Slashdot Mirror
A History of the Digital Copyright Struggle
sconeu writes "The National Journal has an article detailing the battle between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. An interesting read, it discusses the tech industry's early miscues, and the efforts made to ensure that Hollywood isn't the only voice heard on the Hill."
Though their motivations may not be so philanthropic, at least consumer electronics corporations are on the side of the people like you and I. After all, they know that consumers will not purchase crippled, copy-protected products. Hopefully, this will result in a somewhat more balanced result when laws are passed. Call me cynical, but I feel that the Hollywood lobby's advantage is quite large and the laws will likely get passed.
CLIT. Are you a memb
I don't understand the mentality of alot of people in regards to digital copyright. Personally, I see it as if you don't like digital copyright, don't buy products that use it. The people who make movies and such have the right to sell the product in any way they please, yet people for some reason feel they are 'entitled' to use it any way they want. I see it as if you don't like the copyright scheme's they use, don't buy the product. Obviously most people don't care about the copyright protection as there has been no decline in the purchase of movies, even though they are released on the DVD format which has alot of protection. If people continue to buy movies that use copyright protection scheme's then the companies will continue to use the scheme's.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Also, besides hindering the progress of art, they will also hinder the progress of science since most scientific advancements of today depend heavily on the use of computers. If computers are taken away (which they will have to be in order to get this level of control), then the copyright industry will be using copyright to hinder the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
However, since the ONLY reason that copyright exists is to promote the progress of the useful arts and sciences,what they're doing is blatantly unconstitutional. It's just that they can't come out and say that they want to control culture and prevent people from cmpeting with them by creating their own art, since they would get destroyed in the backlash. Maybe someday their internal notes and memos will come out and people will realize that this is about control and doing blatantly unconstitutional things to make money, not about stealing.
So what does this mean? This means:
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
It seems to me, that open-source companies are like Hollywood, in that they both create CONTENT, and both are freely available on the net. . The opensource embraces this fact, with my applause. So, what kind of business model can be adopted by both, to make a modest and fair profit, but not create this digital gestapo?
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
I agree with most of your points, but as soon as you hit this typical rhetorical chime of railing against the big, rich corporations, I am compelled to remind you that most of the "wealth" of a big corporation is split up between thousands of middle-class investors, including whatever is left of your 401K after last year's crash. If you are like most people office drones, you might actually be a part-owner of Microsoft and not even know it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Even the broadcast-flag technology failed to address an infinitely harder problem: how to stop people from using the Internet to spread movies from sources other than digital television. Disney used that limitation as an opportunity to reframe the debate.
I'm sure this point has been made before on some other similar article somewhere else, but I enjoy ranting and most posts do this too, so I'll speak my mind anyway :)
If one looks back in history 50 years, one will recall the 50's as a decade where Hollywood studios were in trouble, feared the television media for similar reasons as they fear the 'net today, and were reluctant to enter the new technology. The studios faced monopolistic charges (I'm recalling a John Lithgow PBS segment) and almost went bankrupt. They bit the bullet, embraced television, and Hollywood fared quite well.
Now, movie making and television have virtually merged thanks to Time Warner, Turner, etc (well for our purposes they have). They are not starving for cash these days, but they certainly are not embracing this new technology. They are rather attempting to control it and resist it, like in the 50's. What they must realize is that more people "pirating" means more people viewing their content. These then could be customers if the RIAA would embrace (I'm sick of that word too; homonyms?) the 'net, they could provide content from third party sites that they could control just like television. They would need some ad system which I am not going to try and pull out of my arse to gain the sites revenue, but I think it could work. Either that or a pay system, but because of who we're dealing with, it would have to be good.
My point (ah yes, there it is) is that if the big guns spent some of their budget for fighting the 'scourge' that is 'piracy,' they could at the very least have a better argument in court, if not a peaceable solution for everyone. All of you out there downloading m0vI3Z will have to give it up if anything but more rights being lost is to be acheived. They will win if you don't, and honest hackers and their rights will get screwed.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Before the Wright Brothers' flight at Kittyhawk, armies were already using baloons for recon. I'm sure those working on the first planes were perfectly aware of the tactical advantages of powered flight. Not the specific applicaitons, but only a moron would have overlooked that something like that would end up being used as a war machine.
Likewise, the makers of the first DVD burners not only knew they would be used for multi-media, but that was the whole point. Otherwise, why spend so much effort complying with the standard of the read-only DVD, when you could just make some proprietary optical disk (like SyQuest and others used to do before DVD's came along)?
Still, there are hundreds of legal applications for a DVD burner. The ability to back up your valuable DVD collection, or transfer your LD's to DVD so you don't need to replace your old LD player when it breaks down, or myriad other uses. Look at how many of the new iMacs Apple sold to people specifically so they could edit their home videos with iMovie and burn them to DVD. DRM would kill the biggest innovation in personal movie-making since the home super-8 editing station (which came out decades ago).
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I think this logic applies to Hollywood too. If they are uncomfortable distributing movies digitally, then don't do it! If they don't want to sell videos, don't! Just distribute to theaters. If they want to distribute in some super-secure format of their own design, go for it.
The whole problem is that they are seeking legislation to restrict the rights of the public and force technology industries to cripple their products and stop innovating. They think they have a problem, but rather than change their own businesses, they want another industry to solve it and have the whole country pay for the solution.
The whole copyright "problem" is a sham to strengthen the control the major players have and stifle competition and innovation.
This is fine but please lock yourself in a room for life and interact wwith no one. This is the only way to gaurantee that you will never harm anyone by anything you do.
