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Judge In RIAA Test Case Calls DMCA Unclear
otisaardvark writes "BBC News has an interesting article about how the judge has chided Congress for being inept and unclear. There are repercussions for both sides; primarily that the initial verdict will take far, far longer."
That has been recognized all along. Its the ambiguites that have been used all to often.
finally all you anti american spokespeople can realize that not all judges are morons. This judge is in line with what lawyers have been saying for a long time. ..ehhm...
the dmca is pointless. take it to court. see who wins. of course, most people will require a pro bono lawyer... but we need more tests of this law so that it can be ruled unconstitutional.
"Martha Stewart can lick my Scrotum......do i have a scrotum?" -- Sharon Osbourne
More like unconstitutional. Where's my fair use. !@)!@)
Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
What's the confusion?
In furhter cases against the DMCA, this ruling can be used to fight for fair use! Providing the appeals hold up of course...
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Does anyone else here find it ironic that the artical is being run by the British Broadcasting Corporation, and not msnbc/reuters/yahoo etc???
"Verizon says it would be unfair to cancel users accounts unless the music companies concerned filed formal legal proceedings that would give the users a chance to fight back.
But the music industry says that would take too long."
That's just super. Now if they could just dispense with this habeas corpus nonsense, they could put all their customers in jail.
Trying to control what we think.
. . .that American citizens who're interested in the progress of American case law have to turn to British news corporations to hear it; while all Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc., can be bothered to report is Bush's latest wag-the-dog blather or Britney Spears' latest bra size.
It's no surprise to me that the media doesn't want the public educated about the ins and outs of the DMCA, but it is disappointing.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Is it just me, or does anyone else see any similarities between the DMCA and the Sherman Anti-Trust Act? Both are very broad, very indecisive, and ultimately are as powerful or as weak as the body enforcing them.
For example, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act gave the power to the government to break up trusts 9a.k.a.) monopolies, but never specified any regulations for determining what is and is not a monopoly. The DMCA outlaws the use of circumvention devices, but never really nails down exactly what a circumvention device is.
Both laws give God-like power to the person enforcing the law, if they wish to do so. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act allowed President Theodore Roosevelt to break up many monopolies in the early 1900s. The DMCA gives the government the ability to throw you under the jail for infringing on some one's copyright in a minor way, even for "fair use".
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act has long been criticized for its failures by historians and political scientists. Perhaps someday soon they'll see the DMCA in that same light?
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
"Congress "could have made this statute clearer," he said.
"This statute is not organised as being consistent with the argument for either side."
The judge said he would try to rule quickly, but lawyers on both sides could not estimate when a decision might arrive."
The only way that I can think of that a Judge could rule quickly in a case where the laws are convoluted and unclear is to rule that the law is ambiguous. This would essentially throw the case out of court.
However from the tone of his statement it looks like he is going to make an honest effort to interpret the law. If so I don't see how a fair and speedy decision is possible.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Am I the only one getting a page that doesn't belong to the BBC?
Doing a host -a on news.bbc.co.uk gives:
The IP address isn't matching any of the networks for the .bbc.co.uk domain - at least on my dns host.
Anyone else getting this problem?
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
You and I might not like the DMCA, but judicial activism -- where judges take on the legistlative role -- is a far greater threat to our freedom than the DMCA.
Judicial activism is the term used to define judges acting as lawmakers. In 1803, the U.S. Supreme Court defined its role as accurately defining what the law is. This means that judges act as interpreters of the law, if and when the law, or its application, is confusing. In recent years, judges have left this traditional understanding of judicial review and have begun legislating from the bench.
Judicial activism violates the balance of powers laid out in the state and federal Constitutions. It takes authority away from the elected legislature, and puts judges in the position of both lawmaker and judge. When this happens, people lose their right to representation.
A good example of judicial activism is right on the page. In this case, the judge is dictating copyright policy in direct opposition to laws passed by Congress.
We should fight the DMCA in the halls of Congress, not in the courtroom, as the system of checks and balances must be preserved!
Speech, you fuckwit! Kinda ruins your rhythm, doesn't it?
