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Coble-Berman Bill Would Restrict Fair Use
Amazing Quantum Man writes "News.com is reporting on the new Berman-Coble copyright bill. This bill is a two-edged sword. It would make life easier for webcasters, but it would restrict fair use. Interestingly, according to the article, Berman allegedly opposes the bill that has his name on it as a sponsor! I don't think it's on Thomas yet, but Politech has a copy of the bill (2.1M PDF)." The report which the memorandum attached to the bill refers to is online. Congress is making an effort to reconcile traditional copyright law with the realities of digital copying; there's no telling whether the end product will be something tolerable or not.
they complain about broadband users sucking up all the bandwidth, take a look at that file size, 2 megs! 2 megs just for a document. That's horrid.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
A lot of people in congress don't understand the needs of today's technical inclined people. They should bring in as many tech people as they can, or simply ask slashdot when they attempt to make laws that will affect the digital world.
Understanding the legal ramifications and understanding what's actually going on are two completely different things..
Discuss.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
The only fair use copyright holders will agree to is what makes them money $$$.
What will they do about parody sites? I mean, just how much does Congress want to diverge from "physical" copyright protection of standard pen-and-ink non-tangibles?
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Unfortunately, to Congress, "bringing in tech people" means bringing in people from MSFT, Oracle, Sony, the (RI|MP)AA, etc. If we are lucky, they might bring in a forward thinking persom from Caltech, MIT, etc. But otherwise, they will bring in industry people who would/do profit from Digital Restrictions Management.
According to the draft bill, such Webcasting "is not an infringement of copyright"--if temporary copies are made only to facilitate music distribution and if the copies are stored only for a time that's necessary for the broadcast.
The problem w/ the legal system is they leave too many areas for interpretation. What if I think that "necessary time" is long enough to make sure that no one gets cut off, which could be longer than the actual broadcast. Also, what if something goes wrong and your buffer copy doesn't get deleted automatically. Are you now liable for software failure? I doubt anyone would want to sit there and watch the cache to ensure that every single buffer copy is appropriately deleted.
The law needs to start using definite time frames. If they would quit using generalized times, and start using something physical, such as a day/month/year, they could have a lot more pull in lawsuits.
My other sig is an import.
This is just another example of what happens when our established laws and traditions smash into the emerging ways of the digital revolution.
There is no conflict here about inalienable rights (speech, et al), but about the "rights" that are more rooted in common sense and conventional wisdom than in any deep philosophy or moral framework.
What is Fair Use? Did God intend for us to have Fair Use rights? Do animals have Fair Use rights? Clearly, reasoning on this level leads quickly to absurdity.
In cases like these (for I think we will continue to see legislation like Coble-Berman as the Digital Age gets into full swing), we have to reflect on what it is that has made this society so successful. Few would argue that Western civilization has triumphed due largely to the ongoing improvement of technology.
During the Rennaisance, during the Age of Reconnaisance, throughout Colonialism and the Industrial Revolution, the common sense values of the time were invariably abandoned or metamorphosed as required by the upward march of technology.
The Fair Use doctrine has played an important part in 20th century law. Now, in the 21st century, we should not be so attached to it and other anachronisms that we lose sight of the end goal: the improvement of the society of Man through technology. If disposing of these antiquated ideals is the price for better technology, then it is we, the technological elite, who should be the first to sign the bill.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
This bill is very broad. It limits too much and is unenforcable. What are they going to arrest me and my friend for our Jerry Springer video collection? Also if I claim all of my emails as copyright protected and they are forwarded on, doesn't that break the law in the bill? Hell forwarding /. on to friends would infringe on rights according to this.
Copyright has a long tradition, It wasn't something drempt up overnight and in IMHO on the whole not to bad, the only thing I would change would be to reduce the length of the copyright(basicly putting the law back to where it used to be).
I live in the UK, and it seems that the US and UK are making extram changes about somthing they don't understand, they should ask them selfs: what is copyright for? and is there anything wrong with the current system. and I think they'll find that copyright it to protect the original producer from being ripped off and at the same time to encourage creativity and derived works and that there's nothing wrong with the current systems.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Who was it that said that the greatest danger to law enforcement was unenforceable laws?
