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.

Comments

Tell me something I don't know.

[Teknogeek]

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.

Trivia.

[Crusty Oldman]

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?

Re:Trivia.

[JoeBuck]

I thought that Ben Franklin, not James Madison, started the first US free lending library.

Re:Trivia.

[rlwhite]

James Madison did: info here

Re:Trivia.

[DEBEDb]

Original intent is hard to prove and is,
IMHO, defeated by a simple observation,
that whatever they REALLY intended to be
the law was written into the Constitution.
Yes, there were a lot of compromises, but
why would you base your law on original intent
of your favorite thinkers without considering
the opposing view, which is built into the
product of compromise that is the Constitution?

Its too bad really...

[Critical_]

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.

Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[malibucreek]

America's system of government is supposed to work on checks and balances. When the executive issues a hair-brained order, or when Congress passes an unconscionable law, people are supposed to have access to the courts to get those rules overturned.

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.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[eyepeepackets]

"America's system of government is supposed to work on checks and balances."

Yes, it (the federal government) does work on checks and balances within itself, but the framers of our constitution didn't see that these huge corporations would have the power via money they now have.

The framers also didn't anticipate institutionalized graft as a political way of life. They thought those running for office would be like them; educated, landed gentlemen with enough self-interest not to sell out their country, its ideals and its future for chump change just to get re-elected every time until they dropped dead.

Face the music: we're seeing a serious push by big corporations to make an end run around our freedoms so that Disney can keep making money from Mickey Mouse forever. The restrictions on the federal government do not apply to corporations. So what you say? Think which has more impact on your daily life.

Stephenson wasn't just joking when he painted in Snowcrash a society where the federal government was still functional, just irrelevant in the face of the huge corporations. I really hope we don't go there.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Zalgon 26 McGee]

Nowdays, legislators only care about the checks... or the unmarked bills...

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Brian_Ellenberger]

>Sometimes they use the moniker "tort reform." >Othertimes, they talk about "greedy lawyers" >and "runaway lawsuits" that inevitably hurt

I guess you haven't heard about the fat guy suing McDonalds's for making him fat. :)

Brian Ellenberger

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Jeremi]

. Both parties are in this together. Al Gore, Dubya, both Statist Interventionist Global Corporatists to the core.

Agreed. I think our only slim hope for removing corporate influence from politics would be electing politicians that that don't accept corporate contributions (e.g. those from the Green Party). Of course, the current system is designed to make it very difficult for a third party to win, no matter how awful the first two parties are. See my .sig for a partial solution to that problem...

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[eyepeepackets]

Well, if they saw it coming, they surely didn't put much preventitive medicine in the Constitution. I just had a quick read of it the other day and all I saw mentioned was treason and fraud in the context of misbehaving congress critters. Nothing about "thou shalt not be bought nor thy actions be bought by huge corporations at the expense of the freedoms of the people."

"Where I draw the line is when they use their congressional clout to prevent anyone else from accessing that cultural material forever."

Ah, you're talking about fair use -- forget it, it's gonna die because Disney Corp. needs to squeeze every penny it can out of everyone on the planet so the Disney CEO can say to the stockholders, "See, I'm doing my job!"

Which reminds me of an old Pogo cartoon quote, "We've seen the enemy and they is us!"

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[jafac]

Bullshit. Does NOT matter what party you're from, you're susceptible to greed if you're a human being. It's just the invisible hand slipping money under the table. Power is worth money.

What is needed is a system to prevent such abuses.
Public officials need all their finances to be set up in blind trusts.
Public officials should have an oversight board (4th branch?) which keeps an eye on their finances and makes sure they're not getting money that they can't account for - and makes sure that there are no conflicts of interest, and in the cases where they are, forces them to recuse themselves from whatever process they're involved in.
Campaign finance reform laws need to be passed that have some teeth. Big, sharp teeth with serrated edges and venom channels.

We KNOW that people are corrupt and suceptible to greed. It's the broken system that allows it.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

US political elections are really nothing more than the powers-that-be, (Big Business(TM)), putting a donkey puppet on the left hand and an elephant puppet on the right hand

This reminds me of one of my favorite editorial cartoons, from round about 1988. First panel: Old-style Soviet elections (one vaugely-Breznev-looking guy). "Check one." Second panel: New-style Soviet elections (two identical copies of vaugely-Breznev-looking guy). "Check one.".

OK, it's off topic, but I think it's funny.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Malcontent]

IF the jury awards him anything whose fault is that? You are blaming the lawyers as if they make the verdicts.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Malcontent]

Still you don't hear the democrats whining about lawyers and calling for limits on judgements.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Malcontent]

Tort reform is a republican issue. It's the republicans who refer to "trial lawyers" as if they were some kind of a sub human vermin to be shot on sight.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Malcontent]

Nevertheless it's the republicans who are fighting so hard to limit liability and your right to sue.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Malcontent]

No doubt but so what? Are you saying that it's OK for republicans to limit your right to sue because if the democrats got money from big business they would too?

This is your stock MS troll answer. It's OK to act evil because other people might also act evil if they were in the same position.

It's not right no matter who does it. In this case the republicans are doing something that is evil and they should be called on it.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Jeremi]

Bullshit. Does NOT matter what party you're from, you're susceptible to greed if you're a human being. It's just the invisible hand slipping money under the table. Power is worth money.

Well, of course. But some people are more susceptible than others. And people who are taking the bulk of their money from corporations are the most likely to be influenced by... those corporations. As for reforms to hold politicians accountable, that's all well and good, but the fact is that dishonest people will find a way around them anyway, so a better bet is to vote in honest people... if you can find any ;^)

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[jafac]

So? Green party members will be susceptible to bribery from:
Solar Cell manufacturers
Farm Lobbies (who stand to profit from increased biodeisel use)
Alternative CFC manufacturers
etc.

