a lot harder to get the Intel and the Entertainment Industry in trouble for violating fair use. Not to mention it adds frivolous civil crimes to the books that will make many innocuous things illegal and restrict our freedom to implement our own programs since EVERY piece of software must be compliant with the SSSCA.
I am sorry, but I think it is simpler to deal with an Industry stepping on us than it is to deal with the government.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Industry: We can't make anything to prevent copying of media.
Politicians: Well then, we'll just make a law that says you have to make something to prevent copying. That will solve the problem.
Later on...
NASA: We can't make a spaceship that travels faster than the speed of light, it's against the laws of physics!
Politicians: Well then, we'll just make a law that says you have to make a spaceship that travels faster than the speed of light. That will fix the laws of physics.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
If anyone is serious about doing more than blowing smoke about actually creating a stir about this bill, an explination Joe-AOL-Email-Sixpack will understand and buy into as something he needs to get behind is an absolute necessity.
Explain away, ladies and gentlemen...
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
Let's start an organized campaingn agaist the RIAA and MPAA! We need a list of Senators email and fax
machine numbers, a form letter, We can setup a
central MYSQL database. All someone would need to do is hit a web page, ener thier name and address if they want, and the email and fax goes out!
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/dbq/officials/
Your civilization has built the Internet... (+2 per city on science.)
This obsoletes the Hollywood Wonder. ( you lose +1 per city happiness.)
(we are here)
You have 10 cities rioting.. you have decended into anarchy.
You government type has changed from a republic to fascisim.
Lets hope to it dosn't come down to "Are you sure you want to break that treaty with the Chinese?" This could have been prevented if our leaders had acknoledged the negitive effects of the Internet on Hollywood from the start. I still don't think they realize. Silly 10 year old playing civ...
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Otherwise the hardware companies would face a potential boycott. The mere threat of such a thing would force the manufacturers to have some kind of "exit strategy" that would not involve depositing billions of dollars of hardware in a landfill (right next to the Circuit City DIVX players). Total cost of disabling copy protection has to be kept under $1; they have no choice.
And if you are, why don't you write your Senator and explain your concerns?
Remember, this bill is in committee in the Senate. Its a long way between committee hearings and an actual bill passing. And for everyone who writes a letter (especially to people on the Commerce committee) the way gets longer. So don't just bitch, write! Or if that's too hard, at least send an email. Generally yoursenatorsname@senate.gov.
For more info on contacting your representatives, check out www.senate.gov. Also thomas.loc.gov has a lot of legislative information.
Mike
What has money got to do with america? Or are
you assuming the US dollar is used everywhere?
Well I've got news for you mate.
I think one of the biggest problems here is the fact that most of the people in Congress have little or no technical education. I'd be suprised if half of them can even turn a computer on. If they are at my mom's level where they can get it on, surf the web, and write a letter, then thats a bit better. But as soon as you bring up encryption, P2P, hardware specs, etc they are lost. Even if we set aside the fact that most of these people have gotten huge amounts of cash from the industry, we have to realize that for the most part they have no idea what is going on and what the repocussions could be. All they hear is "People are stealing our movies! Built in copyright protection will stop the bastards!" but they have no clue as why it will or will not work, what other areas it will affect, etc. Personally I would urge everyone to write their congressperson and help to educate them, both on the plus and down sides. If we let our government be run by ignorant morons, how can anything good get done?
"A coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one."
You can bet that if this passes, there will be versions of the devices manufactured outside the US that don't comply. The companies in taiwan and other places know that if they make devices without the copy protection built in, there will be a demand for them and people (not just Americans) will buy them. Either that or they will make versions that have a simple disable function so it looks like they comply. Besides, putting a silly law like this into place will just make those people that want a device without copy protection built in, drive across the border to Canada, or Mexico and buy one that isn't crippled. The US law makers have to understand that the laws they pass in their own country don't hold for the rest of the world, especially when it comes to the internet (or in this case consumer goods).
Here's a story from The Register about Hollings grilling Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz.
Full story below.
Senator brutalizes Intel rep for resisting CPRM
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 01/03/2002 at 14:41 GMT
Entertainment industry lapdog Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) lashed out at Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz who warned that the copy-protected PCs Hollings is obediantly promoting on behalf of his MPAA and RIAA handlers would stifle growth in the marketplace.
"We do not need to neuter the personal computer to be nothing more than a videocassette recorder," Vadasz said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Thursday.
An obedient Hollings tore into the witness, calling his testimony "nonsense".
"Now where do you get all this nonsense about how we're going to have irreparable damage?" Hollings demanded. "We don't want to legislate. We want to give you time to develop technology."
The "we" he mentions, it's quite obvious, refers to the entertainment industry flacks and lobbyists who wrote Hollings' pet bill, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), which would require hard drives to fail to load 'insecure' applications, and perhaps even operating systems at some point in future. Tinkering with one's own personal property to defeat this Orwellian innovation would be criminally punishable.
This is of course the entertainment industry's dream, as it seeks to hobble all equipment so that it can determine when, where and how its content can be enjoyed by consumers. Copying any content from one medium to another could be blocked on the pretext of piracy prevention, so it's entirely possible that one would have to purchase two CDs with the same content -- one for the computer and one for the stereo, say. It's this sort of extortion the industry has relentlessly lobbied Congress to enshrine in law.
Defeating piracy is the pretext; but obliterating the consumer's right to fair use is the true goal. But because Congress can't quite bring itself to eliminate fair use directly and up-front, a series of laws like the DMCA and SSSCA have been devised to eliminate it practically, or 'incidentally'.
Naturally, the hardware industry is going to resist any law which forces it to break its products. It understands that consumers will be disappointed by equipment which fails to let them enjoy content which they've purchased. They see a slump in sales in the SSSCA. And they're probably right.
The hearing was a typical Congressional dog-and-pony show designed to stroke Hollywood fat cats like Michael Eisner and Jack Valenti pursuing the Holy Grail of pay-per-use technology. No critics were invited to speak, and no harsh criticism was expected.
So when Intel's Vadasz showed the spine to blast the entertainment industry's pet scheme, he had to be beaten down, and Hollings was of course eager to please his masters.
Eisner and Valenti also testified, exhibiting their profound ignorance of technology and their sneering contempt for the rights of consumers, under Hollings' admiring gaze. Hollings, clearly, is an honest politician according to Brendan Behan's formula: when he's bought, he stays bought.
Hollings has also adopted the industry's basic stance, that copying is primarily about piracy, and only rarely about honest fair use. But the best expression of this comes from Recording Industry Ass. of America President Hillary Rosen, who wrote yesterday that, "surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use."
The 'some people' says it all. Most people are criminals, and only a tiny minority are honest and decent, Rosen assumes. This is the also official perspective of Hollywood -- of Eisner, and Valenti, and Hollings. It is a perspective natural to a certain class of person. Consider that we all imagine others to be more or less like ourselves. Decent people expect others to be decent, just like themselves. Criminals expect others to be criminals, just like themselves. When Eisner and Rosen and Valenti and Hollings see a world populated by cheats and frauds and freeloading scum, what does that say about them? ®
Just you're average nitpicker.
I'm not in tune with the movie industry, but I know people in the music industry who say they get practically nothing off CD sales. A CD goes for about $15. From what I understand, the artist might get $1-$2 from the CD sale. Let's say $1-$3 for producing the CD. The store itself makes a small profit, 10% or $1.50. That's still quite a lot going to the record company (by my very friendly reckoning, $8.50).
If they up waht they pay artist and cut the prices for consumer's and lower their own monstrous profits, then we can talk copy protection.
--- igiveup ---
As long as they can keep their actions under wraps, and the citizenry doesn't know about it, it's OK. The problem with Enron is that it failed and everybody found out.
This won't fail, this time it's a sure thing!
most of the hardware is made in cheap labour countries, not in US or EU.
u rite-far-east-country. remember those NES copies?. SSSCA is just insane, there's no freaking way to make it work without making pc's black boxes like consoles, except that they would have to make them single chip and encased in 2meter titan-concrete-something casing(of course have them made in high security places too).
just buy some pirate hardware to play pirate content, from (un)licensed hardware makers in malaysia/taiwan/south(north)korea/china/your-favo
or then we all start just using linux boxes for casual playing too.
btw, what do they intend to do with the 'old' hardware, will the software run on it at all or do they require everyone buy a complete new system the second it comes out?
they can't protect movies or music either way..
and they certainly can't protect anything from pro-pirates who make 100% copies of the original discs anyways, since someone will have at some point have access to the devices used to make 'em..
If I make a song, isn't "automatically" copyrighted? At least, I think if I design a website, my design is protected.
So, if I decide to sing a tune and record, and manage to transfer the MP3 over these devices, can I sue the company that made it?
Also, interesting questions should arise to companies that make modems and ethernet cards.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Sen. Fritz Hollings told universities, schools and colleges, Thursday that they can no longer teach students digital electronics, if it involves practical projects. Universities celebrated, after realising that they could sell all their expensive electronics labs, test equipment and computers and buy more carpets.
"This is GREAT!!" said one student. "My final project was a digital audio player, it was due in next week and i was far behind. But now the government has declared it illegal, and my professor is forced to pass me wayhaaay!" he continued: "The only down side, is that the feds raided my home and found a 100-page report (my project) with detaild schematics. I now face upto 5 years in prision under both the DMCA _and_ the SSSCA!"
Hobbyists were outraged however, "I don't want to live in a country where if i go to radio-shack to buy some components, i can expect FBI agents waiting on my doorstep for an inspection when i get home."
But this law doesn't only affect engineers. Second-hand electronics dealers today announced that they were concerned about the consequences of the law. When passed, it could mean the entire stock, of some dealers would instantly become as illegal as 100Kg of cocaine. "Does that mean i can sell this old Apple IIe for its weight in coke?" asked one seller.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
1. The thing that makes me think is - will they
be building machines without copy protection outside
of the US ? I _bet_ they won't.
So we Europeans will be affected and can't do _anything_
about it. THAT'S my problem.
2. What will this new hardware do to Linux and will
Open Source still be possible and legal after this
law passed ?
The US government is taking away consumer rights
one after the other. After following these things
here on Slashdot I'm _really_ happy to live in Europe,
but that won't help me in the long-term since
nowadays US laws can be enforced everywhere it seems.
A quote in the CNET article caught my eye: "The bill would also make it illegal for someone to make a copyrighted work publicly available after its protections have been removed or altered."
Which raises the inevitable question -- what if I'm the one that created and copyrighted the work -- what if I'm, say, one of the hundreds of thousands of amateur & semi-pro musicians or visual artists that puts copies of their work up for the public to freely download? Don't I have the right to decide how it will be used and whether it may be freely disseminated without giving up my copyright?
Or did the journalist just phrase this passage incorrectly?
Um, if what happens in the U.S. doesn't affect people outside the country, why would this make "life easier for those of us who don't live there"?
I can understand why the rest of the world gets tired of us; I live here and I get plenty tired of us sometimes. But railing against reality just makes you look stupid. This is America's day in the sun; what happens here matters everywhere. In time that will change and we can all feel pissed off and inferior about somebody else for a while. Lighten up--we're the nicest dominant power the world has seen yet. If we were imperial England or imperial Russia or imperial Rome or any of a dozen others, there wouldn't be a Canada or a Mexico, or a thumb-their-nose-at-us-for-40-years-Cuba. They would just be U.S. territories.
Interestingly, since we don't annex the world, the world seems to want to come to us. Did you know that as of the year 2000, one in five people in the U.S. is either an immigrant or a first-generation American? We may not get out much, but we're not as provincial as you may think; we meet a lot of people from around the world because they want to live here. So get a better attitude.
Oh, and by the way, I think you mean "Your country's..." instead of "Your countries..."
Lets condence the entire problem into two sentences.
"Lets pass a law that makes it illegal to copy digital information. That way, we never have to worry about the effect of technological progress on our profit margins."
The problem is not that people are using computers to easily copy and distribute digital information. The problem is that the current business models are in complete and total ignorance of reality. The old business models no longer hold up. Rather then protecting the defunct and now retarded practices with laws, we should be creating new business models.
These laws are about as inteligent as passing a law that the value of Pi shall henceforth be three.
END COMMUNICATION
They already have the power. Copywrite owners (usually not the artist but the publisher?) are protected by law against piracy. That is the law, in most countries.
Hardware won't stop piracy, people will. They should put their money into advertising etc..
what, are they worried of the bad press? Does the average joe not like being told that the media industry assumes they are generally crooked? Ha.
The porblem I have with implementing copyrights in hardware is that it will probably be an indefinite lock on the content whereas copyrights do, eventually, expire.
Some copyrights expire relative to the authors death. How would the hardware/content know when the author has died? Will it be connected to ssome central copyright database?
Of course, no one in the government can think that far into the future. Who cares if content is locked down for eternity because it secures it authors a monopoly on the content for a meager 70 years.
As I understand the law, if I record myself singing in the shower, I have the copyright on that work. If this law passes, how would the following scenario play out?
Assume I do record myself and, for whatever reason, someone else wants to hear this. So I make an mp3 without any copyright info watermarked/whatevered into it, and give it to this person. Now their mp3 player has DRM built in and sees no copyright info - and thus won't play this recording.
As the copyright holder, I'm well withing my rights to distribute the recording (that is, after all, one of the main reasons for copyright), yet I can't because I don't have access to any watermarking technology (don't think for a minute there won't be license fees for this technology).
Does anyone see problems here???
Jon
How, exactly, would copy protection work as it applies to a computer, even on a wintel platform? Would every program have to be run through some kind of wrapper that filters out 'possibly copyrighted' material? Anyone really have an idea or is this another case of "we dont know that its technicially unfeasible, nor do we care, but we MUST have it anyway, and there MUST be a law giving it to us"
Am I the only one, or are there others out there who only casually copy stuff they would not otherwise buy... for example, If I like a band, or several songs on an album, ill buy it. If I only want to check out a song that isnt on the radio without buying a $20 piece of useless plastic, im going to download it. If it turns out it sucks, ill delete it. If I wasnt able to do that, I still wouldnt buy it.
Take software for example also, how many people do you know who have unauthorized copies of Office pro or Visual Studio or some other rediculously priced software, usually so they can learn how to use it, and would never be able to afford it anyway?
Of course, they never consider that, they always say theyre losing money, but in reality, they arent 'losing' sales at all.
Let's see. How many families of 9/11 have their money? why not?
How many people are still waiting the outcome of Congress and the President before they get employment ( or welfare - depending on your parties choice ) help?
How many people are still waiting for homeland defense and security that applies to us physically such as the planes I fly and the bridge I drive over to get to work?
This is ridiculous. If the only thing Congress can do with their time is write laws and bills that make their *supporters* and Lobbyist happy then this country is in a sad state indeed. We vote these people into office. WE should be the ones they answer to. Not AOL Time/Warnder. Not RIAA/MPAA. Not Company A or B. This is pathetic and I'm getting sick of the waste of taxpayers dollar paying these people to make laws that are designed to 'burn us, make companys happy'.
Let's just all get together and give all of our money to our local congressman. Then we'll take our childrens money and give it to a company of our congressman's choice AND THEN jump off a bridge.
"An interactive digital device is defined as any hardware or software capable of "storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving or copying information in digital form."
So touch-tone phones with redial buttons are going to be illegal? How about those silly little digital voice memo recorders?
Oh, wait, here's a big one: Xerox Docutech digital copiers! Anybody dropped a line to Xerox yet?
DRM, to whatever extent that it should exist, should seek some sort of license on the host equipment before yielding its goodies. That's one thing.
I should not have to get a license before I plug an IC into a socket or write a line of perl. That's another thing entirely. Obviously, that outcome will be disastrous for many sorts of innovation, including but not limited to open source, and it will also be a real blow to free expression.
The difference is enormous. It's not "either way we are in trouble", it's "one way we don't get to watch lousy movies and listen to bad music without paying the bastards their cut, and the other way we don't get to touch digital technology of any sort without a license". DRM may or may not be a big deal (I think it will eventually backfire and go away, like every copy protection scheme before it). Moving to a world where any technological activity is expressly forbidden without asking for permission is a very big, very bad deal.
"Either way we are in trouble" is silly. It's like saying "hmm, if I hit the brakes hard enough to avoid hitting that jackknifed semi, I'll spill my coffee, so I'm in trouble either way". It may be true, but it's really not a serious question as to which option to prefer.
mt
If all we do as a technical community is rant about it and stand on our perfect principles and refuse to accept it, we'll just be marginalized and ignored, and Hollywood will have a clear path to whatever it wants.
The most effective way to help the situation is for technologists to sit down and try to work with Hollywood to create an acceptable DRM model for all parties. By working together on some kind of compromise at least some elements of freedom and creativity might be preserved. Just whining about how information "wants to be free" and all that crap isn't helping anything.
Besides, why shouldn't effective DRM exist? Assume for a second that strong DRM is included in all electronic devices. Now assume I'm a band and I want to allow free copying of all my stuff - what's the problem? I can just "chmod" my music files to "allow everything" and stick them on my web site. Similarly with open-source software. All writers have to do is set the rights bits to "enable all" and we're pretty much ok, aren't we?
I understand the platform problem (e.g. DeCSS), but really, again, that's within the rights of the media owners. If I want to produce movies that I know can't run on Linux boxen, well I have the right to do that. And if you can't play them, too bad. There's nothing that says you have a right to hack my stuff so you can see it on your OS.
Regarding Fair Use - that's where I'm talking about getting involved. How come the technical community can't work with RIAA, MPAA, etc, and figure out a way to ensure that I can make my personal copies, but can't distribute them to others? It would actually be nice to be able to make perfect digital copies of "unbroken" music for my personal use, rather than be stuck with these deliberately crapped-up CDs they're starting to produce with all the error correction mutilated and rendered impotent.
We either need to get constructively involved in finding a compromise that suits all parties or sit back and watch as the one-sided circus unfolds and Hollywood imposes whatever sick ideas it has about mandatory DRM on us unfettered by rational thought.
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
The SSSCA was born out of the DMCA which was passed due to a WIPO treaty - read World. Is your country part of the WTO? If not you're lucky. If so then the chances of something DMCAish coming to your back yard is likely.
What do you think intel is going to waste time and money designing a special "european edition" with the copy control disabled? Get real. Now they can finally stick to all the pirates in the ukraine and china without having to get any pesky treaties signed.
