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Alternatives to the CBDTPA?
badBillStomper asks: "In the next few days I will be meeting with my Congresswomen to discus the effects of a Sen. Hollings CBDTPA on your average customer/techie. I have read tens (if not hundreds) of comments on the various OSDN sites explaining the very obvious reasons why the CBDTPA would cause a great deal of harm to the technology sector as well as consumers. Unfortunately the only postings/articles I have seen which offer a resolution to online piracy have been limited to ways in which the entertainment industry needs to change its business model. While this may be a valid argument, it does not provide a legislative alternative (something which many on Capitol Hill are scratching for). Therefore my question to the slashdot community is what new legislation would you support which would make those who engage in online piracy easier to track? Most internet users are familiar with the fact that someone with an intermediate amount of network knowledge can tap into data which is sent from one location to another. Vice President Al Gore was the first to link the internet to the idea of the 'information superhighway.' Since Americans are already used to this term, what would the effects of the creation of a kind of 'net traffic cops;' i.e. a law enforcement type of agency which monitors web traffic and fines individuals which break laws, i.e. distribute copyrighted information?"
Someone forgot a
Why does there have to be any legislation involved at all? Piracy is something the commercial software industry has been dealing with for over 20 years. I don't understand why MPAA & RIAA need hardware changes legislated to solve a problem that is not new. Especially a law that won't even solve the problem (wrt overseas pirates whose governments look the other way).
-1 Microtroll
Why should Congress be the ones playing traffic cop? The corporations have money. If online pirating is hitting their pocket books in a serious manner, they should do what any other group would do: bring the offenders to court.
Take gnutella for example. How hard would it be to write a client which trolls for people providing my copyrighted information? Log the top X number of abusers, and take them to court. Don't smash them like a bug, that is too expensive. Just hit them up enough that it is no longer worth it to them to distribute copyrighted materials. For every one of these guys slapped on the wrist, you will convince 10 people that it isn't worth the trouble.
Just my $0.02.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
No legislation will be acceptable. It isn't the federal government's place to enact any legislation above standard copyright protection. The RIAA and MIAA need to either "Come up with a new business Model" OR start enforcing their copyrights. It is up to the owner of the copyright to enforce and protect his/her copyright. This whining about "We need legislation because there are far too many people pirating..." just won't do. It is up to the copyright holders to protect their own copyright by prosecuting individuals who infringe and pirate, and sue for damages.
When you go to the grocery store, do you see a policeman walking around following you everywhere you go, each aisle you walk thru.... NO! This is because it is up to the grocery store to provide it's own security... and press charges upon anyone who shoplifts from the store. The government needs to stay out of this. This is between the RIAA/MIAA and consumers. PERIOD.
I question the very first propisition here. Where in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or even the Declaration of Independence does it say that business is protected against competition or themselves for that matter? The laws are already quite satisfactory if not overly draconian (read DMCA bad here) concerning copyright already. What the MPAA and RIAA want is the equivalent of patents AND the government to do their dirty work for them. Copyright was NEVER intended to serve this function. For that matter - what about the rediculous extention of the copyright period?????
They have MORE than enough protection already. Tell them to develop NEW business models that work in today's infrastructure -not go to congress and cry all the time!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
For the record, Al Gore was not the first to call it the Information Superhighway.
Since you do compare it to a highway and ask about traffic cops, let me point out that the police can only pull you over and "search" you if they have reasonable cause. There are many precedents of illegal search and seizure. For me to feel "good" about Internet police, there would have to be some way that they have to show just cause *before* they snoop on my traffic. Just like phone taps (before 9-11!).
I can't imagine a viable solution involving a "network traffic regulation authority".
The argument should be that consumers and the electronics industry should not bear the cost of protecting the intellectual property of the RIAA and MPAA.
If you want alternative legislation, propose a consumer's bill of rights that guarantees consumers the right to copy multimedia files for their own use and that prohibits technology that would impinge on that ability.
Piracy is already illegal. How does adding a new law improve anything? If Congress really wants to look like they're doing something useful, they need to take a look at all the existing laws that are 1) stupid, 2) caused more harm than good, and 3) pork, and repeal them.
With each new law passed being hundreds or thousands of pages long, the complexity of law has gone to outrageous proportions. The last thing we need is more complexity. It would be best if we could simplify the law so that we can enforce the important ones.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
If that isn't the ultimate censorship i don't know what is...i can alrady see it.
NET PO PO> You can't read this!!
Me> Why Not?
NET PO PO> Cause i say it's bad!!
Me> On What Grounds?
Net PO PO> Because i can!!
NET PO PO> And i'm gonna block your subnet from even knowing it exists
My new title at the office is "Vice-President of Everything Else"
Thanks Klerck. It's a bit wider now, but still not as wide as you used to make it.
> what new legislation would you support
Not every problem can be solved by legislation, or by posting a federal marshall at every CD-burner, photocopier, etc., etc.
The problem with a 'net traffic cop' is how would such an agency be regulated? What could they legally monitor and what would be considered an intrusion on privacy and on people's rights. If they can monitor all traffic, it would be unjust. There would no longer be any privacy at all online. Yet if they can't monitor anything, they would be useless. Where would you draw the line on what they could monitor and what they couldn't. A better solution would be to set up honeypots all over and to catch pirates that way. No one would be able to trust that the ppl they are trading with aren't feds. Though fear is a bad way to motivate people, it is pretty obvious no other way is going to work.
Easy. You'd see more and more encryption in use. How hard would it actually be to tack in some IPsec or ssh code into the filesharing flavor-of-the-day? (answer: not very)
The basic problem (IMHO) is that anything digital is trivial to duplicate. The CBPUNRECOGNIZABLEACRONYMA, in its essence, tried to change that. The question is not one of alternatives; it is about should this even be done. My answer is simply: no. We should not cripple one industry to benefit another.
I would favor no more legislation at all. My question is, why do they feel they MUST legislate? We have copyright laws. There are MANY problems with them, but none of them have anything to do with piracy. The only ones whining about piracy are shills like Rosen and Valenti.
Why are you letting THEM set the agenda? We should be passing laws that protect CITIZENS.
How about these alternatives: (a) no bill (b) a bill which is 180 degrees off from those currently pending: strong protection of fair use, prohibition of changing technology standards (HDTV) to benefit content providers at the cost of consumers, explicit acknowledgement that the Constitution does not guarantee any industry a certain rate of return no matter what their profit margin was in the past, etc.?
sPh
however, what if I wanted to copy my OWN cd's or my OWN software, this is also becoming a problem. I feel the need to backup my software because of a 5 year old kiddo in the other room. I love that kid, hence the fact that his games consist of those I can copy so I can continue to keep him in games while keeping my own pockets filled. If he scratches the disk (that which he does often) I simply make another copy from the master. ALL disks remain limited to the copyrights (ie only one used, not multi use via the copies) and all operating system and other software that can be used without cd are one use and put away.
Dont get me wrong, I hate micro$ and all it stands for, but kids games henceforth are not available under linux, in fact most run poorly under windoz but not at all under wine
I also have a problem with someone telling me I cannot burn my OWN cd's onto mp3 compilation cd's.
I currently drive about 1800 miles a week, and carrying around those cd's would relegate them to the same type of scratching that the kiddo does.
commentS?
detect peopke who..." distribute copyrighted information? " - this is illegal already and needs no further legislation. The music companies have already resulted in the takedown of many sites already. What's needed is not better legislation but better detection. However this is difficult as sometimes copyrighted information is under permission to be used. Efforts seem to concentrate more on high profile things like software piracy and music piracy than things like websites copying bits of content from each other without permission.
Video Game cheats, hints a
I'm not terribly worried about piracy. most companys and bussinesses are too scared of getting in trouble to pirate software. and most of the people who pirate entertainment software woulden't buy them otherwise. besides in most games like quake the more people that have the game and the more open it is, the better the game gets through user created modifications, more people to play against, better competition. the list goes on and on. the bottom line in my opinion is people should try to find more creative ways to pay for the game. Like everquest, sure tons of people bought the game but the bulk of profit deffinetly came from the subscriptions. and just think of how many more people would have played the game if they gave it out for free.
That's the problem with congress these days, they only measure their progress against whether or not they're passing laws. Never mind the damage they cause.
This is a very dangerous situation. More laws = less freedom, plain and simple. If you need a law to defend you're freedom, its only because the idiots in congress are looking at taking that freedom away. Hell sometimes there are laws (constitutional amendments even) that should protect us, but they just IGNORE those.
The Supreme Court should start to exercise a policy of immediate judicial review of any bills that they think are unconstitutional, no waiting on a challenge. Congress is openly thumbing its nose at very many of our rights, the court should begin to smoke any of the unconstitutional crap they're coming up with before we the people even have to deal with it.
No law in this case would be a good law.
I think that there are enough laws already in existance that we don't need new ones. I also don't think that we need the government doing the work of private industry.
Commercial software makers have been dealing with "piracy" (unauthorized copying without conpensation to the copyright holders) since the dawn of the industry (see Bill Gate's letter to the members of the homebrew computer club about tape copies of his basic interpreter) yet Bill is the richest man in the world and his company is one of the largest and most profitable. I think that the copyright holders are overly paranoid and defensive, I think the level of honesty is not yet so low in this country (or the world in general) that anyone making a product of value has to be so worried about the casual copying of their works. If most people (or enough to make MS such huge profits) are willing to throw down hundreds of dollars for software why do the recording industries so fear that people will not pay the $10-20 for their products?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Technical problems require technical solutions. Legislate in favour of providing people with the right to research and produce open-standards (I won't even require open-source!) and ALSO the right to research weaknesses in open standards. If you provide people with the opportunity to speak freely and candidly on such things as encryption and rights management, you /will/ get results - but if you legislate, few if any people with talent will be working on the project, and you will end up with a shoddy solution that only works because it's illegal for it not to....
This flies in the face of science.
i.e. a law enforcement type of agency which monitors web traffic and fines individuals which break laws, i.e. distribute copyrighted information?
And don't forget to tap everyones phone while you're at it!
This must be the most privacy infringing statement I have ever seen on the slashdot frontpage.
On the other hand, they already have a system that would/may be capable of somthing like monitoring a large portion of net communications. Echelon.
And they never bothered to tell anybody about that one in the first place...
Some people may be all to willing to put it in **AA's service...
I find this proposition just as frightening as any of Holling's half baked bills.
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
The proposed solution is MUCH worse than the original law. A law that requires copy protection can be gotten around. It might make me a criminal to do so, but my chances of actually getting busted for it is quite slim.
On the other hand, a law which gives the government explicit permission to tap my net communications any time they like so they can check and see if I might be engaged in piracy is one of the most horrifying things I can imagine in terms of violations of civil liberties. It makes Carnivore insignificant. Christ! This idea makes Holling's proposed legislation look downright benevolent!
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
The "information superhighway" analogy, always misleading, is even more so when you start talking about "net traffic cops". A more accurate one would be "the Internet library," and a troop of "net censors." What, you say, that analogy makes the idea sound really bad? Well, that's because the idea is really bad.
Great, here come the thought police. For fsck's sake, when will politicians get something even close to resembling a clue? How the hell do they think they'll be able to monitor petabytes of information, in thousands of different encryption formats, being chaoticilly strewn about the world's networks? I think that such a thing is literally impossible. I for one will do everything I can to derail such notions. Dumbasses.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
It is about liberty. CBDTPA, SSSCA, and others are affronts to our freedom. There is no compromise that would make them any less palatable. Just say no!
sulli
RTFJ.
Start with: What is the problem you are trying to solve?
If your friends on Capitol Hill can't answer that question, they have already given you the appropriate answer.
Not aiming to flame/troll, but frankly I do not see why it should be the government's responsibility. If the RIAA/MPAA are so concerned about piracy, then shouldn't -they- be the ones to fund some 'superhighway cops' to keep an eye on things and find those who are breaking the law? It's obvious from some quotes in the past by people like Hillary Rosen that both these industries are of the mindset that EVERYONE sharing ANYTHING is pirating or doing something illegal. If that's the case then let THEM invest in the money and staff to track people down. If they are crying so hard about the loss of their IP, then shouldn't they put the money and people into protecting it without screaming for legislation that will also harm consumers who have done nothing wrong? Not only will they see that sharing can be done legally, but they will spare the taxpayers who just want to listen to their CDs, watch their DVDs, and have a computer that's not a set-top box some money and a heap of aggravation.
--Kylus
Idiot-proof something, and Life will build a better Idiot.
As far as 'the IP police', this may be actually more preferable to any legislation concerning copyrights/intellectual property piracy. I firmly believe that the government should not set standards for technology (should be resolved within the industry), nor should they legislate morality (what happened to parents/community and mores?). I am afraid that I would be opposed to any legislation that would restrict my fair usage of any piece of equipment or media.
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
I say what ever they do eventualy us computer geeks will use the DMCA against them. To do this we develope a new compression format and we then lock it down with the DMCA's laws that nobody can legally reverse engineer it. There would be a tool to reverse engineer it of course, but in order to use it you would have to break the law they initialized. Therefore they could never prosecute. Bout time they taste their own backwash in their beer. Piracy = theft? Hell no I would not have bout it in the first place so they lost no money. BTW this is how Microsoft maintains market share employees learn their stuff at home cause its free sortof, then companies have to buy what employees know.
Upon calling Paul Wellstone's local office, I told the person working the phone how i was opposed to any legislation mandating draconian DRM solutions and made several valid points. I made a point to inform that I was planning on voting in my first election in 2002 and that my opinions on these issues helped form many of my peer's opinions. Tell some high school kids that this will make burning CDs or making copies of free over-the-air TV programs and they'll get interested real fast.
They said they would have the Senator write me back with a response as soon as possible, but being a Senator, he was a very busy man. Ok, I thought, I'm a reasonable man, what's a few weeks. I don't mind waiting a month or two? I took the form letters from The EFF and tailored them to my needs. I sent compies of this e-mail to recently-elected Senator Dayton (D-MN), and my Congressman, Representative Martin Sabo (D-MN).
Well my e-mail and phone campaign was way back in September and just now have I received a response from one of my elected officials. What follows is an e-mail I just received on April 29th from Senator Wellstone, seven months after my inquiries:
I liked the part where I he didn't really answer my question... It seems you are correct in thinking Capitol Hill is hell bent on passing legislation. I don't think ANY legislation is a good thing, but I feel that they [capitol hill] see us [letter-writing geeks] as meddlers who refuse to offer a solution. Who says there needs to be a solution? Has anyone had any other luck with their representatives?
Easy. Just pass a law reqiring all software pirates to register with the government. Tell them they get a free speedboat for registering, but they must first prove they are pirates. When they do, arrest them.
After all, piracy is already illegal, isn't it?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
"Unfortunately the only postings/articles I have seen which offer a resolution to online piracy have been limited to ways in which the entertainment industry needs to change its business model."
Change happens. The entertainment industry has to change to keep up with the rest of the world. What congress needs to understand is that the government does not exist to to protect business models from potential threats. It is one thing for the government to punsh those who redistribute someone else's intellectual property without permission, it is another thing entirely for the government to tie the hands of the people, restricting legitimate use of computers, in an attempt to preempt theft.
Does the government put antitheft systems into our cars to prevent people from from stealing them? No. Should the government put antitheft systems into digital devices to protect music? No.
Change happens. Old industries die, new ones are born. That is the nature of reality. The entertainment industry MUST change, and a democratic government has no choice but to sit back and watch.
The RIAA and their cronies have to get on board with the new technologies, and not fight against them as strongly as they do. Sure, there are always going to be some slashdotters and the like who insist on getting everything for free because of strongly-held beliefs that all data should be free (like beer) and that intellectual property is all a bunch of BS. However, 98% of America would prefer to use a legal, low-cost alternative to Grokster and Kazza than to have a bunch of illegal MP3's sitting on their hard drive.
If they'll help to create the mechanism by which I, for $1 each, can download tracks from any label from the Internet, I promise you, my copy of Kazaa Lite is going right in the virtual trash bin.
modern choral music...
They've consistently been rejected by the market, which should tell Congress something.
There are PLENTY of laws on the books that make it a crime to copy software (or any other copyrighted material for anything but fair use).
What the software and music industry seem to want is the Feds to establish "internet police" to relieve them of burden of prosecution. Perhaps this strikes some as sane, to me it just seems insane.
In an era when our legal and civil rights are being stomped on by business and government alike (for example Alcoa lawyers are attempting to seek that they have the right to enter the homes of folks who oppose an Alcoa stripmine) are we just to smile and say "please, limit my liberties a little more!".
This of course TOTALLY ignores the fact that unlike the U.S. superhighways, the information superhighway is international. Let's see how those "net cops" catch folks in Taiwan.
I do not condone stealing copyrighted material. But bad laws will not help the situation.
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
Current copyright law (flawed though it may be) gives copyright holders all the legislative muscle they need to bring suit against potential infringers. Anything above that gets into the realm of presumed guilt and having copyright holders in control of stuff they don't need to touch.
Tell your Congressfolk that there are already existing laws that need to be applied before adding new ones. I don't see the MPAA/RIAA/etc. actually attempting to go after violators with copyright law - the issue is one of control of content and technology, and the copyright issue is just the smokescreen.
I know the attitude is "Something must be done." and that people who oppose the CBDTPA and its ilk must have some sort of counter-offer. I would say that in fact nothing needs to be done. The CBDTPA is nothing but a blatant attempt by Big Media's congressional lackeys to abrogate rights that have been confirmed by the Supreme Court. Explain what Fair Use is, what time and media shifting is, and how you feel they should still apply to digital media. Point out that the DMCA already infringes on the above rights.
Okay, you want something constructive they can do to look like they're taking action...I'll tell you what I think they should do...but they're not going to like it, since it's not new law:
Spend money on enforcement.
It's that simple. Software and media piracy is already illegal, we just can't/don't enforce the law. Making more law that we don't enforce (or selectively enforce, which is worse) is pointless.
How about asking your congresswoman one question "Do you want your private life, regardless of the intentions of your actions and regardless of online or offline, intruded upon 24/7?" Guess what? Neither do we. I'm not out setting up ftp sites for w4rez, or downloading every mp3, or anything else illegal but the potential for abuse of such a system FAR outweighs the supposed good it would do. One more thing - it is not Congress' mandate to guarantee the revenue streams of ANY company in America. It is that company's. Welcome to capitalism.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporation have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back"
- Robert a. Heinlein, Life-line
...something along the lines of the Taliban Police for Virtue and Vice?
Scary, isn't it.
A police organization overlooking all net activities is just begging for government abuse.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Our current laws (minus the DMCA) are efficient enough to track those infringing on copyright we don't need any more. The DMCA went way further than what was needed, any further legeslation would be just as detremental to the internet commons as the DMCA. Warez kiddies are easy enough to catch as it is. Don't forget about why the internet has grown so much in popularity, because it was unregulated and anarchratic, a haven for freedom of speech and expression, not for any other reason. People wouldn't have cared about the superhighway if it wasn't so full of information that was interesting to them.
I don't think that some kind of net "traffic cops" would be a good idea. In fact, adding that kind of regulation to th internet would be the worst thing one could do for reasons besides
a) It's impossible. Nothing on the planet can analyze that much traffic effectively.
b) Any laws would only take effect on US lines... all I'd have to do would be to lease a server in russia and I can pirate all I want.
I feel that attacking the internet is the wrong way to address piracy. What if I telephone a friend with a serial number for some software program? Should we be concerned about this and have some regulatory agency listen in on phone calls to keep me from disclosing such information?
Unfortunately, while I agree (with about a million other people) that the net should not be regulated, I can't come up with any effective way to address piracy. I can throw some ideas out there involving open source or more effective ways to copy-protect software, but we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. What kind of solution will encompass the software (or whatever) manufacturer's desire to make money while at the same time not inconveniencing the consumer or over-regulatizing the net? Beats me.
--Bennett Prescott
Former Lord Of Packets
Oh, wait, did you mean tracking of possible copyright infringers? I suggest reading Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright book, where she takes on the very hard problem of formulating a new copyright, and suggests that we move from copying being the activity being controlled to commercial gain from copying.
Therefore my question to the slashdot community is what new legislation would you support which would make those who engage in online piracy easier to track?
Could it be that the reason it is so difficult to find a reasonable answer to this question is that there is no reasonable answer at all? The "piracy laws" already exist, and are applicaple to digital piracy. No new laws were needed to shut down Napster. No new laws will be needed to stop some bozo from from selling pirated DVDs on the net either.
By the way, if by "congresswomen" you mean Dianne Fienstein and Barbara Boxer, be sure to talk to them about some of the questionable "Sept 11 laws" they've been supporting.
Ok, lets get one thing straight: there is _no_ way of stopping piracy short of shooting gnutella users on sight. There is no 'magic' hardware or software solution, no DRM, no draconian laws that will stop piracy. Everything that has been tried has failed. If you can see it you can copy it, why can't people understand. The internet or information super-highway or whatever is not just a network anymore, its an idea. The idea is simple: anyone can send data to anyone else on this network. Even if governments implimented net-cops the internet would just evolve around it, already people are setting up wireless networks that have nothing to do with the internet (eg consume.net) and this is just the first step. The world has seen the idea of the internet and now theres no way to put it back in the box. What ever law or system anyone comes up with, someone else will find a way around it. Once people realise this, then maybe they (the riaa etc..) can change the way they oparate. So, to answer the question, no, there is no law that we would support that would also be able to wipe out piracy.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
...the world looks like a nail. And to a legistlature, who's sole power is to create laws, creating a new law is the answer to the world's problems. They see it as no one else is addressing the "problem", and they could win a lot of points with different groups, and look like the hero, if they present a workable plan.
So, while everyone is whining that legislation is not the answer (which is VERY true), it is best to play along and make legislation the answer.
How? Make legislation that says the justice department should get off it's butt and prosecute copyright infringement cases. Providing a new spin or emphasis on existing law would do it. Honestly, someone is going to have those hollywood, tax doging, trolls a bone. The best I can come to a solution is to actually prosecute and pursue cases under existing laws, demonstrating a) the government wishes to protect existing copyright holders and b) the existing laws work, once given a little incentive.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
What I would NOT support is a censorship bot or a bot that captures your domain or anything like that. It's like in the real world. 6 or 7 years ago in Salt Lake City, we had "photo cops" briefly. In the back of a van, there would be a camera hooked up to a radar gun. Any car speeding by the van would have a picture of it's license plate taken, and the owner of the car would get a letter in the mail telling them where to show up at court. It was determined that this was illegal, and we don't have photo cops anymore. Similarly, on the internet, a law enforcement agency shouldn't be allowed to enter a #warezchannel on efnet, capture everybody's whois, and prosecute them.
Search warrents would have to be issued before an internet cop could enter a private site without permission (a private site being one where you have to log on to get in). When an internet cop signs up for a username/password for one of these sites, he'd have to let the admin know he's a cop. Undercover cops are allowed under some situations, but if somebody asks the undercover cop if they're a cop, they have to say "yes".
Basically, as long as the checks and balances that keep law enforcement in line in the real world are held in the cyber world, I'd be happy.
Ask 'em how the laws are coming around to technologically mandate speed limit conformity in vehicles, j-walking, and public urination. Its really kind of silly. Nevermind innocent until proven guilty, nevermind guilty until proven innocent, just label us all guilty and move along. As long as the money flows.
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
We live in a capatilist country. It is all about survival of the fittest. Times change, and in the past, companies have as well. Your local newspaper doesn't use the old antiquated printing press where you had to place each letter in the machine where you wanted it BY HAND. This is the same thing. Times change. Companies have to evolve to survive. Just think: if the government had stepped in and made it necessary for every newspaper to use the old printing press, newspapers would only come out maybe once a week, and they would be quite small.
"True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing"
I think we need to push for legislation against any form of tracking. Without it laws like the DMCA and CBDTPA get snuck in when no one is looking (as we are increasingly becoming aware of) and there will be no freedoms. Compare the way you can be tracked now with ten years ago. How much more sophisticated have those systems become. In Vegas they have data warehouses so the waitstaff knows you like pickles on your burger, etc. Take today as a baseline and see what it is like in ten more years. Our children will be growing up with a permanent record of every activity they have done in their lives. Does this sound reasonable? When is the Ministry of Peace going to be formed?
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
Is it not clear that "Tracking" these "criminals" becomes increasingly difficult by the day. The internet is not "Real Life". You CAN hide. You CAN assume differnt identities on the internet. I read a poem when I was a little kid that is very fitting. It read:
Build a better mouse trap and put it in your house,
but sooner or later Mother Nature will build a better mouse.
The bottom line is that Legislation is not the way to deal wit this problem. It will only lead to more legislation and so on and so forth.
Why don't consumers get legislation protecting them from monopolistic business practices...oh wait, I forgot these politicians got a lot of money from the media suppliers - thats right, they are the only one with rights now!
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Until then Pres. Clinton signed the "No Electronic Theft" act in 1997, modifying Titles 17 & 18 of the USC, copyright violation was strictly a civil matter. In my opinion, that is the way it should stay.
.
However, all that has changed and copyright violations are now criminal acts under U.S. law, punishable by fines and/or imprisonment.
The U.S. already has law enforcement bureaus on all levels: Federal, State and Municipal. We do NOT need YAPD -- Yet Another Police Dept.
Now, legislation providing funding for existing agencies to hire personnel, obtain equipment and training, is another matter.
The VERY big problem, is that data can easily cross State if not International boundaries. Jurisdictional disputes will tie up the courts for years.
If a legislator wants to actually do some good, they need to look into legislation modeled after various International Law, such as the Law of the Sea, etc.
They should also fight any half-baked, feel-good, unenforcable laws that some grandstanding legislators try and force thru Sen. Hollings
Finally, legislators need to educate themselves and their staffs (staves?) on the international, distributed, fault-tolerant realities of the Internet. And I don't mean learn how to send their own e-mail. The basics of routing, backbones, peering, P2P, client-server, etc. Networking 101
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Since when was Gore the first person to do anything? First he invented the internet, now he was the first to link 'internet' and 'information superhighway'? Ridiculous --politicians do not have original thoughts -- facts/statistics will bear me out on this....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
That's what the alternative legislation should (in effect) say. We all know that copyright violation is punishable by large fines. Just enable the average person to collect a decent portion of the fine, for providing convicting evidence of copyright violation. There is a dinky Windows game at http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?6500000036513a t on its copyright screen specifically allows proof-providers 10% of any fine collected as a result of copyright-violation.
th
They want to squash our Fair Use, so as a "comprimise" include a rider bill that requires any producer of physical content that does not allow fair use to require a 100% replacement gaurentee within 7 days of notification for the length of the copyright on the content (100 years now??).
This would be fair since it puts as much burdon on the associations of "content providers" as it does to the whole technology sector. Maybe some will then see how obsurd the whole thing is since they already have a good amount of protection.
Why ask the slashdot community their ideas for legislation when you restrict the possibility to some cleverly disguised version of the Hollings Bill. Most of us disagree with the idea that there has to be some kind of special legislation to prevent theft of IP; we are dubious, too, of the need to permit the kings soldiers complete access to our houses to spy on the anonymous neighbor who might run off with the king's plunder. Some of us may be more interested in legislation that prevents the abuse of idividual rights at the hands of our government for the sake of a small but grotesquely wealthy business group. That is not a forgone conclusion!
Hollywood has spent a TON of fame, time, and money influencing congress over the past 15 years or so. They have come to ask for their favor now; they want to see the return on investment and if they don't see it, they will be taking their money else where.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
I did my final paper in my Political Science: Technology and Public Policy class regarding this very subject. The conclusions of most of the law briefs I referenced for the piece generally conlcuded that most legistlative efforts have failed and will continue to fail. Most drew the parallel between our failure on the casual piracy front with the failure with the war on drugs. Criminalizing the acts of millions of people is not going to make them stop. Only through changes in social norms will the fight against casual piracy ever stand a chance.
I haven't seen it mentioned in any of the previous posts, but If you really wanted to trade copyrighted material across an open network you could just encrypt it. That also brings up the question of, What would they look for anyway?
Patterns in streams of data or keywords in HTML?
That sounds like an awful large amount of data to process.
I guess they could always tap into the resources of Echelon, pull those guys off of watching terrorists and blackmailing congressman for a little while.
IMHO
-TMK
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man
who is able to think things out for himself, without regard
to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably
he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under
is dishonest, insane, and intolerable."
-H.L. Mencken
I think the majority of the problem is that law makers don't understand technology. I bet 99% of them can't even tell you what TCP or IP stands for. I think we need an agency that deals strictly with the tracking and enforcment of issues like this. I'm sorry, but a police officer from Iowa isn't going to have a clue on how to track someone down online. We need an organization that has "EXPERTS in the field".
Then again, if this agency gets ahold of my MP3 stash, and takes out all of my suppliers, the recording labels have won against me. Which means I'll be forced to buy CD's. If this agency cut out piracy altogather (Uhm.. thats like making a system 100% secure... ha!), EVERYONE would be forced to buy CD's from the recording labels, in which case, the recording labels would have their monopoly back, and I'd be broke from paying $17 for 1 CD that probably has 2-3 songs I like on it... I'm sorry, but I'm a overworked, underpaid admin from a small town, I can't offord to pay that kind of money. The radio stations around here suck, so I guess I'll put an icecream bucket in my car and bang on that on the way to work so I have something to listen to.. *sigh*
Can all fish swim?
That all blank CD's purchased already carry a royalty that goes to the RIAA. That's a perfect example of the hypocracy being spewed forth from these corporations.
-Nikkos
I think that internet trafic cops are a bad idea because it is a big invasion of privacy and if someone challenged a law like that it probably would be ruled unconstitutional and a lot of tax-payer's money would have gone down the drain.
There is no need for DRM legislation; here's an analogy.
Jawalking is a crime, already punishable by a small fine, but thanks to a new type of nuclear-powered running shoes, it is a crime that has become more prevalent. Jaywalking hurts the companies that make the little pedestrian signals, and so they lobby to have a law put in place that will attach an explosive collar to the neck of anybody who uses sidewalks, such that only *legal* pedestrian crossings are used.
