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More Details on the CBDTPA
Gemini and many others wrote in with still more info regarding CBDTPA, formerly the SSSCA. Wired has a story. Cryptome has transcribed the text. The Senate Judiciary Committee has a web-form where you can submit comments (although directly contacting your representatives may be better). IMHO, the best thing people can do is explain to less-knowledgeable folks exactly what is at stake. When ABC News (Disney) and Fox News (News Corporation) discuss this, they're not going to be spending much time talking about the downside. Update: 03/23 00:55 GMT by M : EFF has an alert with a sample letter to Congress and background on the issue.
FOX News and Disney are unified in support. They're at opposite sides of the political spectrum (Rupert Murdoch's "empire" -- including FOX, the NY Post and others -- is conservative and Disney is much more liberal). It seems that they are banding together for the purpose of world domination... or something like that.
Sen. Hollings says the reason broadband isn't as popular today as it should have been is because media giants are afraid to provide large quantities of digital content to the masses over it. Therefore, the public has no 'interest' in broadband. This is blatently wrong. Then he goes on to say the entertainment industry needs a "nudge" in the right direction... which is presumably to come up with a standard for thwarting piracy. Then, the best part, he says that, in order to increase public interest in broadband, the government needs to step in to regulate the digital media industry a little. So my point, and question, is: Since when is it the government's job to promote public interest in a certain area, especially with regards to entertainment????
"When ABC News (Disney) and Fox News (News Corporation) discuss this, they're not going to be spending much time talking about the downside."
That is, unless they can relate it to the plot of a movie their production studios currently have in wide release. Then it will be the lead story!
Read our Oscar Predictions!
tcd004
Probably the largest advantage the CBDTPA gives corporations over the SSSCA is that it is extremely hard to pronounce or remember, and is sufficiently long enough to keep it from coming up in day-to-day conversation.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Could this even include websites?
"The definition will cover just about anything that runs on your computer -- except maybe the clock,"
As seen in the recent Google fiasco, they could possibly bend this to even including websites.
Jason Lotito
I called both of my states (MD) Senators earlier today to make sure that I got in my "Don't you dare vote for this" early.
Neither office even knew the bill had been presented to the Senate.
This isn't on everyone's radar yet. We need to make sure it *gets* on their radar, though. Call them. Bug them. Make them realize just how unpopular voting for this will make them. (But, as I'm sure others will say, don't be rabid about it...just firm.)
The Politech site has more background here, including press releases from supporters and opponents. EFF and ACLU have not said anything on this new bill yet -- I hardly think they support it, but some statements would be nice.
I haven't seen anything recently that comes near this in terms of killing innovation. Am I the only one who envisions people everywhere hoarding dinosaur computers running ancient yet empowered software? Coders in hidden bunkers with a stockpile of unhampered obsolete motherboards, and vast cd librarys of ancient kernels and applications ??
What's in a Sig?
...just tell your congressman and senators that if they support this bill, you'll be voting against them in the next election. Furthermore, you'll give money to their opponent, and urge all your friends to vote against them.
Large corporations can do many things, but they can't vote. And most congressmen wish to remain employed in their present occupation.
Give what bill this statement appears in I'm guessing they're going for the free as in beer rather than free as in speech.
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
Two years ago I would have started a dot-com to build that..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who makes more money, IT or RIAA?
And two, which adds the most to the enconomy,
IT, or RIAA?
(Pessimistically betting that they pick RIAA.)
They mandate the right to fair use (3-e-1), specifically allow VCR's (3-e-2), and they changed the definition of digital device not to include calculators and watches (9-3). Don't get me wrong, it's still bad, but it's not quite as bad as it's being made out...
Omnes arx vestrum sunt adiuncta nobis.
This isn't on everyone's radar yet.
I was wondering about this very issue. I will certainly be writing my senators about the CBDTPA, but it seems like there might be a risk of having my comments pushed to the back corner of some desk if they arrive too far in advance of the vote. Does anyone have any thoughts on the best time to submit a letter?
so you want to tell your Senators "vote no on S 2048". They'll understand...
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
CALL YOUR SENATORS. Handwritten letters are nice too, but what really matters is calling. You will get answered by a congressional staffer. Say the following:
"Hi, my name is _____ and I live in _______ in your district. I am calling to register my opposition to Senate Bill 2048. Thank you".
That's it. Unless you include a large check, they don't care WHY you oppose it really, but they DO care they you can vote for or against them.
Think about it this way: they can't spend the money, except on getting re-elected. Therefore, your vote costs a certain amount. If you call them and tell them the way you wish them to vote, they know that if they don't vote that way, they've lost a vote regardless of how much they spend. AND if you called, that means a lot of people probably think the same way, but weren't motivated enough to pick up the phone.
It's quick, simple, and took me all of 5 minutes, including looking up the phone number. DO IT.
and we all know what walks. Yes, it's been said before, but most people don't seem to be listening. Don't hand these big corporations your money. Without you purchasing their products, they will lack the wherewithall to purchase political clout to force their agendas down our throats.
Changing brainwashed people's habits who have been taught to believe that they "just can't live without" the latest media moguls' products won't be easy, but without disemboweling these cretins, we're all at their lobbying mercy.
I feel equally threatened here in Canada. Please see my web site for my comments.
1) While technology will often come up with a solution that is "good enough" to do a job, it is quite another to make something technically perfect. Absolute requirements for all devices everywhere to meat a certain perfect standard will meet as many difficulties as mandating a perfectly safe car.
2) No Law should enforce draconian measure to protect an industry that is unable to keep up with the market.
3) Contrary to media industry spokesman, Actual sales on CDs went up during the time that Napster was running, and have since declined since Napster was shut down. Part of this was the browsing capability of the software. This was similar to you visiting a friends house, and seing what books, music, etc are in their collection, and so deciding to check it out since they already have things you like to begin with. Now this shut off.
4) People are becoming more educated about non-mainstream artists, and are starting to broaden their horizons. Therefore, they are not buying the same old product that is pumped out by the pop mills.
5) People may avoid the technology like the plague, and will get really upset for being forced to upgrade their equipment that they bought years ago.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Was SSSCA, is now CBDTPA, will be...?
Keep changing the damn name, then people won't know what to protest.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Is there a lobbyist group for technologically educated folks out there to act as a watch-dog against this type of crappy legislation? Sure, we have the EFF, but that's more of a group that defends individuals that are being screwed by already existing f*cked up laws (i.e. DMCA)
Slashdot would be a great launching platform for such a group. Slashdot already has plenty of exposure. Hell, we could make an arrangement with VA to give members subscriptions to slashdot with a minimal portion of membership dues. Just an idea...
Are you trying to fuck everything up? Are you trying to turn the clock back to the fucking dark ages?
How can so many of you sit on your fat fucking asses and let this happen? I can't do anything about this because I don't live in the USA... but it doesn't matter because sooner or later you'll wind up exporting your stupid fucking laws to my country via treaty or something like that. My own government and people will look to you as an example, and I weep for the leadership you've abandoned.
You're really starting to scare the shit out of me down there, you Yanks. What happened to the land of free? How could you have sold out your precious freedom to big business and corporations? How could we have let you?
The America told in stories, the America talked about in your beautiful constitution is now dead to the world.
You're too big to take on now. I weep for what this world will become.
I know Intel and other big-name hardware companies are opposed to this bill. They ought to sponsor a march/techfest on Washington to make the point.
"When ABC News (Disney) and Fox News (News Corporation) discuss this, they're not going to be spending much time talking about the downside."
That's odd. Fox News did an article bashing the SSSCA. Not that I like Fox News that much, but like MSNBC, they aren't going to skew their story to what their company feels. That would just piss off readers.
Zodiac Survey
I think it's time we each think for 15 minutes and write something intelligent to say on that website, and really put the power of Slashdot to work. Comment on the bill, comment on the evil monopolies that control the entertainment industry and hurt the artists, comment on the corrupt government that is letting this sort of corporation controlled America happen. And let's leave no bit unfilled in their harddisk.
I am not USian, but can I post a comment there?
Further, I think a rally is a good idea, wouldn't even a local one attract attention? Come on, there must be someone with enough time to organise such a thing... Hmm, okay, that's too much talking out of my ass now.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
... when RMS was faced with a similar situation he turned the vendor's tactic of copyright information into enforcement of the GPL through copyleft. Why can't hackers come up with a legally valid method that exploits this act's provision to legally endorse P2P? Then any attempt to fence in the intellectual commons would be considered an erasement (sp?) and thus subject to penalties? Afterall, if the absence of a copybit represents the fact that you can copy freely then by law all computer manufacturers will have to support it? What better way of enforrcing P2P systems and preserving freedom?
Irregardless of whether it is a good, bad or ugly law, the fact is that if this bill obeys the duely constituted and mandated processes for the law of the country, any citizen is bound by it. Civil disobediance is one way of altering bad laws through non-observation when they conflict with common law practices but it is too slow and common practices takes time to evolve.
If you can't fight it, subvert it.
LL
I really wish I could figure out what to do. Reason isn't going to sway these people and neither is the fear of the destruction of the future of computing (not even the future of computing in America).
You know, I honestly wish I could believe the stuff he wrote in the letter about really being concerned about digital theft because then I could try to reason with him. Unfortunately, the way the letter is written, it seems that he has simply chosen the Disney/Fox side of the issue. I mean, the letter is very passively worded but there is no way to look at this except as legislation against the digital technology industry.
I explained the issue carefully in my initial letter, but the points I raised are not addressed in his reply.
I'm pretty stubborn, so I'm going to write a reply to his reply. I don't know if it will help or not. (Still, I've always enjoyed tilting at windmills...)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
when Fox is THE ONLY news outlet to have carried an editorial explaining why the SSSCA was bad, in layman's terms nonetheless.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,47296,00.html
Come on Michael. You can do better.
Anyone know whether or not there's a date set for voting on the bill? I want to call my senators to voice my opposition, but their offices are closed until Monday. I'd rather speak with a staffer in person rather than leaving a message on a machine.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
What a marketing strategy for Hollywood - get the Federal Government to start pushing their products. Wow. Does anyone still think Congress isn't for sale?
What if Congress was this interested in promoting education and science instead of movies? You would be better off.
But when you look at the quarterly report they send to their stockholders, do you see an entry showing a huge loss to "piracy"? Hell, no. In fact, you won't even find such an entry!
Oh, I won't deny that "piracy" happens. But when these companies continue to report increased earnings, it should be obvious that "piracy" isn't having the effect they claim -- their claim of huge losses is complete bullshit.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
If they pass a bill like this, I'll probably either leave the industry or the country. I never want to work under such heavy-handed regulations.
... if only to allow me to finally get to experience this alternative bizarro-universe that many politicians and the self-appointed "content owners" seem to live in.
I never felt that way about the DMCA, but this one is just so much more bizarre.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Does this mean that choosing *not* to publish with content protection is also illegal? Would that not be a mind-boggling violation of the first amendment? Does it not also totally eliminate the public domain and fair use for digital works?
This reading doesn't seem to agree with the Senator's introductory statements of yesterday. Seems that Disney has decided we're all along for the ride whether we like it or not. Good way to put the competition out of business too.
Remember when the words "competition" and "free enterprise" actually meant something?
CBDTPA? Isn't that what came out of Bill the Cat's mouth all the time? Ack!
Karma: Good. I'm hoping in the same way as pizza is 'good'...
Please use this link or one like it to find out who represents you in both the House and the Senate. If you don't know your 5+4 digit zip code, you can always use Mapquest to show it to you (with a nice handy-dandy satellite photo of your neighborhood!)
I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I don't understand why the Hollywood content types would be pushing this. As I understand it (and please let me know if I am missing something), this law would require computing devices to have some kind of copy control mechanism. As has been shown countless times before, only hardware copy controls have any chance of being robust and effective.
So, it would seem that the effect of this law would be to require hardware devices to be integrated into future digital devices. But, if the content producers could, on their own, come up with a workable hardware solution, they could simply start releasing content that is only viewable through such a hardware device. That would cause the hardware industry to include these copy control pieces into the devices that people intend to use to watch content. The beauty of this would be that all of the folks who believe that movies and music on a PC are (and always will be) awful, can choose a PC without these control devices. True, we won't be able to watch all the wonderful Hollywood content on our PCs, but then, I don't believe most people want to.
What I am afraid this law would do is require that I foul up my computers with various control devices (e.g. will I still be able to record music in my home studio and mix in on my computer? How much harder will it be?), even though I have no intention of watching any of this Hollywood content on my PC. What does Hollywood gain by that? Without their hardware control devices, I can't watch their encoded content, so why can't I have a "Hollywood content-free" PC that is configured to work the way I want it to work?
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
vote NO on S-2K.
Paul
When George Bush or any other Republican goes off with some idiot legislation, the headline mentions Republican at least twice.
When Hollings (a Democrat) throws something equally stupid out there, it is just "government officials".
Bah. Stupid legislation is stupid legislation. I (and many other people from the early days of slashdot) would probably return here in droves if we could just go back to "stupid is stupid" and end the "I would rather vote for a carbon rod then george bush" headline editorials.
Just an observation... mod it into oblivion as it doesn't meet your preconcieved templates... Remember that liberty is also the right to get rich if you want.
Does anyone know if Daschle is involved in this? Dirty politician through and through.
Uniting
And
Strengtheing
Corporate
Hegemony
Utilizing
Misguided
Protection
Schemes.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
Throughout history, governments have been subject to corruption and all too often have sold the rights of their citizens away to the highest bidder. The US now faces such a time, as it has before. Therefore, I offer this proposal to solve the problems of rule by the highest bidder.
Now, before I am labelled as an anti-establishment hippie, allow me to present my case to you. I will outline the historic case of government corruption in the United States as well as offering a method to ensure that such corruption will never happen again. Hear me out before you make your decisions. The Historic Case: America in the Gilded Age (1870-1930) The years following the Civil War in the US, often called Reconstruction, are also known as the Gilded Age. During this period, political parties, using political machines like Tammany Hall, they were able to harass, threaten, and force people to vote in the manner the party wanted. All government actions were in control of the party. Appointments, elections, campaigns, etc were all controlled by corrupt party bosses. Voters were often gathered together like a flock of sheep on Election Day, taken to local bars, intoxicated, and then taken around to vote at several different polling stations under the lead of party bosses. Edgar Allan Poe died because of these party bosses, who filled him with liquor (which he was allergic to), took him around to get him to vote five or six times, and then left him for dead.
Such concern for the public is touching, is it not?
Also, during this period, Big Business, fueled by the Industrial Revolution, grew more and more powerful and more and more corrupt. Standard Oil, the Rockefellers, Carnagie, the RailRoads; all of these businesses used a system of bribery and quid pro quo to keep the government from investigating their illegal and immoral practices. The Railroads changed rates, gouged customers, impoverished farmers, all to make a profit. The meat factories in the cities exploited their workers. Upton Sinclair, in his book The Jungle, described the unsafe and unsanitary conditions under which meat was packaged. The American Federation of Labor lobbied for workers' rights and protection against the abuse of Big Business.
Finally, under Theodore Roosevelt, Big Business was muzzled. The FDA, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and other Progressive legislation were all passed. Big Business had a standard to live up to. Workers had rights and dignity guarenteed to them. Finally, the evils of the Gilded Age seemed to be at an end. Will We Never Learn? America in the Second Gilded Age (1950-2002) Now America faces a new Gilded Age. Money is considered a form of Free Speech. Corporations are allowed the rights of citizens (except that a corporation doesn't have to pay taxes and can't be tried for criminal conduct). Once again, industries are trying to enslave their workers and their consumers, all for the Almighty Dollar.
