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Sneaking DRM Amendments Through the Back Door
SiChemist writes: "Senator Joseph Biden has revised the 'Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002' to make it a felony to bypass certain DRM technologies. The bill has very broad senate support and is expected to pass overwhelmingly. Call your congresscritter! ZDNET story is here."
...and click on an ad at ZDNet.
Yep, I'm from DE. Looks like I'll be making a few phone calls in the near future.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Quick! Throw away all your markers!!
seriously tho, this is getting insane, soon you'll be forced to watermark your work, but inorder to watermark it you will be charged x amount of dollars, what would this do to the opensource community, expecially since opensource doesn't incorporate drm and I seriously doubt that it will be easy to come up with a standard to incorporate drm into linux without it being hacked to shreds.. We need to contact our senate, tell them this is a big no-no, and this really cound hurt innovation!!
~slak
Why Do they feel it's necessary to sneak in legislation? Surely you're bypassing due debate and democracy? Eventually you're going to get a government almost wholly controlled by these huge corporations with big pockets who just want to protect their own interests.
Biden said, "Every episode of "Seinfeld" is now available to download free to anyone with access to the Internet."
...and to anyone with a TV antenna.
Find free books.
the switchboard at the Capitol is (202) 244-3121, and they should be able to route you to any MoC from there, House or Senate.
"I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing."
this smacks of this article wherein Representative Berman footed a bill for the MPAA and RIAA to be able to DoS possible pirates with impunity. Now they want to make it a felony to bypass DRM, an already restrictive protocol in itself. The widespread view is that such things as the DMCA are unconstitutional... the only way that these bills are being passed is by senators and representatives, who are supposed to stand for us (the everyday American), being bought out by the entertainment industry. For more information on DRM and related issues, check out the EFF... there's a lot of info there.
as IT was written, IT becomes the law of the LANd.
LIEk the greed/fear based megaslothian dinosaurs they are, duking IT out in the tarpits of doom.
good for you J. Public, & gooed luck to you, you'll knead IT.
"Every episode of "Seinfeld" is now available to download free to anyone with access to the Internet."
:)
what, does FOX not exist on his planet?
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Senator (insert name here): I propose we initiatiate Military Law across the United States
Congress: BOO! NAY!!
Senator (Someone else): I would like to add something to that bill. A pay raise for all of us of 150%.
Congress: YAY! WHOO!!!
And the bill is passed...
Strange how these things work, eh?
~ kjrose
Forcing Digital Rights Management Up Your Backdoor
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
You won't be able to see anything at ZDNet soon - Sloshdat
Just because consumers will be offered more and more copy-protection enabled hardware, this does not mean that consumers will buy more and more copy-protection enabled hardware. Why am I going to buy a new MP3 player that will only allow me to play mp3s with watermarks when my current 20 gig iPod will be sufficient enough for me to listen to music until it mechanically fails (which could be in 40 years)?
"Every episode of "Seinfeld" is now available to download free (from commercials) to anyone with access to the Internet."
For example: FRIENDS brought to you by Coca-Cola
Tell me now, is this idea funny or terrifyingly close to reality?
Will there be a "campaign speech" exception in his Senate bill? The irony amazes me. What a twerp.
...but there's no point in fighting this any more. No matter what we say or do, big business will walk all over us so we might as well get used to it. When politicians are getting big fat campaign donations from the MPAA why should they give a shit what Joe Blow thinks?
Stoping wide spread piracy (like the WinXP example from the article) is understandable. Making it so I can't play mp3s from my own CD's on my Rio Volt is unacceptable.
WRITE... YOUR... CONGRESSMAN!!!
h tm l
http://www.berkshire.net/~ifas/activist/index1.
even in its thores of Death, ZDNet manages to deliver yet another story of interest to /.
ZDNet is dead. Long live ZDNet!
>Gray believes that forging a digital watermark
>or signature should be just as unlawful as
>forging a physical watermark or signature.
>"It's like taking a T-shirt that you've put a
>design on and then attaching a Disney hologram
>or the NBA championship hologram, distributing
>it, & giving people the impression that it's an
>authorized apparel item from the NBA or Disney,"
>Gray says.
Gray went on to comment that the next version of the bill will include forced human DRM implants to keep people from wearing "unauthorized apparel".
Why would I circumvent DRM? To steal? Maybe not, and let's take the T-shirt analogy further... suppose I buy some Disney T-shirt in the US, but Disney does not want me to wear the T-shirt in Europe. (Perhaps they've recruited the fashion police to check, or the God of Corporations will smite me with lightning if I do wear the T-shirt). Yet, I want to wear it so I fake a European Disney label and sew it in the T-shirt in place of the US one.
Clearly a crime worthy of a stiff penalty and a jail term
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Forced watermarking could be a very bad idea for all of us who produce music/movies/literature in our basements (or reasonable hand-drawn facsimiles). Where am I, a piker who puts together stuff with a PC and freeware, going to get expensive watermarking equipment?
Likewise, what would be the impact on those of us who don't live in the US, but might want to export our created media there (I have a lot of US friends and I like to share)?
What about independent record labels etc. within the US who don't particularly mind people sharing their music? I seem to remember one of the original Dead Kennedys albums came on one side of a cassette tape, with an inscription in the liner notes something like "Home-recorded cassettes are killing the music industry. Go and do your part."
Even though one poster had the valid point that this bill seems to be aimed at direct copyright infringement, where the MP/RIAA and friends are concerned, the definition of "copyright infringement" seems to be "any media transaction where we don't take a cut." We (here in Canada) already have levies on blank media (yeah, the equivalent to the MP/RIAA gets paid for every CD-ROM backup I make) -- what more could they want? Our first-born children? Our souls?
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Microsoft originally applauded Biden's bill when it covered only physical counterfeiting, saying in a press release in April that it closes "a significant gap in federal protection of copyrighted works including software." Current federal law covers only "counterfeit labels," not physical holograms or other packaging material.
But Microsoft indicated on Friday that it had problems with Biden's revisions. "Those issues, from our perspective, highlight the reason why we support the legislation as it was originally written," said spokesman Jon Murchinson.
I can't see this going anywhere if one of the biggest potential beneficiaries is against the amended legislation (certainly pirated Microsoft software is being used as a key example by proponents).
I wonder if this is because 1) Microsoft is actually concerned about individual rights; 2) they see the 'pirating' of content as an important application/revenue stream for their software and hardware platforms; or 3) they're holding out for something even more heavy-handed?
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
If it is illegal to circumvent DRM technologies, then what are the DRM techs there for in the first place? To prevent accidental copyright infringement?
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
.. that the majority of that gang are Democrats. Most geek types vote Republican or Libertarian anyway, but if any of the rest of you wanted proof that voting for leftists is a bad idea, here you go.
Think about it this way: each consumer has some amount they are willing to pay for entertainment per month--the pie doesn't get any larger. Companies that have lower costs, lower prices, and satisfy consumers more will get that entertainment dollar. Do you really think complex DRM schemes are going to lead to usable and inexpensive devices and content?
What's going to win out in the long run is either no DRM at all or devices that anybody can author to; there won't be any need to imitate Microsoft's or anybody else's signatures. That, or people will just go back to small, live performances. In any case, the big media companies pushing for this are going to lose out. They had a golden era with vinyl and CDs, where they could mass-produce cheaply but consumers couldn't replicate, and there was no alternative or competition. That's over now.
Nevertheless, while it just delays the inevitable, it is disappointing that politicians don't get this. And it is particularly disappointing that some politicians are so much in the pocket of vested interests that they try to push through such legislation without much debate.
....thanks to Sony.
And thanks to kuiken for the leads...
When in the course of...oh, fsck it.
Let's keep in mind that this is likely a bill passed in the heat of 9/11. They Who Know Best (TM) are still battening down the hatches, and continually trying to "securitize" this country.
Perhaps we need to remind or congresscritters and our president that the lack of freedom and high security are not a good mix.
This sig no verb.
It's coming to the point where civil disobedience, AIMED at corporations and their paid for public officials is needed...
Corporatism != Free Market
This again has the same reasons as many other outrageous
copy-right laws that are being danced around. People simply
dont understand the technological details, and blind anologies
are made for the common public.
Take for instance:
> Gray believes that forging a digital watermark or signature
> should be just as unlawful as forging a physical watermark
> or signature. "It's like taking a T-shirt that you've put a
> design on and then attaching a Disney hologram or the NBA
> championship hologram, distributing it, and giving people
> the impression that it's an authorized apparel item from the
> NBA or Disney," Gray says. "That's a deceptive practice that
> we have a long history of banning."
But this is such a misleading statement. Consider the case where
you buy an expensive MP3 player from microsoft which plays only
digitally water-marked mp3 files. On the offset it may look like
this law is prohibiting me from playing a pirated song. But look
deeply. What its prohibiting is me playing _any_ songs which are
not water-marked by the some governing body. Which means that if
I make my own music (however cacofonic it might be) I will not
be able to play it unless I get it certified from this governing
body.
In light of this, it becomes clear that not only they are stopping
piracy,with this law, they are also giving themself absolute control
over what content can be played by people (even privately) and what
should not. How easy would it be for me to certify my own "music"
(or noise) by these governing bodies? Obviously I have to stand in
line along with the other members of RIAA and pay the prices that they
set. This is extremely dangerous situation, since the misleading phrasing
of the bill makes it impossible for ordinary senetors to understand the
ramifications and hence we could expect a wide spread floor-banging approval.
The very fact that this bill is set for fast track, scares me more
becasuse they precisely didnt want the time for people to let the real
meaning sink in.
DO NOT PANIC
Forced watermarking could be a very bad idea for all of us who produce music/movies/literature in our basements (or reasonable hand-drawn facsimiles). Where am I, a piker who puts together stuff with a PC and freeware, going to get expensive watermarking equipment?
There goes the snuff film market!
yay canada!
i was someone upset when i first heard of he levies here (in canada) on recordable media. sure it makes media a little more expensive but at least we don't have a big brother looking over our shoulders monitoring what we do with our media.
One thought that just came to mind is that someone, somewhere is implimenting this software to create and propagate things like digital watermarks. Maybe it's time we as programmers to an equivalent to the 'hippocratic oath?' Swearing to do no harm by agreeing not to create the kind of nightmare software protections we see coming to be?
First do no DRM!
Let your representatives know that you expect representation. Politicians need to be reminded that they work for WE THE PEOPLE not for the big companies. Here's a link to a service Digitalconsumer has for sending a fax to your local congressmen:
http://www.digitalconsumer.org/fax.html
"As flies to the wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport." - William Shakespeare, King Lear
In order for these watermarks to have any effect, they need to convince or force hardmare manufacturers to make their hardware play only watermarked, approved media. They know this, and they are already actively trying to get the hardware manufacturers to do this. Without the requirement of a watermark to be present, i could simply strip the existing watermark out and play/redistribute as usual. I'm not creating a fake watermark and thus I am not breaking this law.
The result would be that older unwatermarked media you legally own, music produced by garage bands, and other legal but unwatermarked materials, will not play on a newer player that has DRM. This law makes it a felony to place fake or forged watermarks on such media, even if your sole intent is to allow the media to be played on newer DRM-enabled players.
This bill is a step towards forced DRM, and as such we should oppose it. The next step will be to require new hardware to support DRM.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How many of you would be willing to ban buying CDs if such bills are enacted ? How many of you are willing to forgo the "premium" music and listen to only those groups which put up their music on the Net ?
DO NOT PANIC
I read through this bill and don't see anything about DRM mentioned. This bill only talks about creating counterfeit software, or phonorecords.
Can someone point out the portion of the billb that talks about DRM?