This entire effort is doomed to failure and futility, whether the bill is passed or not, whatever provisions it has in it. And none of the people involved can see that. Not IBM, not Disney - none of them.
The simple thing is that there is nothing - absolutely nothing - that can completely secure media against people to whom you sell it. They think that they are making it difficult for the average person to copy their products, leading to less copying. But what they don't see is that when all is said and done all the average person has to do is point a camera at a TV screen, or put a microphone in front of a speaker, and press record. Encryption? Defeated. Watermarking? Defeated. Shielded and encrypted key managed components from the DVD to the TV set itself? Defeated. It isn't high tech, isn't difficult, and in the end anyone can do it. It might not be perfect quality, but the VCR and MP3s have shown that "good enough" is good enough for the average person.
The most that will happen is that when they catch someone distributing a movie or song there may be a few more charges to jail them with. It won't change anything.
However, I do have a second point to make.
Disney et al. looks around and sees people copying their movies and making them available on the Internet. They think about making movies available digitally and it terrifies them that they might let the genie out of the bottle and "lose" their movies forever as a result. Actually, with DVDs they already make their movies available digitally - which scares them even more! Heck, all that money and effort to buy 150 year copyright protection will go down the drain - along with their companies.
So what can they do about it? Can they track down and prosecute the ones doing the copying? Haven't had much luck there - and even if they catch the 16 year old that first placed a movie on the Internet, they can't take the movie off the Internet.
Our system of Justice is based on freedom (don't laugh, it is - based on it anyway) - you have the freedom to do whatever you want. You simply have to face the consequences afterwards. We don't focus on trying to prevent crimes but on punishing crimes. That's part of what gets people frustrated with the police in some circumstances: "Well, can't you do something about them officer???" "Sorry ma'am, they haven't done anything illegal yet".
What Disney and the rest have decided to do is not to help make it illegal to share copies of their products on the Internet - it already is. They haven't decided to try and catch the ones doing it - it isn't easy, it doesn't put the "genie back in the bottle", and it isn't good PR to throw a kid in jail for 20 years. No, what they have decided to do is to attempt to make it impossible to break the copyright laws.
And that's why they'll fail - it cannot be done. No one can prevent someone from breaking the law if they really want to. And that's why we have a failure to communicate. They just don't see that - they are too scared that it is already too late, and terrified individuals make bad choices.
I for one hope they calm down - that they see their business model is not going to work from here forward and try to adapt. Maybe spending $200 million to make a picture just won't work anymore - maybe it has to cost under $20 million for them to make a profit using just the box office sales and lower VCR and DVD sales. I don't know.
But right now they are running scared - and making really bad choices.
Folks, it looks like the Senate gave us 12 months to show just how fscking stupid this thing is. It's time to expend some dead treeware to your local Congresscritters as well as to the media outlet of your choice. (May I recommend newspapers in Charleston and Columbia, SC as well as in Charlotte (just across the NC/SC border)?)
".sig,
Unless they can put "copy protection" in my eyes and ears; I will still be able to copy anything!!!
Keep that old equipment people. The corporate wars begin here!
They really can't do anything of what they ask. Not if they really want to be elected next year. If congress passes some stupid law like this, then the voters will strike back. Even my mom wants to make copies of video's in case something does go bad. Here's what they should do:
1. Price DVD's and CD's fairly. Hollywood, you already made money on the movie when we watched it in the theater. It stands that you should make money selling DVD's as well. As it stand now, DVD's, even the cheap ones are over priced for what they are. And oh well, someone who bought the right to write program to decrypt dvd's screwed up (Xing) making it possible to crack. If DVD's and CD's cost, say, 5 bucks, then it would not be worth the time to decrypt and make a copy of it at home....if you screw your copy up, just go to the store. Oh and RIAA, your profits did not go down BECAUSE of napster, they went down because you are cranking out vapid, bubblegum crap that noone wants to here anymore. Nothing has been original about any of the new stuff lately. How many boy bands do we have to hear before a good band releases something?? And how many years have they been selling CD's? YOU CAN'T change CD's now because if you do, older player's WILL have problems. Not might, WILL. This is why the Charlie Pride case was settled the way it was.
2. Charge a decent price for the movie. More people would see movies if you reduce he price. I have only seen one movie in the past year because I can't afford a trip to the movies. I'll wait til it comes out on DVD.
3. I want to record TV when I see something. I promise I won't sell it. Any movie shown on TV is so sanitized that it sometimes only looks like the original. Why buy a crappy TV version when the original is better. On and why is ASS a bad word?? Anyone see American Pie when it was aired on FOX? I'd be kind of interested to see how much it differ from the original considering it was a pretty raunchy movie. Also, local news and stuff is things I'd like to record sometimes. My mom and dad have a video of my Grandpa when a human intrest story was done on him by a local TV station about amateur radio. It's my best memory of my grandpa because it was before his stroke that put him in the hospital for good. I can look at this video and see my grandpa as I remember him. It is the best kind of thing to have.
These things (mostly the price one) are things that sound fair to me. There will always be pirates. No matter what "COPY" protection their is in a device, we humans are resourceful. We will always have a way to break it. Even if we have to crack open our devices and figure out where to tap into the device to pick up an unencrypted copy. If you would just come out with good stuff, and not this vapid crap AND charge a decent price, we'll buy it. Next thing you know, we'll have to ban pencils, pens and phtocopiers or put Rights Management stuff on them. What's next? Rights Management on our brains??
Gorkman
Ok, What do you get, if you mix 5 major corporations, a pig and a bag of cocaine?
The SSSCA ROFL!!! hahahahhaha ha ha ohhh...
Heres another: Why didn't the Aibo cross the road?
because he was not SSSCA compliant! oh god thats killing me!
alright alright: What do these things have in common: Heroin, Nuclear weapons, and a BBC microcomputer?
they will all be illigal imports in america!! OH HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAa lol.
Alright. This is the last one, i promise: Why are these jokes so lame? They're Friz Holings wanna-bes! ROFL, oh oh oh god i can't oh oh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa phew....
(Please don't mod this as funny)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
1. Circumvention devices are illegal, IF they have the exclusive purpose of being a circumvention device. (Providers can't use an amateur DRM system)
2. ALL copyrights expire after 20 years. (Not this 95-150 years BS when original copyrights were 14 years)
3. When a copyright expires, it must be released without DRM (Digital Rights Management) software.
Personally, I think this is a perfect balance. While I would deam circumvention devices illegal, I would also release TONS of MODERN works in the public domain. You're probably thinking, "Big deal, you're realing everything prior to 1980 into the public domain. I'll get to watch old movies."
We don't even have a dictionary in the public domain that is clear enough to scan in with OCR software. (I'm not sure of the current status.)
We have nothing, as far as modern works is concerned, in the public domain. Imagine the wealth of information published prior to 1980, now imagine it's all free. Now imagine you're free to plaigerize from all those works to create an uber-encyclopedia of data structures, gardening, renewable energy guide, home medical guide, medical diagnosis software, etc.
It would create a whole new landscape for a whole new type of aggrigate content. You would be free to mix the best of two books or entire volumes and magazines, and put it on a CD or DVD. The amount of knowledge that could be compiled would be insane.
You might as well give new works the ability to protect themselves for a limited amount of time.
It's time to educate the people with the free information they are entitled to. The US Constitution acknoweldges that information is inherantly free, because they had to make a provision for limited copyrights and patents.
The only reason they would make such a provision is because it was self-evident that information, specific works or vague abstractions, belong to the public and no individual.
In other words, copyrights and patents are privledges, not rights.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
What will the next step be? Maybe: 'The medical world and Hollywood have agreed on developing a neural chip to get rid of all human memories with copyrighted information, ...'
Daniel.
- For every winner, there are dozens of losers. Odds are you're one of them -
http://www.senate.gov/
The Intel guy wrote:
Could this be a signal?
Politically, he's suggesting that the best argument against SSSCA is that it would effectively ban "home movies" and similar things.
If you want to persuade your Senators, your Representative, or your neighbors that SSSCA is a bad idea, perhaps the "home movie" angle tells the story best. Home movies are the non-geek equivalent of Free Software, after all.
Instead of trying to keep peace and keep laws in public interest [they] (those who should work for us) are passing law after law of which (almost) each one make one more criminal from ('till now) good citizen. We'll end up in "areas" (a.k.a. democratic republics) where there are two basic groups of people: criminals (a.k.a. ordinary people) and law enforcement (police, politiacians, business, ...).
"Criminals" will be trying to live (more or less) peacefull lives and "law enforcement" will be stealing from them (large portions of) fruits of their work. Because it is easier to "rightfully take away from criminals" than to "steal from good citizens".
So: Good citizens, please consider this as declaration of war (or at least preparation for war) against YOU! And act accordingly.
Maybe our fathers fought for out freedom but we have to still fight too otherwise our children will be criminals and/or slaves again.
hany
Just like they've been siezing copyright circumvention devices provisioned by the DMCA (See prior slashdot stories...)
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Hate to point it out to you, but you're only in the 50th year of "America as a superpower". There's plenty of time for America to turn into imperial Rome, complete with blood sports and massacres of the christians.
Deleted
The SSSCA also creates new federal felonies, punishable by five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000. Anyone who distributes copyrighted material with "security measures" disabled or has a network-attached computer that disables copy protection is covered.
/bin/cp!
I hope nobody here has a network-attached computer with SSSCA-free unpatched
I have been searching congress.org and all over the web for a bill number or such for this whole SSSCA deal. Writing letters to your senators & congressman will help but they will help even more if you have researched the topic and are citing a reference that they can easily look up and address. I would recommend that ALL OF YOU go to congress.org and write a letter. Read a few others that people have sent for ideas and basis if need be. We have such a large user base here at Slashdot. I really think it's time we organize our ranting against bills like this and big corporations that are trying to get legislation that only puts money in their pocket. To be effective everyone must participate. The letters must be eloquent, to the point and have good support! I encourage all of you to write to the people who are representing you and express your opinion!
If congress passes some stupid law like this, then the voters will strike back.
Don't be so sure. In Orange County, CA, a judge found in possession of child porn on his office and home computers is about to be re-elected, despite a well-publicized campaign to vote him out with write-ins (he is the only candidate on the ballot). It looks like the effort will fail, and the judge will take his seat on the bench again.
Now if charges of child porn fail to whip up the citenzry enough to vote an official out of office, what makes you think they'll be moved to vote out an official over SSSCA?
Even my mom wants to make copies of video's in case something does go bad.
When was the last time your mom participated in a public protest or civil disobedience? Better yet, when was the last time your mom voted?
Edith Keeler Must Die
If the SSSCA is supposed to safeguard copyrighted data, and since all data is essentially just bits, then.. why not just go ahead and copyright the 32-bit integer of your choice?
If I own the copyright to, say, that famous hexadecimal value "DEADBEEF", almost every workstation vendor and embedded device manufacturer, and maybe their customers, either owe me a royalty or are guilty of piracy according to the SSSCA. (Remember, this is a copyright, not a patent; it makes no difference about "prior art".)
And armed with this new weapon, I'd go after every movie studio, recording company, and Congressional office that trafficked my "work".
Stupid? Very. Legal? Under the SSSCA, um.. could be..
".sig,
And so how many shootings have actually been prevented by the 'handgun safety lock'? None. That's what I thought. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
gazillion accidental shootings?
(better way is of course not have the gun in the first place, or not have the clip in.. but handling a pistol with no safety lock isn't that fun, but it makes you more cautious..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I think if this law gets passed I'm going to have to leave the US for another country. I'm sorry, but when our government starts becoming as restrictive as China's something is severely wrong here. In any case, I'm going to buy a new system NOW before any type of either law or Copy protection technologies go into effect and I will NOT buy another one until someone finds a way to crack whatever protection is out there. It's not a matter of if they will find it, it's a matter of when. People managed to modchip Playstations to play backup games and Japanese games, I'm sure we can figure out ohow to mod chip PCs in the future.
Valenti said in his statement to the committee. "The truth is, if you cannot protect what you own, you don't own anything."
They can't protect what they own, they have to ask others to do it.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
And what reason would the EU have to push such legislation? Why would the listen to the USA? The only possible reason would be that the majority of us EU voters would vote for it. Would you? Probably not because here in the EU we don't vote for the ones that have the most money to spend on their campain. There's a reason we don't have the DMCA yet, you know; in the EU the people still go before the companies.
0x or or snor perron?!
it's painfully obvious that campaign contributions decide our laws. i stopped buy CDs a long time ago because of the gov't-sponsed shutdown of napster, so now if this law passed, i guess i have to stopped buying movie tickets and DVDs. it appears my only recourse against the billionaire entertainment industry is to cut them off completely. i know i'm mostly alone in this, but it sickens me to think some hollywood trouser-stain is buying politicians with my movie money.
Sure, customs might grab it, but seriously... Do you *really* think Taiwan or Japan would take kindly to having one of their most profitable industries (and exports) suddenly disappear?
The US *might* be able to saber rattle them into line, but would China, or even other countries looking for exports not pass up the oppertunity to ship SSSCA-less hard drives into the US where the demand is incredible?
>The SSSCA also creates new federal felonies, >punishable by five years in prison and fines of >up to $500,000. Anyone who distributes >copyrighted material with "security measures" >disabled or has a network-attached computer that >disables copy protection is covered.
I havent looked through the bill but will this include older machines? If everybody has to go out and buy a new PC to legally use the internet then hardware manufactures are going to love this bill.
As the story said, we are in trouble either way. However, we are in *much* more trouble if a law is passed.
With many of us using Linux, there would always be ways around the protection. However, if the law is passed, we are in big trouble. I quote from one of the articles:
"The Hollings bill, called the Security System Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), makes it a civil offense to make or sell digital technologies that do not contain what it calls "certified security technologies," built-in systems that prevent the copying of content."
How many programmers are going to release something for free that might land them in prison for 5 years?
Since copying is never theft, this hardware could never be used to steal... unless someone was hacking into bank accounts or something.
"Hey, here's the police and Holywood Studios Special Forces Unit!
Either let us voluntarily search for non-compliant equipment, confiscate it if found or you'll be charged for being a pirate and will be terminated with your whole residence!"
IMO this law is not intended to fight pirates. It's goal is somewhere else (mentioned in a lot of other posts) and one of it's sideefects will be (sooner or later) police state where all "ordinary citizens" are at best suspects or (more likely) criminals right from their birdth.
hany
Don't be a dick. In the european systems the copy
control simply won't be included since most PCs
in europe are built in europe and most of the
components come from the far east. Where does
america fit into that equation?
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
their device can't tell the difference between video of your kids and a bootleg copy of Snow Dogs
Most VCDs today aren't ripped, they're filmed by some fool in a theater with a camcorder. How the heck is that going to be detected? Camcorders will have to have constantly updated AI code to verify that they aren't taping anything copyrighted, and will cover it with little black bars if so? WTF?
Ye Gods... this makes me want to go find my Senator, and smack him upside his fool head.
I think Microsoft is already rubbing its dirty hands, because this patent makes it one of the biggest winners if this bill will pass.
I live in the UK. I don't feel I have anything I can directly do to help here, but can anyone think of what us non-us people can do? For example, what might be the best way to help reduce the chance of this sort of misguided nonsense happening over here?
God I hate problems that I am powerless to help solve.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
The pomp and circumstance of government symbols and procedures makes for a handy cloak under which much evil is being done.
It's election time. Notice how none of the candidates are presenting any coherent plans as to what they would make with their time if elected? It's all about the schools and children and old people, and smiling faces.
And once they get elected, they are the smiling ones as money rains down upon them and they blindly push buttons in response.
"Nicest dominant power" ? Hmm. Interesting. In all
the centuries there has been no other power that
almost wiped out the native peoples of its land
and had a bounty on their heads. Ask the native
americans how "nice" they think the USA is.
When you have an employee that is acting up and making poor decisions, you fire them. No different here. From this point on, any election I vote in will always go against the incumbent. I also plan to write a letter to my (Texas) congress men/women and senators explaining my intentions and the reasons behind doing so. This isn't just about the SSSCA, there seem to be very few people in our government who (genuinely) know anything about technology or the laws of common sense. There needs to be a change of guard, and if enough people follow suit then maybe they'll listen.
Remember the Apex-600 DVD player? When the "powers that be" realized that region lockout and macrovision could be disabled, remember how fast pressure was put on the manufacturer to discontinue that model? I doubt you could legally import them anymore anyway because they contain "copyright circumvention" technology.
But yes, attempt at irony noted.
I disagree with one of your points.
There's nothing that says you have a right to hack my stuff so you can see it on your OS.
Assuming that I go to the store and shell out money
for a DVD, for example, I should be able to do
whatever I please with it. I should have the right
to use what I bought however I want for personal
reasons. That includes breaking encryption so that
I can watch it on a computer running OS of choice.
So long as I do not redistribute it, why does the MPAA care what I do with it?
I believe I do have an inherant right to do
whatever I want with my property, when
I use that property for personal use.
By paying of Congress to push the SSSCA, Disney
and their pals want to have leverage over hardware makers so that they can make sure that technology
will always be compatible with their business
models, even if it means harming the US Tech Industry. Such a thing is unheard of in a free
market. By passing this law, Congress will
essentially be saying that The RIAA and MPAA have
a right to always be in business, no matter how
poor their business models are, and that the
RIAA and MPAA have more rights than any other
industries, including the technology industries.
I suppose that this will also mean that the RIAA
and MPAA have more rights than an average citizen.
This sort of thing is what will destroy the US
Economy, sooner or later, because it will destory
the free market the US Economy was based on.
If the media companies and the technology
companies want to do this on their own, that is fine. Congress is overstepping its bounds by
trying to push it legally. The free market will
dictate if it is successful or not.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
(I do not mean election like here in Slovakia when we vere socialistic republic: 99% voters voted and 99% of them voted for comunist party; that 1% was for some proforma "competing" party just for the results not being suspicious to western countries)
hany
Try Libertarian. IMHO, they take the best from both worlds.
They don't care if you're a purple transexual chain smoker from Albania (a nod to the liberals), and at the same time, they are against this sort of intrusion (a nod to the Republicans.)
And they're actually starting to get some traction. Big wins in Colorado recently, IIRC.
Furthermore, they turn down soft money on principle.
http://www.lp.org
How many of us is actually using open source operating systems? Because if it is too few, then we can say good bye to open source. OK - we will go against them, at least we will try, we will make demonstrations and so on. But how do you see the anti-globalization demostrations going all over the world? We will be viewed the same. And we will loose. We can't beat the money.