Re:Let's Get Back Our Access to the Courts

[Jeremi]

.... but any such bribery would have to be the purebred dishonest criminal variety, not the slippery-slope "campaign contribution wink wink nudge nudge" type that is a fact of political life in other parties today. And, contrary to popular belief, not every politician is dishonest enough to take illegal bribes.

How to take care of the situation you describe

[kmweber]

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.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. Do you want to live in a country where businesses are allowed to pollute whatever they feel like, lie to the consumer whenever they want, fail to honor warranties (those silly government-imposed rules enforcing contract laws...). While we're at it, why don't we remove government-imposed controls such as real-estate ownership, accounting laws (yes, I know the current ones are full of holes, but they're better than no such controls), intellectual property (these do serve a purpose) and maybe even the requirement that food be fit to eat. Also, let's let anyone use any radio frequency they like. That way I can buy a bigger antenna than the local TV station and broadcast my own stuff over it.

All of the above are "government-imposed controls". I'm sure you think that some of them are wrong, but, really, are they all wrong? Aren't we better off with some controls?

My personal take on taking care of the situation described is to make it illegal for any business to contribute a politician. Individuals, sure, but why should businesses be allowed to contribute?

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[rodgerd]

No businesses would accept the removal of any number of laws, the most obvious ones being bankruptcy and incorporation laws.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[martyn s]

Oh, I see. So in order to make sure that they don't bribe politicians in order to get their way, we do it their way FOR FREE?? It's a nice libertarian principle, and I used to feel that way, but it just doesn't work. The point of the government is to protect the rights of it's citizens. Why should businesses be the only ones exempt from laws?

Once upon a time there was a man named Adam Smith. His thesis was that "men working to fulfill their own selfish desires will lead to benefitting society". I guess that's roughly true, but it seems he never heard of game theory.

Ok, picture this game: There are four people, each with a 100 dollars, and they're playing a game. The game is sponsored by someone. Here are the rules. Each person can put however much money they want towards the pot. Each round the pot is doubled by the sponsor and split amongst them. So if they all put in 20, they end up with 80, doubled equals 160, and split by 4 is 40. So they each end up with double they put in. Now imagine that 3 people put in 20 but the fourth person puts nothing. So the total in the pot is 60, which when doubled is 120, and divided by 4 is 30. So each of them make 10 dollars profit, except for the person who put in nothing, who made 30 dollars profit.

So what happens when they tried this in real life? Well in the first round they all put in about half their money. But each round they put in succesively less and less until by the last round, they've all learned their lesson, and put in nothing.

So imagine further, a new rule. Anyone can pay 3 dollars to take away 10 dollars from someone else. So now if the fourth one puts in nothing, the three others pay 3 dollars each and take away all 30 dollars that he won, ending up with a profit of zero, but they each won 7 dollars profit. So this new rule totally changed the nature of the game, and actually, paradoxically, made it easier to trust each other.

You know what happened in this game? It started out the same...they each bet half of what they had. But each round after that, the slowly bet more and more, till the last round when they all bet the whole pot, and really made a ton of money.

So what's the lesson here? Changing the rules a little bit can help everybody. That's the governments job. Just because the government is forcing a business to do something doesn't mean they don't want to do it. It might just mean that they want to do it, but they want to make sure the others have to do it too.

Like software patents. Getting rid of them would definitely help the software industry, but they still hoarde them and prosecute them because they get the same treatment from the others.

I know, you're a libertarian, so you likely agree with me about software patents, but government is not bad. The US government is bad, they never do anything right, it's shameful. But that shouldn't turn you off to the idea of government. I think you'd agree that certain 'public' things are best taken care of by non-commercial entities. Schools. Libraries. Roads. Public transport.

Let's look at public transport. Even though the city usually does not recoup money from bus and train fares, it doesn't matter. The city doesn't recoup money for laying and maintaining roads either. Almost anything with very low scarcity, but a high fixed cost should be publicly funded, because it's the most efficient system. If you charge excessively, less people use it, and since there's no scarcity (no marginal cost) the less people who use it, the higher the cost PER use, and hence the lower efficiency.

"Government" is not inherently bad, you really should consider that possibility.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[symbolic]

I have no problem with reasonable, responsible government - a government that is truly by the people and for the people. It corrupt government that I can't stand, and there's plenty of corruption to go around in the U.S. - from so-called bribed disguised as "campaign contributions" to loan guarantees, in which the only real guarantee is that the taxpayers will be left holding the bag, while monied scum makes off with a bag of loot.

The recent passage of the corporate responsibility act is a good thing, but it's only the beginning. It's time to start cleaning house by getting rid of congressional "representatives" that show nothing but contempt toward the notion of fiscal responsibility.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Lack of gov. regulation does not always equal screwed consumers.

The purpose of the government is not to serve consumers. It's to serve citizens. Of course the citizens are each consumers too, but the choice of word reveals a lot of one's starting point.

Lack of regulation does not always equal screwed consumers. Fair enough. But lack of regulation does not always equal served consumers, either. And regulations does not always lead to screwed consumers, as well. Hmmm. Seems there might be a balance to be struck in there...

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

If only the framers saw that the whole thing would slowly become a big mess

I don't think the current state of affairs would surprise the Founders all that much. They'd probably be more surprised the system works at all after two-and-a-quarter centuries across an entire continent. Things are bad with the government of the US, but they aren't (IMHO) past the point of no return. I think the throw-up-your-hands apocalyptic credo is actually just a more sophisticated justification for basic voter laziness.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Safety Cap]

make it illegal for any business to contribute a politician

I'll go one better, from Article 1, section 2 of the US Constitution:

The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand ~.

