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Debunking (some) DMCA Myths
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net's News.com is running an article under their Perspectives section about some of the myth and hype surrounding the DMCA. The author talks about how the EFF is exaggerating the danger from the DMCA. The author mentions that although "the DMCA is both an egregious law and a brazen power grab by Hollywood, the music industry and software companies", groups like the EFF are not much better, engaging in "fear-mongering" and scare tactics to increase opposition."
I'd be on easy street if I could get paid to troll like the guy who wrote that article :)
The risk that a researcher could go to jail for giving a speech at an academic conference is essentially zero
True, but not all speeches and research is presented at an 'academic conference,' now are they. It seems this implies that the author does not support research outside of a institution such as a business or university. Do employees of these places now have more rights than other people? If that's true, i'd be even more against the DMCA than the view of it they're trying to debunk!
The article in question DOES make a few good points in that many of the more extravagant floggings with the DCMA probably wouldn't have held up in court, and WERE blown out of proportion by the EFF and others.
Some say that making such a big deal out of those (relative to how big of a deal they were initially) helps to motivate the public against the DCMA.
This is most likely true.
But what else can it do? It can motivate the less tech and law savvy people (IE: University administrators that control the flow of research funds) to cave immediately to nastygrams that would never manage to hold up in court.
The FUD put out on some (not all, and mostly those related to Acadamia) of the DCMA cases has allowed Hollywood to use the DCMA as a bluff, knowing that most administrations will cave instead of taking it to court.
The DCMA itself isn't as far reaching as many say it is, but by saying it is, they may have managed to allow Hollywood to use it like it is (that far reaching), unchallenged.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
You know that's how the AI in the Matrix figured out how to use people as batteries. It all started as an experiment to see how much energy could be created by translating the heat exhaust from geeks reading crappy articles. Then they experimented with how much energy they could collect from the force of all the keystrokes entired in the ensuing flamefest. Eventually they just decided to use everyone as a battery.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
But what was he arrested for? He wasn't selling his product, he was giving a talk about his product. A product that was not illegal where he lives.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The bulk of this texts argument seems to be based on what has and has not worked in a court when defended but they fail to see this is only part of the point. We all know the mojority of small companies and individuals simply can't defend themselves in court so the DMCA threats are enough.
The DMCA gives the big boys a new threat to use. A friend of mine was recently held up at gunpoint in the store where he works, he explained to me that he was 99% sure the gun was a replica and yet he didn't laugh the guy off, any ideas why?
Sometimes a threat is all you need
If you believe the buzz, you'll conclude that programmers, academics and engineers should be scared witless about being sued under the DMCA. In effect for nearly two years, the law sets protections for the codes that are wrapped around certain copyrighted content such as DVDs and electronic books.
After 2600 and DeCSS, why yes, yes I am scared witless about being sued under the DMCA. All I have to do is make something, someone finds a way to use it for copying some material, and I'm in deep trouble.
It does not matter that the DMCA doesn't apply to many situations. Most people don't know exactly what the DMCA covers...all that needs to happen is someone charges me with violating the DMCA. Regardless of whether the charge ends up being valid, you have been "tainted" and most people won't understand just how false the charges were. Having to defend yourself against these charges can result in large financial losses, not to mention the possibility of being fired.
Sometimes the method of determining the intent of a device is so esoteric, many people will think you just scraped by on a technicality.
I don't think the EFF has been hyping this enough. I can go through a day without talking to someone who has ever heard of the DMCA or the EFF. We are the beginning of a new generation, where we depend on the storage and transfer of digital information in our daily lives. It's our responsibility to make sure that this new frontier isn't locked down and commercialized before we have a chance to explore it. This is our generation and our responsibilty.
When you're standing in a pit of snakes, the moment you become complacent and careless is when they strike.
...
After this and Declan's previous article (something along the lines, "there should be a seperation of techies and state"), which seem, well, non-Declan (who is generally a fierce advocate for freedom and is anti-DMCA) I am wondering if this is applicable...
/. user community. He was last known to be in Washington DC, and is believed to have undergone philosophical changes upon employment with CNET's News.com.