It's the same thing with the RIAA. They see their cash cow threatened (because MP3s and streaming radio give much more power to the musicians and the listeners than they do to the recording industry), and will lobby until the end of the earth to protect their business model. Sorry, but there is no "right to profitability", and if your customers are deserting you for an alternative, even a lower-quality one, you really should re-think your business model; not try and get the better one banned.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Quite the opposite. Those bozos in congress have done quite enough damage already. They need to undo the DMCA, for starters. And roll back micky mouse extensions to copyright term. And put a lid on the office of patents and trademarks.
Now, let's just assume for a minute that we can count on our representatives in congress to actually represent their constituents. If they truly have the best interests of the people in mind, perhaps they would consider passing legislation which eviscerates EULA's. Another way for them to put some time to good use would be to impose a tax on unsolicited bulk email.
Citizens rights to privacy and due consideration are being trammeled by a very powerful minority. Instead of inviting knuckleheads like Eisner for "hearings", they should be beating these petty tyrants upside the head.
The Corporate States of America is no joke.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
This is certainly the right answer, albeit not to the question posed. However, it probably implies the correct question, which is what can be done to deal with the morass that copyright has become? There are a couple of questions that Congress really should be addressing:
The key legislative need is clarification of the government's position, rather than relying upon the courts to thrash this out. CBDTPA's flaws are deeper than the content providers vs. computer industry conflict, and patching it will only slow the development of the clarity needed to go forward.
The fundamental problem is that Content companies want more control over how we use their products. They are not currently allowed to dictate to us how we use their product, short of using things like the DMCA to force limitations on manufacturers(e.g. region coding).
It's one part this and one part that.
They need to aggressively enforce their copyrights to protect their content. A simple search on Google is frequently capable of turning up multiple violations. I don't understand why they don't have enforcement teams on the payroll that work in conjunction with lawyers and the local law enforcement to use copyright law to prosecute. Sure, it will give you a bad image with consumers, but people may actually become scared enough to start obeying copyright law. They may also start lobbying to get laws changed, but hey. The problem is not protection of their content, that's impossible as Bruce Schneier likes to tell us, since every protection scheme can be broken, but of enforcement.
Read my lips, no new laws.
Next - what party is she?
If Republican - advocate a free-market solution, pointing out the revenues (and earnings, and by extension, taxes) from the technology industry far outweigh the income from the Content Cartel.
(If she's a Republican on the Religious Right, you may also want to point out that Hollywood hasn't been terribly friendly to her party in terms of donations, or her constituents' values, either. When was the last time Andy Grove of Intel decided to advocate sexual promiscuity and drug use? :)
Second - no matter what party she's from, avoid terms like "Content Cartel". Works great on Slashdot. Makes you sound like a tinfoil-hat-loon to a politician.
If Democrat - go for the "why subsidize Hollywood and 'big business' over the little guy selling hardware out of his storefront" angle.
Also, and most importantly, if she's a Democrat - point her to Rep. Boucher. A fellow Congressman from her side of the aisle who truly "gets it".
(For that matter, pointing a Republican Congressman to Rep. Boucher wouldn't hurt either. "Hey, man, even some of the Democrats realize that Fritz' bill is a Big Mistake, and they realize so for precisely the same reasons I do. When a Democratic Congressman can find common ground with Sen. Orrin Hatch (e.g. the DMCA has gone far beyond what its legislative proponents intended), there's probably some room for not just bipartisanship, but there's also something fundamentally wrong with the Hollings bill."
Finally - it's not just the Hollings bill. Rep. Boucher put it very well in the interview when he said there were two ways to look at it: Either all your base are belong to Hollywood, or not.
If you can educate your Congresswoman as regards to what to look for (and what to look out for - (including, but emphatically not limited to, Hollywood-mandated restrictions on hardware manufacturers and computer owners, backed up by force of criminal law) - you stand a reasonable chance of not just stopping the CBDTPA, but whatever successor bills Hollywood tries to put through if CBDTPA is defeated.
Finally-finally - and you probably shouldn't have to be told this, but just for the sake of completeness - be respectful and professional. Get a haircut. If you're male, wear a suit and tie. Dress like you're going to the most important job interview of your life.
Just 'cuz there are a lot of long-haired, wild-eyed geeky types on Slashdot, doesn't mean you have to fill the stereotype. The more they can see that opposition to CBDTPA isn't just a "long-haired freak" position, but a rational response on the part of consumers and businesses alike to a poor law, the better for our side.
while your at it why not go ahed and make the following laws as well: LAW 1 - copy protect every cd so that it can only play in cd players and not computers (yeah this leads to step 2) THEN LAW 2 - make is so the cd's can only be played with certain brands of cd players (this will cut down on people sharing cd's) LAW 3 - make is a felony to share cd's among people regardless of reasons LAW 4 - make cd's illegal LAW 5 - make any type of music not played in designated areas by designated government workers illegal (once this is done we'll solve music pirating once and for all) The point is too many laws get in the way and cause more problems. If we just keep things the way they are (minus the DMCA) everyone will be happy. If your record slaes or software sales have fallen, look at what your selling and yourself - don't blame it on some minority.
Ave Molech Setting
Unfortunately the slashdot crowd has, in knee-jerk fashion, completely missed the point of the original post.
:)
Try answering the following question instead: "Given that the industry is going to get SOME law put on the books to protect their interests, what form of law would be preferable".
Think of it as a multiple-choice question on an exam folks.. having to answer it may suck, but choosing an answer which doesn't exist (ie: "No Such Law!" or "Make it _easier_ to pirate software!") is just ignored, and hence a non-answer.
And if you can't come up with a good answer.. just.. don't
Just because you've got an itch doesn't mean that you should scratch it.
There is no need for additional laws, and the idea of ``net cops'' is sheer lunacy compounded with totalitarinism. If a copyright owner doesn't like what somebody's doing with the copyrighted work, let that owner deal wiith it. The {RI,MP}AA can waste their own dollars chasing honest citizens who're acting in concert with the Constitution and ignoring unconsitutional laws.
If you really want to tell your representatives what law to pass, tell them to pass a law repealing the DMCA and the Bono act.
What happens on the file trading networks isn't a crime. What is a crime is that the Scottsdale Symphony can't afford to perform Maurice Ravel's Bolero (you know, the Bo Derek piece) because, thanks to Sonny Bono, it's back under copyright.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
Dammit! No legislation, no net-cops, no government soveriegnty over the use of force on the net.
Repeat after me:
"It is not the role of Congress, nor does Congress have the statutory authority, to provide and direct a profitable business model to any industry. That role is the Supreme Province of the consumer by individual actions in the Free Market."
Repeat daily until a clue is found. Repeat thrice daily if a member of any legislature.
Bryan Baskin
Thanks for asking. I'm not sure you'll like what I have to say, though.
/.
Therefore my question to the slashdot community is what new legislation would you support which would make those who engage in online piracy easier to track?
There can be none to support, I'm afraid. Any laws that attempt to track file sharing will be ineffectual. Cryptography and Steganography would have to be stamped out first, which just isn't going to happen. Sorry.
Most internet users are familiar with the fact that someone with an intermediate amount of network knowledge can tap into data which is sent from one location to another.
It's not just that, my friend. Within any device capable of playing back digitized content, at some point that digitized content will be in pristine format - un-encrypted and just as it was recorded. Some smart person, a "hacker" if you will, is going to figure out where in the device it's in said format and how to extract it. Then it's in a file, converted to MP3(or DiVX or whatever) and on Kazaa, or sent through PGP encrypted e-mail. Very hard to police that, without resorting to totally draconian measures.
Vice President Al Gore was the first to link the internet to the idea of the 'information superhighway.' Since Americans are already used to this term, what would the effects of the creation of a kind of 'net traffic cops;' i.e. a law enforcement type of agency which monitors web traffic and fines individuals which break laws, i.e. distribute copyrighted information?
No offence intended, but you must be a newbie to
First of all, Mr. Gore isn't the best name to use around here, since he has lost all credibility by speaking "authoritatively" about things he didn't understand. Internet Traffic Cops? See my arguments about Crypto and Data Extraction above. They will simply not be of any appreciative benefit to consumers - only to corporations that are trying to protect outmoded business models with flawed laws. Plus, authoritarian organizations aren't embraced with open arms, unless they're restoring authority to "the little guy". Your Traffic Cops are the antithesis of that.
For good or ill, the world of computers and the Internet is ultimately controlled by hackers. You have to be a hacker, and think like one, in order to get along.
Work with us, not against us - give some and then take some is the only way.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I think the analogy to traffic police is good in a sense-- people don't like traffic cops any more than they'd like a government Internet filter or some such legislative arrangement. The average driver, IMHO, speeds and would much rather get away with it than be called on it by a state trooper. Speeding causes a driving hazard to some degree; however, as the Autobahn and the Montana "reasonable and prudent" limit policy demonstrate, leaving it up to the discretion of drivers who know what they're doing works well enough. (It's true, there are stupid drivers, but they'll be a hazard at any speed.)
Now, copyright protection as proposed by Hollings et al. is somewhat analogous to speeding enforcement. It protects the "safety" of entertainment companies' profit margins while precluding activity that, to varying degrees, is-- or should be-- perfectly legal and acceptable. Internet users do not want to be policed. It would limit them to avoid doing anything that might be construed as "speeding"-- including trading uncopyrighted MP3s such as bootlegs, obtaining somewhat legal copies of software that one had purchased but lost or that became damaged, etc., because you could never know when a "traffic cop" might be watching you, unless the Internet community invented "radar detectors." When I e-mail my friend some song lyrics, or post them on my web site, or download them because I can't make out what my favorite band is saying, I don't want to have to worry about getting a call the next day from an RIAA lawyer informing me that I am at their mercy because I am a criminal.
This discussion is apart from any privacy issues, which I'm sure others will bring up. Any such policing legislation would chill legitimate Internet activity and retard the Net as a whole. And the bitching of the xxAAs is unconvincing because the movie industry is raking in profits faster than ever, and the RIAA would be if they didn't fix CD prices quite so high. Someone versed in introductory economics should explain to them that unreasonably high prices lead to unreasonably low demand, and that if they stopped shooting themselves in the foot they might be able to go for a stroll in the park now and then instead of bitching about the pain.
Okay, that's enough ranting for one afternoon.
You should tell your congressman that if your local police enforced current copyright laws with individuals, as well as corporations, then there would be no need for additional legislation.
No data, no cry
KaZaA is promoting something an "Intellectual Property Use Fee". This is heavily flawed but still the only proposal aside from suggesting the labels change their business models.
s sage/5337
See http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/1187 (my own writing) for a quick overview and endless related discussion on the [Decentralization] list, threads beginning at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/decentralization/me
They've already covered this legislation. It's called "The Digital Millenium Copyright Act", and it's already pretty broad. If we need more legislation every couple of years to avoid really bad copyright laws, we might as well just save ourselves a few years of trouble and let them pass the CBDTPA right now. If we need to go beyond the DMCA, then we'll eventually go beyond whatever is proposed.
What you should really be doing is pointing out that the current laws are already ridiculously broad and that you cannot change the basic functions of the internet in any way (aside from making certain functions illegal to USE) without seriously harming the technology industry, which pumps a lot more money into the economy than the copyright industry. You should also push the fact that this sort of legislation, i.e. any legislation that hinders the technology industry by forcing them to implement legal restrictions in hardware and software, will just hold the United States back in a technology market that is growing by the day.
Some times, more legislation just isn't the answer. At some point, they have to be satisfied with the legislation that they have and stop playing games with the rights of US citizens and the health of the US economy. The DMCA already does enough damage to our rights and the open nature of computer standards. Any further copyright bills will be a huge blow to not only our rights, but the economy and the companies and employees within it.
(IANAL or congressional expert and I don't seriously expect my ideas to be used, but I hope this post was more productive than the ones he's complaining about.)
This is a very common trap in the legislation business - propose a horrific piece of crap like the CBDTPA, claiming that there is a "need" for such legislation. Then the really bad bill gets shot down, but since legislators have convinced people that "something has to be done" a slightly less odious - but still objectionable - bill gets passed.
What legislation like the CBDTPA would I accept? None. Absolutely none at all. Let the content providers take the risks of doing business just like everyone else. If they can't accept the risks, then move aside for businesses that will. That's capitalism.
what would the effects of the creation of a kind of 'net traffic cops;' i.e. a law enforcement type of agency which monitors web traffic and fines individuals which break laws, i.e. distribute copyrighted information?
As someone else already said, they've already got Carnivore. Really, do we want or need a law giving some law enforcement agency the right to monitor our web traffic at will without the normal process of getting a warrant of some kind? It's bad enough as it is that they can usually pressure an ISP into giving them that access without legal procedures.
The reason you're not seeing good ideas for alternative legislation is because there are no good ideas for legislation on this issue.
Anything that you do which is actually going to stop someone, short of tracking down the worst offenders in the normal manner, is going to be more harmful to the average consumers and citizens than it is to the actual pirates making money off of illegal copies of software. If someone really wants something on the internet that they can't get legally in the US, they can simply go to sites hosted outside of the country. The US can bust the user that downloaded the content, but that doesn't stop the content from being available, and they certainly won't get the person on distribution of the content unless they play some really nice tricks in court.
Not allowing people to make backups of the music/software they purchased (or purchased a license to use) or transfer the content to another media for their own use because someone else used similar methods to redistribute the content to other people is not the answer, and neither is allowing the government to monitor everyone's internet browsing habits just in case someone is doing something illegal.
The music industry is losing sales because they've decided to raise prices, take on a public war against piracy in a way that puts them in a bad light, and simply hasn't been producing much worth having (Ooh, Britney Spears has sold 20 million CDs world-wide, that's combined sales of 2 albums and 6 singles, several of which (if not all) were #1; compare to 10 years ago, Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction was #2 on the charts and the one album sold 20 million copies worldwide, without even being considered a 'pop' album). Very little of the music I buy any longer was produced in the last five or so years, and not only do I buy a lot of CDs, but I don't even use any P2P file sharing software.
Software industry is in the same boat. On the applications side companies are taking more flack for buggy products and for-cost version upgrades coming along too often. On the games side there are often too many clone products and rushed releases, to the point where you can go to the store and find several FPS or RTS titles with little to differentiate one from another, so the core titles of the genre tend to far outsell any of the rest, simply because people feel they can depend on that company and/or title to give them a solid gaming experience (ie Quake, WarCraft / StarCraft, C&C, Diablo, Baldur's Gate), whereas anything else has to really stand out to do well (Half-life). Then we get something like SafeDisk, which is very common in the gaming industry (UT and Diablo 2 for example), yet doesn't work with a certain percentage of CD-ROM drives on the shelves and in people's computers (meaning that people cannot play the games they bought), while also being easily bypassed in order to make usable copies of the game.
Just what we need, instead of consumer/privacy protection groups making sure that these companies stop screwing us over with buggy releases, protection measures that stop legitimate use, no refund policies in stores so we can't return the products when they don't work, and law enforcement monitoring people's communications without warrants, you're asking us to come up with legislation that permits them to do these things.
The business model must change. It is not the government's place to pass legislation designed to protect a failing business. We live in a capitalist society in the United States and yet more and more the government is asked to step in and prop up failing industries. An industry fails in a capitalist society for a reason. It is because their business model is inadequate to meet the need of their consumers. Case in point: The steel industry. In the last five years the number of steel mills that have closed due to bankruptcy has sky rocketed. The reason? Demand for domestic steel decreased due to the lower prices of foreign steel. Why is foreign steel cheaper? Because the foreign steel producers, for the most part, do not have to deal with unions and the labor contracts they shove down the steel mill owner's throats. Here you have a contract that guarantees a job to the union worker regardless of his performance. That means if he sleeps on the job he doesn't lose his job. Not only does he get to keep it, he gets paid for the time he was sleeping! (at $30/hr it gets pretty expensive) Lost productivity does not matter to the unions. As long as the union workers get to keep their contract jobs, they won't strike. This type of attitude does not work in a society designed to give the best reward to those that do the best work. If you want to sell the most steel it has to be at the best possible price. Lost productivity drives up these costs. As far as the RIAA is concerned, they are pushing so hard to get this legislation passed because they see their demise on the horizon. With the widespread use of the internet as a distribution medium for digital media, the old method of pressing a quarter million CDs for Britney's latest release is soon to come to an end. The artists will now hire technical people like web designers and system administrators s to publish their work to a website in some form of subscription based service. The artists will finally get the money they deserve without the record companies taking 90%. And the record companies will become defunct. In summary, the RIAA, and other failing industries, need to adapt their business models to meet the demands of their consumers. If they fail to adapt, regardless of government intervention, they are doomed to fail.
Please don't encourage my hard won tax dollars to be spent this way. We don't need to encourage big brother type government surveillance of our personal lives. Carnivore is already bad enough without any encouragement.
There are three ways for a country to produce wealth. Grow it, manufacture it, or mine it. Net traffic cops do not aid in any of those, thus they have no positive effect on our GDP. All it does is move more money that Americans might have spent on other entertainment, such as movies, to buying music CD's.
Other countries will just go on pirating our music anyway and we won't be able to stop them. In fact, we will be subsidizing them the way we subsidize super cheap drugs in Canada.
If Congress wants to pass legislation so bad, let them pass a Consumer's Bill of Rights that gives the consumer fair use rights to make copies of their music as well as legally be able to shift it to other mediums.
If cars can run, they can break speed limits. If computers can run, they can copy data.
You can't legislate a technological enforcement of copyright laws any more than you can legislate a technological enforcement of traffic laws.
This is not a question of legislating crime and punishment, like Prohibition in the US in the 1920s, or the current War On Drugs, or compaign contributions, or bribery or cheating on taxes. The CBDTPA is an attempt at legislating a technological enforcement of a law. It is impossible. There is no compromise (Only be preggers on Thursday, ok?) and there is no alternative (How about being pregant in your neck instead of belly?).
If you can't understand that, how in the Sam Hill do you expect to get it across to your congresscritter?
Infuriate left and right
You ought to direct your Congresswomen to Congressman Rick Boucher's Office.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Oh God, I hope so. Maybe they could use it to find some good writers.
"Therefore my question to the slashdot community is what new legislation would you support which would make those who engage in online piracy easier to track?"
As others have said, additional laws restricting the rights of consumers are at best insane.
The problems are not problems of technology, new vs. old, and they are not problems of law. They are simply problems of A. Greed (The companies that claim lost sales, even when sales go up), and B. Scale (It's faster and easier to copy and move a recording or program).
These are not problems that can, or should be handled by further restricting the rights of the honest user. They can only be addressed by the companies themselves, and consumers will choose which forms of 'copy protection/copy restriction' they find acceptable, and will vote the winner with thier wallets.
These issues resurface every 15 or so years, ditto machines, reel to reel tape, xerographic copiers, video cassettes, video tape, and now CD's DVD's and computer software. The results should get better with the itteration of the problem, not worse DMCA, and other proposals that have surfaced in this itteration fly in the face of rights previously established.
Please remind your representative that laws always remove rights, see if she can do something new and use them to create new rights, or restore ones that have been taken.
Why does there need to be a legislative solution when the two parties are already in negotiations to resolve the situation? Current laws (DMCA) might not be to our liking, but provide a balanced view of the problem (when compared to laws like the CBDTPA) by making it a criminal act to knowingly circumvent a copy protection scheme which is in place. This gives law enforcement the tool needed to get the bad guys, but draws the line at presuming that we are all criminals.
Who cares if the people on capitol hill are "scratching for" a legislative fix. Legislators do one and only one thing well; they *create new laws*. By doing so, it justifies thier position.
You are, frankly, asking the wrong question. The question should be: How can current laws be used to reduce piracy?
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Some of the problems are of the music industry or movie industry's own making. If they distributed movies or music on devices that were not also used as computer peripherals by the mainstream, the massive copying would not take place (though some might occur, but the numbers of these would be low). If instead of normal CDs, music only got sold on something like 6" CDs, for a simple example, computer drives wouldn't read them.
Of course then they'd have to deal with consumers maybe not wanting these unique media, but then the choice would be clear. If people wanted the movies or music so badly they'd buy the media. If not, companies would have to make business decisions whether they wanted an easily copied medium to have a given song or movie. Maybe they'd make less on consumer copies but the choice would be clear and there'd be no effect on computers or what people did.
Note too: copying and giving out stuff is already illegal; no new law is needed there. Indeed the DMCA is far too Draconian.
Yeah, I didn't get a reply from any of my messages :-(
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
Unfortunately the only postings/articles I have seen which offer a resolution to online piracy have been limited to ways in which the entertainment industry needs to change its business model. While this may be a valid argument, it does not provide a legislative alternative (something which many on Capitol Hill are scratching for).
Yes, but changing their business model is the only thing that is going to solve the problem. We don't WANT nor NEED a legislative alternative. Invariably, any further legislation in this matter will only serve to harm consumers, invade their privacy, and strengthen an industry which needs to grow up and start figuring things out on it's own. No amount of legislation will stop or even hinder pirates without completely shafting the rest of us and it's high time our politicians learned this.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
The real solution, though few people will admit it, is to reform the copyright system. There is a desire to stamp out all piracy because money is made by exploiting an idea for all it is worth instead of creating new ideas, and there is a desire to pirate content because of a general lack of value in currently produced content. If copyright terms were reasonable, content providers would need to create new content with enough value to attract customers in order to stay in business. Combine this with a healthy public domain to satisfy people who do not want to pay for content, and the digital piracy problem should become much more manageable.
Of course, this means defining "reasonable" copyright terms. To do this, it is necessary to understand why copyright is needed in the first place. Despite what some corporate advocates might want you to think, copyright is intended to encourage the creation and distribution of information content for the public benefit. There must, therefore, be a balance between the incentive to the content creator and the benefit to the public. The immediately obvious first step in copyright reform is to retroactively repeal all retroactive copyright extensions - if the copyright terms were adequate to encourage creation, extending them does not benefit the public (at least as long as time travel is impossible or impractical).
Next, it is necessary to define an adequate copyright term for future use (not effective retroactively). Since copyright is supposed to cover a "limited time" and the content in question is used by humans, the obvious definition of a time limit to a human is the typical human lifespan. A factor of this number (recalculated regularly) would therefore make a reasonable copyright term. Something around .5 would give the content creator plenty of time to receive compensation (if not, the chances don't improve much with additional time) while giving the public access to the content before it is of no value (if it still has significant value at this point, it is of cultural significance, and therefore should be available for use by the general public). People would get their creative content, content creators would have incentive to create, and "pirates" would lose any moral high ground. What more could you want (aside from large corporate interests controlling access to the flow of creative content)?
A friend of mine once said that if we had the Congress 100 years ago that we do today, we'd have subsidies for buggy whips.
The way to fix the problem isn't surveillance or legislation; the real solution is to adapt the marketing model to price the music/movies whatever low enough that that the financial benefit of bootlegging doesn't exceed the moral benefit of legitimate copies. This is perfectly doable, given the exceedingly low cost of online distribution.
Two points - first, the music industry works by their oligopoly on the distribution of physical media and store shelf space. THAT is what they don't want to give up, because then their role as middleman becomes irrelevant.
Second, i'd feel a lot more moral inclination to avoid bootlegging if music artists saw even a dime for every dollar their label makes off their art.
The plain and simple truth is that the vast majority of working, professional musicians are NOT part of the major label system. In fact, it's very difficult to make a living at music once you're signed your soul over in blood to the labels. This legislation is NOT FOR THE ARTISTS. It is for the record distributors.
The movie industry is different, but only slightly. VCRs were supposed to destroy their industry, but instead it became a huge boon. Most people watch most movies only once or twice, so they need to keep the per-view cost down, period. They've already solved their distribution problem, unlike the RIAA.
Think about it... do you really believe this legislation is to protect ARTISTS? Or, gawd forbid, consumers? No, it's their to keep a couple of fat industry's reality checks from bouncing for a few more years.
I say we let the Invisible Hand of the market slap some sense into them.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
I agree. Policing copyright infringement is not the responsibility of the government but the copyright holder. It is their responsibility to detect and to prove copyright infringement.
/. have shown that many people are already willing to pay about this amount (or more) to download a copy of a song that they want.
Another point:
"and fines individuals which break laws, i.e. distribute copyrighted information?"
Where would these fines come from? Copyright infringement has two types: Civil and Criminal. Criminal copyright infringement has set fines (the ones you see in a video's FBI warning) but the penalty for civil copyright infringment is only for damages. In other words, the cost of the CD or video. You have to make a significant amount of money before your copyright infringement becomes criminal. If you make no money at all from the transaction, your infringement is clearly civil.
In an extreme case scenario where such web tracking existed let's say that I am caught copying or providing a copy of a copywritten song. I am held accountable and under civil copyright penalties must pay the copyright holder damages. Let's see, average CD: $17, average # songs: 12 = $1.41 per song.
It seems foolish for anyone to press legal action for a dollar fifty which is why individual consumers are not busted.
Previous discussions on
How about if the industry just changes its business model and offers this as a service instead of making the government into big brother and the citizents into criminals?
(Sorry for posting AC, I'm on the kitchen computer)
If something like Senator From Disney's bill must be made into law, then it should absolutely make the **AA miserable while giving them what they claim they want. Here are my proposed amendments to any such bill.
1> To be eligible for protection under this Act, the copyrighted material shall lapse into the public domain in 5 years. (If you want "traditional" copyright, then you must depend on "traditional" copyright law)
2> To be eligible for protection under this Act, an unencrypted copy of the material must be first filed with the Library of Congress. The LOC shall hold that copy in escrow for the five year copyright period. When the five year period expires, the copy at the LOC will be freely downloadable by anyone.
3> No legal action may be brought under the terms of this Act without a signed complaint from the copyright holder.
4>No legal action may be brought under any term of this Act regarding any material that does not have an unencrypted copy on file at the LOC.Any legal action filed under the terms of this Act where there is no unencrypted copy of the digial material on file with the LOC will bring an mandatory fine of not less than 10 million dollars per occurance to the copyright holder, and a mandatory prison sentence of not less than 5 years to the person who signed the complaint. (If you sign for a corporation, you'd better make sure of your facts!)
5>All hardware affected by this Act must remain capable at all times of processing unencrypted content without restriction. Where this appears to conflict with any other provision of this Act, this requirement shall take precedence.
There should be no alternative, keep your laws off my internet.
God is real unless declared integer.
I don't think I've EVER seen such a unanimous outcry from the Slashdot crowd. NO NEW LAW!
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Reading these posts, all I see are one-sided views. This being Slashdot, however, I'm not too surprised. The typical Slashdot reader has a very liberal view of intellectual property and ownership rights. However, what happens to the industry that creates these products if they're available for free everywhere? Yes, as it stands right now Universal, Sony, etc. aren't going bankrupt on DVD sales because people are pirating movies and transmitting them across the Internet. But, as broadband connections increase we will see an increase in the amount of people who get their movies this way.
Immediately, I'm going to see replies saying, "Change the business models. The companies can still make money in this environment by doing x, y, z." And, yes, perhaps there is a business model out there somewhere that would enable studios to develop content, distrubte it for free, and still make profits on it. However, no one has discovered that business model yet! Nor do I think they ever will.
All one has to do is look at Linux. Linux is a wonderful product, developed by volunteers, and given away free to anyone who wishes to download it. That said, there are a lot of companies out there who develop their own distributions of Linux and are trying to sell them. Has any of them made a profit? Nope. Red Hat? They were profitable for 1 quarter, and haven't been ever since. Caldera? Corel? None of them have made money by selling something available for free.
The entertainment industry can't exist in the way that Linux does. Content created by movie and television studios costs a LOT of money. If this content is then pirated by consumers and distributed for free the studios can't afford to create new content. End of story! Yes, it hasn't reached that extreme yet. Disney isn't going to have to close up shop because of the amount of piracy on the Internet right now. But, the problem can only get worse.
There needs to be some sort of compromise on the issue. Fair use can get along with DRM. THAT is the issue that needs to be resolved. As consumers, we shouldn't say, "Well, I bought this CD so I should be allowed to rip MP3's of it and distribute them to all of my friends and anyone who wants to download them off of Napster." That isn't what "fair use" is all about. It's about protecting the consumer's right to use a product they purchased. Should I be able to duplicate a CD so I can keep one copy in my car and another one at home? Yes. Should I be able to make copies for all of my coworkers? No.
I don't support the DMCA because it's poorly written legislature. However, I do feel that there needs to be some sort of control over intellectual property so that piracy doesn't detract from a studio's ability to make great content.
i liked the part where you didn't ask a question
If you allow me two fundamental freedoms:
1) The freedom to run any software on my PC that I want, and
2) The right to record my own content and distribute it how I like, including for free,
then piracy is a fact of life. Deny me those rights, and you deny me freedom of speech.
Our congresspeople may be searching for a way to make Pi equal to 3, or repeal the law of gravity, but it's doomed to fail.
Maybe what we need to have happen is for some ridiculus legislation like this to get passed. That way all those "average" internet users out there who think that this doesn't affect them or don't really care about it will get pissed off and let congress know.
Find me in ~/.sig
First, I give you the finger.
Then, You give me my phone call.
Here come the thought police...
Say NO to more legislation.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Remember when VCRs came out, and the broadcast and movie industries had a cow? They were worried about piracy, and bootleg shops, where VCRs could be strung together to make many copies at once. Many law-abiding people were afraid to tape their favorite shows, since the broadcasters said people would be violating copyrights.
Then they created Macrovision. All of a sudden, you could go to the rental place, and pick up a movie and watch it. You could watch it on your Panasonic, Sony, Zenith, Sharp, or xxx brand VCR (see, platform independent). But you couldn't copy it without buying one of those Macrovision decoders (which work so-so). And the broadcasters stopped caring if people videotaped their shows, because they may have realized that a videotaped show is better than an unwatched show.
Combine this with the fact that movies can be had for a few bucks (remember when they cost $89.95?), and the movie industry had a new market to sell in. How quickly they forget!
I feel the main complaint is that I have the right to watch a movie or listen to a CD in whatever device I own or want.
Remember also that Macrovision didn't care who you were, what device you were playing back on, and wouldn't report you to someone if you tried to circumvent it.
My two cents, for what it's worth...
Let them mandate changes in the content provider's business model. Why should the legislative answer be to change the manufacturing process for hardware used to process the content if the provider hasn't considered changing their own methodologies first? If you can mandate changes to the hardware industry (and it seems the content providers believe that is their right) then it should be even easier to mandate changes to the industry that's pitching a fit about the problem in the first place.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
Piracy is theft. It's already illegal.
The IP owner already has the law on his side and, additionally, he's free to make whatever use of technology he likes.