Given the shakeout occuring in the media abetted by the rapid disappearance of the advertising revenue stream, the content producers are entering an very difficult time.
Seems nobody can get anybody to pony up some cash just to have some bimbo wave her ass with their logo on it.
Radio and television started this by having "free" broadcast funded by people flogging their wares. Ask PBS how they survive and get a real picture of broadcast costs.
The internet and the web compounded this in an orgy of freebies and swag funded by IPOs, investors greed and lack of common sense (Warren Buffett never invested in the bubble because he never saw how these people were going to make any money once the IPO money ran out. He was RIGHT!)
End result, nobody wants to pay for squat.
But producing content (as unsatisfying as the pabulum that's regurgitated by ad-funded media might be,) costs. And nobody wants to pay for squat.
Given the balooning real and accounting practice BS costs of the blockbuster mentality you get studios that wither on the vine after one less than stellar season. The RIAA and MPAA members are victims of the same pressure and resultant paranoia. They have to play it safe while following a trend which is set by the players who aren't playing it as safe. (It keeps the shares of Pepto-Bismol and Tums in the stratosphere.)
Want to know why DRM is such a pain-in-the-ass but the AAs'll sell the economy down the sewer to get it?
Because nobody makes B movies anymore. They go straight to video and don't generate any buzz that would attract viewers and maybe get them to buy the product.) Nobody know how to generate buzz anymore. Ads don't cut it with Tivo or even the remote having perceptible results on the ad ROI.
Wanna know why the publishing industry is turning into a contentless wasteland?
Same friggin reason.
Misapplied greed. (This is above and beyond the USPO "patent buying for corporate black-mail by the unscrupulous [lawyers and other parasites.]")
The Web has the potential to make a meaningful buzz but search engines don't friggin cut it. The web will have to be ORGANIZED, INDEXED and cross-referenced the same way that libraries have been since the Great Library of Alexandria.
The days of "Cowboy Content Creation" are over. Creatrion of web content will have to be via XML with precise industry standard DTDs.
Otherwise you just get lost in the noise.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"counterfeiters flood markets with their underpriced products and steal a great deal of revenue."
I think not. If I can't afford to pay for a copy of Windows I won't be buying one from Microsoft regardless of the availability of "counterfeits". If I can't afford, I can't afford. It's the same with CDs - they're way too expensive. I can't pay for what I can't afford. If software and CDs were cheaper, I'd spend far more of my megre disposable on them. But they're not, so I can't.
It's about time that people like this Congressman faced up to the fact that consumers are being ripped off by monopolistic corporates,
that the above is a troll.
Making a conclusion based on a 2/3 majority of a sample size of 3 is pretty stupid. By that logic, since 1 of 1 presidents involved with the Enron scandal are Republican, voting rightist is an even worse idea.
Let's look at reality, as encompassed by more than just this one article, and realize the truth: Corporate Whoring is a bi-partisan initiative.
The enemies of Democracy are
Very interesting addition to the fact that this guy is an exceptionally hypocritical creep.
I just saw an ad for SourceForge in my native arubesh! Here's for offtopic posts!
return 0;
}
See:
l
http://www.nutsandboltsguide.com/plagiarism.htm
Mitch Maltenfort, professional grouch
Somebody better mirror the story quick!
"Our Man In Redmond, you are under arrest for the future piracy of a copy of 'Dude, Where's My Car.'"
Someone you trust is one of us.
As one of your supporters, who worked on both your campaign for Governor and Senator, I am appalled to find that you have co-sponsored S.2395, 'Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002'.
Initially, the bill appears to be a legitimate defense of the property rights of the intellectual property community, and if it only went that far, I would support it wholeheartedly: piracy and copyright infringement are serious problems. However, the extent of the bill is so far over-reaching, that the secondary effects of the bill will likely produce a "boomerang effect" in the future.
Why, you may ask, do I think this ? Consider the world in a few years, when Digital Rights Management (DRM) is incorporated into consumer products and operating systems. Microsoft is ALREADY working on this in their "Palladium" initiative, and intends to integrate this technology into consumer Windows in the future.
Now put yourself in the position of a small software company, or of a small band of musicians. The 'Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002' would make it nearly impossible for anyone to publish new software or produce new music for electronic play, unless they had purchased, at high expense, a official digital watermark acceptable to consumer electronics and/or computers.
While this prediction may seem a bit exaggerated, I point out the recent effective death of Internet Radio. . .from too-high licensing fees. The same large organizations who did this back this measure as well.
Great music, great software, and great computers usually start small, and on a shoe-string. Obvious examples are a small college band from Blacksburg that made it big: the Dave Matthews Band. Or a small company that wrote and sold a BASIC language compiler, and grew. . . into Microsoft. Or a couple of guys who started hi-tech in a garage: both Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer started that way. Or, for that matter, a single grad student, who wrote the core of a major operating system: Linus Torvalds and Linux.
Under the long-term effects of S.2395, none of these would be possible in the future. Senator Allen, S.2395 looks good in the short term, but its' long-term effects on software, computers, and music are no less than devastating. I urge you to both revoke your co-sponsorship of this bill, and to vote against it when and if it comes to the floor of the Senate. . . .
You Crazy Americans can gone on an' do whatever you want, just leave the rest of us alone.
"the term `illicit authentication feature' means an authentication feature, that [...] (B) is genuine, but has been distributed, or is intended for distribution, without the authorization of the respective copyright owner."
How much you want to bet that this is used to stop people from legally exercising their right to first sale on ebay.
You may be interested to know that Senator Biden said on national TV that Osama bin Laden's complaints about U.S. support of violence and repressive regimes was justified. (NOTE: This does NOT say that violence is justified.) A carefully accurate transcript of Senator Biden's remarks is available under the heading Senator Biden says the Saudi government cannot continue in power without U.S. government support . (The article takes a long time to load.)
By that logic, since 1 of 1 presidents involved with the Enron scandal are Republican, voting rightist is an even worse idea.
And that president would be Bill Clinton. Enron is just another in a long line of scandals Bush inherited from Slick Willy. These crimes were perpatrated when he was in office.
This sounds to me like the Prohibition era. Something that was seemingly your right (consuming alcohol) became an unlawful act overnight. The problem was that bootlegging became an overnight industry. Hell, from what I remember in some history books, it was members of Congress and other high profile socialites that ended up keeping bootleggers in business. It took them 15 or so years, but they finally repealed the 18th Ammendment.
All this DRM crap is probably gonna run the same course. We will enter a period where even owning a black marker will land you in jail, loaning your CD to your neighbor becomes a federal crime and installing a copy of Windows without express written consent from Microsoft can land you more time in prison than "real" crimes. Then the Congresspersons we have now will be voted out, replaced by a younger generation that sees the restrictions as useless. Their collective strings won't be pulled by the RIAA, and their pocketbooks won't have been lined by big corporations. The laws will get repealed and all will be forgotten. We just have to endure a bit of dark time before our lawmakers realize just what these laws actually mean.
I think I saw an episode on BBC2 a while back, but I couldn't work out what it was.
My current hypothesis is that it is an experiment in a form of visual sedative.
My previous involved a shadowy organisation an a plan to confuse the masses with some sort of Zen hypnotism.
Either way it's there to keep you occupied while a secret angency escourts the 'greys' in to give you an anal probe 'cartman' style.
Somebody told me it was a Situation Comedy (Sitcom) but I didn't believe them.
From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
To be watchable or listenable any digital data
has to be converted into analog at some point.
Once it is it can be copied even if it means
taking a tap off your PC speaker cable and routing
into a tape deck. So they can legislate all they
like but they're on a hiding to nothing in the
end. Guess they're just too dumb to see it.
Add this one to my grownig list of obligatory spam to my friends and family. Another case of the entertainment industry lobbying in areas they have no business messing with, the technology industry. I have a serious problem with how congress has being going along with this racket. Its gotten to the point that our real enemy is an internal one: our own elected officials. ANYONE that supports this sort of legislation is betraying the people of this country, plain and simple. Congress by and large has been bought and are now adhering to an entertainment organization's call to prop up their dying monopoly. This act is a direct affront to the principles and democratic process our society was based upon, and should be looked upon with great scrutiny. In light of recent events and the current state of affairs in the US, its a wonder how these people aren't viewed as terrorists?! After all, if this type of legislation passes, our nation as a whole will be thrown into a digital dark ages (not that it hasn't been already).
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
At the time, Joe Biden was a presidential candidate. He blatantly stole a speech from then British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. Word leaked out (or, actually, a member of Mike Dukakis' campaign team (I think it was Joe Sasso) discovered this and "leaked it out"), and Biden was forced to withdraw his candidacy.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
Well, it looks like Biden & Hollings are just a couple of Disney whores. Maybe Barney Frank will give them a couple of lessons :).
Additionally, it seems unlikely that the new laws would be enforced against anyone who wasn't distributing their cracked versions of a movie/mp3/program. Without that public activity, they don't really have any practical legal way of knowing that you've broken into their watermarking system. The "intent to distribute" language is there to catch people who put their cracks up on a website or P2P network, but who may not have had any actual hits yet.
So, should we be angry and afraid at the path this leads us down? Yes, certainly. But is this the "end of fair use" that everyone's been predicting for so long? Probably not. Have faith that common sense will prevail - if not in Congress, then in the courts and the enforcement agencies.
------------------------------------
Spiral out... keep going.
If anyone remembers the Truman Show, a story about a reality TV channel dedicated to following the the life of one Truman Burbank from cradle to whatever. Of course, they couldn't stop the action for the commercials, so they had over the top product placement with. This *was* just fiction with mock products, but I've already started seeing stuff over and under a letterboxed film.
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index.cfm
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
Music is just the first step. Pass this, and you won't be able to publish an ebook playable on common readers, unless you have corporate approval. This bill plus the Hollings bill, if not overturned by the courts, would be the end of free speech in any practical sense.
wTF
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Biden is a plagiarist.
http://www.ngcsu.edu/bdf/bfried/plgrm.htm
If he can't copy the work of others, no one can.
and no doubt they'd blame it on PVR and Internet piracy, and call for more/stiffer DRM legislation.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Biden's bill is mentioned, along with the "broadcast flag" proposal and the "license to hack" proposal, in this New York Times Article.
Ban books !!!
Close all libraries !!!
Burn all printed media !!!
Knowledge is contagious !!!
He who controls the present, controls the past and the future.
But now with digital technology this year's messages can be inserted into those reruns.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Some democracy. More like a Businessocracy! When did for the people by the people turn into for the corporations by the corporations. Granted money talks but things are getting completely out of hand in the US. Run your multi-billion dollar company into the ground and get off scott free and live off your 30 million dollar severence package, while thousands of ordinary citizens lose their live savings.
I'm not in the US but write your congressman (or whoever it is that represents you) and write the news media as well. The public does not realize what is going on. Soon Americans will be criminals if they hand video tape of last nite's show to their friends. Soon if you bypass commercials you will be a criminal. Make America the envy of the world once again.
Where are the anti-innovation and anti-creative/originality laws?
Where are the laws to protect our rights to be innovative and creative?
By that logic, since 1 of 1 presidents involved with the Enron scandal are Republican, voting rightist is an even worse idea.
And that president would be Bill Clinton. Enron is just another in a long line of scandals Bush inherited from Slick Willy. These crimes were perpatrated when he was in office.
Hey, dumbass, he didn't say which president was sitting in office, he said which president was involved. Check out bush's record with these energy companies...
I wonder how this will affect anything, it'll only hurt people who are well in their right to convert it to a more player friendly format so that they won't have to use that Propetiary DRM Player. Copying copyrighted software and music is already illegal! Sheez.