This is the case here. Congress (and all the people who are paying for them) are trying to change the reality of a society that's very rapidbly becoming a 'free information' country. They're trying to put limits on something that is changing the world very rapidly and in a very chaotic manner. You can call it 'destructive' if you want to, since it's certainly destroying organizations and businesses that survive by controlling information, but it's jsut change.
The problem with trying to control this change is that you can't legislate fish into flying or birds into swimming. Just look at Prohibition if you need an example. A small subsection of the country's population tried to legislate away people's rights to get drunk and wasted. They had good intentions. Alcoholism is certainly a problem and destroys many, many lives. By making a law that was disliked and unenforceable, however, the country opened itself up to the ravages of organized crime more than ever before.
Look at the 'War on Drugs'. Hard drugs (and even some 'soft' drugs) ruin lives and kill people. That doesn't change the fact that people want to get high or stoned. You think that columbian drug lords would have vast fortunes with which to buy submarines and advanced IT installations if the American government hadn't created a situation in which it was more profitable to do dusiness in an illegal manner than legally?
Information is in the same boat. Companys claim billions and billions of dollars of 'lost sales' (cough *bullshit* cough) on music, software, game, and video piracy. People want to use the stuff in a 'fair use' way. Even moreso, they want to pirate it and not pay for it. All the government is going to do by creating a law that makes it more difficult to legally share information is make more people into criminals who weren't before.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
It sounds to me like Section 1 states their going to amend title 17 to say such-and-such is legal, rather than saying such-and-such is illegal. Very restrictive.
Comments from others?
www.yitiens.org doesn't have it up yet but they follow things like this.
Quote "'The biggest impediment to more licensed, lawful services online is piracy, and that's why he is pushing his peer-to-peer bill,' Smith said. Berman represents California's San Fernando Valley, adjacent to Los Angeles and Hollywood's cluster of entertainment companies. " - End Quote
I mean. I may not agree with him but this is a politician who is doing something most politicians don't do. He's representing his district ( this includes the media/software conglomerates ) and so you have to give him credit for that
NOTE: I don't endorse the proposal, but before people roast this guy alive just remember where he's coming from. Unlike Hollings who doesn't care a lick about his constituents
The proposed bill is all bad. It's just a move to stop a bill coming that the webcasters really want passed.
Call your congress people and tell them you are against this thing.
Since apparantly Terrorists are behind every corner, 100% of America's vigilance must be rivited to 'watching out' for them on major holidays and/or sporting events.
.. those people who buy the big foam fingers at minor league baseball games have the right to vote too - I mean , unless there is a terrorist hiding behind the booth .. then they may just be too concerned about that to pull the lever. There are more of them then there are of educated, informed people - and the media companies both know and *count* on this.
.. Would that be the struggling american public .. most of whom have a 6-7th grade reading level .. and less than 50% own a computer .. even less with broadband ? Or could it possibly be the SAME companys that own the news channels that captivate (distract) the same voting public with sensationalistic programming ?
.. considering im SURE Disney is a major player behind this bill.
.. not the government .. to tell him what he is allowed to do with a CD that he just bought. With money he was already taxed on.
Does anyone else find it suspicious that Major 'Terrorist Attack' ratings boosters appear to distract the 'average joe' whenever one of these bills is introduced ?
Remember folks
Just for fun ask 10 people who voted in the last election - if they can name 5 people (aside from the person they voted for) who appeared on the docket along with their 'chosen' canadate.
Or make it simple and just ask why they voted the way they did.
This bill is strictly a media bill. Who on EARTH would profit from allowing people to NOT record TV shows
I find it very funny that Micky Mouse was brought up
Our system of laws, while the intentions are good, has degenerated into the 'informed' and the 'un-informed' Folks don't object to bills because they are spoon-fed the baby bird version by mamma CNN. What does a farmer in the middle of Iowa care if he can upload the new britney spears song to his sister's kid in Ohio? But ask the same guy if he thinks its fair for MEDIA COMPANIES
Im betting you would get a totally different answer.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
At first glance this seemed the most rediculous thing I've ever heard. I mean, taping shows in VCRs is the best way to catch a show you missed, and letting a friend or parent watch it if they missed it too is second nature.
Then I got to thinking about this in terms of today's technology. Pretty soon, we could be burning these shows onto DVDs with DVD-like quality and giving them to people. Of course this could happen today, but I'm talking mainstream ala VCRs. But then, with that kind of technology you could tape the shows and then sell whole series on DVDs to people. You could even edit out commericials. The possibilities are endless.