In other words, the RIAA and MPAA will get a bone thrown their way, but hopefully common sense will win out over greed and we will have a fair and concise set of rules to abide by.
The Sherman AntiTrust Act harnesses government power and focuses it against corporations to protect voting citizens. The DMCA harnesses government power and focuses it against voting citizens to protect corporations.
You may as well compare the Voting Rights Act with a Jim Crow voting law: yeah, they each used government to determine who could vote; but the latter oppressed Americans, and was therefore morally wrong.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
The BBC is reporting that the Judge said the DMCA is ambiguous. This is not a ruling and hasn't set a precedent.
It's typical of the media to blow things out of proportion. And this happens to be one of those things.
Either way, what's really important here is whether or not the RIAA can demand a given user's name, phone number from an ISP *without* any form of a warrant or any form of legal proceeding.
This is something that not even the US government was allowed to do until recent legislation. (The patriot act tends to make things more ambiguous now, and the government can away with a lot more than before, but not as much as the RIAA wants.)
And don't look at that ambiguity as something necessarily good. It could be the nail in the coffin that lets the RIAA and others get away with such reprehensible violations of civil liberty if the courts eventually set the wrong precedents.
"One of the things we're discovering is that people are not aware that that they are engaging in conduct which is clearly illegal," said RIAA lawyer Cary Sherman.
"clearly illegal". This from an industry that says not watching commercials on television is stealing and that making a cassette copy of a CD (that I own) for my car is "tolerated but not legal" behavior.
"If you got a letter from the RIAA saying we know that you're doing this, I'd say there's a good chance that you would stop."
In other words, they want to be able to threaten people with C&D's regardless of whether they have any proof of wrong-doing.
Verizon says it would be unfair to cancel users accounts unless the music companies concerned filed formal legal proceedings that would give the users a chance to fight back.
But the music industry says that would take too long.
Tough shit. It's called due process and is guaranteed by the Constitution. Deal with it.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
"The judge decided what was already known: The DMCA is unclear. Suddenly, not much happened. Then, nobody made a decision. Finally, nobody knows when somebody will."
Big frickin' deal. Please go back over yesterday's submissions editors. I gave you something much more interesting to post.
Sigs are bad for your health.
I meant "...submissions, editors..."
Sigs are bad for your health.
There once was an organization,
known to geeks by its abbreviation,
that's R-I-double-A,
they'll take freedom away,
as soon as Congress gets that "donation"!
There once was a woman named Rosen,
trying so hard to get her laws in.
She's lobbying Congress
to put an end to Progress,
but more copying is all that she's causin'.
There once was a gent named Valenti,
who sued movie swappers a-plenty.
But one day he died,
only his lawyers cried,
and on Slashdot the cheers were modded +20!
There once was a Senator named Hollings
Whose passion for Disney was apalling,
He accepted their money,
Called Eisner his "honey",
And you should see the Mickey-shaped hottub he's installing!
uh..sehän kuullostaa hyvältä!
chided Congress for being inept and unclear.
It took a judge to figure that one out? Any of us could have come up with that.
The verdict should be simple: That the DMCA and DRM are unconstitutional. Why? Because they give a few people (ie Businesses and Copyright Holders) the power to control consumer's rights. Once you start taking rights of any kind away, you violate the one document that we hold most dear over all others. If this passes and the public is made aware of the implications, woe be unto those who tried to undermine the very foundation of America...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
you know, I'd love some hot pepper jack cheese sauce!!
The LSAT is standardized test you take to get into law school. One of the sections of the test is to measure "critical reasoning". I recently took a practice LSAT and came across this question:
Care to guess the correct answer?
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
To quote Nate Oostendorp... "Free speech? You're playing on my computer."
To quote Anonymous Coward... "To quote Nate Oostendorp... "Free speech? You're playing on my computer.""
Face the truth, you nerds will never stop the DMCA. Not only is it 100% constitutional, it is also a very good and well crafted law... and it's here to stay. You DMCA violators out there are destroying the economy and America itself with your hacking and online thuggery.
