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EFF Report: Four Years Under the DMCA
kylus writes "The EFF has a pretty nice article entitled "Unintended Consequences." Basically, it reviews the last four years of life under the law, and how use of the "anti-circumvention" clauses have been used to stifle innovation, censor free speech, and threaten academic/scientific research. It ends with a conclusion most on /. have been dicussing for ages: "Four years of experience with the "anti-circumvention" provisions of the DMCA demonstrate that the statute reaches too far, chilling a wide variety of legitimate activities in ways Congress did not intend."" You've joined the EFF, right?
... I'm being naive here, but my life hasn't changed a damn bit in the past four years.
So I honestly and candidly pose this question -- What's so bad about the DMCA again?
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Section 1201 Chills Free Expression and Scientific Research.
Section 1201 Jeopardizes Fair Use.
Section 1201 Impedes Competition and Innovation.
Just one page down. Not to mention a buttload of examples towards the end.
Yes, do it!
I did and I don't even live in the USA.
You get a really cool t-shirt and the EFF are the only people really out there fighting for what is right... They deserve your support.
Don't but that CD! Join the EFF instead!
These problems are just uneducated judges! If these activist organizations took the time to compile a packet to educated judges instead of complaining, there would be much less misinterpratation of the law.
With my job as a police officer, I know how little the judges actually know about new laws, and often need to be educated by the lawyers about the law they are trying.
Did anyone else think extending copyrights to be *90* years, and disallowing anything that a company claims circumvents its copy protection might not be the best thing?
Well, the DMCA so far hasn't made a discernible difference in everyday life.
Sure, the FatWallet fiasco demonstrates the "inaneness" of the law but it hasn't affected Joe Sixpack yet.
It does affect those who directly fall in the face or corporations which generally tend to continue generating revenue from existing products instead of adapting/improving them*
*Note that this is not a slam against all these corporations. R&D is a bitch.
You've joined the EFF, right?
No. For a start, donations to the EFF are not tax-deductible if you're not a US citizen.
Even if they were, I don't feel I earn enough to donate effectively. People who throw them $50 a year are great in large numbers, but you're hardly buying a couple of minutes of campaigning time for them.
I prefer to keep my money and spend it on things which means I don't have to fall into legal traps. If the people who still use Windows XP and keep throwing $1000+ into the EFF every year actually spent that on Linux training, then they're doing a lot better for the world than giving their $$ to the EFF.
Lastly, I think the EFF is a good idea, but if people believe it's going to be their mouthpiece, they are sorely wrong. One large charity is easy for the government to ignore. Millions of complaining citizens are not. Support the things you want directly, instead of giving $1000 to the EFF and feeling 'good about yourself.'
Just my opinion of course.
mogorific carpentry experiments
s/gnu/linux/linux
hell no i didn't "join the EFF" .. skrew you
have you seen what the janitor rms is doing in the linux-kernel mailing list this week?
somebody remind him that he begged the egcs folks to return egcs to gcc again. and they accepted only because they are not loonatics like rms.
All this stuff benefits corporations and anti-rights groups.
These groups are the ones that 'pay' the people that create the laws..
They are not stupid, they have advisors that DO understand technology and law. They knew exactally what they were doing, we were stupid for letting it slip past us.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
if you go HERE it would seeem that the RIAA has changed its mind. This article is more likely bogus since the RIAA was hacked again yesterday and can be seen HERE. Its still very funny to read.
Not a flaim, but, Judges tend to be better than police offices, purly because of the nature of the job.
A Judge judges, a police office is out to catch people (well most of the time).
Though having thought about what I'd do if I went to court, my only defence would be, 'so, buy doing xzy to me, your going to make the world a better place, how?' I think that should be the only defence anyone needs.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This is why it's so hard to get the results you want whenever you have large numbers of people and systems interacting. Laws are like a service pack - sometimes you get interesting side effects
You've joined the EFF, right? /., or EFF, or attend conferences, or try to do anything that is "non-standard" with digital devices or content. They just have no interest, and so they don't realize that eventually this spills over into everyday life.
:p). I wish I could transform that reaction into interest.