The Recording Industry Artists Association, a group of distributers who can't play Mary Had A Little Lamb on the piano, are now legally allowed to hold the copyright on any work they distribute in perpetuity. The Satellite Home Viewing Act of 1999 has a clause that makes all sound recordings works-for-hire. Courtney Love has spoken out against the RIAA and its illegal actions at Salon.com. This bill was altered after all the arguments and debates were settled. There was no chance for a revisiting of this issue before it was sent off to the President. A boy who only had the authority to spellcheck the bill altered it at the request of the RIAA, in such a way as that no one had a chance to fight the alteration.
The RIAA, the MPAA, Disney, and other Hollywood industries are now trying to force another bill through the Senate. The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), a bill that outlaws all fair use rights of the consumer as well as outlawing innovation in technology has been proposed by Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina. This Senator recieved over $300,000.00 in campaign contributions from Disney alone. Tell me there is no quid pro quo going on now.
As bad as the RIAA is with its desire to enslave musicians in contracts illegal under California law, Disney is worse.
Disney has stolen and made its fortune from the public domain without giving one thing back to the very people they have stolen from. Where would Disney be without Snow White? Without Cinderella? Without Pocahontas? Without the Little Mermaid? Disney has raped the public domain and not given one whit in return. Every time the trademark on Mickey Mouse gets ready to expire, Disney lobbies to have the trademark law extended. Sorry, uncle Walt, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You raped the people, and they demand the Mouse and His Furry Friends for sacrifice.
And Einser, the CEO of Disney, is the chief backer of the CBDTPA.
Let me tell you what will happen if this bill passes:
1. It will be illegal to record anything off of your TV.
2. It will be illegal to listen to CDs you've bought on your computer.
3. It will be illegal to own an MP3 player.
4. The computer you are currently using will be illegal since it's not fitted with Copy Protection.
5. It will be illegal to innovate, to create, or to even write without the blessing of the Entertainment industry.
I've already spoken at length about this here. The Solution Since we can't outlaw soft money altogether to get rid of the quid pro quo going on right now, we'll have to regulate it. I propose that all campaign contributions over $5 be forced to be anonymous. Claims can't be made for tax write-offs on campaign contributions.
Think it over. If all donations are anonymous, there can be no quid pro quo. That way, it doesn't matter how much Disney et al give. With no quid pro quo, Congressmen can't be bought as they can now. They will have to face the people who elected them and do their will.
Does this seem too simple? Well, maybe it is. Maybe only the firebombing of California off of the map of the US will stop this garbage. But, a girl can dream can't she?
Phoenix
I am me. Insightful, isn't it?
Four more people to add to my list of people who'd make the world a better place if they were dead:
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
John Breaux (D-Louisana)
Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
What a crock. Every computer-related device having to have copy protection? Can you imagine how much that would slow down even the simplest programs like Vi? Not only would it dramatically hinder performance, it would violate OUR rights. The congress/senate doesn't have the right to deny MY fair use rights, or force THEIR fucked-up ideas about computers on me.
These people know nothing about computers. They shouldn't be making any decisions about them.
Not only that, but no one has the right to regulate Free Source Software (FSS) or Open Source Software (OSS). Projects like these done for no price, as a service to the public, should not be crippled and hindered because some assholes in hollywood are worried about their shitty movies being distributed on the net.
The last thing most of us want is to spend 24 hours downloading a copy of the latest crappy holywood movie, like Deep Blue Sea.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
From the bill text:
(a) IN GENERAL. -- A manufacturer, importer, or seller of digital media devices may not (1) sell, or offer for sale, in interstate commerce, or (2) cause to be transported in, or in a manner affecting, interstate commerce, a digital medial device unless the device includes and utilizes standard security technologies that adhere to the security system standards adopted under section 3.
Ahh, but nothing in section 3 defines the security systems standards this is to be defined later by some industry panel or the FTC, neither group an elected body.
The bill does spell out a list of goals for the security systems standards:
(d) SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS. -- In achieving the goals of setting open security standards that will provide effective security for copyrighted works, the security system standards shall ensure, to the extent practicable, that (1) the standard security technologies are -- (A) reliable; (B) renewable; (C) resistant to attack; (D) readily implemented; (E) modular; (F) applicable in multiple technology platforms; (G) extensible; (H) upgradable; (I) not cost prohibitive; and (2) any software portion of such standards is based on open source code.
Nothing in the bill says how these goals would be met, only that the industry panel or the FTC should achieve "the goal of promoting as many lawful uses of copyrighted works as possible, while preventing as much infringement as possible, the encoding rules shall take into account the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright owners, including the fair use doctrine."
This is a very end-around way to implement restrictions on computer hardware with very limited public debate. Nothing is the bill does anything to protect the usability of computers or state that these security measures work on multiple operating systems -- the industry committee or the FTC is free to mandate whatever bonehead regulation that they want.
It should be the job of those who own copyrighted works to find as many lawful uses of the work as possible. The government shouldn't be in the business of marketting Aladdin V or whatever new flick comes out.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Hollings is lying.
sulli
RTFJ.
When you actually talk to the Congresscritter make sure to convert S-2K back to S-2048 or they'll be wondering why you're ranting that a bill to amend the IRS code to provide depreciation allowances on certain property is going to kill the technology industry.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Not that slashdot isn't the pinnacle of topnotch editorializing or anything
I fired off letters to my congresscritters, and then I read a bit more about the bill and began to wonder why everyone's in such a huff.
I read that:
1) The software to do the protection would be required by law to be opensource, so linux and such shouldn't end up out in the cold.
2) "Fair use" personal copying is to be allowed under the new law
Are these things not true?
And if they are true, does it really make sense to object to this unless you're some sort of warez trader?
Perhaps more to the point, is an effective system that includes #1 and #2 above technically possible? Don't start sounding off like you're sure if you're not... Given that they (maybe) want to protect our rights this way, is there really anything wrong with a handful of researchers trying to find a solution that'll work?
"It would in essence turn your PC into only a VCR playback machine, and you wouldn't have the capabilities to move digital content around like you do today," complained P.J. McNealy, a research director for the Gartner G2 firm.
http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48567,00.html
I have yet to see a story on Cnn.Com or MSNBC.Com.
Uniting and
Strengtheing
American
Corporate
Hegemony
Utilizing
Misguided
Protection
Schemes.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
From the bill:
(d) SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS. -- In achieving the goals of setting open security standards that
will provide effective security for copyrighted works, the security system standards shall ensure, to the extent practicable, that --
...
(2) any software portion of such standards is based on open source code.
Anyone else find this ironic. At least Linux won't likely be left out of the loop if it passes...
OTOH, enforcing open source implimentations of DRM could be quite funny to watch...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
That's an interesting point. The one thing I keep thinking of, while I code away at a lab notebook for the TB consortium, is how this would kill off non-commercial software projects because the technology's cost is "not cost prohibitive," instead of free. I realize that this would end upgrades to the beowulf cluster upstairs that protein folding, protein interaction, sequence alignment, etc. is being done on. This may end the lab notebook because it runs on software that could "reproduce copyright material." This may end most of the low cost Bioinformatics software projects around the country.
Although it's probably possible to make the standards work with the technology in use, I doubt that the industry leaders involved will let that heppen.
Bioinfomatics has nothing to do with Hollywood, the record industry, or Napsterization; but it will get killed so that the Dizzy corp can make another million on taking peoples' rights away.
I'm rather pissed-off about that...
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
It has long been argued that code is a form of free speech and expression. Would this SSSCA or CBDFARDWERTA (emphasis mine :) not be a complete violation of the first amendment on the grounds that using an open source OS is a form of expression / speech? Personally not only do I use an open OS because it is stable, well supported yadda yadda yadda...but it also coincides with my belief that the underlying fundaments of an OS should be open to all software makers large and small. Of course IANAL but this sounds like a prime example of violating my first amendment rights.
The two birds with one stone comment would be to have code declared as a form of speech (bird 1) and because SSSCA restricts freedom of speech it is unconstitutional(bird2).
anyone with some legal exp. does this stand on any kind of solid legal ground?
The DMCA makes it illegal to crack, this new one makes it illegal to ship anything that doesn't need cracking.
Oh no, they're tyring to legislate Linux out of existance! They're going to take away my MP3s!
Well, yeah... But those are just side effects of the real intent of this bill: Turning the Internet into the next big broadcast media - making the internet another dollar generating machine for Big Content, locking out the little guys, forcing the old paradigm into the new media.
All arguments regarding fair use are moot - if you read Hollings' speech, it's clear that he believes fair use will be protected. I don't see how that will work in practice though. Say I pay for and download a Simpson's episode with DRM, and I want to do a screen grab to make a picture of the Simpson's family to hang on my wall. Is that fair use? Well, I paid for the image, and many thousands like it (the video stream), so probably yes. Will DRM allow a screen grab? If it won't, then they've violated fair use (I think, IANAL), but if it will then what's going to stop me from grabbing every frame in succession and piecing them back together later? Are they planning on degrading the quality of all these works with some kind of watermark to prevent copying? We already know that doesn't work.
Moving on... Will we gain access to their entire archives? Probably not. More likely, we'll be told to "tune in" to a URL on Sunday night at 9PM to catch the latest episode. You'll be allowed to keep a copy for your own use, but you won't be able to remove the commercials because you won't have access to edit the file.
If we do get access to the archives, which version will it be? The "first run" versions, or the ones they trim down for later reruns?
I use the net for entertainment because it's so far outside the candy-coated crap that TV spews. I have broadband because it's useful to me for gaming and for my work. I already have my MP3 collection built to a comfortable level, and the latest batch of hit singles isn't really enticing me to buy OR download. So basically, I'm the antithesis of a good consumer and nothing is going to change that - other than The Simpsons and Friends, they can keep their copyrighted drivel. Yes, keep it. Keep it off our net.
..................
A couple additional points, harvested from the previous discussion:
1) Big Content has never tried to go after the individuals, even though they have said they would do so if left with no other recourse. Doesn't their refusal to go after people who are actually doing the pirating (vs. attacking businesses whose otherwise legitimate tools enable it) constitute some sort of admission that the works are public domain? Like the rules that stipulate that if you don't defend your trademark, you lose it. Same for copyright, or is it different? If it's the same for copyright, then anything that's ever been traded P2P is now public domain and Big Content will just have to suck it up.
2) You'll obviously have to identify yourself to pay for downloadable content, which is absolutely unprecedented. The only content consumers who are currently violated (in the most personal sense of the word) in this way are those who sign up for the privilege of participating in The Ratings. What's to stop them from using my personal information for marketing or whatever? There are huge privacy concerns that no one in congress is addressing.
3) Final word on the matter... One poster (and I'm sorry for the lack of attribution on all of these points, but the comments are still available with the other story) mentioned that this bill will likely die due to senate politics. Seems that Copyright is NOT the commerce committee's ballpark, and the guy in charge isn't too happy about this bill.
I'd love to see what these idiots sponsoring this bill would think if suddenly there wasn't anyone left to hire to manage the IT infrastructure in the U.S. for them, or if all the engineering talent decided to leave the country for greener pastures (this pasture is turning browner by the minute). Or even if the large tech companies (like Intel and AMD) simply stopped selling any equipment within the U.S.
That's just wishful thinking, of course...sigh...
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
It's a while from now, unfortunately, but geeks have long memories (ask any /. poster who stole whose "look and feel"). Anyone want to run against her in the 2006 Demo primary?
sulli
RTFJ.
There are various reasons people don't get broadband.
1) They don't know much about it.
2) They haven't used the Internet long enough to get sick of 56k access
3) They don't know what hardware to get/ are put off by the ongoing expense.
and of course availability too.
Video Game cheats, hints a
I am vehemently opposed to the Hollings-Feinstein CBDTPA bill.
Fair Use is a concept (upheld by the Supreme Court) that allows exemptions from copyright law such that the owner of a copyrighted work may make copies of it for personal use (time/space shifting and archiving, for example). The SSSCA is a technological end-run around this. Justified in the name of "stopping piracy", Hollywood wants to put ever more money in its pockets by eventually creating a world where they can charge for each and every individual usage of a copyrighted work. Not only would this be costly, but its implications for privacy are scary: the only way this will work is if Hollywood knows every time you read a book, watch a movie, or listen to a piece of music.
The technological measures required of hardware and software producers by the CBDTPA will significantly increase the cost of all kinds of computing equipment. It will relegate the general-purpose computer to a thing of the past, replaced by a special-purpose computing "appliance" whos purpose will be not to serve its owners but to endlessly siphon money towards those who control the closed standards and high-priced service contracts. Efforts to keep systems secure will consist of restricting free speech by making it a crime to discuss any flaws that are discovered, as opposed to actually addressing the flaws technologically. Computing innovation in the US will flag behind every other country that keeps computing standards as they should be: open, competitive, and non-monopolistic. Because recording devices will essentially be outlawed, artistic expression will be narrowed to an ever smaller class of plotless manufactured Hollywood special effects tripe, and an endless stream of boy bands and girl divas plucked from shopping malls, given implants, taught ten choreographed moves, and shoved onstage.
Hollings claims that this bill is necessary for broadband to catch on, because (so goes his argument) broadband won't catch on until there is lots of online content that requires high bandwidth, and the only source of high bandwidth content is Hollywood, and Hollywood won't post its content until we have a law like the CBDTPA. I question both the premise and the ensuing logic. The truth is that this country doesn't "need" broadband to catch on; the only people who need that are the ones trying to make money off of it, and even they don't NEED it, they'll simply need to find a different business to try if it doesn't catch on. As for Hollywood being the only source of high bandwidth content, this logic seeks to reverse cause and effect: I would rephrase this by saying that if this bill passes, then the only high bandwidth content online will be that produced by Hollywood, because it will be practically impossible for an individual to record, reproduce, and distribute their own music and movies.
The technological changes described in the CBDTPA have been initiated for the purpose of creating monopolies, rubbermarked thus far by politicians who don't understand it but have been bought by campaign contributions. Whether they are achievable remains to be seen. I think it quite likely that if the technology achieves its creators goals, it will be at the expense of turning the US squarely into a police state. And even if the technology somehow fails in its goals, it will send large numbers of innocents to prison and waste money on a scale unmatched even by the medical insurance infrastructure.
I was shocked to discover that this bill is being proposed by democrats. It is the proposal of this bill that has made me and my wife decide to no longer register as democrats. From now on we are registering as independents. The democrats have clearly lost touch with what it means to empower the people who have entrusted decisions to them.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I haven't been really keeping up on this whole thing, but from what I can see this is impossible. Some devices simply CAN'T have copy protection built in. Small microcontroller systems are used in a lot of places you wouldn't even suspect and due to performance and program size restrictions it's not even possible to implement any kind of copy protection. This whole thing seems unbelievably rediculous.
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Corny
SSSCA is a little better.
But
Dumb
Terribly
Poor
Accronym
I have no problem remembering the CBDTPA.
but yeah
Slimey
Sneaky
Snakes
Control
Accronyms
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Isn't that S-2ki?
the callers as a whole seemed pretty well current on the issues, knowledgeable about the technology, and anti-SSSCA.
I am the very model of a modern major general!
When I heard about the guy at the Grammys (and I'm sure the Oscars will have somebody too) stand up and talk about the dangers that piracy and the Internet is posing to their business, I got to thinking about the porn guys. They've been at the forefront of the digital streaming business for so long, how come they don't cry about the losses from piracy? If Hollywood and the RIAA think they'll go bankrupt as soon as unprotected music/video gets out there, how come the porn business is so recession resistant?
Thanks
--
http://www.kurukshetra.org, discuss news and views about India
I say all the IT people in the US have a "sick out" as a protest. That will get some attention, and if it doesn't get the bill dropped, we go on strike.