Interesting how they point out that the Alaskan Senator is a Republican, yet never point out what party Hollings is from....
Fourth paragraph, "Hollings, a Democrat from South Carolina, said in his statement to the committee."
I guess ignorance is "Interesting" on Slashdot.
Does anyone know when Sen. Hollings is up for reelection? I will personally be down there working no-charge for his challengers.
Hardware manufacturers aren't going to make seperate versions of processors, motherboards etc with and without DRM - they'll just produce the DRM one and distribute it throughout the world.
Sen. Fritz Hollings,
I applaud you for following through with legislation that you truly believe in despite the overwhelming odds. This takes a tremendous amount of intestinal fortitude. Good luck in your quest.
You must understand, however, that I do not support your quest. The SSSCA legislation presumes that anyone with an unencrypted media player, computer, or consumer device would engage in rampant piracy. It does not matter that I wish to use my duly purchased movie in the appropriate manner. I'm still treated as a criminal. This would be equivalent to assuming that every Senator that received $300,000 from special interest groups would craft legislation favoring that group. Being a Senator, you can see the falacy in the previous statement. The average Senator is above such things; they write laws for the betterment of the US and not specific interest groups. Likewise, the average consumer is above piracy and should be treated as such.
Anyway, good luck in your legislative quest. Don't let them tell you its against the interests of the United States. You know what's good for us.
Sincerely,
Tashanna
The senators pushing this nonsense are from South Carolina and Alaska.
Has anyone ever challenged these guys to provide a reason why they are so concerned about Hollywood and the entertainment industry? I don't think there is much entertainment industry in Alaska and South Carolina. Aren't senators supposed to represent the interests of THEIR constituents, not the interests of a constituency on the other side of the country?
Where are the senators from California and so on? They should be pushing this, if anyone, not some chap from Alaska and another guy from South Carolina.
"What's your interest in this?" is a question that should be very publicly asked.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
The tech industry could just stop making devices capable of playing Hollywood content. It'd be really funny if the industry took a look at the bill and said "The easiest way to make protected hardware is simply not to make the hardware. Good luck finding a DVD player in a year's time."
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Start sending letters as a pornographer to the honorable senators thanking them for introducing the legislation and asking how much you can contribute to their campaigns.
Include a free sample by way of thanks.
Deleted
Does anyone else get the idea that America is rapidly moving away from this idea of freedom? I mean, I'll agree that having copy protection on computers is not something that will hinder me as a person in some great degree, but at the same time, I would like to have some sort of freedom over my property. And it seems like one of the things that is my property is my computer and my cd's. It just seems odd to me that we have a government that sees fit to throw away rights. What's our reasoning behind this? I don't think that many of our congressmen see the internet and the digital realm in general as an actual community. They think it's a bunch of wires. From that, we're going to see lots of things change, I have a feeling. When you see people getting together and sharing ideas and building a community as just a bunch of wires, it seems it'd be easy to take the step of seeing a place where people live as just a bunch of houses, or a place where people work as just some walls and some equiptment. I think the government has lost all consideration that there are actually people here in America. And I think the result will be some scary times for us all.
We are creating a corporate dictatorship the likes of which Adolph Hitler himself would have been proud of!
Instead of making consumers pay (directly) for copy protection, why don't the big corporations enforce the existing laws?
If we can track down spammers, surely they can track down some of the people running massive Morpheus/Gnutella/Audiogalaxy/Whatever nodes with huge amounts of material, right?
I understand that you have spent $1 Billion promoting Linux, and as a result you seem to be selling plenty of shiny new mainframes. If the SSSCA makes Linux illegal, what are you going to do then?
You could try to produce a closed source SSSCA complient version of Linux for your customers, but that would break the GPL. OTOH, I guess that Stallman and Co aren't rich enough to sue you so perhaps that doesn't matter. But, once open source Linux is illegal all the work on your version will have to be done by your staff at your expense. Wouldn't it be cheaper to bribe some politicians so that other folks can keep developing it at no expense to you?
We all look forward to hearing your opinion on this matter.
Imagine a band wants to set up download of a song in mp3 format for anyone to use any way they wish. Could the government mandated technology effectively prevent that?
I know it is a conspiracy theory, but it looks like the entertainment industry is trying to force artists to distribute through them and limit the technologies that allow them to do it on their own.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I believe thoughtful, reasoned, legitimate arguments won't work on the likes of the MPAA and RIAA.
Just look at declining sales post-Napster and you'll have to agree that they will need real convincing, to the tune of 50, 75, or 100% decreases in sales...
I think we are going to have to face this stupidity and fight our way through it, not around it. We can't deal with the Michael Eisners of the world on an intellectual level, we just have to hope stupidity like his comes back to hit them all in the pocketbook.
In the mean time,I guess reading might make a comeback...
First of all, not all of Congress are money- grubbing worms. And the others are afraid of losing support.
/. and make your case logically. Don't be threatening, just make it clear that this is important to your vote. Yes, you may get a "we need to protect copyrights...blah...blah" response, but I guarantee that if you got a chain of messages going to them, they will listen. You call. Then, have your spouse, mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, whatever, call. And get as many of your friends to do the same as you can.
I suggest contacting people like Rick Boucher(info here). He seems to have a clue. Get ahold of his office, and find out who else could help out. Then help them organize resistance to this bill.
It's been said a thousand times, but listen anyway: contact your state's Congress memebers. Write down your comments before hand, making them concise and lucid. Leave the vitriol and belly aching on
Creedo
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
You want to write software? Fine. Be sure to register with Software Industry Association of America and get your idea approved. Then after 4-6 weeks you'll be sent an "Individual Coder's Package." This will allow you to write your software with all the copy protection and watermarks built in (not editable by you, of course.) and run your software on your DRM compliant machine, only. This will not allow you to distribute your software; distribution will be decided by the SIAA after a lengthy review process. After 4-6 months, the SIAA decides that your software performs a similar function as a program by AOL/TimeWarner/Microsoft. A form letter arrives letting you know that you are in suspected violation of the DMCA. Your rights to create are suspended, pending an investigation. (4-6 years.)
If you are a writer, replace software with story.
If you are a musician, replace software with song.
If you are an artist, replace software with art.
If you are a filmaker, replace software with film.
If you are frightened, disgusted, and alarmed, you should be.
This will be the future if people do not educate others, and sit idly while Industry decides how best to control what you see, hear, use, and buy.
Have a great day.
What is going to happen is this: I will build my own playback device out of commodity parts that uses my own personal custom file format that is compressed in my own personal algorithm to play the songs produced by MY own hand at MY expense and provided to MY friends, peers, family, strangers, enemies to download from MY computer at MY discrection. Who is going to then make me a criminal? If enough of us get together and build such a device who has the right to control it's distrabution? Maybe give away the plans for free like HeathKit? If you don't sign a blood-pact with Mega-Music Inc. you are excluded from air-play, shelf space, and decient places to even play for freaking free!!! Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!! The Iron Fist of Corpmerica is really starting to leave visible bruising on my brain!!! My so-called representives don't. I'm lucky to get even a form-letter reply from anyone. Just my little rant.
change it.
burn 14 copies of movies off Morph and go sell them to the students down the hall. Then, I'm going to stand in front of my local Best Buy and offer copies of movies on CDR's for $7. How could ANYONE/COMPANY/ORG tell hardware designers HOW to build THEIR hardware? Is that American? Sounds a bit commie to me....it's like drinking Pepsi.
I can't say it enough. Vote with your dollar. If this scam of a law is passed, don't buy any of the new hardware. The hardware makers will see profits dip, and then they'll be the ones lobbying Congress to change the laws back to something sane.
Remember, the American way is to "license" your rights from the government, a la lobbying. Why not get someone else to do that for you?
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
(better way is of course not have the gun in the first place, or not have the clip in..
You don't know much about guns, do you? Statistically, you're safer with a gun than without (every study, with the sole exception of the Kellerman study, backs this up. And it is generally recognized that Kellerman deliberately distorted his data, since he refused to release it for peer review).
but handling a pistol with no safety lock isn't that fun
Actually, nearly all revolvers (until recently) lacked any type of manual safety device. The "safety" is in the brain of the user (responsible gun use and storage). Trigger locks are probably the worst, and MOST DANGEROUS, of handgun locking systems.
Security Systems Standards and Certification Act... 'wait till Biggus Dickus hears of this' -- Life of Brian.
The DOJ is obsolete
Microsoft is not
Governments are obsolete
Corporates are not
Freedom is obsolete, HEY!
DCMA is not
hmm, Unix is obsolete
Winxpee is not
C is obsolete
Micrrosoft is not
Slashdot is obsolete
Capitalism is not
gnuLinux obsolete, HEY !
Fascism is not
BSD is obsolete
Eurrope is not, HEY!
Dollar euro obsolete
UNO copro is not
Anarchism is obsolete
Genocide is not
firremen are obsolete
skyscrapers are not
pensionfunds are obsolete
Enron is not
trrrolling is so obsolete, HEY!
poethry is not
lal lal lal lall aaaa....
Well, subject says it all - welcome here.
You're in recession - we had 5% GDP growth in 2001. You're surrounded with crappy laws - we're free, and we don't give a shit about this SSSCA/DMCA/whatever. Beautiful girls, living is cheap here, nice authentic nature - what else do you want from this life ? Feeling you're an American ?
Hollings isn't up until 2004, though, and I imagine he'll retire then.
People throw huge amounts of their money into entertainment, and the entertainment industry. What did you expect to happen? Now the government's purpose is to serve Mickey Mouse.
While I certainly don't condone the wiping out of anybody anywhere, this was done:
a: before the U.S. was a super-anything
b: all over the "New World" including that paragon of civilization, Canada
c: by people who were basically just transplanted Europeans.
Although we're still grappling with the problem of reparations, it has been a long time since the U.S. has fought a war of aggression or taken a slave. One could argue that as we have distanced ourselved from our European roots we have become more civilized.
Find out
So if it's illegal to decrypt stuff you already own, and it's illegal for any technology firm to not put rights management systems in the hardware and software, and there exists a patent on a 'digital rights management operating system' then what do you think's going to happen ?
In the USA, it will be illegal *NOT* to buy Microsoft Windows....... ?
crazy, just crazy..
To quote Heinlein again: "There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Anti gun control lobbyists have been saying for years that guns don't kill people - people kill people.
Computers don't copy content - people copy content.
Gun control lobbyists could point this out as precedent for tighter gun controls. Anyone want to write to their pro-gun representatives (or the NRA) and warn them of this? (I'm English - I have no vested interest until it's our turn to get screwed).
Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Half the porn you see out there are free samples distributed just to get you to go to the pay sites. There's more "pirated" porn around than "pirated" hollywood movies, and the porn industry is booming.
They actually get the Internet. The MPAA and RIAA should follow their lead. The porn industry may be reprehensible and icky, but they certainly know how to run a business and how to treat the consumer.
Would it be possible, legal, practical, etc, to change the nature of the various licenses (GPL, LGPL, Aapache, Mozilla, etc) to only allow their use on hardware that does not restrict use of free software?
I wonder how the likes of IBM and intel would take that...
That would be why europe got rid of slavery about
50 years before the US. Because you were so much
more civilised than us. Right?
The problem with all these copyright issues is that the general public doesn't know or care to know enough about it to care. This allows the corporations to run roughshod not only over matters of fair use but how and whether you get to use it at all. Their sole tactic with the public is to erroneously characterize anyone who objects as pirates, and they have a tremendous edge on the perception of the matter.
Well, two can play at that game. Start telling your friends that this will make their VCRs illegal. Get a couple of friends together on friday night and go hang out in front of your local movie theater to tell the patrons about this and claim there is a boycott going on. Make insinuations about the porn industry. Comment on the corrupt internal dealings of the media industry, and its lobbying power in government.
Anyone else have some good implications that will cause hyperventilation in the general populace?
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Here are some of the proposed penalties:
I just want to write free software and give it to the world. I want the thrill of producing something with my peers that is as good or better as what the commercial world offers.
We're not interested in breaking copyrights; I don't even listen to any music from the last 30 years, and the only movies I watch are Star Wars. (Well, almost.)
The net effect of this is to reserve the privilege of publishing software to the elite few that can be certified as providing DRM. The Internet brought publishing to the masses -- now the big guys want to shut that off with trademark domain name rackets, etc. The free software revolution brought the art of producing software, the high art of hackery, to the masses. Now that's going to be shut off, too.
Fundamentally there's no difference between a gigantic big-city newspaper and a tiny neighborhood newsletter. Both should be accorded the same rights and protections. Well, fundamentally there's no difference between Microsoft and me, except Microsoft is big enough to be able to survive this DRM stuff. If it goes through, I won't be able to write software any more. Children won't be able to legally learn to program in the 4th grade like I did. Software will only come from crufty companies, and you can forget about free software (as in speech or as in beer, either one). There will be NO innovation anymore, and society will get what it justly deserves for passing such laws. I guess at that point only a revolution will bring back liberty.
Richard Stallman once wrote an essay dipicting a future of software controls and unreasonable DRM. In the story, debuggers had been declared illegal because their primary purpose was to subvert copyright protections. I laughed the first time I read it, thinking that was ludicrous.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
So tell me how you build a PC with out including the processor?
Ah, you took advantage of my American blind spot--everything is so new here we tend to forget how long a long time is. You make a good point; know that there are a lot of us raising our children to mistrust our government. A few even tell their kids that there's more to the world than the U.S. Right now, America's hegemonistic urges seem to be confined to the corporate sphere (and there we have very stiff competition from many parts of the globe); if this country ever turned imperialistic, I would probably end up in jail (or dead) fighting it. I like to believe there are enough who feel as I do to keep that from happening, but I don't pretend to know for sure.
Its all very fine for Jack Valenti to claim he's being ripped off (we'll see about that. I really DONT like people assuming that I'm a criminal. I think that "presumption of innocence" is written into the constitution, am I right?)
/.
Besides, what's that going to do to the content producers. You won't be able to CREATE an MP3 file on your CD-R or CD-RW burner or be able to create a dvd from your home movies because you don't have some stupid copy protection dongle or other annointment from some --AA (and paid for at extortionist prices.)
Give me a fucking break. the RIAA and the MPAA won't be happy until we're paying through the nose to watch the same three reruns of my "My Mother the Car."
I'm now cutting out all media that I can't access from my TiBook. Simply because that's the ONLY piece of access I want to have.
I don't have a DVD player. I don't have a CD player. I don't have a TV and I barely listen to NPR.
Where do the idiots think I watch DVDS or listen to my CDs or get my information? I do it all on my TiBook.
If they want to force me to buy their toys to watch or listen to their crap, they can kiss my mother fucking ass.
The content nowadays ain't worth bothering with. Its vetter to sit at Starbucks logging on over the wireless DHCP connection and posting replies to
And that's the truth.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
One of the things that has really bothered me during the whole SSSCA debate is the media coverage, or lack thereof. I live in South Carolina, and I've never even ONCE heard any mention of this issue from any SC-based media outlet. A quick search of some newspaper archives (Columbia's The State and Charleston's Post and Courier) confirms this. It seems that most of the state adores Hollings and most news stories present him in glowing fashion. I just find it sad that very few of the people actually responsible for putting and keeping this guy in office even hear about major policy he is spearheading. If that's not a breakdown of democracy, I don't know what is.
Even assuming that copyright isn't extended indefinitely, which is a pretty big assumption, the SSSCA will effectively kill the public domain, and here's why.
Even when content comes out of copyright, how are you going to get access to it to use, modify and distribute it? Work through it with me. What you will have is (e.g.) a SSSCA-compliant DVD-2 disk containing an AV stream with a watermark that says "I belong to Disney" weaved in.
But it's out of copyright (let's ignore trademarks, although god knows that's a huge assumption), so now you can quite legally give a copy to your friends, or make your own edit of it, right?
Er, how?
You need to strip the watermark, or it will keep screaming that it belongs to Disney, and I very, very much doubt if any watermarks will have dates on them. No problem, you've got a quantum computer that can crack the pathetic 70 (90, 110, 130 or whatever it is by then) year old protection and remove it, right?
Not legally, you don't. You're allowed to do it, but you're not allowed the tools to do it. This is already the case under the DMCA. But the SSSCA just makes it worse because now you don't have (legal) access to any devices that will play any copied or modified versions unless you strip the watermark. Now you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
(Apologies for the re-use of the analogy, but it's a good one). The content is in a safe with a tiny window that means only you can view it. The clock has run out, and you're now legally allowed to open the safe and get access to the content. Only you don't know the combination. And you're not allowed to buy safe cracking tools, because the assumption is that you'll use them to crack open safes holding still copyrighted material.
One way or another, you have to break the law to create a copy or a modified version or to use such a copy, even though the act of making the copy is entirely legal. It's as simple as that.
Now consider that this also applies to fair use before the copyright expires. Bye bye using clips or images for parody, comment or review. Oh, you can copy the clip, it's just that owning anything that enables you to do so, or to view the copied clip, is illegal.
I do believe that the DMCA and the SSSCA are primarily about stopping piracy. There's no sinister long term motive to stop all fair use dead, or to extend copyright (or copy-prevention) indefinitely. No, those are just nice side effects that polarise society into two groups: licensed content creators, and consumers. Nothing in the middle. No independent multimedia artists or satirists, no amateur editors, no Project Guttenberg, no public domain libraries... no public domain. Just corporate producers, good little consumers... and criminals.
That's not a world I relish living in.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
This is another step down the road to consolidating the power of the Police State.
This is the nature of the police state, that anyone, any time, is in violation of some law. Thinking that only "the other guy" will get nailed is foolish. The entire purpose of these "laws" is to give the State the power to arrest and prosecute anyone they choose at any time they choose.
Tick off your local politico? Not show proper deference to the local enforcer? Have something the local thugs want (car, bike, girlfriend)? These "laws" give them cover to "teach you a lesson" and "put you in your place".
But of course it can't happen here. I'm just a paranoiac in a tin foil hat.
Riiight.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
Computers don't trade movies, people trade movies. "It's a mad house! A mad house!"
Here's a link to a testimony concerning some researchers outrage to the SSSCA - (I don't think this was directly linked to or discussed as of yet)
As an aside, what this is turning into is like a hybrid of Brave New World/1984/Grapes of Wrath/etc...