How about we require one representative for every 30k citizens? With the current population at 287,667,120, this gives us 9,588 representatives! Good luck trying to buy them off. The bonus with this plan is that it satisfies the original intent of the Framers: congress is supposed to do very little and take forever to get it done, so they won't mess things up.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Radical Rad]

How about this: make it legal only for registered voters to donate to a politician. This rules out corporate entities, minors, pets, convicted felons, as well as foreigners.

On a side note: (from the article)

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.

I thought 2600 dropped the case before it got reviewed by the Supreme Court. Or am I confusing it with something else?

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Dyolf Knip]

Odd way of looking at it. I had always figured that more reps was worse than few since, as you point out, they'd end up dickering forever over the slightest thing. It never even occured to me that once the costs of having a government start outweighing the benefits, that inability to make a simple decision might become a Good Thing.

Ah well, there'd still be lots of Congresscritters who'd follow the carrot right off the cliff. And it'd work both ways; how difficult would it be to get existing bad laws off the books?

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Chris Johnson]

*ROFL*

Ooooo. 'Quite simple really' ;)

Let me give you a free hint- remove the subsidies FIRST.

Otherwise, you'll remove the controls and regulations and the corporations will immediately use that new freedom to grab much bigger corporate welfare, have legislation passed to make not using their crap punishable by fines and imprisonment, and will top it off by privatizing some government functions like law enforcement and the penal system :)

And on the guard towers will be written, Verbrauchen Macht Frei ;)

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Safety Cap]

You're right about the trouble of getting the bad laws off the books, but imagine getting 4,500+ Congresscritters to all agree that the US Patriot act, the DCMA, the Sonny Bono Copyright extention act, and anything Fritz Hollings proposes are all good and need to go through?

Not bloody likely...and that's the point!

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Tony-A]

I think proper, effective government IS possible (even if it's never happened before), and I think with it we can all accomplish great things.
Watch CSPAN and CSPAN2 sometime. Be prepared to do a *lot* of watching. They *do* quite often try to do a good job.
I think you are very right about "Almost anything with very low scarcity, but a high fixed cost should be publicly funded, because it's the most efficient system."

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[mangu]

[US_Centric_Disclaimer: I'm not a Gringo]

I think we need to start over. New constitution. New laws.

I don't agree with that. The USA has what is, probably, the best constitution in the world. The problem is not a bad constitution, it's the laws that don't respect its basic principles.

Among those principles I would mention two: the "checks and balances" thing, and the "non-affirmative rights". Huh, what is that? If you check other national laws, for instance most of those in the so-called "third world", you will find a lot of "affirmative rights", such as "every citizen has the right to free health care, unemployment benefits, government sponsored retirement pay, etc". These are, in most cases, unenforceable laws. Third World nation governments simply cannot afford all the rights their constitutions ensure to their citizens.

On the other hand, the US Constitution Bill of Rights mentions "rights" as things the government cannot take away from the citizens, not things that the government must provide.

In that light, laws such as the DMCA are much more third-world-like than US-like, in the sense that it tries to guarantee "rights" that, according to some points of view, may look good on paper, but are impossible to enforce in practice.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[elmegil]

We don't need to scrap the constitution, we need to scrap the byzantine maze of laws that has grown up around it, many of which directly contradict the basic principles of the document. Leave the constitution and all the amendments in place, and start everything else over from scratch.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[HiThere]

I don't feel that the constitution needs to be thrown out, or even changed much. A few trivial rewordings to remove allowances made for slavery and other abusive practices that were then common, and include the first 11 amendments into the basic document. Then strip out most of the remaining amendments. If they are needed, let them be passed again.

But what really needs to be done, is then add an amendment that says no law may be longer than one page, 8 1/2 by 11 inches, set in 9 point type. And must pass the following test:
Three descriptions are given of the law.
Three eigth grade classes are choosen at random.
The classes independantly vote on which description the law matches. If the classes don't all agree, the law is thrown out.
Then the description choosen is appended to the law as a "descriptive summary", and can be appealed to if the implementation of the law contravenes the summary.

That might not result in good laws, but at least they would be intelligible.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[HiThere]

Please remember: The corporations are working under a set of laws and legal restraints that nearly compell them to behave immorally. This doesn't mean that they wouldn't choose to do so for their own reasons, but we can't tell. The laws nearly require the corporations to put short-sighted greed above all other considerations.

Mind you, if we look into the past, when such laws weren't present, that was still the most common corporate behavior. But it wasn't always the *only* corporate behavior. And perhaps you can still, if you are very careful in writing you corporate charter/prospectus, be moral. We'll find out the first time Red Hat needs to defend itself against a stock-holders for "behaving in a non-fiscally responsible manner".

Or perhaps we'll just find out whether or not they were as careful with their documents of incorporation as they thought they were.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[mOdQuArK!]

...convicted felons...

I've never particularly agreed that convicted felons shouldn't be allowed to vote. I figure that if the number of convicts actually gets to the point where their vote makes a difference, then THAT is an indication that the laws have been making too many people convicts instead of functioning for the general good of society.

Saying it another way, allowing convicts to vote introduces a feedback into the law-making process which discourages laws (perhaps based on ideology rather than the good of the society) from being passed which make large sections of the general populace become convicts. It might also provide some incentive for society to do its best to rehabilitate convicts as much as possible, to try and reduce the chance of "revenge" voting.

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Dyolf Knip]

They wouldn't all have to agree. Just half, or two thirds, depending on the situatiuon. Which, I agree, is less likely than with 450 reps, but is it that much less so?

I'm not against the idea, I'm just not convinced that it's a better one. :)

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[Radical Rad]

That's an interesting point. I have thought about that before and I tend to agree, though I would love to hear an argument to the contrary. Considering the high percentage of black males who spend at least part of their life in prison, could the felony/no vote laws be just a roundabout method to suppress that segment of the population?

Re:How to take care of the situation you describe

[mOdQuArK!]

