Slashdot Mirror
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."
I think there's some danger here in enumerating the right to copy CD's, etc. It's the same issue that John Adams had with the Bill of Rights. If you enumerate some rights, it implies that other rights don't exist until they're enumerated. Take for example the right to privacy. The Bill of Rights doesn't list it, and therefor much debate ensues about whether or not such a right exists.
While having a law explicitly naming the right to copy CD's is seductive, we risk having to always enumerate new rights in the future. Instead, 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".
I realize I'm dreaming here. Given where we are as a society, I'd be willing to see this bill passed. But a guy can dream.
Rather than fix the horrible state of copyright law, let's simply add a few more, enveloping and codifying in a limited manner the rights we already have. Makes sense to me.
It is our duty as citizens to disobey unjust laws and to push them through the judicial system to the Supreme Court. It is counterproductive to that duty to prop up the unjust laws with exceptions and clarifications. Further, between the DMCA and the proposed DFCA, all that has been accomplished is a wordy reiteration of the existing copyright laws. I'm no legal eagle, but I firmly believe in having a few concise and necessary laws rather than redundant spaghetti legal code.
First of all, this bill is not an attempt to make so-called mp3 "sharing" legal. It merely seeks to ensure that the fair use rights consumers had for analog formats are held up for digital formats as well. i.e., it is perfectly legal for me to buy your CD, then burn a backup copy, burn another copy for my car, rip it to my hard drive, etc. However, if the DMCA or CBDTPA makes these activities impossible, then I effectively don't have those fair-use rights.
Anyway, the line we always hear is that artists don't make a significant amount of money from CD sales anyway, compared to income from live shows. Is that not the case for you?
Maybe you could strive to sell CDs directly at your shows, instead of making pennies per disc through your label.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
All you trolls on slashdot should pay attention and learn from Jack Valenti. He dishes out FUD with statements that are unsupported and wildly speculative (and in this case a complete lie).
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
If you read the article, it says that it's not going to get through because congress is wrapping up its work for the year in the week.
I see this as something to push Zoe Loftgren's ratings higher. She is my congresswoman and was a full supporter of Cyber Security Enhancement Act of 2002, H.R. 3482. I wrote to her about this and not only did she get my gender wrong (I'm female), but she also wrote, "I would note that this section in no way changes the limitations under current law on the emergency use..." which was a blatant and utter lie... or she was very mis-informed.
She took over a month responding to my email and her web-page was far less than impressive (unlike the congressional leader one district away who voted against keeping "god" in the pledge of allegiance.. I can't dig up who it is right now).
She's also scared by terrorism noting it first in the following closing sentence,"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..." and anyone who was still bothered by "terrorism" at the end of July of this year definitely is being pushed by an agenda or is pushing her own.
I'd publish the entire email she sent to me but there was recent discussion on slashdot about publishing correspondances that has me hesitating.
"Would you rather have a playstation addicted dork wearing a star wars t-shirt?"
The poster is correct, there has been some confusion among Democrats as to what they were really doing. From the article:
"``Lofgren's bill aims to restore what Congress thought it was doing -- preserving fair use for people who have lawful rights to use stuff,'' "
Senators are some of the slowest people on the planet to "get" technology. It's my opinion that Democrats who've supported the DMCA in the past have been largely misinformed by the likes of the RIAA and MPAA.
Oh, and to the original poster:
Is it OK if I hope Democrats don't win a majority this year?
Sure, it's ok if your trust-fund is still going strong. But for the rest of us who actually need our jobs, maybe you'll reconsider?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
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."
I can't believe that these people actually think like this. The legislation doesn't say anything about giving the user the right to share and steal the music without punishment. There will still be punishment for stealing a movie or music (if caught). It's unbelievable how these people think that just by having the right to have "Fair Use" of a product for personal reasons equates to mass piracy being legal.
I'm sorry, but you don't have a *right* to make a living. Don't you see that is exactly what some of us are railing against: the use of laws to protect outmoded business models.
