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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."
...and all it takes is a bit of activism. Write up a letter to your local representative, find ten friends, and have them all write a letter as well as finding one or two friends each. Then, they will pay more note to the issue and quite possibly change their opinion. They are supposed to represent their constituents and often will even if they don't believe in the cause.
I _would_ also recommend writing senators, but that might be a bit more ambitious since they usually represent much larger numbers of people and thus would be harder to coerce.
Oh, and recommend they join Rep. Boucher's informed technological reps bandwagon.
A new Prohibition. The destruction of the PC industry. Is that really what The American People (not just certain bought-and-paid-for senators) want? I suspect that when you ask, you'll get the answer.
Of course the networks won't report on this, because they are owned by Disney et al. But it seems to be making its way into the print media.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
Can't you see the superbowl ads now?
"Today I went to the movies, went to the grocery store, downloaded an mp3, and helped evil hackers steal money from the hands of starving musicians."
stipe42
Quite simple really, and one both the music and movie industries appear to be implementing..
Just make all the content so dull that noone would ever bother copying any of it.
Quite why they bother protecting the latest Britney album is beyond me. Who the hell would want to duplicate that?
http://twitter.com/onion2k
so.. let me get this straight... this kid can get arrested and thrown into prison under the DMCA because he clicked a checkbox in a (not even debatably) legitimate cd ripping program, to make a legal copy of his own legally purchased cd for his own legal mp3 player, because he "circumvented" the copy-control mechanisms?
There should be an idiot clause in the DMCA
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
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. But Hollywood won't make that content available unless it is confident it won't be pirated.
So movies might not be available via the internet with out copy protection. So what? There's a lot more to the Internet than movies. Online gaming, information, and just not having to wait for a dialup or pages to load up are some of the main reasons why people have switched.
Hollings is grasping onto a straw man, paid for by over a quarter million dollars of Hollywood lobbying money.
Hopefully the consumer will win here.
Who's going to be hurt by these annoying new copy protections?
The people who rip the songs just to upload them? No... They're typically on the cutting edge, and will have the means to bypass whatever form of copy protection is in place.
The people who download songs off the net? No... If 99% of the user base is unable to rip a song, but 1% can, ripped copies will become available, and passing from machine to machine they will multiply.
The person who only listens, or only copies for himself? Yup! He's going to be greatly inconvenienced by these restrictive technologies.
The RIAA doesn't care, though. They only care about being able to ramp up the prices on music CDs. The MPAA doesn't care either.
In fact just about the time I gave up on new music is the same time I learned how to play the guitar and make my own music. I may not have the production values that Brittney has but on the otherhand I don't need 600 digital tracks of the same verse sung over and over to smooth out the mistakes. Playing my own music makes me happier than desperately searching for out of print Dead Milkmen albums. Playing my own music won't make me rich and famous but it turns on my wife when I bang on the bongo's like a chimpanzee.
If the record companies don't want my money anymore then Fcuk'em. I'll take my guitar and go home. That's why record sales aren't growing anymore. They have the nads to grossly underestimate the taste of the rest of us in the quest for the quick teenager buck.
It's all part of my rock and roll fantasy.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
IANARE (I am not a record executive), but it doesn't seem to be a smart decision to treat your customers like criminals...
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...
For more information on this terrible proposal, check out:
http://216.110.42.179/docs/hollings.090701.html
And if you want to fight it, check out:
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010921_eff_sssca_al
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
I've heard this argument before. "Buy American" to support the outdated, dinosaur auto industry. "Union made" to support the corrupt, criminally run union management in the hopes of having some benefit trickle down to the actual labourers. I will not buy an $18 CD to support numerous middle men and corrupt (yes, I mean criminally corrupt) recording companies when the artist is lucky to see $0.50 per CD. And don't give me that "means of production" and "advertising" BS. I can produce audio tracks in my basement with the same fidelity with less than $10k worth of equipment now; I can burn CDs and distribute myself; I can HIRE my own advertising agency and yet still retain the rights to my own music without the interference of these media conglomerates. Politicians are being bribed into creating laws that serve to protect outdated business models and work against the common good (see: original intent of copyright). If the system is fundamentally flawed, it is not wrong to oppose it; it may be criminal, but so was drinking, premarital sex, and loading software into your computer at one point in history. Finally, remember that Disney was built on repacking open-source fairytales -- Snow White, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan...
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
The solution is simple. Lots of musicians make their work openly available. Vote with your ears and dollars.
Many people use Linux because they don't like the expense or anti-piracy policies of other options. Why not the same with music?
One of the basic benefits to the Internet is that single voices can communicate to the world. Why, if I can read about Joe Schomoe's problem with Little City, Arkansas Traffic Court, can't we break free of this "you must pay tithe to big publishing companies for entertainment" mentality.
Screw them. I can download more "non-major record label" music than I will ever be able to listen to.
And for that matter, an MP3 player in my car is cheaper than XM radio, doesn't have commercials, and doesn't require a subscription.
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Ever wonder why you can get in allot more trouble for downloading a CD than if you were to walk into a store and steal it?
Hacker Media
10000% markup on crappy music: $20
Two hour movie for the familty: $50
Senator to protect an obsolete distribution channel: priceless? No, $264,534
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.
It seems the only way to get "heard" nowadays is with money.
American public = 300,000,000
* 50% on net = 150,000,000
* 75% used mp3 = 112,500,000
Assume that once in their lives each of these people will save $15 dollars, buy listening to an mp3 and realizing they don't want the album.