Then you've got to ask the question _WHY_ 75% of the population decided to become thieves. If that amount of your population "suddenly" became thieves, then there's obviously some basic need that the current society wasn't satisfying & which had to be provided outside of the existing legal framework. Either that, or the definition you are using for the word "thief" needs to be adjusted to fit reality.

Not quite restricted...

[daemones]

...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.

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: /u
yes yes yes.

Damn, that would be nice.

Re:Not quite restricted...

[Etcetera]

C:\ Format Washington_D_C: /u

Umm, I do believe that's exactly what Al Queda is trying to do...

In wartime, some civil liberties are suspended. Not saying that that's right, but that's simply what happens. Quite frankly, I'm willing to err on the side of caution now that we're dealing with an environment where a city can be detonated completely w/o warning and without handy-dandy flags painted on the airplanes to let us know who did it.

Re:Not quite restricted...

[Etcetera]

I believe the quote is:

"A society that will trade a little freedom for a little security will lose both and deserves neither." --Thomas Jefferson

Technology is part of the reason for the change

[Henry V .009]

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.

Re:Technology is part of the reason for the change

[Dr Caleb]

While your arguement is essentially correct, that wasn't the point of the article.

It wasn't about piracy or illegal reproduction and distribution of I.P. or copyrighted material, it was about fair use, and how the DMCA has squashed it.

It's about how now everything is 'Intellectual Property' and how anyone using something deemed to be IP, even in a fair use situation, must defend themselves in court. It's about how, because of the DMCA, it becomes a battle of 'our corporate lawyers are better than your court appointed lawyer'.

Re:Technology is part of the reason for the change

[Henry V .009]

I don't think that I made my point clearly, then. I was suggesting that it had become that way, not because of the DMCA, but because copyright infringement had become an issue of personal morality. When it is just a corporate regulation, then due process is all you need. When you start regulating morality, things get tricky.

Re:Technology is part of the reason for the change

[Dr Caleb]

Ahhhh! Organized religion!

I don't think they are trying to regulate or legislate morality. At least I hope not!! I believe the easiest way to get us to do what they want us to do, is give us what we want, at a price we're willing to pay (see: capitalism).

Give us secure, reliable software (see: myths and legends) that we don't have to miss a car payment to buy, and an album with more that 1 good track on it (or bring back the EP) and we'd forget about P2P and warez and spend a little cash.

Re:Technology is part of the reason for the change

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

I believe the easiest way to get us to do what they want us to do, is give us what we want, at a price we're willing to pay (see: capitalism).

What "they want us to do" is surrender time-honored and crucial concepts of fair use, non-commerciality, and the public domain... not to mention free speech itself. There is no price they can offer that makes it a good bargain to "do what they want us to do".

Re:Technology is part of the reason for the change

[Dr Caleb]

If they gave us quality at a fair price, people wouldn't feel the need to steal, they'd buy more as a result.

Right now, restricting our rights is the only way they can force us to buy their drivel, so that's the road they've taken. I believe if they didn't have to, they wouldn't bother.

Public domain is another story. That's just a limited monopoly on information, because they fear they aren't creative enough to come up with something original.

Re:Article slashdotted

[renard]

I highly doubt that '...has just sucked you off' appears in the original article.

Indeed, it does not.

Given the Copyright as Cudgel subject, however, this very change might (generously) be interpreted as a fairly witty commentary on the topic.

Could it be? A witty troll?

-Renard

good example of "unfair" use

[jbennetto]

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.

the history of media...

[vex24]

I've heard the argument that as the cost of distributing an artform slide towards zero, the profit margin falls off and the art matures, as only those who truly believe in the artform continue to practice it...

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...

Re:the history of media...

[eyepeepackets]

And then there's the argument that academia contributed greatly to the "death" of poetry as it was practiced up through the 19th century. Excessive use of deconstructionism and free form combined with the attitude that anyone without a PhD in (insert language of choice here) was and is not qualified to write or be published.

Re:the history of media...

[PSC]

At one time poets were well paid and could achieve a certain amount of fame and occaisional hefty profits for their work.

Uhm... when exactly was that?

Historically, only a few poets, who happened to be favoured by their respective sovereign (and had to write in support or at least not in opposition to them) could make a decend living off their art. Otherwise they would die as a pauper. This goes back till the dark ages. Walther von der Vogelweide, medvial "rock star", was paid by souvereigns (several of them, depending who paid the most; and naturally, he would write poems in their favour), because the poor people hanging around on the city's market place - his main audience - could never affort to pay this guy.

Same goes for music. Haendel was a merchenary of the British crown; Mozart, who wasn't, died a pauper (albeit a famous one).

Bottom line: at any time and age, only a very few artists could survive by their art alone and make a decend living. This has nothing to do with expensive or cheap distribution channels.

Otherwise, pre-printing press authors would all have been insanely rich, because copying (manually!) was an enourmously expensive and time-consuming effort. Or just think about the pre-record musicians - they must have been like Rockefeller (or Gates :-) since there were actually NO "pirated" copies! Yeah, right!

(BTW calling copyright infringement "piracy" is a quite tasteless belittlement of actual piracy, which is accompanied by bloodshed and murder. For copyright infringement, even "theft" is technically incorrect since the producer isn't actually lacking anything they formerly posessed - they lost the chance of one more sell, so in a sense, it's "virtual theft" or "potential theft".)

Re:the history of media...

[richieb]

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.

While I agree with you that the record companies have a somewhat valid claim on music which they copyrighted, what they are trying to do is much more extensive.

With DRM technologies and DMCA they are trying to monopolize the digital distribution channel.

And now, for the low, low price of...

[Eric Seppanen]

$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.

Microsoft Lawyer

[Milo Fungus]

I've read various editorials about copyright law. The basic point of many of them is this: The U.S. Constitution grants congress the right "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries" The practice of using copyright law for the hoarding intellectual property is in many ways destructive to "the progress of science and useful arts." Current interpretation of copyright law is, by this arguement, inconsistent with the original intent of the law.