Is this a bad thing? Not inherently, but it could get worse, imho. VCRs are tediously outdated, but are used because they are simple. With DVD or like technology, shows can be uploaded online with ease, carried around, played on your work computer, etc. It really changes the way you think about the whole TV/Movie/Music watching concept, and as such our laws around them must change as well.
I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. It may be that pretty soon you can't let anyone else listen to a CD you bought.
I'm a government consultant for a large institution on the east coast, known for its strongarm tactics. We have recently been contacted by some of our constituents about this so-called "file sharing" that's a goin' on on the internet. Our job is to put the kabosh on it, tout suite! However, before we lace up the jackboots, we wanted to know what a bunch of college students and open source advocates thought.
What an utterly laughable idea.
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
actually this is not a document, but a scan of paper bill without any text recognition.
And PDF-file is not the best way to do it in a such way.
I say GNU to you...
Not to be a raging cynic, but you can tell where it's end up based on the money behind it. Where's the money? It's in favor of limiting fair use and protecting the revenue streams of big corporations. I can tell you this, it will go nowhere positive.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
In an unusual twist, Coble and Berman stressed in their letter to colleagues that their authorship of the draft bill does not necessarily "constitute an endorsement of its contents." Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the top Democrat on the full Judiciary committee, also helped in the creation and included the same unusual disclaimer.
Yeah they wrote the crappy bill that few voters will like. But don't hold them responsible cause they didn't really mean it. Screw the voters make the entertainment industry happy should be their motto. Doublespeak.
Right now, you have the following situation: ... An artists, copyright
Artist A created song B which is a probable hit.
He then sell all rights for that song
to some syndicate C for a fixed sum.
Then for all that A1 A2
on songs will be at C and they will care not of fair use or other stuff or...
Imagine situation, when by law they cannot sell more than 50% of their rights on song.
It means that they have direct decisions on how their material will be used. It will be much fairer to them and society.
That is why technical advisors (to politicians) should be employed by the government or acedemia, so that they are not swayed by self-interest.
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and you even got a five for it...
First you shun thousands of years of cultural thinking and even go down the GOD road.
Then you say that the development of the modern world was down to technology, but using a very narrow definition of technology.
While it is true that some 'Christian' morals were abandoned (mainly the power-monger ones to do with science being black magic &co), general communist type morals were eroded and replaced with strict ownership laws, e.g. feudalism etc.. These rights are/were slowly being given back to the people.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
All of this is a total rehash of the printing press.
Years ago there was no mass publishing, information could be tightly controlled, accessable by only those with the books, or access to them, or those with the sizable sum necessary to pay a scribe to copy one.
Along comes Gutenberg and his printing press, all hell breaks loose. Suddenly the cost of reproducing data decreases, consequently it costs less to purchase as well, so there are more who can afford it. The Powers That Be (PTB) freak out completely, and begin to exert all manner of controls over the presses and the publishers.
After some time the PTB settle on a concept called copyright. Which was ok at the time, presses were still relatively rare and pricey, and it helped apease the small number of authors and scribes who were upset. But more importantly it allowed the PTB to control to some extent the dispersal of information.
Hop forward to today, now everyone it seems has their own press in the form of a PC, the PTB flip again, because their former solution is basically obsolete, no matter what the seem to try to adapt the system. Creators and publishers are up in arms again, but what can be done.
I haven't a clue where this will settle, but I do have a feeling that I'm not going to like it. Time to begin hoarding old hardware.
I always wonder why all the people who talk about the new age of media always forget the typewriter. The typewriter has at least as much to do with the dissemination of information as the press. Afterall presses are expensive, complicated and controlled by restrictive governments. Typewriters and for that matter fax machines are not. The typewriter gave the grass roots movements the ability to distribute their information under the radar.
At any rate my point is that much of this paranoia about restrictive use I think will result in nothing because of the same reasons. If we're going to outlaw the PC, more or less as a vehicle for information dissemination then we would already outlawed the typewriter.
The point I was trying to get across .. is that the majority of 'voting' people do what their TV tells them to do.
.. watch CNN for a few days .. wait for some 'sensational' news story .. then head off to walmart for 30 mins and just listen to the people walking around.]
.. does that sway people's votes ? [Idealy it should not .. but it does .. a great deal apparantly.]
.. it was just (apparantly) a bad choice of examples.