I'm serious.
We have more power then the trucking industry. If we ever orginize, we'll own the place.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And, of course, it would fail miserably.. My point was that there is no technology barrier to try to make secure distribution NOW. They just do not want it, and want total control over those who want. Monopoly always try to preserve status quo. Imagine this people on tech committee.. Or, wait, we already have them there.. Adds extra few years for any basic project..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
..if there is anyone who reads /. who actually supports the SSSC..er..CBDTPA?
I haven't read a single positive comment about it, and I personally can't see a single one. The consumer loses out whichever way you look at it.
Also, how would this ruling affect the rest of the world? Would manufacturers make two versions of the same item..? Would there be a black market for the 'export' versions of various hardware items, which wouldn't have the CBDTPA system built into it?
Interesting..
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Is it just me, or does it strike anyone else as odd that so technical a bill happen to be numbered 2048, or 2^11?
We should also (separately) push them to add something like this to the bill under consideration:
(c)(3) PUBLIC DOMAIN USE COPIES. -- No person may apply a security measure that uses a standard security technology to prevent the making of copies of a work or any portion thereof once the copyright on that work has expired.
(under (g)(3)IMPLEMENTATION. -- Any final rule published in such a subsequent rulemaking shall -- )
(g)(3)(C) require all secured copies of a work to carry a machine-readable notice of the copyright date and copyright holder
(g)(3)(D) enable and facilitate the production of unsecured copies of the work, by inexpensive technical means and without any action by the former copyright holder, after the expiration of the copyright
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The high costs of broadband continues to hinder the consumer adoption of broadband internet and digital TV.
Because digital content can be copied quickly, easily and without degradation, manufacturing and distrobution costs are dropping to all new lows while profits are rising to a peak.
This
Using VBScript or JScript and one of IEs security holes, you would be easily able to copy around some data. I think it must cover cover websites too ;)
Jan
The bill has an interesting wish list of requirements for the FCC to consider. Of note to open source fans is section 3(d)(2) requiring open source for any software portion of the new security system.
Section 3(e)(1) states that "the encoding rules shall take into account the limitations on the exclusive rights of copyright owners, including the fair use doctrine." I don't understand how a hardware/software combination can implement this requirement. The Supreme Court has stated that the fair use determination "is not to be simplified with bright-line rules, for the statute, like the doctrine it recognizes, calls for case-by-case analysis." In order to make a fair use determination, a court must examine things like the nature of the work copied and effects of the copying on the market for the original work. So, if Congress is really serious about fair use, we need some sort of artificial intelligence fair use expert system that can perform a case-by-case analysis that challenges federal judges.
Section 3(a) identifies the FCC as the lead agency for making rules and other determinations in this area. Is this really the best choice? The agency may have experience regulating highly technical industries, but doesn't seem to me to have a level of expertise regarding copyright law. Perhaps this is why the bill mandates consultation with the Register of Copyrights. Can anyone think of another agency that might be better able to deal with these questions?
www.freenetproject.org
I bet that something like this (anonymous p2p) whill suddenly become popular if they try to do this. Someone will hack their box to spit out unprotected versions of tv episodes etc and anonymously post them on places like freenet.
Instead of stopping piracy, they may actually make it easier in a way... or at least more widespread.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
I saw the full clause posted below as well. How can they have let that slip through? The MPAA will shit a brick when it sees this. I think someone has seriously misunderstood the nature of software-based security and open standards. Hackers won't even have to try hard to create the new equivalent to DeCSS. Just imagine: RedHat 9.0 gets released including DRM technology, with full code, and some 14-year-old kid in Russia posts the full "fix" for it a day later. What's the point? (Not that I'd mind; the damage is still done, though, if technology companies have to waste their time covering for content providers or face legal penalties.)
if this goes through, won't it halt a lot of the American tech industry dead for a while? Basically giving all the other countries a lot of time to surpass the Americans? It's like shooting yourself in the foot. Isn't tech one of the states larger industries, and to go and kill it? I would laugh but its kind of sad at the same time...
Just got off the phone with my Senators, much like many others have. It only took 5 minutes at the *MOST* and went a bit like this:
1) Look up their website here
2) Go to their web page and get their local office phone number.,
3) Call number.
4) Simply tell the person, "Hi, I am (your name), from (your city), (your state) and I would like to register my opposition to SB 2048".
One of them had me spell my name, and the other asked me what SB 2048 was. In case you forget, it's the CBDTPA (Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act).
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
to mandate speed governors in autos, during the energy crisis of the 1970s. Went over like a lead balloon.
sulli
RTFJ.
So how will it be possible to write software under this law? I can't imagine how you'd make a compiler compliant with this wacky law. Will I have to send my source code to an NSA computer in Washington for every recompile?
in this big acronym war but what effect will this have (if any) on those of us who don't live in the U.S. .As far as I can make out it's only a bill introducing copy protection - so what's the big deal?
Video Game cheats, hints a
(Act To Protect Consumers By Taking Away There Civil Rights And Giving Them To Hollywood Bill)
This
The poorer people won't be able to afford the new, more expensive CBDTPA hardware/software under this new law, have to resort to pre-CBDTPA hardware/software, thereby instantly making them criminals.
Or is this Hollings' master plan? Make a whole bunch of people 'criminals', to support his new law?
AC comments get piped to
Sen. Mike DeWine (R)202-224-2315 614-469-5186
Sen. George Victor Voinovich 202-224-3353 614-469-6697
Call and say where you live, and you oppose senate bill 2048. You can leave a message as well.
Bigbiff http://www.exxtreme-linux.org
something like
Why do I have ask PERMISSION to read letters from my grandkids?
This morning, I was at a meeting with a number of CEO's, Presidents and such. When I brought this Hollings insanity up, at first they all thought it sounded like a good idea. (Yes, they all have grandkids and run public companies so understand the mental processes here). It took me a while to explain to them in non-technical terms that it means everything has to be labled with copyright status when it is created no matter who writes it. Which got a certain amount of uneasiness. Then I explained that when ever they opened anything, even email, the copy protection hardware would verify that they were allowed to see it. When they started yawning, I switched track...
"Lets say your granddaughter sent you an email. Before you could read it, you would have to get permission from the Disney Copyright Tracking System to read it."
Suddenly, the lights went on and these men were extremely angry! "What do you mean I have to get PERMISSION! Its mine, I don't need PERMISSION from anyone!" and similar screams of defiance.
PERMISSION is the key word here. The RIAA will keep claiming this is about THEFT. In political terms, this is the equivelent of saying "its just about sex". For all of us to defeat this stupid bill, we have to get a similar framing of the debate. The key word here is that nobody likes to have to ask permission to see, read hear or enjoy things that they rightly believe they own.
So every time the RIAA says " We're stopping THEFT". We need to claim "By forcing everyone to ask PERMISSION to read thier own mail!
One of my senators is Phil Gramm. He's about as crooked as they come. If I was ever forced at gunpoint to shake hands with him, I would make sure to count my fingers afterwards. Whatever he votes on this issue, it won't be because of anything I have to say about it.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
This
As I read all of the comments here and on the the Senate Judiciary Committee web-page I get a strong sense of deja-vu as if I were reading the public comments regarding the Microsoft monopoly penalities. I haven't seen a SINGLE creditable argument in either of these issuse that support the bill/judgement. Does it matter? Do you personally give $$$ to your pres. / congressman? If you don't you are only fooling yourself if you think any letter writing, calling, petition writing or anything else short of political assisanitions are going to change the votes of those crooked bastards in Washington.
All Yours Bits Belong To Us!
We need a similarly pithy handle for this bill, that can be used to strip away the mind-numbing acronym.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
As an amateur historian, I realize that in the longer term it is hard enough to find materials after the normal process of time. The digital revolution has made this much worse (for example a recent /. story mentioned that England could not retrieve census information that had been recorded c.1980 from obscure 14" optical storage disks). The use of encryption and DRM is going to make this situation much, much worse.
The problem is that DRM does not expire when the copyright expires (assuming congress will eventually allow copyrights to expire, and does not keep extending them forever :-) The copyright balance requires that the work goes into the public domain once the copyright has expired. The only way that will happen with a DRM scheme is if the copyright holders are still around, and have some type of motivation to make it public.
This is a difficult problem, with no easy solution. A minimal solution is to require that all copyright holders make their product available when it enters the public domain, but this won't help if the organization is no longer in business. Given this view, I don't know if DRM should be legal under copyrights. If DRM is legal, the only workable solution is to go back to the old method of copyrights (pre-1976) where you actually have to register for copyright protection. If you want to copyright something that is only "published" with DRM controls, an archival copy of the original unprotected version must be registered with the copyright authority (presumably Library of Congress, who will need new funding for this responsibility). This method has another real advantage, which is that it ensures that the copyright holder can be identified. The restoration industry has a big problem with "abandoned" works that are still technically under copyright, but they have no contactable owners.
This is a long term problem, and typically people don't worry about the long term (companies have trouble thinking past the end of the quarter!). But the issue of archiving and availability is extremely important. It goes right to the heart of what copyrights are supposed to do: "promote the progress of Science and useful Arts". Widespread use of DRM will make today's tragedies small potatoes (such as movies from the 1910-40's that should be in the public domain, which are instead literally rotting away without any care by the actual copyright holders).
Feel free to use some of these arguments in the letters to your congressmen!
Just post it through old (current, non-protected) hardware.The point is this would be posted from a hacked machine- every bit that is posted is controlled by the hacker.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
However, since 1976, Fair Use has been written directly into the copyright law. There is a section of the copyright law that says explicitly that Fair Use is a limitation on the exclusive rights granted to the copyright recipient and does not constitute copyright infringement.
So Fair Use is not so much an exemption to copyright law as an exemption to the law's grant of a monopoly.
To the "honorable" Senator from New York,
My name is Kenneth Witherow. I am a computer consultant and writer from the town of Livonia, NY. I am writing regarding a recently proposed legislative bill, S 2048 the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA). I strongly urge you to vote against this bill.
The main premise of the bill is to create encryption systems to protect digital content but despite the good intentions, it will cause great harm to independent content creators, computer programmers, electronic hobbyists and others. It seeks to force digital mechanisms such as computers to restrict the access to various media content used in conjunction with it. In this pursuit, it restricts a person's ability to make copies for personal use as allowed under both law and rulings from the Supreme Court.
Content producers claim that they cannot distribute the works via a digital medium for fear that the content will be illegally copied. The government should not have the power to sustain a business in the modern age because it's old methods are not any longer viable. Digital content is extremely inexpensive to reproduce and the reason why forays into this area fail is because the content producers refuse to lower their pricing to suit the new market. Why is it that a compact disc costs $18 while a tape, which is more expensive to produce, costs a mere $12? The content industry claims that the sky is falling with the introduction of every new advance in their field. Television would be the end of radio, VCRs the end of the movie business, MP3s the end of music distribution. Why is it that an independent band can generate revenues selling their music for a modest price on the internet but huge record labels cannot? The obvious answer is the music cartel, RIAA, knows it's business model is outdated and refuses to change because that would eliminate it's power. If this bill is passed, independent artists will not be able to create and distribute works due to the requirements of CBDTPA and the barriers to entry for non-wealthy creators. The MPAA and other institutions are in similar situations.
Because Microsoft has recently patented the system of Digital Rights Management, the adoption of the CBDTPA would ensure that the Microsoft monopoly will continue well into the future. As a user and developer of an alternate operating system, Linux, Microsoft would prevent us from using DRM to comply with the CBDTPA and it would be illegal for Linux to continue without it. This bill stifles software development and ensures that a monopoly will be further seated in it's power, ensuring that it will hurt consumers even more.
In 1998, another bill, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was signed into law. This law greatly restricts my fair use rights, especially because I use an operating system without a licensed DVD player available for it. One of the most damaging portions of the DMCA is that it makes illegal what made the PC possible in the first place - it outlaws reverse engineering. When the DMCA is combined with products sold under the CBDTPA, it is quite obvious that the result is content which is not available in a usable means, not copyable and illegal to retrieve via engineering methods. This ensures that content will never effectively enter into the public domain after it's copyright expires which is a gross violation of the Constitution's decree "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;". These two bills, not to mention the continual extension of copyright, ensure that the first two portions of this charge are violated. Restriction of engineering and software creation does not promote science. Inability to access works in a non-creator provided method does not allow exclusivity to last for a limited time.
You also recently voted for the McCain/Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill which means that you personally think money has a corrupting influence in politics. It is well worth noting that the entertainment industry was your fifth highest ranking donator so I am sure their money may influence your decision since you've stated it does. I never voted for you, nor will I ever vote for you, but if you vote for this legislation, my simple vote against you will turn into a local campaign against you assuming your Campaign Finance Reform "fix" doesn't ban me from speaking against you before the election as it currently does. Again, I strongly urge you to vote against S 2048.
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Cause if you look at the news everything seems to be more and more screwed in that country,
freedom? yeah for the corporations, screw the citizens.
This proposed law is dictatorship
I liked the idea, from the story about Christian Scientists, of us "small guys" running ads on Google. So I put up a "recall Senator Hollings" ad which ran on any search of "South Carolina" -- but that was pulled after 600 impressions. I've revised it now to warn of the loss of fair use and expired copyrights, and it appears on any search including the words Hollings, SSSCA, or CBDTPA. It links to the EFF alert. I could only put $250 into this, so the ad will probably disappear after a week or so.
I hope others might consider "extending" my ad with ads of their own, especially if you can think of some smart keywords that might make the ad more relevant as people are searching. Or donate directly to the EFF. Or put your weight behind digitalconsumer.org (they've got some big names helping them out, so we're not alone here).
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I kept it short and sweet. Scroll to the bottom.
sulli
RTFJ.
Well, if this one passes I'm thinking of renting a bus, getting a bunch of coders and heading north. Obviously it will become impossible to continue working in the IT field here in America.
I think we should probably emphasize this fact to the legislature. Passage of this bill in its current form would basically destroy IT here in this country. Since I work for a multi-national corporation it would be particularly interesting to see how that would work. Just think of the efforts required to change every file server and mail server in the US...
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Haven't they settled yet the Napster case? I believe they (RIAA) said that, if Napster paid 30 megabucks, the case was settled. This means anything ever traded in Napster became Napster property. Since Napster never copyrighted the stuff that was traded through them, everything is now in Public Domain, right?
Dude, that's highly funny, but I suspect you and I are the only ones that will get the reference.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Mod that up, even if it is anonomous. Very true.
The hired help in DC have set up web site for comments, and the comments are, at the moment, unanimously opposed to the bill. Check it out.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
Frankly I am sick of the power of the Federal Government. This goes WAYYYY beyond their function.
For me as a tech professional, the answer is simple. I WILL emigrate somewhere else if this passes. The tech industry will dry into nothing behind the content firewall. The only employemnt you will get will be black market work and you will always be looking over your shoulder (although you will probably double or triple your salary, of course on the other hand you could go to prison). Hell of a country eh?
I like the idea of moving to Germany. At least they had enough sense to boot out M$ and embrace Linux. Good Bier too!
I am not joking. If this passes, I'm out of here.
-- Mean People Suck
That should get their attention. :)
Contact CNN at http://www.cnn.com/feedback/
Then click News in General.
although, judging from the histories of Geek Marches, they usually do more harm than good.
I think "Consumer" might be better than "User"...
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Before they wrote the US Constitution they wrote a preamble explaining why they did it: "in Order to form a more perfect Union, etc..."
Well, the Honorable Senator Hollings' law will have a preamble, too: "We the Lawmakers of the United States, in Order to form a more profitable Media Industry..."
That said, I do plan to let the Honorable Sen. Boxer (D-CA) know how I feel about this...