You folks are as bad as those gun crazies who think they should be allowed to own guns. Bzzt! Nope, sorry, only the government needs guns. Anyone else who has them is a criminal. The same goes for your hacking tools and your "p2p" or as I like to call it, Pirate to Pirate.
The subscriber in the test case has amassed a collection of more than 600 songs which can be downloaded by other internet users with the right software.
Only 600?? Even most people with dialup have more than that.
Trolling hint: people are more likely to see your post if you log in. Moderators, despite your desire for attention, do not desire to waste their points on AC's, so you'll have to wait for an editor, if one ever comes.
....and not represent only rich people and corporations, that is what we want. Right? How about this--suppose a bunch of citizens marched on Washington and hung a bunch of politicians from lamp posts? Well, that would make this a lawless country, then, wouldn't it?
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
With only 600 mp3s, in a similar situation it could probably have been almost anyone of us.
Also, at this point the user in question might sill be quite unaware of what is hanging over his head.
With only 600 mp3s, it the user does not even have to be that net savvy as well.
Imagine having your door kicked in at 5am in the morning. 6 cops rushing into your house, your sister is standing there in her nightgown, and your comp gets confiscated. Yourself? You don't even have a clue what it's all about...
A phantastic story? Not really, it happened to a friend of mine... and, it wasn't even in the US, the scene as I described it took place about a year ago in Germany... 200 subscribers from the same ISP got their comps confiscated on hunt for childpornography.
He got his box back eventually, but think about it, how much illegal software is on your HDDs. The more or less accurate percentage on my comp lies around 95%...
How about yours?
OS Wars Volume 5: Recognized as the worlds leading soporific. Warning! Side-effects include headaches and vomiting.
How about having everybody acutally write their congressmen regularly. I am a big fan of the idea that corporations rule this country (the USA) because good people don't write to politicians... In other words evil triumphs when....
Not that all corporations are evil. But some ov the most vocal give everyone else a bad name...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I guess it must be the time change from here to BBC-world, right?
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
BBC News has an interesting article about how the judge has chided Congress for being inept and unclear.
Congress inept? Never!
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
inept
Alert
The text you entered was not found.
I'm not a Consumer, I'm a Citizen! Please keep the two terms straight.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
the judge has chided Congress for being inept and unclear
Nothing new there. Congress is often purposely murky to avoid offending or upsetting any one group. Plus, being vague avoids having to think, as many PHB's (think they) know.
Table-ized A.I.
I don't know about American law, but in Canada if a law is ruled as too ambiguous of difficult to interpret, it can be "struck down." In some cases, it helps get rid of bad "catch-all" laws that get thrown into place to deal with one problem, and misinterpreted to be used in other cases for which it is not intended.
The flip-side to this is that some laws which are good get tossed because of the same reason. In particular this often seems to be in old laws which don't fully apply to new situations. For awhile we had the child-pornography laws knocked down on a similar basis about interpreting them to material on the internet. I think this case is still going through the wheels, in fact.
Does America have a similar process? Could the DCMA be struck down on the basis of ambiguity or does this just mean that the judge has to sort through what it means himself?
You may 'preach about speach' but I'm yelling about spelling.
Marcus
Okay, I'll bite:
don't leave us all in suspense, what'd you submit?
I take it you haven't heard, The Bush administration claims the power to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely without trial, an effective suspension of Habeas Corpus. All they have to do is label you a terrorist and you disappear in the night never to be heard from again.
The courts haven't been uncritical of this practice and have not exactly been... cooperative...
Now what has been scary has been Ashcrofts earlier statements that they would continue to detain people even if a court ordered them not to. In that case, why not just dispense with the court system and let the FBI and INS take over that role....
Now, you may think this is off-topic, but dispensing with the court system is exactly the path that the RIAA and MPAA are trying to take in this case (RIAA v Verizon) and in lobbying for the bill that gives them the right to use "P2P Warfare."