.. When large media companies, control how information is handed to the general public, and that information is about how 'good' this bill will be for them - what do you think is going to happen ?
If its the forth of july, and CNN tells them there is a 'potential' Terrorist attack , they watch the skys. [If you find that hard to believe
If its the presidential elections, and CNN says X canidate is going to win
Hell, we had that whole mess last time in the Primaries simply BECAUSE the media couldn't shut up about it.
My paranoia wasnt because I believe that
[Although not TOO far offbase, since computer 'Hacking' to use the media term - is now considered 'cyber-terrorism']
My point was
Now , if this was a bill that was horrible for those same companies, the *might* report on it, but do you think it would get the same spin ?
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
I agree. But I also expect that most people would not take this job because they could make at least twice as much money in industry. The only time I have heard of this happenning was when people were escaping the dot-bomb to stable government jobs, or when they could not find industry jobs (which is part of the dot-bomb in itself.)
They could just leave us the hell alone.
You hit a key term here, but slightly off. It should be 'disruptive' instead of 'destructive' and then you not only get right to the truth, but you enlist years of sociological research behind legislation like this and other recording-industry abominations are bad.
/. and the geek community in general is that Internet, file sharing, and the like are bad for some current business models, but in the long run good for society. We point to examples like VCRs, for instance. The problem has been one of convincing the mainstream non-geek population that this is true.
The common opinion on
Enter the term, "disruptive."
There is a sizable body of mainstream economic literature (sorry, no URLs handy, ran across this in dead-tree pre-URL days) that focuses on "disruptive technologies" - how they are bad for some businesses and business models, but good for society as a whole. This is non-geek literature.
Our problem is to cast the free and open nature of the Internet as a mainstream distruptive technology as important to society as the telephone, automobile, airplane, etc. Take a look at the international nature of Linux (or *BSD) and tell me that the Internet hasn't done something immensely valuable for mankind. Letter-writing and co-operative journals are old, so is travel, but this is international collaboration of an unprecedented scale by common people. Not only do we take it for granted, we're about to throw it away in exchange for an outmoded and defective business model. (I know, there are no words about shutting down the Internet, but the sum chilling effect of DRM effectively does so by turning it into radio/television.)
This needs to become a mainstream issue, not a geek one.
(IMHO, the most socially disruptive technology of recent history has been the sanitary napkin.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Bzzzt! Sorry, this is not the history of copyright. Copyright was constructed by the British to break the power of the printing industry (the Stationers Guild), who had complete control over publishing. While this control was originally given to the Guild to achieve, as you describe, control over distribution (limiting seditious and sacreligious text), the British recognized that such control was counter-productive, both in terms of incentive to create and in terms of supporting the public domain as a common locus of raw materials for new innovation.
However, you are correct that copyright is a made up concept, created specifically to provide short term incentives for open dissemination of new ideas and long term incentives to enhance the public domain. What it is not is a natural right; societies created it to achieve a policy objective.
And therein lies the current problem. Berman purposely conflates copyright with property rights to confuse you into thinking that protection is necessary in the face of technological change. This is strong rhetorically [i.e., it "plays in Peoria"], even though it is, in fact, counterproductive to the policy objectives underlying copyright's construction.
And, in this climate, the rhetoric can lead to dangerous laws like this one actually getting passed, legislating the crippling of digital devices in order to maintain a false premise - that copyright is a property right.
And, if you don't believe that the government won't pass a law to cripple a technology, ask youself this: whatever happened to consumer digital audio tape recorders anyway???
Consider the simple provision of no longer allowing people to tape a show and lend it to a friend. Unbelieveable! I can think of many times that I've simply forgotten to record a show, and really want to see it, but it would be illegal for me to request it from a friend as that would now be copyright infringement. I suppose I could wait for the five or more years to see it in syndication (if it gets syndicated) or buy the DVD or VHS tape (if they bother to release it.)
I think a fair amount of the problem is simply access to the content. Companies are stricting controlling access to all of their "content", even if it is pure drivel that only rapid fanatics would be interested in. It strikes me that any provision to disallow the simple sharing of tapes should also be accompanied by some kind of compulsory license on the content. If they want to be able to restrict it's dissemenation then they also need to make it available at a reasonable price. For example consider all of the "crap" DVDs that get sold at Walmart. Wouldn't a couple of episodes of Red Dwarf or MST3K be worth approximately the same as say the $10 copy of Excalibur?