These people have saved almost 1.7 billion dollars. If we used only 5% of those savings to "donate" to campains, that would be 84 million dollars worth of "speach" that would be heard.
So in conclusion, send this money to me, and I'll get right to work.
-... ---
"For example, instead of sending analog signals to your speakers, you send an encrypted stream of digital data, and the decryption is done in a sealed module built right into the speaker," he says. "Video is done the same way: Encryption is done in a sealed module built right into the monitor, so you can't bypass the encryption by tapping into the monitor cables..."
Right. I guess he hasn't heard of a soldering iron. If the endmost device in the chain takes an analog input, like a CRT or speaker driver, then someplace there has to be an analog signal. Who cares if you can't capture an unencrypted bitstream?
But before we get that far, I'm with the other folks who have said that when hardware comes out that enforces DRM, don't buy it.
I can't tell if you are flamebaiting or just ignorant of the big picture. The problem is not as simple as some geeks stealing music. There were millions of non-geeks who downloaded music off of Napster not just because it was free but also because it was easy.
What you need to do is look at what the consumer wants and compare it to the current business model:
1) The ability to download any song recorded in the modern era (including live recordings, "b" sides, and radio-only versions) easily and quickly from the Internet.
2) To be able to take that song and play it in any type of device they desire (CD, Computer, MP3 Player, etc.)
3) To able to include that song on compilation CD's, mix tapes, etc.
4) To be able to ourchase/download only one song from an album without being penalized.
Now how does that stack up with the current model. First, even with online stores such as CDNow and Amazon, it is often difficult to find some titles. When you do you are usually forced to buy an entire CD even if you only want the one song. CD singles are usually only available for recent titles and may cost as much as half the price of the entire CD. The record industry is addressing this by allowing you to buy the music online but in some cases the music is in a different format that is incompatible with exsiting MP3 players. In other cases you are only allowed a certain amount of "burns" which means that you can't include one song you really like on all your mix cds. Add to that the fact that if you buy the CD you can't rip it yourself because of CD protection and must buy separately the digital copy.
The moral of the story is that the record industry dropped the ball. They underestimated the popularity of online distribution and failed to provided a working business model. Napster filled that gap by providing a system that was easy enough to use that even non-geeks used it. The industry is trying to catch up but instead of working together to build a system that would be fair to users and artists alike they are introducing multiple systems that don't meet the users' needs and, supposedly, rips off the artists.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Some kind of DRM has to happen -- say, that's 75% effective or so -- or else the powers that be are going to keep pushing (using rampant piracy as an excuse) until the distopian vision is accomplished.
"Good" (by which I mean, barely palatable) DRM might be:
* Only required on devices/software whose sole purpose is media display/playback. This leaves an OS, for example, or a hard drive out, but a playback application or portable MP3 player in. It won't catch all piracy -- there might still be non-DRM players out there -- but lots of people would probably still just use iTunes and Windows Media Player.
* Key distribution for DRM system(s) is ABSOLUTELY FREE. IE, we don't introduce any further artificial barriers to content distribution, and people can distribute their content freely, for free if they like.
Of course there's still holes, and of course there'd still be piracy, but I think by and large content producers -- from RIAA to your Indie Label -- could collect a fee a little more often and most importantly would have much less to complain about
I think the key problem here isn't piracy -- it's that RIAA and other content producers want absolute control over content and distribution. Piracy is an excellent ostensible excuse for draconian DRM measures like the SSSCA. Give the world reasonable DRM, and their case loses a lot of punch.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
From my weblog
Jack, in your sneering Washington Post piece about copy protection, you refer to professors for whom '"innovation" is legalizing the breaking of protection codes'. Michael, in your testimony to congress you badgered an Intel exec until he told you that file copying can't be prevented, then told him he must prevent it anyway.
As you are evidently impervious to logical discussion, let me tell you a story.
This is the story of a rebel, a war hero, a persecuted homosexual, and a deep thinker. His life reads like the plot of a far-fetched movie, but if anyone fits your bogeyman image of professors who break code, it is Alan Turing.
In 1936 Turing published a paper on theoretical mathematics, in which he described the Universal Turing machine. It was a simple mechanism that could read symbols from a tape, and write back different symbols or change the tape's direction. He showed that with this general purpose machine, you could simulate any special purpose computing machine. He had invented the idea of the programmable computer.
Between 1938 and 1945, Turing worked in great secrecy on computing machines that broke codes. These were the first real computers ever made, and the codes they broke were those used by the German Wehrmacht. Without his work, it is very likely that Britain would have lost the War in Europe before Pearl Harbour.
After the war, in 1950 Turing published other famous papers that laid the foundation for modern computing, and hence all the digital gadgetry that you would like to outlaw for us (though presumably you'd keep the computers you use to edit and create effects for your movies). Turing died in 1954 by biting into an apple he had previously poisoned.
What does this story have to do with you?
Turing's Universal Machine means that you cannot have a software or hardware protection scheme that is secure. Whatever scheme you come up with can be simulated by another computer. The computer industry are not opposing your bill because they want to encourage copying, or because they are bloody-minded, they are not opposing you because of your self serving rhetoric about rewarding artists (remember Peggy Lee, Michael?), they are opposing you because what you want is provably impossible. You can only succeed by making all Turing machines illegal.
If Alan Turing had made an animated film involving a poisoned apple in 1936, it would still have copyright protection. He chose a different path, and gave the world the idea of the digital computer. I know whom I repect more.