Yes, I have. And now I am considering ways to let those that haven't joined, or that aren't even aware of issues such as these, to become informed. My frustration is that it seems 99% of the general public is content wallow in ignorance. Not by choice, but simply by virtue of the fact that they don't read sites like
The reaction to my telling friends and associates about these things is that they look at me like I'm a nutcase (yeah ok sometimes I *am* a nutcase
Does anyone know if there are plans for an 'international' EFF,
I know the US is one for litigation but Europe's getting some nasty laws and catching up on the 'eye for an eye' social model. (thanks to ambulence chasers)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I haven't joined the EFF, and I'm not going to until they change their stance on spam. They're so worried about freedom of speech they're ignoring the fact that the medium is being destroyed.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
"...copy-restriction will never be effective at preventing online piracy but rather is indented to force our customers to buy the same music on multiple media." (emphasis mine)
(So, apparently the perpetrators were intelligent enough to actually use a spell checker on the article... Of course, perhaps they're talking about the source -- it's indented to force customers to buy multiple copies in order to find the one with their tab/space preference.)
that large corporations have dictated laws to consumers and educational institutions. Truth be told, I'm sure the corporations knew the judges were years (if not decades) behind technology, or at best, had such an elementry understanding that they could have persuaded them how they saw fit.
The worst of it is probably the hindering of college research. To me, it's one of the many fun and innovative areas for learning. How much research has been limited? - I suppose any that remotely touches any company's product or service. The majority of computer work seems to be moving more towards a trade school - like a mechanic, the innovative elite becoming a very few.
Seriously, the majority of programmers I see today just know 2 things: the Design Patterns book and Java (or other popular language). There and then a handful of "architects" that make the real innovations.
--------
Free your mind.
You don't need to be very bright to be successful, if you're well connected. And the laws of today, are written specifically for the benefit of the well connected. Look at all the high profile and powerful business and government people, getting caught up and busted doing these absolutely moronic little scams. They're stupid! But they've
been given the opportunity to take extra long strides in their stupidity because of having influencial friends. If left to their own devices, they'd be where they belong. These people didn't rise to the top, they were injected. Two bit thugs dressed in nice clothes and more or less running the country.
And what sort of country are you gonna end up with after a few decades of people like this at the helm? It's like inbreeding but instead of
deformities on a single person(such as multiple heads) , you get deformities in the form of retarded people running the government and industry. Each one of those people doing their part, either through untrustworthiness, incompetance or both, to bring the country down around our ears.
NAFTA was a sledgehammer blow to the legs of the country. DMCA is a sledgehammer blow to the head.
Four years of experience with the "anti-circumvention" provisions of the DMCA demonstrate that the statute reaches too far, chilling a wide variety of legitimate activities in ways Congress did not intend
To make this more accurate, Congress didn't intend to stifle these activities at first. But then, the entertainment industry came along, started writing sizable checks to the Congresspeople for bri...err, "campaign contributions," and changed Congress's mind on this. Sure they intended to chill those.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
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The squeaky wheel gets the grease, write your congressperson. Joining the EFF is a small step, but getting yourself personally involved is better. Voice your opinions to many people often on this matter. For the most part the reason the law still exists is that many people just don't know about it. Good article, perhaps it can provide YOU with your next "talking points" around the water cooler.
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
If you did, did it change your vote?
Is your future vote for or against your legislator going to depend on your legislator's opinion of the DMCA and its effects?
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
I had to read the headline three times to realize that it wasn't "Your Fears Under the DMCA".
Sadly, the supposed headline isn't that wrong.
U.S. Decision On Iraq - How Policy Was Set
On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush signed a 21/2-page document marked "TOP SECRET" that outlined the plan for going to war in Afghanistan as part of a global campaign against terrorism.
Almost as a footnote, the document also directed the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq, senior administration officials said.
The previously undisclosed Iraq directive is characteristic of an internal decision-making process that has been obscured from public view. Over the next nine months, the administration would make Iraq the central focus of its war on terrorism without producing a rich paper trail or record of key meetings and events leading to a formal decision to act against President Saddam Hussein, according to a review of administration decision-making based on interviews with more than 20 participants.
Instead, participants said, the decision to confront Hussein at this time emerged in an ad hoc fashion. Often, the process circumvented traditional policymaking channels as longtime advocates of ousting Hussein pushed Iraq to the top of the agenda by connecting their cause to the war on terrorism.
With the nation possibly on the brink of war, the result of this murky process continues to reverberate today: tepid support for military action at the State Department, muted concern in the military ranks of the Pentagon and general confusion among relatively senior officials -- and the public -- about how or even when the policy was decided.............
Read the full article here - How U.S. Policy On Iraq Was Set
What free speech of Dmitry's was censored? Should the actions of AlterSlash be protected as free speech?
As for bnetd, their server was shut down due to violations of regular old copyright law in addition to DMCA violations. All the DMCA did here was keep Blizzard from being allowed to sue the ISP.
As for your third link, I think it's quite a stretch to say that the DMCA is responsible, since the DMCA does not even apply. Without the DMCA the RIAA just would have threatened to sue under some other law.
