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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?
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!
Many people have been tortured, raped, abused, murdered during this four years. Since your life hasn't changed, should we ignore that stuff as well?
You need to look beyond your nose.
If there is slowly and gradually less and less innovation every day as a result of this, we can all be affected by it without actually noticing it. The point is, whether you know it or not, things might've been very different if it weren't for the law.
Um, that's not "simple logic" because it's not true. The changes might be too subtle or too slow to be easily noticed. They also might begin slow and then accelerate -- during the initial phase you might not notice. Consider the example of weather: A change of one or two degrees might not be noticed by you. Does that mean it never occurs? What about when the temperature change is enough to trigger precipitation?
Should you wait until the changes are irrevocable before agreeing there have been some? Or should you look at subtle measures and try to get an accurate model of the current state of things? I definitely believe in the latter: Although these cases specifically have not wrought great changes in your daily life, they presage a coming tectonic shift.
As another example, drawn from the law: When the Supreme Court held that the state tax assessor could asses a railroad but not the local assessor, it seemed like a tiny thing which had no discernible impact on most people. Yet it was the pinhole through which the legal monster "corporate personhood" entered the law, and in the course of a century has completely shifted the balance of power. Was it worthy of ignoring it just because the first change was small? Or might we have been better off if more people had paid attention then?
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
These problems are the letter of criminal law. Until you appeal, uneducated or not, the jury (the judge *might* have a say in dismissing the case) has to rule based on the merits of the case: "Is X against law Y".
2 0_pl105-304.html
Reverse engineering an access control method or otherwise disabling it is illegal, stupid judge or not.
Ranting and raving follows
The access control provision of the DMCA breaks anti-trust laws: It allows a copyright holder to use its government-granted monopoly to leverage a new monopoly in another field (access devices).
Both access and copyright protection provisions make it basically illegal to produce programs which might be used to overcome such protections. I say basically, because the law states that it has to be the main purpose or usage. However, whether or not it is or isn't the main purpose is always going to be a matter for the courts, causing lost time and legal fees.
Now here's the real kicker. Read the dmca text (here's a link to the final joint version: http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/hr2281_dmca_law_199810
Since its in your web browser, do this: search for "copyright owner", "copyright holder", and any other variation you can think of. Find anything?
That would be because under the DMCA its ILLEGAL FOR THE COPYRIGHT OWNER TO BREAK ACCESS CODES TOO.
Thats right, think about that. Now take a look at the text of the law again. Suddenly, a whole new truth emerges: This law isn't about protecting copyright. This law's existence only protects the publishers and distributers of copyrighted material by "guaranteeing" that whatever format they wish to publish/distribute in, it would be "protected".
In the coming DRM-enabled world, do you get to distribute your garage band over the internet? No! Your digital recording choices will be limited to DRM no-copy file formats which won't go anywhere, and you will not be able to do anything about it legally, because its not the music that is protected by this law, its the DRM no-copy file format.
Finally, (perhaps I should have written this first) the fatal bug in the law: No exemptions are stated for the creator of the encryption too. Nothing in the DMCA says that the person who invents the encryption system has a right to produce a tool for the express purpose of decryption, nor does it say they can grant that right to other people. Do everyone a favor and report every DVD player manufacturer for DMCA violations.
For everyone else, call up your NRA buddies and preach to them of slippery slopes. It's now illegal to produce software that might commit a crime. How long will it be before its illegal to produce guns which might commit a crime?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
That's the exact idea behind the DMCA: to maintain the status quo to support the business model of a handful of corporations.
In recent years, progress in technology has eliminated various technical limitations on what you could do with information. The DMCA was created to reinstate those limitations through legal means, turning back the clock to erase many of the benefits from recent developments. (As it happens, it was written so poorly, it creates new limitations you never even had in the past.)
The question you should be asking is how could my life have changed if it weren't for the DMCA?
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.
Your fundamental premise is flawed:
One need not choose between complaining and contributing.
Furthermore, small amounts of money can make a big difference. A lot of contributors of small amounts of money builds popular support for a cause. Giving $65 gets you a t-shirt, when you wear it other like-minded people are reminded of what's at stake and more likely to have a conversation, give money, etc- your $65 might inspire two other people who wouldn't have contributed to give.
Like all organizations, the EFF must decide what cases it can take based on priorities and resources. Small differences in resources might make the difference between the EFF taking or not taking your case when Hilary and Jack come knocking.
Think about it.
It's true that all three branches of the US government are for sale. Fortunately for us, decisions that are easier to defend on principle are more affordable than crooked profit-over-people decisions. But they are not free. If you have the time and expertise, volunteer. If not, donate some money and don't stop complaining.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
The law is quite clear: It's illegal to manufacture, import, or distribute an unauthorized access control circumvention device. That's the thing we're concerned about. DeCSS, and all similar routines to remove CSS encoding from a DVD that have not been authorized by the copyright holders of the works they decrypt, or by proxy, the DVD-CCA, are illegal.
Period.
