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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!
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.
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 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.
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
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
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?
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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 $65 might inspire two other people who wouldn't have contributed to give.
Like all organizations, the EFF must decide what cases it can take based on priorities and resources. Small differences in resources might make the difference between the EFF taking or not taking your case when Hilary and Jack come knocking.
Think about it.
It's true that all three branches of the US government are for sale. Fortunately for us, decisions that are easier to defend on principle are more affordable than crooked profit-over-people decisions. But they are not free. If you have the time and expertise, volunteer. If not, donate some money and don't stop complaining.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Executive Summary: Any measure for stopping spam must ensure that all non-spam messages reach their intended recipients.
And anti-spam blacklists, such as the MAPS RBL (Mail Abuse Prevention System Realtime Blackhole List, the most popular), result in a large number of Internet service providers (ISPs) surreptitiously blocking large amounts of non-spam from innocent people. This is because they block all email from entire IP address blocks--even from entire nations. This is done with no notice to the users, who do not even know that their mail is not being delivered.
That is exactly the situation. Large ISPs such as AOL and email providers like M$ 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.
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.