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."

Comments

You can prevent this...

[I Want GNU!]

...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.

Re:You can prevent this...

[slugfro]

I agree that the public becoming active and writing our government representatives is a great idea and will hopefully have some effect. However it will be hard to overcome the effect of hundreds of thousands of dollars that our government representatives get from special interest groups such as the entertainment industry. Example from the article:

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.

Our representatives will likely continue to represent those who give them the most money which they can then use to get reelected. Why they just don't try to get elected based on doing what their constituents want I do not know. I guess all we can do is write our reps and vote accordingly.

Re:You can prevent this...

[hagardtroll]

I would argue the 'Constituents Position' on a particular issue is really irrelevant here.

What people mean by congress being bought and paid for has more to do with the legislative agenda, than the actual votes. For example.

What is the one thing that pisses people off more than anything? SPAM. How much federal gov't legislation has been passed to curb SPAM. None.

Compare the number of people pissed off about spam to the number of people concerned with Bankruptcy Laws. I doubt most people care less about Bsnkruptcy Laws, yet we just recently got new Bankruptcy law passed. Why? Because the U.S. Chamber of commerce lobby wanted them.

What laws the congress considers and passes are controlled by campaign contributions.

How many constituents wanted...

DMCA?, Oil Drilling in ANWAR? Bankruptcy Reform? Stem Cell policy? SSSCA? Copyright Extensions?

Yet what they DO want takes forever and often gets stalled. Things like...

Campaign Finance Reform, Anti-SPAM, Consumer Protection, Prescription Drugs, Environment Protection, Employment and Security.

They could give a rats ass about corporations like Disney and the Miramax.

Good article

[sulli]

Better than the wimpy-ass op-ed in the NYTimes last week. This is a good one to show to people who might not care about this issue to explain to them why this is so important.

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.

Idiotic Mechanism Clause

[indole]

...When he put the CD in his computer and fired up AudioGrabber... the CD locked up the program. But after rebooting his computer, he discovered that the protection was easy to thwart. The copy protection worked by introducing a false value for the start time of the CD... [he] used a function of AudioGrabber to reset that start time to zero, and then was able to encode the music without a glitch.

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

Re:Hollywood's blessing necessary for broadband?

[sulli]

I sell DSL for a living. (Disclaimer: this is my opinion, not that of my employer.) You are absolutely right.

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!

Music today sucks

[Deanasc]

When I stopped buying music it wasn't because I could get it for free. It was because music today has passed me by. Maybe if some of the bands I loved 15 years ago release a new album I'll buy it but I'm not buying Nsync or Lit or Train or any other crap that passes for music today.

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.

Dreadfully Scary Stuff

[Wire Tap]

Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C., threatened to launch another bill -- the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) -- that will mandate the inclusion of copy-protection technology in all digital devices.

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_ale rt .html

Re:Geeks = Criminals

[Ubergrendle]

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...

Starve record companies, not artists.

[David Lightman]

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.

Aint it weird...

[Kizzle]

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?

Sealed Modules

[ebh]

Quoth Touretzky:

"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.