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Chained Melodies
NoData writes: "Salon is running an elegant article that covers the current state of the copy protection and circumvention debate. The article touches on the DMCA and the SSSCA, with input from Touretzky, Lessig, and others. It offers a dystopic vision of a future where geeks battle increasingly complex copy protection schemes until ultimately, any consumer control over media is outlawed outright. Refreshingly, the article is not a "Salon Premium" feature."
For anyone who has seen the Snipes/Stalone movie 'Demoliton Man', you have my sincere apology.
But, more importantly, this dystopian future that Salon highlights is paralleled in the movie. There's only one restaurant, Taco Bell, no salt (cause its bad for you), etc.
I recommend everyone watch it but not tell anyone that you did out of shame. Kinda like Mothman Prophecies, except that movie really, really, really sucked.
I mean... you'll get the answer you're looking for, which is opposition to this abomination.
By the way, why are Lessig, Felten, and the EFF crew not on every op-ed in the country? Do they not take this seriously?
sulli
RTFJ.
Hollings is FULL OF SHIT to say that people don't buy broadband due to lack of movies online. Why?
1. Movies are available online, albeit in crappy divx format and illegal. But they are there.
2. At least my customers don't make their buying decisions based on this! They buy broadband for standard internet services. Or they don't, because the coverage isn't there, or they don't use the net enough to pay for DSL. Never have I heard this as a reason not to order, or to cancel - and believe me, I have heard 100s of reasons. NEVER.
Look, movies are everywhere. You can buy or rent DVDs on literally any street corner. You can order hundreds of thousands of DVDs and VHS tapes from Amazon and the like. Broadband has nothing to do with it!
sulli
RTFJ.
It's the only thing outside of mass street protests that will grab both the entertainment industries' and Congress' attention, and this issue doesn't have enough social relevance yet for people to organize and fund protests.
Go ahead if you want and write your representatives, I hope you enjoy the form letter they send back to you in 4-6 weeks acknowledging that lobbyists' money means more than your letter. If you're serious about making yourself heard, call your Reps offices and make an in-office appointment with all of the ducks lined up for your issue. That way when the Rep votes against you, you're more likely to take it personally and vote their butt out of office.
Of course, bitching about this on Slashdot is absolutely the *BEST* way to fight this issue - so convenient, with karma points at stake to boot! Yea...
When are we going to trust the government.
When they stop spying on us, lying to us, and stealing from us, for a start.
Best. Post. Ever.
Not only that, if discussion of copy-prevention circumvention techniques is also illegal under the DMCA, didn't the author of the article break the law by writing about it?
DCMA states that if you break the copyright protection you are a hacker.
Patriot Act states that hackers are terrorists.
Play a CD on your PC, go to jail for life!
Bizzare but true.
R.B.
If I read that US Code right, then the artist who works for a record company doesn't even have the right to perform it, as the artist doesn't hold the copyright on the music itself (Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 106). I may just be smoking rope here, but that's the way it looks.
According to a NYTimes editorial a couple of weeks ago, Napster had 90 million unique users at its peak. I don't know exactly how many of those were American, though I hear that the bulk of internet users in the world are American. I don't know how many of them are, or will be by this November, over 18, but considering that Napster was so popular on college campuses, I think we can assume that the bulk of them are or soon will be over 18.
So maybe 45 million Americans of voting age used Napster. Maybe more. That's a larger number of people than the entire populations of African-Americans and Asian-Americans combined. (Check it out at www.census.gov).
My point here being that this is an enormous block of potential voters who are saying, by means of their behavior, that they resist to some degree the current protections offered to copyright holders. (And I mean by this not just IP protection but also access to store shelves or radio play--try to get your music played on commercial radio without major label backing.) No politician would ignore the voices of a group of this size if it were an ethnic group, so why are they so damn inclined to side with the media companies here?
I guess the answer is: we don't present a unified political front. But perhaps we should. Media companies already have too much power in this country.
That's a common misconception. While it is true that many politicians recieve much money from many special intrest groups, almost none are "owned" by their contributers.
Obviously once a politician is in office he's more likely to listen to the people who voted for him; not the people that gave him money. I know you're just whining and bitching with out accurate information, so let me enlighten you.
I worked as an intern for a Californian US House Rep, filing letters, phone calls, faxes, emails etc. Actually my job was to start designing the requirements for a software app that would put all that data together into a statistical form, so the Chief could see the data on how many people were pro on what, and how they submitted.
Here is what I learned: In every case I was involved in the data collection process (which was just about every major issue for the 18 months I worked there), the Chief went with the public consensus. In the cases he went against it, he always made sure to meet with his advisors and other Reps to make verify his own thoughts.
When he envitably decided to go against the constituents (which was only rarely) he always gave me write-up to put on his webpage.
Maybe you should try actually investigating things, rather than just spitting up everything you've ever read.
This article simply grazed the important point in all this (IMHO), which is that the industry is attempting to make it illegal to own something which *could* be used for legal purposes. The law currently says that substantial noninfringing use is good enough not to be held liable for infringement, so they are changing the law, but lets see how the philosophy of this new law would work in the future.