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.

Re:Microsoft Lawyer

[Elwood P Dowd]

You sound as if you feel that people have a fundamental right to control the reproduction and use of their ideas. The more I talk to people about these issues, I get the idea that almost everyone agrees with you. I can't really understand where people come up with this natural right. It's practically assumed.

I don't see why. To my reading, the framers have included copyright provisions in the Constitution as a means of solving the Tragedy of the Commons. That is, they seemed to desire to maximize common good, rather than recognize a natural right. If there was a fundamental right to control the use of your art, I can't imagine why it wouldn't last indefinitely. This could not possibly maximize common good. It would give artists a miniscule increase in projected revenue from their artwork. This would not inspire the creation of better/more artwork.

Why is copyright a natural right? I just don't get it.

Anyway. A million /.ers have made my argument before. As the copyright term goes from 40 years to 90 years, artists gain something like .5% in projected return on investment. Further increases are even less beneficial. At some duration, the total public benefit is higher if there is unlimited access to the work. Unless there's a persuasive reason for copyright to be natural, then it's simply too damaging to be so long.

Re:Microsoft Lawyer

[Anonymous Coward]

As the copyright term goes from 40 years to 90 years, artists gain something like .5% in projected return on investment.

Yeah, but they're artists...math is a foreign concept to them. They have problems calculating how much change to give me when I buy an extra-value meal. To them, 90 years is (provided they do the math correctly ;) 50 years better than 40.

Re:Microsoft Lawyer

[rhizome]

It's called "sense of entitlement". That which is granted as a privilege is eventually assumed to be a right. The only "rights" anybody has are those that are codified by the laws *invented by people*. There are many societies that exist without many of the protections afforded by U.S. laws without dissolving into anarchy. Heck, up until around the end of the 19th century in the U.S. a parent could kill their child without any legal repercussions. Is the logic that the right to live was granted only to adults? Doesn't seem very natural or god-granted to me.

There is no cosmic retribution for people who violate copyright, trademark, or patent laws, just the legal ramifications of threatening someone's business model. Napster won't cause the world to fall apart or for people to stop creating. People were creating long before there was a such thing as copyright and will continue to do so regardless of the legal and commercial landscape.

Where is one "located" when on the web?

[mikewas]

"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.

Re:Where is one "located" when on the web?

[God! Awful]

Yeah, that was really flamebait. Stupid moderators. :-(

If your servers are physically located in Russia and they violate Russian law then don't be surprised if the Russians seize your servers. If your site violates US law then don't come to the US on vacation. If your users are located in China, they have no ability to seize the servers, but they may block them at the firewall, which is what they do.

It may seem unfair to you, but geeks simply don't have the authority to override the laws of sovereign nations.

-a

Re:Where is one "located" when on the web?

[God! Awful]

That's pretty circular reasoning, don't you think? Geeks complain when laws are enforced that they believe to be unfair. So why are the laws unfair? Too often, the answer is "because they are unenforceable."

-a

Re:Where is one "located" when on the web?

[acceleriter]

I guess it'd have been circular had I been making the argument that laws are unfair because they're unenforceable.

My argument was an analogy to that old chestnut "posession is nine tenths of the law"--I wasn't addressing the fairness or unfairness of the laws in questions; I was only addressing their futility.

Re:Where is one "located" when on the web?

[God! Awful]

I said "but geeks simply don't have the authority to override the laws of sovereign nations." You said that authority doesn't matter, the ability does.

I really don't understand what you mean. If you break the laws of China, that is fine as long as you don't live in China (or visit China). If you run a site that breaks the laws of China, they will undoubtedly block it at the firewall. If you locate the site in China they will shut it down. Where is your "ability"?

-a

Naming names

[milo_Gwalthny]

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!

Re:Naming names

[milo_Gwalthny]

Since /.-ers seem pretty unified on a few issues (the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Increased Profits Act, etc), maybe someone who knows how to do this could organize a friend/foe list around those topics? I will do it myself if people identify the issues and tells me how to find voting records.

There must also be some way of finding the arch-villains: the people who sponsored the legislation or killed friendly legislation in committee. Is anyone out there a Washington expert?

Re:Naming names

[martissimo]

speaking of individually listing congressmen who are for/against these things. is there any easy way to get voting records for what they actually did in previous congressional votes? i'd like to know what my representatives voted for last term before i go to the polls.

Don't know if there is any easy way to check on it, but you can find records of any bill's vote in the senate here, and in the house here

it takes a little time though, gotta go through and click which session the bill was voted on during, then click the number of the bill itself, then click "Bill status", then wade thru all the different yea and nays it goes through till it ends (they vote on some of these things a LOT of times as various ammendments are proposed, and finding the real final vote can be a fair bit of work)

It's all there, but it's far from user friendly and designed for the masses, doubt many people spend much time doing it. Probably mostly done by reporters and politicians looking to dig up dirt on their opponents. An easy to use site that made it all fairly quick to check on would be sweet, but it would likely entail a lot of time and effort.

Re:Naming names

[orthogonal]

That's agood point, Milo, but it doesn't go far enough.

Non-Virginians need to show their appreciation of Boucher the old fashioned way: with cash.

Want Boucher to succeed? Send the guy's campaign fund some cash. In fact, send enough that other politicians sit up and take notice.

In fact, send a copy of your cancelled check to your own representative. Let him (or her) know why you respect Boucher enough to part with your beer money. And let him (or her) know that you vote, and are capable of sending an equal amount of money to your representative or to his (or her) opponent.

Send a copy of that letter to ten of your like-minded friends, and exhort them to do what you've just done.

So? What are you waiting for? Send that check, and send those letters. Now. Before the cops come to confisticate your computer. Before the RIAA sends a million to Boucher's opponent. Before Fritz Hollings or Joe Biden get their bills passed. Now.

