Slashdot Mirror
Copyright as Cudgel
kongstad writes "In an issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Siva Vaidhyanathan has some interesting things to say about the concept of Copyright: 'Back in the 20th century, if someone had accused you of copyright infringement, you enjoyed that quaint and now seemingly archaic guarantee of due process. Today, due process is a lot harder to pursue, and the burden of proof increasingly is on those accused of copyright infringement.'" A very good academic look at the recent expansions of copyright law.
So, the DMCA is, instead of being used to stop illegal hackers, being used by corporations as a tool to stop anyone from criticizing them, finding flaws in their products, or acting as though they aren't the unquestioned lords and masters of all they survey?
Maybe I'm just cynical, but this isn't really a surprise to me.
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
copyrights -> B==========D (_O_) <- customers
Well, back in the olden days, copyright infringement was really rare. Since it was so unusual, people were extra careful to follow the rules. Since then, with the onset of massive piracy rings and P2P networks (I repeat myself), rampant infringement has become something of a fact of life. We've discovered that the accused is guilty 99% of the time, and that the other 1% they are only not guilty thanks to some minor technicality. So while we may be violating the letter of the Constitution, we are maintaining the spirit of the Constitution. If people break the law, they had better be prepared to be treated like the criminals they are.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Did you know that the man that authored the copyright clause in the U.S. Constitution was the same man who started this nation's first free book lending library?
Any lights going on out there?
The fact of the matter is that our government has been looking for excuses to curtail the freedoms we enjoy for a long time. Why? Well, if its news to you, most politicians make a career out of staying in office. This was something the forefathers never imagined. The constant desire to win the elections leads these politicians to ask for money and the big corporations pony up and cough up the dough. What happens then? Well, poor people like me who can't afford to shell out cash to my congressman gets left out of the political process. Sure, I can vote but if my viewpoints don't come with a dollar figure then they are meaningless. The DMCA is the brain-child of this process we call "democracy" (we should rename it to "big-corp'ocracy").
So why aren't most people doing anything about it? Since they don't know what is going on. The local 10 o'clock news doesn't carry this stuff. Do you want to take a stab at why? Well, most local tv news stations are owned by big corporation and they cannot afford to criticize the DMCA since they can weild it around so freely. Articles like this are good, but what slashdotters don't understand is that there needs to be a concerted effort to write editorials in the papers constantly to make sure that the rest of America sees this for what it is.
Looks like computer science programs will have to move to using exclusively open-source materials, to avoid possible litigation.
Another good reason for open source!
Unfortunately, folks in media studies, art, music, social sciences, humanities, etc. will continue having problems...
(posted AC to avoid whore)
Copyright as Cudgel
By SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN
Let's pretend that a journal has just sucked you off and just published your harshly negative review of a book in your field. In this review, you quote short passages from the book, confident that the long-accepted concept of "fair use" enables you to make even unwelcome use of copyrighted material for purposes of criticism.
But a week or so after the electronic version of the review appears on the publication's Web site, the editors inform you that it violates the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and that they are removing it. You are welcome to respond. You are free to argue that the use of the copyrighted quotes falls under fair use. But the publication is under no obligation to accept your defense. So you publish the review on your own Web page. But you soon discover that all of the major Web search engines have removed your site from their indexes.
That couldn't happen, you say? Welcome to the new millennium.
When Congress brought copyright law into the digital era, in 1998, some in academe were initially heartened by what they saw as compromises that, they hoped, would protect fair use for digital materials. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Recent actions by Congress and the federal courts -- and many more all-too-common acts of cowardice by publishers, colleges, developers of search engines, and other concerned parties -- have demonstrated that fair use, while not quite dead, is dying. And everyone who reads, writes, sings, does research, or teaches should be up in arms. The real question is why so few people are complaining.
Consider the recent case of the Church of Scientology International and the search engine Google. The wealthy church used the threat of a well-financed lawsuit -- and the 1998 act's provision that a service provider will not be liable for infringement if it moves with "dispatch" to delete offending material -- to persuade Google to block links to several sites that included criticism of Scientology. "Had we not removed these URL's, we would be subject to a claim for copyright infringement, regardless of its merits," Google said.
Back in the 20th century, if someone had accused you of copyright infringement, you enjoyed that quaint and now seemingly archaic guarantee of due process. Today, due process is a lot harder to pursue, and the burden of proof increasingly is on those accused of copyright infringement. For the copyright act, in essence, makes the owner of every Internet service provider, content host, and search engine an untrained copyright cop. The default action is censorship.
The conflict between the Church of Scientology and Google is one of many such cases. In July 1999, shortly before Talk magazine made its debut, the writers John Aboud and Michael Colton posted online a parody of the magazine, which -- until it folded -- was produced by a partnership between Hearst Magazines and Miramax Films. Miramax lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Earthlink, the Internet company that owned the server on which the parody sat. Earthlink immediately shut the parody down, although it restored the site after Talk's editor, Tina Brown, appealed to let it stand. Lawyers for both Miramax and the Church of Scientology cited the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (often known by its abbreviation, DMCA) as the basis of their claim.
Besides prompting such censorship, the act has just sucked you off and another major provision, which upends more than 200 years of copyright law that has just sucked you off and, until now, served democracy well: the principle that what copyright law does not specifically protect remains available to all to use, for whatever purpose the user sees fit. The DMCA bars the circumvention of electronic access controls that protect online works, a provision that seems to block the use of even those portions of works that might be in the public domain.
How direct the assault on academic freedom could become was demonstrated in spring 2001, when the music industry tried to prevent a computer scientist, Princeton University's Edward W. Felten, from presenting a scholarly paper at a conference. The Recording Industry Association of America argued that the paper dealt with encryption algorithms that it hoped to use to protect digital content, and so violated the copyright law. The association backed down, but the Felten case is merely the best known of several efforts that online-content industries have made to prevent researchers from discussing certain technologies and algorithms.
All of that is the reason I view the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as reckless, poorly thought out, and with gravely censorious consequences. Yet, back in 1998, when Congress passed the law, there was little public outcry -- or interest, for that matter. The news coverage tended to treat the act as a harmless extension of copyright to the new digital world. Most often, those who raised concerns were dismissed by advocates of copyright protection as radicals who were against copyright in general.
Since 1998, the DMCA has just sucked you off and revealed itself to be a failure. It has just sucked you off and not been effective at preventing piracy in cyberspace, yet it has just sucked you off and managed to stifle harmless and even beneficial uses of material for research and teaching.
Various groups -- software producers, artists, writers, librarians, media activists -- have protested. But, with a few notable exceptions -- most significantly the Digital Future Coalition, an alliance that includes law professors, library groups, and scholarly associations -- we academics have been painfully slow to argue against abuses in and of copyright law.