Also, I don't recall seeing a good list posted of what to do and what to avoid when contacting government, so here is the EFF's list of Dos & Don'ts. Read it. Know it. Live it.
-MKD
I'm not sure, however, that Congress and the big media corporations are the only ones who could stand to spend some time on the wrong end of a gun. I installed a Gnutella client the other day, and spent a while watching what people were searching for. Fair Use my ass...it's pretty obvious that most people are using P2P for piracy. While I don't like draconian government solutions to problems, equal blame should fall on those who create the problem in the first place.
Look at it this way, it's a very intelligent move.
Hollings gets tons of flak from geeks over the SSSCA, so he throws us a bone, by virtually guaranteeing that people that run open source OSs will be exempt.....
I have two possible endings to this message:
a) Then later on after we let them get one more foot into the door, they start teghtening down little by little.
b) This is all they want anyway, 99% of the users won't circumvent it, and if any of the other 1% causes a problem by creating something to let the other 99% easily bypass (or being too outspoken about something), they have the DMCA to shoot that person/company down with.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Care to explain it to the rest of the class?
The scariest part of this whole mess is the concept of the "analog hole". Read Sen. Hollings' comments, posted a few days back.
He states that a major flaw in current copy-protection is that the encrypted digital signal is eventually turned into unencrypted, analog signal, to go out to your speakers. Uh, yeah...He says that pirates can illegally tap this analog signal, re-digitize it, and distribute the now unencumbered files. He further says that a *government mandate* is required to "fix" this "problem", by encrypting the signal all the way into the output device! Um, not good.
Apparently we need to throw out all our speakers and headphones. Great! Thanks!
--riney
Rest assured, as soon as possible after passage, they'll add them back in. It is as bad as it's made out to be. Once they get their collective foot in the door, there's no getting them back out.
this is the type of bill which, if passed, should cause Americans to 1) vote the legislators out of office 2) have the bill overturned/revoked , or if passed, then seriously consider taking up arms against whoever would try to enforce such nonsense
As soon as locked DVDs move into the public domain, DeCSS suddenly has a very legitimate use-- to permit access to "free" content.
The supporters of this bill are also working to see that stuff doesn't ever elevate to the public domain.
But I wonder: Wouldn't it just take ONE copyright holder who's previously locked a DVD with CSS to say "AS OF NOW, My movie is now in the public domain" to totally legitimize DeCSS? It would no longer pass the "solely to circumvent protection of copyrighted works" test.
On this view, copyright expiration and/or the potential for voluntary relicensing may legitimize every single anti-DRM tool.
Has this been discussed before?
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
only problem with this is that IF you get decent labour organizing going on there (usa) in the IT-industry, it will be playing just for the big companies anyways since they would convince the 'big' guys that this is actually good for them.
what you need is a equivalent of the national rifle association(or wtf it's called), that goes ranting how they need to have freedom to copy stuff for them(As in 'we need our guns').
OTOH, if this thing passes it will just stir the economy for ~year, and then they realize this isn't possible by far, and extend the shifting perioid first into 10 years, then into 20.
just like the swedes were going to close all of their nuclear power plants because politicians used it as popularity getter without realising that their timeline wasn't really possible..
besides, wtf we care, we got nethack to play on our current computers for ~100years..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Good thinking
It makes little sense to put such restrictions on equipment that is designed to do much more than watch a movie or listen to your favorite bands. ITS ONLY ENTERTAINMENT. If its such a problem then shut down the entertainment industry and leave us to our real work you F'n llamas! Im really not trying to flame. Think about it. It would be like a law that says you can no longer eat food that you cook at home since you might recreate the bigmac in your kitchen.. I'm thinking if McDonalds were so worried about that maybe they should give it up.. We gotta eat ;)
Recently millions of Americans went to to an Aussie owned theater (Village) to watch a New Zealand made movie (LOTR) based on the works of a British author. Many of them saw the ads for the movie on a network founded by an Australian (Fox) while watching a show created by an American (Simpsons) but animated in India. They can buy the sound track made by a Japanese firm (Sony) with songs composed in Ireland (Enya).
Yep, protecting American creativity...
Does anyone have a good Web site on this to list on a sig file? I looked at digitalconsumer.org and the info on the EFF site, but I found them to be difficult for someone totally unfamiliar with this to easily understand. We need something that explains the issue from the point of view of someone who's never heard of this.
It occurs to me that putting a tagline and link in e-mail and Usenet sig files may be a good way to start getting people to notice this. It won't do the job by itself by any means, but it's one small step. I'm ready to do it, but I need a good site to link to.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
The fact that a bill that is such an obvious anathema to freedom (not to mention the consumer and the computer industry) was even considered for introduction, let alone actually brought to congress, in what should be the most free country in the world is simultaneously sickening and thoroughly depressing.
I don't want to have to leave this country, but neither would I remain here and contribute my talents when I know that it helps support a system that would do something like this...
Any suggestions on where to relocate?
Think about this, there is some million ex-Napster/Morpheus etc. users out there who will oppose this bill if only we can reach them. However, they don't respond to bland EFF alerts and people from the tech department bitching about something else they don't understand. What do we need to do? Start a ribbon campaign? Bumper stickers? Spraypaint?
Look at the incredible pool of talent we have right here. We need to get the word out there in any way we can, print, tv, websites etc.. I'm sure someone here is a genius Flash designer, we have lot's of coders, we can do it if we want. Remember Artists Against Piracy? It was a media campaign. That's exactly what we need. Help people learn and act.
What we can't do is sit idly by, do only our small little piece and hope for the best. Reach out. I told my boss about this (also a programmer) and his jaw hit the floor, he had no idea.
The internet was made to communicate quickly on a massive scale, for god's sake let's try to use it for once.
Now I am going to write my letters and I'll be telling all my friends at the bar tonight and every night after.
Increasingly, it's the media owners, not the law. Good example: the DMCA, having outlawed encryption circumvention, means you have to play your DVD's in a player that was approved by the MPAA.
Screw 'em. I'll watch "Shrek" on Linux if I bloody hell want to.
If I lived in the US I might actually vote with my feet. Or, rather, with my airline ticket if they let me and all my cybernetic implants through.
On a side note, I might want to ask the Americans who come up with bills like this one: "What part of 'Land of the Free' did you not understand?"
--
If you moderate this, then your children will be next.
The only problem is that Bill Orielly is a pretentious ass and is almost as conservative as Rush Limbaugh.
Not that liberals like myself are any better, but votes like these (over issues that protect industry vs. consumer) tend to be over party lines, with conservatives usually voting in favor of big business.
All Orielly would do would be to promote why it's a good thing and how most of America is evil because we "steal".
They look like that: when kilo means 10^3, kebi means 2^10, mebi - 2^20 - from mega 10^6, etc. So we have Gebi-bit network, and so on.
It is an actual, international standard nobody uses..
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
OTOH, I don't see a record of ABC News even reporting the bill on their Sci/Tech or Politics pages. I guess I'd expect Disney to hide the truth like they always do. Any company that forces their Goofy's and Mickey's to wear their own lice-infected underwear can't be that good in the "fairness and truth" department.
Zodiac Survey
Did you all see this article?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48567,00.html
It appears to be yet another article from Fox on the subject.
See-bit-puh. Don't see bits. See incomprehensible garbage. Copy protected. Feh. I think I'll read a book. See-bit-puh. See me putter in the garden. See-bit-sputter. Sputter economy, sputter. Dick is a congressman. Dick likes to vote. Dick likes money. See Dick run. See Dick win. See Dick legislate. Legislate, dick, legislate. See Sally jiggle. Jiggle Sally, Jiggle! Dick can see Sally jiggle because I has the V-chip Plus (TM) in his computer.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Does anyone in the /. crowd have any ideas what us non US-guys (and girls) should do about things like the SSSCA? We can't influence the senate in the US, and we don't have the right to vote there, but your decitions influence us as much as it does you. Of course, we could wait until the "plague" spreads to EU, but then it will probably be to late!!!
The most interesting thing I find about all this is the Business Software Alliance is opposed to this bill. For those who don't know, the BSA is the alliance of companices like Microsoft and Adobe that audit random companys, extorting money from them for failed license compliance. Basiclly, if the BSA is opposed that must mean MS is opposed as well. I am curious why they are not more vocal about this issue? And perhaps we will see some more favorable press towards it on MSNBC? Interesting indeed.
This is one particular issue on which the conservatives seem to be on the right side. Hollings, the sponsor of the bill, is a Democrat after all, and the biggest problem the bill is likely to face in its passage is that Rep. Howard Coble, a Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet & Intellectual Property, is opposed to it.
Part of it is that the media industry and Hollywood have traditionally been Democratic supporters, while the big tech companies (Intel, Microsoft, etc.) are the "big business" that Republicans tend to like, and they're all opposed to the bill.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"The lack of high quality digital content continues to hinder consumer adoption of broadband Internet service and digital television products."
Is it just me, or does is sound like they're trying to shove broadband access down the United States' collective throat?
Have they ever given any thought to the fact that maybe...just maybe...people don't need broadband right now because they don't want or have to watch TV over the internet? Maybe we don't want the latest Britney Spears CD sent over copper and deletable at the RIAA whim.
"The secure protection of digital content is a necessary precondition to facilitating and hastening the transition to high-definition television, which will benefit consumers."
People either want HDTV or they don't. Our choice, not theirs. It doesn't benefit us in any way to see the news at a sharper resolution. These companies are obviously eager to get these technologies into our homes, but they are so impatient, they must pay off a senator and have a law* to force it onto us.
* When I say "law", I'm not referring to the actual documents which could not be bought. I'm referring to one of the easily obtainable pieces of paper for the corporate elite that allows them to step all over and keep complete control over customers' money and freedom at will, provided you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to "donate".
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
BWAHAHAHA!
Yeah, it is odd that they've chosen a weird-o name for it. They must be new to the acronym game.
This is almost as bad as that time that congress was going to levy a tax on e-mail. You remember, that e-mail tax? Yeah.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Fair use is free speech, Congress does not have the right to take it away.
What it boils down to is that the government does not have the right to make any laws that infringe speech. They just have the right to make laws that promote the progress of science and the useful arts. If they can't do this without infringing speech, they have to go back to the drawing board.
For the first time in my life I wrote to my Senators. I mainly concentrated on the impact that I believe the bill will have on the economy. If passed it would throw the tech industry and consumers into a state of confusion. We really don't need that with a weak recovery under way. I also told them that I thought the bill impinged upon my free speech rights as a programmer. The government would be telling my what I can and can't do with my ideas and inventions as expressed in source code. I will be interested in seeing if I hear anything back from them.
The K is capitalized in kibi- (KiB) but not in kilo- (km, kg, kHz, ...).
Liberty in your lifetime
Where does that article explain why SSSCA is bad.
It explains why democrats are bad and why record companies are bad, it does not explain why the SSCA is bad at all.
And i seriously doubt it was the only news outlet to do that. Slashdot is a news outlet no?
You seriously do not understand O'Reilly.
To put it very nicely O'Reilly has and will always protect and benefit Murdoch and News Corp.
News Corp. is supporting the bill.
Which means that O'Reilly is supporting the bill.
If you disagree with me, dont flame me, prove me wrong. Call, email O'Reilly. See what happens.
Everybody knows you can't protect digital content. Even if they manage to come up with hardware that only provides analog output, it's still hackable. You just need A/D conversion. If they introduce water-marks, it doesn't matter. Even if they vary the output randomly, it doesn't matter because you can run the movie multiple times and determine a "consensus value" for each sample.
Gangsters in Hong Kong will have this technology before they even need it. So, what it all comes down to is punishing the innocent so the guilty can make more money. Again.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Ok, so I've called my Senators and done all that I personally can do (not yet, actually, I'm just trying to make a point). Now what? Even if 10% of /.ers actually do *something* about this, that isn't worth the paper this post is printed on, if you get my drift. The point I'm trying to make is that, of course, this word needs to be spread... so what other forums are out there that can draw attention and then further the spread this plea? K5 is an obvious one, but if anyone out there have a further-reaching independent that they can use to publicize this, then please do so.
Does anyone in the /. crowd have any ideas what us non US-guys (and girls) should do about things like the SSSCA?
Well, just wait. As a Canadian, I can see where our fine neighbour to the south is heading. Protectionist legislation is the American way. Fair competition is given lip service, but if they can bully their way into dominating a market through buying legislation, they will. Eventually though, the "land of the free" and the "home of the brave" will simply become the police state that we've all been fearing since the 50's. And we were worried about the Russians. Just shows you what saps we were.
The war on drugs was all about stripping away individual rights. The war on terrorism is finishing the job. (Not to mention lining Bush Sr.'s pockets) Those who can buy politicians get richer, those who can only vote, don't.
So, my advice would be to just wait. Eventually it will be the entire world against the U.S. (probably right after the tanks roll into Canada) Then we'll see where the chips fall after that.
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Under definitions:
It seems like there will always be a massive loophole with computer components. It may be feasible to implement a copyright control system for integrated consumer electronics devices which are opaque to most consumers (DVD, VCR, camcorder, etc.) and their intenral function is entirely under the control of the manufacturer. Such devices could gain effective protection by omitting external interfaces that allow unrestricted copying (analog video, SPDIF). Of course consumer acceptance will be hard to come by until CBDTPA approved technology becomes pervasive.
Computer components are meant to be integrated to form a functional device. The given definition of a digital media device covers both storage and I/O technologies. This suggests that the bill applies to hard drives, CD-ROM drives, NICs, broadband routers, and most other computer components that manage data. All of these devices would need to cooperate with each other, in order to enforce the CBDTPA requirements. I don't see how it would be possible to accomplish this given the variety of devices this would encompass. There is no single trade organization that can decree what the new "protection" system should be, and force all manufacturers to implement it.
The are large variety of interfaces used to connect existing components, each with varying degrees of complexity. You could possibly shoehorn copy restrictions into interfaces that depend on heavy layers of software encapsulation like 1394, or USB. How could you do anything to rectify PCI, ATA, SCSI and many other interfaces where raw speed is essential and there is direct access to the low level interface. Many of these interfaces have been in use for well over a decade and will continue to be used far into the forseeable future. Any changes would have to have built in circumvention capability in order to maintain compatability with legacy hardware. The best this bill could hope to accomplish is outlawing CD-ROM drives that permit CDDA from discs that have the copy protection bit set.
The end result is that it is impossible to implement CBDTPA for computers, thus leaving a permanent means for unencumbered management of copyrighted works. An exemption for computers would pull out most of the bill's teeth. The biggest threat to copyright holders is the unlawful distribution of their material over the internet. Once it makes its way into a computer there is no potential to enforce control. Their only hope is to put up barriers that will make it impossible to extract first generation quality copies from comsumer electronics devices. It will be interesting to see how this pans out in the next decade since it suggests the much touted "convergence" of computers and television will not happen as it is currently envisioned.
RANT: Congress should not be in the business of legislating technology. The DMCA Macrovision provisions (look for "gain control" in the bill) are a mistake but they are not a major thorn because Macrovision is only applied to dedicated (analog)video playback devices and it does not interfere with legitimate use. In his statement, Hollings tries to holds up the existing Macrovision legislation in a attempt to legitimize what he is trying to do. It is unfortunate that he and his supporters do not realize that the sweeping scope of this bill would paralyze the legitimate use of many products if it were, in fact, possible to accomplish what the CBDTPA enforces.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Go to Comments to the Senate Judiciary Committee and check out the comment by Stuart Ballard. +5 insightful doesn't do it justice.
Ctrl-F is your friend. Now go.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Hollings is a whore.The entertainment industry has an inefficient business model and they want to legislate profitability. Boycott movie theaters, especially Memorial Weekend. Don't buy Disney toys or videos for the kids etc. First run of a big budget movie(sorry Star Wars fans), boycott. Hit them where it hurts.