C'mon - someone in Delaware register DefeatJoeBiden.org or something and DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS JACKASS... And - idiotic DRM bills shouldn't be the only reason to toss him out of office... see for yourself.
http://www.issues2002.org/Senate/Joe_Biden.htm
The more they "slip in" the more it will break stuff. That's just a fact. We witnessed it with the modded CD's and we will witness it with this solution. As every programmer and engineer knows -- stuff just doesn't work right when its overengineered.
I haven't run any focus groups or anything but I am betting that consumers will backlash if their shit keeps breaking. I know my mom doesn't have the time or inclination to futz with something until it works right. They expect it to work out of the box. So when mom puts her MP3's on her "device" and is told "Sorry, we can't play this" -- I give it all of 5 minutes for mom to get pissed.....and pissed customers don't buy anything more from you.
We have another piece of legislation at some point, guaranteeing that non-DRM content ALWAYS be playable on systems capable of playing similar DRM content. Or possibly remove ALL watermark power from the ??AA, so they become customers of the Watermark Police *just like me*. Actually getting that last clause implemented is one thing that gives me reservations about the whole idea.
Let the ??AA keep their old model. Let them make it as onerous as they want. More power to them, let them make it absolutely obnoxious to use their content. Let them make it illegal to watch it anyway except *precisely* the way they intended.
But just keep the door open to competition, some way for the small guy to "publish."
My original wording was "get published," but that can't be, because the small guy could probably always "get published" so by signing away all rights, and letting the small guy keep rights is part of what this is about.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Dave Matthews Band is NOT from Blacksburg. It is from Charlottesville. Yes, I am a 'hoo, but I'm not being silly. Allen is a double 'hoo (i.e. BA and JD from UVa.), so he might have a clue about this. But even if he doesn't I guarantee he has staffers that will know.
"Congress finds that--
(1) American innovation, and the protection of that innovation by the government, has been a critical component of the economic growth of this Nation throughout the history of the Nation;"
Interesting how they use the word "innovation", a word commonly used by Microsoft to say that they come up with "new" (not necessarily "good", just "new") ideas. Gee, I wonder who lobbied this...
If you're still having trouble figuring it out, do a search on any techie news site on "palladium"
Just another freak in the freak kingdom.
Quoting from a report in Biden's website:
...an individual can download a full-length feature movie in less than 15 minutes....
I'd really like to know where to get that kind of bandwidth, and how much it would be per month.
700MB / 15 min = 46.67MB / min = 777k/sec
Please God...hook me up to that pipe.
The friggin battery will die long before that, AND you will have to send it to Apple to get the battery replaced! Pay attention, you Apple weenie.
I'm also from Delaware...and look, our state senator is featured on slashdot! w00t! what now californa? This is so freakin swee...oh wait, nm, this sucks..GODDAMN YOU BIDEN!
"Stop trying to control everything and just let go."
You forget that during Clinton's terms, much pro-corporation legislation was proposed and supported by Republican senators - the pres. is not the only one responsible for anything.
The Enron et. al. scandals are not the fault of one person or one party. They are the product of an increasing trend in this country to favour big business of small businesses and consumers. The only way to change things is to communicate with your representatives and USE YOUR VOTE!
The time of day is 29:33.
I posted this a 2 months ago on a similar topic, and realized it could use re-posting:
Two quick thoughts -
First, since old CDs and DVDs wouldn't have the tags (I presume), how would you play them? Second, what about Indy labels? Not just them, actually, but people who make their own CDs (bar bands, etc). They either wouldn't be able to make useable CDs or they'd have to get an ID tag. If they can get an ID tag, a pirate could create a dummy band and tag copied CDs, no?
By my estimation, you'll have to buy a new version of every CD you've got, and either small/Indy band won't be able to make CDs or the system is so un-thought out that it will crumble in a week. (Unless they have a way to update the hardware, someone can just make a CD burning program that has a single hacked or acquired code).
GL
LOL! What an ass.
This is a true story from my childhood.
Many years ago, when both I and my cat were younger, the movie "The Adventures of Milo and Otis" was played on the air. For those not familiar with the movie, it shows the adventures of a cat and a dog out in the wild. For the first time in her life, my cat started paying attention to the TV...right up until the first commercial break. She started losing interest then, but picked up again when the movie came back on. Each successive commercial break, however, made her lose interest faster, and made her take longer to start watching the movie again. Finally, she walked away from the TV, never again to return.
It took my many years, but finally, I too walked away from the television. The last time I tried watching TV (to see "Enterprise"), the constant and repetitive commercials drove me away after about seven weeks, only watching one hour a week.
So, proof conclusive that cats are smarter than people. =^.~=
Eventually you're going to get a government almost wholly controlled by
these huge corporations with big pockets who just want to protect their own
interests
Eventually? From where I sit, it seems like that's already happened. The
US needs to do something about who and how much can be contributed to
campaigns.
Whatever happened to campaign finance reform?
Illegal to fake a watermark? Why support devices that require them in the first place?.. you're just giving a reason for people to get them. If you don't support all that digital rights management crap, then no one will buy the devices that use them. If no one buys the devices that use them, then this bill will be pointless. You have to draw the line somewhere and think before you buy a product.
When are MS, Sony and others going to learn that any sort of system like this will be broken?
I was excited to get a sony mp3 player as a gift last year. Until I realized that it used a proprietary format, atrac3. It will only allow me to load a particular piece of music 4 times. I've even loaded the music I make on it, but I am still subjected to this limitation. HELLO, it's my music, I made it,I own the copyright.
Digital Rights Management is there only to help support the massive amount of profit that the recording industry is used to making. Well, I have a message for these people: The days of the $20 CD are long gone. Charge a fair amount of money for your product, and people will buy it. If you continue sticking it to the customer, they will break your systems and get it for free. Evolve or die. It's that simple.
So I'm a pervert. Welcome to the Internet.
The man who plagerised his way through education now wants to protect us from people like him.
For those who weren't around, Senator Biden lost a lot of face, and (IIRC) a shot at the Democratic presidential nomination, due to plagiarism. There was a joke at the time something like this:
Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and Gary Hart are on a cruise ship which starts to sink.
"Save the women and children first!" shouts Mr. Reagan.
"Screw the women and children!" shouts Mr. Nixon.
"We got time for that?" asks Mr. Hart.
Then someone added Mr. Biden to the passenger list.
"We got time for that?" repeats Mr. Biden.
And this is the guy who wants to make DRM breaking a jailable offense. I wonder if it includes just plain plagiarism.
Infuriate left and right
You can write/call/email/whatever you Senator as much as you want, it won't accomplish anything on this go around. Why? Because if you haven't noticed (the article directly benieth this one;) the US economy is in a death spriral from Very Bad(tm) accounting scandals. The country NEEDS Corporate accounting reform and having short attentions spans means this has to be done quickly. No Congress(wo)man in their right mind would say nay to this bill just because a bunch of geeks (who are probably criminal hackers anyways) think one page bunk. I'm not trying to troll here, but think of it from the point of view of someone who sees computers as a newfangled typewriter. Saying no to this bill would lose a Senator more votes than it would gain them. Anyways, if nobody follows it, it won't be enforced after a while (I mean really, we already have a higher percentage of people in jail than Stalinist Russia did,) and the law will prolly just end up on dumblaws.com
Maybe my memory is fuzzy, but wasn't Sen. Leahy the one who basically said there's no way in hell the SSSCA/CBDTPA/whatever that bill is called would be passed this year?
The key words were: "this year". Nowhere did he say he was opposed to CBDTPA. He just said it wouldn't pass this year in a way to make you think he was opposed top it.
Let them pass whatever DRM stuff they want and wait for it to collapse under its own weight. Joe Consumer isn't going to care about DRM issues until it bites him in the ass when he can't play his legally purchased CD because the SONY license server was down. And it won't bite him in the ass until this stuff gets through.
The longer and harder we fight the media conglomerates, the better developed their tactics will be and the harder it will be to undo the damage they've already done. Let them race ahead with blind and untested confidence and make the inevitable mistakes we can forsee, then nail'em hard and make it permanent.
I just did it; it's pretty easy. You can do it before lunch in about 5 minutes.
. cf m
/. readership) attempted to call about an issue on a single day, they would take serious notice.
You go to this web page:
http://www.senate.gov/contacting/index.cfm
Search through the page using the "find" function in your browser for your state abbreviation and find your two senators.
If you have trouble getting their names, they're also listed by state on this page, but without phone numbers:
http://www.senate.gov/senators/senator_by_state
You call each of them. Calling senators and even house members is generally very easy; they usually know not to make potential voters wait on hold, they're very polite, and they are supposed to take notes and tally the opinions of callers throughout the day. This isn't as important to a senator as money, but if, say, 20,000 people (a tiny fraction of the
Keep it polite, friendly, and under 5 minutes. If you can make your point in under 60 seconds, bonus points. Remember, you're just talking to an intern manning the phone, not a participant in a conspiracy. They might even be curious about what you have to say.
"Hello, I'm a voter from the Senator's home state of XX. I'd like to express my opinion on some pending legislation." And then they say go ahead, and you say, "I believe that the extravagant protections we are considering affording copyright holders are bad for our society and bad for our economy. I strong support the repeal of the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and today, I'm calling to inform you of my intention not to vote for anyone who supports S.2395, the Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002. Existing protections for copyright holders already go too far, and this bill would make it worse. Unnecessarily restricting fair use, free speech and free expression to protect the interests of media companies is morally wrong, and will make it harder to protect intellectual property in the long run."
You could get into a habit of doing this. Calling your representatives about an issue should be a normal part of your routine, like paying your bills or cleaning your house. The more people do it, the better things get for everyone.
We're on the road to Tycho.
I think this is going to be another fruitless attempt on the part of the Corp.'s to dissuage piracy. Almost all software (including OS's) is available cracked for download before it even hits the shelves. Sony didn't have to much luck with hardware restrictions for playing "backup" cd's, even the Dreamcast with its GD-roms and the portion of the cd that cannot be read by a computer, was cracked. Cable descramblers, DVD CODEC, VHS copyright, the list goes on and on. The simple fact of the matter is there are a lot more intellegent people working against the the "system" than are working for it. Most of the time it is simple curiosity that fuels it. "Someone figured out how to lock it, I wonder if I can un-lock it". Long story short - "Life will find a way"
DVDs and the region codes got in without much complaaint. DVDs also don't allow skipping certain parts, like the FBI copyright warning, and some trailers and advertising. The public has accepted them.
DiVX failed. It was too blatantly a lousy consumer sell.
So the RIAA and MPAA have learned. They have a good chance of slipping in all the DRM crap they can pay for in Washington, DC. Once it's legally mandated, there won't be any alternatives.
Infuriate left and right
I am using Vorbis' *.Ogg from now on. It isn't only insane, its frickin' stupid. MP3's aren't just used for recording someone's intellectual property, isn't just for notorious B.I.G's Big Poppa soundtrack and isn't just for pornstar moans! MP3's are a highly compressed sound file, very innovative and have changed the world. If you cannot play MP3's with Microsoft's MP3 player then I will use someone else's highly compressed sound system. I have plenty of MP3's that are released FREE by the artist themselves. For example, every single file on www.mp3.com is FREE to download and the artist WANT you to distribute their work. THEY WANT you to show the world that their music is kickass. Not only that, I listen to comedians with mp3s. There is this funny Filipino(I am of Filipino Ethicity) comedian who has mp3s on the internet, and I LOVE to download them. You just can't take away someone's right to freedom of press, we are distributing sounds. NOT MUSIC. The only reason this bill will pass is because the stupid senators are on Sony's, Capital records', and Interscope records' payroll. The communist bastards, I cannot beleive this crap. The day this happens, Im going to jail and Im going to hurt a lot of people on the way.