The real issue here is "what are the poor congressmen going to do with themselves if they're not allowed to dream up stupid new laws?"
Mandating copy-protect devices for computers to protect the content industry would make as much sense as mandating a 15mph speed limit to protect the horse-and-buggy industry.
We already have traditional copyright law which prohibits illegal distribution of copyrighted materials.
We already have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows the content industry to devise any copy protection methods it wants and makes it a crime to circumvent them.
The industry already has all the legal tools it needs to fight genuine piracy. The only thing stopping it from doing so is the realization that going after end users would be a public relations disaster. Is Congress really that eager to bring the PR nightmare upon themselves with a new law that interferes with the actions and technical abilities of law-abiding citizens?
Any industry that treats all of its customers like criminals and treats its products as something to be protected from the customers is doomed to fail. The longer Congress and the industry avoid this realization, the more painful it will be for everyone.
Reminds me of a sig I've seen out here, one of my favorites: "I'm not merely a 'consumer' or a 'taxpayer.' I'm a citizen of the United States of America."
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The primary flaw of the CBDTPA - and much of the RIAA/MPAA intent - is that it starts with the assumption that everything (all aspects of any created thing) should be restricted unless specifically restricted. This underlying tenet is part and parcel of the DMCA, and of the "ability to track those who pirate the material" you mention. That mindset is what has to be battled, because as long as it exists it will continue to lead to more and more restrictions.
Re-read the pre-DMCA US copyright law and the applicable article of the US constitution. Note that these basically begin with the reverse tenet - that everything (all aspects of any creation) are freely available EXCEPT as restricted.
The owners of the creation - not the creators in most of these cases, but the owneres - are perfectly justified in trying to reduce theft of their property. But when any such action becomes such that the default exceeds their restrictive permissions, then they are at fault. To use a tangible analogy, a store is perfectly allowed to mount cameras and put 'tattletags' in their property and use private police to prevent shoplifting. BUT... the tattletags must be removed when sold, and the private police cannot arbitrarily check my car as I leave the parking lot (different from leaving the store), and the cameras can't be set to look upon me in my home. How many of you can prove that you purchased all the furniture - or all the books, or even all the electronics - in your house if a policeman were to arrive and demand such proof (or face charges of theft)? And yet, that's the essence of current thought on protection of intellectual property.
I think, really and truly, that there are enough laws on the books already to protect against property. The solution is no longer getting a law to mandate protection. The solution lies in effective techniques - social, technological, and operational practices - that minimize the theft. I find myself wondering just how much theft there really is - I have seen many exclamations of theft, but even at the height of the Napster excitement nobody was brought to civil or criminal court except the carrier of the product - who could not prove (or disprove) that the clients who'd submitted the disks were doing so without having paid for the property.
We don't need new and more restrictive laws. We might (maybe) need better enforcement of the ones we have. THAT is what I'd ask you to pass on to your legislator.
Apart from the issue of whether any legislation whatsoever would be reasonable, I would be strongly opposed to the suggested law for a more practical reason:
There is no way to search for copyrighted material without examining the content of all traffic going across networks. Such a law would require the police to continually monitor large amounts of all network conversation, with active attention to their content, in direct contravention of all established law and precedent regarding wiretaps and other surveillance techniques. It essentially amounts to a call for blanket surveillance of the population in order to protect the copyrights of certain business interests.
Given that I have opposed such expansions of federal authority in the past, when the excuse was the (arguably much better one) of capturing terrorists, I cannot imagine countenancing such a law when the only incentive is to help some groups make a buck.
Yonatan
Realistically, all the necessary legislation is in place. Existing copyright law already protects against copying, what else do companies have the right to stop if they wish to still call the law "copyright"?
Perhaps this whole mess should be forwarded to the NRA, and they could throw their weight behind it. They have the experience in fighting laws that outlaw tools that _might_ be used illegally.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Rofl, you are so clueless. You're advocating giving the government and big business veto power over what information I can send and receive? This will apply to all communications networks since they're all about moving bits. Are you nuts? Traffic cops? Monitoring? This is of course an obvious part of the plan for total control over everything, but shit you don't have to go advocating it.
What about encryption? Will I have the right to encryption like the big boys will have? No, probably not under this idea or else the idea is useless. So I get fucked over and different rules are applied to me because I'm not rich.
How will this "traffic cop" thing work? Think for a minute about what happens when the government and companies have the ability to check and approve of everything you send or receive. What makes you think that they will use this power wisely? Why would they allow dissenting views to get out? How would anyone know about the censorship? Maybe they will track all files with the word "censorship" in them and stop them so noone will ever know who's being censored. That's a fucking great idea. Any sort of mandated filtering and interception of data is a BAD idea. You are advocating the destruction of the Internet (and of all other forms of digital private communication). There is no way to use technology to effectively stop the flow of bits without destroying freedom.
You are talking about destroying freedom and privacy to preserve copyright. This is a simple quiz and this is how you should present it to the congresswoman.
Freedom
Copyright
Pick One.
The thing is that the people who support the CBPDTA are actually correct. The only way they can continue to protect copyright is to do the very things that they want done in the bill. It probably doesn't go far enough because it doesn't advocate a house-to-house search for all old unprotected equipment, and it probably still allows people to make personal backup copies in certain circumstances. The only way to protect copyright is to destroy freedom. I challenge you to give the Congresswoman the short quiz I presented above, ask her if she had to choose between freedom and copyright, which would she pick. If she can't answer that, then she isn't willing or able to deal with this yet. Then, ask her to find out more about it until she understands that the choice between freedom and copyright is the correct choice. You can only protect one strongly. If you don't get it, then you need to go learn more about what computers can do, until you realize that unless computers are destroyed or turned into toasters with screens, copyright can't be protected.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
All members of congress should only meet 4 days out of the year to pass laws and clear budgets. Maybe then government will only pass laws that are critical to this nation. I think that government is legislating our nation to death. There are already laws in place for copyrights, why do we need more? Because RIAA, and the MPAA don't want to fund the Copyright Police.
Guess what, our country will not fall apart if we don't legislate every activity that occurs in this nation. Let's see what falls out in 10 years. I'll bet that the RIAA and MPAA will still be supporting a multi-billion dollar industry that thrives on delivering products that people want to purchase. And we won't need another law that restricts the majority in favor of the minority.
I'll get off the soap box now.
> Since Americans are already used to this term,
> what would the effects of the creation of a
> kind of 'net traffic cops;' i.e. a law
> enforcement type of agency which monitors web
> traffic and fines individuals which break laws,
> i.e. distribute copyrighted information?"
[Note the lack of a verb in the above sentence. I'll take a "be" please, Pat.]
The effect would be that those who are now trading files will seek newer, encrypted p2p clients with which to transport their contraband down a "stealth commuter lane" (or "underground turnpike" if you like).
Bottom line: It's too late for the record industry. People traded cassette tape copies before, they'll trade digitally now. This might not be morally or legally right, but it is going to happen.
-Dr. Sublimation
Do you really want the internet to turn into a place like that of our highways? No one takes the speed limit seriously, and everyone is in constant fear of getting a ticket. A radar setup on the median ends up causing heavy brake usage and accidents. After tickets are recieved, people that are affluent or are friends with a police officers or other public figures have the ticket magically vanish. It has turned into a revenue scheme for every small town, where you will see the speed limit artificially low for no other reason than to ticket people. Just for real world numbers I95 in mass, usual daytime speeds are at 75-85+, with the speed limit at 55.. unmarked cruisers whoosh by at near or above 100mph. They have the ability to pull _anyone_ on that road over, at _anytime_. Be carefull next time you look over at the next driver, he might be a cop, and he might not like the look on your face!
So we want a group to patrol the internet, obviously we are going to find many people "infringing" on copyright, we can't all send them to jail. So we will have to write tickets. And it will be a potential revenue scheme for many entities. A part of the backbone goes thru Craphole, Arkansas? Well they have a right to ticket anybody infringing on copyright thru that backbone.
Eventually the word "Free" will not be associated with the internet. Just as the freeway is anything but.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
Since the entertainment industry claims that they are just trying to protect the artists, that's what you should focus on. Propose legislation that would make it harder for corporations to legally screw the artists. For example, copyright law could be amended to make copyrights for a work of art non-transferable exept in the event of death. This would insure that only those involved in the creation of the work ( writers, performers, engineers, etc.) would have ownership of it. Best of all, when the entertainment industry representitives complain about the bill, it will expose the fact that they really DON'T care about thr artists AT ALL.
I agree with you on the leasing the server in Russia. Then I played devils advocate and said "well eventually I have to download the software to my own machine to use it, and they would get me then."
The cool part is that they probably wouldn't. You could run the software on the machine in Russia with a nicely compressed X session. And if you want to listen to music, you could stream mp3s.
And if you were worried about mp3 streaming, you could do some simply encryption on them so that if the RIAA tried to figure out what you were sending you could hit THEM with the DMCA too.
I'm sure there are tons of other ways to get around this. Possibly a good solution is to show them that there are too many ways to circumvent the technology and laws that they are proposing, and that it would be hopeless to try and stop it.
I know everyone says "tough luck" to the RIAA, but the RIAA has lobbyists and we don't have many. Right now they have congress convinced that some laws would make the world right again. If the critters can be shown how any law they make can be circumvented, maybe they will realize the hopelessness of passing the CP-WHATEVER-A or anything like it.
Read the viant report and how they monitored IRC. The copyright holders have both the legal and manpower tools to punish "evil-doers". Read The No Electronic Theft Act, which provides for lengthy prison sentences, forfeiture of all equipment used in making or distributing the equipment, and pretty heavy fines.
You are not seeing these cases prosecuted because the copyright holders do not want the bad publicity, not because they have inadequate tools.
Copyright needs to be a "use it or lose it" system. I.e., if the copyright holder does not make a work widely available for a 14 year period; the copyright should be then placed in a mandatory auction clearinghouse. There should be some minimum reserve, and if there is no bid exceeding it, the work returns to the public domain.
Copyright must return to a registration system. One of the greatest problems with the current system is that it is virtually impossible to find the copyright holder of many works. If the holder is deceased, and the work is not extremely well known, there is often no way of determining who to contact or pay. Registration should be required every 21 years.
So if they did approve CBDTPA, what would happen, would piracy stop, NO. Pirates are fairly resourceful people as such there would probably be a huge run on hardware without any restrictions and probably a blackmarket of hardware without protection.
Sort of like the old KGB, which montitored speech and punished individuals who broke laws?
Surely you're not naive enough to belive that such a law enforcement body would stick to copyright issues, are you? Of course, you'd have to outlaw cryptography too, lest those evil file sharers use PGP to hide their nefarious goings-on...
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Exactly that. The forgone conclusion of this submission seems to be that a powerful minority needs congressional protection from the unwashed citizens. The very terminology - "pirate" - belies a concern for the public interest, when in fact it's that very public that's being branded criminal.
Not to worry. Read a few history books. When a minority, no matter how powerful, attempts to brand a majority of the populace 'criminal', their heads get handed to them on platters. Unfortunately, there's usually a lot of ugliness in between.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
This is a tough question. I've read most of the replies and they are mostly "It's an old problem so why make new laws?" and "New laws are a bad idea."
Ignoring that problem isn't going to make it go away and saying that piracy of IP isn't a problem doesn't make it true. The fact is that stealing is a very old problem but the method we are talking about is very new. DVD's and CD's can be ripped and traded while maintaining high quality. This is something that you could not easily do in the days of eight tracks. Also as the availability of high bandwidth connections become more and more in use, trading very large files becomes easier.
We need to acknowledge that the recording industry has legitimate concerns. The recording industry needs to acknowledge that we too have legitimate concerns. The right to privacy and fair use come to mind right away.
Fair use is a legal right as apposed to a constitutional right so that makes it more difficult to defend. If we lose this right it may be very difficult to win it back.
If we create "internet cops" we loose a degree of privacy and begin to look more and more like a "big brother" state.
Any remedy that is provided to the corporate lobbyists is not going to be good for the average citizen. Corporations are only interested in one thing, profit. I for one do not trust them to address only the question of piracy. It is all too tempting to suggest remedies that will provide them with additional avenues to make profit. They could, for example, lobby to have your fair use rights either taken away or circumvented. Senator Hollings has one or more bills being bandied about right now that would do just that. That man is 100 percent for corporations and should be removed from office as soon as possible.
Before I go off on a total rant let me try to sum up this mess -- There is no good answer.
We need to fight very hard for our rights. They are more important than corporate profits.
We need to not steal intellectual property and educate others not to steal.
We need to be ever vigilant because corporations being motivated by profit will never stop trying to take away our rights to turn a profit.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
How about a law that explicity affirms fair use, legalizes non-commercial sharing, legalizes reverse engineering, legalizes bypassing of "effective access controls", rolls back the DCMA completely, and denounces any such legislation such as SSSCA or CDBPTA as unconstitutional.
This will do wonders for the "content industry", even if they dont like the taste of the medicine. It will also do wonders for the quality of content.
Disclaimer, this may not be what your congresscritter wants to hear...
Just because certain special interests and their paid-for legislators feel that Congress must do something doesn't mean that it is true. Why should we offer to be placed in nice, comfortable handcuffs just because it's clear they can't put us in leg irons? (Yet.) You want to offer them an alternative? Tell them that if they manage to harrass the file sharing networks off the Internet, someone will write a wireless P2P program- something that creates an ad-hoc file sharing network with any 802.11b-enabled device in range. Ask them if they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don't.
Imagine hundreds of consumers (not pirates!) taking their notebooks to the park on a bright spring day, and all coming back with new MP3s and a tan...
On geological time scales, it's always almost Friday.
I think there is flawed thinking at work here. Every industry that produces something is subject to theft. There are laws against it but no other industry demands that legal steps be taken to make it impossible. This is akin to grocery stores (who take heavy losses to shrinkage) lobbying for tracking devices in all food packages so that they can monitor their locations at all times, in order to deter theft. Congress would find such a suggestion ludicrous, and well they should. The media and computer industries are welcome to pursue their own means to deter theft, but it is not a government matter.
Eric Christian Berg
I would support a movement which changed copyright law to be if you have a copyright then you don't own the material you own the right to profit from the material. In this way sharing music, books, movies online would not be illegal. However, if they can show that your profiting from it than it is. Hence, Napster would still be illegal because they were making money from banner ads. However, a program like Gnucleus would not be because the creators of Gnucleus don't profit from the trading of other people's work. I would also like to see the concept of Novel taken out of copyright law. I think its clear that the creative process stems from the combining of other peoples work in a way which hasn't been done before. I.E. New ideas stem from the combination of previous ideas. This is not to belittle the creative process. Only to recognize what it really is. I think in this way we will foster a civilization which individuals still receive the fruits of their labor, and at the same time allow others to be creative.
The copyright holders need to start suing people who are using P2P programs to distribute copyrighted materials without permission. Once that happens the use of P2P software will stop really quickly.
Once upon a time, long ago (actually, not real long ago, but long enough), Congress passed laws that protected our freedom. The laws would ensure that your rights weren't infringed upon by your neighbour, and so that you could freely and safely live.
Laws are now passed to control your rights and limit where your rights can apply.
Copyright law, once designed to protect an original authors work has been legislated into a creation that gives corporations the power to control fair use, instead of promoting the creation of new works.
Patent law, originally intended to promote original thinking, competition has morphed into a way to limit others use of generally common sense ideas. This change in philisophy in the congress is a frightening shift in the direction of the US and the world in general.
Step 1: Dismantle the Internet
Step 2: Create new Internet at the mandate of the state with completely different social constructs, the ability to police the virtual citizenry, and the ability to stringently control virtual borders so as to restrict enforcement to a geographic/national area.
Step 3: Make sure it has eBay.
I have been sitting here struggling to come up with a way that law enforcement and copyright enforcement could occur on the net without violating privacy. I tried to come up with something analogous to highway patrols, but highway patrols pull you over for physical violations of laws, not ideological.
And that, really, is the issue - what is the best way to police ideas - because that's what net based copyright infringement really is: the transference of ideas owned by a private party to someone who has not paid for access to said ideas.
So we look a little deeper and find that what people pay for when they buy ideas contained within a physical medium is 25% idea and 75% medium - people are willing to pay for ownership of a physical object more than they are willing to pay for the ideas contained therein. This is why eBooks are languishing right now - people don't want to pay physical book prices for something that lacks the benefits of ownership and portability found in the physical form.
What this leads to, then, is the big ticket item. If people can not separate the value of an idea from the delivery method, how can Congress legislate this separation? How can government convince people in the monetary value of ideas in a form where those ideas are not bound to tangible forms of ownership? How can government most easily legislate a largely societal view?
What you're asking for here isn't really a solution to the larger problem. You're looking for the adhesive strip that covers the larger wound just long enough to keep Congress from getting itchy and scrathing at it until it becomes infected and requires amputation.
But, since that's what you're asking for, here it is: to combat software piracy, Congress must legislate that it is wrong to pirate copyrighted works (already done). Then, they must watch every citizen and presume their guilt by watching every idea exchange they engage in, and only after the exchange occurs can they determine whether or not it was an infraction of law. That's it. That's the only way. And that's exactly the type of thing that's being proposed.
Well, there is another way, but it requires far greater resources. Small-time piracy stings. Get the FBI hanging out on Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus. Have them send undercover agents to LAN parties. Make them hang out on AOL asking if "Anybuddy has da phat noo Britney Spears song??????" and arrest anyone who sends it to them. In other words, have them handle piracy the way they handle child pornography and drug busts - force them to engage in transactions with those breaking the law in order to gather evidence, get a proper warrant, and make the arrest.
Of course, that only works if they can effectively trace an IP address back to an offender, which isn't always a possibility. However, there are plenty of muderers still on the Most Wanted list who have never been found, so a few people copying, "American Pie 2" shouldn't be *that* big of a concern.
So you need to have everybody on a network where IPs are static and able to be traced. No more private networks behind firewalls. See Step 1.
Main problem here? People have come to expect a level of privacy in the electronic world that they could never be afforded in the physical world. Is it too late to change that? Do we want to change that? If we are to move into being a capitalist society that makes its money trading pure ideas, we might have to give up anonymity. The alternatives seem to either be that we make sure ideas are chained to a physical medium or make sure nobody tries to profit from ideas.
Or make everybody respect copyrights. See entirety of message above.
Ask Milton Freedman. This situation cries out for a market solution, not a legislative one. Why in hell should there be a legislative alternative?
In the first place, I've never pirated a song. Never visited Napster. So why should I pay a penalty - isn't this the land of "presumed innocent"? Used to be anyway.
On the other hand, its true that I haven't bought a CD in a while. That's because the content providers aren't selling anything I want, not because I'm a pirate. Eisner is an idiot if he thinks otherwise.
The way around what little piracy there is, is for the content providers to supply the market with what it wants. IMHO, that means selling songs one track at a time, for fractions of a dollar. They cannot continue to try to force consumers to buy 16 tracks on a CD to get the one track they want.
The content providers are creating the conditions for piracy. It they will change, so will piracy. If they don't change, no amount of legislation will change piracy. Ain't gonna happen.
So, tell me again why you think we need a legislative response to piracy?
The core of this "problem" (and I use quotes as it is an imaginary problem) is the fact that the general public DOES NOT CARE ABOUT OBEYING LAWS. There, I said it loudly and with caps.. They dont obey traffic safety laws, they gladly break any law they can get away with and copyright infringement is an easy law to break and never get caught doing... secondly, the general public doesnt care about copyright laws.. if you tell them that the backstreet boys are losing money because of that mp3 they downloaded and listened to, their first reaction is "GOOD!" as all musical artists and movie stars are overpaid, spoiled brats that deserve to be smacked like that.
Finally the consumer is getting sick of being gouged. $20.00 for a cd is price gouging, plain and simple, games that cost $75-$100 is proce gouging, and a word processing suite that costs $499.95 is asking to be copied over and over and over. Do I condone the copying and virtual theft? NO. Will new draconian laws stop it? NO. is there a way to stop it? MAYBE. No law will stop it.. this is a fact that anyone that has driven in traffic knows, laws dont matter.
we are at the dawn of a new era in media,technology and arts.. our leaders can either stomp it out of existance by favoring already rich companies trying to expand their profits, or they can pass laws that will make sense and improve the life of every man,woman and child in this country..
looking at the track record of congress and the house over the past 5 years... I'm ready to become a criminal because I own a computer and equipment that isn't politically and corperate approved...
and any law that creates a criminal underground from regular citizens is wrong to begin with.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No form of legislation can effectively curtail online piracy without placing undue restrictions on consumers. The main reason for this is simply that the fuzzy area between "Fair Use" and actual piracy is just... well, too fuzzy.
Legislators looking to pass laws against piracy must first pass laws that establish what is not piracy. It's like passing a law against property theft without first defining what constitutes a legal exchange of property.
I suggest something different. I propose that we pressure Congressmen and Senators to establish legislation that clearly defines what "Fair Use" is. Instead of leaving it up to judges (and long, expensive trials) to decide what is and is not acceptable use of media, let's spell it out for everyone. Media companies notwithstanding, there will be an enormous amount of public support for any legislator who takes it upon himself to do this.
Once our Fair Use rights are clearly defined, then it will be infinitely easier for the media companies and the technology industry to reach some sort of compromise on how to protect copyrights and protect our rights at the same time. Or maybe once our Fair Use rights are clearly defined, it will become glaringly obvious that digital media simply cannot be controlled by legislation.
Neither of these outcomes can be reached fairly, however, without first identifying those rights that must be protected. Passing laws against piracy without first explicitly stating what is not piracy will give the content industry (and their army of lobbyists) far too much power in restricting consumer activity.
It's very simple. Introduce some sort of Draconian legislation, not because you expect it to be passed, but to soften the electorate for a "compromise," which is what you really wanted in the first place.
We don't need legislation. Neither the motion picture industry nor the record industry needs protection. They're doing just fine, and if they started being smarter, they'd do even better. When they say that profits are being sucked out of their businesses by hordes of evil pirates, they are lying and they know it. What they want is very simple; they want more control over the market so that they can bring back the halcyon days of poorly paid "studio talent" and ring in the new days of corporate-controlled boy bands and Britney Spears clones. The motion picture industry tried this before with chains of theaters and this practice was declared illegal. They want legislative imprimateur not only to own the theaters this time but to own the idea of a theater. It is the exact same deal.
What is this, annual Falling for the Bloody Obvious month?
at first i agreed with many of the posters who were concerned about retaining their privacy rights. much like a phone call, they say, my internet communication is private and should not be monitored without a warrant. that sounds fine and good, case closed.
but let's go back to the "information superhighway" analogy, and the "traffic cops". traffic cops do not need a warrant to park along the road and hit your car with radar to ensure you are following the speed limit. nor do they need a warrant to sit at a stoplight and watch the traffic to ensure that nobody runs a red light, etc. by driving on a public road, we take responsibility for following the laws of the public roads, including stoplights and speed limits.
if this analogy is indeed applied to the internet, then the internet is assumed to be a public road, and by participating in traffic along that road, we give the police of that road the implicit permission to monitor to ensure that applicable laws are followed. instead of using a radar gun to stop speeders, they use packet filters to stop piracy.
but then again, i have always hated the analogy of the internet as a highway. it makes much more sense, technologically and as far as expectations of privacy, to continue to compare internet usage to telephone usage.
perhaps the RIAA/MPAA/Congress should look at existing laws and FCC regulations, and court rulings about those laws and regulations, concerning what can and cannot be monitored. i think they will find that they need a warrant to listen to any conversation, and that those warrants must be obtained in orderly fashion, following all precedence for just cause. by passing a law which attempts to supercede the privacy of internet communications, Congress would succeed in one of two things: (1) passing a law which will be costly to enforce and defend in the courts until it is eventually overturned, or (2) passing a law which has the unfortunate side effect of allowing all telephone conversations to be listened to without need of a warrant.
neither of those options seem good. perhaps Congress (and the RIAA/MPAA) should stay away from such laws entirely. sorry for not offering any suggestions for a "good law" but there are enough laws on the books and enough ruling which resoundingly support the privacy of personal communication which would overwhelm any such law which attempts to open holes to allow for easy, arbitrary policement.
-rp
Imagine if, a hundred years ago, the buggy whip manufacturing association and foreseen this day, and managed to convince the Congress that it must preserve their industry by law. That Henry Ford! He must be imprisoned for ruining our industry!
The major record companies (and less so, the major motion picture studios) are the buggy whip manufacturers of our day. At one time, record production was expensive. Large, expensive equipment was needed to mass produce musical recordings. An artist really had no choice but to sign up with a major label. A lot of maney was spent to manufacture and distribute music.
Today, the manufacture and distribution of music costs next to nothing. Yet the major record labels are charging more money than ever for their services.
The major record labels have had their day, just as the buggy whip manufacturers had their day. No one mourns the loss of the horse and buggy -- or almost no one. The major record labels' fate is the same.
They might try to legislate their place in the market, but even if they do, artists will eventually realize that the major record labels offer them nothing anymore.
We Europeans should pressure the US into accepting these silly laws. The smuggling revenues alone should make a few entreprenurial types very rich. Not to mention the boost to our mediocre IT industry! Unfortunately Europe would probably be bound to implement similar legislation by all kinds of international agreements. Sigh. I'll never get rich this way either...
Yep. To the author of that .sig,
I shamelessly borrowed that quote in my comments to the Judiciary Committee.
If you wish, I will compensate you for it, somehow...
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
They understand the issue perfectly. It's just that a different issue matters more to them. Consider this hypothetical calculation:
Contribution from the RIAA: $50,000.
Contribution from you: zero dollars, or close to it.
Since the primary goal of an elected official is to get re-elected, which way do you think they'll decide? Name three recent Senators who have risked electoral defeat defending ordinary people's rights against Big Government or corporate interests. The only reason the CBDTA might be defeated is that big industrial interests are opposed to it. What WE think doesn't matter to those bastards, unless the backlash is so strong that they'd be driven from office. Given the ignorance and apathy of the electorate, short of massive tax increases, Congress can and does get away with anything they damned well please. And there are no "checks and balances." Unless you think the Supreme Court will protect us...
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
We need to slow down the legislative process. The founding fathers put in place a system to make it difficult to pass laws in order to prevent the taking of our personal freedom. We have corrupted that process to such an extent that an idea becomes a law even faster then the School house rock video on the subject.
"When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
Congress has the ability to pass laws. Therefore, every "problem" must have a solution found by passing a new law.
If the solution does not include passing a new law, then you must have the wrong solution.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
It is already illegal to copy and redistribute a copyrighted work (in general). There are civil and criminal penalties in place to punish those who do. The government's obligation to copyright holders ends there. No further measures are necessary or proper.
LAMP hosting on Debian, SSH, no bandwidth cap, PayPal accepted - http://secondbrainhosting.com/
Boxer gave a nondescript non-answer. Good luck.
Read Bujold. Free (as in
Lets say that the music industry wants to create a safe way of distribute content...they can start selling or giving away this encryption/decription cards that a users have to plug into a computer in order to be able to listen to safe content sold by the music industry.
The problem with this? No one would buy the damn cards and they won't sell anything.
Their alternative?...make not having one of those cards illegal. That's how I see it.
In Britain, shortly after the automobile was invented, a law was passed that stated that any automobile could not be driven over 4Mph, and must be led by a man carrying a red flag. The law was requested by the horse carriage industry.
The effects of the law were quite profound - nobody wanted to buy a car if they couldn't drive it faster than they could walk, so while Henry Ford created the assembly-line, and created one of the strongest automotive industries in the world, Britain's car industry lagged sorely behind the rest of the world. The "red flag" law (as it came to be known) was repealed 10 years later, but the damage it did to Britain's automotive industry has never been undone (disclaimer: I am British.)
Senator Hollings is doing the exact same thing to American computer industry with this bill - to satisfy a vocal minority, he is sacrificing an emerging industry, and it will set back the American economy.
It seems to me that this comparison with highways could actually work.
Rather then enable the government to spy, perhaps this new law would protect the individual from the state.
If we look at mail, personal or even phone laws it is assumed by the general public that these laws protect the individual from phone taps, searches and other activites by those who might wish to pry into on our lives without justification.
However these same laws do enable the option of searches under certain circumstances. These searches are a requirement of freedom and will exist in any free society. Rather then fight these laws it should be a goal of the 'informed communities' to help shape these laws.
Does no one else see the advantages to having laws which are designed for use on the internet?
Instead of risking a judicial interpretation of century old laws perhaps it is time we stoped being greedy and create an environment which is beneficial to all involved.
I agree. Legislation won't work and the big companies need to find other more practical solutions. Take the recording industry for example.
Almost any attempt to prevent people from recording their cd's to mp3's will fail.
Policing the internet for people sharing mp3s could be prohibitively expensive and infinge on the rights of law abiding citizens.
The recording industry could better protect their profits if they RELEASE mp3s of all their artists for free.
The catch is that the mp3s they release will be of low quality eg recorded in mono with low sample rates.
File sharing networks like gnutella would become filled with lower quality mp3s. If a person wanted the high quality sound they would need to buy the actual cd.
(In fact I sometimes think the record companies already do this)
I won't bother to repeat the hundred or so prior "No legislation is good legislation" arguments. They're right, by the way. Legislating in someone's business model is bad for law and (in the long run) bad for the economy.
I do, however, have something original to add. If you want to go with the information superhighway as your dominant metaphor, creating a highway patroll wouldn't be such a bad thing. It would be a hassle, but it might make the content providers happy.
The iHP (internet highway patrol) could look for documentable instances of piracy (though avoiding entrapment might be hard) and issue notices and penalties on par with traffic offenses. A $15 ticket for downloading an MP3, a $100 ticket for pirating M$ office. The penalty would be in proportion to the value of the IP stolen. Repeat offenders could face harsher penalties.
Of course, this would require a huge nationwide beuraucracy and investment in tracking technology and personnel, so it's something I as a taxpayer would be loath to shell out for, but it's an alternative. But the Real Truth is that there's no evidence that piracy of music, software or movies hurts anyone's bottom line. The only emperical evidence I'm aware of points to the opposite conclusion.
This, however, doesn't seem to sway the content-owning agencies as what they are really afraid of is loosing their control over content, not loosing a few copies to piracy. They want to create barriers so that artists and other content-creators cannot distribute outside their system, just like every other distributor has done in response to the internet.