I don't think this shall end well... but we can do more than hope - we can do something about it
A disk manufacture sels its first 'copy protection' disk to a citizen of a country that still allows fair usage?
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
Just replace the IT industry with Dilbert, the MPAA folks with marketing weasels, and the congressmen with Pointy-Haired Bosses. To sum up the hearings, this is how it went:
Marketing Weasels: "This online piracy is hurting sales. The solution is obvious: Make all computers unable to copy anything."
PHB: "Yup. That sounds right, take care of it Dilbert."
Dilbert: "That's impossible. All computers copy. It's part of their basic operation. You might as well tell me to design a perpetual motion machine."
PHB: "I don't understand what you're saying. Logically, anything I don't understand isn't important. You have 12 to 18 months to make all the computers in the world unable to copy. Oh, and the marketing weasels get to decide on the specs. Don't worry, they rarely change their minds more than twice a day."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
As it appears as though the first ammendment to the US Constitution is completely useless now, there are even further attacks on the freedom of speech, such as this bill.
Keep in mind that the argument of (Code == Speech) has not been established by the courts, although as a professional software developer I would argue strongly that it is. I resent the fact that there are certain algorithms that I can't implement, simply because of some stupid regulation or other political objective.
I admit that there could be illegal forms of software, but in my opinion it should be somthing like the proverbial yelling "Fire!" in a crowded room. Writing and using software to perform a DNS attack, or secretly installing something like Back Orifice without the users permission would certainly come close. However, even in these cases I can think of legitamate uses for the software, even though it would be more like a set of lock picking tools. It would be the way it is used that is illegal rather than posession of the tool itself.
Furthermore, I feel that abuse against an individual which stops them from performing immediate typical actions (like the DNS attack I mentioned or grabbing data from a system by deliberately subverting security measures) should be illegal. These nebulous laws that protect an industry are questionable at best. The DeCSS controversy is also a good case in point to show that more traditional forms of expression (such as publication in a newspaper or a public reading of the sourcecode for DeCSS) can also be restricted with these very same laws. (Actually, it would be cool if we could get a congressman to read DeCSS from the floor of the US House of Representatives, but I degress here). The proposed SSSCA hearing would even make that kind of speech illegal. Think about it.
I also think that the time for something like the Open Cores project is going to be critical in the future, where not only is the software going to need to be free and open, but the hardware designs as well. This way we are no longer held to the mercy of a company like Intel that could force new standards like what is being proposed.
I'm no techno guru, so I can't say I understand all the issues involved in building 'secure' systems, but I dunno how they can stop the "laws of physics" (as some posters have put it), and prevent bits from being copied.
They can only make it harder to copy stuff, but then it only takes one person to crack it. They can make it illegal to distribute copies, but then we have huge illegal distribution networks in place. They can put people in jail for posession, but then they can't examine the contents of a CD found on your person without taking it to the lab. They can make a device report every single file you open to some central database or whatnot, but who the hell is going to track billions of needles in terabytes of haystacks?
Just what do they expect to be able to do? Frighten people? Make 'em think, "gee, this is illegal... I'd better not do it?" -- but music and films appeal to young people, the ones most likely to have less need of "respectability".
Is Dirty Data is going to become a new rhetoric, a sort of new morality, making people believe that data can be "filthy" and "rotten". Listen to a Bach copy and you'll be corrupted by those dirty nasty un-authenticated bits??
Is that all they hope to achieve? Get the tech industry to admit that it might be sort of maybe possible, (thus creating pretense that the law is enforceable), and then use the existence of the law to create a cultural notion that copying is bad and can damage your health and well being?
Silly, but I do wonder. Or perhaps they already realise that the game is up. Digital technology is to data what mass cheap produced energy available through a socket in your home is to the local cart and coal merchant. They know the game is up. Their distribution model is dead. And they're just buying themselves some time.
So long as they can maintain the illusion that they still have something to own and distribute (see, we prevent copies with DRM, and we sell online to new markets), then their credibility as a business will continue... just a little while longer. Maybe until they figure out what to really do, maybe just to milk the market until they retire.
Either way, when an empty shell of an industry only has it's image of power and worth left, then "The show must go on...."
Ok, there is one thing that upsets me about the whole Open Source movement, and that is all of the whining, and lack of action. Whining is ok at first, but while we scream and whine for the next 12 months about how evil the SSSCA is nothing will get done, and then we'll be stuck with it. Now, here is the opportunity: If as a community we can come up with a solution to this problem before the private industries or the gov't mandate the solution, we will hold the trump card. My idea of the solution would be that we set up a site or sites, (many competing sites would be the best) and use the resources and connections that the Open Source community has, to create a forum for artists to directly distribute their works. Obviously this would be a pay site (be it per download, or monthly subscription) but I am sure we could get alot of artists to sign up and start producing music, and I'm sure there are alot of Indy film producers that would like the exposure, eventually the idea would be to have TV-like programming available as well, all digital, none of which would be copy protected (the SSSCA mandates that all SW and HW have copy protection, but it does not mandate that all copy-righted material use said copy protection). Therefore, they would be able to copy-right their works, they would own them, and people would have to pay for them. (they would be freely distributable afterwards, but I think the artists would see that they would make alot more money doing things this way, than having to deal with the record companies, direct distribution is much more efficient) The idea being that if we can show that it is economically better for the artists to use these sites instead of the record companies for marketing/distribution, as artist's contracts lapse with the record companies, they will move to us. Furthermore, this idea would spawn a new age of innovation as the decreased cost of distribution would allow many more Indy films and music to be produced and distributed, and if the sites attracted the masses, could seriously change the world for the better. I'm sure I will get flamed about how this is an impossible thing to do, and how the music/film industries are monopolies and this isn't feasible, but really it is, the music industry turns over artists about every 3-4 years, and only the really great bands stay popular for longer than that, this turnover gives this idea the upper hand because if we can get a couple of the next crop of "popular" artists the idea is sold, and the music company is dead. Furthermore, I believe that many of the current artists that fully supported Napster would be good candidates to join this revolution (such big names as Dave Matthews, and others). The film industry is more difficult because production costs are astronomical, however, I feel that we could start with Indy films, prove that it is economically viable and then more big name producers/directors would get the idea and move to a similar scheme. This in my opinion is the way to use the internet and our knowledge of technology to competitively destroy the evils of the music and film industry.
This is obviously a bigger problem than cancer, AIDS, world hunger, or the state-sanctioned violence going on all over the world.
They say the SSSCA will "boost hardware sales." That is because you will have to dump the system you just bought and get a new one if you want to take advanage of all of the 'great new online content.'
I think the only solution is to boycott this crap when it comes out. Refuse to buy the new DRM 64GHz system. Waive your right to watch Madonna or Jurassic Park 47 online. Point out to these corrupt politicians that you are not stupid enough to let them obsolete a system that you bought last month.
It is annoying that we (taxpayers) and the hardware industry end up spending the time and money involved in implementing these systems for the entertainment industry, while they sit back and do nothing basking in the glow of the inconvenience that they have caused everyone.
On top of that, after we go through the expenditure and wast of accomodating these paranoid jerks, we inevitably find that it has basically zero effect (except the waste of time and money). How much time and effort was spent on the copy flags implemented on every CD you buy? Has it ever prevented you from doing anything you wanted to the contents of a CD? Have you ever seen a pirated copy of a CD on DAT tape? I haven't.
But still, this is the most pressing issue for human society to solve today.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
...and I don't care how much money they offer me to work in the US, I'm staying put!
This space left intentionally blank.
You just figured that out? That's been apparent for several years now.
Personally, I think the reason that the Internet became so popular is that it wasn't television. Then the TV execs figured out where all the eyeballs were going. And you see the result.
Anyway, the more people figure this out the better. So pass the word.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
What do you think the Wars on Drugs, Money Laundering (via the UN), and now Terrorism are about? It's about the establishment of Empire.
Did you know that if you leave the country, the IRS deems you to be leaving for tax reasons and you are still liable for income tax? Yup.
So, while you're sitting in your jungle with your open source software on your non-crippled PC, know that the Empire will consider you a tax evader and a terrorist (but I repeat myself). You'll have an A-Team in your backyard and that will be that. Forget about any "popular uprising", too. The sheeple will watch the evening news report about a tax-evading, child-porn-distributing, movie/music-pirating tango in EBF getting taken out and nod in approval.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
Looks like we are creating a dictatorship of scope and power never dreamed of, even by Adolph Hitler himself who would be proud! -Jeho
Damnit... I am only 17. I don't want to have to tell my grandkids where I was when Big Brother took office. It truly makes me sad to see that a few large corporations and some people with a bunch of money can completely screw the majority like this. I will never obey this law. I don't care if I go to jail for it. This is just wrong, and they know it damn well.
Unless you take the stance that corporations should be well-regulated and individuals should be free. But even then, government could come to the wrong conclusion and regulate the hardware manufacturers rather than regulate to restrict the legal claims of the content pimps.
Now if you say, "Corporations should be well-regulated to protect the freedom of the individuals," that's getting closer, except what about the freedom of individuals to invest in pyramid schemes like Enron?
How about, "Corporations should be regulated to assure the transparent and abundant flow of information in every sphere"? - That would both require Enron-like scammers to open their books fully, and require content pimps to let their artists get off the street and into the loving arms of their admirers.
__
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Microsoft will use this to be the only operating system player. Either legislated directly, or via agreements with the content companies. Think of the linux DVD debacle as a preview of the great things to come. Anway I'll bet a million dollars that the 'standards' that will be mandated by congress and/or agreed upon by the content companies and hardware companies will not be freely implementable.
So let them go ahead and pass it, personally I think the fallout will be fun to watch.
"I'm prepared to support this if Disney, et al, cross my palm with some cold, hard cash. Otherwise I'm not sure I can get on board."
That is what he's saying. Don't fool yourself into thinking he's not a whore because he makes cooing noises in your ear tonight.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
Don't forget that we're in the midst of turning the trade sanction thumbscrews on the Ukyraine, because they produce CD blanks that don't have the proper "protective IDs" built-in. As one of the former members of the Soviet Union, they fit right into the category you're talking about, and we're already @#$%ing them over.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Look, if the Movie Cartel is really serious about protecting their property, they should research the encryption and other technology. Then, they should subsidize computer manufacturers to have thier protections included. If they want to secure their content, they should pay the trillions of dollars it would take to secure all the networking and devices on the internet. Also, has Disney ever paid the relatives of Mozart, Bach, ect... for using their music in fantasia? Have they dropped a cent for using such stories as "Peter Pan" or "Snow White"?
The primary purpose of a general computer is to logically process data according to user input (software).
If this law passes - general computers will no longer be produced. The primary purpose of the computer will then be to check if the user is doing anything illegal, and THEN do it if it appears to be acceptable.
There is not so much a difference between polititians and programmers as some would believe - we must TALK or otherwise communicate with these law makers, so that they may understand the collosal value of the general computer - and understand why it should NOT be lost!
Ryan Fenton
How about this?
The first rule covers the establishment of monopolies through legal means. The second rule covers monopolies that develop without legal support (i.e., natural monopolies).
Photocopiers were restricted in the Soviet Union. Not with software or chips, but via physical access - they did not want the rank and file freely copying literature, Western magazines, etc.
The SSSCA parallels this. Using software and/or chips, it'll be impossible for Americans to copy video, music, or to view content from other countries (for any purpose), without explicit permission.
Can anyone out there tell me why this isn't so? Instead of having our rights stripped by a central authority, we're being trampled by an oligarch of corporations.
it seems to me that the problem here runs deeper than the latest "what rights did we lose this week" issue
the problem is that within the american system the immoral, greedy bottomfeeder naturally rises to the apex of the power structure
be it politics, religion or business, the system encourages those who are willing to discard their own personal beliefs for money
the us started a war on drugs and they placed a large percentage of their population into prision, pushed the problem off on a third world country (columbia), and brought terror upon that population for the addictions of our citizens.
this is where we currently stand.
-- john
I don't know what you mean. The last time there was widespread forced labor in Europe was WWII (if we regard the Soviet Union as Asian, otherwise later). The last time there was a war of aggression in Europe was the 1990's (or, if for some reason you don't count the Yugoslavia mess, then the various Soviet invasions, or--if those somehow don't count--then WWII). The last time there was genocide in Europe was, again, the 1990's (or again, sans Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, WWII). Open your eyes. There's ugly all over.
Gentlemen, I am writing you today to voice grave objections to Senator Fritz Hollings and his stance on digital rights management via his SSSCA legislation.
The U.S. economy is in the midst of an amazing ascent from recession, having endured more than any of us might have imagined that it could survive.
The digital information infrastructure is in no small part responsible for our recovery. The ability of businesses to easily and quickly exchange large amounts of information is key to our ever-increasing productivity.
This infrastructure is made possible by a number of software applications that are made available for free, and these applications are maintained by organizations that derive their profits by charging for support.
Let us take, for example, the "sendmail" application supported by:
http://www.sendmail.org
It is both unfair and unreasonable to require this company, who gives their product away for free, and plays no direct role in piracy on the Internet, to shoulder the overhead of implementing digital rights management.
Furthermore, "sendmail" is such a widespread product that E-Mail on the Internet would effectively end if all copies of "sendmail" were
simultaneously disabled.
The SSSCA will take broad sectors of the IT market into violation of the law with the stroke of a pen. These sectors will include the entire free software movement, including one of my favorite companies, Red Hat Software (one of the most successful IPOs of 1999).
The damage to our information information infrastructure will be incalcuable should this legislation be enacted.
This legislation is a result of the lobbying efforts of the MPAA and the RIIA, who rightly desire some control over the perfusion of their digital content. Such content controls could easily be made voluntary by including a small message in an MP3 asking the user to purchase a legitimate copy of the work if a license key was not found in a local encyption key cache.
Instead, these media organizations wish to trample our constitutional protections on freedom of speech and fair use, and take the economy along with it.
Let there be no mistake; this legislation is a disaster. I urge you to vote against it.
So you are saying the ONLY reason someone would EVER want to create is to make a profit? No profit = nothing created??
Explain Linux then.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
how hardware alone can provide copy protection or DRM? Hardware knows about bytes only. My hard drive knows nothing about all my pirated N*SYNC mp3's, or why it shouldn't let me access them. It knows, get this byte, write it here. The processor picks it up from memory here, etc. Or is that the point? That for any of this to work, we need a ``state approved'' software package to do the real work. The hardware side seems moot to me. And IAACS (I am a computer scientist)
It won't be included in the processor. It'll be in an extra chip or in add on device firmware.
How exactly would the processor know that a given bit of memory its accessing shouldn't be able to
be copied to to another part or a device?
Try using your brain before posting.
Wow, those congress people must have debated long and hard on that part. Imagine making publishing a copywritten work a crime. Maybe they can pass a law against murder too.
Hey Disney, get a clue. If I don't have any qualms about giving my friend a copy Fantasia, what makes you think I'm going to care about giving them a copy of DeCSS?
The key to controlling a population is to make everyone a secret criminal. If you make it overt, then people won't be worried about being exposed, and you can't blackmail them anymore. Worse, you miss out on important tax opportunities.
From the article:
But some technology companies and consumer advocates have opposed the bill, saying they fear it would instigate too much government regulation and oversight.
Hmmm.... Completely misses some of the legitimate concerns of the industry and consumer groups and marginalizes them. Good journalism? I think not....
Real concerns:
1: it could kill open source.
2: may be in violation of trade treaties (hence be unconstitutional)
3: severely damage the tech industry's ability to compete with overseas competitiors in other countries.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Are these two at odds?
This sig intentionally left justified.
Really? That'll be why all TVs made in the world are NTSC , all those PAL TVs must be a myth.
That'll be why FM radios in the states only tube to odd number frequencies whereas everywhere else
they do all frequencies. That'll be why PLaystations in the US won't play EUropean discs.
Shall I go on?
I will personally boycott every company and/or service that participates in copy protection technologies - whether or not said technologies are required by law.
When others like me start to send a message to Congress and all those other f*cks that are letting a few corporations ruin America, we'll hope they come to their senses.
RE: SSSCA
Senator xxxxxx:
I urge you to vote against the SSSCA. What is your stance on this legislation?
Photocopiers were restricted in the Soviet Union. Not with software or chips, but via physical access - they did not want the rank and file freely copying literature, Western magazines, etc.
The SSSCA parallels this. Using software and/or chips, it'll be impossible for Americans to copy video, music, or to view content from other countries (for any purpose, including fair use), without explicit permission.
I currently use my computer to put music from CD's I purchased onto an MP3 player. I make custom music collections on CD for my own use. Under the SSSCA, I would no longer be able to use a current computer for these very legitimate purposes.
Thanks for listening.
xxxxxx
In Afghanistan they are now getting the rights to learn, and here in the US we are going on the path to taking them away.
I used to remember when you would go to prison in the Soviet Union for exercising your God-given right to free speech, and the US was free - now it seems the US and Russia have changed places. Just ask Sklyarov.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
So you advocate negotiation while starting from the position that you will lose. In other words, you're simply negotiating over how long it will be before all your rights are gone.
Imagine that a thug breaks into your house one night with the intent to rape your wife and daughters. By your argument above, you are completely ruling out stopping him. Instead you will negotiate and compromise.
You: Tell ya what, how about you go ahead and rape my wife, but leave my daughters alone?
Thug: Ok.
Thug enjoys wife.
Thug: Now I want this one. points to one of the daughters
You: But we had a deal!
Thug: Then I'll have them all. waves knife under your nose
You: Well, ok, let's compromise, then. You can have Nancy. peels daughter's nightie off and pushes her toward thug
Thug: Yeah, that's the stuff...
Thug enjoys daughter
Scene repeats until all have been raped
That is what you are advocating. Slow, steady movement toward complete surrender. Every "deal" you make will merely become the starting point of the next negotiation.
The policy of appeasement has a long history. Learn from it. At some point, we have to stand up and say "no", and do whatever it takes to make it stick. The alternative is abject surrender.
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
Since any sane person would not dream of breaking the law, only insane people break the law.
Thus, if I break the law, I must be insane.
So, you Honor, when I wrote my program to break the copy protection scheme, I was insane.
Catch-22 in reverse.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Copying "digital" information means copying a number. Each piece of digital information uniquely corresponds to a *single* number. This *includes* any book of any kind, printed or handwritten. This also means that *many* devices can be used to perform copying of copyrighted digital data, i.e. a copying machine (can copy any text, thus, any number), a camera, even a taperecorder, since nothing can stop you from saying out loud the digits of the number to your taperecorder.