People want content, companies want money. People don't want to be forced into a limited pay-per use society, despite the fact that companies desperately want that, because it allows them to help crippled business models limp along for another few years. I'm glad to see that Universal is potentially getting it right, finally.
Fair use seems to be such a straight-forward thing. I have written my representatives several times about this. I can only hope that they will support Boucher in his attempts to straighten things out fairly. Though even he does occassionally stray from being our consumer protectionist champion.
First, by the very fact that this legislation is being submitted, we know that the "established laws and traditions" which are being challenged by "emerging ways of the digital revolution" (btw, "digital revolution" is a dead giveaway, nobody who isn't on the industry dole would say that) is in fact the institution of copyright, which is being challenged by what I will call the Even Fairer Use practice of modern free information sharing. Thus the whole premise of your post is backward: you suggest that technology has somehow threatened our ability to take advantage of the Fair Use rights granted to us under current law, which couldn't be further from the truth. Of course, as a PR industry representative, your goal is not discussion but confusion, so such consistency would not interest you.
Your framing of the issue also makes your bias blatantly obvious: you suggest that Fair Use rights are in dispute, while tacitly assuming that copyright is necessary. To illustrate this point, let me rephrase one of your paragraphs: "What is copyright? Did God intend for us to have copyrights? Do animals have copyrights? Clearly, reasoning on this level leads quickly to absurdity." By your own "reasoning," this suggests that copyrights are as open to question (i.e., not inalienable) as are Fair Use rights, and you make no effort to show why one is preferable to another. In fact, copyright is the institutionalized restriction of the right to free speech, which you call inalienable; sounds like we should question the "conventional wisdom" about keeping copyright.
Next, you betray your insider knowledge that your industry trade group plans to continue purchasing this kind of offensive legislation until it succeeds. Gotta be careful about that. And you engage in some Western jingoism about technology, which is implicitly equated with copyright. Unfortunately, you fail to point out that much of this technology (e.g., the Internet) was created by government and university research which would have been impossible if intellectual property law was written the way industry wants it to be.
Then you suggest that we abandon common sense, suggesting that it has happened before without giving a single specific example, again for "technology" (and another slice of jingoism), which you again fail to link to copyright.
Your last paragraph, though, is by far the most obviously industry-funded. You dismiss "Fair Use" as an "anachronism" and an "antiquated ideal," without mentioning a single thing which might be wrong with it. I would suggest that it is copyright which is the antiquated anachronism in an age when digital copying allows us to benefit huge numbers of people for almost no cost. Surely that would accomplish "the improvement of the society of Man." You suggest that this bill and others like it will somehow result in improved technology, again without specifying how; in fact, it will not do this in any way. Finally, you attempt to flatter and browbeat the reader by suggesting that he is elite, and that elite people ought to favor this type of legislation, again without any sort of explanation why. Of course, this is because your reason for favoring this legislation is that it will either preserve or increase the profits that your employer makes from restricting the rights of others to distribute information.
Finally, your presentation is not credible. Your post contains zero grammar or spelling errors, no technological jargon or acronyms, and multiple marketing buzzwords. You are obviously not a programmer or a sysadmin; your background is clearly marketing and public relations.
I am very concerned that this post was moderated to 5. This means one of two things: either PR people are not just posting to Slashdot but also moderating, or the average Slashdot moderator is unable to recognize PR rhetoric when they see it. I submit this message in the hopes of helping to fix the latter if it is the case.
I simply am unable to leave this one alone!
Dude, what have crack smokin' mind you done?
Seriously, the parent of this post wrote the most unintelligible sentences that I have ever read! This was either a poorly put across joke, based on the terrible legalize and crap typically found in Bills or the poster seriously needs to take some remedial English courses.
I mean, what kind of sentence is this?
"What will affect the needs of the society so successful."
That makes utterly no sense at all!
Perhaps the poster should slow down their mental processes and perhaps attempt to decipher what they have written prior to hitting the "Submit" button.
At least their sig was an English sentence.
I am out of here...
Food is still in demand, yet farming is horribly unprofitable, except for a few corporate mega-farms. So the government steps in, and sets up subsidies and price controls. Unfortunately, most of these end up increasing the profits of the already-profitable farms, without enabling the smaller farmers to actually make a living. Likewise steel, and any other "protected" industry.
