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Senate Judiciary Committee Copyright Page
leviramsey writes: "The Senate Judiciary Committee has posted a website dealing with Copyright law, especially with respect to the Internet. Hearing transcripts are posted, as are relevant laws. A comment form is provided. They do not want anonymous comments, so that they may publish them later."
It's simple to us. We know closed source means untrusted programs having control of our computers. We know that means stolen data and lost privacy (e.g. spyware). But all copy protection must be closed source. Why? Because computers can't distinguish between reading a file to view and reading a file to copy/steal/share it. So only certain programs can be allowed to view the file. You cannot be permitted to change these programs, because then you can make copies of the content. You cannot be permitted to understand these programs, because then you can make replacements of the viewing program, and thus make copies of protected content.
Therefore, Copy protection = untrusted software on my computer.
It's NOT about the Fair Use doctrine. It's about who controls your computer.
So how the heck am I supposed to explain this to my senator? Or to the average constiuent of my senator?
It's odd that there's no reference on their page to the CBDTPA that's been introduced (S.2048). I realize it isn't in their committee (it's now in the Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee), but it is still relevant to what they're requesting comments on.
If you're going to comment on the CBDTPA, I strongly suggest you actually read the text. Whining about how it will kill fair use, for example, won't win you any points, since the bill requires that any security measures respect the limits on the copyright owner, including fair use, and explicitly requires that people be able to make recordings for personal home use. You might reasonably object that such a goal is incompatible with all of the other requirements that such a system would have, but don't claim that they haven't considered the consumer at all in this.
I sent in my comments by e-mail; as others have reported, I got it back with a link for re-submitting it using their Web site, which I did. I didn't get any acknowledgement, nor has it been posted to the Web site yet. As at least one comment was posted the day it was written (based on a comment that included the day's date), I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe it was too long, but I didn't get a rejection, either. I don't think it was of lower quality than the comments that I've read so far (and certainly better than some). I updated what I said to reference the CBDTPA instead of the SSSCA and resubmitted it (indicating it was a resubmission), but I still haven't heard anything, and nothing's been added to their Web site since yesterday.
As a side note, they should split up the user comments into a separate page for each day; the current page is over 600K for one week's worth of comments (March 18-March 25, with nothing posted on March 23). For anyone checking to see new comments, it'd save a whole lot of bandwidth and time.