Hell, go outlaw paper and pencils! They, too, can serve the same mallicious purpose, and there is no way to implant a copy-protection scheme inside them!
At least Intel knows the needs of developers (hey, they're computer geeks too), whereas the MPAA is happy lobbying toward whatever draconian regulation they want.
Being thrown in the slammer for making an open OS doesn't sound too fun, either. Copy-protection's going to have to roll out eventually (it's inevitable), but let's let the corporations iron this out.
With that shirt came a copy of DeCCS. I think that making a copy, sending it to a representative, and letting him know that he is now a criminal should be a good way to get the point across. Then explaining how the SSSCA is 10 times worse should let him know how justified it is that many people hate this.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
Why don't we just have a week long boycott of media purchases? Putting off buying a cd for 7 days or so wouldn't bother too many consumers, but the media industry would sure feel it. Or would a month be possible? Think of the impact even a 30% drop in sales would have over a month. What if that month was December? The entertainment industry needs to be reminded that ultimately they are the consumers' bitch - not the other way around.
Dude.
When you post it like that I thought it was a link for a site on how to build a converter. Not a the exact law against it.
Seriously though, your telling me you think the government has rights to pass laws on Radio Waves?
I understand interference regulations and all, but the government has no right telling me I can listen to radio waves that are being sent through the god damn atomosphere.
Next they are going to start limiting the air I breath.
Basically I think everyone can agree that the commercialization of hollywood has led to lower and lower quality films, while the independant film scene continues to thrive w/innovative and creative ideas.
Copyright law was introduced to keep credit where credit is due. That means preventing people from stealing other's ideas, and reaping the rewards thereof.
The copyright infringment that multimedia giants are trying to get the SSSCA passed for is not for protecting from the theivery of ideas, but the theivery of products. Passing the SSSCA will not only stunt the growth of the technology sector, but it will also continue, and even increase the decadence already inherent in commercialized multimedia. By forcing the multimedia giants to spend the money required to deal w/their own problems, we may be stunting the growth of their industry, but who cares? Creative ideas have never been hampered by a lack of money, only a lack of opportunity. Independant films, where most of the truly creative artistry comes from anyway, will continue to flourish, and maybe even increase in stature.
The multimedia industry has tried to set standards in the past, only to watch our community find faults in their designs as soon as they were pushed out the door. So they're whining to Uncle Sam, because they don't want to spend the money for good, cryptographically talented programmers. Boohoo.
As anyone in an IT department can tell you, getting rid of legacy is VERY difficult. In a case like this where new hardware will be immediately suspect, people will be more and more reluctant to give up their old machines. Think about it. If this thing passes, ANYTHING you have now is intrinsically illegal unless it has the new standard applied. Which hasn't even been settled on. Riiiiiiiiiight. I can only speak for myself... but if this thing does end up coming into law, I'm going to freeze my current system RIGHT where it is; keep the machine 'clean' for as long as humanly possible. Sorry Mr. RIAA.. I don't want you looking over my shoulder. I look at sites that have naughty words on them, and remember what you did to the CDs that did the same thing. What's next... mandatory censorship software? Whether we want to see it or not, this *is* the beginning of a slide toward fascism. I just hope that Dubya will see that, if our wonderful Senate representatives don't.
I live in Canada, but I'm gonna be writing my Minister of Parliment to let them know about all this crap and I suggest others to do the same. If Other countries disagree with the idea, as well as many US citizens, then maybe (but probably not because of the US captilist ways and money being the most important entity) with voices being heard both outside and inside the country the bill will not be passed. If not I can only hope Canada makes something like this illegal. We may not be the most powerful nation, but we are well respected around the world and it would speak volumes.
Because Europe is America's bitch.
Besides, Europe dosen't have to worry about piracy until you can get a decent UNLIMITED internet connection.
What the fuck is wrong with Germany and Uk you still have to play per minute for local phone calls. Its amazing people still have phone's in their houses.
Anyway, I was plastering my bathroom last night; I don't want the FBI at my house over the residue.
Thats right, Don't bother. Instead write to the CEO's of the companies that make our computers. Michael Dell has alot of clout, when he talks, people listen, including President Bush. If he and his fellow CEO's can be convinced that the SSSCA is bad for business, they themselves will lobby congress for us. CEO's get alot less mail than Politicians, they also take Email seriously. To a Politician we are a small demographic, easily ignored, but to Michael Dell and his peers, we are customers, or potential customers, we are their bread and butter, we are the ones who pay for thier $20 million dollar houses. If each one of the CEO's of the top 5 OEM's recieves even a 1000 emails, they will listen. As always, be polite, be clear, but make them understand, that we vote with our money.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Here is a quote from an article about that:
"Abraham Foxman, ADL's national director, said the groups were both creating racist games using open source software and modifying commercially available games to make targets of particular ethnic groups."
Great, now we will have people trying to outlaw Open Source - saying it promotes hate.
Well I have 2 responses to that.
#1 Just because a tool can be used for evil doesn't make it evil. Baseball bats aren't evil, even though they can and often are used in a wrongful manner.
#2 The NAACP website is running Apache which is Open Source Software.
Trigger locks are probably the worst, and MOST DANGEROUS, of handgun locking systems.
How many deaths have they caused?
Are there any web sites tracking/discussing this whole mess?
It would seem to me that the Senate is writing this law based on the principle that it should be illegal to make hardware that can be used to commit crimes.
If this is the basis for the law then there should be a whole raft of laws banning all sorts of things. Fire-arms for instance. Guns aren't good for much other than shooting at things. It is illegal to shoot at most things so guns should be banned unless they include protections to prevent people from using them for illegal purposes.
If only we could convince the general public how bad this idea is, and so dissuade them from buying any new hardware with this technology built in... pipe dream, I know...but it would soon have a few companies squirming as they see their bottom lines slide south as their sales disappeared...
Sure, they'll tempt us with movies and such that can only be played on protected equipment, but if we can only resist this temptation...
In the end, the real power, i.e. the power to purchase or NOT to purchase is in our hands....
I sent an email to Maria Cantwell, who not only is my state's senator but, as a former executive at RealNetworks, is presumably more tech-savvy than other senators. Here's the reply:
Dear Mr. Vasquez:
Thank you for contacting me about the Security Systems Standards and
Certification Act (SSSCA). I appreciate hearing your concerns.
The SSSCA has not yet been introduced in the U.S. Senate or House of
Representatives, nor does it exist in final form. A member of my staff
has been in contact with the office of Senator Hollings, who is one of the
authors of the SSSCA along with Senator Stevens. I was informed that the
SSSCA is yet to be completed, and the timeline for the introduction of the
SSSCA is uncertain at this point. The early draft that was made publicly
available on the Internet, to which your comments are likely directed, may
be significantly different from the legislation that may be introduced by
Senators Hollings and Stevens.
I understand your concern that we must work to achieve the right balance
between protecting copyrights and remunerating the creators of those works
and reasonable consumer use of copyrighted works. Indeed, the pace of
innovation requires a diligent consideration of both of these interests.
I believe that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA) passed in 1998
helps to accomplish this goal. I feel we need to continue to encourage
innovation in technology while protecting the intellectual property rights
of inventors, artists, authors and musicians. This law prohibits
circumvention of technological protection measures and the trafficking of
such technology. Thus, the DMCA facilitates legitimate distribution of
copyrighted work by allowing for the use of technological measures by the
copyright holder and providing legal protections for those measures.
However, you should know that I will not be supportive of legislation that
unduly limits technological innovation or consumers' rights.
At this relatively early point in the development of digital distribution
of copyrighted works, the U.S. Copyright Office has recommended that
Congress make no significant changes to copyright law right now. As a
member of the Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over copyright
law, I will be actively considering these issues. Please be assured that
should the SSSCA come before the Senate, I will keep your concerns in
mind.
Again, thank you for contacting me, and please do not hesitate to do so in
the future if I can be of further assistance.
Sincerely,
Maria Cantwell
United States Senator
Apart from the bit about the DMCA, it looks pretty promising.
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
Law makers, make laws... That's what they do.
After 200+ years, I guess they just ran out of good ones to make.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Yeah!
Point number one:
Companies *should* have no political sway what so ever. They can not vote for a reason, they intrinsicly have no ethics. Some people have no ethics as well but presumably those of us that do, out number them (except obviously in congress). Companies are motivated by money and if they succeed in changing laws for their own profit we are all screwed.
Point number two:
The people do not want this law, or the DMCA, or a couple of others. What do you do when your country starts passing laws with no regard for its people? Are we becoming an oligopy ruled by corprations? If so how long do you think this will last?
Point number three:
This could be a somewhat futile attempt. What if it passes and every system as to be compliant and blah.. blah... blah. Now imagine everyone and their dog bypasses the mandated measures. The hardware police aren't going to put everyone behind bars. If a law is broken enmass, it mine as well not be a law (internet descency act anyone).
I dunno, maybe I'm just rambling.
It's 2020. You want to watch a movie at home.
Your choices:
1) MegaAssault ("Arnold Schwarzenegger, as an man involuntarily committed to the old folks home, must escape using only the minigun that his old war buddy smuggled in disguised as a tennis racket"). $49.95, one-time-play solid state video device.
2) Something good by an actual artist. $49.95, play as much as you want, keep it and show it to friends when they visit.
Of course, if you go for option 1, you'll have to put a dollar into your SSVD player every fifteen minutes to keep the movie going. You'll also have to clean up the mess after the SSVD melts itself at the end of the movie (don't worry, it's a myth that these things can explode rather than melting, we promise).
Next, you'll have to report to the Entertainment Clinic, where they will perform brain surgery to remove all memories of the movie, so you'll have to buy another copy if you want to think about it.
They'll be monitoring your email, too, to make sure you don't tell anyone anything about the movie (in case the brain wipe didn't take). And one out of 10 times you watch a Hollywood movie, your house will be raided by the police (motto: "To protect and serve Hollywood"), who will search for any illegal copies you might have made.
Option 2 is looking better and better, isn't it?
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
Here in Idaho, I've noticed a number of places selling "Edited Movies". Presumably, these are legally-purchased originals, with "objectionable" material edited or "bleeped" out (I haven't been inside any of these shops nor watched an "edited movie", so I'm assuming here.)
While VHS is still available, one still has the basic ability to physically "cut" out "objectionable" portions. Once VHS fades from the market, though, under current DMCA and even more so under legislation like this, created "edited movies" will be ILLEGAL, regardless of the "first sale" doctrine, because to create an "edited" movie from digital media, you must COPY it.
While I personally wouldn't touch an "edited" movie, I think allowing someone to "edit" legally purchased material - and even re-sell it (emphasis there - I'm talking about selling the original material (which even under the proposed law is, so far, still legal) along with the "edited" fair-use copy, not keeping the original and only selling the "edited" copy) is plainly "fair use". Face it - squeamish or prudish citizens are still citizens nonetheless, and deserve their fair-use rights.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Well, of course the corporations are "in pursuit of money". What do you think they opened up a business for in the first place? Free hand-outs and free labor?
The statement that "people have ideals and ethics; companies do not" bothers me though.
This belief trivializes the fact that behind every business is an individual, or small group of individuals, who brought it to fruition - and who guides it daily.
If a company "has no ethics", that merely shows that its C.E.O., board of directors, and other upper-level management have no ethics.
I never "thought the tech companies were different than other megacorps because they were started by people like us"! That's a pretty self-centered and foolish remark for anyone to make.
People "like me" are motivated by greed and money, just like people in any other profession.
When given the opportunity to hide behind a slew of employees working under you, not to mention behind a respected brand name, would you still "do the right thing" all the time, even when it means losing a lot of potential profit for yourself?
Maybe you would.... but statistically, a *lot* of people wouldn't, no matter what industry they work in.
Campaign Finance Reform. Fritz Hollings is just another corrupt pol shaking down monied groups for cash to use to keep his personal power and prestige intact. De-fund Fritz and every other corrupt pol. Back public funding of political campaigns or continue to watch your rights and country sold out by pimps and whores.
Night
Tsk tsk.
... )
Imperialist nations gained wealth by colonizing. Coperate imperialism is essentially the same thing:
a) Replace colonization with foreign investment.
b) Replace the imperial armies with the WTO (which has more international legal power than the UN, to put that in perspective)
c) Colonization usually occured when a country had no means of protecting themselves. Today, most countries have guns (tho, ironically, this is in part thanks to American industries), and thus colonization by force would be much more bloody and descructive to the colonizers than it was in many other situations. (I'm talking about the intial colonizations, as many colonies staged a revolt once they had sufficient firepower.)
d)Infmation and media gets around much quicker these days, so colonization must be more undercover and subtle. (See the IMF
> one in five people in the U.S. is either an immigrant or a first-generation American
Not much of a point if you accept (and this is of course very subjective):
a) That the conditions in many countries are due to economic conditions and pressures stemming from the scale and success of the American economy. People have to move because much of the conditions in their home countries are due to governments being bought by large multinationals or multinationals investing in a country, only to pollute it or destroy the quality of life there through competition or otherwise.
b) People's impressions of the US come through the media, which is heavily filtered. I don't know how many immigrants I've met who had a totally different view of what living in North America would be like.
c) The US offers high salaries to educated folks. Hell, in Canada, where no doctor is in *any* danger of starving, our doctors are moving down there for the higher wages, which is much of the reason your healthcare is expensive, and our health care has extremely long wait times. (Which is interesting, as it runs counter to the American economic system's usual 'most efficient use of resources' claim.)
You can't paint imperialist nations as evil war mongers, and then say the US is all good because they dont send over an army to take over countries. The US has far more efficient, effective, and equally destructive means' (see Columbia) of taking over other nations.
Which isn't to say the US is evil. It's just to say that you're only judging the 'goodness' of the US by comparing its practices against practices of old. Different times, different cultures, different economic system, different everything. The end result is the same tho - the US enjoys unprecedented power over the entire world. Even the other Imperialist nations didn't have the economic (which is to say power over policy and decision making world-wide) might the US currently enjoys. Compare China today to China 300 years ago, and you could say they are 'saints' today. Yet we know better (although it didn't stop the US from letting them into the WTO, interestingly enough.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison." - Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
.mp3/.ogg/etc? Sure. What's to keep those files from being shared? Nothing. We need to get the attitude of "give some money to the people that entertain you" back in this country.
I know I'll be flamed to Redmond and back for this, but do we have the right to read/view/hear materials for which we have paid NO MONEY to the people who created / distributed / promoted them? Justify that. Please. I'm very interested. Now, I'm not exactly innocent; I've used Napster quite a bit. But because of that, I've become a fan of several bands I'd not known about before, bought their CDs, and plan to see them next time thery tour through SF.
I've heard the, "Well, I wouldn't buy the music/movie/game anyway, so they wouldn't make anything from it either way." argument. Faeces tauri. If it's good enough to listen to, good enough to use backup space/CD-Rs on, good enough to spend hours playing or watching, it's good enough to pay for. Believe me, I used to run Win95 *and* Office *and* have various games and mp3s within a gig. I had to prune mercilessly more than once and make decisions about what I really valued. Most of that music, I ended up buying anyway, save what I couldn't find (anime soundtracks, etc).
Corporations, like all entities, have to act in their own survival interest. No, it's not nice of them to want to restrict what we do with our computers. It's downright draconian to lock us into Microsoft's "trusted" operating systems. But, guess what? We haven't given them a choice. If filesharing becomes much more widespread, the whole RIAA/MPAA house of cards will fall over - good, you say? - yes, but there will be nothing to replace it. Will artists release their own songs on
Having said all that, I still hope this is defeated on some grounds. I don't hold out much hope. Our Senate serves the Almighty dollar (In Profit We Trust), not the people they're supposed to serve. And anything the clueful might try to change with their votes will be lost in the noise.
"He's got to make a living, or move to Russia..." - Moxy Fruvous, River Valley
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Send a letter telling of your lifelong support of the Democratic Party and why you do not like this bill together with a copy of your check made out the the Green Party of South Carolina. Send a copy of this letter and the copied check to the Democratic National Comittee. Fritz and his folks will get a clue really fast this way.
That is all.
if this gets passed into law then the terrorists win!
I was reading the article about this on the US REG and I was wondering something. The way they make it out if you have a copy righted matrial, it is illegal to copy it onto a digitial medium. What happens if I write a story on my computer and save it to my harddrvie? Does that mean I will break my own copyright when I copy it to a 3.5? Or how about websites? I am digitally copying their content to my hardrvie ( in the way of cache), does that mean I am pirating their content? I hope someone more knowledgable on the SSCA can answer me.
enter the public domain. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER will the copyright expire, unless and until Disney goes bankrupt. Even then it may not, because maybe Microsoft will have bought their copyrights.
For Steamboat Willie, Snow White, and the gang, 'limited duration' means that someday the Sun will go nova, and we may not have interstellar travel by then. Beyond that, there is still an eternity between 'no available energy' and proton decay or the next brane collision, in case we do develop interstellar travel.
The real problem with this isn't Steamboat Willie, Snow White, and the gang - it's the rest of the stuff that gets dragged along in the long-copyright game, too.
I suggest that free copyright be rolled back to the original 14/28 year limits. Beyond that, you have to pay to renew. This way, corporate jewels can be retained. But the rest is released, for simple economic reasons - it's too expensive to keep renewing, and drains the bottom line.
There are details, there needs to be a concept of 'related works' to handle serialized stories or a collection of source code. But the test needs to be tight, because the Star Wars movies really should count as separate works, as should the James Bond movies.
Besides, fee-based copyright extension should appeal to Congress, since it gives the government money. At the same time, for us it starts most copyrights expiring, again. (in our lifetimes) It should also be sufficient to force some expiration mechanism into the DMCA.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
So if this gets signed into law, and EVERYONE (or at least the bulk populace) starts breaking the encryption systems with hacks that get floated around through irc or whatever method - are we gonna start locking up end users? I mean this is really where the problem is. We have enough trouble providing prison space for violent criminals as it is.
If this becomes law, well, it pretty much would confirm that the United States Government no longer stands for the people. I don't see this law surviving even if it is passed - its just not economically feasable to enforce it on end users, and like it or not, it is end users who ultimately are the problem. We just don't have the money to lock up every 14 year old script kiddie for copying Britney Spears or Southpark illegally.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...richie - It is a good day to code.
This could be the greatest fiasco ever for copy protection advocates.