Without the full text of the bills we can't know for certain, but it sounds as if these bills are simply meant to ensure that we retain our fair use rights with respect to digital media. Copyright law already protects you if someone makes a copy of your CD and gives it to someone else. These bills appear to be about ensuring that I can make a copy of your CD (which I legally purchased) for my own personal use, even if I have to break some sort of copy protection method to make these personal copies.
Rep. Lofgren even spells this out rather specifically: "This would not authorize someone taking their digital content and sharing it with a million of their best friends."
Kevin
That's like giving away 2 apples for every one you sell! Kind of a sad business model...
Apples for $24.99 each. Buy one, get two free!
I see what you mean. Noone's gonna survive giving away so many apples...
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
I've said it before, but it bears repeating.
The issue to me is that they (being the movie and record companies) want to have it both ways. They want to sell me a package that includes a piece of physical media (which I own) and a license to view/listen to what is recorded on that media.
I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the fact that 1. I legally can't back that medium up and 2. if that medium becomes damaged my license to view/listen seems to evaporate.
Case in point. I irreparably scratched a DVD from Fox (The Phantom Menace). My only recourse is to buy replacement media and a second license to view the movie. Clearly that license is the expensive part. I don't see how this is "fair."
Bottom line is that IMO when we lost the right to make copies for backup the copyright holders took on the responsibility to do at-cost media replacement, but they aren't living up to that responsibility.
Of course the bills mentioned in the article would turn the tide back, but neither seem to have any real chance of even coming to a vote.
-Peter
What right to make a living off your work? There never has been such a thing, and there shouldn't be. There are rights that are helpful in making a living (like copyright) but they don't give you a right to make a living. Nobody should make a law to preserve an old way of doing things just because some people might be hurt by the world changing. If you can't make money selling your CDs, you'll just have to get another job.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
No, you don't. "Fair Use" allows me to copy my CD into MP3s and store them on mu computer so I can listen to them at my desk without toting my CD collection all over the house. It also allows me to put a copy in my portable MP3 player and listen to it while at the gym or on the bus.
It does not allow me to make copies and give them away.
The money from my purchase of your CD is still in your pocket. I'm not going to buy multiple copies of your CD just so I can listen to it at my desk, or at the gym or in my living room.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
True; but if someone buys a cd, hands some MP3s to some friends and they like your CD, then go and buy it, then you'd have multiple sales where with "sooper-dooper DRM" you'd probably only have the initial one.
Remember to look at all the costs and benefits. You don't have radio (most likely, since you said you didn't have a lable) to promote you. No MTV either. So word of mouth is it.
I would suggest that you try the following:
* Make your CDs a have very high quality "value added" cd booklets and such. You know, like vinyl records used to do. I find music much more enjoyable when you know the why and wherefores.
* Put up crappy (but reasonable) 64k mp3/oggs on your web site, or on a data track on your CD. Say it's free for sharing. Make sure the ID3 info is correct and have a URL for buying the CD. Include descriptions and photos of the CD (all those extras, you know).
You watch, you'll get people who:
* Like one song, they keep the crappy mp3 and are happy. Maybe someone else will hear it and be interested. These correspond to radio listeners and radio recorder people.
* Like a lot, and buy the CD
* Wanna have the CD, 'cause it's cool.
Remember, you aren't selling CDs, your selling *yourself*.
I realize, of course, that you may live off of this money, but I **really** want to see what happens when you try the above.
BTW: You forgot a link to where we could hear some of your music and learn more about you.
Ciao!
The Doctor What (KF6VNC)
Here's a question that I've been pondering for a little while:
Since we are so forcefully asserting our right to space-shift music from CDs to mp3s, DVDs to mpeg files, etc, what about books? If you own a physical copy of a book, then why can't you also have an electronic copy to read on breaks while at work, etc?
On the "copyright page" of all new books, they are stating that you can't make any copy of the book, even for archival purposes.
If I can convert music tracks on a CD to mp3, then why can't I scan in a book and have an electronic copy (space shifting) to keep on my laptop's hard drive?
Just a question.
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
Jack Valenti sees this as:
``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.''