Re:Naming names

[milo_Gwalthny]

I do send my money... to the EFF and the ACLU (much as I am conflicted over the latter.) I hope they spend it wisely.

But, it seems that there are probably more than a million people who read /. (your user # is 588k, and there are probably 3 times as many lurkers as registered users, although many of the registered user #s are probably dormant.) In a Senate/House race, even 1/50th of that number is a lot of votes.

All the congressman would use the money for is to buy votes; why not give him the votes directly?

Re:Naming names

[orthogonal]

All the congressman would use the money for is to buy votes; why not give him the votes directly?

I'm assuming you're in the IT field, and you get those offers for free or very cheap subscriptions to IT publications, even stuff as mass market as Wired? You get those offers because it's worth the magazine taking a loss to you on the cost of the magazine just to get your eyes on the advertisements in the magazine.

So why not just send you the magazine, rather than send the offer and make you respond to it to get the magazine?

Because they want to be sure they've really got your attention: without that attention, you're not going to be be looking at, and buying from, the ads.

It's the same with politicians: saying I'm in a demographic with X numberm of members doesn't impress them much. Sure, some of those people will vote, but will they remember to vote for the right candiddate? Or will other issues have captured their attention on Election Day?

On the other hand, if you've cut a check to Candidate X, you're much more likely to support him, and to remember to vote for him. Both because you've actually had to write his name ("Committee to re-elect Jones") on the check, and because you now have co-joined your interests with him: you've put your money into the effort, and and people don't like seeing something they've put money into, fail.

There's a greater pyschological pressure on you now to actually vote for him, because to do otherwise would mean admitting, if only to yourself, that you wasted your money, made a poor choice. And nobody likes to admit they made a poor choice on an important issue. And there's a a greater pyschological pressure to follow through; after all, you've invested the money, might as well make investment of time by going to the voting booth.

Politicians implictly understand that most people forget, by the time Election Day rolls around, all the heated anouncements they made about how "Y is the most important issue to me, and I'll vote against Candidate X if he doesn't support issue Y". They also implicity know that once you've committed money, you're on board unless they really do go against you on a hot button issue.

So the money's important, but as much as for its pyschological meaning to the giver as for its utility to the receiver. The money's an indication that you're really serious, and kvetching with your beer buddies.

copyright and the sciences

[margaret]

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.

WHAT DO WE DO?

[swagr]

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.

Re:WHAT DO WE DO?

[Etcetera]

Why would a US politician care if I (a Canadian) complained about something?

Umm.. they wouldn't. And no offense, but they shouldn't. They're supposed to represent *us*. (Me being an American.)

Not that you can't help, but you'll need to find another way. Launching/assisting with a pettition drive, organizing communication, etc...

Re:WHAT DO WE DO?

[orthogonal]

Why would a US politician care if I (a Canadian) complained about something?

A US politican won't. A Canadian one will. But since a lot of patent issues are covered by international treaties, a little right thinking Canadian input might do some good here in the States.

Re:to be expected

[reflector]

Read it again. The poster is saying that ALL P2P use is illegitimate, but 1% of it can be gotten away with due to a technicality. I don't consider that an "excellent start for a discussion", any more than saying "all Palestinians are terrorists" is a good way to start a discussion of how peace can be achieved in the Middle East.

Re:to be expected

[paladin_tom]

tps12 posted: 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.

Sure, statistically speaking, the accused is more often guilty than innocent. That does not mean that you can treat people as such. The moment a person's innocence is not presumed, you open yourself up to being taken from your home in the middle of the night and thrown in a jail cell for who knows how long. Assuming people guilty until proven innocent is NOT something you can do in a free society.

Of course, I understand that the current exception to the rule is that if you're accused of being a terrorist, you can be held for months without trial. That's scary. It makes me glad that I don't live in the U.S.

I wonder if this is worth fighting...

[A nonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I wonder if this is worth fighting...

[Paul Fernhout]

Great "Judo" analogy! Good summary.

Here's something I wrote on this earlier which you might be referencing: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33200&cid= 3588180

And as I mention there, I saw the germ of it first in another user's comment on Slashdot perviously.

See also later posts: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33247&cid= 3592289

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=34231&cid= 3707446

Re:I wonder if this is worth fighting...

[Paul Fernhout]

Thanks for the Adam Smith pointer. Definitely strengthens the concept for a conservative audience.

On IP - mostly I just want to see this idea in greater circulation -- as you say, as Judo (or Aikido?) for various noxious social trends. I was pleased to see someone else bring it up, and adding something to is (like citing Adam Smith). Great minds think alike. :-) And as I said, the germ of it came from Slashdot for me too I think (wish I could track down the original inspiration -- think it might have been someone's sig perhaps a year or more ago now.)

Interesting idea to perhaps see it first in Europe. Although, with the looming budget deficits in the U.S., federal and state governments could use all the new taxes they could get.

Re:Changes to CS courses?

[richieb]

Looks like computer science programs will have to move to using exclusively open-source materials, to avoid possible litigation.

Not really. Using OpenSSH and Linux? Well, Microsoft has a patent on "secure O/S"...

Get the picture?

Due Process violation as possible legal strategy?

[Etcetera]

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?

Re:how about some proof, prof

[thumbtack]

Most Reps./Senators won't respond to e-mail outside of their district. Find out when your Rep/Senator is going to be in your area, and ask for an appointment to discuss (yoursubject). Ask for his legislative assistant for that type of matter and communicate with them directly, feed them info, make their job easier. You'll find a much more receptive ear, and CAN infulence their decisions. I've done it and it does work. Remember, if they don't get elected, they can't get the payola, errr "Campaign Contributions"

Going about it the wrong way...

[ambisinistral]

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.

Raw power struggles

[Aliks]

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!