...the DMCA is quite harmless. As the DMCA has never been tested in court, it can't be said it's a bad law because we, including the EFF, truly don't know the extent of its abilities to stifle free speech and innovation. Now, one might be able to say that the threat of using the DMCA has stifled innovation and censored feee speech , but this is far different from actually being the root of the problem.
Not to mention that both sides have waged an antagonistioc war against each other from day one with Napster firing the "shot heard around the internet", so to speak. One of these days the geeks are going to realize that laws apply to the internet as much as they do in reality and that information doesn't want to be free, it simply wants to be information, nothing more, nothing less.
EVNN jnf bjarq lrfgreqnl. Gurl unq yvaxf gb cbchyne crre gb crre svyr funevat fbsgjner ba gurve ubzrcntr.
Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.
And anti-spam blacklists, such as the MAPS RBL (Mail Abuse Prevention System Realtime Blackhole List, the most popular), result in a large number of Internet service providers (ISPs) surreptitiously blocking large amounts of non-spam from innocent people. This is because they block all email from entire IP address blocks--even from entire nations. This is done with no notice to the users, who do not even know that their mail is not being delivered.
That is exactly the situation. Large ISPs such as AOL and email providers like M$ Hotmail all practice this. The result is that mail from smaller ISPs is blocked. How convienent for the larger ISPs. No dial up box may send mail and often the upstream smtp provider is blocked as well.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
But if I buy a DVD and wanna burn a copy to my computer, ooo, well, I must be a felon, cause I had to circumvent encryption on the DVD. But, wait, don't I already own this? Don't I have the right to use that however the hell I wish, as long as I don't threaten that corporation's profits? How can any sane individual argue that making a back up copy is not in my rights?
Or what about when a bug is found in Windows? Shouldn't I be allowed to know about this? I bought it, if theres a flaw, I should be told. Of course this ignores the fact that Windows is basically one big flaw, but you get the drift. I own it, I use it, and any errors affect me directly if theres a security breach or performance issue.
This whole issue will finally be solved when Nike manages to get the law changed so Corporations can lie and legally get away with it no matter what, and some politician is sued for copyright infringement when he says he invented the internet or something and doesn't get in trouble for it.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
Like the opt-out "do not call me list" that requires you to Register With The State to avoid telemarketers, doesn't joining the EFF increase your exposure? Wouldn't a list of EFF members make a good start for investigations? I might join, but I'm not joining with my real name.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I have now...
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On 2003-1-12 you contributed US$65
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Who's with me?
http://kered.org
I'm just guessing here, but I'm gonna take a wild stab and suppose that that legislation was sponsored by the monster cable, music, etc. companies. Am I right? In many cases, it is the lobbyists who actually write the legislation, then get one of the legislators they own to sponsor it in Congress.
Why would it be surprising that the little innovators would find a new monster-sponsored law to be hindering their ability to compete with those monsters?
If you really want to help out with this situation (and many, many of the other problems in the U.S. government) then don't vote for good ol' boys who are owned by their campaign contributers. In other words, don't vote for Democrats and don't vote for Republicans. As long as everyone keeps voting for these two sides of the same coin, big money is going to continue to control Congress. And thus, the interests of big money are going to continue to win over the interest of the general public.
That one ain't rocket science. The only Democrats or Republicans I would ever vote for are ones that explicitly campaign against the current system of bribery through campaign contributions. Otherwise, all my votes go to the few 3rd party candidates that aren't whackos. And if you think that all 3rd party candidates are loonies, then:
1. Look closer, some of them are genuinely smart, responsible, good people trying to serve their community. They don't get any press coverage explicitly because they don't raise enough money, but they still exist. You owe it to yourself and your community to spend a few minutes researching. Or...
2. Run for office yourself. If all you see besides the good ol' boys are some crazed morons, then put your own name in the hat. Somebody has to change something, or we're all screwed.
I can't say exactly which laws are responsible for the changes, but it seems the DMCA certainly plays a role in the changes to my daily life.
Work - I work as a new media designer for not-for-profits.
Ex. 1 - Client wants still image from *their* DVD.
Problem: Disallowed - copy protection measures.
Solution - find a quasi-legal application on the interent.
Ex. 2 - Client wants 7 hours of VHS transferred to DV. Solution: pass signal thru DVcam to Mac
Problem: Disallowed - copy protection
(It is never easy to really know whether something is impossible for technical reasons or due to intentional disabling for copy protection reasons.)
Solution: copy 7 hours to DV tape; capture 7 hours to Mac
Cost: doubles
Ex. 3 - Client wants their TV commercial spliced into other ads for 'internal' use - to show the ad in context.