I suppose we should be grateful that they're not banning sharing food, or growing your own food, or mandating Food Rights Management on all refridgerators.
There are still blacksmiths. There just aren't as many as there were before. Many do it as a hobby rather than a job. Likewise farmers. If there's a market for movies, people will make movies. But you shouldn't expect the movie industry to be as big or as profitable as it is now, and that's what upsets the people who currently run that industry.
--
E_NOSIG
Congress is making an effort to reconcile traditional copyright law with the realities of digital copying; there's no telling whether the end product will be something tolerable or not.
Consider me a troll or whatever. I'm just honestly looking for a logical argument that somehow copyright law needs to be adjusted because the medium has changed.
Under prior law, copying works without due authorization has been illegal and punishable by fine and/or imprisonment.
How does new and proposed law change that fact?
As nearly as I can see, new law seeks only to take away our rights to secure our purchases with backup or to transfer medium. It also seeks to control which devices can access the media the works are published on.
I find this to be unfair and a strike against innovation and the free market. It also further removes the classic "american tinker" that this country's industry and strength came from.
I guess I'm deviating from my original quesiton quite a bit. So to restate the question: How does new and proposed law become necessary simply because new media is available for publication?
Sorry, wasn't really going for historical accuracy, just the "Hey, suddenly we (PTB) don't have control of the info anymore" aspect of the whole mess. This arena of history isn't my specialty, and I skipped alot (like typewriters =P).
I agree whole-heartedly that the confusion (copyright/property right) that is happening is very counterproductive. Copyright has outlived its usefulness and should be replaced or limited severely.
DATs? I miss DATs. There are plenty of instances of the gov't screwing with products and technologies, look at the timing on the patent for nylon as an example. Of, for and by the people? Doubt it.
I live very near Berman's district, if not IN his district. Berman, like Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, my two Senators, is 100% 0wn3d by the RIAA and the MPAA.
It's really screwed...whenever there's a bill like this, I can't write my congresscritters because I know they will not be very sympathetic to my viewpoint. So much for representative democracy... [sigh]
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
US, Hong Kong, Canada - Colonies
Ethiopia, Somalia - Never succesfully colonized.
Where would yyou rather live?
"What is Fair Use? Did God intend for us to have Fair Use rights? Do animals have Fair Use rights? Clearly, reasoning on this level leads quickly to absurdity."
You sound like one of those god botherers who always come up with bullshit like `homosexuality isnt natural`, as if anyone gives a shit about whether its natural or not. Animals dont have surround sound music centres, hash-cakes or anal sex - doesnt mean its not good for a laugh!
The nothing needs changing was not a personal opinion, more an assement of all things past and present.
Personally I'm a hard line commie(hence the red!) and don't believe in copyright, I'm also a liberalist and believe that everyone opinion is valid and who am I to enforce my self opinionated views on you.
Maybe if more government officials and company fat cats thought that way then we'd have better laws. unfortunately there not the criteria for getting elected or running a large company, you have to be selfish and greedy to manage that.
BTW, I'm running in my local elections next time they come up.
Berman allegedly opposes the bill that has his
name on it as a sponsor
Does this not completely expose the utter absurdity of our legislative system in its current form. How f@cked up must our system be to completely deform a bill to the point that the original "author" no longer supports it. That inherently means the original intent of the bill was lost.
Think about it for a little bit.
Vote libertarian.
this is a left handed sig
So you think that there's nothing wrong with Warner Brothers making $1M/year on the copyright to Happy Birthday?
What creativity or derived works are being encouraged by this? How is the original producer being protected from being ripped off? She's been dead for over 50 years.
Personally, I think we need a copyright reform law titled the Happy Birthday law. Let people know that they're "ripping off" Warner Brothers by singing Happy Birthday!
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
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Unless they are going to make us turn in all our video cameras, componet cd recorders, tape records ect.. No matter what kind of encryption they use.. sound still has to come out of those speakers and pictures are still displayed by your monitor. If I really wanted to recorded a song of the net(streamed or what not) I'll just run the audio out into my componet cd-r. Put what you want in the silicon nothing will stop.
You got it actually, I never said these folks were stupid. Just un-informed or influenced.
.. but i was all excited and caught up in rhetoric *grin*
.. or downplaying them in the press .. laws that directly benifit their business - thats just plain scarey.