The law isn't being misinterpreted, any more than the laws being used to send non-violent cannabis smokers to prison are being. The law is an ass. "Educating Judges" will not change that. It's not their job, and there are major implications with suggesting that judges should pretend laws they disagree with should be treated as not-existing.
The people to lobby are the legislators. Give THEM an idea of what the laws they've passed actually mean in practice. They are the only people, constitutionally and in any socially-responsible way, who can do anything about it.
You can find a list of appropriate contacts by examining any recent posting by Karmawarrior.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
There's extremists on both sides, and there are a lot of sysadmins who are quite happy to make email impossible to use if it means upsetting a spammer, or worse, a middleman between a spammer and the outside world - for instance, SPEWS has little problem blacklisting people who have found themselves to be customers of an ISP that happens to have some customers who are spammers. That's the way they work. Suddenly, people who have never spammed, who aren't aware of what's going on or why, find that they can't send or receive email - because they signed up with a cheap ISP in the Yellow Pages or that a friend recommended.
If that's not destroying the medium, what is?
I've been managing my email at home now for three years, running an SMTP server with a domain pointing at it. I do not have a spam problem, because I know how to manage my own email. Companies I deal with get their own address to contact me by, USENET postings get an email address that expires one week after its been posted. If I had time, I'd blacklist any attempt to email two USENET addresses, but as I haven't been on USENET for a while, there's not much point. Likewise, I don't use CLI or similar methods to block phone calls on the offchance that someone who isn't displaying it is a telemarketer, but I use a telephone answering machine to screen incoming calls instead. Result: I don't destroy the privacy of my friends (why should I force them to give me their telephone numbers? I don't make that a prerequesite of talking to them face-to-face.), I don't have calls from overseas blocked, but I haven't had a single telemarketer get through to me since I set the thing up. And all the people who sign up for Telephone Company "solutions" to the problem, in my experience, have had the bastards get through.
My methods are being challenged by those who'd promote the types of anti-spam/anti-telemarketer schemes that are being espoused at the moment from SPEWS to CLI. I've been called a telemarketer on telcoms newsgroups for suggesting that CLI is a nasty invasive and ultimately ineffective way of dealing with telemarketers and that there are better solutions to the problem. Various ISPs are blocking SMTP to and from customer's PCs because they're more bothered about open relays, yet none offer a genuine anti-spam service that really does only block spam. I get spam at work and on Yahoo, but I haven't got the tools to do anything about either, and yet I have to put up with Earthlink crippling my ability to send email unless it passes through their SMTP servers - forget privacy!
We need sane, rational, ways of dealing with spam. Methods of dealing with spam that are entirely about punishment, and then primarily of innocent third parties in the hope that the third parties will then punish the second parties who might, in turn, punish the actual spammers, are damaging, intrusive, disruptive, and, if the last few years are anything to go by, a complete waste of time.
Supporting someone's actions to cripple email because they say they're doing so in order to stop spammers is clearly wrong. I support the EFFs stance in not doing so, and its desire to see solutions that ensure end-users are able to send and receive email unmolested.
And, thanks to you posting that link, and me seeing someone else saying what I've been yelling for the longest time, I'm going to contact them right now and donate $100.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
And the income tax started as a "temporary" measure of some 1% worth. And I'm sure there are thousands of other equally-noxious examples.
:/
I suggest a constitutional amendment to change the country's name to "The United States of Boiled Frogs"
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
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?
The heck are you talking about? The general goal of making something illegal is for the threat of enforcement of the law to stop people from doing something. The threat of the DMCA is the whole purpose of the DMCA. The DMCA has stifled innovation and censored free speech. That it hasn't been well tested in court is irrelevant. Your average person doesn't have the ability to fight such a court case, so the law effectively stifles most people. The DMCA is certainly the root to some problems.
Take life a little less literally. No, for a literal standpoint, information does not want to be free. But would you complain if someone said that water wants to run downhill? It's just an literally incorrect. Saying that information wants to be free is short, memorable summary of a more fundamental issue: "Information tends, over time, to become more free. This happens because human beings like spreading information and spend great deals of effort to develop technologies to spread information. Over time, the cost to spread information has dropped lower and lower. One you had to spread information be word of mouth, then writing evolved to make it easier, then the printing press, then movable type, then telegraphs, telephones, radio, television, photocopiers, facsimile machines, and finally the internet. Spreading information is far easier than stopping the flow of information, all it takes is one little leak and you'll be hard pressed to stop that bit of information from spreading like wildfire. Ultimately you can't stop of the flow of information with technology. The best that you can do is slow the flow of information down, and you can only do so with a repressive government that heavily censors its own people. Information will be free because people want information to be free. Efforts to stop it are doomed, instead spend you time figuring out how to adjust to the new world order."
Of course laws apply everywhere, including on the internet. That's not terribly relevant. The point is that the laws are wrong and should be repealed. Often the laws are wrong because they create an entirely different set of rules when you're working digitally on the internet than you follow working in analog off the internet. That's hardly fair.
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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.
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