Solution - No. Turn down job. Advise against. Not in this climate.
Ex. 4 - User's Mac frozen from attempting to play music disc.
Solution: force restart while holding down mouse key
Cost: User's work lost.
New workplace music policy: dunno. No CDs/music discs? Communal MP3 library, ripped by technicians? Resulting network impact?
This could easily get to be a long list.
The point is that small creative businesses which use 'prosumer' gear increasingly find that they can't easily accomplish simple jobs. It is becoming increasingly difficult to purchase equipment (crippled functions are rarely highlighted). For example, we bought a MiniDisc recorder for interviews. What if we wanted to actually use the interviews for something?
A growing number of digital devices (TV tuners, DVD players, audio recorders, etc) only have analog outputs for copy protection.
Media - media formats like DVD, or MiniDV tapes are arbitrarily smaller than their 'commercial' equivilents. We pay taxes on media. In Canada, $100 will be added to the price of a $600 iPod if media taxes are raised and extended to their proposed level. In the US and Canada, we pay taxes on audio and video tapes, recordable CDs and DVDs, and we can basically look forward to taxes on all storage mediums. (In Canada, it's just more obvious than in the US.) Taxes appear to by calculated by size. Next time you buy a 250Gb hard drive, consider how much money is going to the RIAA and MPAA. (I don't know how I am affected in the UK, because apparently I lost my copying rights when I moved here. I don't think we're allowed to copy anything; not even TV - there is no 'fair use' in the UK.)
Fun - I do the same kind of stuff for fun - for my friends.
Like work, it's an exercise in frustration. The transition from analog to digital is about high-end production. Final output will probably be analog for the forseeable future.
Entertainment -
CDs - The proposition that I'm going to move back to listening to CDs after having tasted MP3s is terribly misguided. I didn't think it would affect the kind of music I listen to (underground hiphop) - it has. Buy CD. Get home. No CD logo. Copy protection chart. May not play on Mac. Rips fine. But why is it distorted? Is it just really bassy? Is it from copy protection? Is it worth it? (No.)
DVD player - it was free. It was useless.
Problem - Analog SCART ouput only. No SCART on TV.
Solution - Route through VCR.
Problem - Disallowed. Copy protection.
Solution - Give DVD player to mother-in-law
Digital TV tuner - digital TV is 'computerized' TV. It's Mpeg2. From camera to editing to broadcast to reception, it's all digital - just like my computer and it's digital display. DVB, the standards body has settled on Firewire as the digital connection standard. At the moment in the UK, there are no devices with digital outputs. Perhaps once the Macrovision is implemented on our digital TV, we will get digital outputs. This just means it that our computer can't replace the TV the way it has replaced the stereo and DVD player because the display is digital LCD. As with everything, it can be done. But it's expensive and thus far, the results are barely viewable. (It's a complicated problem, but the point is that it would be much simpler were it not for copyright concerns. I know, it is also about the predominance of analog displays and who is subsidizing the TV tuners - satellite and cable companies, Tivo, etc.)
I don't know how much of this is attributable to the DMCA, but I am constantly challenged by changes over the past 4 years. Sure, you can get around virtually any roadblock with analog to digital convertors and quasi-legal black boxes, software, and by accepting loss of quality. But it's expensive, time-consuming, and frustrating.
Previously, one avoided buying certain 'cripple-ware' brands. Now it seems everything is 'cripple-ware' and the question is whether to buy anything at all. Unfortunately, the post-dotcom-bubble, post-911 economic downturn will overshadow the economic cost of copy-protection hysteria.
Of course they intended it: The DMCA benefits government more than it benefits the corporations who bribed congress into passing it. Any expansion of government yields power and profit for those in control. Government has ultimate control, not the corporations.
When the full-scale "war on drugs" was forced upon the people some 50 years ago, congress fully understood that the consequences would be measured in violent crime (from the resulting black market), loss of civil rights (most of which have nothing to do with drug use), skyrocketing tax rates, and corruption on all levels of government. But they chose to wage war against the people for exactly the same reason they chose to adopt the DMCA: Because it benefits government. Like any business, the primary objective of government is to profit and expand market share. These laws do exactly that.
As the saying goes, you can't rule a nation of innocents. The more laws forced upon the people, the more power and profit yielded for government.
Or go here to look up more on contributions.