If I were to look 20-30 years down the road at a U.S. ruled by DRM via laws like the SSSCA, I would have to say it would be a pretty sad place. First of all, you have a generation of people who will have grown up beleiving that its normal to have to pay for *any* kind of information, and then think its taboo to share that information.
People will collaborate less and will have learned that it's 'wrong' to pass along data or information of any kind. This kind of mentality will manifest itself in an atmosphere where it's considered morally and ethically wrong to try to do things without doing them in the approved (legal or corporate) manner. I don't see a lot of technical or scientific innovation coming from people who have this mindset.
The Dark Ages was a fairly direct result of the Catholic Church's desire to control information, in their case, religious doctrine. The crusades brutally crushed scientific, philosophical, and mathmatic progress in the middle east. Human progress came to a virtual halt for several centuries.
This is the same thing. Instead of a rich, powerful church, we have a oligarchy of rich, powerful corporations who beleive it is in their best interest to control information of any kind, be it entertainment, scientific data, math, or any kind of production algorithm. The future is grim indeed if these companies get their way.
The renaissance, the richest period of exploration and innovation in human history happened when the controls imposed by the Catholic church started to break down and both religous and scientific information began to flow freely.
Freedom of Information == Human Progress and Advancement
Proprietary Information == Fear, Paranoia, Superstition, and Human Misery
So I'm a pervert. Welcome to the Internet.
What's the difference between this law and a law prohibiting possession of burglary tools? Here's a link to the Alaska statute. Its actually quite a similar law. The Biden amendment is closing a loophole which allows people to distribute tools to steal music, videos, or computer programs as long as they don't distribute the copyrighted material with it.
Even if these laws are passed, are there enough lawyers and policemen to actually prosecute the 150-200 million music listeners in this country? How about the entire world?
Congress has bent over so far to accomodate the music/movie industry, that they are now creating laws that can't possibly be enforced.
These guys just don't get it...the pirates will still go about their activities and the DRM crap will just make life hard for the paying consumers.
-ted
In protest of the recent DRM laws that are to be passed, why are American companies not relocating their "head office" out of the country. Their actual offices could stay in the states but perhaps thier is some legal loophole that would allow them to by pass the new copyright laws by relocating thier "head office" in Angola or Taiwam, Honk Kong or Venezuala.
I'm sure the American government would take notice when they aren't collecting as much tax revenue. I'll be sure to support any company willing to do this even if I don't need their products desparately solely on principle.
sorry about that; it just bugs me when i see umpteen thousand sigs that say "Vote Democrat in 2004!", "Republicans are all Evil" or some variation, and then see the entire community go into apoplectic paroxysms over this and scream "vote Republican!" (or at least that seems to be the zeitgeist today...).
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
At Comdex before the DeCSS fiasco, a vendor was advertising a DVD playback card that had "CSS support to play Hollywood movies" (undoubtedly with all the restrictions on copying/using the output that would entail).
I predicted the whole DVD fiasco here on November 21, 1998.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You do realize they'll just show up in the congresscritter's office, throw down a briefcase full of money, wave their hands around like jedi, and tell them they're losing money to people violating their copyrights. The following year, the official punishment for violating copyrights will be the corporate heads DARing (DAR = Dry Anal Rape) you over a barrel.
and are completely baffled by a new geomagnetic phenomenon that is causing compasses around the world to fail. A perplexed geo-scientist summarized the problem as follows:
"West is moving East and East is moving West. Who would have though that civil laws could trump physical laws".
In business news, sales of red ink and new maps are expected to skyrocket.
You sure it's not Bin-Laden? Maybe people just got him biden for short :P
Um, the Supreme Court did that already.
I am an American citizen and I do not see what good my government does me. All I see is waste, pork barrel spending and rich (generally old) people manipulating the system to their monetary benefit.
I know corruption is going to exist any type of government system, I just wish there were some way to make these senators/congressmen more accountable for their actions. I would also like the legislative process were more open to 'the people'. Lastly how about banning ALL, and I do mean ALL corporate support for politicians.
Ok, back to reality... The only way we are going to keep these types of things from happening would be mass protest/violence. Period. Don't tell me violence doesn't solve anything because I would disagree, violence solves EVERYTHING!
I have to admit, I was a bit shocked at first when I looked at Sen. Biden's profile on OpenSecrets. I was fully expecting him to be in the pocket of the movie industry, but that's at piddly #12 on his list of 2002 supporters. So, who made #1 on the contributions list? It certainly wasn't who I was expecting.
Lawyers.
Hmmm....
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
I'm not certain, but does this imply that if I have some open source player, which isn't going to honor watermarks, and I use it to play music files on my Linux or FreeBSD box that I am violating the law? Am I supposed to use whatever microsoft, real and apple tell me to use?
./configure option by someone outside of the US.
And if open source does have some sort of check for watermarks it's pretty obvious it's going to be made a
I hate laws that are vague like this, leaves it too open for interpretation by some lawyer beyond my price range.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The supreme court jesters set that precedent almost 2 years ago.
This is very short sighted thinking.
What happens if a new media file type is developed? You won't be able to use it.
What happens when your kids move out on their own and have to buy their own CD player and stop using yours?
What happens in a few years when you current stuff breaks down?
Eventually new stuff will be bought.
SAMBA and like technologies could be misconstrued to be tools used to fake legitimate Windows authentication protocols, a form of digital signature, to gain access to Windows protected networks. They would be made illegal. In fact, since there is no interoperability clause in this, any application that uses an unauthorized piece of code to access another system could be labeled pirate ware and the company selling labeled a illegal distribution. Another words, you would have to get approval to use a competitor, otherwise, they are selling pirate tools. Who here thinks that an irritated company would not sue an open source project. Think about it.
What about our mythical garage band signing on with an independent label? No matter what type of watermarking technology may eventually be mandated, I can't imagine it will be priced out of the range of all indies. And for all labels, won't the cost of licensing be passed on to the consumer? So yeah we'll all pay more for CD's, but at least the new costs should be about the same for all labels. I'll grant that watermark licensing will probably be based on volume, which puts indies at a disadvantage. But I think the licensing body (unless its the RIAA itself) will have an economic incentive to have as many licensees as possible.
8 bit computing - It may be 2007 out there, but it's 1983 in here!!
Xbox is already a sort of "trusted" computer.
Let's suppose someone comes up with a way to create signed binaries that it will run without a mod chip (which might be pulled from the market under the DMCA).
Are these not-created-by-Microsoft authentication tags (for xbox linux, not a "backup" of a game) a violation of Biden's bill?
The "property" with a counterfeit authentication isn't Microsoft's, it's FSF's/Linus's/et al. so maybe the bill doesn't apply. I get hung up on the definition of "illicit authentication feature" in section 3 6 C "appears to be genuine, but is not." Is it A and (B or C) or A or B or C??
Dear Senator X,
[it's going to both a version will go my Rep as well]
I am writing to you today in regards to Senator Howard Berman's proposed Digital Rights Restriction provisions. These provisions have been included as amendments to bill number S2395. As a Software Developer and a citizen I oppose these provisions wholeheartedly as they will only serve to stifle competition and restrict legitimate research not prevent any unauthorized copying of copyrighted software, music or movies.
The stated goal of these provisions is to prevent the unauthorized copying of copyrighted materials. To that end, they make it a felony to produce a fake watermark or "digital signature" in order to fool watermarking technologies. They impose stiff criminal and civil sentences on the act and make distribution or intention to distribute these watermarks an offence in their own right. While this may seem reasonable on the surface I assure you that it is not.
Digital Rights Management is becoming a ubiquitous technology. It is already at work in DVD players, many music players such as handheld mp3 players. Microsoft and Intel have announced that it will be embedded at the lowest (Processor) level of their new systems, and the FCC is seriously considering mandating it in the Digital Television and Digital Radio standards. One pair of senators (Fritz Hollings and Ted Stevens) are seeking to make it mandatory in all new technology via the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act.
Because this technology will lie at the core of Microsoft's new operating system it will be necessary to obtain a watermark key in order to run any software on future versions of Windows. As a software developer I would be forced to obtain Microsoft's permission to develop and run software on my, or anyone else's machine. In short, I would need Microsoft's permission to do my job. I cannot imagine any legal tool more anticompetitive than that.
The same is true for Intel and AMD's proposed secure chips. These chips would embed watermarking at the processor level making it necessary to obtain a signature in order to develop any hardware or software for the AMD or Intel platforms. This would stifle the hardware vendor competition that has made computer hardware a 300 billion dollar a year industry, brought the prices of computers down, and fueled the recent economic boom.
Let me be clear that I do not oppose the principle of watermarking in any way. As a security technology it is useful and I feel that Intel and Microsoft should have the right to include it in their systems if they wish. However I feel that such technology should be open to examination and the general public should have a choice about which technologies they do and do not adopt.
It was Microsoft's ability to examine the CP/M operating system that allowed them to produce the first version of DOS, and Intel's ability to examine IBM's PC designs that allowed them to enter the PC market that they dominate today. Such open competition is beneficial to the economy.
This is also the case for movies, music and electronic books. By prohibiting other users from producing watermarks you are allowing groups such as the MPAA, RIAA, and others to control the DVD, and Digital Television distribution channels. In, effect, granting them monopoly control over who can and cannot produce movies and music in this country. Again this competition would stifle, not only innovation but the economic gains to be had from the 30 billion dollar a year music and movie industries.
Lastly, these provisions will also stifle useful research. Digital watermarking technologies and Digital signatures underlie many security systems in use today ranging from defense to private industry. Research on these systems involves attempts to break into them in order to test their strength. Scientific Peer-review of this research depends upon the ability of these researchers to share their findings and to test each other's results. This work allows those individuals to produce better, more secure systems to the benefit of our National Security and Economic infrastructures. These provisions would make that work illegal. This would seriously impair both our Economic and National Security.
These provisions are unnecessary because, as senators Berman, Hollings, and Stevens well knows making unauthorized copies of "Sinefield" or any other copyrighted work is illegal. These acts are already punishable by law. We also have a justice department capable of carrying out such investigations and prosecutions. Indeed, these provisions will not make the act of piracy any "more" illegal. They will only stifle economic competitions and industrial research.
In the end, even if these provisions are passed they will not prevent piracy. They will only permit a small subset of the business community to unfairly control the economic and cultural landscape of this country. This group will be in a position to decide who can develop software, who can distribute music, who can distribute movies, and who can conduct security research. In such an environment of inflated prices, the incentive to piracy will be far greater, and the likelihood of any real security weaknesses being identified will be far less.
Thank you for your time.
Irvu.
The T-shirt lobbies for tougher legislation,
Ha, of course I mean the T-shirt LOBBY lobbies for tougher legislation.
Sadly,
not funny but true.
(Score:+5 True)
--my karma just ran up your dogma--
DRM requirements for computers is like forcing the automakers to build your car so it must stripsearch you for weapons anytime you stop at a bank - so you won't rob it.
It's awkward, unnesscessary and wrongheaded.
Push this message...
I'm ignorant: how do laws like this affect the UK, can us brits still be jailed/sued for using marker pens to evade copy protection?
-- Wibble
Numbers USA has a free service for faxing them. Yep you got to register, but this makes sense so that you don't have spam bots abusing the service.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
All the fuss, all of the legislative alliances, the secret backroom deals, the evil schemes - all of this - has so far been interpreted as Hollywood and the Major Labels fighting for survival against the Internet eating all of their intellectual property.
Framing the struggle in this way places the concept of "copyright", and more generally the rights of the artist, at the center of the battlefield. However, as is patently obvious to all, the sheer size and cost of the technical measures required to prevent Internet copying of arbitrary digital data are completely out of step with the Constitutional force given to copyright.