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Are corporations also allowed to "sponsor" judges in the US? Seems that might be a quicker way for the RIAA to help clear things up...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
the riaa CLAIMS they just want the name so they can send a letter because most people stop when they get a letter. Verizon doesn't want to breach subscriber privacy. So how about Verizon act as a conduit? The RIAA gives Verizon a letter which they then pass on to their customer. Their privacy is preserved but they are warned they are being watched. Everyone wins!
20 bucks says Jack Valenti reads slashdot...
Congrats on the nice turn of a phrase - the DMCA is tantamount to what usually comes out of bowels.
how surprisingly refreshing to see a judge doing his damn job, rather than caving to the political winds of whatever the current administration advocates
I hate sigs.
Hehe, um... that was my mod point. I clicked the drop-down list to choose "Off-topic", but suddenly "Informative" started calling my name. Now, I'm not one to abuse the system, but I do like to pretend I have a sense of humor. :-)
I just wish I could see how it ends up getting meta-modded!
And what's more, I made the mistake of actually logging in before posting anonymously, thus undoing my ostensibly hilarious moderation. Whoops, didn't realize it worked like that... for the better, I suppose!
20 bucks says that valenti has cd's or mp3 with music that the original artist was never paid for
Funny that, the RIAAs lawyer is Sharman (Surname) and who owns kazaa? Sherman networks! :)
Even if the isp would monitor traffic, it will after a few moments by encrypted. And what can any isp do with that then let it just pass through. (and the encryption can be as simple as xor. decrypting it what I understand would break the law) :-)
Lifes a bitch
Unlike Britain, news is not disseminated from one source.
That's right, we have no other source of information anywhere at all other than that kindly provided by the Bristish Broadcasting Corporation.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I've seen alot of these, "why isn't the USA media reporting this" type comments, and all I can say is try reading a REAL newspaper, like the Wall Street Journal, which not only has the article but also list a RIAAvsVerizon FAQ , a PDF of the Recording Industry Association of America's July 24 motion, and a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's court filings page for the case!
The link for this article is here.
And by the way, if you want quality news coverage, typically you've got to pay for it.
Music Companies Try to Force
Verizon to Identify Subscriber
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- Music companies tried to persuade a judge on Friday to let them obtain names of Internet file-swappers without going to court first, a move that could dictate how copyright holders deal with Internet piracy in the future.
Internet service provider Verizon Communications Inc. is resisting the music industry's subpoena, saying that it could turn Internet providers into a turnstile for piracy suits and put innocent customers at risk.
U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, who heard the case, lamented ambiguities in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which was enacted to uphold copyright laws on the Internet while shielding technology companies from direct liability.
Congress "could have made this statute clearer," Judge Bates said. "This statute is not organized as being consistent with the argument for either side." Judge Bates said he would try to rule quickly, but lawyers for both sides had no guess of when a decision might arrive.
The subpoena hearing, which is normally a tame affair, was contentious because the music industry sees it as a test case. If it succeeds, it plans to send reams of cease-and-desist letters to scare file-swappers into taking their collections offline.
Until now, copyright holders have relied on requests sent to Internet providers to take action on their own against suspected pirates. Almost all Internet providers forbid sharing copyrighted material without permission. But that can take a lot of time, and makes copyright holders reliant on Internet providers to enforce the law. Internet providers don't always respond as well or as quickly as music and movie publishers would prefer. They think individual letters from the maker itself might work better.
"Wouldn't that be a lot easier way to let people know that they are in fact not anonymous and there could be consequences?" asked Cary Sherman, the Recording Industry Association of America's general counsel.
Verizon said that since the hundreds of songs up for trade by the anonymous Verizon customer at the center of the case sit on the person's computer rather than Verizon's network, it isn't required to automatically give up the subscriber's name.
"Verizon was a passive conduit at most," said Eric Holder, a former Justice Department prosecutor who represented Verizon. Mr. Holder said the music industry's strategy could create a contentious relationship between Verizon and its customers and put the Internet provider in the position of handing over names to the music companies without a judicial determination of piracy. "We also don't want to be the policeman in this process," he said.
