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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."
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.
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.
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'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)
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?
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.