Handguns are illegal because they could be used to kill
butter knives are illegal because they could be used to kill or at the very least commit battery
cars are illegal because they could be used to kill
alcohol is illegal because it could be given to a minor, which is illegal
rope is illegal because it could be used to hang someone with
The philosophy of this law points out the idea behind the statement "live free or die!" We might as well kill our selves because we are not living our own lives, we would be living the lives the media companies would want us to live, which is the lives that the major advertisers wants us to live. We would all be dudes owning Dells, drinking coke, wearing gap jeans, etc. This law should not be fought on technical grounds, but on philosophical grounds.
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
Hollings, who has received $264,534 in campaign contributions from the TV, music and movie industries since 1997, has attempted to argue that standardized copy protection is the key to encouraging the continuing rollout of broadband Net connectivity. According to this theory, customers won't sign up for DSL or cable Internet access if they can't get top-notch entertainment via their computers.
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Hollings is the worst kind of idiot if he truly believes that. I couldn't care LESS about getting "entertainment" via the 'net, "top-notch" or otherwise. That's why I have a TV, DVD/Laser player, stereo, etc.
Honestly, this obsession with getting movies and TV via the Internet has consistently baffled me. Am I the only one asking "Why bother?" Am I the only one who realizes that the current Internet BACKBONE could never support the sustained load from nine zillion people trying to stream "Shrek" or "The Matrix" or whatever else over a broadband connection?
Yes, I have DSL. And static IP's. I use it because I wanted to be self-hosted. While I recognize that Joe Consumer probably doesn't even know what Unix is, let alone how to self-host (run their own servers) over a broadband connection, it still baffles me why anyone would think that watching a movie on a computer monitor is in any way "better" than watching it through one's TV.
With that said, Hollings is indeed the 'Senator from Disney.' Him and his stupid SSSCA proposal need to be slapped down. Hard.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Assume the following:
1. Regardless of any attempts by anyone to prevent it, reproduction of data will occur. No matter how good your copy protection, if I can play it, I can copy it. I can even reproduce it with an arbitrary fidelity approaching perfection by sampling it many times.
2. Once copied, the data will proliferate in the wild. No law is going to make everyone agree on the ethics of the issue or behave with restraint. There will always be some people who want and will copy and share.
If you assume these two items, the only way it seems artists will be able to gaurantee a certain amount of compensation for their efforts (something almost everyone unanimously agrees is necessary for w/out it we would see a great deal less effort invested in creating good art) is the ransom model.
This will require most artists to "pay their dues" by producing some amount of good quality free music so that they become known as good artists. At some point, they will be able to propose a ransom for their next work.
The ransom can be paid in any combination/way you like, 100 people willing to pay $10, 100,000 people willing to pay $1 and 200,000 people willing to pay a dime. Anyone can up their contribution anytime they like to speed release, but once the ransom is reached, the item is released into the wild.
This also provides a direct means of observing the compensation and will allow a sense of fair play to enter the equation of compensation, whereas now compensation is sort of open ended and indeterminable. Sometimes inordinately large, and other times non-existant. Also, a reputation for honesty becomes important. If an artist stiffs the public with a POS, they'll remember.
Chances are that if you can think of a problem with this system, with a little more thought you can think of a fix for that problem.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
All that link to Cornell says is that you have the right to copy for fair use. It says nothing about them not having the right to defeat your copying. They have every right to do this, but it's going to hurt their business model in the long run.
Addlepated - punk & metal
Does anybody remember back before Napster that there was a fuss about selling used CDs? The Record Inidustry tried to claim that people shouldn't be allowed to sell CDs because then the Record Company got no kickback.
Of course, that was selling of the original, so it's allowed to survive. But the idea is the same. it is ridiculous that They just feel it is their right to get money at every level of usage. it will never happen.
unilateral opinions such as the stance of RIAA/MPAA are never good. compromise is how all sides are happy. BOTH sides will have to give up ground, but Congress should not be so fast to support only one side.
This law is not a danger to us. It will NEVER pass and even if it does, it's unconstitutional.
Here's why... The bill efectively eliminates the 'public domain'. Under this bill, all player would be required to not only have copy protection, but the media they are playing must BE protected. So unencrypted content is unplayable.
Now, congress could ONLY get around this by mandating a special 'public' encryption method, but that opens a door for hackers to strip a private CP method off and replace it with the public one and viola!... Publiclly playable (and tradeable) MP3's again.
If they don't do the public CP thing, then the 'public domain' dies. And the courts won't allow that, since the constitution is quite clear that un-copyrighted works must pass to the public domain. (In fact, the constitution specifically uses the words 'public domain')
We should be wondering why they would put forth a bill that most likely won't pass, and will CERTAINLY be struck down by the courts. I believe it is just a gimmic to pressure the computer industry into accepting/creating/using Copy Protection. But everyone, be creative here... think of alternatve reasons why they would put this forward. What ELSE do they have to gain by this? Because the obvious answer is NOT the correct one.