Howard Dean for president
It becomes a very slippery slope when you begin to afford copyright holders more power over the internet than they have with traditional distribution systems. What Congress needs to realize is that every new law effectively stiffles all inovation in that area of the net. Why give copyright holders the tools to track their property after it has been purchased? They cannot do it now. Balance should be the montra of our current Congressional body, but instead they have their hands out, and the XXAA's are paying. Not to say that you should accuse the honorable Congresswoman of accepting bribes, but perhaps point out that the current laws do not seem to be protecting fair use, and by their actions, the public is demanding expanded fair use, not limited.
So where does that leave Congress? Well, with a few big questions. Who is being harmed right now by the lack of legislation? Who would be harmed if we over legislated the net? Can the Recording Industry, and Hollywood, actually prove they are being harmed by "piracy", or is it just a convenient time in an ordinary market cycle to begin crying foul? Are current Copyright laws and terms in the best interest of those who create, or those who horde? Copyright terms are now well beyond a century, and are being pushed even further. How long do you need to turn a profit?
I believe that legislating over something as potentially powerful as the internet, is not necessarily a bad thing, IF the laws are not prematurely put into place. There are still too many questions about the effects the net is having on our society. To begin legislating to protect the old from the new, is foolish. Especially in a time when the net is in it's infancy.
We need a pro digital consumer bill that protects already established rights. Its up to the companies to develop a bussiniss model that they can profit from. We need to make bills like the CDBTA(?) illegal.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
After you're done speaking with your Congresscritter, give them your phone number and tell them to feel free to call you with questions about this matter.
ALSO!!! Tell them that if they need a Congressional POV on this, they should talk to Congressman Rick Boucher! We have a friend in Congress, USE HIM!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
It needs to be emphesized that the 'problem' Hollywood is confronted with has already been confronted, and solved, by the software industry.
No legislation of any kind is necessary, except the repeal of the DMCA of course.
Software is even more prone to illegal copying and distribution than video or music, yet the software manufactuerers gave up on 'copy protection' schemes years ago as unworkable, ineffective, and harmful to their legitimate customers' need to back up their software and data.
The solution instead is to serialize each instance of the software sold and cross-reference that serial number with the credit card or other identification of the purchaser, such that if 10,000 copies of program A, serial number #12345, appear on the web the copyright holder can go after the original purchaser as a first step.
This doesn't stop all copyright violations, but it does make most people very, very reluctant to share copies of their software, and, as a result, the software industry is flourishing.
There is absolutely no reason Hollywood couldn't attach a serial number to every digital movie or braodcast sold and downloaded on the web. Sure, some would crack the serial number and remove it, but the vast majority of people are not inclined to give away things they themselves had to pay for, especially if there is some risk (however remote) of their name staying attached to the illegal copies.
I say it again, Hollywood doesn't need this law any more than software manufactuerers needed it 15 years ago. The problem has already been solved without legislation, by the marketplace, and if Hollywood weren't so rigidly stuck in the 20th century they would have long since figured that out by now.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Enforced capitalism is no better than enforced communism. Freedom? What's that?
What do I need karma for?
-Skeld
Of course he didn't answer your question - that letter was obviously written so that it could be sent to people both for and against the legislation.
If we absolutely MUST pass some sort of legislation, why don't we repeal all intellectual property laws and dis-incorporate all of the big "content provider" companies?
Unfortunately, you have fallen into the trap that the entertainment industry wants you to fall into. Fundamentally the industry has a business problem, not a legal problem. Look at what they are trying to compete against. Digital music can be:
-Aggregated in large numbers (create a digital jukebox with a large number of recordings)
-Carried with you, easily (portable MP3 players)
-Traded with friends
-Easily downloaded. Any song, any group in full.
-Easily searched, locally and on the net.
-Organized. By group, genre, etc.
Let's face it. Digital music is damn convenient for the customer and it is becoming even more popular by the day as computers get faster and with larger hard drives. Do the record companies have anything than can compete with this? No. Have they tried? No.
The home computer was designed to be general purpose. Process any information regardless of content. The internet was designed to transmit information, regardless of content. Period. The genie is already out of the bottle and there is no way to put it back in. Technology keeps rolling on, and companies who keep up with it will stay in business, companies who don't won't survive. Trying to roll back the clock will never work and laws to put block on computers or the internet are destined to fail.
Congress shall make no law protecting a particular business model of method, especially one that inflicts grief on another business or consumer. In addition, crimes committed using technology should be treated as the crimes they are - stealing is stealing, defacement is defacement. The introduction of technology to a crime does not alter the underlying crime. Copyright violations shall be dealt with via the existing extensive copyright legislation.
The problem I have with the media companies is that they're trying to construct electronic delivery systems that have two characteristics.
The first is that piracy would be difficult, although not impossible. In my view, this is pretty hard goal to argue against.
The second goal is the one I have trouble with. They're trying very hard to avoid electronic distribution systems that would mitigate their existing advantages.
Right now the big media companies are the gatekeepers of the existing distribution system. If you want to get a record into the stores, or if you want to get a movie into the multiplex, you need a big company's help, and in practice, that means you have to give them more than half of the money.
There has always been piracy -- I'm 40, and I used to make extensive use of my cassette deck, as did everyone else I knew. Piracy is nothing new. What's new is the potential for media distribution systems that give individuals and small independent companies the same sorts of access to the public that the big companies have.
The media companies want to prevent piracy. But I think that we have to do what we can to shift the emphasis away from piracy, and towards the creation of open distribution systems.
Now one problem with open systems is that people will buy something and resell it or give it away. My argument is that this inevitable fact doesn't outweigh the overwhelming public interest that would be served by open distribution systems.
Let the media companies go after pirates after the fact. Give them stiff peanalties, something that will defer people from sharing songs for free on the net. Why give something away when there's a real downside, and no upside?
Let the media companies choose the formats they use for their products -- if MS wants to make a player that will try to validate the user as an authorized owner, and they want to use that, that's great. Let them come out with new electronic audio players that will police their media rights.
People whine about the new celine dion cd coming out in copy protected format, but that's the right of everyone involved. Celine Dion doesn't owe me free music, and neither does her record company.
But it's fundamentally unfair for the government to get between you and I, and say that we can't exchange a song that one of us created over a network in a specific format, because that format doesn't provide the media companies with assurances that the song wasn't pirated. That's an unreasonable burden to put on us, and it will, to use a MS phrase, "stifle innovation."
It seems to me that the core problem here is that the media companies take a big bite out of the transaction because they control access to the distribution system. Without that gatekeeping role, they don't produce enough value to justify their cut.
Unfortunately for them, computer networks are going to wipe out that gatekeeping role unless people like your Representative vote for laws that provide artificial support for it.
It sucks for them, just like automobiles sucked for buggy whip manufacturers. But it's good for the world.
Let them build whatever system they want (crippled cd's and authenticating players and all), but don't force everyone to use it.
Make sure that we preserve the ability to build alternative systems.
You actually thought Wellstone would listen to you? You've got a lot to learn. I voted against him the first two times he ran, and I'm voting against him again this year.
If you want your digital rights protected, you need to vote Libertarian or Constitution. These are the only parties that respect the limits placed on government. (Yes, that's right, Mr. Wellstone, it's the government which is limited, not the citizenry.)
Constitutionally Correct
They can develop a copy-identification system along these lines with three separate elements, and then announce that it has four.
They'll even be telling the truth -- FUD (I've filed off three serial numbers... were they bluffing about the fourth one?) becomes an additional element.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
This is exactly right.
Which means lawmakers will never see it this way because the consumer is not perceived by them as contributing to their success in the next election or weilding a block of power in a coordinated and certain manner. Like the RIAA, Disney, etc. We are all just doomed here.
The proported reason for the CBDTPA is to increase Broadband Content on the internet to speed along the adoption of broadband internet by the masses. Hollings thinking is by turning every computer into a media station would encourage hollywood to start putting there products on the net, where they can charge, charge, charge away. I think the better way would be to get a richer public domain out there. Cut copyright terms back to a limited time like 28 years(what it was after the first copyright extension). That way you got everything create prior to 1974 would be in the public domain, and freely distributable. And every year the pubic domain would be getting bigger. Just imagine, you would be able to download the Godfather, the French Connection and so on. And in 2005 you would be able to get Star Wars online. For too long, people have forgotten that copyright is a social contract between the creators and the public. They get a government sanction monopoly for a limited time, we get a public domain to enrich our lives. If you want to keep it out of the public, call it a trade secret and accept the good and the bad that comes with it. We don't need Hollywood to give us new broadband content. We have plenty out there. We just need to say we aren't going to give you something for nothing (monololistic protection forever).
With regards to the piracy issue, pirates are people with peglegs and eyepatches who rape pilage and plunder on the high seas. Hang'em from the yard arms.
embedded in each "original work?"
That way, the netcops could figuratively "pull you over," and ask to scan your machine. If you didn't already own the original cd/dvd/whatever the cops would ticket you the price-per-piece. If they didn't recieve payment immediately, maybe they could instruct your player to not play those tunes. (requires optional equipment not shown. batteries not included)
This is a sample sig. Press F1 to personalize.
ok i hear the big companies whining about piracy and how the cost of piracy and protection is responsible for the cost in software, and the pirates saying that if the games/programs weren't so expensive, they wouldnt be pirating them..
how about some open software team work to create a robust cd-protection scheme, with a licence agreement saying its free to use for any product that does not exceed whatever price, thus helping the software companies crack down on piracy, helping them keep their costs down researching cd protection, while holding them legally obligated to keep their price down.
The analogy of the internet to an "information superhighway" is flawed, as should have been evidenced by the fact that that's what Gore calls it.
A highway is something that allows people to get from point A to point B, hopefully faster than they would by walking, running or hang gliding (LA residents excepted).
The internet on the other hand doesn't allow people to go anywhere, yet is a vast resource of information and activity. A better name for the internet would have been the Information Superlibrary, although even that is flawed as the content in a library is fairly static in comparison and in most libraries you can't frag other people (legally).
Do libraries require "cops"? What about video games (tickets for spawn camping)? Trying to govern the internet removes the inherent benefits of it. If you have to get an OK to post an audio file, who's to say you'll go to the trouble of doing so. If you've got to get 32 character keys (per family member for 1 viewing) to post pictures of your 3 year old for your family wouldn't it be easier to just snail mail them a copy? The internet is *dynamic*. As such, it has a multitude of content that is constantly changing and that uses multiple formats to do so.
Even that aside, there's no proof that piracy even causes a loss of revenue. In order for that to occur you'd have to prove that people who pirate would actually make purchases if piracy was not an option. You'd also have to prove that piracy doesn't lead to an eventual sale of the pirated material.
There is in fact fairly significant evidence to the contrary. While napster was fully operational and free, record sales increased significantly. As per a recent slashdot post, Eric Flint has posted hard numbers showing that giving away his books on the Baen Free Library drastically increases his sales for those books (and his other books too).
Finally, you'd have to determine if any sort of regulatory oversight of the internet would actually be effective. What you have are millions of people trying to get content with a necessarily few people trying to stop them. No matter what method you use, unless you go extremely draconian (aka violating the rights of your constituents) there will be no way to possibly prevent content distrubution.
There is a need to be filled here. If Hollywood and the MPAA were smart, instead of fighting the net, they'd start using it. Instead of spending millions on people trying to find and promote (aka flood the airwaves) the next Britney Spears and Backstreet boys, they could be using sites like MP3.com to find out what people actually like and try selling that to people instead of the crap they do sell.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
Congress ALREADY gave them the ability to implement DRM (Copy protection) technology and convict anybody who breaks that DRM technology.
This industry hasn't even done a decent job taking advantage of the DMCA, which is PLENTY sufficient and then some.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Specifically, Prohibition. If what the people want to do is outlawed, they will take it underground. After a few years, the government will (hopefully) admit the futility of the situation and repeal said b*s* law.
However, this situation may be different. Since history has been conyrighted by numerous textbook organizations, we are probably prohibited from copying it. (grin.)
Because politicians must do something about this problem that bothers their owne^H^H^H^Hlocal industry.
Is there any compromise between doing nothing and Disney's Law?
If they must pass a law... how about something along the lines of... If the owner of digital content places a unique serial number on a given bit of digital content it is illegal to remove or modify that serial number, and doing so has penalty X....
Sure, modifiying someone else's copyrighted works is already illegal, but this would allow people to modify their own works in a very specific way and still keep their copyright... it would also spell out a specific penalty for removing such a serial number.
With legal protection of serial numbers on digital content, lawsuits against the people who illegally release pirated content are possible. It's hard to sue every kid who has a pirated Brittney Spears CD, but this would help you sue the kid who made the original illegal copy.
The entertainment folks can then negotiate with the hardware manufacturers to get some sort of serial number scheme thet would be difficult to bypass... and the law would help stop the few people with the ability to bypass the technology.
Personally, I'd rather not have any more laws... I just tried to think of a way to let the entertainment industry save face, but avoid too many negative consequences... so please don't mod me as a troll just because I actually tried to answer the question... however, please do flame my idea all you want..
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Whoa there Hoss! I don't want ANY form of "internet traffic cop" monitoring my internet activities or the traffic I send or receive. Shades of Carnivore. Sounds like the idea you are proposing isn't much different that Orwell's 1984 (Big Brother is watching) or the way the net is censored in totalitarian countries like Red China. All this just for the benefit of ONE special interest industry (MPAA, RIAA)?? Fuck that. The DMCA is bad enough, and now Senator Fritz Disney (D-MPAA) is trying to get something even worse passed. No way, Jack.
The problem that the recording industry has always faced is that of pirated recordings, either from a concert or captured from the audio output. The Grateful Dead encouraged that, and they were able to outlast most other bands. There's a lesson to be learned from that.
Of course an alternate solution is to stop selling cd/dvd's and make everyone go back to the movie theatres and to listen to live music only.
I liked the part where I he didn't really answer my question... It seems you are correct in thinking Capitol Hill is hell bent on passing legislation. I don't think ANY legislation is a good thing, but I feel that they [capitol hill] see us [letter-writing geeks] as meddlers who refuse to offer a solution. Who says there needs to be a solution? Has anyone had any other luck with their representatives?
Of course. If they aren't busy passing laws, just what ARE they doing for their constituents?! [TUNE IN - SPECIAL EXPOSE REPORT AT 11!]
The real enemy here is, of course, budgets with built-in automatic annual funding increases (it's been a while, but I think it's called baseline budgeting... anyone confirm y/n?). Since they don't have to waste valuable time arguing about re-allocating the same money every year, they have more time to devote to bullstuff like this.
Frankly, I think we'd all be better off if we just paid them $10 million a year to go play golf -- maybe start a league or something.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Legislation is the wrong way to do this, as has been pointed out very well by a bunch of previous posts. How about instead of a new law, the MPAA and/or RIAA provide a product offering that is only available *if* you have hardware that supports some strong copy protection? How about if that product is actually attractive to consumers. The way they're trying to do it with legislation hardly treats us as consumers - more like penned up farm animals. I grant you that hardware protection on specific devices *could* be defeated, but the truth is that people would tend not to do this if there were a reasonably attractive product out there (look at www.audible.com for an imperfect example). In short, innovation instead of legislation.
There is quite simply nothing to compromise on here. Fritz Hollings can take his bill, turn it sideways, and stick it up Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti's asses.
The CBDTPA is on its face value a load of bunk! It is intended to violate the rights of every single human being on this planet because they are capable of infringing on copyrights.
The only reason Hollywood still exists is because of the technology industry that it attempts to rape a sodomize a few times every decade. They are making more money than ever, and have never in the past been sucessful in there absurd raids on freedom. If we allow them now, it just confirms they were right all along and should remaim persistant for future even more invasive legislation.
You do realize this isn't the ending, but the very beginning of what they want, right?
P.S. You should mention to your Congressman that if he is against gun control then he's blatantly hypocritical to support this bill.
This is my first lame "MOD PARENT UP" post... but this is an insightful comment that is pretty buried, and so far its seems to have been missed by moderators....
The only people who want legislation are the MPAA/RIAA, and congress and senate who are influenced(or bribed) by these groups.
The consumers dont want new laws, they dont even want the DMCA, the musicians dont want new laws, the techies like us dont want new laws.
Why should we create laws just to bail out record companies, its almost as stupid as the airport bailout 20 billion dollar thing, to put it simply, its corperate welfare.
Why the hell should billionare companies get welfare?!
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
First of all, do nothing is a stupid suggestion. People elect legislators to legislate -- that's what they do, and how they're evaluated in elections. DO SOMETHING is the first principle.
.ogg's of cd's I own for the purpose of "space-shifting"(they're much easier to carry) and am not a pirate. Likewise, many other people aren't either. But we're at a level where "society" is pirating, so let "society" pay until a dramatically lowered target piracy rate is reached. And if people don't like it, then let peer pressure work towards meeting that target.
Secondly, given that one should do something, what to do? What the media corporations really care about is not the fact of piracy, but the harm (real or perceived -- I'll bow out of that debate) done to their bottom-lines as a result of piracy. It can also be taken as a fact that while everyone is not a pirate, enough people are pirating music that it is not practical to find a way to stop them. So don't try to do so. Instead find a way to repair the harm.
I propose doing just what was done for other media -- create a "shut up and go away" tariff on the media. That'll reduce the hand distribution. Combine this with greater enforcement for the medium-less transmissions as already covered under existing law, or pass a law creating an office for such enforcement.
I only copy
--- The reclining dragon deeply fears the blue pool's clarity.
I would if I had any points, but I don't. This is a GREAT analogy. Face it: it's the entertainment industry that needs to change here, not the consumers. They are almost completely at fault for charging so much, not releasing singles at a fair price, acting that any digital music should have per-use charges, etc.
I truly believe that if people could purchase single tracks online for maybe $1 to $2 per track, in a loseless format, that doesn't restrict how and when they can be listened to, piracy wouldn't be what it is today. The simple fact of the matter is that if I want one song, I am NOT going to purchase an entire CD for it. If I like the bulk of the music on a CD, and the CD is reasonably priced (Price less than about $17), I purchase it. The music industry has to regognize two things:
1) The importance of their role as it currently is is becomming obselete. It's FAR easier for artists to go directly to the consumer today than it was even 5 years ago.
2) Consumers demand more flexibility and portability and more reasonable prices today than they did 5 years ago. All of a sudden, the RIAA isn't the only source of music. Unless the RIAA can meet the demands of the consumers, they WILL go out of buisness, eventually.
Now, I believe that the RIAA is aware of but in denial about these issues. Now, they are waking up and realize that the only way to keep their role as it currently is is to strong-arm Congress into legally protecting it. I've not news: the consumers won't stand for it.
-James
When audio tape decks became popular, VCR's, the **AA claimed that it would destroy their business. In fact, the RIAA was successful in making sure that the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) standard never made it to the consumer level.
While the argument here is the same as DAT, "but people can now make 'perfect' copies..." I think it still falls through overall. Why? Because there just isn't enough time!
It's obvious, to me anyway, that the Recording Industry targets the exact same market segment that has the most time & energy to spend making copies in the first place. (14-24 yr olds) Once you've passed the target demographic, the recording industry could just about care less what type of music you're interested in. Yet they want laws passed that will affect everyone!
From the perspective of someone who is past the "target demographic" I see this attempt at curtailing the habits of one group of people by passing laws that affect ALL people as unconscionable.
Most people over 24 or so will go buy music/dvd's rather than rip/burn them simply because there isn't enough time! Yet these same people are virtually ignored by the recording industry.
I don't think legislation is the answer. I don't see any reason for an industry who has a narrowly targeted demographic to get legislation passed to help it remain focused on that narrowly targeted demographic while the rest of the world/economy changes around it.
I don't see why people outside the recording industries narrowly targeted demographic should have to suffer at the result of sweeping legislation.
More and more, it seems to me that the **AA is crying for the tech sector to "Do something so we don't have to change our business model!"
Why should they?
There are (supposedly) thousands of out-of-work techs from the dotcom demise. There is NOTHING that prevents the recording companies from hiring some of these people to develop technology for them.
So what does it come down to? Here are my thoughts:
i'm all about trading music, but i'm not all about my mailbox being full of spam. maybe its good to let the control freaks come in and bully us a little, and maybe the spammers a lot.
... is the fact that there is no such thing as a completely bullet proof system for protecting copyrighted materials. Doesn't even matter if it is not digital... no way exists and no way ever will because of the causal effect (create a copyright system, someone will create a work around).
Further, I don't understand why the government is wasting my money to try and beat the inevitable conclusion that you can't stopy copyright infringement.
You can on the other hand take measures that make copyright infringement less than easy and legally painful enough that the average joe won't do it... that is the whole point of law, contrary to the beliefs of anarchists on this board. The problem lies in defining what is reasonable and what is not.
Incurring additional cost on the consumer is not reasonable. Incurring added steps to access copyrighted material is not acceptable. Infringing on privacy and freedom of speech laws is not constitutionally legal. And, infringing on existing laws that give consumers the right of personal archiving of materials is legally grey but wrong none the less (As we have seen).
So what is reasonable? Go fish... my take is that software encryption and locking is a good thing, as long as costs are not passed along to the consumer... digital media is entirely over priced these days as it is, and all though record and media companies would like us to believe they are benevolent giants suffering under massive loss thanks to the 1 in 10000 pirate, the truth is that they are multi-billion a year profitable companies. If they want to curb piracy, let them work together to enforce a standard over media content that the consumer can live with and that keeps priracy from growing out of bounds (it's going to happen, the question is how easy and tempting is it to undertake). I don't even deny these media gluttons the right to lobby and try and get reasonable criminal laws enacted to protect their properties... I just have a problem when their solutions would legally invade my privacy, my wallet, and my life with added time and discomfort to utilize their crappy media.
I've been trying to think of what possible additions to the law could be made simply to satisfy this appitite for legilation congressmen apparently have, and I can think of none.
It is already against to law to do what is being done. It would be unfeasable and a terrible waste of money to set up an online police force. Stress that the people that would be doing this would be highly trained and skilled, and the equipment, salaries, paperwork and additional drain on the legal system would amount to a serious wad of cash for the government to fork over.
Point out the numerous clashes the government has had with the entertainment industry and thier unwillingness to combat youth violence and drug use (as opposed to say, the NFL). Point out that rather than supporting this de facto monopoly, more political gain is to be had in trying to "fight for the little guy". What is really happening here is Hollywood and the Music industry feel threatened by the increased exposure of independant artists, and fear they may loose control of thier media. The online trading has spawned a culture with far more artistic flair and talent than is evidenced in the controlled works put out by the big boys. What they are really trying to accomplish here is a freeze on that culture. They want to prevent all unobserved and free trading, and that is unacceptable.
One solution I've been playing with is the idea of a "Don't Pay" button. Instead of a Pay Lars button (micropayments), change things so that the default is to pay but you can not pay if you wish to.
I call this microrefunds, a reversal of micropayments.
I have put an essay on microrefunds on my web site to explain this.
It's just a draft idea at present, not endorsed byt the rest of the folks at the EFF yet.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
I understand your congresswoman may feel the need to write new legislation, after all, they need to feel like they are earning their salary. But we already have laws against piracy. Convince her that more legislation will only hurt the consumer even more.
Remember,
more Government = BAD
less Government = GOOD
And change their damn business model.
Its that simple, change business model or go out of business.
Im fucking sick of this corperate bailouts, its far worse than welfare for the commons who may actually need it, corperate welfare is to help some rich billionare monopoly corperation stay on top.
If we pass this into law, we are fucking morons, they already bailed out airports i mean damn
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Why?
If a business model is not appelative to the consumers it must die. Making laws to "force" it's survival thru un-capitalist ways is simply wrong.
Looks like America is adopting Communist ways of controling the economy...
Cheers...
There are plenty of examples where trying to make new laws to deal with things that are already covered perfectly well by existing laws have really screwed things up. They are usually pushed by someone or some company/industry who stands to make a lot of money and gain a lot of power at the expense of others. The DMCA is a good example of legislation made for a good intent that really tipped the balance of power between consumer and business unfairly in favor of business at the expense of the consumer.
There are plenty of laws against piracy. Enforce those before making new laws that will majorly disrupt the entire computer industry. Legislation should be the last resort. It should be well thought out and be fair, just and reasonable. This is one case where less is more.
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I don't claim to have the answer on how to stop piracy. I also don't believe legislation is even neccesary here.
However, there are a number of rules that must be followed in any legislation made to stop piracy.
1. It can't limit free or open source software in any way shape or form.
2. Reverse engineering must be allowed in all ways, shapes, and forms. I am not saying I should be able to rip off your source code and copy it but I should beable to reverse engineer your stuff so I can re-impliment it my way and get the same results. This is extremely important for competition.
3. Copy protection schemes cannot be made such that they break a legal use of a material. For instance, if I buy a CD I have a right to turn it into MP3's and play it on my computer or other digital device.
If the RIAA wants to sell more music they are going about it the wrong way. It has already been proven that MP3's have not decreased the sales of CDs. I for one download a good bit of MP3's to try out songs. Partially because I am sitting at a computer all day a work, and partially because the radio stations around here play nothing but the same old shit all day long. However, when I find myself listening to the same MP3 frequently I buy the CD. This is the way most people I know use MP3's and if anything it helps the RIAA. Those people that horde MP3's any never pay for the music aren't going to buy CD's even if they can't get there MP3's anymore so going after them is a lost cause.
The fact is Movies, Music, and software industries bring home a lot of cash. Per employee they all bring home more then most other industries. When a company of 30,000 employees bitches while generating more revenue then a company that has 300,000 employees you won't see me feeling sorry for them. Especially since they have more actually money in the bank then most companies that size can even dream of.
You also won't see me feeling sorry for a company thats sole purpose is to make money off the achievements of others while doing very little work themselves.
Where in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or even the Declaration of Independence does it say that business is protected against competition or themselves for that matter?
I think you have it backwards, where in the Constitution does it say that congress can't pass laws to protect a business?
Don't delude yourself, The Constitution only protects a handful of rights, the rest are free game for congress to take away.
You *never* had the rights you thought you did...
...and never forget it.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Make the wording more specific:
Any producer of digital content that is technologically protected in such a manner that does not allow license holders to exercise fair use rights must issue replacement or duplicate copies within 7 days of request by the license holder. Replacement or extra copies may not be witheld for any reason, and license holders may request up to 6 copies per year for the duration of the original owner's copyright. Users may request copies of the media in ANY format that the copyrighted material has been published in that is of equal or lesser quality to the format the content was licensed under.
In addition, all copyrighted material will, at the time of application for copyright, be placed in escrow in a high-quality unencrypted and unencumbered digital format (equivalent in quality to the highest-quality protected format the copyrighted material is released under) with the Library of Congress for immediate public domain release at the expiration of copyright. In the event that the original copyright holder ceases publication of the material prior to the expiration of the copyright, license holders may request up to 6 copies per year of the material from the Library of Congress' escrow copy.
Instead of going in and trying to come up with some sort of suggestion to placate Big Media, make a better use of your time and express to her her constituants disgust with these companies and their lobbies. Want a solution? Set copyright back to the orignal 14 years. Broaden and ironclad fair use. Repeal the much abused notion that corporations have the "rights" of private citizens, including the "right" to dump more money on elected officials than private individuals can match as a means of reaching their ends.
Oh, and repeal the DMCA.
Wow. Guess what, you just took care of "pirating."
Seriously though, help her understand that companies are NOT her constituents, people are.
I have some thoughts on this, thanks for prompting me!
I am unable to accept legislation with regards to DRM, IP, etc. Most of the companies that are spearheading this have more influence on our daily lives as it is. In the case of Disney, these people have leveraged Mickey and a dead man's legacy for Billion, possibly trillions of dollars. To think these people approach congress, and in light of their successes, they refer to us as a thieving public destroying their profitability. It is shameful to think that these people are approaching the government designed to protect, the people are the venue by which the companies make money, and are getting somewhere with this.
The entertainment moguls are doing what is natural, what is charged by them and fiduciary responsibility. They are, in the interest of the shareholders, trying to setup a monopoly. This is the goal for big business, and big business has done a lot for the World to date. But there is a limit. The government is supposed to counter balance. These companies don't need the government's help for Christ's sake; the PEOPLE need the government's help! These companies have formed mega mergers and huge OmniMediaPlexes that are rackets which amalgamate into the GIGANTIC monopoly.
This, of course, always overshadows standard copyright laws, fair use and the notion that information wants to be free. I have seen really interesting things in training as a chemist at a university. I have seen and heard of things have copyrights and patents as a symbol. The truly novel and unique and worthy ideas are usually so complicated, intelligent that protecting the "IP" is a moot point, most people can't comprehend what trying to be protected if it novel. This isn't to say that there is no caused for protection, but limits are a good thing. This allows other scientists and innovators too quickly build on the successes of others. Think of this way, if you myriad of patents and copyrighted works didn't make you rich, you probably didn't come up with something very unique. If you leverage the governments of the world to force people to pay for mendacity in order to make money, you are in essence screwing the shareholder in the long run, you need to innovate is diminished and the ability to survive hinges on legislation and not R&D.
In the case with music, these people are the worst anti-competitive types out there. A CD costs almost nothing to produce even with all costs factored in. These companies, unlike, say a University, create racket for which there I no escape, and force the artists to sell their intellectual souls to the company. Eh artists resent it. I f*cking refuse to pay $16 dollars for a CD worth not more than $2-$3. Things like E-music prove that only one song off a CD is generally worth keeping anyways, and the heavyweights of music prove this. People need to realize these people are able to create artificial markets, they call them regions [outwardly, blatantly, and cockily], they are able to prevent capitalism by leveraging their monopolies and rackets and creating markets for themselves. DVD is $6 in certain regions. In the US, its $16-$24. In EU I hear it is even more. This is disgusting.
Another thing that crops ups, and especially pisses off the likes of the extra greedy types like Lucas - stuff appearing and being released before its time, illegal releases. Look, I don't know when this happened. But when the movie is finished, just start playing it. Don't set a date. When the move comes in, just play the damn thing. Jesus Christ. I never thought that people would care when you start selling something. If it's good, it sells it self. [people no longer understand word of mouth]. The media moguls are so disenfranchised with their purchasing public they no longer understand what we want - AT ALL. Believe me, it's not a long extended wait.