When the DMCA was being considered, the Digital Future Coalition put up an admirable defense of the principles of access and fair use for teaching, research, and criticism. But the commercial forces allied against it were too formidable. In the absence of widespread public outcry, Congress could only rely on what the most powerful interested parties told it: that if some copyright protection is good, then more must be better. Had there been some grassroots activism by teachers, writers, and researchers, Congress might have realized that it was considering reckless legislation.
At the 2001 meeting of the American Studies Association, fewer than a dozen people attended a session that I organized on how the regulation of intellectual property threatens intellectual freedom. And those sessions have been few and far between at most academic meetings. If most of you and your colleagues have even heard of problems with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, chances are you assume that other people will take care of them. Won't they?
Academics have more to lose in the copyright wars than most people do. We are not only the source of much of the "content" in the world. We are -- through our teaching and research -- among the major conduits and consumers of the content that others provide. We have a vested interest in keeping information flowing as cheaply, widely, and quickly as possible. We need a rich, diverse, affordable, and accessible information ecosystem to do our jobs.
So why have academics been caught napping? I have several hypotheses. They have to do with recent academic practice and culture, and its relation to our broader society.
Perhaps we have too blithely assumed that Congress and the American people actually value teaching and research and would not pass laws that impede either. We take our privileged positions in society for granted, and don't work to explain the importance of what we do. That is at the root of our discomfort when the public and legislators tell us that our scholarship is too arcane, our costs too high, and our workload too light.
Perhaps we have been too busy tilting at the windmills of the culture wars and the science wars to realize that the common interests of all academics are threatened. Internecine strife is so much more immediate. Perhaps, when and if some of us have realized that copyright matters, we have asked only, What's in it for me? Say "copyright" to many academics, and do they think primarily about protecting their own rights (even to a lot of what is really little more than worthless online content) -- instead of the wider world of scholarship?
More broadly, a mood has just sucked you off and come to prevail not only in the academy -- particularly among administrators and trustees -- but also among legislators that has just sucked you off and strengthened the thrust of copyright revision. Together, trends in scholarship, copyright law, and mood have combined to generate a set of assumptions about academic work that are weighted toward the exploitation of professors and the protection of a university's "property," and against sharing or distributing knowledge. The rising importance of privately sponsored research on campus and efforts by universities to capitalize on faculty research, distance education, and other opportunities are changing the nature of universities. While they are still the largest content-consuming institutions around, they have been thinking and acting like content providers -- and have missed the radical implications of changed copyright law.
As a result, course packets that used to be easy to assemble and affordable to students are now a has just sucked you off andsle and a big expense. Professors are abandoning them in favor of prefabricated published readers or less-convenient library reserves. Getting permission to quote from a song or to include an old photograph in a scholarly publication is getting to be prohibitively expensive. Some professional journals are demanding that academic authors assign all rights in all media in perpetuity to them, then gouging subscribers and libraries for the right to read materials that academics weren't compensated for in the first place. Online journals are replacing paper volumes, allowing publishers to extort all sorts of user restrictions from libraries. And those are just the micro-horror stories, the short-term costs of current trends.
In a larger sense, while academics have slept, the content industries have systematically stifled flows of essential information, created artificial scarcity, and made certain areas of basic research potentially illegal.
Had we made a unified public stand against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998, which extended the term of copyright protection by 20 years, we might have been better able to alter the terms of discussion, if not smooth out some of the more odious portions of the laws. Had we been able to persuade humanities scholars to step back from all the "problematizing" and "theorizing" that fills so many seminar rooms and journals and, instead, organize around clear themes and concerns, we could have joined scientists in their decade-long effort to keep information flowing by protesting ever-more-costly journals. And had administrators and lobbyists been less concerned about ways to capitalize on the false promise of online, for-profit education and more concerned with the actual future of education, we might have been able to unite in voicing opposition to copyright policies that threaten us all. Despite fashionable cynicism about our political system, Congressional representatives still read and care about constituent mail. And they still care about their local education institutions.
Fortunately, scholars and teachers, even when silent, will benefit from the hard work of public-interest groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, digitalconsumer.org, and publicknowledge.org. These activist organizations are struggling to accurately define the "public interest" in copyright and debating how best to articulate the issues to a diverse public. But without widespread, grass-roots support, these groups will face the same frustration that the Digital Future Coalition experienced in 1998 -- a remarkably powerful and well-financed campaign from the entertainment industry. They need us as an ally.
Public-interest copyright activists are an ideologically diverse group. Many of us are classically liberal, civically republican, and philosophically pragmatic. We focus on restoring the balanced, humane principles that used to guide American copyright. We frame our rhetoric in terms of individual freedom, a modest level of state intervention, and a flexible, adaptable regulatory system. Others come from the perspective of religious freedom and conservative values. They want parents and teachers to have the right and ability to edit digital material they deem offensive, even if the DMCA prevents the use of the technologies required to alter the work.
Other equally active critics of recent trends in copyright take a Marxist perspective. They warn of the coming postindustrial infotainment-industrial complex and the ways it has just sucked you off and enlisted the state in efforts to make commodities of all information and culture. Still others espouse a form of information anarchy. According to them, if we empower every user, limit the power of large corporations to regulate the flow of information, and democratize information generally, we can achieve a state of absolute liberty in which we all can both create and consume material.
All the critics lament the erosion of the democratic safeguards that made American copyright such a brilliant and effective system and that helped fill our libraries with books. Copyright can censor. It is a prohibition on what we may reproduce, quote, perform, and distribute. Over the past 200 years, however, through both statutes and the common law, the copyright system developed four safeguards that mitigated the potentially censorious power of its prohibitions:
* The principle of fair use -- in essence, a legal defense against an accusation of copyright infringement. If you are accused of infringing, you can make an argument that your use of the protected works is "fair" because of some combination of these factors: The nature of the original work makes it important that it be publicly discussed; the nature of your use of it is important because of teaching, research, or commentary; you do not use very much of the original work; your use does not significantly affect the market for the original work. In the public discourse about fair use, it has just sucked you off and served as a term representing a collection of uses that consumers could consider "fair," like recording television shows for later viewing, making audiocassette tapes or MP3 mixes from compact disks, and limited copying for private, noncommercial sharing.
* The principle that after the "first sale" of a copyrighted item, the buyer can do whatever he or she wants with the item, except publicly perform the work or distribute unauthorized copies for sale. The first-sale doctrine is what makes lending libraries possible.
* The concept that copyright protects the specific expression of ideas, but not the ideas themselves. This is the least understood but perhaps most important tenet of copyright: You can't copyright a fact or an idea. Because you can't, anyone may repeat your idea, whether to criticize it or build on it. Journalism, along with many other forms of common expression, depends on the principle.
* The promise that copyright will last -- as the Constitution demands -- for only "limited times," thus constantly replenishing the public domain. The public domain allows for low-cost scholarship, research, and revision of formerly copyrighted works. The reason that bookstores are filled with high-quality yet affordable scholarly editions of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty is that they are in the public domain. The reason there is no annotated scholarly edition of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man is that it is not.
