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IEEE Adds DMCA Clause for Submitted Papers
xpccx writes: "Newsforge has this blurb about the IEEE changing its 'IEEE Copyright Form' for submissions to the 'IEEE Copyright Transfer & Export Control Compliance Form.' From the IEEE site: 'While the IEEE standard manuscript submission process has always required authors to represent that the necessary clearances and approvals have been obtained, the newly revised Form now requires the author's explicit affirmation that the manuscript does not violate U.S. export laws or restrictions.' And specifically from the new form, 'The undersigned further warrants that the publication or dissemination of the Work shall not violate any proprietary right or the Digital Copyright Millennium Act (the "DCMA").' Maybe the IEEE just wants to protect itself from DMCA lawsuits, but I hope their intention is not to abandon authors who get sued."
From IEEE to USEEE.
protect themselves from lawsuits - that's all.
Video Game cheats, hints a
One of the few organizations that has the power and/or clout to stand up to it, instead retreats into capitulation. They are a huge orginization, that is not just american, but has influence worldwide. And they are a research orginization ...for shame. I'm seriosly considering cancelling my membership.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
After he published the special relativity theory he said:
"If I hadn't written it, it would've taken only a few month for somebody else to publish it. The time was ripe."
Whose ideas are the ideas we write?
(c) copyright 2002 Slashdot.org
Perhaps in the future, a good case could be made infront of the Supreme Court that the DCMA does stifle free speach - and this will be some of the evicence.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
In these days and times its not only the society they are trying to protect but the volunteer editors and staff as well. I am good friends with one the editors of the larger societies and he is constantly worried about getting sued for the smallest things. Yes its a shame that they have to do this, but they really have little choice in protecting themselves. If you feel disgusted then direct your anger and resources at the cause (The DCMA) and not at who its affecting.
The IEEE "Export Control Compliance Form" at the IEEE web site reads "Digital Copyright Millennium Act" (DCMA), and not "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" (DMCA). Is this a clever ruse by the IEEE to confuse dyslexic lawyers?
You can have flame wars over this stuff. I can recall watching the folks who put this ageement together have an all out brawl over three or four months before they got it nailed down.
Of course people freak when they see a long license agreement. Paranoia takes over.
But there is the other angle, that people are being held responsible for the material they submit, so that the publication (web or otherwise) doesn't take the penalty for your stupidity if you put up something that could cause a legal problem.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What about foreign authors, are they required to be aware of US law and abide by it even if their own country doesn't have such a law?
And who decides what violates the DMCA, if not a court of law?
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Should make it easy for authors to ensure compliance. Even I am willing to state that nothing I submit violates the DCMA. The DMCA, however, is another story....
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
when the US chapter launched its campaign against forgeign programmers working in the US (under H1-B visas).
As a body that tries to appear International without explicitly saying so, shouldn't they also adhere to the Icelandic Indecency Act of 1536 or the Samoan Code Against Sodomy as well as the Kansas Internet Cleanup Code?
The IEEE does not pay authors - it is all academics and professionals. They do not pay editors or review boards - again all volunteer. They charge very high fees to libraries and even individuals. The online subscriptions cost almost as much as the print subscriptions.
In short they do very little for the huge amount paid to them. Why can the academic community not form a purely web based journal that is of the same academic peer review quality of the IEEE and available to all for free? Seems like this might be a good time to figure out the answer to that questions.
Is it DCMA or DMCA? The article seems to be confused...
It is DMCA.
They are confused because they are retarded. The DMCA does that to people.
However, cutting to the chase, the IEEE and the authors it represents really have little to fear in reality. The IEEE isn't "2600" Magazine; it doesn't deal with controversial subject matter on a regular basis. They aren't in the computer security business and they are unlikely to accept any remotely controversial manuscript in the first place. They changed their rules for one simple reason: they think it will make people care about the injustices of the law.
Unfortunately, they are sadly mistaken. Engineers have zero political clout, here and anywhere else in the world. If we had clout, the CDA wouldn't have seen the light of day; Clinton wouldn't have been able to get away with jacking up the H1-B visa quota by 1.5 million every year during the tech boom; and the USA-PATRIOT act wouldn't have come to fruition. The IEEE wants to bring about public awareness of the injustices of our government, but they're just preaching to the choir. We, as computer professionals (especially the academics among us), understand the problem and want a solution. But we don't vote; we don't lobby; and we don't rent hookers for our congressmen.