The internet has made me impatient. I hate traveling now. I want things now, right away, without delay. In an age without magic, getting things faster make things more interesting. I want it now. Like Veruka Salt. Not having it isn't enough; I don't want to wait, ever. I'll even pay more not to wait. People don't understand this. I love camping kernel.org for the latest release. I love the fact there is no latency. A kernel that was released 10 minutes ago can be ALL MINE! The marketing detritus infecting these mega companies does not know what I want. I don't want to wait in line for a film; I'll use some online service to reserve tickets. My time is valuable, I will never have enough, and these corporate slime want to think of ways to take up more of it, to make me wait. For example, I wanted there to be a Service Pack 7 for NT 4.0. After a promise and a long wait, it never came; Microsoft has no idea how much that did to disenfranchise me. Meanwhile there are others who give you access to daily build and CVS in the OSS world, and my needs can be addressed by a simple email.
Big companies need to be re-edified. They are behemoths destined for doom if the government doesn't force them to be competitive again - including with each other. It's a constant struggle, a supply demand issue, consumer versus company. Neither is good or evil, but people don't buy, don't build it. They don't get this they fabricate losses to insinuate that they are losing money. This is a flaming crock. All losses due to IP and piracy are perceived. It is a result of being disconnected with those who use it, its is a result of poor pricing models. Trust me. They want to arbitrarily set a price and force people to pay it. They don't want to find sweet spots, and stratify their pricing. Its not my fault the most I would pay for an office suite is $75. Anything more, and its either pirated or I'll get it for free. Microsoft doesn't want to know this information, apparently, they have never asked me. So they lose $75 bucks, in essence.
The CDPTA, DMCA, and all other legislation hurts the betterment of the internet intelligence cache. It forces people to make changed that are undesired. It causes obfuscation and the legalization of non disclosure for large companies. It basically promotes the flat out lying to the paying consumer. It exposes people to higher risks - what you don't know can hurt you.
People and companies also have to realize that software is no longer interesting for the most part, the usability of it is. We don't license software in our car's computer. We don't upgrade it. It's a functional unit, and the less we know it the better its working. How we USE software is far more important. The car company bought and SDK and probably got a few software engineers to make this software. The professional SERVICE is worth the money, not the software. The integration is the value add, not the software. This has become my attitude, because using software is really a liability. It's like owning a high powered rifle. It can kill, in terms of downtime. The rifle instructor is able to teach the rifleman how to hit targets and not people or other things inadvertently. The point is the instructor makes the rifle worth something. This analogy could be applied to most anything. It's the truth.
Capitol Hill ©(TM)®, both side alike, are listening to where their money comes from. Big companies, especially Disney, Macrovision, Microsoft, and other lobby the hell out of these people and coerce them into suppressing you; and the rest of the world to some degree via trickle down. These mongoloids in Washington have to get with the program, and start reading the law. There is precedent to handle this stuff; usually most of it can be found pre 1850. There is no need to suppress the people.
Laws are broken every day here now. The US has started to make a hypocrisy of the constitution. Here criminal gets far more due process than those seeking to protect their rights. I want a Heckler and Koch G36C. I like that automatic rifle. The more primary form of law, The Constitution, says I can have it. But I can't. Sates violate my rights. But Charles Manson just got his tenth chance at parole. Due process is for criminals here now. Like Microsoft. They have dragged this out ad infinitum, and now there are dead bodies (figuratively), and the innocent's due process was violated in favor of Goliath.
I hate the government now. I want a vote of no confidence. Both parties now piss on the constitution for fun. Big government has destroyed the essence. If you ever heard the George Carlin skit on Turning the 10 commandments into two it proves ONE THING. MORE "laws" means things are far more complicated then they really are. The crux of a concept does not lie in complexity, its utter simplicity. The miasma of complicated laws are designed to created grey areas and subterfuge by which people and the buying public can be exploited, and this door tends not to swing both ways, trust me.
And to close with my thoughts on Copyright.
I feel it is important to this case, especially from the American prospective, to point out that one of the most ingenious, prolific and outspoken forefathers of the USA, where the DMCA and other vile laws live, believe firmly that the bill of rights should have included and explicit reference to freedom from burdensome and unfair copyrights and legislation thereof.
Thomas Jefferson was concerned about you and me. The people that read periodicals. Everyone as a singular entity. You yourself may not know what's best for you if you belong to something bigger. Our, the USA, laws are supposed to protect the little people.
While I'm not suggesting an armed standoff against federal agents necessary in this case, something must be done. We are railroading an expatriate to whom are laws do not bind. Furthermore, our own forefathers, particularly Jefferson, BELIEVE me he is YOUR friend (not the big monopolies like Electric Companies, Microsoft, Petroleum Companies, etc.)
I'm going to except his beliefs below. Realize that even 200 years ago, the pitfalls of burdensome copyright and the legislation that ensues would erode our freedoms.
......
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in his correspondence with James Madison (1751-1836) was initially hostile to the provision for copyright and patent law in the United States Constitution. On
Dec. 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to Madison from France concerning the recently-drafted Constitution:
I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights
providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms
for freedom of religion, freedom of the press,
protection against standing armies, restriction
against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting
force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by
jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of
the land...
Note, here IMHO, TJ wants to along with our other inalienable rights, establish a freedom from Monopoly. These rights, not excluding freedom from monopoly, were to him as core as the rest of our bill of rights. He repeated this view in his letter to Madison dated July 31, 1788:
I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our
new constitution by nine states. It is a good
canvas, on which some strokes only want
re-touching. What these are, I think are sufficiently
manifested by the general voice from North to South,
which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty
generally understood that this should go to juries,
habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion
and monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty
in finding general modification of these suited to
the habits of all the states. But if such cannot
be found then it is better to establish trials by jury,
the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press
and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish
standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies, in
all cases, than not to do it in any... The saying
there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements
to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a
monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the
benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to
be opposed to that of their general suppression.
Madison, in a letter dated October 17, 1788, responded,
With regard to monopolies they are justly
classed among the greatest nuisances in government.
But is it clear that as encouragements to literary
works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too
valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not
suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public
to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified
in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely
less danger of this abuse in our governments than in
most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many
to the few. Where the power is in the few it is
natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own
partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as
with us, is in the many not in the few, the danger
can not be very great that the few will be thus
favored. It is much more to be dreaded that the
few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many.
I hold the recent copyright extension as an example of what Madison though there was little danger of. There it was said, even by Madison, the proponent of the said directives, that there would likely be no "a sacrifice of the many to the "partialities and corruptions" of a powerful few."
I firmly believe the DMCA is both a corruption and a partiality. Anyone with Macrovision stock will try and convince you otherwise.
Jefferson probably saw that there is some purpose in having intellectual property be protected in some fashion or more likely, IMHO, probably decided that he would rather be a part of creating the ground rules for this countries operations and decided to cut bait at this point. He subsequently said to Madison in a letter on August 28, 1789
I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes,
but I should have been for going further. For
instance, the following alterations and additions would
have pleased me... Article 9. Monopolies may be
allowed to persons for their own productions in literature,
and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not
exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no
other purpose.
The blank was to be filled in at some future date, obviously. The law is written with the sense that this right would be the right of the people to protect themselves against intellectual fraudulence by companies, e.g., the theft of the 'little man's' ideas. In addition to which, there is always the stance that the people of the fledgling USA would be safeguarded in the Bill of Rights against unduly long copyrights.
Jefferson's preference for the term of copyright was submitted to Madison a few days afterward, in a letter of September 6, 1789. The proposed term was that of 19 years, based on actuarial calculations:
The question Whether one generation of men has
a right to bind another seems never to have
been started on this [i.e., the European side --
Jefferson was writing from France] or our [American]
side of the water... that no such obligation can
be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. --
I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be
self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct
to the living; that the dead have neither powers
nor rights over it... A generation coming in and
going out entire... would have a right on the first
year of their self-dominion to contract a debt
for 33 years, in the 10th for 24, in the 20th for
14, in the 30th for 4, whereas generations, changing
daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant
term, beginning at the date of their contract, and
ending when a majority of those of full age at that
date shall be dead. The length of that term may
be estimated from the tables of mortality. Take,
for instance, the tables of M. de Buffon...
[according to which] half of those of 21 years [of
age] and upwards living at any one instant of time will
be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the
nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term
beyond which neither the representatives of a nation,
nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly
extend a debt... This principle that the earth belongs
to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive
application... Turn this subject in your mind, my
dear Sir... Your station in the councils of our country
gives you an opportunity for producing it to public
consideration... Establish the principle... in the
new law to be passed for protecting copyrights and new
inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19
instead of 14 years.
A Jeffersonian computation using life tables from 1992 gives a Jeffersonian copyright term of 30-35 years. (Vital Statistics of the United States 1992, Volume II--Mortality, Part A, Public Health Service, Hyattsville, 1996, Section 6, Table 6-1.) Note, however, that at least one edition of Jefferson's works has a much abridged version of this letter, in which the 19-year computation and the proposal for the term of copyright do not occur.
One of Jefferson's most famous statements on patent law was in his often-quoted letter of August 13, 1813 to Isaac McPherson, in which he wrote that, since there is no natural right to property in land, how much less is there a natural right to a property in ideas. I think Jefferson's words apply equally well to copyrights as to patents; to "expression" as well as to "ideas": "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
"The scary thing about the DMCA is that it affects everyone, but only a subset of the country realizes it exists, of which a subset understands what it means, of which a subset understands why its so wrong. " quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
"Is there a "voice" amongst this subset that has any power to inflict any change here? Kind of spooky. It makes you wonder where things are headed." quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
As someone pointed out in a discussion thread previous to this, be sure to realize that copyright is referred to at this point as monopoly in Jefferson's letters.
Its fairly clear that Jefferson uses Monopoly in reference to copyright, which is what it is, you can monopolize on your intellectual property for a set period of time. He was willing to give IP of the day 19 years, but he was very much verbal about fair use, and that public fair use was of the utmost importance.
Even cursory inspection of Jefferson's views shows his distrust of allowing monopolies run rampant.
Even Madison has said:
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government. "
They both realized that in order for Monopolies of any sort to be protected by the government, that undue amounts of arbitration would be necessary.
Jefferson also affords a Monopoly to the Individual, not a corporate entity:
"Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose."
Surely he isn't suggesting that one person could create a monopoly on, lets say, corn. He was referring to copyright. He certainly isn't suggesting that corn could only be sold by one person for 19 years.
Another thing, imagine if the copyrights were in fact awarded to the people who invented them, not he companies who subsidized them. It would be interesting to see a world where companies like DuPont and Merck (and every other chemical and drug exploitation companies, because that's what they are, the money is in the treatments, not the cure) are made to treat their patent holding scientists with the utmost respect and regard, even more so than the shareholders, because if they left for another company, so leaves their patents!
The most important of all the Jefferson arguments is this: If IP is so unique, so wonderful and so great, why does it need protection? I don't believe I had quoted this particular argument above, I will work to find it, but the statement is true. If something is obvious, then it really isn't IP. Would you like Bob Metcalfe, the Linux is a piece of crap Windows 2000 rules moron who founded 3COM to still hold the patent on ethernet?
Don't you think its nice that other companies compete with 3COM for the ethernet space, such as Intel, CISCO, et al? Doesn't the standard referred to as "ethernet" get better and better because these companies compete for your business in the same segment?
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181.
The message in this passage is clear: an idea is not matter but energy; it cannot be owned, and it isn't diminished by being shared. In any discussion of copyright, it is useful to begin by reminding ourselves that ideas can't be copyrighted and can't be owned--only expression can. Furthermore, even when expression is copyrighted, academics ought to bear in mind their right to Fair Use, a crucial exception to copyright that exists in order to enable teaching, research, and news reporting.
*** This article is a conglomeration of thoughts that I have previously expressed on another discussion thread. If you have seen these before, please note that the ideas were expressed elsewhere as well. ***
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Have you purchased any content, say some popular music, that was readily available for bootleg online? If you're still purchasing and online bootlegging gets even easier, would you stop purchasing and start bootlegging?
Now, do you think the vast, vast majority of consumers would steal their content rather than pay for it, assuming the content they wanted was readily available at a reasonable price? Or do you share Hilary Rosen's view that most consumers are thieves who will steal anything that isn't nailed down? (takes one to know one, i say)
If, like me, you believe that most people would prefer legitimately purchased content *if it is readily available, reasonably priced, and allows fair use*, then your whole argument falls apart. Consumers WILL pay for online content. The problem is that the industry currently refuses to allow them to buy online content in a real way.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
I know you are right in saying that many on capitol hill are itching for a legislative answer to this, but there is no legislative answer.
First and foremost, most of the legislation they want would violate the first amendment and hideously extend copyright beyond anything it was ever intended to be. Second, more legislation is no good if they cannot or do not enforce it, and most of this type of legislation is unenforceable.
I think copyright laws should be relaxed, not tightened, but they should be there. And they should be enforced.
My susggestion to their dilemma is partially to find, not really a new business model, but more complimentary business models and distribution channels. Most people are willing to pay if the price is affordable.
Second, strengthen ENFORCEMENT and funding for enforcement against those who commercially and on a large scale infringe on copyright. Let the little ones go. The little ones aren't worth the trouble to hunt them.
If they find someone violating their copyrights, they have the law on their side. Sue. Have them arrested. etc.
You can't make the tools which COULD be used to commit a crime illegal if those tools have legimate use. And this is what they want?
True the cost of protecting their copyrights will end up being passed on to consumers who will then decide that the price of their goods is too high and will then just stay away in droves. Guess a new business model is needed after all.
I think the FCC should allow encryption of DTV signals and that the TV sets and VCR's should then have to decrypt them. Close the devices that directly handle the signals, but give consumers fair use rights within those devices. Just leave our computers alone.
For the first time in history, scarcity is about to vanish. There is no scarcity in copies of many works of art. It is now possible for the first time in history for everybody to share works of art, for enjoyment and advancement of humanity at just about no cost at all.
How can this be bad? It is something that mankind should have been striving for, yet, it just happened. It is still the best thing that has happened to mankind in a very long time.
Yet, the entertainment industry is trying to destroy that monumental achievement. Why? Because they have yet to come up with a business model that takes this into account. We, mankind, has yet to understand how creators can be awarded securely, so that they can make a living from providing the works that we enjoy so much.
We should be the first to acknowledge that this is not an easy problem to solve. After all, getting the funds to keep /. running has proven to be non-trivial.
However, in this situation, the proposed legislation threatens to destroy all that we have built up.
It must not happen. It would be a great step backwards for mankind.
What must happen now, is that all the great minds of this planet must come together and think, and experiment, to solve one of the most fundamental problems of our time: How do you reward people in a post-scarcity society?
Finally, to all those who say that "Congress should not pass laws", well, perhaps it is a solution for the US, but let me offer a perspective from my norwegian viewpoint: Politics is about the people influencing the society they live in, making priorities, and changing things that doesn't work. Politics is about the balances that the market can't provide. Politics is providing copyright laws in the first place, if you really want to be consistent about the "hands off" attitude, you should reject copyright alltogether. However, through politics, you should be able to create the laws that are good for society. Copyrights is meant to balance the rights of creators and people, for the benefit of everyone. When the entertainment industry is creating DRM tech, they are clearly violating their part of the deal. Clearly, what should happen then is that DRM should be banned. Using politics.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Forgive me if my language gets a little stronger than I usually use here, but I get SO damned tired of hearing special interest groups (ESPECIALLY wealthy trade organizations) yammering "There oughta be a law!"
The truth of the matter is that the content industries want to criminalize exercise of fair-use rights by law-abiding citizens so they can palm off the cost of investigating infringement of their (IMHO) unconstitutionally extended copyrights onto the very people whose long-standing rights they have just trampled.
If the RIAA and MPAA want to protect their intellectual property, including that portion of it that they stole back from the grasp of the public domain by the Sonny Bono Ex Post Facto Copyright Extension Act, let them get off their dead asses and defend their property in the civil courts. There are already PLENTY of laws on the books that empower them to do that.
I object strenuously to the use of MY taxes to pay for prosecution of copyright violators because doing so is the purest form of corporate welfare. Make Valenti and Rosen pay for their OWN damned legal bills.
I would LOVE to see a DMCA prosecution for circumvention of "technical measures" applied to prevent copying of a work on which the copyright would have otherwise (absent the SBCEA) expired. Ex post facto criminalization of otherwise lawful conduct is facially unconstitutional, don't ya know? One, or the other, or both, of these "Media Welfare" laws would HAVE to be struck down because acting together they result in a situation that is blatantly unconstitutional.
utter rubbish
I agree with you that the CBDTPA is terrible but I think that the nature of your question is the wrong one. The fundamental problem here is that we do not need any news laws. I realize, of course, that it isn't legislatively sexy, or politically gainful for a budding Senator to say that but it's the truth.
The proponents of the bill claim that the current anti-piracy measures are insufficient, and unless "something" is done the "Content Production Industry" will collapse. And, they claim that if this industry collapses nothing new will ever be created. As proof of the damage they cite the lack of Consumer Broadband and Digital Television, as well as declining CD Sales.
As Carnivore and magic-lantern demonstrate governments can track user behavior online. And, they are exploiting those abilities to the utmost. They have been focusing on terrorism lately, but they can always turn their eyes to copyright infringement if they wish. I believe that those tracking powers are too great and need to be reigned in not expanded, but that is a discussion for another time.
Therefore, despite what the "Content Production Industry" claims, the existing laws can be enforced. We do not need to change the underlying code in order to make it more difficult to trade files, nor do we need to make otherwise legal activities (such as fair use) illegal for fear of theft. Such bills only punish the vast majority in order to catch the few, and in so doing, go against the whole point of criminal justice; to defend the majority, not persecute them.
Digital Television and Broadband have been held up by competing standards, low demand, unfair competition, and the last-mile problem. Despite what the bill "finds" the lack of demand is the fault of a number of factors not potential piracy. Even if it was, that lack of demand is not a social problem requiring government efforts. The rpbolem is one for the marketing departments not public servants.
When you consider CD-Sales the same problem of proof exists. When Napster was at its zenith (at the height of the tech boom), CD Sales were up. Now, in the midst of a U.S. recession, they are down. Doubtless copying is part of this but, how much? And, does that impact justify increasing the prices on most consumer electronic products, and making life more difficult for consumers, electronics producers, and even copyright holders? Again the proponents of the bill have not offered any hard proof. The same goes for Movies, books and other cultural works.
Lastly and most importantly, the whole point of copyright law is to encourage the production of "science and useful arts..." It is not intended to create or sustain a publishing industry. Despite what Jack Valenti says they have not proven that the current state of affairs will reduce the number of authors, musicians and filmmakers out there. All that they have shown is that it may reduce the number of publishers out there.
The bottom line is; there is no proven compelling public need for this kind of legislation. If anything the need is to examine the charges of price-fixing and stifling competition that have been leveled at the industry and to examine the digital tracking of the Justice Department.
The clear avenue here is not to do nothing but to prevent harm from being caused.
I wish the techno-cult would stop believing that this is an all-or-nothing discussion. This kind of polemitization prevents progress. This issue isn't about copyright ownership or technological reality. That's all just rhetoric.
Every stakeholder, including the music corporations, is aware that once a piece intellectual property is made digital, there is no known way to restrict it's flow among concerted pirates. But this issue is not about piracy among the techno-elite. This is about maximizing profits by protracting the purchase habits of the mass audience. If big-media can keep a large portion of consumers buying at current rates, meanwhile addressing the desires of many would-be pirates through online music distribution, that is profit maximization. And as long as the cost of this tactic is greater than the cost of overhauling the industry, it will continue.
Now you may claim that changing the industry today will lead to GREATER profits tomorrow, or at least profits on the same level. I'm not sure this is true, but my opinion doesn't matter. Neither does yours.
The fact is that every public company abhors risk. The industry will not go out on a limb unless it is pushed by frustrated investors dropping its share price, artists that leave because they believe greater profit can be had under a different system, the mass audience suddenly deciding that they are paying too much, or executives who foresee greater profit for themselves.
So we can cry out the facts or we can accept the truth. This is a battle of attrition where the eventual loser is the music industry, but we don't know how far off that is.
As for legislation I could support, I don't think the ridiculousness of that proposition has sunk in. There ALREADY is legislation but it's not profitable for music-companies to come after individual pirates. Not because of the cost of lawyers, but because there is the RISK of criticism by consumers and artists if the companies are portrayed as beating-up the little guy. Massive pirating rings are one thing but what do you do with some 12-year-old with 15GB of music that would have cost anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 if each CD had been purchased. Does Disney or AOL/Time Warner DARE go after this child and the parents?
Since there is no further legislation that can fix the problem without stripping us all of the long-appreciated fair-use doctrine, how am I to answer?
I hope that some crucial people understand the futility of chasing real pirates and the stifling side effects any effective legislation would have on the long-appreciated fair-use doctrine. I hope that several congresspersons listen to reason or take the money from electronics marketers and sabotage the bill with eviscerating amendments.
I wrote to my Senator, Senator Hollings himself, in October about the SSSCA nonsense. I just received a reply approximately 10 days ago. Here's the letter, if anyone's interested.
April 22, 2002
Dear Mr. *********:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the problem of digital piracy and consumer fair use of electronic devices. I recently introduced S. 2048, "The Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Act," which in draft form was titled the "Systems Security Standards and Certification Act." The purpose of this legislation is to increase the level of quality content on the Internet and other digital media by calling upon representatives of the content, consumer electronics and information technology industries to agree upon a standard technology solutions to the problem of digital piracy. I view government involvement as a last resort.
Every week a major magazine or newspaper reports on the thousands of illegal pirated works that are available for copying and redistribution online. Piracy is growing exponentially on college campuses and among tech savvy consumers. Such lawlessness contributes to the studios and record labels' reluctance to place their digital content on the Internet or over the airwaves. While industries are at odds as to how to solve these critical content protection problems, this bill will facilitate the means to finding a solution.
Specifically, this legislation requires the content, consumer electronics, and information technology industries to come together with representatives of consumer groups to develop standards, technologies, and encoding rules to safeguard digital content so that it will be made more readily available to consumers without being subject to piracy. The affected parties would have one year to reach an agreement. The technologies would then be incorporated into all digital media devices to ensure universal protection for digital content and universal access to such content for consumers. The deadline imposed on the industry would work in the following fashion: if they come together to solve these problems in private sector talks, we will empower government enforcement so that all consumer devices comply. If they don't, the government, in consultation with the private sector, will have to step in.
Finally, S. 2048 specifically requires that any standards agreed upon respect consumer's fair use of legally obtained merchandise such as videos and CDs. We live in an exciting technological age and I support and encourage people to utilize new innovative products to their fullest extent as they become available.
Again, thank you for sharing your views and concerns with me on this very important piece of legislation. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future with any questions you might have.
With kindest regards, I am
Sincerely,
Ernest F. Hollings
United States Senator
Piracy *is* a problem, and that highways *do* need traffic cops. But how to solve this is non-trivial.
JWW says: More laws = less freedom
Like freedom of speech? Or laws against stalking? Or licensing for doctors? When you drive a car, the law says you need a license, to prove you're competent. That makes all of us safer.
I believe that good laws = good freedoms.
booch says: Piracy is already illegal.
Is it? You can legally share music with your friends-- but the original law was never meant to protect your million gnutella friends. And when it is illegal, does anyone really care? It's easy to avoid detection, and the laws are almost never enforced, so where's the risk?
Greyjack says: You'd see more and more encryption
Encryption is a dangerous shield. If it's ever broken you're screwed, and how about unpredictable back doors, video surveillance and keystroke captures?
mjfgates says: "the Internet library," and "net censors."
Are you thinking of the free public library, created by our laws, managed by our government, and funded by our taxes?
Companies want to sell things, so it's closer to"the Internet bookstore". A bookstore can put electronic tags in the books, and get police to prosecute shoplifters. What's the equivalent for digital files, for detection and enforcement?
feloneous cat says: Let's see how those "net cops" catch folks in Taiwan.
Extradition happens. And you can bet that the media companies will pressure the U.N. for copyright-protection resolutions.
catfood says: What is the problem you are trying to solve?
Prevent unauthorized sharing. The existing laws for this are difficult to extend to mass digital copying, because of technology (like DeCSS), scale (like gnutella), secrecy (like encryption).
Is anyone here truly innocent of unauthorized sharing?
blankmange says: the loudest... voices are the industries themselves - where the profits are.
What is your best case? If the music companies decline? If the artists get the control and the profits, they also get the copyrights-- yet there's no enforcement. If I create a song and choose to charge $1 for it, I want protection from you stealing it and mass-distributing it. Look, this is a complex issue. The media companies are clearly on the wrong side this time, but they are touching deeper issues that need more careful thinking. Just my two cents.
-- Joel (joel at school dot net)
Will everyone please stop referring to themselves and others as consumers. We are implicitly helping the case of the corporations when we do. We are citizens of [[INSERT STATE HERE]] and the U.S.A. through social contracts embodied by state & federal constitutions. We are not subjects of the corporations.
When those two simple words are changed it affects the whole frame of reference of the arguments. When we use "consumer" it is tilted in favor of corporate policy. When we use "citizen" the corporate stance is weakened.
Let's not play the role (consumer) that the corporations are trying to force on us! Stand up, be a citizen! [Cue patriotic music]
Sorry for the rant...
The solution instead is to serialize each instance of the software sold and cross-reference that serial number with the credit card or other identification of the purchaser, such that if 10,000 copies of program A, serial number #12345, appear on the web the copyright holder can go after the original purchaser as a first step.
I pay cash. And I'm not showing my ID to buy a CD or a movie or a software game. If I have to do that, I won't buy.
It occurs to me that at issue is the basis for the need for the legislation in the first place. Broadly speaking there seems two motivations to address the problem of stealing copyrighted works.
First is the need to ensure that a business is reasonably protected. In this case we probably have to debate the meaning of "reasonably". There are in place now laws which protect copyright holders from infringment of their property. However these laws were probably drafted to address a single entity violating the law such that enforcement costs were commensurate with the loss encurred by the plaintiff. Recent advances in technology and the sort of exponential growth of an infringment now make those laws seemingly impractical. That is, I can share a file with 3 friends, they can share with 3 and so forth. From the perspective of the plaintiff the choice of who to go after is rather difficult insofar as one will have a difficult time extracting relief proportional to the loss. Regarding this perspective I believe I could argue effectively that the government cannot reasonably legislate with this motivation. This is because the cost of the legislation would be rights of citizens. To my mind, and I suspect constituionally speaking, this is a choice which congress is denied. I will ignore here the other aspect of such legislation save to say that I do not think that file sharing is preventable. Given the previously mentioned exponential model it takes only 2 or three initial violators to destroy the integrity of any DRM scheme such that the laws would be practically unenforceable.
If, on the other hand, congress believes that the point of the legislation is to protect a citizens right to a rich and diverse cultural experience then this is, arguably, a reasonable choice that I suspect congress is entitled to ponder. However I believe that I could eventually argue effectively that laws with this thrust did not achieve their goals and, to the extent that's true, argue that the laws are not constitutional because they denied citizens rights without compensation. Regrettably this would require predicting the future.
From these perspectives the only legislative alternative I can see is an enhancement of the copyright infringment laws such that, for example, burden of proof for damages would shift to the defendant in the event proof of violation was made. Or perhaps making it a criminal offense that allowed jail time regardless of the provable damages. The intent, I think, should be to make the cost of violation very expensive to those who violate the copyright laws.
Good luck.
I know you're right in a "back of my mind" kind of way, but a list of examples to provide the Congresswoman would be nice.
Nope, no sig
Non-technical people seem to think that a computer can solve anything and they simply expect too much. Piracy is a people issue, a computer cannot tell you whether a file that was copied was a program you bought, and a program you stole, it does not care. In much the same way a house does not care, it just is. no amount of legislation is going to change what people are not willing to listen too.
Take a look at Enron, they lost 100 billion dollars, a hell of alot more in hard currency that any software piracy. Throw in the ripple effect for other companies 1/2 trillion dollars could be attributed to the immediate after effects. Why did this happen, fraudulent accounting. Was their legislation to deal with this? Yes! Did it keep it from happening? No!
If people are willing to screw their companies over for millions of dollars and noone is going to jail despite how obivious they were. I think you will find it is hard to convince poeple that you need to protect them from piracy for a overpriced 18-dollar music album.
I think any legislation to attempt to include copy protection in all hardware is doomed. Mainly because computers are advancing so quickly that by the time you had figured out a standard for encrypting content, the typical high-end computer would be able to brute-force break it in a few hours.
One piece of legislation I think is REALLY needed though, would be to actually give a clear definition of what "fair use" actually is. I've read some of the copyright law and lots of opinions on what various people think it means and all it's done is convince me that nobody, lawyer or layperson really understands what constitutes fair use.
Some sort of plain-and-simple law that spells it out would solve a multitude of problems currently in the legal system. People can't obey a law if they don't understand what is and isn't legal.
Milo from Kangaroo Koncepts
The already know that technology will not prevent piracy. Consequently they must have the legal right to a criminal prosecution of someone who pirates their content. It's the law that is supposed to prevent piracy.
How about asking them to pass this:
1. Users have the right to "time-shift" content that they have legally acquired.
This gives you the right to record video or audio for later viewing or listening. For example, you can use a VCR to record a TV show and play it back later.
2. Users have the right to "space-shift" content that they have legally acquired.
This gives you the right to use your content in different places (as long as each use is personal and non-commercial). For example, you can copy a CD to a portable music player so that you can listen to the songs while you're jogging.
3. Users have the right to make backup copies of their content.
This gives you the right to make archival copies to be used in the event that your original copies are destroyed.
4. Users have the right to use legally acquired content on the platform of their choice.
This gives you the right to listen to music on your Rio, to watch TV on your iMac, and to view DVDs on your Linux computer.
5. Users have the right to translate legally acquired content into comparable formats.
This gives you the right to modify content in order to make it more usable. For example, a blind person can modify an electronic book so that the content can be read out loud.
6. Users have the right to use technology in order to achieve the rights previously mentioned.
This last right guarantees your ability to exercise your other rights. Certain recent copyright laws have paradoxical loopholes that claim to grant certain rights but then criminalize all technologies that could allow you to exercise those rights. In contrast, this Bill of Rights states that no technological barriers can deprive you of your other fair use rights.
jello.
aka aron.
