BSA To Join Battle Against DRM

Dunark writes "It appears that two of our favorite enemies are now at loggerheads with each other: According to The Inquirer, the Business Software Alliance has joined the fight against the Hollywood-backed attempt to legislate required DRM (the Hollings bill). Read about it in The Inquirer and also at Mercury News"

Comments

In other news...

[bwalling]

North Korea is planning an attack on Iraq if they don't stop production of "weapons of mass destruction".

BSA is not the **AA??

[jackb_guppy]

They both want the same thing. Control your desktop.

The difference is the business model.

**IA wants to control the media of distribution to protect their business model.

BSA wants you to "break the law" with their software watching to charge you after the fact.

You know penalities are "free" money.

Re:BSA is not the **AA??

[Dunark]

I'm hoping that Congress does the obvious thing to benefit themselves: If they drag their feet, hem and haw, and otherwise prolong the legislative process, they get the maximum amount of campaign contributibtions from the opposed lobbying groups while doing what I want: Nothing.

DRM seems strikingly familiar ...

[SuperDuG]

... to a way to identify yourself legally to the one's in charge.

Please don't mod this +1 funny, as it's not meant to be that way. I really do find strinkingly large simularities between the way the Nazi's do things and the way certain members of congress try to force the people that elected them to give up their rights. Just because "Rights" is one of the DRM words, doesn't make it right.

I believe in Law that is for the people.

please follow the links...

heh

[Iamthefallen]

This is like an American version of Godzilla vs. Mothra, 2 monsters in suits battling eachother in the courtroom, you're not quite sure who'll win, you're not quite sure you care, but you have to watch it and cheer them on.

Re:heh

[Cyno01]

Yeah, and no matter who wins they'll have stomped half the city.

Don't be so supprised

[Huogo]

The BSA simply wants to do their own DRM, and dosn't want it mandated to them. If the RIAA/MPAA gets to choose the DRM, the BSA has to implement one that they might not like. If the BSA can implement their own DRM, they can charge royalties for using it, and they get to choose their own.

Re:Don't be so supprised

[azazeal386]

Very good on noticing this. The Hollings bill mandanted (as I recall) that the DRM solution be OPEN to the point that any manufacturer can implement it (usually, government chosen specs are patent-licensed to all, such as the Digital Signature Algorithm). RIAA wants cheap players so more people can watch movies. The BSA wants the PER-SALE fee to use their DRM solution (each DRM protected movie file you download a small amount goes into Microsoft's coffers).

What fools we all have been!

[azazeal386]

First, what the BSA wants is NOT less DRM, it is
Market-Enforced DRM. You can only get your software,
movies, music and what have you THROUGH their
blessed Palladium.
The reason they don't want Hollings bill is
that it forces them to consider things that they
otherwise wouldn't for economic reasons, for
example fair use and expiration of copyrights, which
would come into play IF the DRM solution was
part of a law.

So -- Remember. They are NOT anti-DRM, they just
want to CONTROL the DRM. And it is a LOT more
difficult for government to interfere with
the private choices of individuals (you bought
this hardware knowing it had DRM -- but you
can't connect to your online banking otherwise and
the $10/teller visit fees added up!)

Obligatory MPlayerJoke

[Artifex]

After all, if you can only watch future movies on "approved" OS's, guess which ones will be approved and which ones won't!

I'm betting that within a week of Microsoft pushing a DRM implementation out to the public, there will probably be an mplayer patch with a couple downloadable DLLs that will do the whole thing. :)

BSA our enemy?

[ultrabot]

Since when was BSA our enemy? Don't you realize that the more they force people to pay for proprietary software, the less the people are inclined to choose proprietary solution over a free beer one.

I bet many companies are evaluating open source alternatives for their existing proprietary applications right now, because they might not have bought quite enough licenses to cover all their use. That wouldn't be the case if BSA was less aggressive.

Re:BSA our enemy?

[Jerf]

The BSA is our enemy because of their history of being jack-booted thugs, and using wild accusations and what boils down to vigilantism to accomplish their goals of ruining people's lives.

They may cause people to move to open source but the collateral damage is too much.

It is not supposed to work that way

[Dada]

Am I supposed to feel better because a lobbying group is working to undo the evil of another lobbying group?

I'm no historian but I think the intent of the people who set up the USA Congress and other government organs was to enable the rule of the people for the common good. Now we see a group of corporations *buying* new laws for their own profit and the *only* thing that has the slightest chance of stopping them is another group of corporations who see a threat to their own bottom line.

It might be nice to see bad laws failing to get enacted but if you believe that the BSA are acting for the good of the people you are very naive. They act for their own good *exclusively* and it is pure chance that in this instance it coincides with what is good for the general population (indeed, there are many examples of the same group working directly *against* the common good).

So rejoice while you can but know this: you no longer have a say in the making of your own country's laws. Every time an expensive lobbying campaign is successful, it is one more battle lost for democracy; the exact legislative result is of little consequence.

Re:mixed feelings...

[Skjellifetti]

'It is a pity that our friends lie in between,' said Gimli. 'If no land divided BSA and RIAA, then they could fight while we watched and waited.'

'The victor would emerge stronger than either, and free from doubt,' said Gandalf.

Of course.

[base3]

With strong DRM, there'd be no money to be made from protection rackets^W^W software audits and assessments of extortion money^W^W non-compliance fines.

In fact, if a workable DRM scheme were possible, the raison d'être of the BSA, SPA, and similar criminal enterprises is completely kaput, vanished, gone, history . . . you get the idea. Additionally, their members would lose the mind share they currently gain from unlicensed use of their products.

The law in the U.S. has become corrupt.

[Futurepower(R)]

The biggest friends of business are business men and women. The biggest enemies of business are ... business men and women. Slashdot articles have provided many examples of business people being self-destructive.

The law in the U.S. has become corrupt, as this July 2002 article, linked at the bottom of the Inquirer article, says: Political contribution watch.

I've done some research about how law is made in Oregon: Airplanes are safe, but laws often crash. (For those who live outside the U.S.: Oregon is a U.S. state.)

Basically, it appears that the law in the U.S. is being driven by those who have a financial interest, not people who have the best interests of the country in mind.

When they harass open-source shops

[bee]

There have been numerous reports of the BSA harassing Unix or open-source shops out of ignorance/malice (choose one) because they have the mentality that all PCs run Windows. Businesses have been destroyed because of them.