What is the solution? The solution is to get the right people on our side. We need to forge a partnership with major corporations; we need to practice give-and-take to arrive at a compromise. That's hard for most techies to do because most of us hate corporations. But if we don't join them, they will beat us. The choice is ours.
bill
The Felton suit failed because the RIAA and the Justice Department ran away from a defendant who was clearly falling under the researcher exemption.
Now we have a publisher of academic papers ignoring the same exemption and asking authors to censor themselves. If that isn't strong evidence of the chilling effects of the DCMA, I don't know what is.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Why else would they make authors warrant that their work does not conflict with the DMCA? If the IEEE finds themselves named in a DMCA suit, they will go after the author (more probably, the author's employer) to recover their costs in a breach of contract action.
Bottom line, IEEE is folding like a full-service laundry. (Boo, hiss as appropriate)
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
To: webmaster@ieee.org
Please make this available to those in IEEE who may be monitoring public opinion on this issue. Thank you.
As a graduate student of Computer Science and former student member of IEEE, I was horrified to read (http://newsvac.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/04 / 4/0039211) that you require submitters of papers to represent that their research is politically correct wrt the DMCA. If anything, the IEEE should be taking an active stance against this law and using its lobbying resources to speak out against it, not bowing before the corporations that purchased this unjust (and inapplicable to academic security research, I might add) law.
It is bitterly disappointing to see an august organization like the IEEE acquiesce to those who would chill freedom to speak and publish in the technical arena.
Unless IEEE rapidly reverses this blunder, I will have to stop recommending IEEE membership for students of Electrical Engineering and to forcefully disassociate myself from the organization.
Respectfully,
<name>
~~~
xpccx writes:
What's the difference? The IEEE is asking authors to "warrant" that their works don't violate the DCMA, which means the author is accepting full responsbility if the work does violate the DCMA.
What was NOT quoted was this: "The undersigned agrees to indemnify and hold harmless IEEE from any damage or expense that may arise in the event of a breach of any of the warranties set forth above."
This is interesting language -- it requires the author to pay any damages or expense arising from a breach, so if the DCMA is violated, the author is responsible for all attorney's fees and damages. The IEEE does not expressly require that the author pay all defense costs from the time an action is filed, nor at all if there is no breach.
The bottom line, though, is that if a lawsuit is filed, the IEEE and author will need to somehow hire an attorney to defend against the claim, and if the ultimate verdict is that the "work" violates copyright, DCMA, or other laws, then the author is on the hook for all the fees, costs, and damage awards.
This is "chilling effect" is not the IEEE's fault, it is an intrinsic, intentional feature of the DCMA and other recent changes to intellectual-property laws in the USA. The goal is not to actually outlaw everything, but to create a cloud of uncertainty that will cause most people to simply avoid the "cloud" entirely.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
(disclosure: I have signed one of these once, but I do not remember this clause either. It's possible it was there already but that I didn't pay enought attention.)
Also, it seems like all foreign authors now also must comply with the DMCA if they want to be published in an IEEE publication. I wonder what happens if they sign, but the work is later found to be in violation of the DMCA. Can you be prosecuted for that even if you don't live in the US, or performed the work in the US?
This leaves me with a lot of questions...
Right now, it is a small group of people devoting a limited amout of resources to fighting the DMCA. As the Felten case showed, it is possible to use the threat of lawsuit to prevent publication, no matter how constitutionally unsound (remember, when it looked like it was headed for the Supreme Court, the plaintiff backed down). This announcement by IEEE should send shockwaves around the world. With "more than 377,000 individual members in 150 countries" and as the producer of "30 percent of the world's published literature in electrical engineering", this will make more than a little noise.
IEEE has clout and reputation, it is doubtful that something like this is going to kill their journals. I am an optimist; I like to think that they are stepping up to the plate rather than backing down.
(* Engineers have zero political clout *)
Doctors and lawyers have trade unions, or at least PAC groups. How come computer and engineering geeks can never get together?