We might also prevent shoplifting to require all stores to strip-search everyone upon entry and exit, but I think people would just stop shopping.
The alternative is to keep copying illegal, just as it is now. The industry can still use watermarking to find large sources of piracy (e.g. some of the offshore wholesale copiers), but don't try to protect casual copying except declaring it illegal. That can be done today and doesn't require any law. Indeed, theateres have coded movies so Hollywood can find sources of first-run movies that are pirated.
Ask if you can TODAY audit the Congresscritter's computers, or their offsprings computers and other media and see if they would be willing to suffer the penalties of anything you find. By the way, look in the drawers or trunk for pliers, screwdrivers and other "burglary tools" that should be outlawed because they can be used for breaking and entering.
Finally, let them pass this stupid law, but stipulate that as a requirement that any media coming under that law would GIVE UP ALL FIRST AMMENDMENT CLAIMS AND PROTECTIONS (since they want consumers to give up fair use), so that, for example, a town can declare an R rated movie indecent, and drag Jack Valente into court and then prison if they distribute it or send it in the area. Hollywood would then want the bill killed. Or better yet, a porn tax, so that any protected media would have a recorded transaction and a ratings-based tax charged. If they don't like it they can just leave it unencrypted.
I don't think there should be any legislation - period.
I am unable to accept legislation with regards to DRM, IP, etc. Most of the companies that are spearheading this have more influence on our daily lives as it is. In the case of Disney, these people have leveraged Mickey and a dead man's legacy for Billion, possibly trillions of dollars. To think these people approach congress, and in light of their successes, they refer to us as a thieving public destroying their profitability. It is shameful to think that these people are approaching the government designed to protect, the people are the venue by which the companies make money, and are getting somewhere with this.
The entertainment moguls are doing what is natural, what is charged by them and fiduciary responsibility. They are, in the interest of the shareholders, trying to setup a monopoly. This is the goal for big business, and big business has done a lot for the World to date. But there is a limit. The government is supposed to counter balance. These companies don't need the government's help for Christ's sake; the PEOPLE need the government's help! These companies have formed mega mergers and huge OmniMediaPlexes that are rackets which amalgamate into the GIGANTIC monopoly.
This, of course, always overshadows standard copyright laws, fair use and the notion that information wants to be free. I have seen really interesting things in training as a chemist at a university. I have seen and heard of things have copyrights and patents as a symbol. The truly novel and unique and worthy ideas are usually so complicated, intelligent that protecting the "IP" is a moot point, most people can't comprehend what trying to be protected if it novel. This isn't to say that there is no caused for protection, but limits are a good thing. This allows other scientists and innovators too quickly build on the successes of others. Think of this way, if you myriad of patents and copyrighted works didn't make you rich, you probably didn't come up with something very unique. If you leverage the governments of the world to force people to pay for mendacity in order to make money, you are in essence screwing the shareholder in the long run, you need to innovate is diminished and the ability to survive hinges on legislation and not R&D.
In the case with music, these people are the worst anti-competitive types out there. A CD costs almost nothing to produce even with all costs factored in. These companies, unlike, say a University, create racket for which there I no escape, and force the artists to sell their intellectual souls to the company. Eh artists resent it. I f*cking refuse to pay $16 dollars for a CD worth not more than $2-$3. Things like E-music prove that only one song off a CD is generally worth keeping anyways, and the heavyweights of music prove this. People need to realize these people are able to create artificial markets, they call them regions [outwardly, blatantly, and cockily], they are able to prevent capitalism by leveraging their monopolies and rackets and creating markets for themselves. DVD is $6 in certain regions. In the US, its $16-$24. In EU I hear it is even more. This is disgusting.
Another thing that crops ups, and especially pisses off the likes of the extra greedy types like Lucas - stuff appearing and being released before its time, illegal releases. Look, I don't know when this happened. But when the movie is finished, just start playing it. Don't set a date. When the move comes in, just play the damn thing. Jesus Christ. I never thought that people would care when you start selling something. If it's good, it sells it self. [people no longer understand word of mouth]. The media moguls are so disenfranchised with their purchasing public they no longer understand what we want - AT ALL. Believe me, it's not a long extended wait.
The internet has made me impatient. I hate traveling now. I want things now, right away, without delay. In an age without magic, getting things faster make things more interesting. I want it now. Like Veruka Salt. Not having it isn't enough; I don't want to wait, ever. I'll even pay more not to wait. People don't understand this. I love camping kernel.org for the latest release. I love the fact there is no latency. A kernel that was released 10 minutes ago can be ALL MINE! The marketing detritus infecting these mega companies does not know what I want. I don't want to wait in line for a film; I'll use some online service to reserve tickets. My time is valuable, I will never have enough, and these corporate slime want to think of ways to take up more of it, to make me wait. For example, I wanted there to be a Service Pack 7 for NT 4.0. After a promise and a long wait, it never came; Microsoft has no idea how much that did to disenfranchise me. Meanwhile there are others who give you access to daily build and CVS in the OSS world, and my needs can be addressed by a simple email.
Big companies need to be re-edified. They are behemoths destined for doom if the government doesn't force them to be competitive again - including with each other. It's a constant struggle, a supply demand issue, consumer versus company. Neither is good or evil, but people don't buy, don't build it. They don't get this they fabricate losses to insinuate that they are losing money. This is a flaming crock. All losses due to IP and piracy are perceived. It is a result of being disconnected with those who use it, its is a result of poor pricing models. Trust me. They want to arbitrarily set a price and force people to pay it. They don't want to find sweet spots, and stratify their pricing. Its not my fault the most I would pay for an office suite is $75. Anything more, and its either pirated or I'll get it for free. Microsoft doesn't want to know this information, apparently, they have never asked me. So they lose $75 bucks, in essence.
The CDPTA, DMCA, and all other legislation hurts the betterment of the internet intelligence cache. It forces people to make changed that are undesired. It causes obfuscation and the legalization of non disclosure for large companies. It basically promotes the flat out lying to the paying consumer. It exposes people to higher risks - what you don't know can hurt you.
People and companies also have to realize that software is no longer interesting for the most part, the usability of it is. We don't license software in our car's computer. We don't upgrade it. It's a functional unit, and the less we know it the better its working. How we USE software is far more important. The car company bought and SDK and probably got a few software engineers to make this software. The professional SERVICE is worth the money, not the software. The integration is the value add, not the software. This has become my attitude, because using software is really a liability. It's like owning a high powered rifle. It can kill, in terms of downtime. The rifle instructor is able to teach the rifleman how to hit targets and not people or other things inadvertently. The point is the instructor makes the rifle worth something. This analogy could be applied to most anything. It's the truth.
Capitol Hill ©(TM)®, both side alike, are listening to where their money comes from. Big companies, especially Disney, Macrovision, Microsoft, and other lobby the hell out of these people and coerce them into suppressing you; and the rest of the world to some degree via trickle down. These mongoloids in Washington have to get with the program, and start reading the law. There is precedent to handle this stuff; usually most of it can be found pre 1850. There is no need to suppress the people.
Laws are broken every day here now. The US has started to make a hypocrisy of the constitution. Here criminal gets far more due process than those seeking to protect their rights. I want a Heckler and Koch G36C. I like that automatic rifle. The more primary form of law, The Constitution, says I can have it. But I can't. Sates violate my rights. But Charles Manson just got his tenth chance at parole. Due process is for criminals here now. Like Microsoft. They have dragged this out ad infinitum, and now there are dead bodies (figuratively), and the innocent's due process was violated in favor of Goliath.
I hate the government now. I want a vote of no confidence. Both parties now piss on the constitution for fun. Big government has destroyed the essence. If you ever heard the George Carlin skit on Turning the 10 commandments into two it proves ONE THING. MORE "laws" means things are far more complicated then they really are. The crux of a concept does not lie in complexity, its utter simplicity. The miasma of complicated laws are designed to created grey areas and subterfuge by which people and the buying public can be exploited, and this door tends not to swing both ways, trust me.
And to close with my thoughts on Copyright.
I feel it is important to this case, especially from the American prospective, to point out that one of the most ingenious, prolific and outspoken forefathers of the USA, where the DMCA and other vile laws live, believe firmly that the bill of rights should have included and explicit reference to freedom from burdensome and unfair copyrights and legislation thereof.
Thomas Jefferson was concerned about you and me. The people that read periodicals. Everyone as a singular entity. You yourself may not know what's best for you if you belong to something bigger. Our, the USA, laws are supposed to protect the little people.
While I'm not suggesting an armed standoff against federal agents necessary in this case, something must be done. We are railroading an expatriate to whom are laws do not bind. Furthermore, our own forefathers, particularly Jefferson, BELIEVE me he is YOUR friend (not the big monopolies like Electric Companies, Microsoft, Petroleum Companies, etc.)
I'm going to except his beliefs below. Realize that even 200 years ago, the pitfalls of burdensome copyright and the legislation that ensues would erode our freedoms.
......
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), in his correspondence with James Madison (1751-1836) was initially hostile to the provision for copyright and patent law in the United States Constitution. On
Dec. 20, 1787, Jefferson wrote to Madison from France concerning the recently-drafted Constitution:
I do not like... the omission of a bill of rights
providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms
for freedom of religion, freedom of the press,
protection against standing armies, restriction
against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting
force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by
jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of
the land...
Note, here IMHO, TJ wants to along with our other inalienable rights, establish a freedom from Monopoly. These rights, not excluding freedom from monopoly, were to him as core as the rest of our bill of rights. He repeated this view in his letter to Madison dated July 31, 1788:
I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our
new constitution by nine states. It is a good
canvas, on which some strokes only want
re-touching. What these are, I think are sufficiently
manifested by the general voice from North to South,
which calls for a bill of rights. It seems pretty
generally understood that this should go to juries,
habeas corpus, standing armies, printing, religion
and monopolies. I conceive there may be difficulty
in finding general modification of these suited to
the habits of all the states. But if such cannot
be found then it is better to establish trials by jury,
the right of Habeas corpus, freedom of the press
and freedom of religion in all cases, and to abolish
standing armies in time of peace, and monopolies, in
all cases, than not to do it in any... The saying
there shall be no monopolies lessens the incitements
to ingenuity, which is spurred on by the hope of a
monopoly for a limited time, as of 14 years; but the
benefit even of limited monopolies is too doubtful to
be opposed to that of their general suppression.
Madison, in a letter dated October 17, 1788, responded,
With regard to monopolies they are justly
classed among the greatest nuisances in government.
But is it clear that as encouragements to literary
works and ingenious discoveries, they are not too
valuable to be wholly renounced? Would it not
suffice to reserve in all cases a right to the public
to abolish the privilege at a price to be specified
in the grant of it? Is there not also infinitely
less danger of this abuse in our governments than in
most others? Monopolies are sacrifices of the many
to the few. Where the power is in the few it is
natural for them to sacrifice the many to their own
partialities and corruptions. Where the power, as
with us, is in the many not in the few, the danger
can not be very great that the few will be thus
favored. It is much more to be dreaded that the
few will be unnecessarily sacrificed to the many.
I hold the recent copyright extension as an example of what Madison though there was little danger of. There it was said, even by Madison, the proponent of the said directives, that there would likely be no "a sacrifice of the many to the "partialities and corruptions" of a powerful few."
I firmly believe the DMCA is both a corruption and a partiality. Anyone with Macrovision stock will try and convince you otherwise.
Jefferson probably saw that there is some purpose in having intellectual property be protected in some fashion or more likely, IMHO, probably decided that he would rather be a part of creating the ground rules for this countries operations and decided to cut bait at this point. He subsequently said to Madison in a letter on August 28, 1789
I like the declaration of rights as far as it goes,
but I should have been for going further. For
instance, the following alterations and additions would
have pleased me... Article 9. Monopolies may be
allowed to persons for their own productions in literature,
and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not
exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no
other purpose.
The blank was to be filled in at some future date, obviously. The law is written with the sense that this right would be the right of the people to protect themselves against intellectual fraudulence by companies, e.g., the theft of the 'little man's' ideas. In addition to which, there is always the stance that the people of the fledgling USA would be safeguarded in the Bill of Rights against unduly long copyrights.
Jefferson's preference for the term of copyright was submitted to Madison a few days afterward, in a letter of September 6, 1789. The proposed term was that of 19 years, based on actuarial calculations:
The question Whether one generation of men has
a right to bind another seems never to have
been started on this [i.e., the European side --
Jefferson was writing from France] or our [American]
side of the water... that no such obligation can
be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. --
I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be
self evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct
to the living; that the dead have neither powers
nor rights over it... A generation coming in and
going out entire... would have a right on the first
year of their self-dominion to contract a debt
for 33 years, in the 10th for 24, in the 20th for
14, in the 30th for 4, whereas generations, changing
daily by daily deaths and births, have one constant
term, beginning at the date of their contract, and
ending when a majority of those of full age at that
date shall be dead. The length of that term may
be estimated from the tables of mortality. Take,
for instance, the tables of M. de Buffon...
[according to which] half of those of 21 years [of
age] and upwards living at any one instant of time will
be dead in 18 years 8 months, or say 19 years as the
nearest integral number. Then 19 years is the term
beyond which neither the representatives of a nation,
nor even the whole nation itself assembled, can validly
extend a debt... This principle that the earth belongs
to the living, and not to the dead, is of very extensive
application... Turn this subject in your mind, my
dear Sir... Your station in the councils of our country
gives you an opportunity for producing it to public
consideration... Establish the principle... in the
new law to be passed for protecting copyrights and new
inventions, by securing the exclusive right for 19
instead of 14 years.
A Jeffersonian computation using life tables from 1992 gives a Jeffersonian copyright term of 30-35 years. (Vital Statistics of the United States 1992, Volume II--Mortality, Part A, Public Health Service, Hyattsville, 1996, Section 6, Table 6-1.) Note, however, that at least one edition of Jefferson's works has a much abridged version of this letter, in which the 19-year computation and the proposal for the term of copyright do not occur.
One of Jefferson's most famous statements on patent law was in his often-quoted letter of August 13, 1813 to Isaac McPherson, in which he wrote that, since there is no natural right to property in land, how much less is there a natural right to a property in ideas. I think Jefferson's words apply equally well to copyrights as to patents; to "expression" as well as to "ideas": "he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."
"The scary thing about the DMCA is that it affects everyone, but only a subset of the country realizes it exists, of which a subset understands what it means, of which a subset understands why its so wrong. " quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
"Is there a "voice" amongst this subset that has any power to inflict any change here? Kind of spooky. It makes you wonder where things are headed." quote, kstumpf (ken@stumpf.com).
As someone pointed out in a discussion thread previous to this, be sure to realize that copyright is referred to at this point as monopoly in Jefferson's letters.
Its fairly clear that Jefferson uses Monopoly in reference to copyright, which is what it is, you can monopolize on your intellectual property for a set period of time. He was willing to give IP of the day 19 years, but he was very much verbal about fair use, and that public fair use was of the utmost importance.
Even cursory inspection of Jefferson's views shows his distrust of allowing monopolies run rampant.
Even Madison has said:
"With regard to monopolies they are justly classed among the greatest nuisances in government. "
They both realized that in order for Monopolies of any sort to be protected by the government, that undue amounts of arbitration would be necessary.
Jefferson also affords a Monopoly to the Individual, not a corporate entity:
"Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding ___ years, but for no longer term, and for no other purpose."
Surely he isn't suggesting that one person could create a monopoly on, lets say, corn. He was referring to copyright. He certainly isn't suggesting that corn could only be sold by one person for 19 years.
Another thing, imagine if the copyrights were in fact awarded to the people who invented them, not he companies who subsidized them. It would be interesting to see a world where companies like DuPont and Merck (and every other chemical and drug exploitation companies, because that's what they are, the money is in the treatments, not the cure) are made to treat their patent holding scientists with the utmost respect and regard, even more so than the shareholders, because if they left for another company, so leaves their patents!
The most important of all the Jefferson arguments is this: If IP is so unique, so wonderful and so great, why does it need protection? I don't believe I had quoted this particular argument above, I will work to find it, but the statement is true. If something is obvious, then it really isn't IP. Would you like Bob Metcalfe, the Linux is a piece of crap Windows 2000 rules moron who founded 3COM to still hold the patent on ethernet?
Don't you think its nice that other companies compete with 3COM for the ethernet space, such as Intel, CISCO, et al? Doesn't the standard referred to as "ethernet" get better and better because these companies compete for your business in the same segment?
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181.
The message in this passage is clear: an idea is not matter but energy; it cannot be owned, and it isn't diminished by being shared. In any discussion of copyright, it is useful to begin by reminding ourselves that ideas can't be copyrighted and can't be owned--only expression can. Furthermore, even when expression is copyrighted, academics ought to bear in mind their right to Fair Use, a crucial exception to copyright that exists in order to enable teaching, research, and news reporting.
*** This article is a conglomeration of thoughts that I have previously expressed on another discussion thread. If you have seen these before, please note that the ideas were expressed elsewhere as well. ***
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
Why limit Level 0 to lifetime credit? Shouldn't credit be given to the creator of a work forever?
Should Mozart, Beethoven, Ella Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemmingway, etc, always get acknowledgement for the fact that they created their works?
:-)
The legislatures should modify EXISTING copywrite law. by making it LEGAL to copy and distribute art if the person doing so DOES NOT MAKE ANY PROFIT. This would take care of the issue in almost 90% of the cases that people are currently concerned about. The fact is that copywrite law's exist for the good of society and the individuals that compose it. NOT to guarantee profits to corporate entities. The reason copy write law was created ( in part at least ) was because Stephen Foster died without enough money to pay his Dr. while he was one of the most popular artist in America. This happened because he would sell a song to one printer and all other printers would pick up a copy/print it and sell it. Copywrite law is for the protection of artists' rights (The protection of individuals from corporate greed). It doesn't work either well or ethically to try and apply it the other way around. Ideally it should not be possible for a business or corporation to hold a copy write, only individuals. They should not be a transferable asset and should die with the creator of the art.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
It seems to me that, really, the "problem" is that "Copyright" implies that "making copies" is the important part of the exclusive rights for "content owners", when really, the important part is "Distributionright" instead.
The "common sense" understanding of "Fair Use" seems to boil down to "if I paid for it, I should be able to do whatever I want with it, including make copies in different formats for interoperability, archiving, and so on", so every time some wealthy **AA Organization pressures the legislature to "protect COPYright", anything that results will necessarily trample all over "Fair Use".
If, instead, we can get the legislature to focus on DISTRIBUTIONright, Fair use should be protected - at least, more so than it would be if the efforts were to prevent "Copying" rather than "unauthorized Distribution".
(After all, If I 'rip' a DVD that I've purchased to a DivX 5/Vorbis .ogg file for my own use, I don't think any even-remotely-rational person would call that "piracy". It doesn't become "piracy" until I start giving out those files to people who don't have a legal right to the material encoded in it.)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Dude, you blew it! Now they're gonna have to add a serial number and say there are 5! What is your problem???
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
Why doesn't Hollywood just add a serialnumber (in the shape of watermarkings(*)) into every content they wish to "protect"?
Find a protected content floating freely around the net? Get the serialnumber and find out who's the owner of the debited creditcard. Go after the violater, not Joe User.
The upside, the users gets to keep their fair use rights *and* wont be "forced" into the underground networks to find a playable copy of the unplayable medium he have bought. And Hollywood would loose less virtual money to "casual piracy", because, do *you* trust your friends enough not to share your copy with all his friends and in the end letting Hollywood get a copy and sue ass to hell?
The downside, Hollywood don't get to control the users life.
(*) Yeah, I know, watermarkings can be removed. And DRM's can be circumvented. And those who'll engage in either are likely to be the same people, so it's just status quo.
The goal of such a policy would not be to prevent all uncompensated use, nor would it attempt to punish each and every infraction. Rather, the purpose would be to define norms of lawful, honest behavior that allow for the full use and enjoyment of works in digital form, with compensation to rightsholders. Flaunting of these norms would not result in guaranteed penalty, but habitual, intentional violators would be at significant risk. Determined pirates could still evade the law, just as determined shoplifters, drug users, and tax evaders do today. But most Americans do pay their taxes, voluntarily, similarly encouraged by the carrot of doing the right thing and the stick of potential legal consequence. If the Federal government can raise more than a trillion dollars a year this way, is it that naive to imagine that we can actually get authors and other rightsholders compensated using the same approach?
If bill really wants to stop piracy of his products, let him do it by adding 'spy ware' into his OS. There is no reason why he could not figure out who has a valid copy of Office, or an OEMed one illegally transfered from a old PC. Let them risk upsetting thier own users base, rather than letting them buy laws to do thier dirty work for them. There is a delicate ballance between the rights of the consumer and that of a corporation, but alas it seems that many of the new bills just help business at the expense of consumers.
Businesses are becoming bigger and bigger by buying thier rivals to the point where compation does not exist anymore in many industries. I would rather see bills designed to foster compation which would ensure the US remain a technology leader. Or at least the current ones enforced.
The last i checked, every attempt thus far at "digital watermarking" technology has been a miserable failure. Remember the whole bit with Prof. Felton awhile back?
Serial numbers of this sort are a nice idea for a first step, but it is a really bad idea to think of this as a placenta. Basically: you can't trust it to work. Do the serial number thing, and people will just learn before they share stuff on grokster they need to run it through their DRM-cleaner program. Or they'll just not pirate things bought online, and only pirate stuff they ripped from CDs. (and if you try to use watermarking to embed the tag information into the signal on the CD, then you have to come up with a form of watermarking which is A) non-degrading-of-quality and B) cannot be effortlessly removed by a perl script written by some anarchists in norway. chances are good that a watermarking system like this is not even possible.)
( people i know were downloading VCDs of "the Matrix" while it was still in theatres. how will serial numbers on digitally downloaded material stop people from sneaking camcorders into theatres? )
So while a minimally invasive serial-tagging technology would be easy to implement, it is not the solution. It's just a way to amke people think twice before uploading stuff they bought to strangers.
An ID system also brings up the issue of the possible effects on the first sale doctrine. What if i sell my digital rights to the new Kool Keith album to a friend, who sells it to another friend, who sells it to a used cd store, who sells it to some guy who uploads said album to napster with *MY* serial number (since i was the original purchaser of the album) watermarked all inside it. How would "innocent until proven guilty" be maintained there? Would saying "um, i sold the album to someone and deleted it, i don't know what happened after that" hold in Internet Traffic Court?
There are only two solutions to the above problem that i see. The first is to have some massive central "rights management" server which tracks each time that someone sells a digital copyrighted work to someone else so that when it shows up all over FastTrack they'll go after the most recent person to legally own that copy of the album (and not the original purchaser). The second is to create a special class of digital downloaded copyrighted work where you recieve limited rights to it (the whole software 'lease but not sell' model) and do not have the right to resell.I don't think the whole serial-number-tracking thing is viable.
Verr are your papers?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
none, go away, not needed here. no really, the US Govnt can only do more harm than good at this point.
At least Feinstein's upfront with you :p
"new legislation would you support which would make those who engage in online piracy easier to track?"
None. First I want legislation to protect me before I vote for any legislation to stop piracy. (And whan I say piracy, I mean true piracy, the kind that causes harm, not the definition that the RIAA has bastardized in order to explain their lousy sales.)
The reason that the CTPBASPAFP is so awful is that there is all this 'protection' for the handful of corporations trying to get it passed, and none for anybody else. I want legislation that protects my rights so that a corporation cannot impede them. DigitalConsumer.org has the right idea. Establish our rights first. This is absolutely necessary to enact before you can go legislating anti-piracy measures.
Why? Because, for one thing, the MPAA and the RIAA have some extremely broad defintions of what piracy is. They think that burning a song from an MP3 is piracy. It's not. They measure any time they don't force a customer to give them money is piracy. By their defintion of the word, a huge portion of the internet population would have to be punished.
So let's say, hypothetically, that our rights are established exactly as DigitalConsumer stipulates. Now we can start talking about legislation because we know what they law cannot say. It's easier to define what Piracy is at this point and determine a suspect's guilt. Once they do that, then they can investigate individuals or groups who are seeking to distribute their content in a way that causes harm to the normal distribution channel.
Let's say that somebody records an episode of That 70's show, which is available on public broadcast (no cable or satellite required...) and makes it available on the web. Is it piracy? By DigitalConsumer's bill of rights, no. It's space shifting. You can't go after people sharing that show. Does it do harm to the industry? That's debatable. If somebody doesn't watch the show on TV they're missing the commercials that make it money. But wait a minute, that's not piracy. If I missed That 70's Show and f'd up the taping of it, the only other choice I have to watch it is to download it. The studios have a real easy way to get me to watch the commercials for it. Provide it, with commercials, for me to download. Simple. That's why it's not piracy. I'm not relieving their ability to make money off it.
The people's rights are far more important than the corporations'. Protect our rights, and then we'll work with corps in order to keep piracy down. Don't keep piracy down at the expense of our rights.
"Derp de derp."
I would like to point out to you how you CAN get the government officials to listen to you. I have pointed this out before and I will continue until the Slashdot crowd gets it.
YOU, yes, YOU have lobbiest who are voicing your opinions to the government RIGHT NOW. These lobbiests have (near) the same power as the corporate lobbyiest and in fact some of them ARE corporate lobbiest. And that lobbyist is contributing RIGHT NOW, just like the RIAA's lobbyist, to the congressmen for access.
Where is that lobbyist getting his money? From you. Whenever you donate to the EFF, Sierra Club, NRA, Greenpeace, MADD, Mothers against Guns or any other orginization it uses that money for lobbying efforts to further it's agenda (if it doesn't it's not a good orginization and you should not contribute to them). Lobbyists are your loud voice to our officials.
You stated that the only reason we might win this one is because other large corporations are against it. How are those large corporations getting access? Their lobbyiest. In this case their lobbyist are our voice to our government.
I get SICK of hearing that "no-one" is representing our view to our officials or that "we don't have the money that the RIAA has so we won't be listened too". This is absolutely false.
If our view isn't being listened to then GIVE MORE MONEY to orginizations that lobby for your views (the EFF would be a good one in this case). An alternative to giving more money would be to get others to join and give what they can to the orginization if they agree with you. And listen here, I am really not talking about you starving college kids who are trying to get through college. I am talking about all you folks living high on the hog from your profits of the Dot Com era (that is a little joke). Seriously, those of you professionals who own nice houses SHOULD be contributing if you REALLY believe in these issues.
WE DO HAVE A VOICE!!!
(Except for 60 days before an election when it is illegal for us to purchase T.V. ad time to state our views . . . but that is different problem).
-
All of your personal data, including contact
data, belong to you. No person has the right to
use your personal data without your permission.
No person has the right to make such permission a
condition of sale.
-
Software that you buy belongs to you. No person
may restrict your right to modify it, make archival copies or sell it.
-
Statutory damage and legal expenses for
unauthorized use of personal data and for
interference with the consumer's fair use and
first sale rights. Consumer entitled to file in
state courts as well as Federal. Triple damages
if judge determines that the infraction was
deliberate.
After a bill like that passes, I will be willing to discuss what legislation is need to protect the imoverished corporations from the greeedy consumers.I agree here for the most part with a slight twist.
Instead of the serial number being in plaintext, and checked for validity, it should be a watermark entirely invisible for the end-user. Neither the hardware nor user would know the watermark was there.
This has a few advantages:
For the content creators, only they'd have the keys to view to watermark, making it MUCH harder to erase/disable.
What the content providers would have is a tool to track down the source of gross violaters of copyright, while still allowing fair-use.
For the end users, no checking for serial number validity to disable product. This has been a fairly useless feature even for software as the serial is plaintext, it's easy to disable the check.
1. Acknowledge the fact that fair use rights cannot co-exist with effective technological means of copy prevention. Technology cannot and will never be able to accurately determine whether the user has a fair use right to make a copy. Fair use does not place an inherent limit on the number of copies I may make, limit me to using them on only certain machines, or require me to identify myself. When making a purchase, I do not imply my consent to have information about myself or my purchases tracked in any form. Citizens (we are more than consumers!) will not stand for any limitations on fair use rights.
/., this is enough said.
2. Acknowledge that the Constitution intends copyright and intellectual property laws to benefit the people in general and not the IP holders. It is for this reason that copyrights must have a time limit. A restoration of this time limit to a reasonable length such as the original 14 years is long past due. With its present length, copyrights are detrimental to society. Much of the culture and information in this country is privately owned. Virtually all printed publications, music, and media created in my lifetime and my parents' lifetimes (and since I'm only in my 20s, my grandparents' as well) are restricted because of IP ownership. Although I don't have any numbers to back this up, I can assure you that this is over 90% of surviving media and 99.99% of the media commonly used and experienced in our country today. Our culture is effectively under private ownership.
3. Repeal the DMCA. For
4. Protect the rights of citizens with a bill similar to that proposed by digitalconsumer.org.
5. Acknowledge that the battle being waged between the computer and content industries is akin to printing presses vs. scribes and should not be interfered with.
piracy is already illegal you stupid fool. We don't need any more legislation. Go to hell.
"Unfortunately the only postings/articles I have seen which offer a resolution to online piracy have been limited to ways in which the entertainment industry needs to change its business model."
Personally, I'd take that as a clue that the entertainment industries seeking to push this legislation have a business model that doesn't work anymore. You can't have a market seeking legal action every time their business model no longer works. We'd all still be using typewriters and payphones if it worked that way.
"Derp de derp."
As I see it, the folks in Hollyweird have two very legitimate reasons to complain:
/. but the bottom line is that the owner of intellectual property has the right to be compensated for people taking advantage of their creation. If someone has something you want, the market provides a mechanism for you to acquire it: you pay them money. If you don't like their terms, don't buy it. If they choose to give it away, that is their choice; not yours.
1) Professional piracy operations who create and sell illegal reproductions of copyrighted material and
2) Posting of copyrighted material for sharing/download.
Any one person burning copies of CDs or DVDs isn't the real problem. They simply can't make enough of them to significantly harm the copyright holder. Trying to eliminate this would be like figuring out a way to make every photocopier not allow you to copy a page from a book or a magazine and just as unneeded. Who wants to do the equivalent of standing at a copier and copying a book one page at a time?
