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Protecting Your DRM Rights
A reader wrote to say:"There's an article on SiliconValley.com that talks about a new bill in Congress that will, if passed, mean that consumers can copy CDs, DVDs and other digital works for personal use, just as they now do with TV shows and audio tapes."
Someone, somewhere in congress finally gets it!
btw, FP?
New bills aim to protect consumers' use of digital media By Heather Fleming Phillips Mercury News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON - The battle being waged in Washington over copyright in the digital age ratchets up a notch this week as new legislation is introduced aimed at clarifying consumer rights. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, plans today to introduce the ``Digital Choice and Freedom Act,'' Silicon Valley's response to a host of Hollywood-backed bills tilted in favor of copyright holders. Lofgren's bill would ensure consumers can copy CDs, DVDs and other digital works for personal use, just as they now do with TV shows and audio tapes. ``This would not authorize someone taking their digital content and sharing it with a million of their best friends,'' Lofgren said in an interview Tuesday. Instead of creating new rights for consumers, she said, her bill would ensure that ``the rights they have in the analog world, they have in digital.'' Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., plans to introduce similar legislation Thursday. Lawmakers are wrapping up their business for the year within weeks, and neither measure has any chance of making it through Congress by then. Rather, the bills are aimed at staking out the technology industry's position in a festering dispute that could result in congressional action next year. The bills also would amend a 1998 law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, that makes it a crime to circumvent technological protections built in to copyrighted works. Instead, consumers would be allowed to bypass the technology if the intent is to make a copy for personal use. The legislation will vie with Hollywood-backed proposals, filed by Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., and Rep. Howard L. Berman, D-Los Angeles, that would embed copy protection into PCs and an array of consumer devices, and allow the music and film industry to use aggressive anti-piracy technologies to thwart unauthorized downloading over the Internet. ``The laws that have passed in recent years have imbalanced the historical balance between owners of copyrighted works and users of copyrighted works,'' Boucher said in an interview Tuesday. ``The balance has been tilted dramatically in favor of owners at the expense of users.'' The film and music industries cast the debate in terms of piracy, arguing that copy protections are needed to ensure people don't download movies and music without compensation to the copyright holders. The tech industry counters that free-flowing downloads of movies, music and other digital works could drive demand for broadband Internet connections, which it hopes would in turn spur innovation and increase sales of new technologies. ``If this bill were to pass, it would render ineffective, worthless and useless any protection measure we would have in place to protect a $100 million movie,'' Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said of the Lofgren bill. ``You could download a million movies a day, and no penalty for it.'' Caught in the middle of the debate are consumers, whose ``fair use'' rights are in limbo. The courts have long upheld consumers' rights to make personal copies of songs, TV shows and other copyrighted works. But the move to digital raises the question of where to draw the line, when near-perfect copies can be easily shared over the Internet with large numbers of other users. ``Lofgren's bill aims to restore what Congress thought it was doing -- preserving fair use for people who have lawful rights to use stuff,'' said Paula Samuelson, a law professor at University of California-Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. ``The Lofgren bill offers meaningful protections for a number of ordinary activities by consumers that should be lawful under copyright law but about which the law is presently ambiguous.'' Contact Heather Phillips at hphillips@krwashington.com or (202) 383-6020.
Anything that is introduced in Congress now isn't going to go anywhere. They're going to go home and campaign for the november elections soon.
If you really want to support this bill, write them and let them know you support it. Then, next January, assuming that Lofgren and Boucher get re-elected, write them and remind them that you'd like the bill introduced again.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem
You *don't* understand the concept of fair use. Fair use is that I don't want to have to cary it from my house to my car and then to the office everyday I make two copies leave on in the car, one at work, and the original at home. It is already illegal for me to make a copy and give it to a friend. The point being we do not need new laws we simply need to enforce the already existing laws. And people have been copying music for a *very* long time and yet people manage to make a lot of money at it. I think if you are depending on selling cds you don't understand the business model. Selling copies of the music has always been bad for the people making the music. They make most of their money off of live shows. Selling music is just a way to get people to shows.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
> I'd prefer to have the default be "of course we have this right, because it's not explicitly listed as a right that's not allowed".