Perhaps we are too anti-social to organize?
Table-ized A.I.
If you download the PDF version of the form, open it in Acrobat Reader and choose Document Info, you'll see that this form was actually created back in October 24, 2001. Plus, the name of the form NewCRform101901.htm should also hint that it was done a pretty long time ago (the date is right there).
However I don't know whether the form was already up there all along, or perhaps the Newsforge submitter just spotted it recently and thought it was new.
"The undersigned agrees to indemnify and hold harmless IEEE ...
IANAL, but this sounds like the author is agreeing not to sue IEEE for actions arising out of publication, NOT that the author is agreeing to pay IEEE's expenses if someone sues the IEEE.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- A.E.
Why should the DMCA apply to, say, an author from India? Is the IEEE in the business of enforcing laws from all over the world?? So, shouldn't they adopt the "lowest common denominator" as the law that they'll adhere to?
...just publish your tech reports, research papers, etc, on your own University web page. Use your own University's department to organize conferences and other get-togethers.
Since when does ITAR apply to scientific papers written by civillians?? If ITAR and DMCA apply to scientific papers isn't that a blatent violation of the first amendment??
Sure the flying monkeys behind ITAR and DMCA have threatened to sue to censure academics... but there's no way that they would go to court and risk overturning their precious little law.
Besides, ITAR doesn't apply to information that's in the general literature of a field. If you publish results in the public domain frequently and often you avoid the major hassle of ITAR. Otherwise you'll have to get a state department waiver to have a meeting with a foreigner to discuss basic science that they already know anyway.
It seems is IEEE would have stood up for academic freedom they would have had a good chance of overturning ITAR and DMCA in court.
Actually, I bet the new pollicy comes from the company that publishes for the IEEE and wants to protect DMCA from any constitutional challenge because they make piles of money appropriating copyrights for other people's work.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
The IEEE isn't exactly a rich organization. They exist to promote research, education, & the development of standards in the Electronics/Electrical/Computer/Software engineering fields. This is their main concern. They wish to distance themselves from any possible liability because one large lawsuit, whether just or not, could bankrupt the entire organization. This is why they probably aren't taking a stand against the DMCA - holding themselves blameless is the lesser evil.
The IEEE takes the same approach with their code of Ethics. The code is a recommendation, one which many groups have worked hard to meticulously craft. Nevertheless, the IEEE cannot back up someone who is coming under legal fire for abiding by their Code of Ethics' principles. The reason is again that any large organization/corporation with deeper pockets than theirs could wipe them out, and then all the greater good that the IEEE accomplishes would be lost due to an attempt to stand their ground for one minuscule portion of what they represent.
While the DMCA stands as a law in the USA, the IEEE will respect it. There are many other organizations and people (& hopefully you, the Slashdot reader) who can fight the DMCA with much less risk. Support the EFF, or it's variant in your country. Spend a few hours working on any government initiated review of Copyright law, if this is happening in your country. Win the big fight, and non-profits like the IEEE will lift the restrictions that they are legally obligated to enforce.
I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: From what I know, IEEE International as a whole tries to avoid getting involved with local politics. I can understand them trying to maintain a legal distance.
The United States branch of the IEEE, IEEE-USA, *does* get involved with local legal and politics. See their public policy section, which has a number of position statements.
In summary: If you want to know what IEEE International thinks about the DMCA, etc., you're in for a long wait. Look to see what the IEEE-USA branch is doing instead.
I've been a member of the IEEE for many years. I've published in IEEE publications. But I don't publish in them any more.
Why? They don't add any value, and they want too many rights. For one thing, they want ownership of the content. That's not customary; the usual arrangement for magazine publication is that the publisher gets the right to first publication in serial form. The author can then reissue the material in other media, such as a book. And real magazines pay authors. A writer friend who heard about the IEEE deal described them as a "vanity press".
IEEE journals don't pay reviewers. Yet what they'r e really doing is trading on the reputations of the reviewers. The review process needs to be separated out from the publication process, which is what the Open Content people are trying to do.
More to the point, I get more hits on my web site than the IEEE sells copies of most of their technical proceedings. The publications aren't in Google.