I think it is still illegal to distribute copyrighted works. The difference is, the DMCA makes fair-use illegal. This bill is to make fair-use legal (which should be legal anyway, but the DMCA is so vague it disallows it). The purpose of this bill is not to address the illegal uses of digital media, but to ensure the legal uses remain legal. The problem with Jack Valenti is that he has sold his soul and cannot see these things clearly. He does not want the public to have any fair-use, he and the big companies want to abolish fair-use.
Nobody is really saying "people should be able to illegally distribute media" they are saying "don't deny us our legal rights just to enforce these laws". If there was some magic technology that would allow me fair-use to my digital media yet not allow me to illegally distribute it, I would be all for it. I don't have a problem paying for things, I have a problem with companies making me pay for things when I shouldn't have to, or preventing me from using things I have already paid for.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Supposedly consumers will be allowed to circumvent copy protection for fair use. Great! But what about the programmers? Does each consumer have to write their own software cracker? Will creating a decoder or unlocker designed for fair use still get you thrown in jail?
What "right" are you referring to? The constitution certainly gives you no such right. Congress may, at its discretion, provide temporary copying monopolies when it judges that this will have the effect of promoting science or "useful arts". But there is absolutely no basis for claiming that you have some kind of "right" to this consideration.
For that matter, what "my work" are you referring to? If its the creative effort you are talking about, I can certianly respect that. But if its the result, then it was never "yours" to begin with. In this country, no one owns an idea, and that includes a song and/or its lyrics. You may be granted the exclusive copying concession ("copyright") temporarily, but that's it.
As for your inability to support yourself without the monopoly copying concession, loads of musicians are doing that today. Additionally, tremendous amounts of music (and many would say the best ever) was created before copyright was ever even thought of. Back then there were entire >100 piece orchestras to be paid too, and yet, they managed to eat and create. So I really fail to see how your lack of business acumen is my problem.
Age 12 - My mother, never one to be really interested in music at all, acquires an 8-track tape player. She soon discovers that there is a store - yes a legitimate business here folks - where you can walk in, select the 8-track of your choice and bring it to the counter and for a meager $4 they will make you a copy in less than 2 minutes. Did I say copy, damn right! They had several high speed 8-track duplicators sitting right behind the counter. These guys were printing money and you had to shove your way to the counter on several occaisions we visited. There was nothing like getting that crappy Neil Diamond record for only $4.00 and my mom was hooked.
This lasted for several months before they were shut down - hmm...wonder how that happened. But not before the whole town was rocking and rolling with these illegal copies. So let's go skip to the next track here.
Age 16 - Mom finally breaks down and let's me get a stereo - receiver, big ass speakers and record player. A few months later I discover cassette tapes, man I gotta get one of those!! So I acquire a cassette tape recorder and some blanks. Hey guys, can I borrow your LP of Styx or that new Van Halen. I hear they're smoking! We traded LP's and cassettes back and forth for years - I think if I opened all the boxes of tapes I have laying around there must be at least 500 blanks I recorded at one time or another.
Fast forward to 1984, CD's are looking like the next big thing, great sound, compact, portable, wow. So I get a CD player! Guess what, I still have that tape deck too. Ooh that Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon CD sounds so much better on CD (wonder if they'd really have ever sold anymore of that one if it hadn't been remastered on CD) gotta borrow it and tape it off.
We really hadn't thought of duplicating a CD onto another CD at that time, PC's just couldn't deal with the amount of data and commercial duplicator's were way too expensive. But boy those record companies were really raking it in! $17 bucks for Dark Side of the Moon and guess what - they don't have to spend any more on art work, the artist, recording or any of that crap, but they can sell it to you all over again! Now who was printing the money. They were laughing all the way to the bank!
About this time, I walk into my neighborhood video store and guess what - yeah that's right I can rent the latest audio CD's from them for $1.00 a day. I did a double take and thought to myself - I want that one and that one and hey that looks good too. I taped like there was no tomorrow. Why spend $17 on a new CD when I could get 13 on tape after buying the blanks. I had more music than I could possibly listen to - still do for that matter. And now the record companies were starting to feel the pinch from home taping so they got Congress to enact the taping tax on blanks. The bastards!