/. community at http://www.slashdot.org.
** MISSING **
Declan McCullagh
ACLU Award: Free Speech
Time Magazine Advocate for: Privacy
Previous Plaintiff: Challenging the Communications Decency Act
Anti-DMCA Efforts: Intervened in the landmark DVD/DeCSS lawsuit asking the court to open proceedings.
Declan McCullagh was reported missing to the
Incident Type: DMCA Abduction
If you have information regarding the disappearance of this individual, please contact: the
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
Really. He probably had to fill a deadline and came up with this, knowing it would generate a lot of interest. First he says this:
Then he goes on to say "no wait a minute, it's not so bad, we can live with it". He goes on to say, basically, how he believes the line between "encryption research" and "trafficking in circumvention devices" is completely clear and bright.
Well guess what. It ain't. I don't feel like the line between code and speech is a clear one. He even acknowledges in his article that including code in a research paper is vital:
So, by his own words, the chances of a lawsuit are not zero if you include code.
And what is code? How about some pseudocode? How about a working copy of code, except some constants are changed? How about a complete working example of code, but only in the print version? If this print version later appears on the web in full, will the author suddenly be liable? (Remember, by their own words, they went after Skylarov because his name was in the copyright notice, not because he personally was trafficking in the device.)
He then goes on to mention all the recent news items (the HP flap, IEEE, etc) and dismisses them all by saying basically: well it's bad PR for these companies, so they'll withdraw their lawsuits. Well, no thanks, "bad PR" is a pretty thin safety net.
And I also sense a vibe that traditional security research published in a journal or university web site, with lots of verbage is okay, but a bugtraq posting from "Cyb3rH4xx0r" who lives in his mom's basement is not. Well personally, I learn as much from posted exploit code as I do from long-winded papers. And any smart person could generate one from the other. Which is why a researcher should be a afraid, even if they don't use code in their paper.
So I think a security researcher has every right to be afraid of the DMCA. We know exactly why: because 1) code is not always considered speech and 2) pretty much anything can be a "technological protection measure", from bits in a TrueType font (remember that one?) to ineffective LFSR's in DVD players. Put these two together with the DMCA and you feel the chilling wind.
(And that's not even discussing the awful "takedown" provision of the DMCA, which allows copyright holders to arbitrarily take down web pages and eBay auctions. I'm surprised we haven't seen more abuse of that one from people forging affidavits.)
Yes, maybe 10 years from now we'll all look back on this and laugh at how Valenti thought he had us on the rocks. But until the DMCA has been struck down it acts as a great big wet blanket to free speech and fair use. I wish we could just get a test case into court and get this over with, but Valenti et al would prefer to use threats since the court case may not go their way.
In the article, Kerr is quoted as saying "If the public believes that the DMCA is stopping Professor Felten and other researchers from conducting legitimate research, then that is a major victory for opponents of the law." Well, the public believes that because it is true. Felten wanted to present a paper and was told by his employer not to do it. No matter what that article says about lawsuits being unlikely to succeed, the mere threat of a DMCA lawsuit seems to be enough when you're dealing with deep pockets.
Declan is not inherently a friend of free software, a foe of the DMCA, or indeed a friend of freedom at all.
/. and elsewhere.
He is a friend of Declan, and he will do whatever it takes to advance his career, irrespective of how many people he harms in the process.
In the early days of LiViD (the first group to get a semi-working software DVD player under GNU/Linux) Declan McCullagh hung out on the livid mailing list. After he had a very good idea what was going on (work to create a DVD player under GNU/Linux) he published, in WiReD, a hysterical article about hackers writing software to enable rampant DVD piracy. The story was carried here on
As a result, several lead developers in the project were threatened with legal and criminal action (though no crime had been committed) and had to withdraw from the project. While others took over their responsibilities, this probably delayed the development of a working DVD player for GNU/Linux by a couple of months, and nearly wrecked the lives of several software volunteers.
Thanks to Declan, who never once admitted any wrongdoing (despite the flagrant yellow journalism that precipitated the problem, and likely led to the entire DeCSS fiasco as well), never once apologized, and remained quite arrogant during his entire tenure on the mailing list.