Lawyers for the recording industry rejected Verizon's arguments that it had little obligations in the process. Industry lawyer Donald Verrilli said no type of service provider is exempt from having to identify a potential music pirate, no matter where the songs sit.
Mr. Verrilli also dismissed Verizon's position that its customers have a right to privacy. "You don't have a First Amendment right to steal copyright works," he said.
The judge disagreed with Mr. Verrilli's assumption that the works were stolen. "Here, there's only an allegation of infringement," Judge Bates said.
Judge Bates gave few hints as to how he might rule. He asked many detailed questions of both sides. He called some Verizon positions vague, but showed little patience with other arguments advanced by the music industry and movie studios, which also argued on behalf of music publishers.
Through programs like Kazaa, Morpheus and Gnutella, a person can find virtually any song or movie -- sometimes even before it's released in stores --- and download it for free. On a typical afternoon, about three million people are connected on the Kazaa network and sharing more than 500 million files.
-- Copyright (c) 2002 Associated Press
Updated October 4, 2002 9:43 p.m. EDT
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
> The problem with this 'solution' is simple to explain. A cease & desist letter is a prelude to a lawsuit. RIAA must know whom they are threatening with litigation in order for the threat to be meaningful
not at all
if the person stops, everyone is 'happy'
if the person doesn't stop, then the riaa goes ahead, gets a court order, determines their identity and sues their ass
Not a phantastic story at all. It happened to my boyfriend and me, only it was 7 armed FBI agents at 6am and the alleged offense was copyright violation. They got our name, address and credit card info from the ISP, but then specifically instructed the ISP not to inform us. That forced the ISP to violate their own privacy policy, and would not have been possible before the so-called USA Patriot Act. The warrant says they were supposed to return our computers 4 months ago, but they keep stalling, because hey, they're the FBI so they don't have to follow the rules themselves right? What a waste of time and resources. Makes me sick.
It was mentioned a while back that this guy had been trading songs by Britney Spears. Man was I glad to hear that.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
It's true. This country's status as a "democracy" went out the window a long time ago. I once read on the forums here someone talking about companies "buying some laws" from the government to make sure they get their way. He was right, all you need is money and you go straight to the top. I personally am glad someone donated an anonymous million dollars to help fight the DMCA (Domineering Mandated Conformity Act). It's what we need, as despite the boycotting efforts, the average joe consumer is still going to buy his Britney Spears CDs. I'm glad we have companies like Apple and senators like those now pushing bills in support of fair use rights on our side. Without them..."1984," anyone?
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
DMCA was a very big bill, dealing with many things wholly unrelated to DeCSS (including sui generis IP protection for molded boat hulls), and with some excellent and valuable provisions as well. Most of us are more familiar with the DMCA anticircumvention provisions, and associate that with its great evils. Also relevant are the notice and takedown provisions.
This case, and hence the Judge's comments, deals with neither. It address the specific provisions governing when and under what circumstances an ISP may be required to provide information responsive to a subpoena.
Not a defense of the bill or the Congress -- I just saw enough comments indicating a general misunderstanding of to what the judge was referring to think that these comments might be helpful.
The only 'illegal' software on my HD is roms for games i actually own and DeCSS. Haven't you heard of FreeBSD
Regardless of what the DMCA says you can and cannot do, I wouldn't go against the RIAA on this one. To do so shows that you're not really interested in individual rights to crack media formats for fair use. Instead you look like your protecting piracy, since that's what this case is about. By going against the RIAA on this case, you're proving their point, i.e. that people don't like the DMCA because they want to freely share copyrighted material on the web. I think this is a bad message to send, and subverts the true reasons we are fighting against the DMCA.
Vote for Pedro
0%
Gentoo Linux 1.2 apps
Openoffice
Blender
about 10Gig of MP3s that I have the CDs for or downloaded from www.emusic.com as a subscriber.
The MP3s from emusic are kept in one place, and the ones that I ripped in grip are sorted in a uniform fashion in another place.
If they confiscated the computer they would find nothing technically illegal...
doesn't mean i wouldn't be convicted of something or other, but I have rights to all that is there.
Brian