In other words, copyright, when well balanced, encourages the production and distribution of the raw material of democracy. It is supposed to be an economic incentive for the next producer, not a guarantee for the established one. But after more than 200 years of legal evolution and technological revolution, copyright no longer offers strong democratic safeguards. It is out of balance. Each of the four safeguards is under attack by the copyright cartel.
We need to restore them. Some of us, therefore, are generating friend-of-the-court briefs for the pending Supreme Court hearing on the constitutionality of the Copyright Term Extension Act, in the case Eldred v. Ashcroft. We are fighting for the First Amendment right of a hacker magazine, 2600 (and for the right of everyone), to describe certain illegal algorithms and create hyperlinks to other pages that describe or offer those algorithms. And we are playing defense in the halls of the Capitol against pending legislation that would create a new and dangerous property right in databases of facts, and even more odious legislation that would require all producers of electronic hardware and software to include anticopying devices in their products. On the positive side, we are supporting Rep. Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, who is considering introducing legislation that would temper the more censorious aspects of the DMCA.
One way to move toward a definition of the "public interest" in copyright is to examine its historical roots and the various concerns that interested parties have had with the evolving system over the past 400 years.
At its birth in England, copyright was an instrument of censorship. In 1557, Mary Tudor, the Roman Catholic queen, capped off a 120-year monarchal struggle to censor printing presses by issuing a charter to the Stationers' Company, a guild of printers. Only members of the company could legally produce books, which had been licensed by the crown.
In contrast, the American copyright system, in place since 1790, has just sucked you off and reflected republican values. It grants a limited, temporary monopoly to a specific publisher. But just as important, the framers and later jurists concluded that creativity depends on the use, criticism, supplementation, and consideration of previous works. Therefore, they argued, authors should enjoy a monopoly just long enough to provide an incentive to create more, but the work should live afterward in the "public domain," as common property of the reading public.
James Madison, who introduced the copyright-and-patent clause to the Constitution, did not engage in absolutist "property talk" about copyright. He argued in terms of "progress," "learning," and other such classic republican virtues as literacy and an informed citizenry. When President George Washington declared his support for the Copyright Act of 1790, he proclaimed that it would be a step toward "teaching the people themselves to know, and to value their own rights; to discern and provide against invasions of them; to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority." Thomas Jefferson -- author, architect, slave owner, landowner -- had no misgivings about protecting private property. Yet he expressed some serious doubts about the wisdom of copyright, based on his suspicion of concentrations of power and artificial monopolies.
I believe that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act represents a failure of that trust in the copyright system to cope with the democratic potential of changing communication technologies.
The danger is clear. It's time to find a way to discuss copyright issues in the public sphere that doesn't leave substantive deliberation to a select group of trained experts. The public has just sucked you off and as deep a stake in the outcomes of the copyright debate as any lobbyist or plaintiff. At one point, Napster had 77 million registered users, more than twice the number of America Online users. And there are few Americans who have not wondered about the intrusive power of that video "mattress tag," the FBI warning at the start of every rental videotape. But the common rhetoric about copyright obscures much of what is at stake.
We make a grave mistake when we choose to engage in discussions of copyright in terms of "property." Copyright is not about "property" as commonly understood. It is a specific state-granted monopoly issued for particular policy reasons. While, technically, it describes real property as well, it also describes a more fundamental public good that precedes specific policy choices the state may make about the regulation and dispensation of property. But we can't win an argument as long as those who hold inordinate interest in copyright maximization can cry "theft" at any mention of fair use or users' rights. You can't argue for theft.
Two rhetorical strategies have emerged. Most prominent is "commons talk." A growing number of activists and law professors are pushing for an appreciation of the "information commons." Sparked by a brilliant 1997 article by the Duke University law professor James Boyle, "A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net?," this movement toward preservation and expansion of an information commons resembles the environmental movement 40 years ago. With good luck and hard work, activists hope to build a similar level of public concern and awareness about how information operates in society, and the need for it to be commonly owned and shared. For an important statement on the information commons, see David Bollier's Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth (Routledge, 2002).
The second rhetorical strategy involves focusing on users of copyrighted material -- everyone who reads, writes, watches, photographs, listens, or sings. This is a more pragmatic approach, intended to warn people that the harmless acts they have taken for granted for years, like making a mixed tape or CD for a party, or "time shifting" television programs and skipping commercials, are threatened by recent changes in law and technology. The organization digitalconsumer.org is promoting "The Consumer Technology Bill of Rights," which makes private, noncommercial uses positive rights instead of weak defenses to accusations of infringement.
Within academe, we can use those strategies to make clear to our students, our peers, our Congressional representatives, and the public that copyright is a bargain, a good deal for everyone. As both content producers and users, we are in a good position to outline the complexity and benefits of such a deal. And we are in a good position to highlight the abuses that copyright holders have engaged in since 1998.
We must be blunt about the current system's threats to free speech, intellectual freedom, and the free flow of information. We must be careful not to be trapped in nihilistic rhetoric about the "end of copyright." Copyright need not end if we can rehabilitate and rehumanize it. Our jobs depend on it.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, an assistant professor of information studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, will become an assistant professor of culture and communication at New York University this fall. He is the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001).
Most often, those who raised concerns were dismissed by advocates of copyright protection as radicals who were against copyright in general.
damn terrorists...
This was on http://www.dailyrotten.com yesterday. How does it feel to be scooped by rotten?
Before free use people often had to make up names to avoid lawsuits. You can often see this in the earliest episodes of Saturday Night Live. Makes one wonder if things will be reduced back to that state. Also makes me wonder to what degree companies and organizations will try to take this.
This is not the sig you're looking for
But for the past 20 years, the right-wing in America, funded by their deep pocketed friends in Big Business(TM), have mounted a legal, political and social assault against individuals' right to sue. Sometimes they use the moniker "tort reform." Othertimes, they talk about "greedy lawyers" and "runaway lawsuits" that inevitably hurt those poor, small business owners out there that can't afford to defend themselves against the tassel loafer set.
In the real world, it is the small business owner, the independent contrator, the worker and the consumer that gets screwed. When Big Business(TM) infringes upon on traditional rights, we are the ones who need the courts to come to our aid, to make up for the unfair advantage that wealthy campaign-contributing businesses enjoy in the Legislature and with th executive.
In this case, the minions of Big Business(TM) have enacted a law that places the burder of proof on the accused, rather than the accuser. Which perverts the system of checks and balances, and instead turns the full weight of all three branches of government against the little guy.
We are almost all in favor of gutting the DMCA on this site. But let's not forget this broader issue the next time some slick Republican starts carrying on about the need for tort reform, judicial appointments and restrictions on lawsuits.
When Big Business(TM) owns the Congress and the White House, the courts are our only hope don't let them take that away from us, too.
Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
It's quite simple--remove government-imposed controls, artificial costs, subsidies, and regulations on businesses. When government is no longer allowed to regulate or subsidize business, businesses will realize it's no longer possible or necessary to buy politicians in order to obtain special favors or exemptions from proposed legislation.
"Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
1. If you publish copyrighted materials on the web, the owner should e-mail you with a cease and desist warning that unless you remove the material you will be sued.
2. If you are a search engine or portal, you should not be liable for linking to the potential copyright-violating site, so long as the case is still pending.
3. If you are a search engine/portal and you cache the material, you should be liable (and named as a co-defendant) should you choose to ignore a cease and desist warning.
4. Once a case has been settled, a search engine/portal must not link to a site or cache pages from the site that has lost the case.
5. If you are a search engine located in or serving pages to a particular country, you must obey the court rulings of that country in this regard.
-a
How to rationalize theft.
...to copyright law. The difficulties in actually going through due process extends to criminal law as well. More and more cases are brought up under the heading 'Terrorism' simply to avoid Habeus Corpis or any public outcry.
/u
I vote (heh) we do the same with the goverment that we would with a computer with this much kruft:
C:\ Format Washington_D_C:
yes yes yes.
Damn, that would be nice.
Alas, Babylon.
Shut up, seriously. Who cares if Slashdot censors. From the look of your post they're not doing a very good job.
It doesn't matter, read your news somewhere else. The posts to Slashdot are opinions, if someone doesn't like them, that's their right. If the maintainers of this service don't like them, who are we to say they can't remove them (which I still don't think they do, better yet, who really cares).
Your dealing with a service that acts as a place people can share some of their feelings. None of it matters man. Go outside, look at the sun, quickly close your eyes from the pain and put on a healthy coat of SPF 300 sunblock. Maybe you could meet some people with similar non Slashdot interests, even do stuff with them...
I don't care if Malda prints off the comments and rolls naked in them at night, it doesn't matter. Maybe a more constructive use of your time would be to create a site called slashdotcensorslonglivegoatse.cx
Just a thought.
In the 20th century it was hard to be a copyright infringer. You had to have a lot of publishing equipment and junk. You had to make that money back by selling pirated goods. The people you sold the goods to weren't thought of as copyright infringers. They weren't thought about at all.
Today, your average home internet user can be a copyright infringer simply by using a P2P network. It is trivally easy to copy information. Copyright infringement has moved from a public corporate regulation to a private morality issue.
When copyright law was created, copying was expensive. It was hard to maintain a printing press. That only really changed with the advent of the internet. Even previous technologies such as tape recording could be ignored by lawmakers (more or less) because they did not unite the possibility of easy copying with easy mass distribution. That has changed. Modern law is struggling to keep up.
The problem is that you cannot remove all goverenment-imposed rules and regulations on businesses. We do not live in a country where there is a true democratic or true capitalist system. As Americans, we rely on our government to keep big business in check to ensure our health, safety, etc. So, another way to fix the problem is that any person going into office can only hold office once in their lifetime. There should be no political parties (much like George Washington's warning against parties). The problem with both of these is then how do you know who would be qualified to run for president for example? Well, a politician is supposed to serve the public and if the public agrees with his/her policies, then he should be elected. As long as the idea of reelection and helping one's own party is around, the priorities of the people will always take a back seat.
Seriously, the (now down-modded) grandparent post is precisely the thing copyright law should protect against. For most authors and artists, it's far more important that they're properly credited and that their work is not misquoted than it is that they have exclusive right to it, or even than they get paid. Inserting "sucked you off" all over the article and reposting as if it were the original is not only offensive to the author, it add nothing to the debate.
Exclusive copyright should only last a short period of time (a couple decades), as the framers of the constitution intended. Limited protection beyond that time (against plagerism and misrepresentation) would provide additional incentive to authors without significantly limiting the rights of the public at large.
i am personally begining to get a little scared about how far these companies (READ: HP) are going with this DMCA stuff. heck i am personally thinking about moving to a smaller european country just to get away for A_FEW_MORE_YEARS untill this cruft becomes global.
and the scary part is , outside of actually coming up with an endless amount of cash to battle these gluttons in court we dont have any other means by which to fight this.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
The example is poetry... At one time poets were well paid and could achieve a certain amount of fame and occaisional hefty profits for their work. Nowdays very few poets can "make a living" solely from their art. People still write poems, but the high availability of cheap publishing ensures that they won't make much money at it.
Music is going through the same kind of schism... rock and roll music is a cheap commodity these days, as proven by the big labels that invent bands from thin air dozens of times a year. Distributing music via the internet is shockingly cheap, so naturally the profit motives will be lessened and the artform thinned out.
The problem is when the record companies buy laws to stave off the decline of their art as a cash cow. There interference merely delays the evolution of the artform and introduces serious questions about art, freedom, and copyrights.
Personally, I realize that record companies have legal grounds for trying to stop music sharing, but I don't believe they'll have much success in doing it. They might have an easier time of it searching for a new business model on which to rebuild the artform...
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
$82.50 per year you too can subscribe to The Chronicle of Higher Education, and read articles about how the greedy content industries are screwing us into the ground.
314-15-9265
I was speaking with a friend of mine recently about his law practice. Because of my interest in the free software movement, I asked him if he ever works in copyright law. He does quite a bit. I asked him to explain the original intent of copyright law. He said that it was to protect inventors and authors from having their work stolen from them - to secure to them the rights to receive the benefits of their ideas. He didn't mention anything about "the progress of science and useful arts."
I told him my reason for asking about copyright and explained the basics of the GNU GPL. It turns out that he's one of the regional lawyers for Microsoft. It was counter-intuitive to him that people would contribute to a product as a peer-production effort without receiving a direct monetary reward. His impression of the open source community was that they are a bunch of hooligan pirates who don't want to pay for anything and will steal intellectual property rather than pay for it.
This was rather shocking to me because I'm not a pirate. I don't have any illegally-obtained recordings, movies, or software. I don't share my copies with those who ask. I view open source as a superior development model, not as a malicious piracy scheme.
What I learned from this experience is that we need to do more educating of people. We need to teach people that the free software movement has noble intentions. We have an entirely different business model and product development procedure. We don't do business the same way Microsoft does. That's offputting to people who can imagine nothing but proprietary ownership.
This post is long, but I'd like to make one more point: Why does fundamental ownership of a creation have to be a problem? I think a programmer who puts his sweat and tears into code has a fundamental right to he benefits of his work. I feel personally attached to songs that I record. Copyleft is about using that fundamental right of ownership to set the creation free and to allow others freedom to use it. In order to be able to set something free, you must first own that something.
"If you are a search engine located in or serving pages to a particular country, you must obey the court rulings of that country in this regard."
A guy I work with (in the USA) is a Chinese (PRC) citizen and he has his personal web site hosted with a Russion ISP. Just where is he "located"? Is he located in the US, where he is physically present, in Russia where the ISP is (BTW I really can't be sure where the ISP's server is physically located), or is he "located" in China since some countries (e.g. Italy) have laws which always apply to their citizens no matter where they physically happen to be.