I suggest a different model of what is going on: arbitrary bit strings have become, in some special circumstances, certificates of value (i.e. "money") and the struggle we are seeing is more in line with what one would expect over counterfeiting of currency rather than copying of songs and music. US currency has an entire branch of the Secret Service to protect it, and entire classes of legislation exist to defend it. By this standard, the CBDTPA does not look extreme: it looks quite conservative.
When you buy a movie ticket, you're buying a "right" - in most cases, the right to see the stated movie at the stated time. That "right" is transferable (you can give a ticket to somebody else). If you duplicate your ticket and give copies to all of your friends, you have committed a crime: fraud, in this case. Digital Rights Management is intended to make every transaction between you and a content vendor like buying an unforgeable movie ticket or an uncopyable CD.
Paper cash is the generic case of this movie ticket. A twenty dollar bill is a token expressing a certain amount of raw economic power which can be turned into any number of different experiences. A perfect Digital Rights Management system is essentially a trading system for experiences: your money goes in one end, and experiences flow out of the other. It is a piece of financial infrastructure, just like a bank or an ATM machine or a check or a credit card: it is an engine of trade and commerce.
At this point, I think it's clear that forging a digital right is equivalent to fraud, and more-or-less equivalent to counterfeiting. If the DRM system issues a "ticket" in exchange for payment, and you then create additional tickets equivalent to that first ticket, or conspire to get the experience to which that ticket corresponds without a ticket, you've committed fraud.
We have clearly gone far beyond mere "copyright infringement" at this stage. Once you understand that Digital Rights Management is financial infrastructure - extending the ability to take money for goods and services right on to your desktop PC - I think the nature of the fight becomes much clearer. The battle is to shape the nature of electronic commerce, not just online credit card processing, but the nature of all value-exchange transactions conducted over the Internet.
There are two "real world" ways of handling exchanges of value, and they are parallel and closely conjoined. Cash is for anonymous, decentralized transactions, and the banking system is for identifiable, centralized exchanges made using instruments like credit cards, checks, and wire transfers.
Our ability to trade using cash rests on the difficulty of copying our currency. Because it is difficult to reproduce bills and coins, all of the money in circulation can reasonably be assumed to be the real thing and even a cursory check is usually enough to separate the fake from the real. This is the only reason a cash economy is possible.
Imagine that the US Government decides the new $100 bill will be a simple black-and-white photocopy of the current $100 dollar bill. The cash system will collapse overnight: nobody will accept the copyable bills because there is no way to tell genuine money from fake stuff. All transactions, no matter how small, would have to be done through the banking system. Cash cannot exist if it can be copied too easily.
This is how the digital economy looks to Hollywood and the record companies: a sea of counterfeit rights, of fake money circulating, choking their ability to do business. Without "uncopyability" as a basic property of some data, there is no way for them to protect their assets.
Given that there is no trustworthy "cash" economy on the Internet - that there is no way to do anonymous, decentralized exchanges of value or data online - what's left? Centralized, identified systems equivalent to credit cards, checks, and wires: banking for data.
In the banking portion of our current financial system, "rights management" (i.e. financial integrity) is guaranteed by the banks: your branch will not allow you to spend the same money twice, your credit card has a limit controlled not by you but by the card issuer. Audits and third party verifications of the trustworthiness of all parties are required for business. Breaking any of these rules results in jail time.
This is where the copyright lobby wishes to lead us: into a future of highly secured systems which treat data like money, protected by both audits and fierce laws, designed to prevent the "embezzling" of valuable data. Because no such system can ever be 100% perfect ("cop chip on every analog-to-digital converter" not withstanding) it is also necessary to either patrol (impossible) or shut down (entirely likely) the unsecured part of the digital economy: in the limit, this kind of a system means that no file without a "digital right" to be transmitted can be moved across the Internet, and those rights may be arbitrarily hard to come by for files large enough to be music or movies.
This may seem entirely improbable, but once every few years somebody in government suggests that the simplest way to stop money laundering is to simply take cash out of circulation and use some kind of authenticated, identified electronic token in its place. It usually gets shot down very quickly, but it is entirely within the range of things that government considers from time to time.
Now examine PressPlay: your "digital rights," your "money", is stored for you on a centralized server, or in a cryptographic lock-box controlled by that server but resident on your desktop machine. You can use your digital rights ("spend your money") only in authorized ways, but other than that you have no control, and the entire scheme is warranted on your identity. PressPlay is a version of banking for data.
Let's look at this again. If counterfeiting of money was rampantly out of control, then taking cash out of circulation would be a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem. We would be left with central banking and authenticated transactions as the backbone of the economy. On the Internet, rights management is out of control. Taking "cash" (i.e. the ability to access any file without a digital rights check) out of the online economy may seem, to a government, like a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem of "counterfeiting".
We can not expect the government to continue to allow the Internet to be a nest of Warez and ripped-off music and movies, any more than they would stand for wholesale counterfeiting of the dollar.
We have a short window of opportunity to negotiate the way in which the Internet is brought under the rule of law. In the struggle over domain names, trademark legislation was extended to govern the new land, although we kept some autonomy. In the struggle over counterfeiting and digital rights, we have some choices ahead of us:
1> We can stay outlaws to the last, denying the rule of law, until such time as they ban "cash" transactions online and all we're left with is "data banking."
2> We can mount a war, and it would be a war, to change the values of the culture to make the "law of the West" the law of the land: to destroy copyright as it is currently understood in favor of an Internet-friendly system.
3> When the federales come to town, we can have cleaned up our own business, and present our solution to "rule of law in cyberspace."
I favor option 3. Accept the rule of law and propose and back our own implementation: elect our own sheriff rather than having one foisted upon us.
Given that Digital Rights Management is essentially financial infrastructure, I think that a great deal of the work done on digital currencies could be fruitfully reapplied to DRM, not just from the perspective of security, but also from the perspective of preservation of anonymity and empowerment of the individual to control their own digital rights, rather than being policed by a "banking" system.
I think we really need to step up to the plate here and envision an internet which is open to both secure trade and the commons. Like it or not, we cannot keep breaking the law and expecting to get away with it. Until authors have the ability to issue rights to their works, and to have those rights be respected, we are in danger of simply having the Internet as we know it "paved for television".
In fact, the word "digital" does not appear in the text of the bill. What the legislation *does* do, is prevent people from copying any holograms or CD Key stickers that accompany the distribution to "prove" that the software is "genuine". Frankly, I'm not against this bill.
It should be made illegal (felony) for a elected representative to present a bill or amendment that breaches the constitution, except where said bill/amendment makes it clear that specific constitutional rights (no catch all caveats allowed) may be being taken away.
...
Furthermore, no bill/amendment containing potential constitutional right removals should be fast tracked to avoid timely public debate or scrutiny.
Easily proved (the moment SCOTUS overturns bill/amendment). Sentence of disbarment from public office, and five years sounds about right
Why are there still no www.geekpack.org links with these stories?
Slashdot seems to have a short attention span..
From their site:
"GeekPAC is an organization created for the specific purpose of Lobbying Directly to Influence Elections and the passage of legislation that fits the goals of our organization. We are a "PRO" Information Technology, "PRO" Freedom of Information, "PRO" Equal Access, "PRO" Freedom of Innovation and "PRO" Free Enterprise organization. In essence we speak directly too issue that appeals to the people who live with, and work with technology. Our goal is to become a voice to better represent those people."
Would someone who actually gets listened to put them in there sig or something? Am I the only one who thinks this is a *GOOD* thing?
They were last mentioned Thursday April 11, but I don't think they were excepting membership then..
Quack, quack.
That was In God We Trust, Inc. The Casette version (it was an EP, their best one imho). The B side was blank with a note encouraging the listener to record other music on the blank side.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
[MP/RIAA]...what more could they want? Our first-born children? Our souls?
They do, but their marketing people haven't figured out exactly how to take our first-born and souls, then license them back to us on a pay-per-view basis.
_______
2B1ASK1
up it would go. Great post.
Why yes I am paranoid! Thanks for asking!
I like him better, too, but he is showing things are not right in the U.S. government, and he doesn't seem to be aware of that.
Anyone who thinks that they can introduce watermarking, copyright protection, and so on, into a market where we have more than adequate technologies without such limitations, has to be off their rocker.
Sure, you can introduce a WMA-a-like, which has restrictions on your ability to download, but you're not going to stop people ripping it to MP3. Don't ya just love being able to record what your sound card's playing out?
Sure, you can make music players that won't play MP3... but you'll lose 95% of your market if you do. So you make the players backward-compatible with MP3... everyone copies the protected media to MP3, and you're back where you were before.
You could build DRM into hardware... only you'll get less buyers than if you circumvent, exclude, or otherwise, DRM. And if you do build it into hardware, there's always going to be a mod-chip available. See Sony PlayStation.
Essentially, they can try all they want - but as long as there is software that can capture what's being played out on the screen and through your speakers - which there always will be - you will always be able to make copies for your own -AHEM- personal use.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
Just so you know what to look out for: the watermarking/DRM equipment will most likely not be expensive. The "equipment" to generate/read the watermarks/DRM will just be software and/or a chip that uses things like public/private key cryptography and digital signatures. The keys to produce and widely distribute DRM/watermarks will be expensive. Note that the software or chip to encode will not be any more expensive than the stuff to decode, however it'll probably increase the cost of your licensed computer/recorder/player by a noticable amount at any rate.
You could create your own keys, however I presume that many devices and player software will only play files with keys made by some future DRM consortium. The entertainment cartel will use this as an argument: people can still make their own content. The problem with it is politicians and the general public will believe this and not realize that it will limit them from distributing their content.
The entertainment cartel may create a more fine-grained region control than even DVDs. There could be different DRM constortiums in each country, so if you want to distribute something internationally, you'll have to buy keys for each country you wish to distribute your media. ..or perhaps they'll esablish different formats in different regions--like NTSC vs PAL.
I'm in the US, we have those levies too. I am also offended that I have to pay "taxes" to the entertainment cartel for all the blank media and CD-RW drives that I legally use. I don't know about Canada, but here we also pay it on "recording" devices. What they want is the same 50% of everyone's income that the government takes and be a government entity that can enforce "anti-piracy" laws (really meaning anti-competition laws) and restrict trade of "non-approved" video, text, and audio such as your stuff, independent films/music, and unfavorable reviews of cartel products.
Of course this will do nothing to stop "piracy" (or at least the real piracy that is for money) since those people will easily be able to steal or manufacture a recording device and produce 10,000 disks. The hash also does not stop them because they are only interested in duplicating disks that have the already-hashed data.
What it will do is make it impossible for anybody to produce any kind of entertainment without buying a license from the MPAA/RIAA and submitting their data to be encoded. Thus all competition is eliminated.
By the time everybody realizes this they will be able to say "well, that's too bad, but it's just the price we have to pay to stop those horrible pirates".
While I agree that the levy is ridiculous - virtually all of us buy blank CD's for data, etc. - there is a point to remember:
In Canada it is legal to make copies of CD's you own (of course). But it's also legal to make copies of someone else's CD's - provided you make the copy. Ie, I can borrow a friend's CD and burn a copy for my own use. I cannot burn a CD and give it to a friend - that would be distributing a copied disc.
So long as the disc is for personal use (no public presentations, radio, etc) you are legally free to make a copy of whatever you want. Just be the one who pushes that Burn button.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Remember Transformers, and other cartoons of that era? They were essentially program-length commercials for toys.
If everything is going to be DRMed, and assume that the DRM actually worked, what would be the purpose of having broadband connections at home? Why would I need a broadband connection to just read email? There won't be any content worth getting. If anything, DRM might just kill the cashcow that the cable modem and dsl providers have been sitting on for past years...