Later he passed himself off as a "friend" of freedom and an anti-DMCA activist/journalist. It gained him widespread popularity in some circles and some degree of recognition.
Now, clearly, he has determined that he can advance his carreer by toning down, perhaps even reversing, his stance on the DMCA. Hardly surprising, since, as a "journalist" he works for a publisher which is, almost by definition, a member of the very copyright cartel that is pushing the DMCA and similiar legislation.
Declan is a friend of Declan, the rest of us are tools to be used and discarded as needed to advance his own career.
Being stabbed in the back by such a person, given his history of behavior, should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
He was a principal player of an enterprise engaging in commercial activity that was criminalized in the US, and that impacted a US company -- Adobe. Despite that, he entered the country voluntarily and demonstrated this activity. According to a DOJ press release, he is also the copyright holder on his program, so any distribution should be going on only with his full consent -- which is likely given the nature of his presentation.
The program was also purchasable from within the United States from an Elcomsoft.com server hosted in Chicago (again, within the US...). Payment was handled through an online service located with the United States.
So, he was willingly distributing an illegal circumvention device within the United States, to Americans.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I have just one question. A mark is the victom of a con - exactly what does the EFF have to gain from conning the easily scared? And what do companies have to gain from the chilling effect, whether or not it is actually occurring?
.. the fact that somebody seeks to profit from it, as opposed to furthur a belief or ideology they hold makes the behaviour N times less acceptable to me.
I'll never understand why people dont consider whats at stake when people deceive others; quite often you'll find the most sincere and real message comes from the dude who has little to gain from yelling 'Fire!' You can find more insidious fear mongering than EFF's call-to-arms in any ad in Business 2.0 or Wired article
Honestly, when did people start becoming more tolerant of deception and FUD, so long as it was for the Good Nature of profiteering? Doesn't that seem a little backwards, or am I just confusing this issue with the time honoured tradition of masses stroking the egos of the already powerful?
"Old man yells at systemd"
> Rosen, Valenti et al are students of history. They know that the door swings both ways.
True. A little bit of reading in legal history will uncover many examples where a law passed to change the existing legal opinion was limited by the existence of a body of precedent. (The examples I can think of off the top of my head are the law of privacy -- which has been incorporated into common law in every US state except for New York, where even the passage of a law defining a right to privacy has been limited by their court system; the other example is Canada's Bill of Rights, which their Supreme Court has held is limited by pre-existing common law.)
Unfortunately, there is little legal precedent to extend or limit DMCA. Neither the US Supreme Court nor any of the State courts have shown whether they embrace the corporist ideas of ``intellectual property" or Lessig's ideas of public domain.
> I believe their thinking is that they
> should grab as much land as they are allowed to grab, so that when the door swings back, maybe it will be left leaning
> a bit to their side.
As the saying goes, possession is nine-tenths of the law. Ask any landlord who forceably evicts a tenant 6 months behind in the rent.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
let me give you a quick example:
let's say i live in Australia amd purchase $5000 worth of DVD's there. then, i move to california. normally, because of the regional encryption nature of DVD's, all of my DVD's would now be completely useless. now, let's say i'm smart and decide to break the encryption method of DVD's so that i could watch my own, purchased DVD's. under the DMCA, that would be illegal. so my rights to fair use are in the toilet. get the picture now? if we don't make a stand today, these laws will clamp down even tighter in the future, probably throwing our fair right use completely and utterly out the window.
i bet back in the mid 1700's, you were the guy saying, 'hey everyone, english tea is really, really good. let's not rock the boat. is it really so bad paying them unrepresented taxes? c'mon everyone, the english really are nice people afterall...'
by the way, i followed the felton case very carefully examining every detail. your rendition of the justice departments' views are warped and untrue. shame on you.
yes, yes let Allan Adler badmouth the EFF all day long. but, if what he says is true, than one might ask what the EFF's motive is to do such a thing.
look, the bottom line is that money is driving this whole thing. money is enough to take away our consitutional rights little by little. if we don't put a stop to this in the beginning, then we will all me telling our grandsons how much freedom we had in the 'golden days'.