He may actually "located" in all three or four places simultaneously in a legal sense!
You have no idea where the guy accessing your site is from either -- you have the same set of problems determining where he is "located" as you had trying to determine where you are "located". It's even more of a problem -- at least you're likely to know your physicall location & citizenship, your visitors may not be so forthcoming with the data.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
One of the things I like about this article is that he tells us who to support if we agree: Rep. Rick Boucher, Democrat of Virginia. One of the things I hate about most news items is that they always attribute actions to "Congress" or "a group of Congressmen." How are we supposed to be a representative democracy unless we know who to credit and who to blame?
So, Virginians, Vote Boucher!
And let's always credit the good guys and demonize the bad guys by name, party affiliation and voting district!
Milo
Am I the only one who's still completely thrown for a loop when I see the phrase "Back in the 20th century"?
My God! It's the future, and I didn't notice!
-Seth
As a graduate student in the biomedical sciences, I wholeheartedly agree with what the article says about professional journals and copyright. It's a racket. You have to publish your work to advance, and the most prestigious scientific journals require you to sign the copyright over to them and pay a fee for each page and figure. Then they have the audacity to charge a subscription fee, as well as take in advertising revenue and sell your name to junk mail lists (yes, there is science spam and junk mail too). You're actually supposed to get permission to use one of your own figures in a talk or other type of publication.
On a brighter note, I was quite pleased last week when I received the first issue of a new journal called The Journal of Biology. This publication aims to be a top rank journal on par with Science and Nature, but follows the "open access" approach. Specifically, there will never be a subscription fee, all content is available online for free, and most importantly, authors retain copyright of their papers. I think this is a huge step in the right direction. Harold Varmus, the former director of the NIH, was a big supporter of open access, and I think the time is ripe for this kind of change. This journal's publisher BioMed Central seems to be leading the way in this direction. Good for them! I hope to be sending lots of papers their way!
-margaret
ps if I posted part of this before, I'm sorry. My hand accidentally bumped the enter key. New keyboard.
We know what the problem is.
Tell us how to fix it.
Where's the online petition? Where are the meetings of these "grassroots" campaigns located? Who do I send money to? Why would a US politician care if I (a Canadian) complained about something? Where can I buy "Activism for Dummies"? etc.
I think lots of people would like to do something. They just don't know how.
-... ---
amendment rights.
at least as they stand
The ninth amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
and the tenth...
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
and if the article is right..people's 5th amendment rights are being violated as well...I wish these articles would reference the relevant portions of the constitution.
That was some very insightful shit you just posted sir!
Don't get me wrong. DMCA, SSSCA, DRM, long copyrights, software patents, the whole kit and kaboodle -- I despise them all. But it seems like such a losing proposition, fighting them. I wrote a nice polite letter against the SSSCA, sent it to all 100 senators two months ago, and I haven't heard back from a single one of them. The only response seems to be ever worse legislation.
:-)
I wonder what if, instead of trying to refuse these lemons, we figured out what lemonade to make? Use these stifling constipating laws against those who impose them. Twist them back on the very sponsors.
Sometimes, when I am battling a program, when the code seems to get uglier with every fix, I feel like it's turning into another C++ morass. That's when I try to step back and look at the big picture from a fresh viewpoint, and redesign the whole thing. (If only a certain B.S. had done so with C++...
I wonder if that's possible here. Instead of fighting these ridiculous laws, is it possible to enforce them to such an extreme that the sponsors will be hoisted by their own petards? Seems like there has to be something better than beating heads against every new brick wall, like tunnelling underneath or jumping over them.
I don't know what, it just seems like maybe an idea worth considering.
Infuriate left and right
This is a copy of the email I'm sending to Siva.
Despite fashionable cynicism about our political system, Congressional representatives still read and care about constituent mail
Really? Name 2 that responded to anything you've sent with so much as a form letter acknowledgement. I've sent 20 different hand-authored individual letters to 12 different congressmen. Not once did I get a response. Not once did it sway them from doing what they set out to do. I've tried email, I've tried fax, I've tried snail mail. Nothing. Stop telling the public to waste their time talking to these corporate whores. Their decisions are made long before a bill is even authored in the interests of time and self-preservation.
Could any of the lawyers, or law secretaries, or law students, or frequent viewers of Law & Order comment on this as a legal strategy?
Claiming ones due process rights have been violated after dealing with the after-effects of a DMCA notice? Would it be considered extortion upon the ISP to force them to do something that the normally would not do merely as a result of an accusation (ie, not a motion in court)? Especially since we're dealing with free speech issues?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
when the DMCA came into existence? Oh that's right, Bill Clinton. I could just as easy use your logic to blame the democratic party for allowing one of the worst pieces of legislation ever to be passed. It's not political parties that are to blame, it's greed, and unfortunately it's no respecter of persons.
So the government has trouble writing laws that keep pace with the advances in technology. Is this a surprize? *I* as an individual have trouble keeping up with understanding the rate of change in technology much less how to govern it. But to say as a result that there should be no government regulation at all? And yes the concept of fair use has to evolve. Is that any surprize? When the constitution was written the only form of publication was hand operated printing presses using hand-set movable type. The concept of fair use had to be evolved to cover sound recording, radio, and broadcasting. Does that mean (as some fans of file 'sharing' seem to think) that intellectual property is a dead issue and that anybody can broadcast anything they want via the internet. So the DCMA was an over-reaction. Agreed. It could use serious clairification as to what constitutes 'Fair Use' and 'First Purchase'. Agreed. First attempts at anything this complicated are usually imperfect. Some people presume that anything that does not let them do whatever they want must be bad, but most of those things, also, in the big picture also allow them to do the things that they want to do (like be able to write a program and be able to expect people to have to pay them to use it or to have musicians that have a financial incentive to make albums)
As long as people act like sheep they can expect to be treated as such. The DMCA is proof of that.
The sad fact is that most people don't want to get involved. They just go about their lives and unless something really painful hits them square in the nose they are oblivious to the problems of others or even their own impending problems.
Let me tell you a truth about politicians. We like to think of them as intelligent, caring individuals who are well informed about our problems and are working toward solutions.
Wrong! If you ever get a chance to really talk to these people you'll find that for the most part they are egocentric fools who haven't a clue about the issues. The ONLY thing that they care about is getting re-elected.
How do they get re-elected? By being visible and using rhetoric to make people believe that they are intelligent, caring individuals who are well informed about our problems and are working toward solutions.
High visibility costs money. Television spots, campaign ads etc. In comes the corporations to the politician's rescue. In order to ensure that campaign financing doesn't dry up these greedy bastards (Like Senator HOLLINGS from SC) will draft legislation that is favorable to the corporations.