About this time I started working at a radio station - reviewing records. "Hey, Sire how about sending out copies of that new Talking Heads album for us to give away and anything new you might have going so we can play it out here." I was in taping heaven - a direct fix from the record companies on an almost daily basis. I didn't have to rent it anymore because they would just send it to me and pay the postage too. I was taping things almost 12 hours a day, there was always something laying around that looked interesting. God I loved that job!
It really wasn't until about '98 that CD-burners and the internet caught up with the record companies technology. While they were too busy counting their profits to invent new technology to prevent this, THE PEOPLE got tired of paying the same $17 for a cd they now know costs about a quarter to make. Now we could make a perfect digital copy - in the privacy of our own homes. Hey dude, can I borrow that Floyd disc again - I just got a burner. It was no different with software and porn - burning night and day, while asleep, while at work. And by the way, where are the porn and game developer people in this debate, how come they aren't right up there on the front row screaming with the rest of them, "They're stealing my god damn avi's of Brittany naked!!"
Now with the advent of compression schemes like MP3, we can steal that song in seconds. Ooh there's that Dark Side of the Moon track on MP3. Yeah I know I own 3 copies (lp, cassette, CD and soon to be DVD video) of the damn record already and I'm too lazy to rip it, just download it and be done with it.
You know where I'm getting most of my CD's to burn these days? The freakin' public library!! Oh yeah and there's that cool DVD I've been wanting but didn't want to shell out $25 for, I think I'll check it out and rip that over to VCD too. I can keep it for a week, no problem, thanks. And now with shn, you can compress the tracks and not worry about quality loss like with MP3. Watch out BMG, I'm coming for your whole damn catalogue next!
I guess the point of this whole rant is that we've been stealing your music for years and you're still making plenty of money. Get over it! We will find a way to do it. It's human nature to rise to that challenge. It's the little kid in all of us that likes to do exactly what he's told not to do just to be rebelious. And besides, 90% of the stuff I taped was CRAP. I listened to it maybe once. I look through it now and it's like, "man why did you tape that shit."
The record moguls need to worry less about us copying their music and more about coming up with a replacement for the CD. And besides, me and millions of others that have been downsized/layed off and otherwise unemployed think there is currently a recession going on - that couldn't be the cause of a drop in cd sales now could it??? They got themselves into this mess with their new technology and that's the only way they are going to get out. Like Janis Ian said, they need to come up with something that is so far beyond our computer's power to duplicate, so far beyond consumer electronics and so superior to compact discs that we can't say no. That's the only way out for them.
Laws are made to be broken. And besides, I bet they find that they are going to get hacked a whole bunch more than they will ever be able to hack us consumers. What a pea-brained idea anyway! This was probably the second great idea of the guy who thought up the copy protection scheme you can defeat with a sharpie!
Sorry, the mail man just delivered those VCD's of the Rush - Vapor Trails tour show on 8/24/02 in Colorado I traded for, gotta go check it out. Oh yeah, and what are they going to start doing now, checking my mail? Give me a break and get a life you RIAA idiots!
If you think this bill is a good idea, get out there immediately to http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html and write your representative. It only takes a few minutes total.
I can't find the bill yet on the house website, but don't let that stop you, just reference Rep. Zoe Lofgren, ``Digital Choice and Freedom Act,'' or find out what Boucher's bill will be called and support that.
As usual, sending a brief, logical, and courteous message is the way to get their attention. And please, don't bother to contact Lofgren and Boucher on this, contact YOUR representatives.
Very arguable. Fritz is the obvious counterexample, but aside from that the Clinton adminstration was pushing the Clipper chip and encryption controls, and supported the CDA and DMCA. I'm not in any way suggesting that Republicans are blameless; there are good guys and bad guys on both sides of the aisle on these issues.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Selling and uploading bootlegged cd's are still illegal and morally wrong. I am one of the few slashdotters who do not pirate based on principal. If we demand fair use rights and upload mp3's to the internet, then we give the RIAA a good arguement to stop fair use. After all only thieves would want this right?