:-) ZModem all the way.
Return to the age of the 2400...
This thing goes far beyound every copy protection. The problem I see is, who will give out the watermarks and who will be able to obtain them. What they do here is to imprint the console development scheme onto the cultural scene. That basically means the dreaded indies finally can be dried out and the RIAA and MPAA can control everything. It is like having a signature is a passport to be able to distribute music if everything becomes really bad and only watermarked works are allowed to be played or shown.
Guess what the result could be a cultural desaster worse than everything else in history (even the nazis couldnt be more supressive culturally where an underground arts scene could survive). This thing has to be brought to a broader public!
And I thought Palladium already was bad because they do the same to the developers.
But this is even worse, cause the whole arts culture is at stake here!
Btw. dont you have election time this year, I guess it is time to kick some serious butt electionwise!
So I use the DRM enabled videocam to pirate the next Star Warez movie
The camera recognizes the watermark placed by Lucas and shuts off.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I believe this:
Despite their greed and/or ignorance, US representatives will never be able to justify to the public why the kid's crappy techno band or grandpa's atrocious blues quartet or the church's miserable choir must include DRM in free distributions of their hand-made, debut CDs.
That's all it's going to take.
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
he Enron et. al. scandals are not the fault of one person or one party. They are the product of an increasing trend in this country to favour big business of small businesses and consumers.
Wrong! Enron, Worldcom, etc., are the result of a handful of executives breaking the law. The current media assertion that this is the fault of the one politicial party is silly. We don't need new laws passed, we need the current laws enforced.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
FYI, Democrats _and_ Republicans are both beholding to media interests (put simply, they're terrified of crossing the people who run television, radio and newspapers), although I think the Repubs are worse on the balance it barely matters who your rep is.
/. and agree with you on the issue? Just keep calling, and tell your friends to do the same, and have faith in the process. We got a long way on that method in our country, and we can certainly go farther on it.
You're right. One guy calling a senate office they utterly ignore. But if you and 20,000 of your friends do it, they will shit themselves.
Trust me.
Now, how many millions of people read
We're on the road to Tycho.
how long it will be until some advertiser simply completely funds a show with omnipresent product placement.
I read somewhere that producers of movies in Asian countries with weak copyright laws actually fund production of movies this way.
Will I retire or break 10K?
3(a)(6)(B)
"the term `illicit authentication feature' means an authentication feature, that" " is genuine, but has been distributed, or is intended for distribution, without the authorization of the respective copyright owner; "
Would that not make selling used CDs which have watermarks or other protections illegal!? And the same for DVDs?!
In the case of the burglary tools, they have a fixed purpose (i.e. unlocking locks without the requisite key...) whereas, many of the "tools" for which one can circumvent DRM with have other useful purposes.
A black Sharpie(TM) permanant marker, for example, is something that could get you a felony charge with the law in question. (No, it's not likely anyone in their right mind would charge someone with the proposed criminal act- but the wording of the law allows for it all the same and someone not in their right mind (which appears to be going about these days with all the bad laws, bad judicial decisions, etc.) can and would likely press charges and get you a nasty sentence for your troubles.) This is a bad idea, really.
Infringement is already illegal. Why in the hell do we need more laws making it illegal- it's not going to make it any more illegal than it is already.
("Sharpie" is a registered trademark of Sanford...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Which means that if I make my own music
<devils-advocate>
How can you prove that it's your own music? For all I know, it could be your performance of a song written by some other songwriter. And don't tell me you wrote that song; surely you "accidentally" cribbed a melody from one of the millions of songs written since January 1, 1923, all of which are under copyright in the United States of America.
</devils-advocate>
Will I retire or break 10K?
-nt-
Has the modern education system failed that badly? I mean I am not a mathematician (I just play one on Slashdot), but I learned this 20 years ago in grade 10. IIRC, the term was introduced to us along with the study of set theory.
Here we go again...I really wish people would quit pretending that only "Those Evil Republicans(tm)" are owned and operated by Big Business. I especially don't "get" the notion that MEDIA controls the republicans, especially with Hollings' and Biden's legislative behavior lately (and, e.g. Feinstein's vocal and passionate support for Big Media in California...)
Face it - BOTH of the "two parties" that the press ever mentions in any important way are wholly owned subsidiaries of major donors. The alleged "left" seems to be owned mostly by lawyers and media companies, while the "right" seems to be owned by "old-school" industries like manufacturing, oil, and power. Don't trust EITHER of them...
(Most of the "Big Media" companies DO give me the impresssion of having a "leaning" towards the Democratic Party [NOT a "liberal" or "leftist" slant - if that were true, we'd be seeing a lot more favorable stories about, e.g., Ralph Nader and the "Peace and Freedom" party and the "personal freedom" aspects of libertarianism and so on], with the exception of Rupert Murdoch's "FOX" channel. "The Two Parties", then, aren't really "Democrat" and "Republican", they are "Disney" and "Rupert".....)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
So I take a picture which I would like to share. I put it on the 'net without a watermark. Nobody can see it because it doesn't have a MS approved watermark. I say... hmm... ok, I'll use my own key and watermark it. Nobody can view it because it's not watermarked by a recognized authority. I use a tool which forges a MS watermark. Now, finally, people can view it. However I am now in jail for 5 years and I had to pay $25000 per download of my own damn picture.
No thanks.
Would someone please mod this racist lowlife poster down to hell, where he belongs?
[begin shrill]
...and people are so stupid they probably won't even notice!!!
...and life will continue to be as meaningless as it ever was...
In the future, Television will subconsciously dictate how we will dress, how we will react in different circumstances, and paint perfect lives so people will be obsessed emulating everything they see on TV!!!
TV will be the way companies will create demand where there was none, and add value to things that are meaningless!!! All to the highest bidder!!!
Your Coca-Cola dystopia is NOTHING compared to the dystopia that TV will sell to the highest bidder!!!
[end shrill]
[narrirator]
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
And by "beholding" I mean "beholden."
We're on the road to Tycho.
Entertainment products are in no way a currency. They don't have any stable, universal value. After I watched a movie, there is nothing I can do with the ticket stub. They are exactly what the name implies - products and services. But anyway, society generally controls both what government does with currency and what companies must let you do with their products. If you buy a car, you want to be able to drive anywhere you want, disassemble it to make improvements, sell it and so on. True, it a crime for me to steal a car from dealer's parking lot but it's also the same crime for him/her to steal it from mine after I payed for it. It's also Ok for me to look at someones car and, should I have the expertise, make a similar one for myself.
What enterntainment industry is asking for though is a dictatorship, power without control. It will hardly agree to be controlled by public like a government - we will not get to elect CEOs of Hollywood companies. It also hasn't agreed to the same restrictions as makers of physical products. I can not get my money back if Pressplay deactivates my music collection. There is no reason for us to cooperate and give them such a priviliged position.
Proposed Bill in Senate:
;)
S.2395
Short title:
Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002
Introduced:
4/30/2002
Rewritten to include DRM:
7/18/2002
House Equivalent (without DRM provisions):
H.R.5057
Sponsor:
D-DE - Sen Biden Jr., Joseph R.
Cosponsors:
R-VA - Sen Allen, George - 4/30/2002
D-ND - Sen Dorgan, Byron L. - 4/30/2002
D-NE - Sen Nelson, E. Benjamin - 4/30/2002
D-CA - Sen Boxer, Barbara - 4/30/2002
D-SC - Sen Hollings, Ernest F. - 4/30/2002 (big surprise)
D-WA - Sen Murray, Patty - 4/30/2002
R-OR - Sen Smith, Gordon - 4/30/2002
D-ND - Sen Conrad, Kent - 7/9/2002
R-UT - Sen Hatch, Orrin G. - 7/9/2002
D-VT - Sen Leahy, Patrick J. - 7/11/2002
R-SC - Sen Thurmond, Strom - 7/11/2002
R-OH - Sen DeWine, Michael - 7/11/2002
D-CA - Sen Feinstein, Dianne - 7/11/2002
If someone wants to lookup email, phone, fax, and snail mail contacts for the above and post them that's ok with me
I found this line on his page.:
One of the most respected voices on national security and civil liberties, Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has earned national and international recognition as a policy innovator, effective legislator and party spokesman on a wide range of key issues.
Now that is really funny, because his bill that can be summarized as:
Anti-counterfeiting Amendments of 2002 - Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit trafficking in an "illicit authentication feature." Defines that term to mean an authentication feature that: (1) without the authorization of the respective copyright owner, has been tampered with or altered so as to facilitate the reproduction or distribution of a phono-record, a copy of a computer program, a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or documentation or packaging, in violation of the rights of the copyright owner; (2) is genuine, but has been distributed, or is intended for distribution, without the authorization of the respective copyright owner; or (3) appears to be genuine but is not.
does not reflect any civil liberties. =) The question is, if I see something on the news and tell my friends about it, is it goin to be illegal? First of all, I am not 'authorized' to tell it, secondly it is genuine, but has been distirbuted, and the last one, it might appear to be true.. but its not(?). Sooner or later we'll have leather masks with zippers on our mouths, that would zip us up anytime we say something without authorization. Soungs like a bondage session to me
Then maybe the MPAA/RIAA and Congress would take notice if after a year or so of this mandatory watermarking, a large percentage of all content played in new DRM players was marked with the "Marca de agua libre"?
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Congress may make a law that requiring the licensing of free-speech, to ensure that the work was not originally created by another; and the method of this protection may not be circumvented; and must be paid for.
Amendment 1.B
Congress may make a law determining when free speech is permitted, or who may pay for it.
3. A heinous crime; especially, a crime punishable by death
or imprisonment.
Note: Forfeiture for crime having been generally abolished in
the United States, the term felony, in American law,
has lost this point of distinction; and its meaning,
where not fixed by statute, is somewhat vague and
undefined; generally, however, it is used to denote an
offense of a high grade, punishable either capitally or
by a term of imprisonment. In Massachusetts, by
statute, any crime punishable by death or imprisonment
in the state prison, and no other, is a felony; so in
New York. the tendency now is to obliterate the
distinction between felonies and misdemeanors; and this
has been done partially in England, and completely in
some of the States of the Union. The distinction is
purely arbitrary, and its entire abolition is only a
question of time.
1. Publish a new P2P package that is packaged using DRM, and has a EULA restricting its use and/or users (no RIAA employees or contractors, no crapflooding, etc.).
2. Wait until RIAA DoS's/crapfloods your new P2P network.
3. Drag RIAA into court for violating your DRM and EULA.
4. Profit
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
This is really getting old. Every few weeks something appears about Senator so and so passing some legislation to essentially suck off of the media giants just to make some quick money.
I'm sure there was a time when all senators acted in the best interest of the people he claims to represent. Nowadays it seems they are way out of touch with them, because if they really were in touch, they'd know their people don't want this kind of stuff to happen.
And we (geeks) can call our congressmen or whatever as much as we want, but in the end the big corporations will probably win out because they have the big $$$ and can afford to buy off these short-sighted senators.
Fuck the RIAA and MPAA. I'll never buy a CD or DVD again, EVER.
s/consumer/peasent
You meant Senator Joseph Biden. Berman was the guy with the "Legalize DOSing for large copyright holders" bill from a couple of days ago. Whew!
.I really wish people would quit pretending that only "Those Evil Republicans(tm)" are owned and operated by Big Business.
In me, this idea comes from the fact that most of the republicans and other people I know on the rightish side of the political continuum tend to beleive that markets will solve most (if not all) problems. This ideology tends to favor those with lots of market power, ie, big business.