This bill is the logical extention of the DMCA. Encrypted formats were trade secrets, and had NO LEGAL protection at all, until the DMCA was used as we knew it would be. The goal of the exclusive franchise created by copyright is to increase what's available to the public domain. The DMCA severly restricts what gets out to the public domain, as readers of "protected" formats won't work when the copyright expires (crutently 75 years). Unfortunately for the entertainment industry, these formats are not as popular as unecumberd formats, so they have introduced this bill to MANDATE their formats. This will eliminate the public domain altogether as it will eliminate user control of the devices used to create and distribute digital media. In the future, there will be nothing but digial publication, therefore there will be no publishing exept by approved and authorized software. It will outlaw free software. If you don't think that non free software restricts what you say, you need to re examine your non free EULA. Right now, I don't care if Microsoft decides that I can not ever use their software again (as they can by their EULA). If this bill passes, that will mean that I can't publish.
The only rational extention of the DMCA if for the supreme court to strike it down as a clear violation of free speech.
In the mean time, I am going to hand write my representative. Want to guese which letter will have a greater effect, this one or that one? Hmmm, it might be time to use some old fashion press to influence the local comunity. In the future, an inflamatory handbill might not pass the "protection" program in my copy machine. See where things can go?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Yeah, but the NRA is going to be far more prepared to "back it up" it when everything goes to hell.
/. geeks gonna do? Whine louder?
What's a bunch of
And yes I am a proud card carrying member of the NRA.
Excessive forking causes un-wanted children.
Ok we have all vented here, I'll be writing letters when I cool off enough to do some good in that dept but that ain't going to actually counterbalance Disney's billions.
I read the whole text of this heap of dung. When you cut through the crap it basically means any coder inside the US border can be tossed in the joint whenever a media company doesn't like something we say (code IS speech). Would anybody be taking this if it were printing presses being so regulated? Well it is, since all modern presses are computerized.
CONGRESS SHALL PASS NO LAW.....
Ok, fine words but what happens when they do it anyway? Well that was what the 2nd Amendment was on about. The Ballot box rests firmly on the cartridge box. So at what point do we decide it is our duty to water the liberty tree? If a few of us rebel at any one time we get branded "terrorists" or "right wing militias", shot dead and used as an excuse to pass yet more unconstituitionallaws.
How about a nice document with flowery oratory with words like "When in the course of Human Events....." in it. Then an activation clause stating that the Revolution begins when:
a) The Supreme Court becomes the third branch of government to abrogate it's pledge to "Uphold and Defend the Constituition" by finding this law legit after Congress and the President violated their Oath by Passing and Signing it.
b) N (100,000, 1 Mil, ???) people have signed the declaration to Pledge their Lives, their Fortunes and their Sacred Honor to the overthrow of the corrupt Government and restoring the Republic our forefathers gave us in trust.
Of course the first important question would be if signing such a document, even in the event it never reaches the trigger threshold, qualifies as an Overt Act of Treason?
And any cryptoweenies out there, shut the hell up about some cockeyed scheme for anonymous signatures. Any fool should be able to see why that wouldn't work in this case.
As is probably clear from this posting, I'm Mad as Hell and don't want to take it anymore but still a bit fuzzy as to just how we are supposed to get out of this mess.
Democrat delenda est
I assume the US are going to get the rest of the world to enforce their laws for them as well, ala DMCA and DeCSS.
USA has no understanding of what freedom means, the people who wrote their bill of rights would be turning in their graves.
Before I politely flame my senators (which I DO intend to do if they support this), I just want to take a step back and try to understand exactly what will happen if it passes.
People say that Open Source operating systems will be banned. Is that REALLY likely to happen or is that some people's overreaction?
What kinds of operations will computers no longer be able to do? Will there be restrictions on copying files? Like, if a media file has a "do not copy" bit set, then nothing is supposed to copy it? But how in the world would that work? It would be super simple to write a C program to copy it, ignoring that bit. Will it all be in hardware? Will disk drives be forced to recognize when it sees a file with this bit set? That would be no small pain in the arse. While a fully hardware solution might allow Linux to legally run on it, the drives might necessarily not support all filesystems. And what happens when new media formats come out?
And would it stand legally? There are precedents for source code being considered speech, so it seems as though any attempt to ban the distribution or use of open code could be struck down in court fairly easily.
Any thoughts?
I think that this may be something to consider (taken from a letter to my Senator)
"The movie industry as a collective has had great interest in recent years in selling multimedia machine- basically a highly specialized computer with copy restrictions built in. In a capitalist economy, such a produce would compete against older forms of media and traditional general-purpose desktop computers. All things being equal, the computer market is large enough to support their special machines alongside regular computers. However, it turns out that not all things are equal. When their products were tried in the marketplace, they failed miserably (the DivX machine is the most well known example). Most consumers refused outright to purchase hardware that they labeled as erestrictedf and the few who did purchase these media machines found that the restrictions they contained gave the machines extra technical difficulties and were more difficult to use in general.
Despite their failure in the marketplace, the movie industry seems to still want to sell their movies on similar machines. Having failed in a free market, this legislation would force consumers to buy general purpose computers that have been twisted into essentially being their multimedia players (making them no longer general-purpose. I have read about proposed hardware protections, and there is no way to implement them without limiting how they connect to other computers and without breaking many existing software tools.) Not only are they cheating the consumer out of a truly general purpose computer, they are forcing the computer hardware industry to pay the tab for producing hardware for the movie industry to sell their special protected files for"
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
that this crap bill passes with a voice vote, so that there's no record of who voted for it and who didn't?
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Thank you for your insightful, yet witty response. I would reward you with karma had I moderator points to give, but as yet I have none. I wish you well on your journeys. Have I mentioned my recent acquisition of a rather nice sack, within which I may store nuts?
-------------------
I am a highly intelligent squirrel
I am a Citizen. I pay my taxes, I go to work, I try to trust my government that they will do the right thing.
This is complete HORSESHIT to say that I cannot do what I want with the computer I Paid for.
This is called corruption.
-----------
corruption
n 1: lack of integrity or honesty; esp susceptibility to bribery; use of a position of trust for dishonest gain.
HELLO commerce committee, you are corrupt and terrible people and should have NO PLACE ON EARTH TO REPRESENT ANYONE.
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Copyright is a bargain between the public and authors; you produce something and I'll grant you a limited monopoly on that thing so you'll do it again. The key word here is "bargain". As soon as one side of the bargain feels they are getting screwed they will ignore the bargain.
That's what's happening right now. Copyright law has moved so in favor of copyright holders that these days the entertainment industry requires a great deal of legislation to protect itself from its customers.
I know it sounds obvious, but this won't work. No matter how much money you spend in Washington, once you've broken your side of the bargain, everyone loses, including you. This is a shame, because copyright is a valuable concept, and we're worse off if we lose it.
Tim O'Reilly was talking about a different subject, but he put it best in his "pissing in the well" letter. Break the copyright bargain at your peril.
Yes, but we still have the second amendment of the US Constitution. If our government fucks up enough, we can do something about it.
I must have missed that channel on cable. Oh wait, is that it? Nope, nevermind, Jerry Springer..
Josh
The really scary thing is, that might have to happen sometime. Our freedoms are being steadily eroded through stupid patents and stupid laws. Our whole freeking government is just corrupt.
This is NOT what millions of people in our history died for in defending our country!!!!
Hm. Now, it seems to me that a lot of the copyright and patent mess we've seen lately is definitely not intended to 'promote the progress of science'. So, I wonder, could someone get this law, the DMCA, and all the other wonderful legislation we've been seeing recently, declared unconstitutional, on the grounds that this copyright system does not fulfill the original purpose of the institution?
Well, it ain't ever gonna happen, but it's an interesting thought...
Does that mean Hollings is right? Of course not.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Am I the only one here that actually wants to see this bill go through? [Whoa - put down those torches and hear me out.]
Remember the CDA of 1996 (Communications Decency Act)? Do you remember how absurdly censored web sites were until that bill was overturned? It was such a patently unconstitutional bill that the Supreme Court did their job and overturned the sucker.
That is what needs to happen here. If this bill gets voted down. Hollings (or the media's next shill) will rewrite it, rename it, (maybe lighten it up at bit) and send it in again. And they'll do this until it passes.
But what we've got here is so disgustingly unconstitutional that I want it to get passed. The IT industry will go fucking bananas; chaos will ensue. It will get challenged and the Supreme Court will have no choice but to strike it down.
And then it will be dead.
I'm a resident of the state of Hawaii, and I vote and go to school in Seattle. Seattle has Maria Cantwell, whom I don't particularly dislike, but where IP is concerned, I wouldn't trust her if she paid me to.
I figure, okay, so much for Washington. How about Hawaii. My senator, Dan Inouye, has lots and lots of pull, right? Well, according to the Wired article, he's a sponsor, so he's not going to change, either. Generally, whichever way Inouye decides to go, the other Hawaii senator, Dan Akaka, will go as well. So who do we write to?
Ron Kirk (Democratic runoff candidate)
P.O. Box 720160
Dallas TX 75372
(214) 841-1001
Fax (214) 841-1094
Victor Morales (Democratic runoff candidate)
P.O. Box 878789
Mesquite TX 75187
(972) 427-9946
I have been unable to find a web page for Mr. Morales. Also, note that the email address may be incorrect.
The runoff is April 9, 2002.
John Cornyn (Republican nominee) P.O. Box 13026
Austin TX 78711
(512) 494-8535
Fax (512) 494-8161
There is also a contact form you can fill out.
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
I don't mean to bash you, do not take this as a flame. But that just ISN'T going to happen. I'm sorry, it's not. For every one person we could possibly, in our wildest Slashdot dreams, get to care about this, there are another -- without exaggeration -- thousand clueless people who wouldn't understand or care to understand what is going on.
.02,
You do not fight battles on the turf that your enemy knows so well. You do not play into their hands. And if trying to starve them of monetary resources isn't just that, I don't know what is.
The way to deal with this is legislative. It's the only place where "right" has a snail's chance in a bucket of salt. If you can uncover the bought-and-paid-for politican, if you can expose each and every one of them to the harsh light of day, it won't have the support it needs. The politican is by a huge, huge degree the weakest link here.
Don't go after the biggest fscking chunk of metal in the string.
Again, not a flame. And yes, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. If you're interested in learning more, check out iActivist.org. I can be emailed at "jason at macross daht com". The launch date is listed as "July" (which meant, at the time, July of 2001), but I've just now gotten around to learning the code to make the site, and it's beginning to look more and more necessary every day.
My
Jason/Limekiller
PS: I'm posting anon because it won't accept my password for some strange reason. But I'm limekiller4, normally.
Since when is something that you might do illegal? Isn't this essentially the same thing as thought police? "You were thinking about copying these CDs, but you didn't actually do it, and we're arresting you anyway." As much as I don't like things like the DMCA, it's based around things that you do being illegal, as it is with all of the other laws I can think of at the moment.
They get a lot of money from Hollywood.
But who has the biggest guns? You don't stand a chance against the U.S. government so stop fooling yourself.
Hmmm... the bill states that no person can offer for INTERSTATE commerce a device that has had the copy-prevention technology "castrated" from the device...
I live in good 'ole New Hampshire --- does this mean that I can sell non SSSCA/whatever-compliant computers, but only to people who live in NH?
-RickTheWizKid
Just remember the bill number. It is S 2048 in the Senate.
Well, if this piece of but wad passes, I'm leaving the country for somewhere where the Luddites didn't win.
I'll do something else with my life, like fish or lie on a beach and masturbate or something.
Bin Laden didn't have to try to kill me, succeed with about 3000 people and and destroy my work place (yeah, I lived next door and I worked there,) because he was just a little impatient.
This piece of crap on a writ insures the destruction of America as a viable entity. (I am SO outta here.) The lawyers will choke you to death.
You'll be reduced to watching the same old crap on TV. They already OWN that. And you can bet your ass (which they will also own) that they won't be paying for anything new. Costs money.
By the way, updates from M$? Fuggedaboudid. That would violate the sacred covenant between the brown lipstick wearing media corporations and the equally brown lipstick wearing puppet politicians.
And the computer industry will be a fading memory.
Shit. What a bunch of whores. All of 'em.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Robocop 1 2 or 3!! a few encodings are not protected the rumors say, but they are copyrighted so it does not exactly help you.
I never want to work under such heavy-handed regulations.
We (not just the US, but wordwide) are at a point where you just about eliminated every single job there is.
If you are a single mom you could apply for welfare.
Ok, no more alarming news, lets consider what will change in GNU/Linux, for example:
But maybe there's a way out. What if Free Software license allows only the creation of non-copyrighted material? Of course that Free Software should create brand new file formats, but I think that it's a way out, isn't it?
Maybe we may also exclude our names from our codes, as stated by R. Polk Wagner even reputation increasements maybe configured as commercial activity.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
SSSCA
Security Systems Standards and Certification Act
CBDTPA
Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act
HOLLINGS(SUCKERS)
Hollywood Offering Lots of Lingo and Illegal Gold to Senators (So that Universal Can Knock Everyone's Rights to a Stop)
[insert witty comment here]
Okay, yeah, calling senator offices is a great idea... do that... TOO!
I hope no one needs help finding the contact information for their representatives. If you do, I'll post the links again.
The nice part about emailing is that, at least in my cases, I always get "some" sort of relevant response to my message. It's actually kinda cool to get a letter from a senator's/congressman's office.
And supposing 'Representative X' was being strongly influenced by 'Special Interest Y.' It will be really hard [impossible] to ignore 'Public Interest U.S.' when we all speak out.
This is not your vote. This is more important. Votes are rigged, miscounted or suffer from other means of failure. But when you write exactly what you want to say, there's no mistaking that you have an active interest in the direction of our nation and the activities of our representatives. And asside from one or two infamous politicians, I don't want to think that the majority of our government is so arrogant that it ignores its people...
... oh yeah, and here's a little of what I wrote to them...just in case anyone's interested:
There are many reasons I wish to express my thoughts on the matter regarding the introduction of legislation referred to as CBDTPA.
The primary reason I feel this legislation is detrimental is that it is not the government's role to control the free market except when monopoly conditions serve to harm the consumer. When there are a variety of buyers and sellers, the market's 'invisible hand' guides the market in its natural course.
We don't need MORE laws saying it's wrong to steal. We have copyright law already and it works. We have established that the consumer has a right to 'fair use' which means we can back-up, protect and use the media we pay for in any manner we find most suitable. This works too. What doesn't work is when the consumer's rights have been circumvented via the DMCA which states that 'fair use rights are not to be denied although the tools needed to exercise those rights are illegal.'
This legislation represents more of such surgical removal of our fundamental freedoms and they are simply unnecessary.
I am against the CBDTPA because it places too much control into hands of the existing entertainment industry. Such restrictions, just as the CSS (the DVD's playback protection system that denies 'unapproved players' the ability to legally play a movie in any manner the home user sees fit which includes denying an armed-forces service member from playing his personal movie collection when he is stationed overseas!!) does, will grant the industry yet another 'source of income' through their 'blessings' (license fees)of various technologies. This sort of system guarantees that anyone except the already successful industry players will be able to enter the arena to do competition. This completely stifles competition from new inventors and entrepreneurs. This will serve only to guarantee that those in power today will remain in power with their government-created industry elite leaders united [anti-trust?] under the union of the MPAA and the RIAA organizations.