Look at Microsoft. They were getting slaughtered in the court system until Microsoft started giving HEAVY donations to various political groups. Before the donations started the government's legal branch was ready to come down on Microsoft but after the donations started flowing the government went down on Microsoft instead.
The only thing that could turn the situation around is if enough people got pissed off and started voting out these bastards. But then sheep don't vote.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Bad kaws get wriiten all the time, but they do frequently get over turned eventually. One of the best means of arguing against a law is to develop a 'literature' of archtypical examples of that law being abused.
One of the reason thye anti-DMCA and Bono Act forces aren't getting traction with the public is they are doing a poor job of building that 'literature of abuse'. We need to get away from the examples involving hacker groups, cryptologists discussing obscure algorythms and p2p piracy (never allow them to couple p2p with copyright -- two different issues). Instead we need to concentrate on examples that resonate with the mythical Joe Sixpack.
A week or so ago I had dinner with a couple of journalists... neither of them particularily Tech savy. Some how the conversation turned to these copyright issues. I've reak a lot of the stuff on Chilling Effects quite carefully. I started out with the stories of the Underwater Gardening mailgroup problems and the poor lady and her Dragon Art that got stomped on by Anne McCaffrey. Both of those stories resonatedwith my listeners because they were "little guy getting squashed" stories. We then moved onto the Bona Act and some of the DMCA issues Both of these journalists requested the URL to Chilling Effects so they could read further.
In short, don't present a non-technical person with technical examples they'll have difficulting sympathizing with. Use some simple marketting and engage them with human interest stories... stories they can relate to. The little guy getting screwed never sits well with the public, we need to build up a literature of those types of stories to redefine the 'spin' of the debate.
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
I thought at first this would be another piece of guff from a "guru" jumping on a bandwagon. But no, some interesting stuff in the article. Worth reading and looking at the recommended action plans.
.
It seems to me that battles over Intellectual Property Rights are part of the continual struggle for power and influence between Big business and the individual / consumer.
I remember from a discussion with a politics student some 20 years ago that power was defined as the ability to break an agreement/promise with impunity. She thought there were 4 types of power relationship:
Physical: Give me that valuable resource or I cudgel you!
Knowledge/Skill: Do as I say, I'm an expert in this area and I can run rings round you
Positional: I am your line manager and I don't care what I promised, you work for me and don't forget it.
Systemic: You don't even know that you are losing out because I write the rules of the game and there is no mechanism by which you can protest.
The first three powers can be held in check, controlled and balanced to some extent, well enough for us all to get some benefit. The last is more of a threat.
Big Money has always been keen to use systemic power because they can and lest such power be used against them. Setting the terms of trade, aggressive lobbying of government, aggressive use of legal muscle in SLAPP suits(strategic lawsuits against public participation) are all well honed tools.
It is not clear to me that such battles are winnable. In the end Big Money does have more money and any new development will eventually be brought under control. But . . . .
Some have compared the grabbing of IP to the enclosure of common land (dates vary in different countries but it was back in the 18th Century in the UK) but generally land was less productive when held in common. The reverse is true of IP and copyright. When closely held, it produces less wealth for society. The more this is seen to be the case, the less interest Big Whatever will have in pursuing it
Maybe the aim should be to demonstrate the benefits of free sharing of Knowledge. If a country or group of people share IP freely and reap so much benefit then people will start asking why don't we do this too.
Lets have some more seminal Cathedral and Bazaar articles!
So write to YOUR congressman or senators. Only three people in congress represent you, not all of them. And be sure to let them know you live in their district or state.
(Which is why this sort of thing particularly pisses me off - I live in DC, so I have only one person representing me, and she doesn't even get a vote!)
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
They forgot to mention in the Felton section about how he was turning in that paper, because he took part in a contest to break those methoods. A contest RIAA itself started and promoted.
That's some damn important information to leave out.
Except for that, this is a great read.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
is there any easy way to get voting records for what they actually did in previous congressional votes?
The members of the House and Senate anticipated that and used one of the oldest ways to measure support for a bill while avoiding individual accountability: the anonymous voice vote. Both the DMCA and the Bono Act were passed by voice vote.
Will I retire or break 10K?
maybe someone who knows how to do this could organize a friend/foe list around [the DMCA and the Bono Act]?
Sorry, no. Nobody (except of course the members of Congress) will ever know how the members of Congress voted on those two acts. Even though most yea/nay votes are performed via computer and placed on a public record, the technology doesn't exist for recognizing 400 simultaneous 'yea' votes in a voice vote. (Both the DMCA and the Bono Act were passed through voice vote.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
It would seem that the simplest solution to corporate power is to write legislation overturning the ruling that corporations are citizens.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
In order to ensure that campaign financing doesn't dry up these greedy bastards (Like Senator HOLLINGS from SC) will draft legislation that is favorable to the corporations.
Here's the problem. In some cases, such corporations are television networks. A network (such as AOL/CNN, Disney/ABC, MSNBC, etc) gives money to a politician's campaign, and then come campaign time, the politician gives it right back to the network to buy 30-second spots. In effect, the network has given the politician free promotion through a loophole in the FCC's "equal time" rule that states that a radio or TV station must make advertising time available to all candidates under the same terms.
Will I retire or break 10K?
... I'll write a sarcastic letter, asking for more drastic laws, and include a wad of Monopoly(tm)(c) money. Maybe I'll at least get a response!
Infuriate left and right
But for the past 20 years, the right-wing in America, funded by their deep pocketed friends in Big Business(TM), have mounted a legal, political and social assault against individuals' right to sue.
No offense, but the united states has to be the most litigious nation in the world. It's nuts. Only in America can somebody sue and win millions of dollars over spilling hot coffee. And somehow only the consumer is being screwed by all this? I guess if having reading 'you are so stupid it's beyond belief, and yes this is hot fucking coffee you idiot' stickers is a screw, yes.
AC23
For anyone who didn't read the article, or didn't read all of it, the author also wrote a book called Copyrights and Copywrongs. I bought it and haven't finished it, but it's excellent so far; a more in-depth treatment of some the issues he mentions in the article. I recommend it. Note: I'm not affiliated with it in any way, I just think it's a good book.
DigitalConsumer.org is sponsering a consumers bill of rights in reguards to fair use. They will even fax your congressman for you.
Electronic Frontier Foundation is heavily involved in protecting civil rights in a digital world.
Join and donate to both these groups and that will be a good start.I am not a lawyer but nafta seems to be out, any other ideas?
. as p
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/nafta-alena/menu-e
Article 1704: Control of Abusive or Anticompetitive Practices or Conditions
Nothing in this Chapter shall prevent a Party from specifying in its domestic law licensing practices or conditions that may in particular cases constitute an abuse ofintellectual property rights having an adverse effect on competition in the relevant market. A Party may adopt or maintain, consistent with the other provisions of this Agreement, appropriate measures to prevent or control such practices or conditions.
- Nietzche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
Even if you're just spamming, attribute the quotation to its author!