Back to the real problem. There are already laws on the books to prevent piracy operations. If necessary, the penalties can be made more severe or additional money can be allocated for stricter enforcement. There are also laws in place to prevent people from operating sharing/download sites that provide copyrighted material. Same alternatives as for piraters but go after whoever is providing the server(s) to include peer-to-peer sharing schemes. The only way these can cause significant harm to a copyright holder is if they are known to a large number of people which immediately puts them on the law enforcement radar screen.
This may not be popular here on
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
That's my basic alternative. Repeal of the DMCA would also be necessary. Basically just roll things back to where they were before Disney got involved.
... whatever Holling is calling his bill now. Lets just say the latest Disney bill.
... it is immoral to patronize Disney products.
And Sonny Bono, if you want to be particular. During the 1950's copyright was about where it should have been, except that we were a bit careless about respecting the copyrights of publications from other countries. Since then...
These days I feel that we'd be better off if the copyright laws were just totally revokes. Period. But that's because of the unreasonable extensions and because of ***** like the DMCA and the
Remember
I don't care if the GPL is reduced to the BSD. Revoking copyright would be an improvement anyway.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
How do you expect this to work?America's legal system has gone a bit downhill, but still i somehow just can't see that happening.
And even if no one but the judge was allowed to see the evidence of how they caught the defendant, every judge who is presented with this evidence is just one more person who knows The Horrible Secret of the Fifth RIAA Serial Number Hiding Method. Eventually, someone is going to quietly leak any and all secret methods the RIAA has from the bench to the press.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
if anything like the infamous bill will be passed, tell her that the US may suffer of a great loss in selling of technology oversea.
I suppose that any kind of technology which includes copy prevention systems will cost MORE - and therefore sell LESS in places where such technology is not requested.
Go on from there.. and have fun.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
It is *mathematically impossible* to have any sort of "secure" media format. Attempting to legislate it into existance is tantamount to legislating gravity away. IT CANNOT BE DONE. What you NEED to do is make certian that she understands this simple fact of nature. There is no possible legislation that will work. None at all. The reason why people advocate the changing of business models by those that sell content is simply becuase that is the only possible alternative.
Imagine, if you will, the analogy of power companies wanting to base thier industry on oil, which for the moment is a in abundant supply. Imagine if over the years, they completely run out of oil, and I mean COMPLETELY run out. Now, in order to keep thier business going, they come up with the idea of using an over-unity (free-energy, perpetual motion, etc.) machine to supply them power. Since such a machine does not exist, and CAN NOT exist, which option seems more logical to you (and to your congresswoman): A) Legislate that a perpetual motion machine must be created by the year 2006, or B) Tell the power companies they they will simply have to think up a new business model and explore alternate means of power.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Therefore, allow me to present three proposals that will not prevent copying, but will make it difficult:
Hope the above list of suggestions helps.
[Insert pithy quote here]
There is nothing wrong with letting business float or sink on the sea of Capitalism. If they need government help to keep them from floundering they aren't worth saving. Think about the all the ice harvesting and transporting businesses that went under when refrigeration was invented. The only important point is that music will live on with or without the parasitic recording industry.
Laws should be created to protect the rights of the individual. Creating laws that are designed to protect corporations defeats this purpose, by instead protecting the few that stand to profit from such laws. We as a society need to realize, even though it is much to late, that this is the case and needs to be rectified. Unfortunately since this is no utopia, and the people with money generally get their way, it will never happen.
As for a new proposition I must agree with the rest of the user community that no legislation is needed. If a company is concerned about piracy then THEY should be wholely responsible for creating their own protection against it. Take companies like Citrix for example that have low rates of piracy of their software. You get 32 days to use the software free of charge. If you want to continue you must register it online. It generates a key you must register that is 100% unique to each installation + hardware configuration, so you never get the same key twice. Sure you could hack that but the majority of people would not bother, plus the fact you have to reregister every so often is a pain, because you would have to reload your PC just to reinstall that software.
Anyways that is my 2 cents.
Kix
I can only please one person a day. Today is not your day, and tomorrow does not look good either.
I disagree here on the viability of digital watermarks. Think about it. You need to hide, perhaps 10 characters - 80 bits inside a comparitively large multi-megabyte source.
Heck make it 160 bits. Of course, redudancy adds data, but still we're talking a lot of places to hide data.
Prof. Felton's studies simply show what happens when you try to innovate via litigation rather than in an open, peer-reviewed environment. They (studios) started to take the first step, and then didn't even finish it. Engineering's an iterative process. They didn't even complete one iteration before the sharks got involved and the whole thing was killed. Heck in my designs, I've got a rule - Designs NEVER work right the first time; if it appears too, you've missed something.
If we had a bunch of bright people working on a open watermarking standard I'm confident that they could come up with a viable solution.
And I don't think that this would need to be tied to any "serial-number-tracking" system at all. It would simply give law-enforcement, and content provider a method for tracking large scale violations.
Why are legislators who can't even balance their own checkbooks (remember the Congressional Bank scandal) and can't balance the budget trying to deal with information technology issues. Why don't they first deal with real issues like the health care crisis, election and campaign reform, the rising cost of living and lack of affordable housing for low imcome Americans, the problems with the educational system, etc. Or would they rather behave like the cronies of big business and dodge the issues that matter to the average person. And we wonder why half the people in this cuontry don't vote.
"As flies to the wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport." - William Shakespeare, King Lear
The internet and the computers connected to it are physical things that can be controlled by law or force. The internet is also an idea, and people have gotten used to the idea of being able to send _any_ data to anyone anywhere. Theres no spin-docter in the world who can persuade them to give that up, and any one who tries to pass laws will just have those laws ignored.
Even Disney and Hollings will have to work hard to convince the public that giving the government control of their computers and practically outlawing all computer-science, engineering and electronics degrees is a good thing.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If you propose something "reasonable" as an alternative to CDBPTA (whatever...), then that's bad. Because the sides will "compromise" on something between what you propose and Hollings' odious bill.
:-)
Instead, you must take the offensive. You must show the illegitimacy of Hollywood's entire position. I favour this approach:
Copyright law should be analagous to patent law. You can copyright something, which gives you a limited monopoly, but requires full disclosure in an unencumbered format (like a patent.) Or, you can use a technologically-protected format, in which case the law is similar to trade secret law. Your material is NOT protected by copyright, and if someone breaks the protection, tough luck -- your work is in the public domain.
Unencumbered format == copyright protection.
Technological protection == no legal protection.
Simple, straightforward and fair. And it will certainly spur the developers of technological protection to come up with good schemes.
The industry would not go for this(not to mention treaties and what not), but I think it could be allright (after some more thought and tweaking)
allow harsh draconian laws like DMCA but
link them to the following:
-Repeal current business process patents and prohibit new ones from being issued. look and feel patent/copyright protection as well.
-Repeal all of congresses numerous past extensions to copyright. back to 14+14 years
-Make the copyright term for software or mixed software/media be 5years.
-Require submission (to internet library for instance) of a unprotected, unencrytped, digital copy (ascii source, hi-res photo, DVD-master, etc) of material in order to receive any copyright protection at all for that material.
This way the greedy industry still gets to rape consumers and content creators but only for a short time and we get our fucking public domain back.
The CBDTPA is not copy protection legislation. The existing DMCA is all the copy-protection legislation we (or, more precisely, the media industry) could ever want. The CBDTPA is business promotion legislation: it's hard to jumpstart a new technology, due to chicken-and-egg problems: it's not profitable to create content in the brave new copy-protected, rights-managed format until people have players for it, but nobody's going to get the players (never mind how unattractive they'd be) if there's no content for them. So this law simply forces everyone to get the new players, so that the media industry can begin selling us all that glorious new content in their glorious new (for them) formats.
So suddenly do we have to register each cd we buy with our name an address? If I buy a cd that is telling me to take drugs and overthrow the government will my name get tagged too? I dont like that idea.
Mess Stuff Up
Why should they not have to change their business model? The world changes. We adapt. They should too.
ac
Who decided that the only course of action is legislation? Here's a thought: Don't pass dumb-ass laws when you don't understand the things you're trying to control.
One problem. When half-life came out it was one of the first games to have the cd-key stored server side, so that you couldn't play online if someone else had your key (ie, no wide-spread keys for all the pirates to use).
Well, some enterprising people would go to the store (or they worked there), open the box, get the legit key, then return the game. Now they had a working cd-key. Then someone comes and buys that same box. They try to play, and their key comes up as pirated. They didn't do anything wrong but still got screwed.
Server side checking only works when you're forced to connect to their servers to verify the key, so in your example of serialized movies, you would have to dial in to the MPAA's servers before you could watch anything, and if they decided to revoke you key then you're outta luck.
So, good ideas, and I totally agree that legistlation won't do anything but fill up more of our prisons with non-violent offenders.
Travis
This has a big pile of problems.
First, those serial numbers can always be removed. It's not always easy, but only one person has to do it for an unnumbered copy to "escape" onto the web.
Second, if the serial number is used to trigger million-dollar court cases, then someone who steals a DVD from your briefcase is causing you a million-dollar problem (he can distribute it and get you sued) instead of a $20 problem (replacing the DVD).
Third, mass-market digital media formats (DVDs, CDs, etc) are stamped from a master, which leaves them not well suited to serialization. Software serialization only works because you type in the number yourself.
And last, tying serial numbers to identification is heavy-handed. It pretty much eliminates the possibility of cash purchases, movie rental, or resale. The market simply won't bear it.
Frankly, I doubt that even in the software world, where serialization roughly works, that it would be sufficient evidence to convict someone of piracy in a court of law.
It's unclear to me how anyone could confuse serial numbers with a placenta. I think the word you're looking for is "panacea".
...is sufficient already, it's just its enforcement is lacking, being replaced by racketeering-style "audits" by shady organizations dressing up as a law enforcement. If some bootleggers indeed are causing problem, go after them. If some noncommercial redistribution indeed is a worthy target, sue _someone_ who does it, and try to scare others by doing so, however won't be surprised if "billions of lost revenue" will happen to be total 1000 DVDs per year for the whole country that someone might buy because he can't find a shitty DIVX copy, with the total amount of revenue insufficient to justify a single clerk writing cease and desist orders.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
There is ABSOLUTLY no new law required to "fix" this problem. Watermarking works to some extent if you want to track down larger infringers randomly watermarking would be a somewhat cost effective solution since according to them it's rampant and everybody is ripping muscic video etc and making avalible on the net (it's mostly the 56k trolls) Exisitng laws can then be utilized look at the BSA for a draconian example. Even teired watermarking could be used to localize the source first the network then the cable co then maybe event the settop box or Sat receiver adding a little in. But changing ANYTHING at the consumer level just means that new black boxes and hack with circumvent those watermarking injections.
As to new technologies like HDTV the standard is allready there dont muck with it it will just slow down consumer adoption and invalitate the origional claim of cheap set top down converters for people that dont want to upgrate after the mandated change. It's all analog at the end there is NO way to stop it from being copied back into DRM free digital people that use the pirated content dont care about quality to much especial in the video segment. What happened to the law that said anything broadcast into your yard you could do anything with except if it was a state secret (aka no decoding military stuff) we stripped out an exclusion for the satalite industry NBC broadcasts into my yard in doing so gave up there rights to the content while giving me a little extra dose of radiation. Movies and DVD's are one thing but broadcast information shouldent be allowed the same standards of rights it invaded my house I didnt ask it there and they cant not send it there.
pls see _Noir_ by K.W. Jeter
> It's very simple. Introduce some sort of
> Draconian legislation, not because you expect
> it to be passed, but to soften the electorate
> for a "compromise," which is what you really
> wanted in the first place.
So I guess the alternative Draconian bill would be to completely eliminate copyright law. That would cause the special interests to seek the compromise we wanted (get rid of the DMCA only).
And even if no one but the judge was allowed to see the evidence of how they caught the defendant, every judge who is presented with this evidence is just one more person who knows The Horrible Secret of the Fifth RIAA Serial Number Hiding Method.
And of course the judge can't be the only person who knows. The defense have to have the opportunity to challenge the evidence, to argue that the serial number isn't unique after all, to show how it could have been changed at some point etc. The defense have to know how the system works if there's going to be any pretence of a fair trial.
Congress wants to pass a law, so let them. Let it include these sections:
- NOMENCLATURE: CONSUMERS. Many bills and laws refer to the consumers of electronic devices and services as 'USERS', while non-elctronic device and service bills and laws refer to 'CONSUMERS'. CITIZEN or CONSUMER should be the term used, not USER.
- SUPPORT OF SOFTWARE. All software and hardware requires support. When consumers are unable to obtain support from the producer (unsupported products) the community MUST be able to reverse engineer those programs. In order for that to work, copying of software must be available without restriction once a producer discontinues support for a program. At such time that any group fails to provide support for a reasonable cost and within a reasonable time, all IP rights must be dissolved. To prevent lawsuits against people who support these projects, any software patents would also be dissolved. If a component in the software wishes to keep their patents, the group must release their source to a GPL-style license. Congress has all power of patents, so that shouldn't be hard for them, except in their pocketbooks. This provision cannot be taken away by license or other agreement.
- SUPPORT OF MEDIA. All media fail. CD-ROMs and DVDs get scratches, melt in the sun, etc. Any law preventing the duplication of media to any degree MUST support complete and free replacement of damaged media UNTIL THE MEDIA TYPE IS NO LONGER USED. (That means that 8-tracks are just now leaving the market, and the big black records are still good and must allow either duplication or free replacement.) If the tools for duplication of media are controlled with DRM, the provider must allow free and infinite replacements of media, and transitions to unlimited other media for backups (rather than a single backup copy). This provision cannot be taken away by license or any other agreement.
- PROMOTION OF BROADBAND. The CBDTPA states that it is trying to promote broadband distribution. Rather than restricting the rights of broadband consumers, a law promoting broadband should instead enhance the rights. True promotion of broadband would consist of a subsidy, fee restrictions for providers, no limit on NAT devices, and offering of services at reduced costs to the elderly and poor / college students. Because high-speed Internet access providers are currently appending the charges for regular telephone services (universal access fee, etc), they should be required to follow the same regulations.
- LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY. Current licenses tend to terminate all liability on the part of content producers. It is obvious that poorly written software is being exploited in the form of viruses, worms, and other destructive programs. I am a developer and understand that bugs happen even in good code; but some accountability must exist. Developers and corporations should not be able to sidestep all liability, indirectly harming consumers with poor products. Product support (as outlined above as a REQUIREMENT) should include timely and appropriate corrections to all software defects as support (30 days?), or immediate termination of all IP rights as discussed under SUPPORT above. Corporations can still license away all liability, but only on the provision that by law they must terminate all copyright and IP rights when so licensed, so that consumers can fix problems that arise.
A law with those provisions (and no loopholes) would protect consumers by removing some of the stigmatism of calling consumers "USERS", allow users to fix problems if the producers are unwilling or unable to, promote broadband (which is a stated goal of the CBDTPA), and allow a stronger legal ability for corporations to limit financial liability on programs.
That should hit most of the problem. BUT, it would be nearly impossible to get such a law passed thanks to the greed and fat wallets of the majority of Congress and the greed of corporations trying to get a bigger slice of the pie than they deserve.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
You're oversimplifying the problem.
Your 80 bits or 160 bits have to survive intact and be clearly recognizable after undergoing lossy comperession designed to remove any data that doesn't actually affect image / sound quality.
BUT at the same time they have to be impossible to find. If I compare bit for bit 10 different originals of the same CD I mustn't be able to identify the bits that contain the code.
And just doubling the number of bits is nowhere near enough redundancy. If you have two copies of the code and one of them identifies it as having originated on the CD that was sold to me and the other one doeasn't you haven't really proved that I had anything to do with it - if one copy of the code has been corrupted or altered then maybe both have.
what about the meenies out there that crack the serial system and thereby have acces to all the codes for the program.
or how about the bruteforce method of cracking the software.
No the problem is not solved. But i dont think it id the governments responsibility to do so either.
I must agree to that the governments of our day are far more attentative to companies than to their normal citizens. our needs aren't important anymore the companies more important than the people they are supposed to represent.
This isn't liberalism, this is capitalism and the people with the power are on the side of the corporations.
Just a comment
So you should, like, have to provide an ID everytime you buy a CD?
If the net police monitor your communications in order to fine you if you do something wrong, they would be violating the 4th Amendment. By monitoring you without "probable cause", they are violating "due process" by having a presumption of guilt.
so... NO!
If piracy is a problem, make it illegal. Oh wait, it already is. Well in that case, stop whining and go enforce existing laws.
As others have noted, laws to shut down file sharing can't work without destroying the usefulness of computers. This is an enormous cost to society.
If the concern is that copyright holders aren't making money when their goods are pirated, and that becomes a real economic issue, then it needs to be solved in those terms. Piracy can't be stopped. But copyright owners can still be paid.
The solution is that the government would have to take over paying the copyright owners. It would be a giant, ongoing, permanent bailout of the music industry and other affected businesses. This would be costly, but the costs would be visible. Everyone would see how much the government was paying, every year. This is unlike regulations and anti-piracy measures, which have huge costs but they are hidden because each person is silently harmed. It is best for costs to be visible so society can judge whether the rewards are worth it.
There would have to be some way of monitoring how much each song is pirated. This would depend on the nature of song distribution in the future. Maybe some kind of monitoring programs could sit on the gnutella network and count requests. Or maybe people could vote for their favorite artists and the funds could be dispersed that way. Whatever method was found would have to be immunized against technological trickery, e.g. download daemons to drive up the "score" of a particular artist.
In the long run we may need something like this if piracy starts really cutting into the revenues of the content companies. It is a way for people to get paid even when their work is available for free. Perhaps it is not too early for the government to begin studying this kind of technology. They could set up some committees and study groups. That would be a step towards a long term solution.
So according to Senator Hollings' wording, all the content industry has to do is stall for a year, then they get to dictate a solution without the consumers or electronics industry getting in the way?
i.e. a law enforcement type of agency which monitors web traffic and fines individuals which break laws, i.e. distribute copyrighted information?"
These days, with legislation like the NET Act, that "traffic cop" is really the FBI and DOJ, and they don't hand out fix-it tickets and $200 speeding tickets. They hand out 1-5 year prison sentences, and lifetime passes to scrutiny from law enforcement.
Just a little clarification -- I thought the italicized quote above was just too candy-coated & removed from reality.
Another point -- require them to keep copies of any hardware needed to play the media, and require them to provide hardware to law enforcement, government archives, or the copyright office at any time. This would last for the lifetime of the copyright. As a hedge against them going out of business, the hardware (and all specifications needed to rebuild it if necessary) should be escrowed somehow.
This is a serious problem already -- according to a friend at the US National Archives, they're already having problems getting players for seven inch open-reel audio tapes.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
You can choose to enforce the existing laws and actually prosecute those people who break it, or you can make it illegal to produce anything that will facilitate the breaking of the unenforced laws. You can shield the people who violate copyright laws, or you can protect people's rights to produce hardware and software of multiple uses, but you cannot do both.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
with my social security number, which could be linked to my Passport(tm) account, tatooed in barcode form on my shoulder, and implanted in a Unique Identifier Chip subdermally. Then when they catch me trying to be a l33t pir8 the could remotely disable me. That would be a great solution, where do I sign up?
What I meant is that if you maliciously fail to give credit then the government could define that as a crime or make you civily liable. For example, if a member of academia plagarizes someone else's work and makes money off of that the government could give the original creator a choice: sue the person or send him to prison.
They are not entitled to any further legal protection as this time. With the infinite copyright protection laws (we all know that if we made it to the point that a copyright would expire Disney, etc would get copyrights extended again) they have the legal power to control copying of their material for plenty of time.
I might be a little more accepting of DRM ideas for recent performances if copyrights were limited to 20 years.
That way I could get unencumbered digital copies of works such as Star Wars: A New Hope, Saturday Night Fever, Emergency (the TV show), CHiPs, I Love Lucy, etc.
There is the another side to the issue though. Electronic media works by copying the data from one place to the other. It is not feasible to allow only the copying you approve of and deny all the rest of the copying.
Additionally legislative copy protection puts barriers in the way of amateur and/or poor (in money, not quality) content producers because software cannot distinguish between an independent film and an unauthorized copy of a copyright protected work.
I have enchanged some messages with my congressman about it and contemplated the ideas myself and I keep coming back to the idea that any laws requiring digital rights management and the like can only do harm and impede progress and creativity.
As both an amateur film-maker and a professional programmer, if a digital rights bill passes I will only be harmed and in no way will I benefit from it.
The MPAA/RIAA people need to look at their priorities. Microsoft is a nice example of what can happen when your "intellectual property" is copied and transferred willy-nilly all over the internet. Microsoft has still managed to turn a profit in spite of being a huge victim of software piracy. (One list I saw placed Microsoft at #1 and Disney at #37.)
They already managed to make digital audio tape (DAT) virtually useless. Now they want to make our computers and televisions useless as well. I'm sorry but they're not entitled to it.
Coding Blog
Im thinking 'cash is king' If I have 50 bucks to plonk down is the guy behind the counter going to refuse my 50 bucks? Or 500 copies got 'missplaced' in some storage yard and sold for cash. OH how about we dial in and 'activate' them. Oh that didnt work with DIVX. If a copmany treats its customers as thieves they may just decide they dont like the garbage being shoveled out...
Any sort of 'protection' that is come up with will be ripped right off. For example DVD. Which btw has pretty good protection? Dont belive me? TRY to break it with out using decss or any of the 'known keys' Try to actually figure out what the keys are on your own. Guess what you wont. The only reason DeCss came up was because one of the software dvd players left the keys in such a place that the guy could figure out what thier key was and then derive whatever key he wanted from that. You can bet the next version of DVD will have a vault door for security. But someone will screw up and the keys will be out. Or there will be a flaw in it that makes it a snap to crack. try Foolish DVDs
Also anything that is encoded must be decoded so you can copy it there. Or you can just make a bit for bit copy and the decoder will not know the difference. Most copy protection is just silly and bypassable.
To legislate it to make it so you can not do it is even MORE dumb. Just because its digital does not mean its 'new'. Its just a different way of saying something. We HAVE copyright laws. Like them or hate them we HAVE them. They just need to enforce what they got. Dont belive me. go watch a vhs or dvd. Got a FBI warning right on the front that tell exactly what will happen to you. Same exact thing on the back of cd's. /p
Note the part where he refers to citizens of the United States of America as "consumers".
That, to me, shows his disgusting attitude towards us more than anything. I'd say to find another Congressman to apply your votes to, and let Corporate Congress members such as him slide down the drain, like so much washbasin slime.
What you are describing is technology helping the police enforce traffic laws, but it does not in itself enforce traffic laws. You still have control of your car, you can still break the speed limit when you want. The CBDTPA wants to making it *impossible* to break the copyright, not merely report to the authorities. The equivalent traffic enforcer would be a black box controlling the car directly, with radios by the roadside directing what those local laws are. That is what cannot be done, and what the CBDTPA attempts to do.
:-) shut to prevent tampering. You would have to go to a licensed garage just to check the oil and change the air filter.
Furthermore, your example has the black box in a rental car, which very few people are interested in maintaining by themselves. How likely is it that this kind of control will be added to private cars? You would have to lock the hood (bonnet
And even if such a situation actually existed, how long would it be before someone stole a roadside transmitter from a fast highway and kept it in near his antenna, so he could always go highway speeds? You know there would also be transmitters available, just as radar detectors are still available even in states where they are illegal.
The CBDTPA is unenforceable.
Infuriate left and right
Here's a tactic that would be fun. The World Trade Organization (WTO) was established to help prevent non-tariff barriers to trade; basicly these are spurious laws not involving tariffs that are passed to protect entrenched industries. For example, one country could claim that the rice from another country causes cancer, when in fact it doesn't, and use laws to restrict this rice. The WTO takes cases involving these issues and resolves them; if a country does not remove the offending law, the WTO can punish the country quite stronger, including trade embargoes.
I personally do not support the WTO, but it seems like what the RIAA and MPAA want in the CBDTPA could be called a non-tariff barrier to trade: one industry, the computer industry, is threatening them in the marketplace, so they resort to a non-tariff legal approach to solve this issue, the CBDTPA. Could we file a case with the WTO on behalf of a technology company, maybe in another country (South Korea perhaps, where many computer electronics are located?) against a company in the U.S. (probably against the Big Five entertainment companies)? If a WTO case goes through, the offending country can be subject to quite large punishments. The great thing about this case is that it does double duty; it both makes traditional defenders of the WTO see them as gadflies (free-market conservatives + BigCos), and it also might possibly embarass America on the international stage (as if America really cares about that though). This plan kinda uses the WTO the same way Stallman uses copyright, inverting its original intentions.
Thanx,
Brad Neuberg
Eh artists resent it. I f*cking refuse to pay $16 dollars for a CD worth not more than $2-$3.
Where do you come up with these figures? Break it down for me please because I just don't see how bands that are getting screwed over a $16 CD are going to be less screwed on a $3 CD.
The sad thing is writers take it in the ass a lot harder than recording artists do but no one gives a shit. We don't care because we don't have an easy way to steal their work yet. Once we do and the writers start complaining then I'm sure we'll all come to the table about how the publishing industry is ripping off writers so we can justify ourselves ripping off the publishers.
'Same speed C but faster'
Their offer:
-outlaw computers as we know it
Our offer:
-repeal DMCA
Compromise:
-do nothing
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
What if my workstation doesnt have an internet connection. So now i am required to have the internet to use photoshop 7, (as an example)
Could be an interesting virus also here. "Please insert the cdrom for xyz"
the virus/tojan craps that one file that has the serial info on it and uploads it somewhere
I like the bit about public debt not exceeding 19 years, by TJ. Kind of makes the recent death of the long bond seem more reasonable.
The truth about online piracy is that if your sending your MP3s to everyone and their brother it's easy to find out about... ...this happened with Napster. MP3s were not that popular until Napster got going. Before then for those of us who really wanted to find free music we found MP3 search sites and so forth. It is easy to track and it's ease is in direct relation to how much piracy is going on.
I'd concentrate on the findings of congress, which are important to the law being upheld and why they are just plain wrong.
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect
1% of 3 is a lot worse than 1% of $16. Also, cheaper CDs would make annoying shit like Macrovision go away. There would be less vultures feeding off of CDs if the margin wasn't 10-100 fold per CD. Maybe the ideal is that the guy making the CD and the artist gets the cut and the artists hires marketing slobs if they need them. Maybe we can encourage artists not to depend on these horrible Media Complexes for air in the market. I mean, B. Spears? This is what those companies buy us for all our $16 CDs. Fuck them.
Artists should start pumping out CDs on their own accord and profiting from concerts.
I also thing music should be all you can eat. It's so subjective, the radio stations play garbage, and most of the tracks on a CD are crap, save one or two. If E-music were to have higher bit rates, I would have signed up already. I want to try before I buy; there is no lemon law against bad music.
All you can eat music is the only thing that makes sense.
Absolutely none. You're asking for a compromise position with evil, frankly. Copyright infringement is already illegal, and that's all it needs to be. The only legislation I would support in this area would be a repeal of the DMCA and a drastic rollback of copyright terms to pre-Disney levels, as well as decriminalization of copyright infringement (it should be only a civil offense).
Don't know about the US , but where I come from, USAGE IS A SOURCE OF LAW. Meaning that if most people share their paid software/movies/music with their friends, it becomes , through the ruling of a judge recognising its widespread existence and the futility of prosecution on this matter, force of new legislation. Precedent in court becomes law by itself! No need for Congress thank you ... or only
to officialise the reality of court rulings.
The only legislation that will help at this point would be legislation that defines IP piracy narrowly enough that there are a manageable number of pirates.
According to the conglomorates, piracy is doing anything with an IP that they havn't explicitly conceived of and allowed. This definition is so broad and so overbearing that its useless.
Consider a speeding ticket. They came up with a new class of law for a speeding ticket. Its an "infraction," not a crime or a civil offense. The standard of proof is whether the defendant showed some reasonable evidence that it didn't happen. And the penalties are tiny: fines less than a couple hundred dollars leading up to the eventual loss of your drivers' license.
Why did they need to come up with a trivialized form of law for speeding? Because virtually everybody speeds at least some of the time.
The lesson: you can't criminalize something that everybody does at least some of the time. You can either have an "IP court" next door to the traffic court (an abomination if I do say so myself) or you can take a smarter approach:
Define some core consumer rights:
1) The right to _own_ a purchased copy of an IP, even if the license purports to make it a rental.
The constitution talks about offerning authors an inventors the opportunity to profit from their works... Not the opportunity to control them. And with good reason - control is the opposite of freedom.
Ownership might complicate things a little at Blockbuster: A return would have to be architected as a repurchase of the IP instead of merely returning a rental. But so what? College book stores do it all the time: you buy the book with some confidence of being able to sell it back at the end of the semester.
2) The right convert an IP from one physical media to another (copy a CD to a cassette tape for the car), or to undertake or enable reasonable steps which accomplish the same result (download an mp3 of the exact song you own on CD, rather than having to rip and convert it yourself).
Is it reasonable that someone who wants to listen to a song at work, in his car, and at home should have to buy it three times? Or that someone who bought the IP 10 years ago should have to buy it again just because LP records have gone out of style? Of course not! Make that sort of activity not just reasonable, but in fact the law.
3) The right to modify any copies of an IP that you own in any way desired, and the right to create and distribute tools which perform such modifications.
Perhaps even go so far as to state that the owner of an IP forfeits the right to punative damages if he publishes the IP using a manner in which he intends to deprive the purchaser of these rights. No punative damages allowed if the DVD was published with CSS!
I'm allowed to write notes in the margin of a book, rip out pages, doodle on it, etc. I can sell the book to someone else later. I can even rip it in half and sell one half to one person and one half to someone else! Why should my rights with other types of IP be any less? They shouldn't!
4) Apply the legal standard of intent - that someone pirating an IP or enabling the piracy of an IP either intended to acquire an IP to which they did not own any rights or that they had demonstrated negligence in taking no reasonable steps to avoid enabling such piracy. (after all, a file on an open server is a little like a swimming pool: an attractive nuisance. No fence = no defense in court.)
With those rights firmly established, how many pirates will be left? Only the modern Robin Hoods who who set up download servers with no attempt to validate a recipient's ownership of the IP. You can deal with them either in the form of criminal theft or as civil cases. Either way, there are few enough that they can be dealt with effectively.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Hollywood wants to create another revenue stream. This copyright stuff is just a convenient vessel to do so.