Is this a likely scenario ?
a) Bill passes
b) Everyone continues working with Linux because it's free speech - this one the Supreme Court will uphold
c) Microsoft is forced to add monster DRM features
d) Only content that is copy protected is allowed to be produced by the major titles.
e) FREE speech becomes even more accessible and more valuable - because it is free - demand increases.
f) Hillary realizes that both feet have been blown off by shotgun.
g) Sales of copy protected material drops like mad.
I can't figure why people care so much about helping Hillary & co. Let them shoot themselves. The more draconian the impositions the better. Let's lobby to make sure that ALL material sold by MPAA and RIAA members MUST conform to sone draconian impossible to use DRM scheme. After all, you must eat your own dog food. Let's make sure that they can't get out of it without a VERY LONG period. After all the consumer's are going to have to purchase new equipment and they must honor the new standards.
This could be the biggest victory yet for open standards and an open community. Why stop it ?
Why don't you go recompile your kernal and leave us in pease!
Did the horse whip makers try to get laws passed to curb the use of cars? Did the polititions listen to them? In the end, it may turn out that these media giants are nothing more than the modern equivalent of the horse and buggy industry. Of course, the politicians will be more than willing to screw everything up just to line their pockets. They're not any worse now. Politicians have always been more concerned with themselves than the people they serve.
If everyone is breaking a nonsensical law, then well, everyone is breaking the law. So if a cop is looking for someone or something, he can pull anyone over he wants, and have the backing of the courts for doing so. I bet the feds just loooove these copyright laws. Just as the ultra-slow speed limits gives cops the freedom to pull over anyone they want, assinine copyright laws will give feds a convienent way to get into your house if they are looking for drugs or whatever in your neihborhood. Just a few tricks that our oath-bound government officials use to sneak around the constitution. It just gives them more freedom to do their jobs. Of course that freedom has to come from somewhere. How much will you be willing to lose?
When was the last time a letter to your Senator or House representative did *ANY* good?
/.. It's time for a complete overhaul of our unbelievably-corrupt government.
You must not yet realize that these people take money from big corporations -- not you. Idiot.
No, it's time we moved beyond the niceties of letter-writing and surfing
Because the contry is full of greedy people. You know, it's getting very tiring listening about all this crap about "We have to protect our interest." Actually, it's more like "We have to protect our greed." I don't know about you guys, but at one time, people used to do things because they enjoyed them. Entertainers would entertain you because they enjoyed it. Singers sang because they enjoyed singing. Actors enjoyed acting. If they got rich, that was great, if not, they kept going it usually since they enjoy what they do. I didn't become a computer tech just because I wanted to get rich ( he ) I did it because I love computers. I also enjoy helping people, most of the time ;). Unfortunately, all of the studios don't think that way. All they care about is money. They don't care if the consumer is happy, they just want your money. They don't care about your rights, they just want money. And if your rights get in the way, they want to change your rights, or pass new bills or laws to restrict your rights. And Unfortunately, it sometimes happens. Why? Because they give money to campaign _contributions_ and sway someone to their line of thought. Take the Tauzin Dingell bill. Who in their right mind believe this is good? And speeking of gouging you with prices, I can't use my VPN account on comcast anymore since it's a "home account"? Bull, they just want to charge me more money. Anyway, if you made it this far, I guess what I'm trying to say is this: The main driving force in this country is GREED. That's why people can get away with all this CRAP that we keep hearing about. Oh, btw, I would have registered instead of posting this as anonymous, but it's just very nice that all of a sudden comcast disables their web mail, Conveniently the day after excite goes belly up...*mutter*
I see you're an optimist too... :)
I like your fee based copyright idea. I read in another post (was this you), where a guy suggested the following:
1. Copyrights are limited to 10 years
2. After that, they can be renewed for a fee, start at something like $10,000.
3. The fee doubles every year.
11: $10,000
12: $20,000
13: $40,000
14: $80,000
15: $160,000
16: $320,000
17: $640,000
18: $1,280,000
19: $2,560,000
20: $5,120,000
21: $10,240,000
22: $20,480,000
23: $40,960,000
24: $81,920,000
25: $163,840,000
26: $327,680,000
27: $655,360,000
28: $1,310,720,000
29: $2,621,440,000
30: $5,242,880,000
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
all they do is copy bits from one spot to another
Now I can understand why suicide booths are so popular in the future... the SSSCA must have been upheld.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Let's be clear here. We're talking about three different things:
1) Digital rights management where the content is encrypted & the keys are carefully managed. Only "authorized" players can get at the keys and the keys are somehow locked to a storage device or computer.
2) Watermarking where the content has tags hidden (steganography) with origin, copy and copyable information.
If every modem, router, PC, VCR, PVR and TV could recognize the watermarks and not play or pass on content with particular tags, you might have some control even if encryption is stripped off.
However, the quality of a camcorder pointed at a movie screen, divx'd & p2p distributed is so poor that the watermark could not be well hidden to still appear (artifacts would be easily visible in the theater).
That brings me to
3) The cable-TV style internet. I don't think Eisner cares that much about the genie getting out of the bottle. It's the genie replicating itself 1E6 times across the internet. The problem isn't a digital one, it's a physical vs. "ether" (Eisner's word) one. I can sell SVCDs on a street corner no easier than VHS tapes. I can only sell a few and the risk is high.
Suppose every ISP was required to prevent servers and p2p clients for "consumer" accounts . All servers must be licensed (like guns) and are subject to inspection without warrant.
That would achieve Eisner's goal.
A China-style firewall around the whole country would be required also.
I suggest Vadasz said "no" because he couldn't imagine Eisner would want something so far out.
I'm beginning to believe Eisner would be willing to do anything & give up any of our rights in order to achieve his goal.
If you have the time and want to go beyond news reports read my previous comments
.oggs of Eisner & Vadasz's comments as well as their answers to the 1st round of questions. If anyone has 34MB of server space, I have most of the 1st 3 hours of the hearing
I've put up
Why have this law pass, you ask? Simple--just the notion of having them enforce this law. Could you imagine getting arrested for having a calculator that doesn't have copy protection? Or how about creating another digital device? Obviously, this law is so broad that, ironically, the government will be facing the same enforcement issues as they did with all the napster users--there would be too many 'infringers' of this law.
The reason why I say that this law should be passed is because of its sheer folly--millions of Americans will be in 'violation' of this law for doing simple things as writing source code for a class project to just coding things for fun. Lets see all 20 million of them get arrested. They couldn't even do that with napster.
Even if the law does pass, it, like the 20th amendment, will die a quick and painful death.
The issue isn't whether or not us hackers can still get around the protection. We know the copyright scheme will be broken, and the method for doing so posted on Freenet and traded via IRC and hosted on non-U.S. systems running OpenBSD (on older, non-DRM-compliant hardware of course, since OBSD probably won't be able to run on the newer hardware).
This isn't a technical issue. This is a political issue.
The issue is whether or not it is legal to use your computer -- WHICH YOU PAID FOR WITH YOUR OWN MONEY.
There is no reason the government should be able to tell you what you can do with a non-destructive device on your own property.
Thank you for your completely hysteria-free response. I certainly wouldn't want to take "credit" for a lot that goes on around the world in the name of U.S. interests; your points are well-taken. Two things, though:
1. The U.S. is unrivaled militarily, but is far from alone in its successes (or predations, as the case may be) on the financial front. Europe, Canada, Japan, and an ever-growing list of newcomers compete effectively in the race to make all the money in the world. I would never argue that what international mega-corps do to the less-developed nations is right, but I would deny that the U.S. is alone or even sets the standard. Certainly we don't spare ourselves the hazards of "efficiency". It's routine for hundreds or thousands of Americans to lose there jobs when a large company decides it has become too "fat" to compete. To Americans, a lot of the complaining we hear sounds like the whining of sore losers. (No doubt other nations fail to share this view.)
2. I would deny that military power, while currently not in vogue, is passe. The fact that you can make this mistake speaks volumes for the relative peace that the age of the superpowers has imposed since WWII, but it is too optimistic to expect it to last forever. U.S. foreign policy is frequently crude, but it's not imperialistic. That doesn't mean it couldn't be; Americans are simply not imperialists. We're no saints, but most of the bashing we take seems to stem from our overdog status. Remember when "only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday sun"? Our time too will pass, and then it will be okay to like us.
SSSCA (or anything similar) will probably accelerate a move of technological innovation to places other than the U.S. Who knows, we might see American computer science researchers enjoying long sabbaticals in Thailand or India, where they'll be able to work relatively unfettered. All in all, I'd see the SSSCA giving short-term benefits to big U.S. companies, but undermining the long-term health and competitiveness of U.S. industry. Oh well. We can still grow corn and stuff.
ok.. you almost have the handbasket... now be nice little sheep, get in. yes, now push off, and you'll be in hell in no time.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Think of all the miata's this argument has bought lawyers 16 year old daughters.
Think of all the people that could have eaten with the money used to buy all of those miatas.
Welcome to the 3rd world ladies and gentlemen.
It has not escaped my attention that Sen. Hollings hails from a state that, AFAIK, has absolutely nothing to do with the media industry, tech industry, or their adversaries. As such, any legislation he pursues in this arena will have little or no effect on his ability to be re-elected or to receive perks from the industry, despite what others may think.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
"We don't even have a dictionary in the public domain that is clear enough to scan in with OCR software. (I'm not sure of the current status.)"
Does this explain your idiosyncratic spellings of "deem", "reeling", "plagiarize", "aggregate", "acknowledges", "inherently", "privileges"? You know, if you read books now and again, you'd recognize a correctly spelled English word when you saw one.
Did you pay for that oxygen? Huh??
Fucking communists.
Senator Hollings's office,
This letter is being addressed to your office for your capacity as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and co-sponsor of the proposed legislation the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA). The legislation that you are proposing will have a definite, immediate, and chilling effect on the economic growth of the technology and entertainment industries for the foreseeable future.
I would like to point out that your legislation intends on preventing free market forces from being allowed to shape the economic growth of these industries by creating artificial barriers intended to maintain the current balance of power/wealth held by the copyright holders. This is very similar to the competition felt by the railroad industry from the automobile, in that both the railroad and record/movie labels depended upon their absolute control over all major distribution channels for their sources of revenue (the record industry receives 94% of total revenue from CD sales). The PC/internet is like the automobile/highway system in that it frees the masses from having to rely on a bulky, inefficient, and tightly controlled distribution channel that allows for illegal price fixing, for which the record industry has been found guilty of in the past. I am not an advocate of any form of piracy because if the government were to allow the markets to naturally rebalance themselves, they could now do so in such a way that piracy would no longer be an attractive option for consumers, unless you feel that every citizen is a thief at heart. This would be do to the volume of scale involved with the internet distribution of data including songs and movies.
To illustrate this point the average cost per song on a CD is ~$2 for the consumer. This $2 includes certain privileges like owning the physical media, protective case, label and lyrics, the ability to create copies for personal use within the fair use doctrine, unlimited listening, portability, and then the right to sell the CD provided that you don't keep any copies. Under the current overpriced CD distribution scheme, very few successful CDs will sell a million or more copies. By contrast is the reported popularity of some pirated songs on the Internet which regularly exceeded ten million downloads. If the record companies were to offer their songs for sale on the internet with the legal right to download the songs, giving the buyers full fair-use privileges, the ability to create playable audio CDs, unlimited listening ability, and portability for a cost that reflects the volume of scale, lack of overhead, and fair profit margins they would see immediate, dramatic, and profitable sales.
Instead these companies are moving their businesses online in a way that allows them to continue to maintain the same near absolute control over the online music industry that was had by their control over the traditional distribution channels. Should the railroads been given control over all highways? If allowed to continue, your proposed legislation will allow these industries to continue their abuses on the consumers by way of forcing consumers to pay every time they listen to a song/see a movie/read a book, without regard to any legal fair use. As proof of their true intensions the record industries current online ventures have proposed an insulting royalty payments from online sales to the artists they claim to represent/protect. Some of these songs being sold online by the record companies don't even have a legal right to sell online, and the artists' who own the online rights are threatening them with lawsuits and sending cease and desist orders, which the record industry has chooses to ignore.
To end I would like to include a quote from Robert Heinlein's "Life-Line"
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
All opinions expressed within are mine alone and by no means represent those of my employer.
E-Mail!
How many copies of that stupid ps602 Internet Email Tax hoax have you received in your lifetime? Ever notice that it keep resurfacing every six months or so? It works because it hits people at an emotional level.
What I'm proposing is this: one or more e-mail letters are drafted that specifically paint the SSSCC as pork barrel that benefits the porn industry. Let people know that many of their congresscritters have already come out in favor of this piece of legislation. Let people know that if passed, it will severly limit what they can do with legitimate material, including child-safe Disney cartoons -- ALL TO BENEFIT THE PORN INDUSTRY!
We need to start circulating this now, to everyone you know. Aunt Sally. Uncle Fred. Grandma. Your dog. Everyone. Hit the minivan moms. Everyone. With the proper social engineering, this could sweep the nation, and then resurface in six months or a year or so.
Gawd, this is a brilliant stroke of inspiration! It's got to work!
they should. i know one of you out there is within personal contact of A senator. a good handful of you must be. SEND THEM A LINK TO THIS DISCUSSION FEED!
computer geekdom: a way of life. a real, honest, solid genre of people, with it's own mythology, it's own history, it's own unique culture. The SSSCA will DESTROY geek culture. it will kill us all, in a very real way. someone has to stop this madness.
At least with Intels option, market conditions can more quickly adapt. Thus, when everyone quits buying the hardware, intel can quit making it.
If it becomes law, as hollywad wants, the requirement will never go away.
Move to SC, vote for whoever might beat Hollings and let him know why.
...and don't buy Disney
>>>>truth; beauty; unix.<<<<
I have seen a couple links about people saying they should write their congress-person(sic?) but seeing as this is a bill in the Senate wouldn't it be better to write your Senator? Heck you can email them these days (probably a better chance of getting through with all the anthrax scares).
Intel (and others) do not "get leverage over" Hollywood if SSSCA is not passed, they merely avoid getting fucked over *by* Hollywood, and everybody avoids getting fucked over by the government again for once, as well as by Hollywodd. Jeez, talk about blaming the victim for the crime...
If Hollywood has a problem with advances in technology, it's their own fault as a result of
their own indolence and greed. There is no guarantee or expectation arising from the U.S. constitution that the govt. will shield or protect anyone's profits from percieved or alleged threats incidental to technological advances.
Hollywood is the one attempting the shakedown here. The tech industry will be *well* advised to tell Hollywood to put their copy-protection concerns where the sun don't shine until such time as the proposed SSSCA is well and truly withdrawn from any kind of consideration.
(For that matter until, in addition, the DMCA is a least rewritten, and maybe a serious look is taken at the role and functions of the FCC, and WTF possessed the last administration to fuck up DNS administration so badly by creating a by turns spineless and fascist wannabe govt quasi corp. like ICANN which has merely spawned for the most part a bunch of free-loading commercial opportunists, speculators, spammers, and rent-seekers instead of reliable and professional registries, at the expense of long-established registrars and TLD's, not to mention making things more difficult for anyone who needs to register and administer domains. But one thing at the time, maybe)
I recommend they do this, and further, spend a few bucks to unseat some incumbent Senators and congressmen, if necessary. Otherwise, well, we ain't even seen piracy yet, if you ask me. I say that to remind them that they need to think about their customers here, first. Without us, your stockholders do not earn dividends. So kindly do not roll over on us like the tobacco industry and others have done in the face of extortion by legislation and litigation.
--rgb
There are a number of countries outside the US (intentional tautology), and also a number of multi-national companies that originated outside of the US-- neither of these two groups is going to be too happy about having the hardware they wish to purchase effectively controlled by laws implemented to please a small number of people in Hollywood...
I imagine that this will have something of an impact on the US tech. trade with the rest of the world...
-- At rest in the information super layby.
Corruption?
You're soaking in it now.
The whole notion of trying to work copy protection into your hard disk is clearly ridiculous. It isn't going to seriously prevent movie piracy, and it isn't going to seriously increase the movie and record studios' bottom lines. I think that even Jack and Hillary know that (though maybe Fritz doesn't).
By and large, I don't really care if I can make copies of the stuff put out by the music and movie industries. If they want to make it hard for me to see their stuff, I suppose I will just have to see less of it. I don't plan to spend any more money under a pay-per-view regime; just view much less. When you get right down to it, I don't care if their crap is uncopyable, as long as I can continue to copy my own stuff and share it with other people.
Now, is it really possible that even the U.S. Congress would pass a law prohibiting people from copying even their own material? Is it reasonable that people will be forbidden from copying Word documents or sharing home videos over the Internet with their friends and with the public at large? If these things cannot be done, then personal computers as we understand them will not exist. Not even 100% paid-for congressmen are going to outlaw PCs; there is already too much infrastructure and dependency on them to outlaw them.
SSSCA will not increase the MPAA's profits, nor will it likely reduce piracy. It also attacks the principles of the public domain and fair use, but these things have been under assault for a long time, and the SSSCA isn't going to make or break the issue. It is a bad idea and should be challenged, but I have to wonder, apart from access to increasingly trite and repetitive movies and music, what would such a scheme really cost us in the long run?
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!
A law this invasive will finally push the intellectual-property/freedom issue in front of everyone. Then we can finally have the open rebellion this country needs.
Liberty in your lifetime
I sent this off the the NY senators:
.mp3's across wireless networks. Printers can print text from copyrighted books. Scanners can digitize copyrighted photos. The list can go on ad-infinitum.
It has come to my attention that there is a bill being floated about in committee that is attempting to force the technology sector into building copyright protection into their hardware to somehow promote broadband usage.
While I applaud the attempt to protect corporation's ability to collect royalties, this attempt is so misguided that it would kill the tech sector.
Imagine what this bill will legislate: That every manufacturer of every beeper, vcr, dvd player, CD-drive, PDA, cellphone, computer, computer drives, printer, cables, router, networking equipment, TV, toaster, vehicle, radio, electronic clock, telephone system, refrigerator, etc. sold in the US will be required to include this copyprotection or face $500,000 fines.
This partial list may seem unrealistic, but not if you sit back and think about it. Cellphones can now transmit data, including
Manufacturers would be required to add this special hardware to every piece of electronic equipment produced for the US, increasing the cost of production.. also increasing the cost of individual items. In a world where everyone is trying to cut costs just to stimulate consumer spending; this could be a death sentenence.