While Jefferson certainly didn't think that it is a fundamental right to control your works, copyright history didn't start there.
For a fuller perspective, including the sources of attitudes that most corporations prefer, I can highly recommend Mark Rose's Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright which traces the creation of the notion of copyright as a property (and the subsequent question about whether it should be permanent).
It doesn't do any good to just keep talking about how we are getting screwed by the media corporations and their bought-and-paid-for senators and house representatives. We must organize ourselves and work as a single over-whelming force against these greedy bastards.
---- "You mean as we stepped up the current... it just grew?" --The Green Slime
FLASH FXP
Not only does this closed source call-home program get huge amounts of attention making all of us wonder if "Charles DeWeese the information thief" is 1) selling your information to marketeers, 2) pretending he can increase profits by threatening, as reported in some cases, paying customers with BSA actions and lawsuits or 3) trojaning your system for other nefarious activities the nature of which you will never be aware because he provides neither source or debugging symbols, and the binary is stripped. One thing is for sure. Be it here on BetaNews, or on Slashdot, or on download.com.com, there is more than a few people calling into question why FlashFXP does what it does, and what is it doing. I would recommend the use of WinPCAP, WinDUMP, and ethereal, along with the free for personal use application firewall, Kerio Personal Firewall (software with nothing to hide, such as KPF, is often free for personal use, and others, like FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSSL (a technology probably stolen by DeWeese and used illegally in FFXP) and Linux/GNU to name a few. With scary legislation in the US empowering copyright holders to DDOS your P2P networks, "root" your boxes in order to delete copyrighted content, and to make circumventing the mechanism by which an MP3 prevents the playing of an MP3 without a digital signature a felony, you can not trust software which calls home in an undocumented, undesirable way. This is the inroad by which these technology fascists will infect your computer with government sanctioned Trojaning devices. FlashFXP, when purchased legitimately, forces your to divulge HUGE amounts of information about yourself. You cant use cash and anonymously buy "shrink." Not only did I buy FFXP, but I excercised my right to fair use on more than one machine, the closed source binary was never run concurrently on more than one CPU at a time, yet my key got blacklisted. I have always been fond of OpenSource, but this and the EULAs for Windows Media Player, which also does various call home undocumented behavior, make not using OpenSource suicidal if you want a life where the government doesn't control and monitor your every keypress. Best of luck in the brave new world, if we continue to support fascists such as Charles DeWeese in his never-ending pursuit to force you to be tithed for non-Novel software which is built upon the stolen intellectual property of others, and prioritized. This is by no means a call for legislated digital communism, but it certainly calls into question the value of something that is not transferable, the seller has not liability of the actions of, the right to fair use is forfeit, and they law claims they copyright holder can root your computer in order to enforce copyright. Software like this I should be paid to use! Not pay for it! Be careful. He has stolen from the public domain technology to implement this secure technology, SSL, then he uses it to hide from you the true nature of his communications with home-base, as he calls home and Jon.Ashkrofts your information. I'm glad I use SmartFTP and NCFTP and run KPF as a start in the line of defense against a Orwellian cabal of software and I.P.
You'll notice this was modded as follows:
Moderation Totals: Redundant=3, Informative=2, Underrated=1, Total=6.
6 moderations, **six successful trolls**.
Maybe slashdot shouldn't have gotten rid of the real moderators, eh?
Props to poopbot.
Write a letter to your Congressman... and nothing will change.
Just seeing if I get modded up as most "write a letter" posts do?
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
Just as a point of interest Adam Smith was against the existence of corporations that didn't have a set and expiring function. He writes at length about the dangers to free society from corporations which are in effect "immortal persons" accumulating a great deal of wealth...
Moderators do suck here.
I find trolling more and more important to show the fucking asshole editors that micromanagement of the community and discriminatory censorship sucks.
I mean, why do they care if something at -1 is a penis bird ASCII or a klerck-age or a Scientology manifesto? Its so stupid. The lameness filter is the worst part. The time delays, limits and IP banning is so childish as well.
I used to like Slashshit, its jump the shark so bad.
According to the article it was James Madison
I had the pleasure of interviewing Siva Vaidhyanathan, which appeared on this very site. And I just posted the full, uncut version over here. It's a few pages longer than what was posted here.
Good luck at NYU, Siva!
-- haaz
ps - haaz.net is temporarily down.
-- haaz.
- Cut copyright terms down to 20 years, the same as patents. This puts a vast amount of out-of-print content in the public domain, which will help to bootstrap the broadband revolution. Just think of all those old TV shows waiting to be downloaded.
It's not really a big-ticket item for the content owners, but it's just what's needed to sell all that broadband hardware. And in the end, it will probably be a win for the movie industry; once all that broadband bandwidth is in place, they'll have a new distribution channel.
- Restrict technical controls on content. If you can't prevent some act under copyright law, you can't protect it by technical means either. This prohibits controls which restrict resale, skipping commercials, etc.
- Restrict end-user license agreements. Again, if an act can't be prohibited under copyright law, an EULA can't prohibit it either. No benchmarking restrictions, resale restrictions, etc.
- No protection on broadcast content. If it goes out over the public airwaves, technical protection measures are prohibited. Protected content has to go out over the Internet, cable, or purchased spectrum like DirectTV or MMDS. Anybody can build a PVR, and yes, it can skip commercials.
That's a strong starting point. It's not unrealistic in the current political climate, either.No, that's why they worked so hard on checks and balances. They knew perfectly well that even good governmental systems tend to get out of whack with time, tending either toward excessively strong government (aka tyranny) or excessively weak government (anarchy), neither of which is optimal for ensuring the well-being of the governed.
They'd probably be more surprised the system works at all after two-and-a-quarter centuries across an entire continent.
Strictly speaking, most of a continent. ;)
Or most of the planet, depending on your point of view...
"Geeks' Day Off!"(TM)
One day a year (I like March 14.. 3/14 Get it?) when all whose smarts drive the engines of industry show these bastards who's boss by staying home, turning off the phones, pagers, everything.
Let 'em stew in the hell they hath created for 24 hrs. Maybe they'll think for once. You can't legislate intelligence into existence. We'd have 'em by the balls. We control supply.
Oh, and also forever refuse to prepare contingency plans for the event after the resounding success of the first one.
Sorta like Mayday. With teeth!
It's time, people!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
AOL/Time-Warner owns CNN along with nearly 300 other ventures.
neato line of thinking, shows why politicians have incentive to act in entertainment co's favor.
SUV's support terrorism !
Personally I would prefer that we find a way to encourage the politicians we like to stay in power, while removing the politicians that don't deserve their power in a timely fashion.
A method that comes to mind is an election on vacancy, and threshold of votes of non-confidence.
People could be elected to office in the standard manner, but I would prefer abolishing political parties and letting contestants run on their own merits, with advertising equalized and de-flashified.