Assuming this means they have been bought is a classic logical error, of course.... a => b does not mean b => a. In this case, just because someone acts in the interest of big business, it does not mean they have been bought, despite the fact that those bought by big business will act in its interest.
(It's sortof like the Turing Test, and this is one of the big problems I have with the Turing Test. a (a consciousness with the ability to communicate) => b (ability to convince another consciousness of its consciousness), but that doesn't mean b => a ).
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Alone, this sort of bill is useless, but sooner or later, they will get their federal mandate requiring hardware to contain DRM technology. Are you happy never buying another electronic product, ever again?
OK, say for example all the DRM laws are passed. No one can distribute media in the US without a license obtained from the MPAA or RIAA.
Where does this leave other countries? There is no way all of the countries will adopt similar laws.
So, does that mean that a US citizen, importing music (etc) from abroad is commiting a crime in order to listen to it? What about the UK citizen that wants to listen to music that's only available in the US? The only way to do that would be to import a DRM restricted player. Which will probably also be illegal.
Who is going to go to all that bother? No one, they'll get a unrestricted pirated version instead; no DRM is infallable, hence the law-making. They won't be breaking any of these DRM laws outside of US juristiction and the industry loses a sale!!
There are many independant labels that are imported by fans all the time. Go to a proper music store and take a look. Often these labels have no interest in setting up international distribution chains and especially all that will be involved with DRM. Some folk are actually in it for the music still, not the markets. The club DJ scene is dominated by imports and early releases; a good DJ gets the best new music before the others.
Often, it is realised that there is a international market for a band, and then it gets released officially. This happens amoungst all countries, except when it comes to the likes of Britany Spears, where agressive marketing is used to promote multi-national sales right from the "creation" of the band/act.
And so, many international companies will be turned away from the US market. At the loss of the US people, but not the US companies, who will get a bigger cut of the John USA's monthly media dollar. It will get to the point that every movie in the multiplex is created in the US. Ohhh...wait a minute...
Imagine that happens to music, the software industry and any other form of digital entertainment. But so long as big business is OK and outdated market models are preserved, that's OK.
This whole affair is destined to be an embarassing flop. Like the software creation process, the longer the problems are left unsaid, the more costly they will be to rectify.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
This amendment needs a compromise; the watermark should only be enforcable if it is created in a non-biased manner by a non-profit organization with a board of directors from the general public, free of charge for those distributing their content without charge. Thus, any garage band should be able to get a watermark as easily as the RIAA for their stuff, regardless of financial ability. What we *dont't* want is SONY or the RIAA itself minting these watermarks. We need a non-biased "authority" otherwise this will just further entrench media monopolies at the expense of small businesses (such as a local band).
A big percentage of media in the U.S. is controlled by republican-friendly moguls like Murdoch (inc. AOL/TW) willing to put out 24/7 Repub. propaganda channels (Fox "News"). "Sex and violence" middle-class-parent point scoring is a bipartisan effort, with democrats like Feinstein and Liebermann just as eager to jump on the bandwagon as their conservative opposite numbers.
The 2/3 - 1/3 doesn't mean anything even if it's true, and you haven't cited a source. It just as likely means the Dems need more $$$ thrown at them because they're not "family."
I say take the high road, and fuck 'em both equally anyway.
Don't forget that another current House of Representatives bill recently passed would make it a crime to attempt any of these crimes. In other words, it would be illegal to try to code an unauthorized watermark program, even if it didn't actually work.
I think they're worse on the balance, not specifically because of their policies with respect to the media, but in general. Not that I like either side.
We're on the road to Tycho.
There should be a way that a producer of media should be able to 'opt out'. After all if I WANT to give away my stuff, then I should be able to turn off drm in my files. Sort of a non-watermark watermark. I don't think anyone yet knows the nuts and bolts of drm, how it is going to work. I suspect that the watermark is embedded in the file in such a way that you can't just copy it out and paste it into another file. The software to produce the final file will embed the watermark, and might very well have an opt out option in it. This would NOT be usefull to a pirate who grabbed hold of a watermarked file and wanted to rip out the watermark. So far I think the the purpose of DRM is to provide a way for the MPAA and RIAA to enter the digital domain marketplace without having their digital works pirated. If it serves to lock out amateurs who want to sell their works, that is anti-trust. If DRM can exist on a level playing field with an opt-out option for those that do NOT want to protect their works, this would be a fair compromise.
From true democracy to corporate democracy to now corporate communism all under 250 years.
I bet Stalin and Lenin are laughing their perserved asses off.
Like that guy who fathered the GNU movement said, it's "Digital Restrictions Management". Or "Democrat's Right to Mug you" (And any republican that is for the current state of DRM is a democrat in disguise).
I wonder what's next....the corporate version of slavery? So much for the free-market concept.
democrat - acronym for "demoralized communist rat" or "demoralized capitalist rat"
1. It is essentially impossible to force laws upon the population of the United States that are intolerable to that population. Even if the uber-extreme cases you are thinking of come to pass, either the market or the government will be required to self-correct fairly quickly. Prohibition is a good example on both counts.
2. I very strongly suspect that either now or after a correction we will have some kind of moderate DRM. This bill is actually a very good example of that kind of moderation (it is necessary to take the language at face value and strike the opening comments about how "protecting copyright-based industries = propsperity"). Under this bill, if I release a story, digitally signed by me, then no one can forward that story with the signature intact. The recipient would get an "unauthenticated" copy. Now I may not even care that it got forwared, as long as the recipient sees that it's unknowably altered from the original.
This is actually a way to relax copyright laws, ironically. We have less need of lengthy, oppressive, copyrights when "content creators" (i.e., anyone who creates content) can distribute it with the understanding that forwarded copies will show up as inauthentic.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
The time has come for people who program for the joy of programming to acknowledge that software, _ALL_ software, is artwork, and not something that must be approved by a committee before it is allowed to be appreciated by the public.
This point must be stressed, and stressed hard, for it may be the _only_ way that we can be sure that free software can continue to exist. Those who fear that bylaws such as these will stifle open source software should be pushing this point hardest of all. If this point could be generally accepted, it would become clear that laws whichs stifle it are also stifling artistic expression -- a socially unacceptable act -- and would gather opposition even from those who don't know any better.
Art is something that comes directly from the imigination of its creator, having no intrinsic value other than the amount of appreciation that other indivuals will have for it.
How is software art? Consider the similarities: Art is created, not simply built. Art's aesthetic or practical value (not cost) is determined by those who experience it, not by any measure of worth that is associated with its creation or production. Art is developed by the conscious use of a combination of a person's acquired skills and their imagination -- not by instruction. The best art comes from those who do it because they want to, not _just_ because they're getting a paycheque.
Software _IS_ art. I am convinced of this, and I would hope that others would see the truth behind this as well. It is probably the cleanest way out of this whole mess.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Just how is one supposed to "forge" a digital
watermark? I would assume that a player enforcing
some sort of DRM would require a form of a global
PKI with, assumedly, M$, Disney, etc, etc in
control of the root. In order for me to forge, I'd
need access to the private key somewhere in that
PKI chain for my signed content. That is, the
player would have to be able to authenticate and
authorize the content, and that in turn requires
access to trusted private keys to vouch for your
identity.
So I'm probably naive, but this sure looks
mostly like a no-op to me.
I think the best possible outcome would be for Palladium to not be able to run free software. I can't think of anything that would kill it faster.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. This has nothing to do with piracy. It is about control and preventing competition. This is an example of that.
If hardware makers only make machines that play "watermarked content" and you can't add a watermark to your own content to play it, then they've taken the control back. When you write your congressmen, point out that this will make it harder for independent artists to make and distribute art and it therefore hinders the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
1) burglarly laws are per state and some of them are actually sane
2) those laws don't mean I can't build my own house or fence or gate or whatever.
This law will make it nearly impossible to distribute a work which I have created. I'm not talking about copying someone else's work without their permission. That's already illegal anyway.
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina is at 1-202-224-3154, and the bill is S.2395. Call now!
(Not that it'll help - he's blatantly whored himself out to Big Hollywood, but we've got to do our part).
such as the utopian free market dream some people around here share. Here's what I mean:
many folks think that by product A not selling well, it will just go away. We know that this doesn't really happen, hence the utopian description, but anyways....this in turn (the not buying of a product) will force the manufacturer to make it better, listen to demands of its customers, or withdraw said product.
Think of a certain company in Redmond, and notice that this doesn't really work (again...utopian), well at least not until it builds a HUGE amount of momentum and this entails much time, which we don't really have anymore as far as fighting the passage of corrupt laws.
On to my point....so if we just let politicians take as much and as often from any contributor I'm just fine with that, if and only if the politician is not corrupt, uses common sense, and has no problem with these same companies later saying "fuck you for not supporting us" and just cutting him off
Oh well....it's not really well thought out, but still....I guess I'm saying that I don't think that campaign finance reform is all THAT necessary, as long as these corps learn that $ wouldn't guarantee a vote, then maybe things would change
I looked through the bill, and it doesn't say anything like that. You can watermark music by your own band. Someone made that up. It only is against people who are breaking copyrights.
That kind of bs hurts us. When we use messed up info to try to counter goofy DRM bills, we just make ourselves look like idiots. Just look at the environmentalists; they have been giving exagerated reports etc. so much that most people don't listen even though they have a good point. We would not like to share that fate.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Civil disobedience will only give them evidence that they were right "that Americans are IP theives."
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
It seems to me that there are millions of computers, CD players, DVD players, MP3 players already in the hands of consumers (thieves in the eyes of the RIAA/MPAA). And there must be 100's of millions of CD's already out there? It seems to me that this train has already left the station. Even if they do succeed in copy protecting/watermarking CD's, people who want to can always fall back to analog and make copies that will play on all of the equipment made prior to this BS law going into effect. It isn't going to stop the real bootleggers at all, all this is going to do is annoy the rest of us.
Unfortunately, this will not work. As another poster mentioned, Congressfolk can spot a form letter a mile away. This works for groups like the NRA because along with the form letters come (or dont come) big campaign contributions. Unless and until the hacker community gets into the act of organized brib^H^H^H^H campaign money collection and distribution, letters ought to be individually written, even if the ideas in them are the same.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Fuck this greed infested piece of shit country and its sellout government!!!
Are you smoking crack at work again? I didn't vote for Biden, in fact most of the people in Delaware didn't vote for Biden, as five minutes of research might have told you.
Maybe you should visit the place before you spout your crack dreams on slashdot. Delaware is small, and the government even smaller - small enough that citizens can literally call their senators, representatives, even the governor and expect to talk to them personally. I have done it myself on occasion, although I usually write paper letters instead since they count for more at the end of the day.
Biden is like Helms or Roth - people don't want to vote him out because he has accumulated power that will not be passed on to his sucessor.
That's a very good point. I think the big issue is to use any communications channel that they consider "legitimate." They often ignore or think much less of feedback from email, web forms, and other "automated" systems, because most still think the internet is kind of imaginary and/or populated by the radical fringe. They get so many bags of mail that they never read even a portion of it, and that was before anthrax. They're also pretty much inured to auto-fax campaigns run through the websites of the major lobby organizations (ACLU, etc) and generally ignore those entirely unless the numbers get really huge.
What scares them are positively identifiable ordinary citizens taking the trouble to contact them on a large scale. The phone seems to be the simplest way to do that. Of course, as seaan wisely points out, they don't really pay attention to details. If you mention a bill or an issue, they usually note it down with a + or -, and that's about it. Even still, when the advisers look at the results tally and see a big figure, they usually get the message quick. I would advise using the phone first, before anything else.
If you take the trouble to compose a fax of your own (even if you use someone else's text), rather than going through an automated system like the ACLU's, then I could believe you're also getting through. And if the phone people are actually telling you to use the fax, by all means!