That IS the default as I understand it. That doesn't mean that a law backing up and clarifying a grey area that's very much under assault from the other side is a bad idea. I'm all for it.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
From:"Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren"
. html
To: <luthien3 AT juno DOT com>
Subject:Response from Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren
Date:Tue, 30 Jul 2002 09:52:54 -0400
July 19, 2002
Mr. L. Williams <I'm female, damnit! Guess she hasn't read LOTR and heard about the female character LUTHIEN!>
<Address removed to protect me!>
San Jose, CA
Dear Mr. Williams:
Thank you for your email expressing your concerns about Cyber Security Enhancement Act of 2002, H.R. 3482. I appreciate the chance to hear from you about this legislation, which passed the House on July 15 and has been sent to the Senate.
As a member of the House Judiciary Committee that marked up this bill in May, I can assure that the Committee took care to ensure that civil liberties are protected in this legislation. At our hearing on the bill, Alan Davidson, Associate Director at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a Washington non-profit seeking to protect civil liberties on the Internet testified that his organization, "commends this Committee for holding this hearing, and for the relatively measured approach taken in H.R. 3482. We agree that computer crime and security is a serious problem that requires serious Government response."
Regarding your concerns about Section 108, I would note that this section in no way changes the limitations under current law on the emergency use of pen registers and trap and trace devises. A Government official can only authorize emergency use of a "pen/trap" if there are grounds upon
which a court could enter such a pen/trap order, and only then for 48 hours, after which time continued surveillance is illegal. Please also note that H.R. 3482 does not expand use of full-content wiretaps, which are far more invasive that pen/traps. These more limited devices provide information about the destination and source of information, but not its content.
As we enhance cyber security to protect our vital infrastructure against both terrorists and the type of high-tech vandals who crashed Yahoo in February 2000, I agree with you that civil liberties must be protected. Please do not hesitate to contact me again with your concerns, as I can benefit from hearing your views.
Sincerely,
Zoe Lofgren
Member of Congress
ZL:ad
<I've since looked at her webpage and she has more information but seems to have "omitted" that she was responsible for being on the committee to help push this bill through. Now the congressman I *really* like is Mike Honda who had good explanations on his webpage such as this statement on why god shouldn't be in the pledge and why he voted against it:
http://www.house.gov/honda/InCongress/pledge
>
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
From the press release summary:(I've added the bold...)
SECTION BY SECTION ANALYSIS OF "THE DIGITAL CHOICE AND FREEDOM ACT OF 2002"
SECTION 1: Designates the title as "The Digital Choice and Freedom Act of 2002."
SECTION 2: Lists factual findings.
SECTION 3: (a) Section (a) clarifies that America's historic principles of fair use - codified in section 107 of Title 17 - apply to analog and digital transmissions...
...Section (b) seeks to restore the balance by adding section 123 to Title 17. Section 123 allows lawful consumers to make backup copies of digital works, and to use digital works on preferred digital media devices. It further protects consumers by prohibiting non-negotiable "click-wrap" licenses that limit their rights and expectations...
SECTION 4: Today, when a consumer purchases a book, they are free to lend their copy to a friend or family member, or to sell their copy to a used books store. Section 4 allows consumers to do the same thing with digital content by extending the first sale doctrine...
SECTION 5: ..."As the House Judiciary Report accompanying the DMCA stated: "[A]n individual [should] not be able to circumvent in order to gain unauthorized access to a work, but should be able to do so in order to make fair use of a work which he or she has acquired lawfully."
Section 5 reaffirms this intent, while also providing needed flexibility for the copyright owner. Under section 5, a copyright owner is free to employ technical measures to protect his or her work. However, the copyright owner must ensure that those measures allow lawful consumers to make non-infringing uses of the work... Since most consumers do not have the expertise needed to circumvent such protections, Section 5 permits tools if they are designed, produced and marketed to help consumers make non-infringing uses. Again, these tools are only permissible if the copyright owner fails to give consumers a choice by restricting legitimate uses without providing any solution for the legitimate user.
The Senate ALWAYS votes by roll call on legislation.
Are you sure? According to the bottom of this page, the U.S. Senate can voice-vote on a bill just like the House.
And because "a voice vote does not create a public record of how each Senator voted," it means that the bill didn't even have enough opposition (20%) to demand a roll call.
Will I retire or break 10K?