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Senate Soliciting Comments on SSSCA
jayed_99 writes: "The US Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing today about the issues surrounding DRM and the SSSCA. They have a link on their front page that requests comments. Here's a bit of the relevant text: 'If you have comments on these issues that you wish to share with the Committee and with other stakeholders, please email usercomments@judiciary.senate.gov We ask that comments not be sent anonymously, so that if we need to edit comments for public display or request clarification, we are able to contact the author. In addition, for obvious reasons, we request that e-mail submissions themselves avoid copyright infringement, defamation, or other unlawful content.' (You people from Wisconsin, pay attention! Both of your Senators are on the committee)."
This should really be on the slashdot main page! Here are my comments.
To: senate.gov
I'm currently a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University and a computer
science researcher. I'm writing to express my dismay that the Senate is
considering passing a law that would require DRM technologies to be built
into hardware and software systems.
Honestly, I cannot imagine doing computer research in a country where
computers and the software that runs them are built with tamper-proof
components to implement DRM. We often need access to the internals of the
computer, and we almost always work on consumer-level commodity hardware.
Forcing us to purchase special hardware would dramatically increase our
research costs and reduce the relevance of our research to real-world
systems.
Several of my hobbies involve creating content: music, typefaces, and
software that would likely to be subject to DRM. As a content developer,
I am worried that mandated DRM will inhibit my ability to freely
distribute content that I own the copyright for, by placing restrictions
on content formats or requiring certificates from an external authority.
As a consumer, of course I dislike the increasing insistence of copyright
holders to control the use of content that I "license" from them. I also
would resent having to pay for the extra hardware and development overhead
to include DRM in my electronic devices!
Copyright infringement will remain illegal whether or not DRM is legally
mandated. But in a world with mandatory DRM, we lose the ability to
exercise some rights we historically have enjoyed, such as fair use and
the first sale doctrine. We also face the very strong possibility that our
technology industries and research communities will be stifled. Mandated
DRM is a bad choice on all counts!
Sincerely,
Tom Murphy
Dear members of the committee:
Thank you for listening to people whose expertise is not as unproductive financial
parasites on the backs of assorted capitalists, artists and engineers.
There once was a day when we could intelligibly use the phrase, "record company
executives," without flinching or laughing (or crying).
Those days are gone forever, and so is the easy money.
SSSCA is a stampede of enormous grazing beasts, and what they trample is their own
source of food--the consumers. People will get a self-righteous streak, and the backlash
will equate theft to just dessert. Look up "warez kiddies" on any popular search engine.
You'll see. Subcultures develop on the strangest of premises.
There is an old saying: Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.
***
Furthermore, all fancy arguments aside, I think Faust is the appropriate allegory in this
matter. When human rights are exchanged for expedient profits (which I argue will not
materialize on balance anyway) the transaction is indistinguishable from making a bargain
with the devil. It seems that everyone, with the singular exception of the mesmerized
Ernest Hollings, has enough brains to see that this is the vending of freedom itself. How
many pieces of silver is it worth? How much freedom is for sale?
What if traditions were such that a streetcorner extortionist could sock you for an "end
user license" of the redness of a stopsign--his duly registered intellectual property? What
if that came to a halt--by discreet civil disobedience or any other impetus? If enough
extortion revenues had accumulated, then we could be reasonably sure that enough
money could flow toward at least one politician that cognition would slow down in the
gray matter of that politician as return on the investment.
This is insanity heaped upon insanity.
Look.
while ((myChar = fgetc(stdin) != EOF)
{
myChar ^= 'a';
fputc(myChar, stdout);
}
If I put a customer's data through that filter and charge a customer money for doing so,
and if you publish this horribly incompetent 3-line encryption source code, then I can take
enforcible measures that could possibly land you in jail.
That is the insanity of the DMCA, which proposed legislation makes entirely worse by
_mandating_ gawd-awful encryption software without peer review or science.
A fool could imagine two plausible beneficiaries: Microsoft and Disney.
En toto, the contempt people would feel would eclipse the benefits to those on that tiny
list, damaging the overall interests of those corporations, but I dare not risk repetition.
Now let us return to the matter of mandating that operating system software or firmware
be crammed into devices without recourse.
You, by endorsing the SSSCA, would automatically kill dozens if not hundreds of
companies whose core business is to use commodity computer hardware with the Forth
operating environment and programming language.
Those victims would be the tip of the iceburg.
FYI, that sort of thing--plain jane Forth technology--reliably controls spacecraft without
getting clogged up with operating system software and firmware.
You have no idea how damaging the unintended consequences of this imposed
("proposed") legislation will be. You simply haven't had enough time to learn about the
technology and its nuances.
SSSCA is a stampede. You folks have the power. You should know better.
With the exception of Senator Hollings, you have the power to know better.