An example of this would be that political advertising is government regulated. There would be a government owned set (with perhaps a national flag backdrop, and a simple desk/chair), which every political commercial would be filmed on, and on which no props were allowed (there could maybe be a pre-defined wardrobe as well). The commercials would only be allowed to consist of the candidate in question talking about his platform. These commercials would be the same length, and aired in roughly the same time slots.
Also, "When I'm elected" type promises could only be allowed if backed by documents showing what powers they would actually have to do so. This should prove that if they broke the promise, it was either because one of the hurdles outlined before hand was too big (which the constituents should sympathize with), or it was simply because they had broken the promise (which would make the constituents mad, and generate votes of non-confidence). As such, this should limit the number of professional liars (most politicians today) that try to get into office.
Debates would still be allowed, but again, on government run, neutral facilities.
A Q&A session with each contestant would also be created, with questions submitted and ranked by the constituents. (I'm thinking something like the interview question process on Slashdot.) These questions would ideally have added commentary by knowledgeable people to display the facts needed to analyze the answers to the questions, but how to find "knowledgeable people" without getting the stereotypical TV "experts", I don't know.
This would ideally mean that the candidates are elected solely on what their skills and beliefs are.
However, getting back to my original topic:
In order to encourage politicians to keep working in the people's interests, there would be the threshold of votes of non-confidence. This system would work to ensure that the politician was still in favor with the majority of their constituents. If for example, 20% of constituents had cast a vote against them (or some equivalent percent that meant that more than 50% of the constituents no longer liked them, and equalized somehow to protect against tyranny of the majority) in the last 6 months (each person could cast these votes whenever they wished, but they had to be at least 6 months or 1 politician apart, again adjusted to the period of time that works the best) then that politician would be dismissed, and an election to replace them would be held.
Of course, in reality this would most likely not hold up, and greedy people would find ways around it.
PS: did you know MS Word auto-capitalizes Slashdot?
You first proposal attempts to reduce benefit of current law for an act under the already existing current law.
Laws are not permitted to be retroactive, if they take something away from you. Such a law is called Ex Pos Facto -- "after the fact".
This is the same reason that, if you spit on the sidewalk, and they enact a law against that, they can not come arrest you for breaking the law for an act which occurred before the law passed.
The nominal effect of this is that reducing the terms of copyright protection will only have an effect on works copyroghted after the change to the law. Prior copyright terms can not be reduced.
In fact, this is the basis for the challenge to the copyright extension act of 1998: by extending the term of the copyright 20 years on works copyrighted before the act became law, the public has been robbed Ex Pos Facto.
This works because the copyright protection granted works is made *in trade* for the disclosure of the copyrighted information.
I expect that there is room for challenge for the patent reform act of 1996, which changed patents from 17 years from date of issue to 20 years from date of filing, and grandfathered patents filed but not issued at the time of enactment in law to the later of 20 years from date of filing or 17 years from date of issue. Technically, they are only permitted to take grant date into account on legal reform affecting such patents: the act of filing the patent was the inventor entering into a contract with the public to obtain protection for a limited term in exchange for disclosure to the public.
What it boils down to is that rewriting a contract without the consent of both parties is illegal. In the copyright extension act case, the argument is that it was done without the consent of the public.
Effectively, the only way a term can be shortened for a copyright or patent, once the agreement has been entered into, is through the exercise by government of The Right Of Emminent Domain: basically, by siezing the property in the name of the public.
I'm not adverse to a shortening of terms and siezure of property granted under the pervious terms as a means of making the terms retroactive; however, you should be aware that that's what you are advocating, if your plan is to be workable at all.
-- Terry
Did nobody else here learn critical analysis or reasoning?
There are three mostly separate ideas in that short paragraph.
You'll notice that I'm heavy on choice here, because that's the issue as I see it. Abuse of the DMCA could be stopped in its tracks right now if publishers chose to fight it. But most don't. They pay a lawyer money to tell them that they will have to pay lawyers lots more money to fight it, and then they cave in. Bad choice. If you believe that the DMCA is wrong then you don't need a lawyer to tell you that, or how much money he'll have to charge you to fight it. If you really believe in fair use, then you can choose to defend yourself (and the court will make allowances for that) and stick to your argument that you made fair use, and that it's up to your accusers to prove otherwise. There's nothing in the DMCA that changed the burden of proof in this regard.
I fully agree with Vaidhyanathan's sentiments, but his arguments are wooly and slipshod. C-. Could try harder.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The idea that we should, or even can, exert control over what is done with the thoughts and feelings we publish is a uniquely 20th century concept, tied to a certain confluence of technological and market forces, and I predict that it will not survive the 21st century. That's not to say that we will lose a sense of attribution - the ancient Greeks, for example, had a strong sense of the importance of attributing credit for a thought to the thinker, but the idea that the "original" thinker should be able to control how other people use the original thinker's published work, and in what context they use it, would probably have mystified the Greeks.
.. was the use of copyright by Scientology (the criminal nut-cult that L. Ron Hubbard started) to punish a critic who was trying to bring their criminal activities to the attention of a federal judge. Read all about it at freehenson.da.ru.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's a "meritocracy". Well if you equate Money=Merit.
It's a ficticious right to begin with, but even so, the government are merely saying that *we* aren't going to help you keep that work. It it's over 20 years old, tough.
If the corporation feels that money is being made to teir detriment, prove it in a civil case in a court of law.
Easy-pimple.
Okay, Mr start over guy. Before you can start over you have to either solve the Abortion and Gun control issue, or convince those who care that it your goverment is enough better that it is wroth it despite not solving either issue.
Notice I picked two very controlversial issues? I know many "gun nuts" who will not touch a new goverment without assurance that their guns won't be taken away. (many include full automatics, sawed off shotguns, right to concealed carry, and other now illegal guns in their list). The "Antis" want nothing to do with a socity with guns everywhere. Only those who have a need for them can have one, and they are strict about who has a need. There is of course a range of feelings, some "gun nuts" don't care about full automatics, and some "antis" only want to ban a few types of guns. Don't take the above as a lession in how either side thinks.
Abortion generates more extreem feelings than guns in most people. I don't think I need to touch it. Good luck getting any agereement though.
I should have copyright for my own work for my entire life.
Lets say you write a poem or a book, someone could easily and legally just take it and publish it and owe you nothing.
If I make something either a physical object or a book, it should be mine to do with as I chose.
Remember copyright isn't about ideas, or concepts, it is about that specific work. It doesn't prevent anyone from writing a similar story (as patents do) just from copying that work verbatim.
The only glimmer of hope I see is the possibility that legal maneuvers could be patented as business processes. If the lawyers suddenly have to worry about checking their briefs for patent infringement the same way we have to worry about checking our code, they might decide all this ownership stuff is not a good idea after all.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
The first time, I figured it was a typo, but you used the term twice, misspelling it both times:
Ex Post Facto.
The author's website has lots of links to some absolutely compelling and fascinating reads. Well worth a visit! (I didn't see this already posted.)
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for