Although I believe the IEEE only protects _itself_ from legal issues, its time for the IEEE-members and other people to show how much they believe in DMCA. What are the Alternatives to IEEE - where can people publish tech stuff? Mind the IEEE values: 1) reputation (died today) 2) size 3) influence (shouldn't matter to publishers, but does) The voice here are consistent: cancel your IEEE membership. m
No one in the world has the unique perspective to put a technical or financial focus on a political problem (e.g., VISA and green cards -- the IEEE has a very insightful view into those that most people don't know ;-). The IEEE has its own political action committees (PACs) and other lobbying efforts which many members pay for by default. So let's not get into the BS about the IEEE "not being able to do anything."
In case people are curious, I've written further under the original Newsforge post here: "The "IEEE has quite a lobbying effort ..." and "That's not what an IEEE member does ..."
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
The problem isn't immigrants in general, it's underpaying immigrants so they can replace higher salaried Americans! That's what H1B VISA's promote! The IEEE has been trying to get this fact out, but people think it's an immigration v. anti-immigration issue. Not so! It is more complex than you realize -- and American companies are here to dupe you! Trust me, immigrants, the IEEE-USA is your friend in this!
What the IEEE-USA does is actually promote giving real green cards to immigrants who are engineers instead of H1B VISAs. They recognize the real problem and how companies abuse the H1B VISA system whereas they cannot "abuse the system" with green cards. Unlike H1B VISAs where companies can "put the screws" to immigrants who cannot change their sponsor, so they work for less, so they can replace Americans. So why does this matter?
Green card holders can change jobs so they demand the same salaries as Americans! As such, Americans don't get fired, nor do their salaries decrease! Green card immigrants are only brought in to augment them as necessary and become Americans themselves. H1B VISAs are used to temporarily gain access to lower-costing employees and destroy America in general for corporate profits (this still happens despite the supposed "loophole changes" in H1B VISAs). The IEEE promotes an "accelerated program" to allow real engineers to get green cards faster than the normal process. Linux Torvalds is one of their "poster childs" showcasing the enormous amount of BS he had go through.
Furthermore, they have tried to "educate" the public on a "technician" and the so-called "IT shortage" versus "engineers" who do not deal with IT!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
with the outrageous fees they charge for institutional electronic access to their journals?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Win the big fight, and non-profits like the IEEE will lift the restrictions that they are legally obligated to enforce.
That is truly frightening.
Now private organizations have to do the work of the courts and the police in enforcing their laws. What next, having the car companies having to help catch speeders? Oh wait, that'll never happen - there are no entrenched monied interests threatened there...)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You could not be more wrong about that. The IEEE Computer Society Tecnical Committee on Security and Privacy [ieee-security.org] runs some of the most significant security conferences, including the "Oakland" security conference [ieee-security.org]
After this, perhaps the correct tense is "ran" instead of "runs". It certainly doesn't sound like anyone would expect them to support anything *controversial*.
I have occasionally been a member of the IEEE in the past. I consider it unlikely that I will be one in the future.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If it had to hire teams of lawyers to read over each paper and explore the legal background, then I shudder to think how much my subscriptions would cost.*
indecision
* Declarations: I am a member of the IEEE and ACM, and have so far published 3 papers through them. I've signed the forms. I've thought about their implications.
But here's the rub: who besides the IEEE is in a position to fight this law, both because of their clout and their position as a "concerned party" WRT to this legislation which buys them a level of instant credibility that many other groups would have a hard time matching?
Face it, right now the IEEE and ACM are the closest things we have to a "geek lobby" (so far; I'm holding my breath to see what kind of influence we can exert through digitalconsumer.org and AOTC/GeekPAC); ACM has done the right thing and taken an official position against the DMCA and the IEEE should follow suit. It would suck for the IEEE to get sued because of the DMCA, but such an occurence would hopefully serve to bring the issue to the fore as much as the Felten case promised to, and one would hope that its membership would step up to make sure that it wasn't financially ruined as a result. I honestly don't think that the IEEE being wiped out as one poster predicted is a realistic outcome at all.
Article in New Scientist, available online (but with annoying popup ad) at
9 99 92169
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which publishes 30 per cent of all computer science journals worldwide, is to stop requiring authors to comply with a controversial US digital copyright law.