On top of this, the SSSCA bill is attempting to make this copy protection retroactive.. making every piece of electronic equipment in the US illegal.
Lastly, it would punish every consumer in the US for the actions of a few; who will, in anycase, just find another way to get around the copy protection... an action which is already illegal.
I hope you will take the time to review the ramifications of this proposal and help to stop this misadventure.
==
Maybe someone will get a clue.
Ah fuck it.
They're going to get this legislation, one way or another. Might as well just get it over with. I'm convinced our elected officials are incapable of comprehending the holocaust this will cause until it actually happens. There really is no other way.
I'm kind of looking forward to it. It's going to be fascinating.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
excellent. don't underestimate the degree to which
the commerce dept views American entertainment
as a product.
When other countries trie to protect their own
culture, Uncle Sam says there is no such thing as
culture just products.
My point they are intent on doing anything to making $$$ from Mouse and freinds.
The irony is that all this copyright,patent shit
is counter to the natural processes that brought
us to where we are now.
the end result is creative gridlock.
or maybe even better Innovation Gridlock.
( unless Billg really has made the word "innovation" so defaced that no thinking person
can use it.
The US has already done this...
I remember about 10 years ago when some people were injured due to festival "seating" (which means there are no seats). It was all over the local news. Later, a rep from the state legislature then said (paraphrasing): "while researching so that we could make a law against festival seating, we discovered it was already Illegal."
If the people who write laws cannot keep track of them, then how can they expect the common citizen to obey them???
I even remember watching some TV show, and a copper saying basicly that everyone is always breaking the law, and police have to constantly make subjective judgement calls wether or not to arrest them.
You know what? I give up. There's nothing that a post on Slashdot or a letter to your congressman is going to accomplish. The govermnet is in the pocket of the corporations now. The only solution is to leave the country and move to another country without such restrictions. Any suggestions? Finland perhaps? Norway? If there was a mass exodus of all the IT people, that would put a stop to this nonsense.
Or maybe would could organise a million IT worker march on Washington. That would get us some media attention.
Or hey, how about a slashdot union? If everoyne on slashdot joins the union we'll get union protection and be able to shut down every major corporation at once to get our way.
Mod this up ac or not.
the end result of eula,dmca, sssca, the "new" copyright,the "new" patents,( the 5 horsemen of
the apocalypse) is CREATIVE GRIDLOCK.
while the corps are busy nickle and diming each
other only the lawyering will remain the only growth industry.
So what is meant to protect America's economy will ultimately weaken it.
Irony, the one constant in the human condition.
Is anybody really surprised we aren't on Mars yet.
If this law gets passed, just think what happens when it will become cheap enough to print our own circuits using printers. Hardware hacking and printed chip designs will be passed around that will ignore all of the copy protection schemes out there.
Personally, I don't want to break the law but if this law does pass or someone tries to force me to do things their way, then I will fight back. I will break the law because the time has come to start anew. NO ONE has the right to tell me I can't use something because I have the ability to break to law with it!
I am willing to die for my freedoms, are THEY willing to kill me to take them away? If they are willing to kill me, then I am willing to kill them. It's as easy as that.
This is the final straw which has caused me to actually get off my ass and gather all of the legal info I could find about setting up a PAC (i.e, should be a 503 (1)(c)(4) nonprofit, and all of the accounting and tax rules). This is all from 26 USC 501 & 527.
I hope to read through all of this information, hopefully this weekend. If I think I understand it sufficiently I'll go through the process of actually registering a corporation (by default here in PA, unless anyone has any good reason it should be somewhere else and practical advice on doing it that way).
Assuming I get that far, I'll submit a story to Slashdot w/ all of the particulars inlcuding what I've done so far and what I think I'll need in terms of support resources (people, services, etc).
Anyone w/ any more ideas, info & suggestions is of course free to post here or email them to me.
What they do in Washington is irrelevant to the real world anyway.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Read this before you start writing checks (unless you're loaded, in which case write as many as you want).
Great, copyrights for the rich.
The SSSCA is the biggest opportunity for corporate jujitsu ever offered consumers. I assert that iff the SSSCA is written so that the -ability to assert controls- is not specific to a few, but is available to the many, it is a recording industry death blow.
The recording industry consists of specialists of various kinds. Some of these even have (or had) to do with the sound quality of recorded music (I'll just talk about recorded music and forget about movies, try extending what I say yourself). People who knew how to run a disc cutter, for example, were contributors to the sonic excellence - or lack thereof - of a given disc.
These specialists' work has largely been outmoded by digital copying. Much recorded music is only ever represented digitally until it's played back. And as the recording industry has become aware, digital storage and retrieval is something many consumers can do.
The recording industry -hires- talent. It does not have the talent as 'employees' but as a sort of hybrid of employees, contractors and indentured servants. The talent, not the recording industry, provides the product. The recording industry provides the package. For this service they receive the bulk of the money paid for the product generated by the talent.
Such a package isn't needed any more. When talent itself realizes this, they may decide the recording industry doesn't help them, and -iff they can assert their own content controls-, the recording industry can be cut out of the value equation. This means that talent will be able to -write their own contracts- based on the type and severity of copy controls they themselves wish to assert.
This does not mean copy controls won't be broken. It does, however, mean that less-severe copy controls will be seen as they should be, enhancement of the work's value, and below a certain point it won't be economically feasible to infringe the work's copyright at a profit. It will then fall to the -talent- to decide what point they will accept as correct.
Look at what else it does: imagine a perfect means exists of forcing a one-cent direct payment to listen to a recorded work of Bill Nelson's. (I am not saying this is good, I am just asking your suspension of disbelief for a few seconds.) Now, if Bill earns a million euros from people listening to "Atom Man Loves Radium Girl" he may conclude that he can wring more money out of that song, right? Wrong. If the content controls are a contract, they aren't subject to change. Your copy grants specific rights, -whatever they happen to be-. Would they be change-able? Impractical and probably fraudulent. Now Bill might re-issue the song with a more interesting mix, and raise the bar, but the existing work comes with a -contract- the artist himself said was OK.
Bill might price himself out of the market with the re-mix. In that case, he'd get lots of pennies from the old version and hardly any from the new. That is OK, right? "Oops, too much for that song, next one better be cheaper."
This is distribution, all right, and it lets the artists decide what they get for their work. All it takes is that the ability to assign content controls be available to anyone who wants to do it.
Therefore, if you are going to write to your favorite politician about SSSCA, please, don't ask them not to pass it. Ask them instead to make sure evenhanded assertion of copyright is available to everyone through the mechanism of SSSCA, and that the copyright agreements mediated or enforced by SSSCA mechanisms be considered contractual.
Many people here seems to wory about what will happen with their current devices. According this page, you can keep 'em. Excerpt:
(b) Exception -- Subsection (a) does not apply to the offer for sale or provision of, or other trafficking in, any previously-owned interactive digital device, if such device was legally manufactured or imported, and sold, prior to the effective date of regulations adopted under section 104 and not subsequently modified in violation of subsection (a) or 103(a).
Actually, what the entertainment industry wants is impossible. Once the code is cracked and the watermark is removed, there's nothing to stop someone from making illegal copies distributing it or even "re-protecting" it with a bogus watermark.
People who pirate content online are already breaking the law. What's going to stop them from breaking this one?
No, the problem here isn't a question of insufficient law. It's an intractable problem of enforcement. I can the "War on Content" looming in the future, just like the long forgotten wars on drugs and terrorism.
Sheesh! This law is already out of date and it's not even a bill, yet!
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
No, it wasn't me. I recently suggested the pay-to-renew plan as a /. story, but it was rejected.
I had thought of the escalating fees, as well. I had thought more of a cumulative progression instead of a geometric one. The increasing fee is good, but somehow I don't think we could get buy-in for geometric scaling.
(I'm on a different system, and AC for the moment.)
I'm sure the musicians on RIAA labels had to record demo tapes before they'd even be considered. If I was a musician trying to get signed by a record label, I wouldn't send them the only copy of my demo tape (or demo CD or whatever) - I'd copy it.
I'm sure writers had to submit drafts. For that matter, they must have handed in plenty of essays at school while they were learning to write. Many people type essays, because there are these wonderful things called computers which check your spelling and let you correct mistakes.
I'm sure most filmmakers started off as independents or amateurs.
I write programs, and I certainly learned to code (on a BBC Micro) by starting from others' programs; computer magazines published complete source code for smallish but non-trivial programs, specifically for this purpose. Many still do (look at the Hands On columns in Personal Computer World; unless they've changed a lot since I last bought a copy, the column authors publish source code to their Delphi and VB programs occasionally).
The "content providers" whose copyright this is meant to enforce have to ask themselves: if people can't record or copy "content", where does your new talent come from? If you can't copy anything, you're quite close to being unable to produce anything yourself. Yes, the media companies are OK now. They have artists who can already produce "content". But in however many years' time, how will they find the next Britney Spears if she's unable to record music?
It's difficult to make money out of providing content if you don't actually have any.
I could rant about how the whole point of any general-purpose stored-program computer, from a mainframe with the power of an abacus up to to the latest PC or Mac, is that it can carry out any sequence of instructions, on any data, and this would completely defeat the object of computers; but I hope I don't need to.
No offense to the americans here, but quite frankly, this would open up a gaping hole in your market that we, the other countries capable of producing computer hardware, would love to fill. The hardware and software markets outside the usa borders are large markets to say the least, markets in which crippled exports from you would have a hard time competing.
While this may be a bad thing for americans, it's a good thing for the rest of us when the competition shoots itself in the foot.
----- sXe
PROHIBITION OF (interactive) DEVICES
SEC. 101. PROHIBITION OF CERTAIN DEVICES
It is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security systems standards adopted under section 104.
... "interactive digital device" means "any machine, device, product, software, or technology, whether or not included with or as part of some other machine, device, product, software, or technology, that is designed, marketed or used for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving, or copying information in digital form."
[Summary: The private sector has 12 months to agree on a standard, or the Secretary of Commerce will step in. Industry groups that can participate: "representatives of interactive digital device manufacturers and representatives of copyright owners." If industry can agree, the secretary will turn their standard into a regulation; if not, normal government processes apply and NTIA takes the lead. The standard can be later modified. The secretary must certify technologies that adhere to those standards. Also: "The secretary shall certify only those conforming technologies that are available for licensing on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms." FACA, a federal sunshine law, does not apply, and an antitrust exemption is included.]
Does this mean i cant work on my tvset or DVD player myself? ( or anything else under the sun soon ) Since its got software in it that could conceivebly be used to circumvent protection, if i repair it i get fined 500k?? then loose all my belongings and goto jail?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Would you like fries with that?
You know, all of Hollywood's legitimate concerns could have been addressed years ago if a flexible, anonymous payment and royalty collection mechanism had been incorporated into the original HTTP protocol. The consumer would get a better deal, there'd be little economic incentive to pirate, and the media companies would be making much more money than they already are. Whole new formats, genres and content would exist that we can only speculate or leave to science fiction for now.
No wonder Ted Nelson came off as a bitter old drunk on Cringely's PBS special on the history of the 'Net.
No reason to fix things at the point of a gun, though.
--rgb
How about a publicity campaign for the bill, stating that we need everyone to give away their rights to fair use relating to copyrighted materials. "On behalf of the entertainment industry, we would like to ask you to sign over any control over all media to us." That should resonate well with voters...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
At times like this, I'm glad I'm a DJ. You can't copy-protect vinyl!!! (at least, not yet)
look people if every geek, gamer and every o/c modder would boycott the movies you would have the clout you need from the impact you would create.. can`t anyone have a web site for this or even mention it on thier website. we the computer users have to unite and this is A GOOD WAY to show support and get the attention made by your protest from your wallet. if we don`t join together we`ll never have a voice or show a visible reason to be taken serious PERIOD!!. if money is what they want then stop giving it to them... as for myself and family we haven`t been to the movies in years...
Content providers tell us that we need the Federal Government to mandate copy protection on all hardware and software that can process information to control copyrighted materials, so then movies can be sold and distributed online, which will cause an explosion in demand for broadband internet, which will increase demand for new PC hardware.
The little problem with this claim, is that movies are available all over the Internet now for free. So, free movies available should cause an explosion in the demand for broadband, and PC hardware sales should be booming, not shrinking.
The logical conclusion is that a higher price will increase demand for a product?
They tried with the "war on (some) drugs."
They tried with porn.
Porn is more explicit, cheaper, and easier to get than ever. Trying to outlaw it put lots of kids in danger by driving it underground and made lots of sleazy guys in California very, very rich.
Drugs are purer, cheaper, and easier to get than ever. Trying to outlaw it put lots of kids in danger and made lots of Colombians and Mexicans very, very rich.
Someone should mail Valenti an economics textbook and a history of the Soviet Union. The gov't can't tell people want they want. The environment shapes a person's desires.
If he wants children to grow up respecting the property of others, he shouldn't spend so much time glamorizing sleazebags in the 6-8 hrs a day he has them captivated in front of the screen.
They have the secret to preventing widespread piracy in their grasp. By limiting the amount of bandwidth avalible to people, they can prevent around %50+ of the population from being effectively able to download videos, especially if they don't upgrade to V.92. As far as MP3/ogg/whatever audio goes however, the cat's out of the bag and they nearly should give up on it. Mandatory hardware protection is foolish at best, it will turn the average citizen into a criminal more then likely, as has been the case with many other policies for a long time now. Chances are that even poession of the dos "debug" and EPROM programmers util will become illegal, as it will allow people to tweak their hardware to pirate extents. If this passes, I predict it will be the cause of a legal war if not a real war against the corporations who own people such as this senator and the government. The killing of Napster by the RIAA was also a foolhardy move, if you want to kill a product you don't give it hundred of millions of dollars worth of free advertising via the evening news, even if you kill them three more will pop up in their place not unlike a weed. If they had kept things quiet it probably would have blown over or died off on it's own accord like most other .coms.
Don't call my crazy, that's what they called me back in the home!
If anyone is looking for a rigorous analysis of the legitimacy of IP from a libertarian point of view I recommend you give this working paper by Stephan Kinsella a read. Food for thinking.
We could only be so lucky. Hopefully it'd take them...um, let's see: life expectancy is X and I'm currently Y. Let's hope it takes X - Y + 10 years. That'd be just great.
Which is why, when companies like Disney lobbied for copyright extensions, they made sure the law was written to be retroactive. They haven't created anything in recent years that is as high a quality as the stuff that was produced 40-50 years ago. Michael Eisner's job is now much easier since he doesn't have to actually have keep producing new, high quality content. Just keep repackaging the older material in news ways and re-releasing it. These guys don't give a damn if the copyright doesn't end until after they, you, and I are dead. They'll still be making a ton of money. That's all they care about.
``In technology news... reports of a 1 DIP abacus sent technology stocks soaring. Industry officials stated that the `The ability to perform ten operations per second has been a long time in developing in the 20 years since the passing of the old computer era that was legislated out of existence by the DMCA and SSSCA.'. A spokeperson from the MPAA warned that this new technology could be yet another threat to the rights of copyright holders and they are closely watch its development.''
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
People, if we are going to attack this, then we need to get this sort of information out into the open - as far and as wide as possible.
I am suggesting that each of us (within the US anyhow) write a concise letter outlining the SSSCA and what it means to the general public and send this letter to the editor of your local news paper.
While congresscritters find it easy to dismiss one or two people who write, they find it quite impossible to dismiss one or two thousand! There is strength in numbers. Let's educate the public about this sillyness.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
Perhaps you can join us !
The Campaign for Digital Rights is a consumer group that is campaigning against this type of legislation being implemented in the UK, as well as trying to give support to
We formed during last summer and the Free Sklyarov campaign, holding two demonstrations outside the US embassy, one of which was covered on Newsnight (The only nightly news review program).
We have also been campaigning against copy-protected CDs in the UK, in fact we think it's us that Phillips were referring to when they mentioned 'large scale' protests in their press release denouncing copy-protected CDs.
At the moment we are concentrating on making the UK implementation of the EUCD (the European version of the DMCA) being as sensible as possible, with as many exceptions and consumer rights as possible.
You can find us on the web at UK.Eurorights.org, where we have mailing list discussing action to take.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
The SSSCA defines an "interactive digital device" so broadly, even software is included.
Things covered as "interactive digital devices":
Linux
the "cp" command
A digital thermostat
A digital watch
and more...
Read the law - it is very broadly constructed.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
The SSSCA could require it in the processor. Now what do you do?
Anyway, if you ever wanted to visit the USA, you'd have to never deal in non-compliant hardware or violate the SSSCA in any other manner even though you live outside the USA.
Sklyarov visited Las Vegas and was arrested here for things he did in Russia which were and are legal there.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
For more on how the government is in collusion with large corporations on trying to maintain the status quo while at the same time whittling away at Constitutional rights using vehicles like the SSSCA, I refer you to Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. I submitted the publication of his book as a slashdot story (thinking it might be as newsworthy as some minor kernel change - guess I was wrong), only to have it rejected. Here's the excerpt for folks who want to know more about the SSSCA, the government, and related legislation:
Michael Moore, who some slackers might remember from TV Nation fame, has finally managed to get his book Stupid White Men published - no small feat when the men in question run the White House and America seems to be willing to forgive them even scandals like Enron. Quite a change from just a couple of years ago when a cigar and some oral hanky-panky could get a president impeached, eh? You can buy the book from from a number of different online stores, and if you're lucky you just might find it in a regular brick-and-mortar store as well. Bush-lovers and right-wingers be warned: this isn't your bedtime reading material of choice.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I don't understand how this is a federal case. How can the US gov't claim jurisdiction over every electronic device on the planet? If I go to Canada and buy a digital camera (a still picture camera) then cross the border back into the US, have I committed a federal crime? If I want to keep the property I have legally purchased I must commint a crime by not declaring it through customs as the importation itself is illegal. That is two federal offences. If I were to declare it that's a half million or 5 years (the first time). Bear in mind, I have not stolen anything nor copied any data nor have I violated the "No Electronic Theft Act" (from about 1997).
Does this law extend to used items bought in another country? What about this country? How would this effect our old computers with a new hard drive? How do you stop someone from intercepting the "secure" transmission between two computers (are you using WiFi?, how about a hub).
Oh wait, technologically illiterate Senators don't have to answer these questions they simply make their impossible decrees and expect others to fall in line. After all security schemes like CSS are the ultimate in protection.
What's next, mandatory use of condoms?