DMCA fighting aside, I saw some serious FUD from the EFF about the patriot act and other legislation. I would like to see a less political group to send my money to. I want my money to go to good causes and not red herrings.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
...as I live in the land of fair use, also called Norway. So now I'll decrypt, decripple and reburn my DVDs with no region coding/RCE/control blocker/copyright warning/whatever and play discs from any region in any region DVD player with a good conscience. And format-shift it so I can have a divx on my (DVD-less) laptop too. (Yes, I know DeCSS no longer works. But you get the idea.)
:)
So how's life in land of the free and home of the brave?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I find it curious that they'd title it the same as John Ross's novel (ISBN 1-888118-04-0) where he takes on the National Firearm Act of 1934. Using perhaps a more lecturing style than Ayn Rand in "Atlas Shrugged" he synthesises a set of consequences that leads defenders of the Bill of Rights to armed conflict with the US Government -- specifically lone gun assasinations of armed tax agents and the legislators that created them.
I wonder if the EFF wanted a subliminal association....
A New Vision for the Recording Industry
The past year has been one of the worst in the previous decade for the music industry. While factors beyond our control, such as the down-turn in the American economy, have no doubt contributed to this, the industry itself can certain not completely escape blame. In an attempt correct this, representatives from our member labels recently met to discuss ways of reforming the industry. The result of the meeting was a set of changes to current policies, outlined below, which, when implemented, we hope will pull the industry out of its current slump.
Our member labels will halt all plans to sell copy-restricted CDs. Restricting the use of CDs devalues the product, reducing the incentive for consumers to buy them. Also we believe that as time goes on, the public will realize, as we have, that due to the viral natural of distribution through file-sharing networks copy-restriction will never be effective at preventing online piracy but rather is indented to force our customers to buy the same music on multiple media.
We also vow to stop pursuing the companies behind file-sharing networks in court. In light of studies by reputable pollsters that have shown that most users of file-sharing networks reported that their music purchases increased in frequency, there seems to be little reason to continue spending millions in an attempt to shut down these services. Instead, we plan to propose to settle out of court in exchange for a royalty system based on a fraction of profit (only fair, given that these profits are derived in part from our products).
We will also stop lobbying politicians to impose draconian copyright laws on the American people. Last June, Rep. Rick Berman, who received more campaign donations from the entertainment industry than any other Congressperson, proposed legislation that would exempt rights-holders from anti-hacking law in order that they might exact vigilante-style justice on file-sharers. Initially we were thrilled at the display of the political might of our money, but later were sickened as we realized the implications for democracy in America. Morally, we cannot continue this manipulation of the political system.
In addition to the reasons just given, we also are doing both of the above, halting the lawsuits against the companies file-sharing services and stopping our coercive political contributions, in an attempt to restore consumer confidence in the music industry. Our customers will know longer will feel guilty after buying a CD, now knowing that the proceeds from their purchases will not be used to support causes that harm them and their peers.
To further convince consumers that the proceeds from their music purchases are well spent, we will be attempting to treat our talent more fairly. At the core of this effort will be the halting of collusion between labels on recording contracts. While overlooked by anti-trust law, the elimination of competition caused by collusion is just as harmful to the producers of content as it is to the consumers. No longer will artists be forced into signing contracts which reduce artist''s royalties for a multitude of arbitrary or antiquated reasons for if any label attempts such abuse, they''ll be certain to lose their talent to a competitor. We believe that this can be undertaken without damaging industry profitability. Firstly, the previously mentioned reduced legal and political expenditures will help to offset the cost. Secondly, we plan fix the sobering statistic that nine out of ten industry ventures end up failing recovering their costs. This figure would be unacceptable outside the entertainment industry and, while it was viable inside it due to the abuse of artists, there is no reason it should not be possible to vastly improve upon it.
Finally, we promise to stop trying to brainwash the world into thinking of music as property, something that an artist has an innate right to control, even after the media that embodies that music has changed hands. Rather, we will recognized only the original goal of copyright law in America, to benefit the average citizen by creating a incentive to produce creative works. We will also launch a publicity campaign to remind the public of this principle, unknown to many. We hope that upon learning that the true purpose of copyright law is to benefit them, average citizens will be more likely to respect it.
It is our hope that these policy changes will revitalize the industry and make it deserving of the unique place it holds within American culture.
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uchar im2[6]={0x51,0x67,0x67,0xc5,0xe0,0x00};for(i=0;i6
CSStitlekey1(im1,im2);CSStit
Some people...
Sony, Microsoft, MPAA, RIAA paid good money for the DMCA. If you want it repealed, you need to start contributing to some congressmen. Re-election campaigns don't come cheap, you know.
Remember: If all else fails, graft works. Pay the right people in power the right amount of money and you will get what you want.