.com's are not wasting millions on TV ads like they did in the 1990's.
If you account for inflation, the music, movie and tv industries are making less money (profits) than they were before.
Think of it, what were the gross ticket sales for E.T. and Star Wars versus Titanic and the other newer "blockbuster" movies? The list is here. The newer movies just are not making the same money that the old ones did. Very much a "good ol' days" analogy.
It is the same for the music industry. The marketing required to get the big album sales is tremendous. MTV, VH1, and the 3 or 4 companies that own most of the radio stations (Viacom etc.) in the US only play what pays.
TV has lost potential revenues from advertisers over the years due to restrictions on what types of companies are allowed to advertise on TV. There are no more hard liquor or cigarette ads, both industries that having massive cash reserves. That is why the TV industry pushed so hard to be able to get back prescription medication ads. And that is why you see so many Viagra, Prilosec and others ads on the TV now. They can afford it, and the
Despite all of this, I think it is ludicrous that Hollywood (the entertainment industry as a whole really) is pushing so hard for the DMCA or whatever.
Business' must adapt, or face the consequences. Look at IBM, Apple, and Microsoft. Who adapted the best to the situation around them? Microsoft did. Who should have the monopoly? IBM. Who should have a much more significant share of the market? Apple.
Different companies, different business models, different results.
The Internet is a network of interconnected private networks. It was built this way so as to circumvent the middlemen. So far, the telco's and most governments failed to excercise any significant control over the network. The Hollywood lobby thinks they stand a chance. I say let them try.
I'd love for you to impress upon our woefully ignorant, arrogant, and moneygrubbing legislators with the simple fact that folks have been doing what ever they durn well please with copyrighted, and even patented information and devices for some number of years.
That being said, I believe Hollings and all his PAL's need to know is that if I want to read a book on the toilet, throw it in the toilet, cram it where the sun does not shine, read it on moonshine, read it with a Linux box, read it with a fox, put it in my socks, etc... I have a Fair Use right to do so. I paid for it, and as long as I do not use it to make money or plagiarize someone elses IP, IT IS MINE!
Before they legislate the rights, and technology for protecting the copyright holder, they need to state, and protect the rights or the purchaser. There are plenty of current laws to protect the holder, and none to protect the purchaser.
One final point in this regard. As the dishonorable creep (Hollings) thinks about this, remind him of the rights he and his collegues tried to legislate... UCITA which gives all rights, protections and privileges to the MNC's while allocating ZERO rights to the consumer.
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Please forgive the lame Ascii Art, but nitpickers can be pretty busy and might overlook something important like this.
As well as the serial number in a known position, add a small amount of random noise to the media, which is recorded and tied to their serial number via a database. Its easy to obscure with an audio filter, but as random noise follows no particular algorithm, it can't be completely removed from a single copy like watermarking can.
To remove it properly they'd need two legit copies. Who could be stuffed doing that? And the fear factor of being identified as having removed the known serial number would stop a lot of people.
Basically, it's a bit of social engineering.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The defense have to have the opportunity to challenge the evidence, to argue that the serial number isn't unique after all, to show how it could have been changed at some point etc. The defense have to know how the system works if there's going to be any pretence of a fair trial.
While I agree that it's not fair, such things already happen. Remember the trial of that Mob guy about 6 months or a year ago? They put a keylogger on his computer (there was a Slashdot story on this). They would not, however, reveal to the defense how the keylogger worked, so the defense couldn't determine the validity of the evidence gathered that way. The judge let them get away with refusing this information to the defense too. I wonder how often this kind of stuff happens now.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Seriously do they think a USA law will have any effect on digital theft ? I see it as a law that if it gets passed will be quickly repealed.
It would be just like if everyone right now in the usa started using illegal drugs. You can't throw the whole population in jail. People are going to continue to share music, media, digital content for as long as it exists.
The only hope those trying to profit from it have is that the people using the content have enough moral high ground to pay for it.
I seriously expect the whole software and digital content, music, movies, etc to go broke in years to come as broadband spreads and only grows faster.
A law will not stop what people have rationalized as okay. This was proven in prohibition in the usa. It didn't work then and it won't work now. Too many want it.
The IP mafia already has more than it should have with the DMCA. If you actually think the slashdot crowd (including me) would tolerate (not to mention support) legislation supposed to keep peoples activities on the internet under constant surveillance you should stop smoking whatever you smoke real soon.
Ther invention of railroads changed the world dramatically. suddenly it was possible to travel fast and far without paying unreasonable amounts to get a passage via horsecart and risk being robbed on the way. The owner of horsecarts weren't too happy about that, but noone would've thought of demanding that trains travel no faster than a horse. The same goes for telegraphs obsoleting messengers, phones obsoleting telegraphs, automobiles making railroads second choice, TVs taking a bite out of the revenuestream of cinemas (noone demaded a TV-fee for not going to the cinema), fridges putting the iceman out of business, ...
So what is fundamentally different here? Computers and the internet change our world, but so did other things before. Looking back we can see now how futile it would have been to stand in the way of those past developments, and how anyone who did stand in the way didn't win anything by that. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, and even the RIAA and the MPAA know that. If they want to survive they will have to adapt, and all the bickering about pirating serves just to buy them time. Why didn't they offer music over the net under acceptable conditions? And sorry, paying as much as for a CD for worse quality, major usage restriction and an expiration date on the content doesn't sound like a good deal.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Now, the problem is that the "exclusive rights" copyright uses -- such as the right to control reproduction -- are very problematic on the internet for two reasons:
That wouldn't be such a problem, except the massive costs of this extremely poor security model will be passed on to the public.
Now, as for alternatives, they come in two flavours -- there are the bottom-up, decentralised ones, such as the Street Performer Protocol (a variant of which Stephen King used very succesfully, even if it wasn't always reported correctly). Other bottom-up models include Ian Clarke's "fairshare", gift economies, or tipping systems. None of these alternatives require government support, and have been slow to take off (many people blame the lack of safe, easy micropayment facilities), but no doubt there's a lot government could do to encourage them.
There are also government-supported alternatives, in which funds are raised through voluntary tax credits, or taxation (which could be levies on hardware or internet usage, or general revenue) and allocated to artists in a decentralised fashion, by the public. An example of this kind of model is described in Steven Shavell and Tanguy van Ypersele, Rewards versus Intellectual Property Rights, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001.
I'm just finishing a paper on applying publicly funded reward models to copyright on the net -- it's not quite ready for public release yet, but email me if you'd like a copy.
Also, you can find more interesting sources at this wiki, and I'm just in the process of setting up these mailing lists for discussion of these models.
Fixing copyright
Because the issue won't go away until it is. This has nothing to do with logic, it's just reality.
If you like, think of it as hacking the political process. What we really need to do is to hold off bad legislation until digital fair use rights are so taken for granted, that the public won't stand for the big corporations trampling on them.
At the moment, the copyright industry is telling governments that legislation is needed. Telling them that legislation is not needed will not hold off the copyright industry for long enough, because it will just be your (i.e. small person) word against theirs (i.e. big business). Suggesting good legislation, and getting it passed, may do the trick.
So what would good legislation look like? If you don't think legislation is needed, it follows that good legislation should be redundant. Making explicitly illegal things which are already illegal. Making explicitly legal things which are already legal. Introducing new or different penalties for already illegal things.
Does that answer your question?
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Look, the reason we have and need copyright laws is because it is a logical impossibility to retain physical control of something once you no longer have it in your possession. These new laws don't aid the enforcement of coyrights, they try to make copyright laws completely redundant and pointless. If such technologies were actually workable, (and there is a great deal of evidence that they are not), we wouldn't need copyright laws for digital content at all.
So, what do we do? Protect the copyrights of those who are being harmed, and throw a few infringers in jail. With enough high profile cases, people will start to think twice about illegally re-publishing books or CDs.
> It seems that there are some legitimate artists out there against piracy
Yes. In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Elvis Costello dismissed file sharing as outright thievery: "I know that if you make something and someone steals it, that's theft. That's all you need to say about file sharing, isn't it? Where's the ambiguity?" And don't try claiming that he's a friend of record companies: his battles with record companies are well-documented, and in the same interview he says: "You know, I haven't made any money off records for 20 years. I've made all my money off publishing. So I don't care what the record industry whines about."
and I thought he had invented the internet...opps, now he linked it to the information stouperhighway as well. Lets hope this clown and his inane ideas go away for good in 04
Not to sound alarmist and sensational, but I think your speed limiter analogy doesn't go far enough. I think outlawing the sale of any device that doesn't include whatever copyright/file protection scheme the big copyright holders dream up could be closer to outlawing cars in favor of public transportation. You don't control the device any more, it goes to places/does things that the law decides on. Today's PC's and personal music players will be gone, and be replaced by things with very limited functionality.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Just let the market sort it out. I'm sure multibillion dollar corporations can figure out some sort of copy protection. I'm even sure that several of them can band together and agree on a DRM system if need be.
The fact that this has not happened yet speaks volumes as to their expectations of how the market would react to such restrictions. They don't appear intelligent enough to realize that what would be unpopular in the market and get no sales will be unpopular in law and get repealed or overturned.
three separate elements, and then announce that it has four.... I've filed off three serial numbers... were they bluffing about the fourth one?
You're obviously not a programmer.
Any file is nothing but a sequence of zeros and ones, and you can examine them precisely. If you "file the serial numbers" off of Alice's, Bob's, Chuck's, and Dave's legal versions and get the exact same sequence of zeros and ones in every case, then there is no hidden information left. FUD all you like, you can't hid anything in identical data.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
What is happening is this: the site is going from a five-cent download royalty to the artist for full downloads by registered users (NOT charged to the user) to a double-option scenario:
There was immediate talk of trying to offer a sliding scale, to allow downloads for less than a dollar- the trouble is, you can't really go less than the credit card processing. At fifty cents a download, Ampcast and the artist split seventeen cents and the credit card company of course still takes its full share...
I haven't been on Ampcast long enough to get serious money out of the nickel-a-download thing, and I'd been trying to persuade the site to simply drop it, because I didn't think there was a future in it. Right now, the main idealistic rah-for-the-artists guy at Ampcast, Jim Waskovich, is trying to sell artists on the dollar-download option on the grounds that artists are worth something. I admire his gumption- but we aren't talking about artists. We're talking about downloads- and I don't think digital files are intrinsically worth anything.
I'd love to sit in on some of your discussions as it's a subject that fascinates me, but the solution may have to involve accepting the ground rules of a new situation. Information is no longer a physical good, in practice. You used to have to truck goods around in order to get records, CDs etc in people's hands. That's no longer true- and it's only going to get worse as communications technology improves. In 2020, your spam will contain small feature films by way of 'multimedia'... and you'll gripe because it takes several seconds to download. How many complete books can you download per minute now? How many two-hour feature films at DVD resolution will you be able to download per minute in 2020?
It may never again be possible to strictly couple the distribution of information with compensation for artists.
The area to watch is the post-apocalyptic area. Assume that because of digital copying, both the RIAA and the MPAA go belly-up. They collapse- already they can't budget for serious artworks and have to hit lowest common denominator, let's assume even that doesn't help.
In this post-mainstream era, everything is out there as data. The entire history of the entertainment industry, tons of 'fan-films' and filks, and various independent contributions. Nothing new is being produced in a mainstream sense.
Now what?
What entreprenurial opportunities are there? If large-scale high-budget works cannot survive, does this produce a demand for them in their absence? It's rather like asking what the demand would be for saxophones in the Middle Ages: impossible to predict Coltrane or Ian Underwood from the idea of a brass thing with a reed on it. In a sense, we don't know what's ahead at all.
One thing I can predict with great authority, though- by 2010, the biggest mainstream pop star will be virtual. This solves the 'artist compensating' problem by inventing a kind of artist that is a fiction and can't be compensated except with other fiction ('Cribs' visits the artist's CGI mansion. Posh!).
By 2020, home computer users will have the capacity to do the same degree of synthesis and animation on their desktops, though...
Had some fun? ;-)) What happened?
A-something..
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I don't know why, but this is the funniest thing I've seen on Slashdot in months. Please, someone, those reading at +3 deserve to see this.
When the 19th amendment was created the nation was plunged into several of the darkest years of it's history. Men like Al Capone and others of his ilk ran the US. People flocked to speak easy's in droves and NY actually had more "bars" than ever before. We are seeing the same reaction here. If you want legislation then here is what is needed.
1. Reasonable copyright laws.
2. Makeing Illegal EULA's that go against copyright and other civil laws.
3. Putting an end to the price fixing of Audio and Video CD's so that the market can set the price.
4. Making Illegal the sale of CD's designed to break individuals computers.
Now for the bad news you can't create a DVD or a CD that I can't record..... And I won't write a single line of code or reverse engineer anything. In order to prevent the pirating of these mediums the only method is to prohibit the sale of them. Sorry but Thats just the way it goes. If I'm supposed to listen to or view something... I can copy it. Good old fashioned analog methods are 100% effective. These arguments are as old as the hills. They said the same things about cassettes and the VCR (VTR for non American readers) What happened there? The industry embraced rather than fought the technology and in the end found a whole new line of business THAT ACTUALLY INCREASED THEIR REVINUES. Sorry for the shout but the point is important. What would have happened to the industry if the record companies had said to napster "Hey this tech is pretty good, can we buy you and the tech out?" Then re-introduced napster selling studio grade MP3's for say 50 cents US a song using the same network. What would have happened is that they would have sent song sales through the roof! People have shown time and again that they will:
1. Pay a resonable and fair price. For quality goods.
2. If given a choice between pirated and legit versions they usually chose legit.
3. Obey reasonable laws.
They have also shown that when push comes to shove, they will:
1. Steal from people they consider to be thieves.
2. Work to destroy people and organizations that call them thieves or liars without pravocation.
3. Vote with their wallets.
To the recording industry the vote is in. Your sales are down because your product sucks and the people don't want it. No business or industry has ever had the right to remain in business. What would have happened if the Pony express had sought to outlaw trains because it infringed upon there business model? Yes the analogy is accurate. A new model of recording and distribution of first music and maybe later movies is fast aproaching. These business need to stop trying to use Washington to legislate their lack of business ability and get back to doing what a business must do. Either change or fail. Ask anyone who worked at Wang Computers or Commodore. Bad business practices lead to bad business. Lee Iacoca set two business precidents.
1. The government can bail out a business.
2. The business must pay back it's creditors.
Too many of these businesses remember the first and forget the second. Disney et al think they have the right to be in business. Fact is they don't. They only have the right to try. Success comes from work not from the purchase of Senators. Oh and remind your congressman about Nov 2nd. That day will show a lot.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
I would sleep a lot better knowing I would not be subjected to ten years of anal rape for putting up a Barney parody website.
This is a little off topic, but what if this concern and legislation is a symptom of the death of an "industry" that existed as a short term fluke? Legislative bodies should try to take a long term perspective on the matter so that the law books don't end up looking too silly.
Historically the benefit provided by media industries was provided by a "cottage" industry of local and traveling artisans: minstrels, acting troops, vaudville, etc. The expensive technology of recording and reproduction created a few production enterprises in the mid 20th to service the new market for reproduced performance. The means of production were owned by the studios, though the content was being provided by modern versions of the original artisans. The production / marketing centers created a notion of "elite" artisans, however, which certainly has crushed a lot of talent.
Now, however, the means of production are moving back into the hands of the artisans. A talented artist does not need a production company to produce an excellent recorded work. It is only a consequence that the means of production are also a good means of reproduction, which is causing the media companies this first set of problems. The true problem will come when people (known by our government as "consumers") rediscover their appreciation for artistic authenticity over cynically marketed fame. The media companies will be transformed into mass advertising agencies for the talent that captures the greatest net share on it's own.
Wherein copyright law will revert back to the original intent -- to protect the interests of the true creator. And all these strange interim laws and machinations will amuse future historians.
People like simplicity and low cost. Two things that copy protections ruin.
If I were to buy a CD or DVD of something and then have to register it to play it, have to have to buy all expensive DRM compliant hardware (let's say it adds 20$ to each piece of hardware)
Ethernet adaptor
Motherboard
CPU
RAM
Video Card
Sound Card
Hard drive
Speakers
Monitor
So that's 180$ added to the price of the entire computer, because I'd have to buy a new computer to support all this DRM junk, I could have bought 3 DVD or CD's for that price.
Now when I pop in the DVD and it goes to check against the MPAA's Database of registered DVD's it should play it.
However if the MPAA's site is down, the DVD won't play.
So why would I want to deal with all this crap when I can save myself a few thousand dollars in replacement hardware and just get something that disables the protection on the disc itself?
I had to go though this crap once before with actual DVD's. I had to get device to strip off the macrovision so it would run through the VCR so it would run to the TV that didn't have composite or s-video connectors. It was either pay 50$ for the image stabilizer or pay 800$ for a new TV.
Now I have the intelligence to figure out what the problem was. However people who go out and buy DVD players, computers, and whatnot don't know how to hook anything up (A lot of people still use the RF connectors AKA "channel 3 or 4" because they don't know how to hook up the other cables.)
So let's say some kind of legislation is passed that makes it a requirement to DRM-enable all hardware. How many people with current computers or older machines are going to buy something and play it in their computer only to phone their tech support person at 50$ an hour to tell them that they need to buy a new 2000$ computer to play their 50$ DVD.
Legislation is not the answer. The MPAA and RIAA are whining babies, having not taken the inititative to develop proper protections and distribute on the internet BEFORE the pirates did.
The MPAA and RIAA will fade out of existance from their arrogance. The game companies are a much larger business and make more money than movies and recording artists do. Even if their protections on their software are rather lax!
If the MPAA and RIAA want to get back in the game, they need to stop telling the government what to do and spend that money on distributing their content ONLINE and make it convienent as possible. No registration, no tracking, just one-click purchase with the ability to write it to a disc once. People will be more inclined to pay 1$-100$ to see a movie online NOW than pay a similar amount for the DVD or Theatre ticket that they may have to wait weeks to see.
I would honestly purchase "content" online if I could have it NOW and not have to jump through any hoops to get it.
Blanket fees are also a bad idea. The internet radio tax is absurd, radio stations would be paying royalties on music that the companies recieving the royalties never even heard of. A lot of the internet radio that I listen to is either foreign(as in not in english) or original/remixs of music. Nothing that I can buy in a store here. If I could download the songs straight from the record company at CD quality I would gladly pay that. But IMO it won't happen anytime soon because they are too scared of people taking the downloaded files and redistributing it. People would much rather have full quality audio from the official source than second-hand files that may not even be full quality. A way to do this is to have "higher-than-cd-quality" files that are higher quality than the CD's with an unique serial number and datestamp (and alternatively encoded purchasing number) This way it's impossible for people to rip music from CD that is better than the official source.
Some kind of lossless audio format would be required.
And if you want to simplify it for those people who don't understand. Simply store all the downloaded data in a solid file on the hard drive that only the DRM enabled players can open and burning it to CD erases the version in the datastore. So the DRM enabled burner would set the "is a copy" flag on the CD, once it's on CD, someone could obviously rerip it into an mp3. So the solution there is to simply not allow for burning to audio-cd, back-up to CD that the DRM player can play but won't re-rip from. Non-DRM players would see garbage.
See all this can be done without leglistation, it doesn't even require hardware replacement (though halting production of CD/CD-R/CD-RW drives would eliminate one piracy area, instead having DVD burning drives that respect the copy/no-copy flags.) People could stick hack it if they wanted to, but because hacking it is far more complex, most computer users won't bother.
This article almost brings tears to my eyes. Why? Well, because 3 years ago me and my partner started working on licensing software that, without revealing too much as I'm still hopeful, could integrate seamlessly with existing digital formats and pretty much guarantee that widespread illegal distribution of software, images, video, anything digital really could be prevented. We had preliminary patents filed, attorneys retained, and a corporation founded. This with money out of our own pockets! But what happened? All the stupid dotcoms out there buried us! VC guys never looked twice at us because the Internet bubble burst! So our legitimate business model, our _working_ software, and the fact that we had retained one of the foremost security experts (well according to the mob anyway) in the country who vouched for us and our software didn't mean squat! We didn't even get a chance to produce a prototype model that we could then sell! I still sit on this technology, and I don't know what to do with it. In essence I agree with most of what has been said. This problem can't be fixed through more laws, it can only worsen it. Eventually we'll end up with private information dealt on the black market like it was crack rocks, and there will be plenty of buyers! Instead of focusing on the privacy needs of the customer, focus on the integrity of the software. So, here I sit, depressed, wasting my talent away working for other people, sitting on what I know is the best damn licensing and software protection system in the world, without a soul to talk to, without a lot of hope that I will ever see it working. People keep forgetting that good software is not written by MBA's. Those nipwits! Anyway. I couldn't help myself. I had to say something. Sowwy. -Thomas
The only reasonable alternative to this unspeakable abomination and affront to everything this country claims to stand for is for the proponents to get bent, or to be charged with their crimes.
Well, you could repeal the DMCA, the various copyright extensions, etc. Yes, that sounds reasonable to me. They're unconstitutional and a court will certainly find them so someday. Why waste time and money? No telling what kind of damage all this crap is doing, already.
--rgb
The obvious workaround to that is to define the entire work itself as "the serial number", thus creating a legal loophole that reduces in the limit to the same thing RIAA and MPAA wanted in the first place.
Then when you buy an Elton John CD, you aren't buying a CD, you're really buying a 640MB serial number... so what if it's no different from everyone else's serial number, except by the low order 32 bits?
Yes, and the worst part of it is that these are the same people who control the news--what we know. They control what we know, and therefore control what we think.
Besides a handful of people on Slashdot, not many average Americans realize this. Average America is stupid, and wants to be led around by corporations, because that is easier than caring.
They are holding us (the people of the future, the embracers of new technology) BACK.
I'm still thinking about what we can do about this, but the fact is that it's US versus the corporations and because of their control over information, average America also.
Fuck congress, we can write them all we want, it's not going to change anything. We need to start a new country, with only people who are forward looking. We can trade with America, sell them new cool stuff.
We won't fight any wars.
And we'll put men on Mars 20 years before the U.S.
I'm tired of this shit. I'm bored. AMERICA is BORING. Television is BORING. Movies are BORING. I haven't been truely excited about anything in a long time. And I know a lot of others who feel exactly the same way as I do.
Yes, the internet has made us impatient. Because we know what IS possible, the way the world could be. A beautiful place. Yet all we get is held back by Average America, and corporations who are run by old men as a sort of game amongst themselves.
We could all be in space right now. We have the technology. I would love to see the Earth from space. That would be truely exciting and interesting. Where is the public space travel? WHY THE FUCK ARE WE STILL LIVING IN THE 50's?!
Because the same people who were in power then are in power now. Fuck this country. I want a new one that's based on technology. That new country is the Internet. So, while they can make their laws and whatever in the REAL world, I will always be free here.
If they ever try to take that away from me forcably, there's going to be a fight.
Still have much to think about, but I'm getting there. More later.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Yeah, maybe turn the "information economy" into a real FREE MARKET (like it's supposed to be)! Great idea!
Print up some posters. It's gurrilla marketing time.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
That if he is really that any economic losses associated with piracy are completely dwarfed by the economic costs imposed on the United States by its ludicrous
The only piracy I see is in paying upwards of $400,000 US through tariffs to save each job in the steel industry, or forcing homeowners to fork out an additional $1500 average per house because someone decided to lock down lumber imports from Canada.
Frankly, the costs of software piracy look fairly trivial in comparison.
PLEASE give Cliff a labotomy. Or a least a whack on the side of the head to wake up.
id add that this problem goes way back before the dmca, the internet or even computers...well maybe not computers, i cant think of the years in my head right now, anyways back in the late 1800's business law changed alot, and one fundamental ruling screwed everything up, namely- a supreme court ruling said that a business has all the same rights as a person, so as everyone complains about how the .gov needs to protect the people and not the corpoation, well legally they are!
there are other laws that need to be fixed is my main point.
research your local area and find out when the last time a company charter was revoked....
anyways i'd like to see a direct democracy in that we vote for every bill that these people who 'represent' us come up with, i.e. they write them, we vote them in/down- then it we couldnt bitch when things like this become law.
In general, I pretty much agree with you. I would go further, IP is bunk, but regardless regioning in the media industry (DVDs) should be a crime. And yet I still buy DVDs, because I am weak and I love film. But no more. I will vote against these moguls with my dollars. I do not care about the "oh but they will a) not care b) use it as evidence of piracy". Enough is enough. Live by conscience and demonstrate by example.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Gee, do you think they can use that remote-control stuff for rats (compare http://slashdot.org/science/02/05/01/1918223.shtml ?tid=126 ) to get Mickey to wait for Eisner to have Hollings over for his weekly briefing, so he can bite 'em BOTH on the balls? Just scientific interest...
If CDs are so bad, and cost the record industry so much money in piracy, then why don't they just switch back to Vinyl. No-one made them use CDs in the first place. Phillips invented the technology for data storage.. It just so happened that you could store music on there, and the record companies started picking up on that, storing their music on them, and selling them. Nobody made them choose this technology.
DVD - Digital Versatile Disc is a similar story again. Nobody made them stop using VHS (where we didn't have perfect digital copies, and of course no piracy problems ever existed, ever). They chose to adopt DVD for themselves.
Now, for some reason, they want the technology compaies to invent some new technology to stop people using the media properly, and they want laws to make it happen. They've already made me a criminal in my own home by introducing laws to stop me watching my Region-1 DVDs (purchased whilst I was living in the US) in the UK. Will this madness never end... If the technology is so bad, why do they use it, and why do they charge us a premium when we buy it. CD was always more expensive than vinyl. DVD more expensive then VHS.
They're selling me a disc full of data.. As far as I'm concerned it's up to me what I do with it. Any technological solution which is implemented can and will be legally circumvented given enough time and manpower. Making laws that turn everyone into criminals is a very bad mode. Once you're labeled as a criminal, you tend to start acting as such.
Maybe you have heard that anecdote about Mozart: there was this sacred song that the Vatican I believe, would not allow to copy to anybody. Then Mozart came, heard the thing, memorized it, wrote it all down and performed it later.
Repeat after me 300 times: once it is perfomed, it can be recorded.
Good, that is reality. Unless you come with a convenient way to popularize somebody like Big Brother in a democratic society there is no way you can stop all the Mozarts of the world.
Even if there is no way to directly copy a movie from a DVD, that does not stop anybody to go, watch the movie and create a crappy animated version (which will improve with time, it is just a matter of waiting until kiddies in their garage can produce movies of passable quality with their Beowulf clusters) and release it for free.
All of the sudden all this crappy legislation would become just a paliative and people would have handed over (via passive acceptance) their rights to fair use.
For music this is done and dusted. Let the big companies make it technically impossible to copy anything,it is trivial to hear the music, write it down, play it and distribute it.
Even worst for the IP companies, as Open Source is changing the way many people think about software, something like Open Music (the way music always was before recording was invented) will change the way people think about music, Open Movies, Open Photos and Open Books will shortly follow. What are they going to do? Forbade us to sing, write and make crappy home videos unless we distribute them through their Copy Right aware distribution chanels?
There is no way this can be stopped. Any legislation and business model should deal with this reality, legislation is there to organize our actions around a given reality, no the other way around (in which case it is bad legislation).
Companies with a legitimate business proposition will adapt around this. All the others will be remembered with certain desdain, perhaps as steel and coal industries are seen in many places where they are vanished: they were good for a while, but they were a bad thing after sometime, and basically everybody was happy to see them go.
The answer has been said several times, but let me join the chorus:
1.- Definition of basic digital rights for the average person.
2.- Acceptance from the legislature that they are not there to gurantee profits for any industry.
3.- The IP industry needs to work more with their customers to find what they really need and want. If that means less margins and profits better they bite the bullet now.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Instead of the serial number being in plaintext, and checked for validity, it should be a watermark entirely invisible for the end-user. Neither the hardware nor user would know the watermark was there.
If the "watermark" is invisible then it might easily completly disappear from a copy, especially one converted to a different format... Anyway simple comparison of multiple copies of the same work will indicate where the serial number is. With something like a CD you could probably use completly optical methods to do this.
To remove it properly they'd need two legit copies. Who could be stuffed doing that? And the fear factor of being identified as having removed the known serial number would stop a lot of people.
This is only to be an issue for casual copying. A commercial pirate organisation isn't going to stopped by needing to get a few legit copies...
This law or any like it will REQUIRE all computers to be crippled.
I agree with you, that is the real question. And furthermore I would say the answer is neither YES nor NO. I think one needs to look at what is gained and what is lost in these type of preventative laws on a case by case basis. For example, speed limits are laws designed to prevent reckless driving and therefore accidents. We give up some freedom and accept regulation of how we use our personal property for increased public safety. One could argue that outlawing cars in favor of massive public transportation would be even better for society, but I think the cost is too high. The lost freedom is more valueable than the benefit to public safety. Similarly, I think the loss of an open PC is too high a cost for protecting content owners or distributors. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that something more like a speed limit law could be found to address the illegal behavior. I have not seen a law like that yet, but I am open to the possibility.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
This is only to be an issue for casual copying. A commercial pirate organisation isn't going to stopped by needing to get a few legit copies...
Commercial pirate orginazations aren't going to be stopped by any of the proposals presented, even the most draconian ones. The thing the Media Cartels claim to be worried about is casual sharing via the internet, which serialization in the same manner that software has been doing for over a decade does reduce very dramatically.
For commercial piracy a whole slew of laws already exist, and no amount of crippling of consumer hardware or software is going to do anything to improve that problem. Indeed, the copy of Lord of the Rings that has been circulating was clearly an inside job, probably copied from an Academy screening tape, sold to a commercial copyright violator in Asia somehwere, pressed onto DVD, and later converted by one of the purchasers into DivX for distribution on the net. At no point in that entire stream was any copy protection in place, so things like the SSSCA (or whatever we're calling it today) would have done absolutely nothing to prevent it. This is a social problem, primarily within the ranks of the film industry itself, and is addressable by enforcing existing laws and regulations.
Even the most draconian society in the world, one which would make the former Eastern Block seem like a liberal democracy in comparison, will not be able to stop this entirely. What is truly appalling is that the Media Cartels are willing to give it a try anyone, our consitution, our freedoms, our very society be damned in the process if need be. And even if they get what they want, the problem will still exist, regardless of how many lives the cartels destroy with their newfound legislative weapons.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy