Who Owns Your Digital Media?

Ren Bucholz writes "In what was designed to be a "safety valve," the Copyright Office is holding its tri-annual search for exemptions to the DMCA's prohibitions on circumventing access controls. The Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted comments last December that outlined four "classes of works" that should be exempt, including copy-protected CDs, region-coded DVDs, DVDs with unskippable promotional material, and public domain works that are only available on DVD. They are asking people to write in support of the four exemptions that they have proposed. The Copyright Office is only accepting comments until February 19th, so get on it!"

Comments

More copy protection isn't the answer

[Kethinov]

Who Owns Your Digital Media?
Obviously the artists who make it.

But more copy protection isn't the solution to all this pirating going on. Music, movies, TV shows, and other forms of digital media should be made downloadable on the website of whoever owns it. The owner could still profit quite handsomely from advertisements on the website, seeing as how more people will visit it to grab all the free media they would offer. Video media such as TV shows and movies would have built-in ads within them too.

Hey, what better way to "pollute" or "stop" the P2P networks than making your product perfect quality and free! Who would want to download a movie off Kazaa when you can get it off the corporate website where you know your download won't get cut off? If you rip your own product into a file, you can throw as many ads into it as you wish. Granted, there would still be P2P around, but it'd be harder to find video and audio media without ads. Most people would be subject to ads, still, and the profit would still be there, just not at the expense of the user. This system discourages pirating.

Perhaps if these companies would grow a set of balls and try something new (actually old.. TV has been doing it for decades) then they could stop worrying about copy protection. If a user downloaded your movie off your website laced with Ads you get paid for, then mass distributes it via P2P, their bandwidth is actually making you money. Why haven't these companies thought of this yet?

What exactly is Digital Media?

[civad]

I was trying to find out myself what could "Digital Media' mean: Here are some of the meanings of the term "Media" (Re: Dictionary.com)
a. An ancient country of southwest Asia in present-day northwest Iran. b. A plural of medium. c. A means of mass communication, such as newpapers, magazines, radio, or television. d. The group of journalists and others who constitute the communications industry and profession. e. (Computer Science) An object or device, such as a disk, on which data is stored. f. A culture medium. g. A specific kind of artistic technique or means of expression as determined by the materials used or the creative methods involved: the medium of lithography.
These and many more meanings of the term bring the following thoughts to my mind:
Considering 'a' Digital Media could mean that the ancient country has been restored in a digital form. In that case, the 'owner' the digital media should be the person(s) who created it OR others.
Conclusion (on ownership:)Depends.

Considering 'b' plural of medium: I think the grammar of the language ownes it.
Conclusion: MPAA/RIAA can go to hell.

Considering 'c' means of mass communication,now here's where the picture begins to blur. Going purely by the dictionary meaning; media = means of mass communication; if I own a TV set, I should also own the media, right? In that case, the form of the media does not matter (digital or otherwise)
Concluion: More research needed

'd' is most interesting media= group of journalists. I wonder how the term 'digital media' could be interpreted in this case. A cyber-clone of Larry King???
***At this point, I have lost my ability to conclude. The very idea of a digital journalist has shocked me. Imagine being interviewed by a robot... :)

'e' makes the most sense. Means of storage....However, if I go to say Best Buy and buy a pack of 50 CDs, then I own the 'digital media', right? Now the contents of MY digital media is a different story. I think nobody has the right to impose upon me what I should keep in my house/ car, etc. The same applies for digital media. (However that does not mean I have a right to steal others' stuff and keep it in my house/car, correct??)

Considering 'f' culture medium: I wish I were a Biology major to comment on it. Any takers????

Finally, 'media' means artistic expression.....so if the artist expresses something be it acting/ vocal/painting, etc...) then the artist is the owner of the 'media'...right? Then why should we even bother about the Music Labels/ Movie Studios? Arent they middlemen who are trying to milk both tte artist and their 'patrons/ audience?' Just a (more than a) few thoughts....

who owns your digital media?

[MoFoYa]

I own my digital media.

If I bought it, I should have the right and ability to use it as i see fit. If I want to load my new audio CD into my MP3 player and take it with me without having to lug around a player and CDs, I should be able to do that easily.

The P2P problem is another issue alltogether. People have been sharing music and videos for decades, but now that we can do it online in such great numbers it's starting to hurt(so they say). This battle should not be fought by changing the media. Besides, I can still make an MP3 or Mpeg from a CD/DVD with copy protection --- Analog Inputs. This method just makes it a much longer and difficult process to manipulate MY media.

Question - Why have we not heard so much as a buzz from software companies? Software is shared via kazaa(and others) in the same way music and video is.

Even the unskippable FBI warning is atrocious

[semios]

Here's the comment I made to the EFF:

I find the fact that the FBI warning isn't skippable on my DVDs disturbing. A message pops up on my television from my DVD player that my DVD is disallowing me from jumping to the main menu. My DVD player is *disallowing* me to fast forward. No where else do we suffer being controlled by our own devices. Imagine if CD players imposed such bizarre rules such as forcing you to listen to something as obnoxious as the this before you could play the disc, "The following music you are about to listen to is copyrighted material. Any unauthorized copying of this material is a felony offense."

I have some better questions....

[the_mad_poster]

...who is your representative in Washington? How do you contact them? Do you know what their position is on the issue? Have you (intelligently) made them aware of your position on the issue? Do you still buy Digital Media? Are you just bitching because you want to be one of the people who steals it?

I think a lot of people need to stop talking and start doing something. This issue pops up on /. what... every 20 or 30 minutes? What good is it going to do you to keep voicing your opinion here? You're just preaching to a choir of people who are preaching to the choir.

If you're so absolutely lazy that you can't be bothered to write up a logical, intelligent e-mail, join EFF and at least use their default e-mails to mail your reps and let them know that corporate ownership of your life is NOT acceptable and you WILL help "throw the bums out" if they don't do something about it.

I'm sure a lot of people here do take action against the crooks in Hollywood, but I also guarantee it's not enough....

Re:'defecive' disks ... 20 ywears ago it was VHS

[shepd]

Yes, it was Macrovision, and was added to help ensure the movie companies could keep their monopolistic grip on the video rental companies. Back then the price of buying a movie was in the $150 - $200 range. Without macrovision, since nobody in their right mind would pay that price for a movie, they were being pirated left right and center.

So, add macrovision in, and the cost of pirating the movies goes up the price of a Time Base Corrector. No more casual piracy (not that it was all that casual as VCRs cost $500 at that point).

So, what's the result? Pirate movies become more valuable, prices go up, and once the pirates have covered the cost of the Time Base Corrector (perhaps $5,000 back then? I don't know) they're raking it in.

Eventually movie companies realised that the tighter their grip, the more piracy, and the more money pirates would make. Huh? I'm sure you're saying. Pirates don't follow the rules (obviously), so why the hell should they care how much it angers the MPAA when their stuff is pirated? It's like the Black Sunday ECM DirecTV sent down a couple of years ago somewhat earlier to this time... It only served to make sure professional pirates got another boatload of loot getting people back up and running. I know for certain it never stemmed the tide of piracy. If anything, the advertising that the DirecTV signal was infact piratable drove users _away_ from paying for it!

So, they got a clue (the MPAA, certainly NOT DirecTV), figured out what it really costs to dupe a movie, and simply lowered prices to a point where they made money, and made piracy a waste of money.

Of course, just like DMCA of today will likely hang over the head of Americans as a reminder of the bad old days, Macrovision is still with us as nothing more than an anachronism that costs about $20 to defeat. Not that it's really worth even that much to bother.

Any of that sound like a certain other group of people?