Write YOUR congressman

[FuzzyDaddy]

Many people have complained here that they've written to several or dozens of congresspeople. In our system, a congressman (in the house) represents the people of her district. While she is supposed to be concerned with the good of the country as a whole, her actual job is to represent HER DISTRICT.

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!)

Re:Write YOUR congressman

[Danse]

I've already written to my senators and rep about various copyright bills as they have come up. When I get a reply from them (usually a couple months later at least), it's always a form letter stating that it's essential that we do whatever is necessary to protect copyrights. The American Way of Life(TM) depends on it! So, I see that it's pointless to try to reason with them. For every letter I send them, there's a dozen corporations handing them thousands of dollars for their next campaign. Who do you think they listen to?

Missing, Important Felton Case Information

[fire-eyes]

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.

Re:to be expected

[orthogonal]

They're not even American citizens so who cares what happens to them?

Uhm. The latest guy to be sent to a Navy brig without trial or access a lawyer -- Jose Padilla -- is an American citizen, and was arrested on US soil (when he de-planed at Chicago's O'Hare Airport).

It wasn't to protect criminals that the writers of the US Constitution were so concerned with due process and the rights of the accused. They were concerned because they had experienced tyrannical governments taking away those rights from -- criminal or not -- anyone who inconvenienced the tyrants.

Which is a long-winded way of saying: no matter how much you try to keep your nose clean while kissing the ass of authority, you may be next.

Jose Padilla probably is scum, he's almost certainly connected to the Taliban, and that's frightening. But I'm more frightened that he'll be a precedent for the (further) erosion of rights without which a free society cannot be maintained.

It's because I'm an American and a patriot, not despite that, that I insist Jose Padilla be afforded the right guaranteed all Americans in our Constitution.

Re:to be expected

[jedidiah]

It is not true at all. Most Palestinians are simply caught in the middle. So are most Israelis are. Very few on either side of the conflict are actively involved in the fighting. This is not uncommon in war.

Corporations as Citizens

[sconeu]

It would seem that the simplest solution to corporate power is to write legislation overturning the ruling that corporations are citizens.

Re:Corporations as Citizens

[sconeu]

Sorry, I meant "are persons", not citizens.

Violation of FCC "equal time" rule?

[yerricde]

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.

Next time ...

[A nonymous Coward]

... 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!

Re:That's a catch-22

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

Well, a politician is supposed to serve the public and if the public agrees with his/her policies, then he should be elected.

Of course, there's nothing to stop someone from running on a popular platform, then doing the exact opposite upon being elected. Re-election can serve as a safety device, too, since it allows the voters to decide directly on the performance and trustowrthiness of a candidate.

Re:Changes to CS courses?

[richieb]

If it is true it won't stand up--there's prior art. Microsoft can push around individuals and small companies, but they'd be up against an army.

I was using the "Secure O/S" patent as an example. In general, companies (especially like MS) have many patents, some of which are bit too broad, which they can use to control people without patents.

The big guys, IBM, ATT and SUN, have their own patent portfolios so they can horse trade. You licence patent 321321 to me, and I license 787888 to you.

Universities are not in a good position to fight the hoards of lawyers from MS, IBM or ATT.

Siva Vaidhyanathan interviewed on Slashdot

[haaz]

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.

Proposals for the next Congress

[Animats]

With Big Business not looking too good right now, it's time to start thinking about some populist proposals for after the fall elections. I suggest the following starting points:

• 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.

Re:Changes to CS courses?

[AntiNorm]

Not really. Using OpenSSH and Linux? Well, Microsoft has a patent on "secure O/S"...

Linux cannot be applied in this sense because Micro$oft's patent is for a DRM-OS, i.e. an OS that enforces DRM restrictions. Suffice it to say that this is one thing Linux does not do. You're confusing the "script kiddie proof" connotation of secure with the "restricting access to digital media" one.

I interrupt this subthread to, again, advocate:

[pedro]

"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!

Re:I interrupt this subthread to, again, advocate:

[pedro]

So in otherwords you're calling for a strike.
Short of killing them in their beds, I'd say yeah.
Geeks and True Workers (the guys who hang drywall, do carpentry, build and fix your car, etc..) are the people who built all of the Stuff that Rich Folks want to control.
Since they can't do it without US, we can Take It All Back. Either frontally via a strike, as I suggest, or more subtly via a vast network of backdoors in practically all software that matters.
Managers NEVER review code, so it's a doable thing.

Re:I interrupt this subthread to, again, advocate:

[pedro]

This was NOT meant to be a joke.
I'm serious.
Geeks *must* organise, and consolidate their powers.
Otherwise, all of society is really and truly fucked.

Your first proposal *can not work*

[tlambert]

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

Re:Your first proposal *can not work*

[DHam]

> Laws are not permitted to be retroactive,

That depends on your jurisdicition. As a bare minimum, the governments of Commonwealth countries have this power.

In addition, an act to shorten copyright would not be retrospective as it would only affect future behaviour. An act which stated, for example, that all works written before 1980 went out of copyright in 2000 would be retrospective but an act stating that all works written before 1983 will go out of copyright in 2003 would not. What might be a problem is seizure of property. I say might because, first, intellectual property is not necessarily a proprietary right - once again this is a legal system question. Second, depending on jurisdiction, seizure of property may or may not be a legal problem. Some constitutions permit legislation allowing this.

> This works because the copyright protection
> granted works is made *in trade* for the
> disclosure of the copyrighted information.

This is simply wrong. Copyright still applies to non-published works. For example, if I send you a letter, I own the copyright in that letter without me generally disclosing it. Further, even my own diary is copyright even if I don't show it to anyone. For example, if you enter my house (as a guest or as a trespasser) and open it up without my permission, your use of it is still restricted by copyright.

> 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.