I should have said Station-X instead of CNN
This is where it gets sticky. When publishing conglomerates (wow i mangled THAT word) can get laws passed by either sensationalizing them
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
YHBT. YHL. HAND
YHBT. YHL. HAND
How many average internet users do you think could accept just having "always on" internet access which you could do whatever you want with that was no faster than 128K but cost less than $20/month. Is there anything on the net besides downloading movies and music illegally that requires the use of signifigantly more bandwidth for the average user (not Linux users downloading isos)?
If you think that the future of on demand broadcast media is going to make your subscription to cable/SAT TV any cheaper you are seriously mistaken. You are going to pay more to watch even flashier advertisments and even worse content. Just like it is now when you go to see a movie in the theaters.
Let them do their thing. Sure it will destroy the internet as we know it however it will also take alot of those meglamaniac companies with them or atleast stigmatize them to the point where they withdraw from said market. You see these companies need to be hurt so bad by the consumer that they learn to not take them for granted. Let them come, It wont be just the geeks telling them to fuck off but the rest of the working class of America as well.
Peter
www.alphalinux.org
IMHO, the secondary damage of the War On Drugs far outweight the damage of the drugs, themselves. By trying to interdict drugs, we turn them into a high-dollar business. Also IMHO, it becomes self-defeating, because the more successful you are at interdiction, the more the cost rises, the better-financed the drug supply chain become.
I heard on NPR that in the 1968 election, Nixon promised to reduce crime. After getting elected, he had to produce. Some of his advisors told him that all of the more traditional law enforcement techniques had been proven not to work. (by experience) His best shot was drug treatment, to reduce demand, and therefore crimes of financing. He went along with it, it worked, and crime actually did go down measurably. In the 1972 election crime was no longer a big issue, so he dismantled the apparatus, and the approach has never been taken seriously again.
Kind of like the way Clinton/Greenspan actually did achieve a "soft landing" of the economy right before the dot-com boom. But now the concept appears to be forgotten, and I have no doubt that whenever recovery comes, it will be back into the usual boom/bust cycles.
Back to topic, filesharing is an interesting comparison to drugs because it is a widespread crime. Perhaps it should be better compared to Prohibition, one of the stupider ideas the US ever came up with, and clearly the STUPIDEST thing ever put into the US Constitution.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Doesn't most of the copywrite extension boil down to non-human 'entities' trying to control copyrights on works? The general problem isn't that, say, Arthur C. Clark was trying to protect a story he wrote, but instead Disney trying to protect their corporate mascot (and cash cow).
Perhaps the problem could be reduced by REQUIRING that only HUMANS own a copyright and that right can extend up to the lifetime + 10 years of the copyright holder.
Sure, a company can USE the work, and, in fact, defend the copyright holder's rights, but they don't own the copyright except by proxy through the real human owner.
Finally, as regards a certain digitally deficient corporate rodent, perhaps we need a new class of 'intellectual property'. When copyrights and trademarks were 'created' images were static and text was printed on paper.
Perhaps we need to allow for 'mutable' intellectual property where the 'mutability' would allow M. Mouse to be covered in all his 'poses' and various states of 'instantiation' (digital, blah blah blah). (Ie you can own said mouse in his typical garb, with his typical form in perpetuity as your corporate mascot.)
Am I just silly or what?
He's just covering his ass. He probably picked up a bunch of flack over his bill to legalize attacks on P2P networks by the media moguls (as reported on Slashdot last month), and realized having his name attached to another anti-consumer bill is not a good strategy for getting re-elected.
NOTHING.
This isn't a matter of wait and see, the bill stinks so badly that even the sponsors claim to oppose it.
The Webcaster exemption is meaningless unless legislation is passed that overrides the Library of Congress CARP decision that makes Webcasting financially impossible for any US-based operation. Don't expect the bill to have this provision added, it was not written for our benefit either as consumers or as content distributors
Unfortunately, this is a draft, so there is no bill number we can add to this to so we can tell our Congresscritters which bill we want dumped into the bitbucket. Yet.
What can we do?
When the bill we don't want becomes available, we need to contact our Congressmen and Senators and tell them that WE DO NOT WANT IT. We need to tell our Congressman and Senators to VOTE YES on Rick Boucher's Music Online Competition Act .
The best way to do this is with a fax gateway set up specifically to enable us and anyone else who's interested to easily contact our elected representatives. When it becomes available, we then need to point, click, and make our points known.