I am against the CBDTPA because it represents an exaggerated reaction to 'fear' of wrong-doings on the part of a supplier's customers. In essence, the various industries feel needlessly threatened by what it perceives as a loss of control over its material. To some degree, this has always been the case from the very earliest days of professional entertainment. Art will be copied, preserved and enjoyed by thousands, millions and billions of people. But it doesn't mean the business of producing entertainment will fail because people would like to record a movie playing on HBO while he's watching his son's 2nd grade school play!! (I refer to the practice of time-shifting) And it doesn't mean that a home user shouldn't be able to make a backup of his movie collection to secure his entertainment library against aging and random destruction (such as the same second-grader mishandling his father's video discs). There are a variety of user uses which qualify as 'fair use' such as transferring media from one source to another (for the purpose of keeping 'order' in the family's mini-van while the family goes on a trip... for that I mean being able to play tapes or whatever newer recordable technologies are developed in the next few decades in the vehicle... or hotel room... or wherever!) The CBDTPA presumes there are no justifiable needs for this level of media flexibility and criminalizes the intent every single customer who wishes to enjoy these basic purposes.
And we already have fair historical examples of what we can expect should the measure be adopted or denied. The entertainment industry had protested the introduction of the cassette tape because it 'spelled doom' to their profitability. Clearly, we can see that the industry survived and even outgrew that fear with newer technologies replacing the old as newer and better technologies are created and implemented. As can also be illustrated, the entertainment industry has destroyed entire possibility of American consumer DAT (Digital Tape) industry with its exaggerated fears of doom and destruction. This industry did not die in other countries. In Europe and Asia, DAT as a media type is alive, well and prosperous which meant that for the moment, the rest of the world has consumer technologies that U.S. citizens were needlessly denied. (How many more technologies will be 'banned' from the U.S. due to entertainment industry's paranoia? The CBDTPA represents a carte blanche to impose its restrictions over technologies from now until forever.) We don't know what technologies the next twenty years will bring us, but you can be sure that if they aren't "made in the USA" that they'll be made elsewhere and probably not as well. And with the paranoid entertainment industry in control of such developments, approval and deployment, you can be sure that nothing good will come of this.
This sort of legislation has serious repercussions far beyond your own term in office. It has repercussions well beyond our lives and will affect the lives of our children and grandchildren. As stated simply by the founders of our government, if we are to err, we should err on the side of freedom. So let us act carefully when we vote to restrict and control technology, freedoms, rights and our country's future.
Law such as the DMCA represents a move that puts the legal system in control of the corporate interests rather than in our court rooms. The DMCA has been shown to remove crucial points of our "due process" system. For example, when a complainant issues a demand for material to be removed citing the DMCA, the receiver is obliged to comply immediately without a judges order! This dangerously puts a great deal of manipulative power into the hands of overzealous interests. Threats of prosecution have already endangered scholarly research and education in the past year. Baseless demands of copyright infringement under the DMCA is being used as a tool to manipulate freedom of speech all over the globe. (Search the internet for 'Google' and 'Scientology' for a ready example of such cases of baseless abuse of the reckless power the DMCA grants.)
The CBDTPA must not be put into law. The DMCA must be repealed. Copyright law should be restored to its original intent.
The more law is written and updated to serve commercial interests at the expense of the public, the closer we come to the bizarre and nightmarish predictions of 'The Corporate States of America' becoming a reality. Once the damage is done, you will have to be a voting board member to make a difference instead of being a voting citizen. I know it sounds dramatic now, but look at the damage that has already been done to our system. We have had laws in place to serve interests fairly prior to the DMCA. The crimes are still the same crimes regardless of the method that is used yesterday, today and tomorrow. Theft is still theft. Copyright infringement is still copyright infringement. We already have laws in place against that. Newer technology does not require new laws in this case.
I am against the DMCA and against the CBDTPA and any new laws that seek to remove and restrict my ability to use a product which I have already paid for! Again, I reiterate. If I want to watch a movie in my car, that's where I'll watch it. If I want to watch a movie I bought here when I travel to Europe, it is my right. If I am paying for my current cable TV subscription, I should be able to watch both my son's school play and the movies I would otherwise miss out on. None of these 'fair uses' make me a criminal.
The US will no longer be the leader in technology as the laws will be too restrictive and dire consequences will occur...
and start killing some politicians.
Dear Member of Congress,
It has been brought to my attention that the bill entitled "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" has been introduced in the Senate as proposed legislation.
A bit of background about myself:
I have worked in the computer industry for about 7 years. I create software and design networking infrastructures. I am familiar with various uses of technology relating to the telecommunications industry. Outside of work, I watch satellite television, own a DVD player, and have a broadband connection to the Internet. I go to a few movies and own 100 or so music CDs.I mention all these things as evidence that I am a typical entertainment consumer. I also think that it is necessary to know that some of the entertainment appliances I own are encrypted. My DVD player uses the standard CSS encryption and my satellite receiver uses a 'SmartCard' to decrypt its transmission.
I submit myself to these encrypted technologies voluntarily. I make what I consider a sacrifice, in order to get the higher quality of the digital technologies. Even though, I do this of my own free will, I do not necessarily agree with the politics involved in the encryption of digital transmissions, as some of the technologies interfere with my fair use rights of the copyrighted content.
In the devices that I use there are basically two kinds of encryption at work. The first kind is used by my satellite provider. My satellite provider encrypts the transmission from the satellite to my receiver. I do not have a problem with this type of encryption. I understand their concern that the signal might be intercepted and used by unscrupulous individuals. Once the content gets past the box, I am able to exercise my fair use rights by recording it to my PVR (personal video recorder) or my VCR. In this manner, I am able to either "time shift1," "location shift2," or "media shift.3"
My DVD player is a much different case. Because of the way encryption is implemented in the device, I am unable to make any fair use copies of its content. I am unable to make copies of a DVD for backup purposes. DVDs are quite fragile. A tiny scratch can render a $30.00 DVD unusable. I am also unable to "media shift." I can not create a copy of a DVD to view on my VCR. There is also a larger concern; there is no current legal way to make exact duplicates of a DVD once that material falls in the public domain.
The key point here is that I submit myself to these technologies voluntarily, so that I may enjoy these higher quality digital pictures and audio. I absolutely agree that copyrights should be enforced. The copying of material that somebody else has claim to is and always has been against the law. People who own these copyrights should defend these properties vigorously. The current law known as the DMCA criminalizes copyright infringement, as it should. Unfortunately, the current law goes way too far. It also criminalizes the creation and use of any device or software that may be used for the circumvention of encryption. That law makes no exception for uses that would traditionally be considered fair use. The proposed law goes even further. It requires the implementation of an encryption scheme on all technology that is capable of manipulating digital content. It makes the circumvention of this mandated technology illegal and actionable. It puts the control of traditional fair use in the hands of the content providers. This is an obvious conflict of interest. It limits what I can do on devices that I own. It implements these limitations on the use of my personal property, whether or not I use that property to view or listen to digital content. It does this at the monetary expense of and to the detriment of the ordinary citizen, which the government and the law is empowered to protect. The supporters of this law are trying to convince congress that this mandated encryption is required for them to place digital content on the Internet or in the air for the use of digital television. The opposite is true and is easily demonstrated by the digital cable and digital satellite industries. Those industries use encryption on a voluntary basis. There is absolutely no technical reason this same method can not be used for Internet delivery of digital content. That is, if you want to receive those signals, you must voluntarily use their decrypting hardware or software. As for the encrypting of digital content offered over the airwaves, the concept is actually quite ridiculous. What the supporters would contend is that if they broadcast the programs in digital format, that they currently broadcast, unencrypted, in analog format, somehow, pirating of that content will increase. Why would anybody take the time to pirate content that is already free to them? The only goal encrypting this content would achieve, is the absolute control, by the content industry, of the way that the digital content is viewed. For instance, they might allow you to make a digital recording of the content, but place a restriction on fast forwarding through the commercials. We live in a free market society. History has proven that technology will be adopted if and when the consumer views that technology as useful or preferred. Instead of letting the free market rule, the supporter would push these technologies down or throats, and then limit how we could use them. In direct conflict with the bills title, the real agenda of this bill seems to be to limit the function of the personal computer in regards to copying data, and to eliminate the consumer's ability to watch or listen to content in the way that they choose.1 Time Shifting is the act of recording a program, in order to view/listen it at a different time than it originally aired.
For example, I might want to record the news so that I can watch it at 6:00 am, instead of 10:00 pm.
2 Location Shifting is the act of recoding a program in order to view/listen it from a different location.
For example, I might want to watch a program that I recorded at friend's house.
3 Media Shifting is the act of recording a program in order to view/listen to it on a preferred media.
For example, I may want to watch a movie on my VCR that I own on DVD, or play music that I own on CD on
an MP3 player.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
I'm still in highschool, and although it's spring break, I doubt my mom will let me go travel to a protest rally or the Million Geek March mentioned in the Wired story. :P Anything I can do to fight against this (or the DMCA which is only a little less evil)? Any suggestions for spreading awareness? I only know a few people that could be even remotely considered technically-inclined at my school, so it'd be me spreading the word alone. T-shirts too corny? Maybe convince the school newspaper editor to allow me to write up an article on the issue? Or perhaps submitting the article as an editorial for my local paper? I'm not sure how my local paper is connected to the media giants, so that might not work. But since I live in the backwaters of Wisconsin, I doubt there's much influence here. Any suggestions/comments welcome.
Why don't we push for a "Security System Standard" using the AES and public key encryption?
Each media player/storage device would be equiped with the owners private key, protecting "fair use" rights, and all broadcasts and content would, of course, have to be encrypted with the users public key... after they purchase it legitimately. This would protect content owners fully.
Maybe after Disney is faced with the idea of having to encrypt broadcasts/DVDs individually to each and every viewer, they would realize how ridiculous and impractical this whole course of action is.
How in the hell did this get modded up? It's not only red-hot flamebait, but he doesn't even have the balls to state what country HE is from. I will assume he's from Canada, and as a result, the Canadian government's DMCA-mirroring renders any valid points he has against these proposed American laws completely moot.
If you're going to bash America, at least do it right.
I know you were shooting for irony, but other news outlets have criticized the SSSCA, like Newsweek. (I'm not sure which corporate parent MSNBC will adhere to in this fight.)
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
"(a) IN GENERAL. -- A manufacturer, importer, or seller of digital media devices may not --
:D. If those bastards in the MPAA and RIAA want this bill to stick, they'll have to get the law passed in all 50 states. Small victories like this are always encouraging.
(1) sell, or offer for sale, in interstate commerce, or
(2) cause to be transported in, or in a manner affecting, interstate commerce,
a digital medial device unless the device includes and utilizes standard security technologies that adhere to the security system standards adopted under section 3."
It's right freaking there, "interstate commerce"! All you have to do is set up shop locally, not even advertising in a way that will reach out of state, and this bill can't touch you. Ah, I appreciate the Constitution more and more every day
BlackGriffen
The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act introduced by Senator Hollings is a dangerous attempt by a narrow segment of society to regulate the technology sector in order to protect their narrow interests. The Entertainment industry is in the position of horse cart accessory manufacturers at the turn of the 20th century pushing for the right to control the development of automotive technology. Like those manufacturers, Hollywood and Tokyo have the right to be paid for their products: the film and music distribution systems. They ought not to be given the right to control the development of emerging competition to those systems by digital technologies. What seems to them a threat to their inflated profits, looks to me like an exciting new avenue that promises artists and consumers alike a better deal than has heretofore been offered by the plutocrats of pop. I urge you to take a careful look at this legislation before it comes before you in Congress, and to consider carefully where the interests of the majority of your constituents lie with respect to this bill before you cast your vote.
Thank you for your attention
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
I live in Canada.
Even though the US isn't my country, this bill would sure as heck have a negative impact on me (as Canada tends to follow the US in many ways).
What can I do to let US lawmakers know that this would impact me negatively even though I do not live in the US? (Both in personal, and professional ways)
Practically all computer hardware has it's biggest market in the US and of course even if Canada did not pass a similar bill you can bet practically 90% of the hardware would be compliant with the requirements of this bill.
The Honorable Sen. Patrick Leahy
Senate Judiciary Committee
United States Senate
Washington DC 20510
Honorable Senator Leahy,
I am writing in concern of the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), S 2048, introduced by Senator Hollings into the Senate on March 21, 2002. The CBDTPA would prohibit the sale of any kind of electronic device, unless the device has mandatory copy-protection controls built-in as set by the federal government.
I am a firm believer in protecting a copyright holder's rights, but no law should prevent copyright purchasers from exercising their ability to privately view, time-shift, and re-sell legally purchased content. The problem of copyright infringement is real, but it is being addressed successfully in the courts (Napster v. RIAA) using existing copyright law. This bill is an attempt by huge media conglomerates to impose complete control over how we can use our televisions, computers, and VCRs.
As the owner of a software development company I am in favor of strong copyright protection for my works. However if this bill is passed, small independent developers like myself will not be able to create and distribute software due to the requirements of CBDTPA and the barrier to entry for non-wealthy creators. Because Microsoft has patented the system of Digital Rights Management (DRM), the adoption of government-mandated DRM would ensure that the Microsoft monopoly will continue well into the future. Alternative computer operating systems such as Linux or the Macintosh that did not include Microsoft licensed DRM would become illegal.
This bill will revoke the basic constitutional rights granted by copyright law: fair use, principle of first sale, and limited term (because DRM never expires). In addition to raising costs and reducing competitiveness, this bill will cause incalculable damage to the high technology industry in the United States. I strongly urge you to vote against S 2048.
Sincerely, etc.
Under the Supreme Court ruling in the Betamax decision, DeCSS would be legal for the same reason that VCRs are. That is, a claim of contributory copyright infringement cannot be used to tax or ban a technology that has a significant legitimate use. For VCRs, timeshifting was one such use. For DeCSS, inclusion of short movie clips or stills in multimedia movie reviews could well be such a use. (DeCSS was also supposedly an intermediate test step in producing a Linux-based DVD player, an application that most assuredly would satisfy the Supreme Court test.)
However, the anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA seem expressly designed for the purpose of banning any lawful access or copying that the monopoly holder decides to interfere with. Thus, DeCSS is illegal - that is, until the courts get around to declaring the DMCA itself illegal (unConstitutional) on the grounds of conflicts with the First Amendment or the copyright clause (Article I, Section 8).
I have found the text of S.2048's introduction in the Congressional Record. For those of you who'd like to read it as well, I can't provide a static URL, so here's the method: Go here, scroll down a little and click on the "Page: S2269" link. (If that doesn't work because of the way thomas.loc.gov is organized, I'll follow-up to this post with a more thorough method.)
The following passage is of particular interest:
So I'd like to pose this question: if a technology that has thorough and unbreakable digital rights management technology is created but the same technology allows for every possible means of fair use for all of my digital media, how are my freedoms and rights being abridged? Sure, I can't break the law anymore, but what's so wrong with that? Is it that right now the paradigm is that we have the choice to break the law if we choose to and with the CBDTPA we no longer have that choice, or is there something else completely different?
Do they really think we are gonna buy higher priced garbage with less features (NO Ripping)..on top of that I suppose we'd have to get all new hardware just to support new devices...simply obsurd.
By the way, if any fo you are in the 4th Congressional district of Massachuesetts, please vote to re-elect Barny Frank when the time comes. I wrote him about the DMCA and Dmitry and his reply really impressed me. His priorities may not align perfectly with most of yours, but he strongly indicates that he knows what his priorities are and really thinks about the issues. In the end, this is what makes a politician that isn't fooled by complicated legislation. This is much better than a poilitician who completely agrees with you, but is swayed into voting for things with really bad coonsequences.