"ABC Nightline segment on a 15-year-old named Benjamin who used his personal computer to go online and download the movie Men of Honor and an episode of Seinfeld, minus the ads"
Let me guess, they showed him start the download, then a smooth cut to hey presto here is the movie, cutting out the days or weeks between.
For a control, they should have had him download "men of Honor" and "Seinfeld" from a legitimate site he could buy it from.
Oh wait, despite the promise to do Video on Demand they never have. So there is NO "control" to compare this with and they have no idea if people would buy the product for a couple of $$ a download if they could get it legitimately from fast download servers.
All that shows is there is big demand, not that people wouldn't pay for downloads if they were available.
It's a battle between Hollywood and the tech-industry... who is missing from this picture? The consumers... the people... It isn't untill the end of the article consumersgroups are mentioned... and rightly so... they hardly play a role...
Isn't it scary to live in a nation, where the voice of the voting people are ignored?
When did democracy die?
The industry's problem is not that some people infringe copyrights. The industry's problem is that technology has made it practical for artists to produce and distribute their works independently. Don't use language that supports their scam of suppressing the latter under the guise of suppressing the former.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
I recently faxed the following letter to my Congressional representatives. Feel free to quote it in your own correspondence, with proper attribution of course. (apologies for the formatting; this is copied from LaTeX source)
I am proud to be both your constituent and the owner of a small but
successful digital video studio. I have become very alarmed by recent
changes to U.S. copyright law, and the direction in which it seems to
be heading. The tremendous powers the law has granted to copyright
owners, particularly large film and music studios, are having a
deleterious effect on independent producers (such as myself) as well
as consumers of these media.
Under the pretense of combating music and film piracy, the major
U.S. recording companies and film studios have recently obtained legal
powers that extend far beyond the reasonable, limited monopoly
conferred by traditional copyright law. For example, the 1998 Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) outlawed the creation of tools that
circumvent the copy-prevention systems now present in commercial VHS
tapes, newer audio CDs, DVDs, and other digital media. This provision
has hardly diminished the operations of music and film
pirates. Instead, the primary effect of the DMCA's anti-circumvention
provision has been to trample on ``fair use'' rights --- legal
allowances to duplicate copyrighted material for personal or
educational use. It is illegal to produce a device that circumvents
the copy-prevention system on VHS tapes or DVD discs, even if the
intended use is simply creating a personal back-up copy, excerpting
for academic purposes, or converting the media into an alternative
format (e.g. close-captioning for a hearing-impaired audience).
More significantly, small, independent producers are excluded from the
DMCA's protection, since most copy-prevention systems are only
available to the largest media studios (either due to high costs or
exclusive licensing arrangements). As an independent studio, we have
not seen any benefit from the DMCA. In fact, on several occasions we
have been forced to abandon projects because copy-prevention systems
barred us from duplicating materials, rights to which we had
properly and legally obtained!
I have learned of upcoming copyright initiatives that would further
worsen the situation. The Security Systems Standards and Certification
Act (SSSCA), introduced by Sen. Ernest Hollings at the behest of the
Disney Company and other large studios, would outlaw all digital audio
and video equipment that does not contain an integrated, tamper-proof
copy-prevention system. This measure would make life extremely
difficult for independent digital studios like my own, which have
thrived on the availability of cheap, flexible digital equipment for
editing (and thus necessarily duplicating) audio and video. Large
media companies will escape through an exception in the law for
``professional'' recording devices --- which will likely be priced
beyond the budget of a small studio. This is already the present
situation with VHS players: cheap ``consumer'' players by law must
incorporate the Macrovision copy-prevention system, while expensive
``professional'' players are excepted!
Thankfully the SSSCA was withdrawn, but mandatory copy-prevention
equipment appears in several other upcoming proposals. One such
measure is the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act
(CBDTPA), also to be introduced by Sen. Hollings. The Act's
supporters, all major media companies, claim that having
copy-prevention hardware in all digital TV equipment is necessary for
the widespread adoption of digital TV. I see no reason for this. Many
other media, like analog TV, radio, and the audio CD, have thrived
despite the absence of copy-prevention systems. My own studio has no
qualms about digital distribution channels that do not mandate
copy-prevention. One effect of mandatory copy-prevention equipment is
clear though: it will completely lock out independent artists and
studios who do not have the ability to encode their work with the
proper copy-prevention signals. I strongly suspect that this is
the true effect the established industry intends to create with the
CBDTPA.
In light of these facts, I urge you to take the following actions:
Oppose the further expansion of copyright powers. Pre-DMCA
copyright law was already strong enough to encourage the creation of
vast numbers of film, music, and literary works.
Do not support mandatory copy-prevention or ``content
protection'' systems, as embodied in such measures as the CBDTPA and
SSSCA. Media pirates will inevitably find ways around these
systems. Mandatory copy-prevention will only have the effect of
strengthening the established media monopolies at the expense of
independent studios, artists, and consumers.
Support the efforts of legislators such as Rep. Rick Boucher
(D-VA), who is working to scale back the Draconian provisions of the
DMCA and write ``fair use'' into law as a guaranteed right.
Support H.R. 5285 - the Internet Radio Fairness Act - which will
lower the unreasonably high music royalty rates imposed on independent
internet music broadcasters.
I can think of no better way to erode America's world leadership in
film, music, and digital media than to destroy the abilities of
creative artists to produce works, and of consumers to enjoy
them. Expanding the control of existing large media companies may lead
to higher short-term profits for them, but will surely cause severe
long-term hardship for all of us.