ElcomSoft's Advanced e-Book Processor, which translates e-books from Adobe's eBook format to Adobe's PDF, and "thereby allows a computer to read an eBook out loud using text-to-speech software, which is particularly important for visually-impaired individuals." Therefore, the DCMA is in direct violation of the ADA (American Disabilities Act). Not to mention the First Amendment. You may not personally be physically challenged in such a way, but if this law restricts the abilities of a fellow citizen's right to knowledge, shouldn't you be just as upset?
Or why don you open bank accounts to collect contributions to buy^H^H^Hloby congressmen ?
After 4 years, does anybody know if there is/was a lawsuit invoking the DMCA against sombody who is actually pirating content?
- that the DMCA and laws like it are simply logical progression of copyrights. You can't tell people that they have certain types of rights and never expect them to never try and secure those rights. To expect so would be hypocritical and is just as wrong as the DMCA is. Information is so easy to copy and manipulate that copyrights are simply not going to be workable unless all information is controlled or none of it. It simply amazes me to hear people cry bloody murder about the DMCA, but never even consider the root of the problem.
All I ever get in reply is this crazy propaganda about the poor starving artist and how they are they are so valuable and holy while anybody elese in society who may have the need to copy things is a worthless piece of cr*p incapable of adding any value to society. Perhaps this is just to distract from the fact that for every artist that makes it, there are 10,000 living in dirt poverty who copyrights haven't helped one darn bit. Perhaps it's to keep people from noticing how bad copyrights really are.
I admit it's a tough cookie to crack and I don't think there's any simple solutions.
..."
However, I do think it all depends on how the issue is raised. There are a few openings I've found work:
1) Any conversation about the future of technology. If a non-techish friends asks you anything about where computers and media will be going in the future, point out that much of that will depend on the threats posed by big media companies to consumer freedom.
2) Any mention of the use of current technologies which are threatened by repressive legislation.
- "So I just burned a great mix CD from the mp3s on my computer."
- "Cool. Did you know that if the record industry has their way, no one will be able to do that in a few years?
3) Any conversation about abuses of corporate power in general. A great many folks these days have become very distrustful of corporate behemoths for obvious reasons. Often they will get what you're talking about much more quickly if it can be related to their own experiences and opinions about corporations. Corporate control over politics is a particularly good opening.
- "Well that's because politicians don't give a damn about the voters, only the corporate fatcats that are giving them money."
- "Yeah, isn't it terrible? Did you know the record and movie companies have been donating millions of dollars to restrict our freedoms to listen to music and watch movies on computers?"
(In my travels in leftie political circles, I've often found that even people who don't know the first thing about technology often have a sympathetic ear for topics like the DMCA and such, because they're already _very_ suspicious of media conglomerates, for a whole slew of other reasons.)
Anyhow, keep up the good fight.
Red All Over: Rambling Missives from an Aspiring Revolutionary
- stifle innovation
- censor free speech
- threaten academic/scientific (but not corporate) research
- jeopardizes fair use
Just what is there on this list that major corporations, particularly Hollywood content providers would object to? What is there on this list that regardless of stated goals, your Congressasshole would care about?If it interfered with the profits of major campaign contributors, it would have been repealed days after passage. All it interferes with are the rights of the people and small companies.
I see no Unintended Consequences here.
I think it's going to interfere with corporate profits eventually, but given that suits don't look forward more than a quarter in terms of where things are going, this is also a non-starter.
Tech Public Policy stuff
yeah right, "anarchy for the rich". Libertarian literature I've read seems to point to a society where the well-off are justified in doing anything they want, to preserve their wealth. We already have that, just different mechanisms to do the same thing.
Well,
Unfortunately the copyright law is going to be changed also in Norway, based on EUCD. And it's going to be even worse than DMCA. So enjoy your freedom as long as you can!
V.
The EFF is right on this issue. They are wrong on others. When they stop supporting spammers then I will consider joining them, but not until then.
Well, it's only our freedom to use our computers as we please and our ability to create innovation that we and our nations will profit from that's at risk right now.
Ultimately, all our civil liberties are at risk and so is our economy as a whole. If it becomes impossible to create innovation without getting it approved by a Hollywood committee whose members represent companies who can't even keep a simple Website online without it getting hacked to death, that innovation will NOT be happening in the USA. Remember that the other major component of the Hollywood cartel companies is represented by the guy who said the VCR would kill the movie industry. The innovations will be made everywhere that Hollywood doesn't control and the jobs will go with them.
If the Hollywood cartel and other major corporate interests have the power to censor everything that conflicts with their agendas using the DMCA, where is the information flow we need to become informed voters? How can we discuss political activism if corporations can arbitrarily decide that their public activities are secret? Even where copyright is irrelevant, most people can't tell corporate lawyers to go fuck themselves in response to a C&D.