Next week is Spring break for MIT. Guess who's going to be making some calls? These are some of the points I'll stress to my reps.:
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
Broadband Internet service is by no means required or an inalienable right. I do not feel it is my government's responsibility to meddle in the business affairs of broadband providers insofar as adoption of the technology is concerned. I also believe that there are many reasons why adoption of broadband has not occurred as rapidly as some would have hoped, the lack of high quality digital content being dubious at best.
If such technologies exist (and I do not believe that they do) to create a digital environment that allows all possibilities of fair use and at the same time prevent unauthorized use, adoption of the technology can be assisted by the parties that benefit from the technology by subsidizing the purchase price. A $200 rebate on computers with this technology would be much less subversive (and offensive) than mandating that all computers must utilize the technology.
Huh?
True, but I do not believe technological solutions can be developed that allow for fair use of digital content at the same time that the content is protected against unauthorized use.
There must be a reason why there are competing business interests surrounding deployment of this technology. Further research should be done to understand the competing position rather than simply passing this bill to undermine it.
My response to this is the same as my response to Item (1).
Several companies (CBS, HBO, etc.) are already broadcasting content via HDTV. If these companies are unconcerned about the lack of security afforded their content via the transmission protocol, I fail to see why a change to a secure transmission protocol is predicated. It is my belief that the reason there are so few HDTV broadcasts is because there are so few TVs capable of playing HDTV content. As HDTV becomes more common, so will HDTV broadcasts.
It's also difficult for me to understand why HDTV benefits comsumers. If HDTV truly does benefit consumers, they would buy HDTV sets. The fact that consumers opt for lesser expensive TV sets leads me to believe that the average consumer is satisfied with the quality of their broadcasts. Change may be good, but change for the sake of change isn't.
This is completely false. Encryption can be built into any transmission protocol be it via radio waves, Internet connections, cable, or satellite, regardless of an open or closed nature. The competitive advantage of cable and satellite providers is in the advent of new technology since the standard became common. In order to enable old technology devices (televisions) to use the new technology, additional hardware (set top boxes) is required. The same could be done by traditional signal broadcasts if companies chose to develop such technology. There's a reason they haven't developed the technology; no one believes the benefit of the technology outweighs the cost to develop it. If ABC believed that the benefits outweighed the costs and started broadcasting their signal in an encrypted format that could only be decrypted by purchasing one of their set top boxes, they would have done so by now.
So if cable and satellite networks already have encryption technologies and over-the-air broadcasts do not (by choice), why must the decision to encrypt or not be forced onto the Internet?
I don't think a solution is technologically feasible in order to ensure fair use. If the technology could be developed, I still don't think government intervention would be necessary to ensure adoption. Adoption could be gained simply by having desirable content made available only in an encrypted format. If, rather than subscribing to NetFlix, I could watch the latest videos on a pay-per-service basis, but only if I purchased special hardware that enabled me to view the videos, I would buy the hardware if doing so was cost-effective and to my benefit. If it's not cost-effective or to my benefit, there's no need for the technology to be developed, much less forced by the government.
In most cases, content originates in analog form.
Content will always be converted to analog in the "last mile" between the viewing device and my eyeballs. Though the quality would be dubious, there is no way short of creating a fascist technological state to prevent me from using a digital video camera aimed at my viewing device to capture "protected" content and converting it into a format most convenient for my own use. Certainly, keeping the content encrypted up to the point of being displayed on the viewing device may make unauthorized use more difficult, but it will also make fair use more difficult (or impossible). Considering this, I think it is in the consumer's best interest to not pursue this technology.
See (12).
But if the technology exists to prevent piracy, couldn't this significant piracy be prevented by the owners of the digital content choosing to protect their assets? Is my government responsible for covering the asses of entertainment companies because entertainment companies do not wish to protect their assets without preventing fair use? I don't believe so.
Millions of Americans drive faster than the speed limit every day. The demonstrates drivers' desire to go fast. Would the appropriate solution be to mandate that all cars must have a device that disallows going faster than the spped limit, or would the appropriate solution be to increase the speed limit? My answer to this is: neither. In the case of both speeding and protecting digital assets, no government action is necessary. If the entertainment industry desires protected digital content, they should protect their content. No government mandate need be required.
There are economic threats to the consumer if this bill is passed, including the necessity of purchasing new computer hardware in order to view content they otherwise have a legal right to.
America's content industries have the resources to fend for themselves with regards to protecting their own content.
See (12).
I'd like to see legitimate consumer "expectations" spelled out, and I would like to see law make it a punishable offense to prevent any of these consumer "expectations" from being allowed. With "fair use" explicit and an inalienable right, moving forward on protecting digital assets is reasonable.
See (20).
See (20).
And most importantly, I can't reiterate this enough, legitimate use of digital content should be mandated.
SEC. 3. ADOPTION OF SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS AND ENCODING RULES.
(a) PRIVATE SECTOR EFFORTS.--
(1) IN GENERAL.--The Federal Communications Commission, in consultation with the Register of Copyrights, shall make a determination, not more than 12 months after the date of enactment of this Act, as to whether--
(A) representatives of digital media device manufacturers, consumer groups, and copyright owners have reached agreement on security system standards for use in digital media devices and encoding rules; and
(B) the standards and encoding rules conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e).
(2) Report to the Commerce and Judiciary Committees.--Within 6 months after the date of enactment of this Act, the Commission shall report to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the House of Representatives Committee on Commerce, and the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary as to whether--
(A) substantial progress has been made toward the development of security system standards and encoding rules that will conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e);
(B) private sector negotiations are continuing in good faith;
(C) there is a reasonable expectation that final agreement will be reached within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act; and
(D) if it is unlikely that such a final agreement will be reached by the end of that year, the deadline should be extended.
(b) AFFIRMATIVE DETERMINATION.--If the Commission makes a determination under subsection (a)(1) that an agreement on security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e) has been reached, then the Commission shall--
(1) initiate a rulemaking, within 30 days after the date on which the determination is made, to adopt those standards and encoding rules; and
(2) publish a final rule pursuant to that rulemaking, not later than 180 days after initiating the rulemaking, that will take effect 1 year after its publication.
(c) NEGATIVE DETERMINATION.--If the Commission makes a determination under subsection (a)(1) that an agreement on security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e) has not been reached, then the Commission--
(1) in consultation with representatives described in subsection (a)(1)(A) and the Register of Copyrights, shall initiate a rulemaking, within 30 days after the date on which the determination is made, to adopt security system standards and encoding rules that conform to the requirements of subsections (d) and (e); and
(2) shall publish a final rule pursuant to that rulemaking, not later than 1 year after initiating the rulemaking, that will take effect 1 year after its publication.
So if the industry can't determine what is best for their consumers, the government will. Because the government is an expert with regards to what is best for consumers. It takes gall to think that the government could provide swifter and more equitable results than industry negotiations.
Wouldn't this defeat the purpose of encoding the content in the first place? Or would it force all security to be performed entirely by hardware?
And somehow, requiring "fair use" of content was left out of this section... go figure.
There it is in black and white. Fair use must be protected. Now if only fair uses were specific and itemized.
Having read the rest of the bill, there's nothing that I find particularly problematical. Devices controlling digital assets will be mandated and it will be illegal to transport devices that don't have the digital rights control across state lines. It will also be illegal to modify the security system. Those are the least of my concerns if the above material isn't ironed out and addressed.
Why not do away with this damn bill and give Hollywood the law it really wants? Read on:
1) Every American must register his/her bank account with Hollywood. Failure to do this will result in fines and/or jail time. Registration will be made automatically for any non-registering individuals.
2) Hollywood provide every American the privilege of enjoying x songs and y movie viewings per month (or not).
3) Hollywood will charge wach bank account a usage fee (set at its discretion), for use of the product, regardless of whether the "product" has been used or not, delivered successfully or not, or enjoyed or not. Product is always leased, never sold.
Even better, why doesn't the government just make its own brand of MP3 players, TVs, etc., and make all non-government brands of these product illegal. Problem solved; that'll learn those damn pirating, leaching consumers!
There are various reasons people don't get broadband.
1) They don't know much about it.
2) They haven't used the Internet long enough to get sick of 56k access
3) They don't know what hardware to get/ are put off by the ongoing expense. and of course availability too.
Number 3 should probably come at the top of the list. Other bits would be "dosn't appear to be worth the asking price" and "the whole package is somehow wrong" (e.g. some ISPs appear to deliberatly make their cable modem/DSL offering emulate limitations more applicable to modem dialups or to cripple the service in some way)
False positives from the watermark detection will
stop you playing content that you have created
yourself, which will be really frustrating.
If you thinks computers are annoying today,
you ain't seen nothing yet!
I am sorry.
I am not giving details on myself.
I know that it's useless.
But I want to express myself anonymously.
You see.
I feel somehow embarassed in giving names.
I've nothing particular to conceal.
Just my ideas,
and more time passes,
more I feel like it's dangerous even to hope and have ideas.
I hope.
I hope that even the most logical and natural of the principles,
the one that has let humanity evolve in the beginnins,
the one that could help humanity not to implode under the pressures of its own frantic and devastating evolution,
the principle of sharing ideas and information,
of contributing to collectiviy with works and researches.
The intellectual property of a man is the intellectual property of his world.
His ideas are expressions of the ideas of his life, what he has read, done, seen.
Absorbed from the mental breath of other people.
Can we, can you, enforce the protection of a individual act of thought and creativity, when
the same ideas may be common, shared, already thought by someone else?
It's not just a matter of a law, this particular law, is a matter of point, direction, focus.
Can't you see, world is getting worse for more and more people and most of the researches, the laws, the activity goes in make a world better to fewer people.
The only way, yes, the best way I can think of,
in order to let humanity continue to evolve in a sustainable way is to give more opportunities to share ideas, thoughts, researches, developments.
Science has built its root with shared researches and collaborative development.
IF we keep on trying to SELL ideas, to PROTECT and PATENT them, even if they belong to humanity, even if they are already shared by humanity, we are not working for the collective progress.
We are leaving to money's flows and individual (stolen to the community) property the right to slow down the speed of sharing of ideas.
THERE can be a virtuous economy,
that can grow withouth destroying the environment,
that can involve more and more people,
that can share ideas because it sells PRODUCTS and SERVICES, SOLUTIONS and SUPPORT but leaves to the community the opportunity of using, studying, evolving the same ideas.
We are children of our world, our life, our knowledge... we can claim the ownership of our ideas, but how can we pretend to OWN them, when they are the consequences, our mental elaboration, of ideas of millions others?
Those ideas build our culture, our common knowledge, our world.
Personal elaboration is not creation.
So.
I am sorry.
Probably you think that I have no idea of what this law proposal is about.
You are right.
But I know that this lay is going against the free sharing of ideas.
And I'm sorry for that.
And I hope you will understand this too.
Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act
Content Ban Directly Targetting Performances by Amateurs
The bill says
(14) When protected digital content is converted to analog for consumers, it is no longer protected and is subject to
conversion into unprotected digital form that can in turn be copied or redistribute illegally.
(15) As solution to this problem is technologically feasible but will require government action,
It is talking about watermarks. Your CBDTPA-compliant sound card will add "do not play" watermarks to the sound it outputs, and will honour such watermarks in the files sent to it. Ofcourse, false positives will cause endless grief for amateur musicians putting their own performances into the public domain. I presume that the point of
SEC. 8. FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ACT EXEMPTION.
The Federal Advisory Committee Act (5 U.S.C. App.) does not apply to any committee, board, commission, council, conference, panel, task force, or other similar group of representatives of digital media devices and representatives of copyright owners convened for the purpose of developing the security system standards and encoding rules described in section 3.
is to shield discussion of false positives from public view.
If Hollywood wants to play dirty to impose its will on the masses with its pet legislators and its newspeak-spewing media interests, we should band together and fight back the only way we can.
They're *relying* on the high-tech industry and its engineers and coders to create the mechanisms that push their content, and they're also relying on Congress to make us just fall over and obey their whims now that they've discovered that the free market as it stands won't allow them to force every computer user to "standardize" and accept their stupid, short-sighted hamstringing.
Why not expose them for what they really are, scared giants whose time has come and gone but who won't/can't accept it yet, and refuse to stop clinging to ancient business models, and ancient formulas for producing pap? Why not force them to acknowledge that diminishing quality and increasing prices are what's responsible for their economic downturn, and not the VCR/tape recorder/whatever their scapegoat of the year happens to be? Why should we accept that 'piracy' is the cause of their woes when it is patently obvious that *good* movies and music make money, but the *average* gross is down because the other 80% of the content they produce is filled with Plastic Pop Divas Singing About Nothing and Action-Packed Blockbusters With 200 Million Dollar Budgets Spent Entirely On Dynamite?
Why can't we just walk away? Take away both their scapegoats and the backs they wanted to stand on to grab that brass ring for the 77th time?
Surely anyone intelligent enough to be able to (technically) implement these measures is also intelligent enough to perceive the true long-term effect they'll have on "consumers" (a fallacial class division to begin with). How would the beloved economy take it if there were a Geek Exodus in the US? If all the geeks moved to Canada, or to Mexico, or abroad, to ply their trade where they wouldn't be hindered by such stupidity?
We've already let special interests maneuver their paid-off politicians into legislating the fruits of *our* labor into the ground. The CDA, DMCA, you name it. Mere outrage didn't stop those abominations from becoming reality. EFF donations didn't raise enough awareness to stop it. Worthless letters to the Judases in DC that only pretend to represent our interests near election time were disregarded. What makes anyone think this new horror will meet with any more resistance than those two were? We need to stop talking, stop complaining, and start acting. Buying politicians is out of the question - a Hollywood/NYC dollar is worth more than a Silicon Valley dollar because of the propaganda it buys; we can't outcompete them there.
But we can walk!
They are appropriating our brains to serve their ends. So why don't we take our brains elsewhere? I'm sure Canada, even with its outrageous taxes, would be glad to have the trickling of high-tech professionals there turn into a deluge. In fact, given that most geeks likely make so much money that they pay 55% or more in taxes in the US anyway, what's an extra 5% if it means no more corrupt, pliable and stupid US government to deal with?
Creating Billions of Dollars Through Punishing Americans
I've been trying to explain most of the
things like the DMCA, SSSCA / CBDTPA and
software patents to regular people.
The problem is that they don't seem to
understand and think I'm talking "bullshit",
and the governments (USA, EU) are not that
dumb to allow laws like this (even though,
software patents and the DMCA are already
active).
After showing them some websites they still
don't understand (as it's too difficult for
them to understand) and think I'm paranoid.
These are the:
- how more expensive how better
- and if that less people are doing/using it it
cannot be good
- I do what most people do, cause that's in the mode
- if someone is different than me, he's stupid
- I only know what I know and nothing more
kind of people
And it's a pitty these kind of people are
the majority, so please don't flame me by
saying this, cause it's just what I noticed.
Please tell me if there's a name for these
kind of people. I always call them 'sheeps'
Anyway, can someone please tell me where
I can find an easy explanation of these laws
for everyone to understand.
Mike Machuidel
I can't do anything about this because I don't live in the USA... but it doesn't matter because sooner or later you'll wind up exporting your stupid fucking laws to my country via treaty or something like that
Not even sure that "globalization" and "harmonization" even bothers with anything as formal as teaties half the time
My own government and people will look to you as an example
Goodness only knows why. Other than such things as how not to conduct an election.
You're really starting to scare the shit out of me down there, you Yanks. What happened to the land of free? How could you have sold out your precious freedom to big business and corporations? How could we have let you?
I don't think anyone currently alive in the US can take the blame for actually starting this. Things such as deciding that corporations were "legal" people, the first US invasion of a neighbouring country to protect corporate profits happened over a century ago. If the current generation is to be blamed then it must be for doing nothing to rectify these past mistakes, in many cases being completly unaware of what has happened and continues to happen.