Sorry, wrong again. In legislating, parliament (presumably also congress) is not bound by previous acts of parliament. It might be politically difficult to go back on a leislative deal, you might even feel it's morally wrong but it's not illegal (which is to say beyond power, in this context).

Re:Your first proposal *can not work*

[Animats]

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".

Actually, it's "ex post facto". The U.S. Constitution has been held to prohibit only ex post facto criminal laws. New taxes, for example, can be retroactive. There might at worst be a "takings clause" issue.

Re:Your first proposal *can not work*

[tlambert]

> > Laws are not permitted to be retroactive,
>
> That depends on your jurisdicition. As a bare
> minimum, the governments of Commonwealth
> countries have this power.

In this case, we are talking about the U.S., since the U.S. is one of the few countries which permits software patents (another is Japan).

The point on intellectual property law in the U.S. is that it has a Constitutional basis, rather than a Common Law basis. This makes it a very different thing in the U.S. than elsewhere.

> > This works because the copyright protection
> > granted works is made *in trade* for the
> > disclosure of the copyrighted information.
>
> This is simply wrong. Copyright still applies
> to non-published works. For example, if I send
> you a letter, I own the copyright in that
> letter without me generally disclosing it.

This has yet to be legally tested in the U.S. Court system; the basis of Copyright law in the U.S. is Constitutional: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries".

The net effect of this is that Congress does not necessarily even have the power to grant intellectual property protections, unless doing so promotes "the progress of science and the useful arts": there is no Constitutional basis for grants for any other reason.

Patent law is a reaction to trade secrets; Copyright law is a reaction to book licensing.

AT&T and USL attempted to expand Trade Secret protection to the point of Patent protection, but were thwarted in the attempt (cv. "USL v. BSDI" and "USL v. Regents of the University of California at Berkeley").

So, at least in the U.S., we are talking about how government is permited to act, in the public interest. It's likely that the law implying Copyright protection of unpublished works is in fact unconstitutional.

> Sorry, wrong again. In legislating, parliament
> (presumably also congress) is not bound by
> previous acts of parliament.

U.S. Constitution; Article I; Section 9; Paragraph 3:

"No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."

-- Terry

Shoddy reasoning

[Rogerborg]

Did nobody else here learn critical analysis or reasoning?

• 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.

There are three mostly separate ideas in that short paragraph.

1. That due process is "harder to pursue". Unsubstantiated. Following due process means actually taking your case to court. Publishers can do that. Most choose not to. There has been no erosion of due process. In fact, there has been a clarification of what due process is with regard to copyright.
2. The burden of proof is "increasingly is on those accused of copyright infringement". Why? The DMCA gives a mechanism that obviates the need for proof by either side. It does not assume guilt. In fact, it provides a well defined way for publishers (including self publishers) to robustly assert their innocence prior to entering legal wrangling. If they choose to do that, then they can follow due process. Most choose not to.
3. "The default action is censorship". True, but unrelated to the other two points. It forms no part of this paragraph or of a consistent argument. There's nothing in the DMCA that says "You must take down the contested material", only "If you choose not to take it down, you will be liable". The reason that the default action is censorship has nothing to do with due process or a change in the burden of proof, it has to do with a change in the burden of liability, a clarification of the process, and a choice to not defend publication.

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.

Re:Shoddy reasoning

[PanopticnetPrisoner]

Not exactly, because the fight isn't directly between the alleged infringer and the copyright holder. Usually, the copyright holder, citing the DMCA, asks the ISP to remove the alleged infringing material. If they willingly comply, then the legal spotlight shifts from the copyright holder onto the service provider, with whom the user must first contact before ever approaching the copyright holder.

Now, the DMCA does provide specific exclusions for service providers, but the unfortunate reality is that the majority of ISPs prefer to simply comply with the copyright holders rather than wage a lengthy, costly legal battle.

Thus, the DMCA (at best) adds an extra level of complexity to digital copyright and obscures the user's right to due process, by adding an additional party between the copyright holder and the copyright infringer. It is also important to note that this additional party is not trained in copyright law nor does it exist to protect intellectual property; it exists to provide internet-related services to customers. It is composed of technicians -- not lawyers, not police.

The purpose is to make digital copyright realistically enforceable, and, to a large degree, the DMCA is successful in this regard. But at what price? By shifting the burden from the copyright holder to the service provider and end user, it is now easier to prohibit actual violations, but it is also easier to suppress free speech and other usage forms protected by traditional copyright laws, such as the oft-cited fair use.

Copyright =! natural right

[commodoresloat]

Excellent post. The notion of copyright as a natural right is counterintuitive. Historically, copyright and ownership of ideas made little sense before the Gutenberg printing press. (c. 1450 I think) The first copyright laws were established in England as a means of protecting a printing company's monopoly, in exchange for censorship of material considered seditious. Only one company was legally permitted to publish works and copyright law was intended to protect that monopoly (they even gave the company search and seizure powers usually reserved for the gov't! A model for the BSA perhaps?) Nothing about an author owning his work at all. Of course, US copyright law is based on different notions, but there is no evidence that anyone thought copyright a "natural right" before a bunch of immature egomaniacs found themselves in possession of tons of copyrights in the 20th century as a result of the rise of the music, entertainment, and publishing industries.

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.

The worst example I know of..

[jcr]

.. 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

Starting over

[bluGill]

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.

Re:Starting over

[bluGill]

No you did not. You solved them in your mind, for you. There are enough people who disagree with your statement that you cannot get an agreement.

My rights

[nuggz]

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.

Hoisting them on their own petards?

[alispguru]

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?

Maybe. A big part of the problem is that lawyers think that we have the system we have because creators want it that way - that the only reason people create anything (art, patents, whatever) is so they can lock it up and make money by restricting access to it. See the Microsoft Lawyer post in this thread, and realize that it's not just MS lawyers, but basically all IP lawyers who think this way.

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.

Siva's Website

[dew]

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.)