- Court cases are the symptoms of bad laws.
- The bad laws that concern us are made by politicians who work for their major contributors, not the people who vote for them.
- The cure for these bad laws is to kick the politician's asses out of office and keep kicking them out until the survivors and the replacements get the message.
- Non-profit organizations can't buy politicians.
The fact that non-profits can't make campaign contributors makes them a non-starter as far as the only possible solution to the problem of preventing bad laws from being made. Contribute $0, $1000, or $1,000,000,000 to the EFF, it makes no difference.Contributing to the EFF gets you respect among your peers and a nice tax deduction to boot and the feeling that YOU HAVE DONE SOMETHING.However, the problem as it affects us as a group can't be solved by trying to stop bad law from taking effect, the problem is to stop the stream of bad laws from being made.
The EFF can not do this, only a credible PAC to represent our interests along the lines of the AARP/NRA model can.
I once believed that the high-tech community had the brains and the guts to organize a credible effort (as in PAC) to take out (not ON) Hollywood and/or the vendor community would have sense enough to spend a portion of their profits comparable to what Hollywood is spending to protect their ability to do R&D and manufacturing in the USA. If this had been done, DRM would probably be dead and everybody including Hollywood would probably be making a lot more money.
The high-tech community has told itself that contributing to the EFF is all we need to do and I'll believe the vendor community will do something when I see them doing it.
Well, I estimate we're a month or so from the day when it simply won't be possible to get the paperwork (filings with the FEC and the state election authorities in all 50 states) needed to make it possible for a national PAC to do business in the 2004 election cycle, i.e. the day that no amount of money can buy our freedom. If this problem isn't resolved in the current election cycle, game over.
If you have about $1-2M you're willing to risk on making America free again or can pass the hat to a handful of friends to raise that amount of money, start an anti-Hollywood PAC NOW, don't waste the money on the EFF.
Unfortunately, no smaller amount of money can make a difference in terms of stopping the Hollywood cartel, any PAC capable of making a difference is going to have to appear on the scene with a national-level presence and credibility. That takes enough money to get into the game, and my $1-2M estimate may be optimistic.
Note that this is startup money that will need to be spent before a single dollar is spent in making serious campaign contributions, the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars needed will come from people who want to be able to send contributions to an organization designed to fight bad politicians, not bad laws.. However, I think this is most of us. Enough of us sending in $10 and $100 and $1000 donations and some corporate contributions and we've got a war chest big enough to take on Hollywood and win.
Your only other alternative for spending your money on freedom from bad law like the DMCA and the upcoming CBDTPA and worse legislation, law and administrative regulations based on the Broadcast Working Group recommendations is to save it for an emigration fund, moving overseas to somewhere that the government doesn't take orders from the Hollywood cartel is expensive. If a people doesn't have the will to do what's needed to protect their freedom, they will lose it. This process is already underway.
The good news is that you may not have to move to India or China, the EU member nations don't seem to be in any hurry to adopt the EU Copyright Directive intended to give them their version of the DMCA, and perhaps persuading politicians that all they need to about the EU Copyright Directive in order to give their nations a drastic competitive advantage over the USA is to do nothing will work.
So... it's up to you as it always was. If we can't get our shit together to buy Congress out from under Hollywood, maybe I'll see those of you who decided to stay in high-tech instead of in the US flipping burgers in an expat bar in London or Frankfurt or Amsterdam or New Delhi.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Well, while our lives at home haven't changed a whole lot in the last four years piles of legal precedants are being built up in court that will change our lives quite a bit. The DMCA doesn't change the fact that it is illegal to make copies of copyrighted material for non-personal use, and it really doesn't go any further to protect those copyrighted works. What it does do is allow the patent holders for the ecryption technology(like CSS) to determine how their content(legally purchased or not) is viewed. In other words, if they decide that they don't want to license DeCSS to anyone writing software for platforms they don't approve of(Linux), they need only claim DMCA infringement on anyone who goes ahead and comes up with some DeCSS on their own. That's the exapmple that's been played out. Why haven't we seen more examples of this type of legal action? The MPAA and the RIAA haven't had enough time to sue everyone yet, and they need to build up some significant legal precedant.
My Blog
is why we suddenly loose all these rights because something is digital
I know the argument is that you can produce perfect coppies with digital so they need to protect their rights in other ways. Surly there should be a differance between protecting rights and destroying fair use.
where would the law stand if I bought a new LP and sampled it, do I loose fair use because now I have it in digital form?
