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."

Comments

Obligatory Phone Number:

[staggerlee]

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.

It's not what you think.

[kmellis]

From the ZDNet article:

"Merely creating a fake watermark or digital signature would not be illegal, but 'trafficking' in it or redistributing the file would. In addition to criminal penalties, the bill permits a company whose watermark or digital signature was used to sue for damages 'of not less than $2,500 or not more than $25,000, as the court considers appropriate.'"

That's not circumventing DRM for things you already have fair use on. It's circumventing DRM and then distrubuting pirated material. That's pretty straightforward and even if it perhaps is draconian, it's still only punishing something that's already illegal and that you shouldn't be doing.

The usual gang of idiots...

[gilroy]

Good to see our regular Rogues Gallery of senators. Blockquoth the ZDnet article:

Its sponsors include key Democrats and Republicans, including Senate Commerce chairman Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the top GOPer on the Judiciary committee.

Biden irony, it takes one to know one

[splorf]

Biden is the guy whose presidential campaign in 80's crashed and burned because he was caught plagiarizing a speech originally given by some politician from the UK. Now he's trying to crack down on unauthorized copying of music and software.

Will there be a "campaign speech" exception in his Senate bill? The irony amazes me. What a twerp.

You know what to do folks...

[Dutchmaan]

WRITE... YOUR... CONGRESSMAN!!!

http://www.berkshire.net/~ifas/activist/index1.h tm l

Interesting link...

[zerosignal]

http://www.nutsandboltsguide.com/plagiarism.html

"The last straw, however, came when it turned out that twenty years earlier Biden had received a failing grade in a law school course for plagiarizing a legal article (he'd given a single footnote while lifting five full pages from the article). Biden said he'd been unaware of the appropriate standards for legal briefs, but the public was unimpressed. His campaign collapsed and he withdrew from the race."

My letter and email to Sen. George Allen. . .

[Salgak1]

(R-VA, one of the co-sponsors. . . )

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. . . .

Here's what you do.

[DaveWood]

I just did it; it's pretty easy. You can do it before lunch in about 5 minutes.

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. cf m

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 /. readership) attempted to call about an issue on a single day, they would take serious notice.

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.

Re:Here's what you do.

[seaan]

Yes, contacting them by phone is easy, but I do have one suggestion. Instead of giving them a 5 minute speech on the phone, simply tell them that you are opposed to it. Than offer to let them know the reasons, and ask them the best way to do that.

During both of my phone calls they asked me to fax my reasons instead. It makes sense, because your carefully selected words have a better chance to get through that way. The person you contact on the phone is going to make notes, but don't count on an exact rendition of your elegant arguments. Most likely the senator will get some kind of mass summary of all calls, but important points you may have made will be lost. If you really want arguments heard (as opposed to your simple opposition), you have a much better chance with fax or email.

Fax Your Congressman for Free

[Alien54]

Congressmen and Senators really pay attention to faxes and phone vs email

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.

Copies Are Legal In Canada

[Myriad]

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?

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.