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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.
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!
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
I was thinking exactly the same thing. There IS a way to deal with this, but it involves a little more inconvenience...
In addition to not buying RIAA/MPAA material, people need to write (physically, paper and everything) to their legislators, and cc the "content providers", explaining that they are not buying NOR pirating the material, and the reasons why (which boils down to "there product no longer meets my needs", whether those "needs" are "to listen to/watch material that isn't mass-market crap" or "to be able to make fair use of the material", or both.)
An undeniable pile of paper mail saying "I'm neither pirating NOR buying the stuff" sitting on a legislator's desk (especially if they include "and if you try to criminalize my ability to get material that DOES meet my needs, I'll be doing everything legal that I can to get your political career ended") is going to make it a lot more difficult (or at the very least, a lot more blatantly expensive in terms of contributions and lobbying) for Jack "We're all going to go bankrupt, no really, I mean it this time, never mind the VCR issue" Valenti to push the "pirates are the sole reason our business is slightly less ridiculously profitable this year, so you must criminalize our customers" line...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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!"