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New Anti-Circumvention Rulemaking Coming Soon
zurab writes "According to CNet, copyright regulators are considering a rare public comment (pdf) process on the controversial DMCA law. The article states they are mostly looking for what kind of exceptions they should make to the law." If you recall, the Librarian of Congress is required by law to conduct a review process every three years to see if there are any specific types of works which should be exempted from part of the DMCA. You can see loc.gov for some information about the current and previous rulemaking procedures, and this piece I wrote after the last rulemaking was finished, examining what did and didn't work to convince the bureaucrats.
And no, code has not been ruled as free speech according to the courts. Linux will not qualify as speech and will be unprotected by the us constitution. The judge presiding over the case of the MPAA vs Jon Johnshon ruled that code was a series of "actions" rather then "expressions" and will remain how courts look at code untill another judge questions this.
If the dmca is ever overturned then we can port linux to pallidium and the xbox without a mod chip and ms wont be able to do shit.
Please common on about the unconsitutionalality of the law but do not write comments about specific bad sections which may help the EFF in court.
http://saveie6.com/
Free speech involving security vulnerabilities.
It makes little sense to be allowed to post a patch containing C code to fix a security vulnerability to a public mailing list, and yet not be able to post English text that contains the same information.
I don't particularly care about not being able to "make mp3z from my cdz", but I don't want my webservers rooted just because somebody wasn't allowed to post a patch.
If somebody doesn't patch their server, they are being irresponsible, not the person who posts details of the vulnerability.
At the end of the day, if your server is vulnerable, disconnect it from the network. If you don't like the idea of download, use software that doesn't have a terrible track record of security flaws.
Hmmm - where to begin? How about if it's as easy as breaking by swiping a black magic marker around the edge then it can't count. How about proof that this law has actually put $$$ into the hands of the artists. Ensuring that papers and discussions, especially related to news and education, absolutely cannot result in an arrest as what happened to Dimtry or that professor who was threatened. (After all, Dimtry has PhD in cryptography - if he's not allowed to talk, who is?).
Make a change? Then ensure that no matter what, peoples right to fair use and free speech cannot be infringed by this law.
That gave me an interesting idea. Eventually these laws (ala the Corps making them get written) are going to end up cancelling each other out.
To summarize:
The DMCA says you cannot build a 'device' that can circumvent(blah blah) a copy or access control system. To use this to their advantage, Sony decides to build a new DVD player and markets matching DVDs that are only authorized to be played on those systems.
Ding! Instant monopoly position. But I digress...
Anyway, Time Warner and Disney also get the bright idea to do something like this at the same time (maybe because of reading some slightly anarchistic postings on a popular online message board?)
At this point you are not allowed to play a Sony DVD on a Time Warner DVD player, or vice versa.
This gets ugly for both the Corps and the consumers.
Sound like fantasy? So would have the DMCA ten years ago.
What's that smell? Ah, that's my karma burning...
the congress just voted to give bush the power to INVADE and sovereign nation for no reason accept that in the future they MAY do something we don't like!
After they violently OVERTHROW the government and take control of the OIL FIELDS they announced their plan is to OCCUPY the country indefinatly with GEN. TOMMY FRANKS as DICTATOR until such time as they find a acceptable PUPPET to install.
And if you think this is about ANYTHING besides OIL then you haven't been doing your reading.
So while you cry about not being able to pirate mp3s your government is getting ready to INVADE a country and INSTALL A MILITARY DICTATOR!
GET SOME FUCKING PRIORITIES!
SERIOUSLY!
"However, the copyright office says it has only a very limited scope to define exceptions to the law. In the last round, it carved out just two activities that could be exempted from the law. People could break through encryption onlists of Web sites blocked by Web filtering programs and could break protection on software or other "literary works" in cases where the copy control was obsolete or interfering with the functioning of the program, the office said."
That must make DeCSS legal then because without it a perfectly good DVD player can't play a perfectly good DVD on a Linux box. Same for encrypted CDs because copyprotection interferes with the program functioning in certain environments.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
there's actually a legitimate reason for regional coding, staggered release of movies are different in different countries due to holiday periods and such, but apart from that, i don't see why they need to put it on things like music dvds
It would be like asking a janitor in the Supreme Court building to declare the DMCA unconstitutional. You could do it, and he could do it, but it would have no effect because he has no mandate or authority.
You'd be wasting everyone's time.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Encrypted distribution can be used to prevent the limited term and the necessary public access required by the Consititution. Works can be rendered unreadable after the copyright expiration. Therefore, I would suggest that encrypted distribution should only be protected under copyright law if provision is made for release of unencrypted distribution at term expiration. This provision should be that the copyright holder should provide an unencrypted rendition of the work of equivalent (or higher) quality to the Library of Congress. Until this is provided, the copyright of the encrypted work should be considered invalid.
Not to mention the obvious comments that all circumvention devices have fair-use potential and should therefore be permitted.
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