Letters are obsolete in this context. Due to worry about anthrax, they are going through extensive decontamination and a letter might take months to get there if it shows up at all. Phone calls are good, but this works best because it's easy for someone to casually participate. What we need are hundreds of thousands of contacts between us and our elected representatives, and it's been proven that this works.
The ACLU uses this approach and it frequently works, despite the unpopularity of the ACLU itself and civil liberties in general.
Who lives in Washington,DC who is willing to dedicate a telephone line to this and is willing to maintain a fax server limited to local calls within the DC area?
The software required to run a Web-to-fax gateway already exists, check http://www.tpc.int for more information. The site seems to be down right now. If it doesn't come back up, there are other possibilities. Or start an Open Source project at Sourceforge and write one.
Given the basic gateway software, a front end is needed that does what we need to do.
The main requirement is that it allow users to submit their zip codes and automatically return a response that will direct their faxes with our canned message and anything users want to add to the fax number corresponding to their Congresscritter.
The ACLU has this kind of setup that should be easy to duplicate. To see the user interface, click here and enter your zip code. Go through with the rest of the process if you agree with what they want public support for, but the important part is to see how such a thing works.
The hardest part is gathering the list of several hundred fax numbers. While there is such a list, it's a couple of years old and needs updating before it is used. Fixing this just takes being willing to put in a few hours comparing the list against the current list of Congresscritters and going to individual web pages for new additions to the list.
Based on the previous performance of the geek community, The Register says essentially that we as a community are too stupid to mobilize to cover our own asses,preferring the practice of pure Libertarian cult dogma to any approach that can work in the real world. Maybe they're right. I'm writing this in case they aren't.
Is our freedom worth a spare server, the price of a phone line, a bit of code writing, and being willing to point and click a few times as these bills hit various points in the legislative process?
It's up to you now. If The Register is right, and we can't mobilize to protect ourselves, we don't deserve to be free and we don't deserve to be able to use our computers and the Net we will instead of as appliances whose posssiblities are limited to what Hollywood, the Feds, and Microsoft give us permission for.
Tech Public Policy stuff
And the TPC fax gateway Website is running now.
Tech Public Policy stuff
"To qualify, a Webcaster must be licensed by an agency such as ASCAP and must ink an agreement with the record labels."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but with all of the other DCMA and CARP issues, haven't we already learned that most webcasters already have ASCAP agreements and pay royalties, it's the record labels that have been either holding out or demanding outrageous fees? It seems absurd that any law can force two bodies to form a contract, and I can't see how this can benefit webcasters at all. Seems like another, 'You'll do it our way, or no way at all', while getting the senetors behind them.
from the I'm-not-sponsoring-the-bill-with-my-name-on-it dept.
Nobody asks: So I've got another bill to get through the House. What does Slashdot want in this one?
Does current law imply that I can tape a copy of a TV show and then sell the copy?!?!?!
I thought that was illegal.
Howard Coble + Howard Berman = Howard + Howard = HH = 88 !
The bill is entirely a Trojan horse. What looks at first blush like a concession to Webcasters on the "ephemeral-copy" issue is actually a further restriction, because it rolls back the definition to cover only server cache, not a playlist assembled on hard disk.
Please stop putting an 'e' in scary. Please!
These are really two different industries. Unfortunately the same companies, who are part of the same cartel, control both.
Moviemaking is not technologically threatened. I can not make Star Wars in my back yard, even if my neighbour is a better actor than Hayden Christianson. However, movie studios only make money on their movies because copyright gives them control over distribution.
Movie distribution is technologically threatened. I don't believe there's a compelling public interest in keeping the existing distribution system in place for its own sake, particularly if more efficient methods are being made possible by the application of new technology.
The question is, can we find a way to support the movie making industry without propping up its outdated monopoly on distribution?
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E_NOSIG
NT
This is still just a bill. Look at all the names on the proposal, and write to those congressmen. They will not know what we think about these issues unless we tell them. Snail Mail may never get there, and e-mail can be easily ignored. from my own experience, faxing them is the best way. The fax numbers of the congressmen involved should be published at congress.org. Read more about fair use, and digital music at dontbuycds.org
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
take a look at his home page and some comments from his slashdot account.
Maybe that's why there called religious nuts?
A bit of religion is a good thing but that much is just plain gullable.