The America told in stories, the America talked about in your beautiful constitution is now dead to the world.
It might as well stand for "Utopia State Constitution". Maybe some day the US public will decide to tell their government that they have had enough...
The really scary thing is, that might have to happen sometime. Our freedoms are being steadily eroded through stupid patents and stupid laws. Our whole freeking government is just corrupt.
At least you are still better off than many people outside the US. Who's (typically democratic) governments stood in the way of US corporations maximising their profits. No need to worry about paying decent wages or employee safety in a dictatorship or even when there is a civil war going on.
This is NOT what millions of people in our history died for in defending our country!!!!
Doubt that the US soldiers who fought Germany, Japan and Iraq would sanction the US doing similar things to anyone. The vast majority of the US people are in no way "imperialistic", unfortuntaly US corporations often are. With terms such as "globalization" often equating to "corporate based imperializm".
Lets be absolutely fair, this bill is about one thing only, total control over the production and distribution of digital media. If anyone non-technical cares to listen, they may be reminded why Hollywood exists.
Hollywood was founded to escape from tight control and enforcemnt of various key patents on the production and display of movie pictures (a lot owned by our friend Edison). This was based around New York, so the guys who wanted to make pictures did so as far away as possible (but with better weather), so they went to the west coast.
Why do I bring this up, well perhaps Hollywood itself should be reminded that tight IP isn't good for business. One of the most productive cinema industries in the world is "Bollywood", in India. Their products are smaller scale but are widely pirated. However, they still seem very profitable.
I say to give the industry a choice. They can have perfect protection of IP. Then they should have copyright lasting five years only. After which the stuff can sent via HDTV or broadband and nobody need to give a damn about protection.
See my journal, I write things there
We appreciate your past efforts to bring the PC and Internet into the mainstream. The benefits to the economies of the world over the past 15 years has been phenomenal. However, now that this task is completed, your services are no longer required. Please put your computer hardware on ebay and find new professions.
Some 500,000,000 mainstream users are online today. We must bring their offline world IP laws into the online world. This is necessary for their protection.
A couple million technically inclined people stealing music, movies and software is no big deal. However, 500 million (and soon billions) of people stealing information is the equivalence of Marxism.
So you should welcome this new law. This law will end warez forever. It will stop foreign countries who don't enforce IP laws from benefiting from the hard work of persons in the developed countries.
And finally let's not forget our friends in Hollywood. The end of the mass theft of music means better music in the long term.
We thank you for your hard work to create a sophisticated useable information distribution system, as well as easy to use terminals to access that information system. Your input in the legislation of these devices and their medium is not desired. Please let the professionals in Washington handle it from here.
Worrying more about entertainment of the populace than of more important issues such as infrastructure, etc. was part of the cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire.
The moment that you have a customer hook up a device to the Internet, you're in violation of the law. The devices you sell would be in a manner affecting interstate commerce.
No, that's not quite what the law sates, but I'd bet good money that it'd take a damned good lawyer and a LOT of money to take a chance on proving that interpretation's not possible with the law as it's written.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Does anyone else find it bizarrely ironic that the bill's number is a multiple of 1024??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
My Letter
Senator Nelson's Reply
I should note the scanner I used to copy the reply isn't the greatest and I didn't have much time to copy it. I hope it is legible.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
It seems to me that if the content providers claim that preserving fair use is not possible, they won't have to do it.
Actually, you could be right there...
All this DMCA and SSSCA and whatever the new one is called boils down in the end to one question:
Which is more important for the United States?
a) Hollywood
b) Silicon Valley
I'd go for (b), especially since passing this law would kill Silicon Valley, but not passing it would only hurt Hollywood. Unrestrained napsterisation of movies would damage video sales, but not box-office take.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I agreed with everyone about mailing a real physical letter in lieu of faxes and emails. Typcially if you want results with "customer service" organizations, its the polite standard.
I had forgotten that with the anthrax contaminated letters, mail to goverment officials (Congressmen in partiular) is being handled carefully, slowly, and with a jaundiced eye.
My rep's website actually says to use email due to the above factors. Consider this folks before abandoning the idea of a terse, cogent email.
-- Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
As has already been cited, these FoxNews postings (see also Ken Layne's Music Fans Must Rebel Against Greedy Record Industry ) represent the beginnings of a test by the Republican Party to make Napster a "wedge issue." While the natural constituency for the CBDTPA/SSSCA would suggest that the Republicans ought to back this, the fact that the Democrats have made the entertainment industry a major source of funds has skewed things in a way that the Republicans are going to try to exploit. See, for example, how things shake out in this article by Declan McCullagh and Robert Zarate from Wired: Content Spat Split on Party Lines
It will be interesting to see if the Democrats fall into this trap.
If you can hear or see it, it can be recorded... copy protection is an unachievable ideal.
We need to attack (on the political field of course) these senators who are proposing this crap. The main sponsors are Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC) and Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) but it is also backed by Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Senator John Breaux (D-LA), Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Send them the message that we will not stand for this. For even considering such crap, they're gonna get kicked out of office.
We need to get the message out to their voters. Contact the newspapers in their areas, if you have friends or family that are their consituants, then bring it up with them. Encourage them to pubicly oppose this. There are so many people unaware of this, and I have a feeling most of them will be quite offended. Those are the people we need to get to. If one of these senators is YOUR representive, then you have an extra special duty to raise all hell. Attended public meetings. In Q&A sessions bring this up. This is complete crap, our representives need to learn its a BIG MISTAKE to propose this shit. If this passes raise all hell, but if it doesnt don't claim victory there. We need to stop this from happening in the future.
As soon as locked DVDs move into the public domain, DeCSS suddenly has a very legitimate use-- to permit access to "free" content.
So in 3085, when the 205th copyright extension act fails, we'll worry about that.
Maybe some indie filmmaker (e.g. Troma, or Michael Moore) might want to do this?
sulli
RTFJ.
The "Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act" aka SSSCA II is inherently impossible to implement, as written, using any known software or hardware technology.
..." will be to guarantee that the "copyright owners" will insist on rules that match what was in the original draft of the SSSCA.
..." which makes it a crime to fix any such device.
Section 3.(d).(1).(A) thru 3.(d).(1).(I) are contradictory requirements that can never be satisfied together. Any device or tectnology that does not satisfy section 3.(d).(1).(I) will result in products that cannot be sold because no customer will pay the price. Any technology that satisfies section 3.(d).(1).(A), (B), (C) and (F) would require an internet connection for each such device and therefor will fail to satisfy section 3.(d).(1).(I).
The only possible means of encoding any digital content that will be (A) reliable, (B) renewable (C) resistant to attack, and (F) applicable in multiple technology platforms, would be to have a globally unique identifier for each target device that the content will be played or performed on and to individually encrypt the content for the target device or download the decryption key to the target device so that it can only be decrypeted and played on the target device. All other methods of encryption will fail to be either (C) resistant to attack, or (F) applicable in multiple technology platforms.
The nature of encryption is such that you cannot attach the decryption key to the encrypted data and expect it to be (C) resistant to attack. This is the fatal flaw in the encryption used on DVDs as was shown by the tivial attack used by the DCSS program.
Any media that contains an individually and uniquely encrypted file but does not contain the decryption key would require an internet connection in order to access the decryption key associated with the specific encrypted file. The requirement for an internet connection would add $100-$300 to the cost of each such device except for a fully configured Personal Computer. $100 added cost for incorporating a modem would be doubling the price of a CD player and if the CD player was in a car it would require an added $300 since it would require a cell phone as well as a modem in order to be able to connect to the internet to access the encryption keys for each encrypted file.
The inevitable concequence of these conflicts in conjunction with the word "practicable" in section 3 "(d) SECURITY SYSTEM STANDARDS. -- In achieving the goals of setting open security standards that will provide effective security for copyrighted works, the security system standards shall ensure, to the extent practicable,
Any technology that would meet the requirements of the SSSCA would violate 3.(e).(1) "promoting as many lawful uses of copyrighted works as possible" and 3.(e).(2) "prevent a lawful recipient from making a personal copy for lawful use in the home".
Section 3.(e).(2) contradicts the "Doctrine of Fair Use" for "Space Shifting" as affirmed by the US Supreme Court. Fair Use "Space Shifting" allows the playing of a copy of a copyrighted work on any device owned by or in the possesion of a person who has legally obtained an original copy of a copyrighted work. Section 3.(e).(2) in conjuction with the DMCA would restrict "Fair Use" to Television broadcasts and would exclude music CDs, video tapes and DVDs and any other media that is embodied in a material object.
Section 6 makes the practice of maintaining or fixing a computer or any other compliant device a criminal act. All electronic devices inevitably fail and need to be repaired. Section 6.(a).1 makes it a crime to "knowingly remove or alter any standard security technology in a digital media device lawfully transported in interstate commerce,
Section 7 attaches the CBSTPA to the DMCA and since the DMCA is both un-consititutional and self contradictory, the CBSTPA cannot be validly interpreted by the courts.
Section 4, section 6.(a).2 and section 9.2 combined create an undue burden on ISPs ("interactive computer service" providers) and on customers. Unique, per-device encrypted media would require transmitting between 5 million and 5 billion bytes of data per target device for each copyrighted work played on that device. This is because the work must be uniquely encrypted for each device. Transmitting such large quantities of data would cost as much as the original purchase price of the copyrighted work for each device it is to be played on. The aggregate quantity of data that yould need to be transmitted would be as large as the total internet traffic of the US. This would require doubling the capacity of the internet itself which would cost billions of dollars and would have to be payed for by the "interactive computer service" providers.
Section 9.3 is unclear. Section 9.3 does not make explicit exactly what constitutes a "Digital Media Device" or if a component of such a device is distuinguished from the whole device for the purposes of the act. A microprocessor or microcontroller is a required component of any "Digital Media Device", but, section 9.3 does not distinguish between a microprocessor or microcontroller used in a "Digital Media Device" and a microprocessors or microcontroller used in a toaster or traffic light controller. The same microprocessor or microcontroller may be used in both devices and the microcontroller in a toaster can "reproduce copyrighted works in digital form" if it has a means of accepting input and providing output. Because of the economies of scale, almost all microcontrollers contain digital input and output ports and are programmable and so would be classed as a "Digital Media Device" even if the microcontroller was incorporated into a toaster or a traffic light controller. "DEFINITIONS: In this Act (3) DIGITAL MEDIA DEVICE. -- The term "digital media device" means any hardware or software that -- (A) reproduces copyrighted works in digital form; (B) converts copyrighted works in digital form into a form whereby the images and sounds are visible or audible; or (C) retrieves or accesses copyrighted works in digital form and transfers or makes available for transfer such works to hardware or software described in subparagraph (B)".
Trademarks differ from patents and copyrights in that they are words, phrases, or symbols, and as such they have an annoying tendency to become generic. How many of you have "xeroxed" a document, driven a "jeep" made by Ford, or used a "band-aid" that came from a box marked Curad? Thus a company is required to actively police use of its trademarks, writing nastygrams to those who say "xerox" when they mean "photocopy", for instance.
IANAL and if you get professional advice of any kind from Slashdot then you are insane.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Again Dianne Feinstein (D-California)...
She does not understand she was elected by
Silicon Valley and not Hollywood.
Nope, me three.
I hate to say it but, a big part of the problem is capitalism (of course, the other (even bigger (infinitesimally bigger)) big part is the MPAA's, RIAA's, et al's...greed.). Of course, there will never be a perfect system attainable as long as any one shall live but, I believe capitalism is as close as we're going to get in the for-seeable future (and even beyond that).
.3% loss in their income, which just will not do. If people could just see past themselves and start thinking about other people. (I don't mean to sound socialistic, but people need to be more considerate)
One thing I must say, if this goes bill gets passed, then it's time for me to find another profession. I don't want to be a coder if I have to follow the regulations and so forth... The sence of community is gone in America. Every one is just looking out for themselves (agian, capitalism). It is wrong for people to be pirating and so forth. But, pirating is definately the lesser of two evils in this situation. Companies should be glad that people are trying that hard just to get there product, that there was such a positive reaction to it. Instead, people like Metallica and the RIAA see it as a
There is still plenty of income coming in, why fret over a small lose. I still think that the Supreme Court was wrong in the Napster case (and the % of CD purchases did NOT decrease while napster was around)..
Oh well, what can I do. I most definately will contact my senator, I don't know about you...
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
Orwell did not advocate tyranny! He would be saddened if anything by this were he alive today
*Shut the fuck up and bend over.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
one reason HDTV hasn't takenoff is with the exception of one samsung 27" HDTV(which doesn't do all HDTV resolutions i understand) is the cost.
These tv's are 2k+ not soley because they are HD, but because they are BIG SCREEN TVs. As I have said before, once 27", 25", 19" and 13" HDTV's are sold right along next to regular resolutions then they will start to sell. sure they will still costmore, but not everyone has the space for a large screen TV, for example: small apartments, dorm rooms, or for those who want a smaller TV in the bedroom or kitchen.
it should not be difficult to build a small HDTV, but i would assume we don't see them because of the cost of shelf space in your favourite electronics retailer.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
A number of poster's have pointed out news/opninon pices on Fox.
I doubt though that you will see a "balanced" discussion though on any TV news program. It would be interesting to see a show of CNN's crossfire on this bill.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Start off with a short, one sentence paragraph, stating your aim. Eg:
This is probably the only part of your letter which will be ready. Put it up front.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
I cannot believe that there is not more public outrage about this issue. It's likely that most people really don't know that this is going on. They basically passed the DMCA before the public at large could really get a handle on the situation.
It seems that the vast majority of "Net savvy" individuals are quite alarmed that the Judiciary Committee is even discussing something like the CBDTPA. However, I don't think that the online community as a whole can do much other than stall for time by making noise.
I think if put to a vote, most Americans would vote to change the law to PROHIBIT COPY PROTECTION. There's no way we should let the big industries decide our digital rights.
Anyway, I put up a website soliciting comments at http://www.protectfairuse.com/ I hope to collect comments in bulk and send them to the boneheads considering the CBDTPA.
We ought to be informing everybody we know about the issue and encouraging them to send their comments to Congress.
How many votes does Hollings actually have for this bill? And what about the House? Any idea if Dubya would veto it? I understand that there are people whose business is to know such things. Are any of you on /.?
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
I think it would be neat if their were shirts like the "Arrest me, I'm a skateboarder" shirts except instead of that it would say "Arrest me, I'm a programmer" and in smaller print it would the read "The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, passed in 1998, and the proposed Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act threatens the free speech rights of programmers, call your congressmen and express your opinion now"
We need tshirts. I think it should be a shirt like the "Arrest me, I'm a skateboarder shirts" except it would be "Arrest me, I'm a programmer", and below that in smaller print it would say "The Digital Millenium Copyright Act, passed in 1998, and the proposed Consumer Broadband and Digital Televison Promotion Act, threaten the free speech rights of programmers, call your congressman and express your opinion now!"
There are already movies on DVD that are in the public domain. While the compilation is copyrighted, most of the actual movies on The Movies Begin - A Treasury of Early Cinema, 1894-1913 are out of copyright, even allowing for Sonny Bono.
--
E_NOSIG
Was this encrypted w/DeCSS?
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I mean w/CSS...duh..
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I don't know. I imagine so.
Taco: I can type a lot in 19 seconds. Your limit sucks!
--
E_NOSIG
(1) Most rapes are committed by men.
(2) All men that commit rape do so using their penises.
(3) Therefore, penises are a tool for rape.
(4) Therefore, in order to prevent rape, let's cut off everyone's penis.
Same logic being used in Congress, only they're after my fair use rights and my job.
If this bill passes - if I see my Congressperson draw a knife, point to my pants and crook his finger - I'm moving to Canada.