I think the idea of having a encryption for somehitng like e books or even DVDs is stupid, they will be hacked. The hacks will become widespread and the encryption will become obsolete. So why bother in the first place. All it is doing is criminalising people who are otherwise law abiding, just like the drug laws.
In a democracy, if the majoraty of people believe that a law is wrong should it still be enforced or should it be changed?
It's well-established that judges can interpret Congress's intent in writing a law to determine how it should be applied (the Supreme Court probably does this more than lower courts do, but in principle any federal court can). The EFF claims that the DMCA is being applied in ways Congress didn't intend, which would indicate that this is a failure on the part of judges to properly understand Congress's intent.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You're not a victim of loss of connectivity through MAPS. You're a victim of the spammer that caused the MAPS listing.
I say maps has a list of all "dial up" IP addresses and large ISPs refuse to take mail from those IPs. Who on that list deserves that kind of treatment? It's being abused to block small ISP mail servers too.
I'll bet you a nickle that most spam comes from competing large ISPs that want to wreck each others service. Today, my wife got a letter from "bloddy_buttholes." Stuff like that does not come from anyone who really wants to sell anything, it comes from someone that wants to disrupt email. It's people like that that should be punished, not someone like me who simply wants to send an email to his mom's AOL account.
When all the small ISPs are dead, it's a small step for the large survivors to require certian mail agents. If you have not heard enough clueless, "I'm sorry we don't support anything but M$-crap-program", just wait. My reply is that I don't need their support for my software, I simply need their mail server to act right. One day they will use the DMCA and Federal laws agianst taking cable services without permission to lock out any software they don't like.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...chilling a wide variety of legitimate activities in ways Congress did not intend.
Call me paranoid, but I don't think they knew full well what is was going to do, or at least, their paymsters did.
The Senate, IIRC, voted 98 in favor, one against, and one abstention.
The actual vote was 97-0. I'm not sure if the three absained or simply didn't bother to show up for the vote. My guess is the latter.
And I still do not. Neither do you assholes. Most people who blather on and on about this DEAD AS A FUCKING DOORNAIL issue know nothing about it. Lookie here all you chicken littles: the world didn't end, the sky didn't fall, and your little linux machine is still running after 4 years under the iron fist rule of the DMCA. Only a linux moron would be so concerned over something like this because they have no software DVD decoders for linux. Why? Because no one wants to throw their money down the tubes creating one. Duh.
It's an attack on not just civil liberties, but the high-tech economy. If you want to live in a nation of burger-flippers, you're pro-Hollywood.
Search here or try google if you know how.
Of course, in your case, "You want fries with that?" is probably your on-the-job reality, you aren't a programmer worried about the economy tanking so badly that service industry might be where you'll eventually wind up.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Thanks! And what's really funny... if the RIAA had any sense, every word would be true!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
They were criminals, plain and simple.
This legislation affects no ones civil liberties and YOU PEOPLE KNOW IT. All this pissing and moaning you people do has to do with one thing - there are no software (or hardware) DVD decoders for linux. Look hard and deep inside of yourselves....you know it's really true but you can't admit it because Stall-head and Raymond have you fooled right now. Every company or person on the face of this earth has the right to protect THEIR FUCKING PROPERTY any way they want and YOU HAVE NO SAY IN THE MATTER.
By the way, the EFF, wrong as they are on most issues, are at least consistent in their views. They don't put up straw dummies like the DMCA and pretend the earth is slowing it's rotation because of it. Stop lying to yourselves and admit the truth. THE ONLY REASON THE SO-CALLED LINUX COMMUNITY HATES THE DMCA IS BECAUSE THERE ARE NO DVD DECODERS FOR THEIR OS. If that is not a true and factual statement, why isn't the rest of the world up in arms about it? I'm speaking of the real world, not the server room or anywhere else linuxheads hang out. We know the truth...you just can't handle it.
Also, a side note of health care costs:
Higher health care costs have also come from the severe tort abuses recently. Doctors' malpractice insurance has skyrocketed in recent years. It has gotten to a point to where many physicans no longer perform high risk (as in lawsuit) procedures simply because the insurance costs more than what they make per year by performing the procedure.
Just look at West Virginia's situation and Pennsylvania avoided a close situation
This article is ancient now. I am curious why it surfaced on slashdot now, instead of when it was new.
Like you, I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's
place in the Scheme of Things. Here are just a few:
Q -- Is there life after death?
A -- Definitely. I speak from personal experience here. On New
Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian",
then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was
fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have
spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful
headache. Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back
to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead. I
guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long
as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
-- Dave Barry
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