I also support copyright protection for free software via the gpl and would be pissed if someone did not follow it. We all need to stop pirating software and music so hollywood no longer has a good argument. This is why I use free software. If I can't afford it then I use an alternative like free software.
Anyway I consider my computer mine and not Microsoft's, not the RIAA's, or the governments. I put alot of money towards my computers over the years and I would like to do what I please. As long as it doesn't hurt anyone else I am happy. Perhaps the answer would be to use some manditory filtering of some of the internet routers under an IT consorturium and not the riaa to help protect mp3 uploading mandating by the government. I know this might sound unpopular but perhaps we could all agree on a place for legal mp3's and the RIAA could check to make sure none of the files are illegal. I think it would be very bad to have the riaa as the policman but I would not mind a bi-partison government/IT corporate consorturium to oversee this. This madness needs to stop. This is the only comprimise I see that would satisfy both parties and not be the craziness of what the RIAA hopes by banning analog speakers and mics, to the other extreme of the wild west days of napster.
In the meantime buring mp3's would still be perfectly legal under this system and drm would not be needed. You just couldn't upload them. By the way I think drm in personal computers is very bad and would kill the internet more then just banning some ports. I would prefer to see some filtering in the net after a judge finds a particular file swapping service illegal rather then to have my output jacks banned and have my mic only record in encrypted data. We all should have the right to use your pc's as a recording studio if we please.
http://saveie6.com/
It should have been titled "Protecting your Fair Use Rights".
Big difference.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Tell me how copyright infringes against what YOU CAN SAY.
Overbroad interpretation of the "derivative works" clause does that. According to this article, there are fewer than 47,000 melodies, and each one has a copyright owner, making it next to impossible for a songwriter to create an "original" musical work.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"Obscurity is a much worse problem (for an artist or author) than piracy."
This could have positive implications for those of us who have to use technology such as DeCSS to play DVDs that we legally purchased on our DVD-ROM drive that we legally purchased attached to our computer on which we legally installed our Free operating system.
Maybe we won't be branded as filthy circumventing criminals if this bill is passed.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I wish Rick Boucher were my representitive so I could vote for him.
``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.''
This guy actually gets it! There really need to be more representitives and senators like him. I just wish that there were even any running in my district so I could put in my vote.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Here is an excerpt of my letter of support sent to my congressman:
I have one little quibble with the bill as it stands. In section 2. FINDINGS, paragraph (2), it states "Perfect digital copies of songs and movies...". This is an exaggeration that has been used by both the RIAA and MPAA to justify draconian copyright protection measures. They purposely confuse two different concepts: "digital copies" and "digital distribution". The reality is:
(1) Digital copies are far from perfect
(2) The quality of a copy has little impact upon non-commercial copyright infringers
Take an example from ten years ago, the mandating of copy-protection on Digital-Audio-Tape recorders. The only people who cared about quality enough to be effected by the copy-protection measures were audiophiles (who, by the, way effectively killed the format because of the restrictions imposed by congress). The irony is that audiophiles were also the least likely people to make illegal copies; on the contrary, many purchase multiple versions of a single recording. The more typical non-commercial copyright infringement was young teenagers buying $50 boom-boxes with abysmal sounding cassette duplication. The quality of the duplication was of minimal importance (you can't hear the poor quality on a $50 boom-box), as it had minimal impact on their decision to make illegal copies vs. buying legal copies.
I'd recommend striking the word "perfect", and putting to rest the urban legend that digital copies are somehow different from other method of copying. This is not meant to diminish the importance of digital distribution, which obliviously has had an impact on non-commercial copyright infringement. Confusing "digital copies" with "digital distribution" is how we got lousy laws like the DMCA in the first place.
I am glad that there's a bill to make it legal to copy movies and stuff. However, I think Congress should go and make all the encryption and region coding on the DVDs illegal, force the DVD player manufacturers to modify (at no charge to the consumer) any DVD player that has these features to remove them, and forcing DVD manufacturers to replace all discs (again, at no cost, not even postage) to ones that have none of the above disabilities. Oh well. It'll probably never happen. Oh well.