For those who think the tech industry can provide a 'more reasonable solution,' think again. Any DRM system is based fundamentally on encryption and obfuscation. The only way it can 'work' is if all hardware and software involved is proprietary, because otherwise, it would be trivial to break. Somewhere, the decryption key(s) must be transmitted and stored. This is partly why CSS was cracked so easily. There's no need to brute-force the keyspace if you can disassemble the crypto mechanism itself. Obviously, this is what DMCA was designed to fight against. Because the user has physical access to both the ciphertext and key, encryption becomes only an obfuscation technique. So anyways, because OS-level software must be involved if you're going to design a complete computer system this way, the code for it must be proprietary. Otherwise, you could just watch the plaintext and/or keys being passed back and forth throughout authentication and playback. The possible implications for Open Source software and operating systems are fairly obvious. For example, how is the Linux kernel supposed to access a disk if the ATA and SCSI interfaces themselves require authentication? You could use a proprietary module, but at such a low level, what would talk it? The whole VM subsystem would have to be proprietary too.. and the video subsystem, and sound.. and eventually, you wouldn't even have the Linux kernel anymore. Then you move beyond the kernel and every application that touches "protected" content must be fully proprietary along with all libraries used and any interfaces with the rest of the system, probably X included. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if SSSCA would, in effect, make nearly all Open Source software illegal. And if SSSCA doesn't get passed and the tech industry comes up with it's own solution, the DMCA will then make Open Source software illegal on new hardware because the only way it could work is by breaking the whole DRM scheme.
That being said, I really doubt this kinda crap will go through. The tech industry realizes full well the possible ramifications.
* Transistors? Add a DRM input to each.
* Electrons? Sorry, do you have permission to enter this energy level?
* The laws of nature? Ooops, we forgot about rich guys in LA when we put those together, let's revise them.
It does sound like a conspiracy theory, but listen to it this way: "If you want your music to be heard on the latest generation of equipment, you just have to sign with us." It makes a certain, twisted sense, but I think it's just an unintended, but welcome side effect.
Though, I think it will cause a lot of talent to either go outside the country or stagnate.
-------------------------------------------------
That would be almost as illegal as an OFF switch on your television!
Blancmange
Actually, the EU commission can make "directives" that is STRONGER than the memberstates CONSTITUTION whitout we being able to protest. And since the commission is as corrupt as U.S. senate we will simply not stand a chance. We will be runned over as we where with the software patent. Our only hope is probaly the french farmers (they always get their ideas throught of some reasons - probaly because the dump dung outside the EU commission) but I don't think they have any intrest in stopping this.
What we need is a PC design that uses open source VHDL to build an FPGA PC to implement an open PC architecture design that people can build on to to get their own pc designs that do not have this copy prottection because sooner or later, hollywood will want the PC chipsets thenselves to implement this nonsence deep in the chipset so that it will be harder to remove, but FPGA's are getting bigger all the time, sooner or later, it will become possible to implement a PC in an FPGA with a CPU connected to it..?
I wish people stop using the fashionable oxymoron "Intellectual Property".
For me the ultimate reason why information can't be owned is the necessity of Mind Police to enforce such kind of property.
Please, use the words with care.
After reading some of the posts it seems to me like a lot of people have very negative opinions aburt . So why not start some sort of organisation that works against this kind of laws . If such an organasation exists i have never heard of it and then this can bee seen as criticism to thier pr strategy.
Do you have any idea how many bits and bytes are generated or acquired and stored on a daily basis by the scientists and engineers of this fair country?
Restricting the ability to move around and manipulate reams of digital data will hinder research efforts and bring the livelihood of of our country to a halt.. These idiots in congress need to have their heads yanked from their arses and examined!..
Computers are only tools to enhance the way we live. It is the individual who decides to use it for good or evil. I would not like to see a day that I could not get a computer that don't have copyright protection on it. That will be the day that we live in a "Police State". Everyone will need a permit to have a computer or run one.
WAKE UP people! Don't let them take your God given rights as citizens of the United States of America. Fight for those rights, since those are the only thing worth living for!
Big companies - wants you to do this....
Buy their products and shut up
Buy more of their products and shut up
This goes to the major recording industry and the movie industry trying to protect their bottom line or profit margin. They don't care of your individual rights. All they want is for you do buy their products and shut up. They want you to be the cattle while they are the cowboys hearding us to the pasture!
What about those prople that buy thier music or movies legally. Would they punish the innocent? Would they monitor the way we use our computer? Will they handicap your computer so you can't do nothing with it?
There are more pressing problems that needs to be solve in this little planet we call Earth. Hunger, Famine, Cancer, National resources, etc... etc.. etc..
I urge you to boycott the movie and music industry. Stop buying their DVD, their music, their products! We as united can stand up againts this tyranny!
Macintosh for Productivity
Linux for Development
Palm for Mobility
Windows for Solitaire
Republished with permission from the author. Original publication from Maccentral Forum by hidozage.
Apple is like a strange drug that you just cant quite get enough of they shouldnt call it Mac. They should call it crack
Lighten up, USians... this is great news for the rest of the world. Glad to see you folks are gonna bite the bullet and hoard all those great movies that Hollywodd churns out ad nauseum for yourselves. With your new copy protection the rest of us wopn't be able to watch them. I love it. Those brilliant folks in the US entertainment industry have done and are doing more to aid cultural industries in the rest of the world than either the Iron Curtain or the Great Wall of China. In the future if I want to watch one of Arnold's extravaganzas I'll have to cross the border.
Wait a minute... aren't they throwing visitors in the can down there and throwing away the key if they look suspicious? Maybe I'll just tune into CBC here at home.
Now if we can just get them to install this junk in the TV sets....
OK, here's an analogy that even our breathtakingly retarded politicians can understand, even if they're just pretending to be stupid because they are in the back pocket of some of the wealthiest human beings on earth (who clearly need laws passed to protect them from the minimum wage making masses):
Imagine a law proposed by law enforcement agencies, that requires that anything that could be used as a weapon, to make a weapon, to harm or by inaction come to be harmed a law enforcement officer, would be required to incorporate technology to detect whether it was about to harm a law enforcement officer, and refuse to operate in that case.
Obviously the MPAA is thinking about PC's, hard disks, and audio/video entertainment devices here. What they've crafted is something so overbroad, it's like saying that every lead pipe, brick, or 2x4 made must by law fail to operate if it's about to whack a cop upside the head. This is *totally* insane. Let's think of a few devices capable or storing, transmitting, or processing digital data. DNA. A flashlight. A penny. Your mom. Photographic paper. A VHS videotape. A light switch. An ethernet cable. A piece of wire.
However, if it comes into effect, there's always the option of smuggling in copy-unprotected hw from other countries, such as Canada. After all, the USA may be able to push a lot of third world countries around, but I doubt that they'll try to force this bucketload of crap down my country's throat.
Now's the best time, I figure, to start spamming politicians and threaten not to re-elect them if they support SSSCA. Chances are that they won't listen, but there's still quite a few who fear for their political careers.
Of course, there's also smearing, riots, terrorist activities (you don't have to be from another country to be a terrorist, contrary to what Dubya wants you to think), and other more violent ways of getting the message across.
Just don't get busted. Americans, your country is in more danger of stupidity from your government. Remind your officials in Washington why you voted for them -- to keep tripe like the SSSCA in the garbage, where it belongs.
Thank you.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
Unfortunately I know of no ethics framework other then satanism which tells people to accumulate wealth. Certainly none of the traditional religions which form the core of our ethics system do. Jesus, budha, mohammed all preached a life of simplicity and charity. Of the three mohammed was the most "earthly" and even he commanded his people to tithe 10%. Jesus certainly had problems with wealth accumulation and budha of course preached a life of poverty pretty much.
The first commandment of capitalism (and therefore corporations) is "tho shalt accumulate as much wealth as possible". At the opposite end of that you have "it is harder for a rich man to get into heaven then a camel to go through the eye of a needle". It's the american cognitive dissonance engine. In god we trust, after wealth we toil.
War is necrophilia.
Let me say it again. Secure Digital Rights Management is as simple as creating proprietary devices and interfaces with which the end user will view/listen/read the media.
Rather than trying to tie down the PC, why not create a proprietary "box" which will read/display copyrighted media. Say for example, the "DRM" box. A DRM box is like a computer - it has a monitor and keyboard, and perhaps a mouse, but none of the PC interfaces - no USB, no parallel, no HD, not even a floppy. Yes, it has an ethernet card and internal hard drive, but both the ethernet card and hard drive rely on proprietary drivers to unlock the hardware - that way, the average person won't be able to yank out the HD and put it in a PC and copy the content. And the DRM box will be internet enabled, but it will check every downloaded file for copyright infringement. Likewise, the only removable media supported will be CDROM - that way, you can listen to content, but not copy it.
When it comes down to it, most people don't want a PC for the sake of having a general purpose computer - they want an entertainment device with Internet access. A "DRM" box, rather than a PC, would work well for both the content control groups (MPAA, RIAA) and the average content consumers.
To be honest, I don't see any need for the general consumer to have a general purpose computing machine, when what they really want is an entertainment device. Why by a DVD drive for my PC and watch movies on a 17" monitor when I can buy myself a DVD player for less money and watch movies on a big screen?
Dear Senator Feinstein,
I am a constituent writing to you regarding the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee's hearings on 2/28/2002 regarding intellectual property protection requirements for computers and digital devices, and the draft Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) by Senator Hollings.
Few would argue against Hollywood's goal of preventing the distribution of reproduced copies of copyright-protected content. However adopting the proposal in the draft SSSCA would be terribly destructive because in pursuit of this goal it both forecloses digital viewing of independently created content, and takes all reasonable control away from the content purchaser. It is not my place to suggest possible alternate means of achieving their goal, however I would like to point out some of the problems in the proposal, in hopes that you will come to agree with me that significant further study is needed before the concept of any Federally mandated measure could begin to be entertained.
To understand the problems with draft SSSCA, some background facts need to be appreciated.
First, it is important to understand that the Internet to date has been a medium of free exchange of expression. Its technical architecture is fundamentally based on the assumption that getting information from sender to recipient is the goal. This assumption is so deeply-seated that if communication is ever blocked, the Internet itself seeks out another route. In this regard, the Internet is like an error-resistant Post Office, faithfully delivering messages with admirable determination. Together with nearly universal access, it is this highly democratic, forum-like characteristic that has made the technology, culture, and, yes, the business boom of the Internet possible -- marking one of America's great modern achievements.
Second, as computers have spread throughout society, the creativity of private US citizens has increasingly transpired not on paper or canvas or in the concert hall, but on the computer. People are making media, from children at school, through to neighborhood rock bands recording albums at home, to artists creating digital paintings and collage works. Digital photography, for example, is a creative medium intimately linked to the computer in the home.
Third, in the world of computers and the Internet, every creation takes the same essential form -- a file (sometimes called a 'stream') is a sequence of 1's and 0's. All digital content, whether music recording, love sonnet, or home movie, is stored on a hard drive and transmitted over the Internet as a file. Due to the nature of computers, there is no other possibility.
Let us also quickly review the essential legal nature of copyright:
1. Not all content is protected by copyright.
2. All copyrighted content may be legally used in numerous ways that its publisher would prefer not to occur.
3. Copyright is temporary, not permanent, per the US Constitution.
4. After copyright expires, works are intended to pass into the public domain for use by all citizens.
5. Because of 3, all content eventually becomes unprotected by copyright.
Now then. The draft SSSCA would change all computers -- indeed, all digital devices -- to reject all digital content that is not stamped with information telling how the publisher says it can be used. This turns the free transmission principle on its head, utterly. Rather than a medium of free communication, it would make the Internet and all the computers attached to it a place where only certain, specifically authorized, pieces of content could be found.
This is where a world of complicated problems enter the picture, and is why the draft SSSCA cannot be accepted.
There are more problems than I can list with the draft SSSCA, so let me concentrate on a 'Top 10' list of the worst ones that I can see:
1. It would end the Internet's value as a public commons for speech, since only 'authorized' speech bearing the stamp could take place there. The importance of this factor cannot be overstated, and should make the draft SSSCA an affront to any guardian of the public sphere, not to mention vulnerable to Constitutional challenge.
2. No computer (or device) would be able to play any piece of digital media lacking the stamp. This has many serious implications, the most obvious of which is that no computer or device would be able to play such common locally-created items as children's movies or animations created in school, home photographs, and so on. Only 'brand-name' entertainment would be possible. While this is a laughable scenario, close reading of the draft SSSCA would appear to require it.
3. In the proposed scheme, any hobby or volunteer art, or promotional content, created with the intention of being shared freely (e.g. not stamped) would be excluded. For example, music directly published for sharing by the artists who created it, unaffiliated with any major publisher. This is not only undemocratic and a governmental interference with free speech, it also raises serious issues of government-sanctioned market protectionism by keeping independent content away from the digital audience.
4. In the proposed scheme, the stamp becomes equivalent to permission to publish expression to the American public. This is fundamentally against the free speech principle. Speech must not require permission.
5. Requiring a stamp sounds suspicious enough, but much more so when we ask: Who issues the stamp? Will there be a cost? What should the cost be? Will all applicants be treated fairly? Since the stamp is prerequisite to -any- display on -any- computer or device, these questions are crucial. Can an entertainment industry entity be trusted with this gatekeeper duty? Is it wise or appropriate to have such a universal gatekeeper at all? How can having a designated universal gatekeeper be consistent with free speech?
6. Currently any challenges regarding the originality of a work are brought to civil court under the Copyright Act, after publication of the work. Under the SSSCA scheme, stamp denials could occur before publication. So if stamps were to be issued by the Government, there would be Constitutional questions of governmental prior restraint. Troubling questions, too, since the question of originality is frequently ambiguous, making the process vulnerable to charges of censorship under color of authority.
7. No computer (or device) would be able to allow the owner unprotected access to any piece of digital media containing the DRM stamp. This has many serious implications, including preventing wholly reasonable and otherwise legally sanctioned 'fair uses' of the content by the customer. For example, space-shifting (making an MP3 file from an album for listening while exercising) or format-shifting (copying onto a laptop computer for listening during a business trip) or making a back-up copy in case the purchased copy is ever damaged.
8. The proposed scope of 'All interactive digital devices' is indefensibly broad, not to mention the fact that it indicates a troublingly naive picture of the digital world. Despite having no way to receive files, typewriters and thermometers are digital and interactive and so could be required to implement useless and expensive content management technology. Similarly, there are any number of interactive digital devices and components not intended as media players whose technical functionality and/or cost would simply be made unfeasible by attempting to add rights-management features. So a certain quality of 'magical thinking' about how technology works and what is in fact possible is in evidence. We can be certain that the SSSCA was not drafted with the involvement of anyone who ever engineered any digital device, and this alone is reason for much further study.
9. The required access control mechanism would survive the copyright's expiration, therefore none of this content will be able to pass into the public domain. This allows publishers to cheat the public out of the Constitutional 'copyright bargain' by hoarding the work after having already harvested the financial benefits of selling it.
10. The draft SSSCA has a bad synergy with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA criminalizes the existence and possession of any measure allowing circumvention of access control technologies, irrespective of copyright validity or infringing intent. This cements two of the above SSSCA problems: content that will never pass into the public domain, and content that cannot be reasonably re-used by the legitimate customer. Also, like the DMCA, the penalties are unnecessarily draconian ($500,000/5 years imprisonment), are redundant to the penalties available under the Copyright Act for intentional infringement, do not require an intent to infringe. The SSSCA penalties would also appear to be wholly redundant to the DMCA.
Given all the serious problems listed above, it is extremely distressing that the Committee has entertained the draft SSSCA at all. Please, I would ask you to consider the matter of the SSSCA carefully, and I would urge you to call for further study and a more reasonable, less destructive proposal before further discussion of any possible legislation in this area.
Sincerely,
-- SnogwozzleIf you /really/ want to be like that, then the rest of the world will just ignore you - you can go back to being the isolationist state that you were for many years, and the rest of the world will be happy to avoid you.
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Interestingly enough, I believe most of AMD's processors are actually fabbed in Europe - Dresden, in fact.
Take a look at this and do the sums - most of AMD's fab's are outside the US.
The US really isn't the centre of the world, you know . .
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
The man's obviously NOT acting in the interests of the people of SC, let alone of the nation, but instead acting in the interests of a business that really isn't even IN his constituency. At the very least, you should be building up a campaign of "anything BUT Hollings" for when his term is up. Tell everyone you know about the SSSCA (What it is and what it means- most people when told what this silly law means in laymen's terms, they get really, really pissed off about it...) and that HE's the one that is backing the bill in the Senate. Bluntly, the man is NOT working in the interests of his constituency OR the country as a whole. He doesn't need to hold that office any more.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...that unregulated things. As someone else put it, it's been shown that it wasn't a good idea in the first place, why do we need the content industries writing their own laws regarding copyright?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
They're mandating DRM on everything- and if it's really there in a way that's "useful" to the content industries, it will prevent any usages not DRMed.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I think we (geeks) will eventually be forced to learn politics. And lesson one will probably be that 'the politics of vengeance' doesn't work. Instead of focusing on 'punishing' Hollings for introducing a bad law, in the hope of making an example of him, we need to start a realistic assessment of how different Senators will vote on the law. Now here's the important point: don't waste any energy on the Senators who will definitely vote for the law, like Hillary Clinton who receives huge checks from ??AA. Concentrate on the Senators who really don't care, and would only be voting for the law to earn a point with Hollings. If they don't have a piece of the action, they might be willing to oppose the law if they could earn some money or good publicity by doing so.
Someday we will learn real politics instead of futile ranting. Or else we will end up like the Palestinians.
Do we really need to start an official boycott just to get people to avoid going to see new movies or renting new movies? What I mean to say is that Hollywood has a VERY hard time putting out movies that are worth my time in the first place. Personally, I've been boycotting most of Hollywood for years-- and as a result have more free time, a better imagination, and (miracle of miracles) a better social life. I also feel smarter, but that may just be my own ego speaking. The point is, Hollywood is trying to make an inferior product EVEN HARDER to access and enjoy. Now, does that make good business sense to anyone else?
What happens to my favorite (very obscure) music? Do I have to buy new copies of CD's that took me several months to find the first time? I get the impression that that's what this particular law is effectively designed to do...
If this law does pass, how can it be struck down by the Supreme Court?
Hey Kirkoff
/usr/games/fortune