We're on the road to Tycho.
Senator Joseph Biden: "Windows XP was available for illegal use on the streets of Moscow two months before it was released in the U.S. by Microsoft," and "Every episode of "Seinfeld" is now available to download free to anyone with access to the Internet."
And if this bill becomes law...
Windows [all versions] will be available for illegal use on the streets of Moscow and Every episode of "Seinfeld" will be available to download free to anyone with access to the Internet.
YOU MUST PASS THIS BILL BECAUSE WE MUST STAMP OUT PIRACY!
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
It certainly has some parallels with Stalinist "Communist" ideas, but I really think that the word you're looking for is 'Fascist'. In Mussolini's Italy, the state was known as the "Estato Corporativo", or "Corporate State", for those of you not slick enough to put that cognate together. I think if we're going to draw any parallels between odious governments of the past, this is the most relevant one.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
I never claimed it did... I pointed out that the next logical step after watermarks, would be mandatory DRM hardware. Why? Because watermarks are useless by themselves.
What is the point of watermarks in fighting piracy? You cannot use watermarks to track pirates unless you put individual watermarks on each media, and in that case the pirates will vertainly strip the watermark off. The only possible use I see is that the RIAA/MPAA can set up automatic sniffer bots, looking for files with their watermarks on Kazaa and other file sharing systems. They certainly don't need it to legally establish a certain work as their property, simply looking at or or listening to that will do the trick.
So... once all sanctioned media are properly watermarked, it will be a small step to DRM in our hardware. Illegal copies won't play. Oh, your DVD player will still play the holiday movies you made i.e. your own material, but what about taping shows from TV? You may one day find your VCR or DVD player refusing to record some TV shows or movies. You may find that your own recordings receive a "local" watermark that your equipment recognised, but your computer will not accept, and neither will the neighbors player.
That is what DRM potentially means. Farfetched? Far beyond the scope if this bill? Perhaps, but a complacent attitude by us the voters and comsumers will mean that the rights and possibilities we enjoy today, are eroded away a bill at a time. You can bet there'd be an outcry if DRM was to be implemented overnight, and the proponents of DRM know that full well. They will attempt to bring their ideas of DRM about, step by step, in vaguely or broadly worded bills, packaged together with a bunch of other laws perhaps.
My final piece of advice for when you make a judgement about any proposed bill or law: never assume that the lawmakers have our best intentions at heart. Always assume new laws, rules, and bills will be used to the furthest possible extend they will stretch, not just to the extend most people would deem reasonable. Demand narrowly defined laws.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
In time all the 'do your parts' effects ( if any )will fade and we will be stuck with these totally insane rules and restrictions. Its all about control of the general public by the government. its a slow long process that cant be reversed, only slowed until it reaches the point of revolution. Then the process starts all over again.
Read your history books.. this process isnt new.. only the manifestations and detals change, but not the overall process..
Freedom, it was fun while it lasted. im glad to have been alive when it was still an option.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Agreed. But the parent of my post was trying to pin the scandals (and the lax enforcement that they resulted from) on Clinton and the Democrats. I was simply refuting that.
The time of day is 29:33.
"Corporate Whoring is a bi-partisan initiative."
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Is there a webpage somewhere that lists all these rotten anti technology senators and congressmen?
And yes supporting and sponsoring DMCA and CDBTPA is anti technology.
The page should cover international politicians too. That way citizens know who to vote for.
um, dude... we're there.
I wonder how many people complaining here are even registered to vote? Get off your a$$es and DO something. Register, then go vote. Skip the big parties if you want and vote Green or Libratarian or write Linus as your candidate. Just DO SOMETHING besides complain. If you dont vote, you dont get to bitch.
Actually, if you really want to give credit where credit is due, I would say that the Gingrich-led 1994 congressional power shift is to blame. They got in with all this de-regulation and free market stuff, they made all the laws (or un-made them as the case may be), that allowed a lot of these corporate shenanigans to occur. They were the ones that gutted all the oversight. You can fault Clinton for signing these POS bills, (like he had a choice), but the blame, in my estimation, lies squarely with the laissez-faire neo-liberal Republicans like Kemp and Gingrich.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
I swear, where do you people come up with this stuff?
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
When will the /sheep figure out that at least the Republicans are open about who bought them, and aren't a bunch of lying sacks of shit taking MPAA and RIAA and Disney money to pass DMCA and introducing CDTVBP and this shit while trying to blame Bush for Enron, and then race-baiting the entire country to keep minorities on the intellectual plantation (see Clarence Thomas et al) even though they take the NEAs money to squash school choice and keep the children of those same minorities trapped in failing inner-city public schools.
It ain't all about Roe v. Wade (another 5-4 Supreme Court decision, btw...) or who can promise the biggest welfare check, folks.
To transition to a DRM world:
Examine current media playing system A. Determine neat enhancements that should have been done some time ago. Call new spec playing system A2. Require all manufacturers to support future media playing system B if they use A2 spec. Consumer wants A2, also gets B support. A few years down the road when 20% of the population can handle system B, some System A2 media is also available in System B format, with minor additions. This drives more demand. A few items come out System B only. When 80% of the population can handle system B, a mass migration to system B media begins. A lot of media is System B only, and (cheaper) System B only players start shipping. A year or two later, System B rereleases of System A/A2 stuff start shipping, giving the media moguls more money.
American citizens, on the whole, are *easy* to manipulate.
May we never see th
I've been making VCDs of my nephew. He lives in Texas and I live in California, so it's about the only involvement in his life that I have. I make these VCDs using only open-source tools (some of which I made for this purpose and haven't released quite yet).
I use VCDs because they're easy to make with a commodity burner, play on most DVD players, and are suitably versatile, compatible, and easy to use.
Now, it sounds like the following scenario is on the horizon:
Is this about right?
That's okay... I'm musically inclined and can still write songs I can send to him... except... gee, I just got a sense of deja vu.
If this passes, let's create a DRM network that forces all participants to sign a EULA stating that they do not work for congress or the white house, do not own stock in or are employed by a list of corporations (Hollywood, Disney, etc,...).
Then, to read our text and other media inside the DRM, they would have to accept the EULA agreeing to these terms. When one gets in despite our EULA, we can sue!
What do you think? Could this be legal? Could it work?
Not that I would, but out of idle curiosity, does Godwin's Law apply to Nazis in particular or can it also be called on Fascism in general?
Dyolf Knip
Boxer and Feinstein are co-sponsors of this evil bill. Here's my letter to Boxer (one of the co-sponsors of the original bill)
Dear Senator Boxer,
As both a consumer and as a content creator, I was disturbed to find out that another anti-competitive bill had been introduced to curtail consumer rights, this time under the guise of anti-counterfeiting legislation. I wonder if, as one of the original co-sponsors of this bill, the so called "Anticounterfeiting Amendments of 2002", you are fully aware of the ramifications of this bill as currently amended.
I refer specifically to the revised clauses under Section 3, subsection a)2, which refers to outlawing the trafficing of "authentication mechanisms" as defined under Section 6. These "authentication mechanisms" are essentially anything which would allow users to make copies of media in their posession.
This bill, if passed into law, would fine or imprision consumers for up to 5 years, for trivial actions such as selling markers that could be used to circumvent audio CD protections schemes, and for distributing otherwise legitimate authoring software that allow users to set digital flags in media that they originate, so that it can be played in consumer equipment. It can further be extended to merely publishing a set of directions to modify your own equipment to bypass artificial and anti-competitive restrictions, such as DVD region encoding.
In essence, this bill does not attempt to punish widespread commercial piracy, as the title would indicate. Rather, it would seek to impose harsh restrictions on content, in the same vein as the infamous DMCA, by harshly surpressing individual free speech, and suspending fair use rights.
What will it take before consumer rights are respected? Will we have to witness the groundless imprisonment of another foreign national, for merely presenting a talk, as Dimitri Skylarov was subjected to, because his program, which would allow blind users to read "protected" documents in a standard text reader, was deemed a violation of the DMCA? Will it be when the domestic content creation industry grinds to a halt, because the only people allowed to create content are the corporations, who will then turn everything into an hour-long string of product placements? Or will it only be when the consumer stops buying ALL content entirely, because of these inane restrictions, that they realize that these invasive laws are NOT the answer?
Senator Boxer, I urge you to take a good look at S.2395 in its current form, and ask yourself whether its passage would be beneficial, not to corporations bent on maximizing profits no matter what the cost to consumers, but to the freedoms and personal dignity of both the American consumer, and to independent artists and programmers, who require access to tools that could easily be deemed "infringing" by the oligopolists in control of the major media markets today.
I hope you will take the right step and vote against S.2395. I can only hope that your colleagues can be convinced of this as well. Thank you for your time.
That the USA is already owned by big business. It will go down in history as the first democracy to become ruled by corporations. "There were signs" my grandchildren's history teacher will say, "but by the time they came around, it was really too late to do anything." Jeffersonian democracy was created to preserve freedom, on the principal that the people are always right... no one considered that it would be possible to buy the people.
N CASE YOU DIDN'T NOTICE
With this commemnt I was pointing out a Felony means nothing these days. So don't judge this law by it, look deeper.
Hon. Senator *,
I write to urge your opposition to S.2395, "A bill to prevent and punish counterfeiting and copyright piracy, and for other purposes."
Although I understand this bill has been introduced by fellow Democrats, I do not believe you should vote for it. The restrictions imposed by this bill could result in increased costs to hardware and software manufacturers, resulting in higher prices for consumers and/or fewer jobs. Entire operating systems, some relied upon by Fortune 500 companies, could be rendered obsolete overnight. Hundreds of Federal and Georgia government agencies could be forced to upgrade to compliant hardware and software at a staggering cost to taxpayers.
Piracy is a problem, but I believe the solution is to go after those who make money from it, not going after the average voter. Instead, why not penalize for-profit providers of copyrighted materials? Snatch up those who truly prey on the intellectual property of others and leave the curious music fan alone.
This bill is the result of big Hollywood money donations. In an election year, I think it unwise to cast votes that your opponents may seize upon to depict you as "in Hollywood's pocket." Hollywood predicted doom with the advent of the VCR and the cassette recorder, yet here they are, trying to strangle yet another emergent technology in the crib. Please resist the urge to legislate solutions to what is essentially a technical problem. If the money behind this bill doesn't want their works reproduced in a given format, let them be the ones to figure out how to go about it.
Thank you for your time,
--
Freeper Logic
And as for all this talk about watermarking, remember, if this stuff ever goes goldmaster (so to speak), there'll be a simple answer, probably either a marker-esque solution or a "check the streets of Moscow" solution...
Then they'll be complaining that the watermarking is freely available on "the internet".
Dammit can't they ever stop being greedy!??!
Hacking the Network
Thank you, music geek. You get to keep your medal.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
For supporting Bush's Gestapo he should be thrown out of Washington and tried for treason.
Which shall I write to first?
One of many problems with DRM is the large conflict of interest with the same large corporations pushing this twisted legislation being the same ones that own nearly all modes of (dis-)informing the citizenry. Controlling information is an old political fight going back to way before the Gutenberg press. Control of information is a key to controlling the population.
Broadcasting, mostly in the U.S., has shifted away from being a means of stimulating active citizenship. In particular it has shifted away from adressing citizens, where its purpose was to be useful, to addressing consumers, where its purpose is to turn viewers passive and into customers.
In the short term this has gotten out of hand in the U.S. and requires rapid corrective action. However, some European countries have chump leaders too and the concept needs to arrested at an early stage before it can metastisize through the rest of the world.
In the long term, there needs to be a stronger separation of corporate interests and governance. The former is short term and often is counter to the best interests of citizenry.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.