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Lofgren Introduces BALANCE Act to Modify DMCA
Infonaut writes "Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D - CA) introduced H.R. 1066, The Balance Act. It seeks to clarify 'that America's historic principles of fair use - protected under Section 107 of the Copyright Act - apply to analog and digital transmissions.' Apparently Lessig is on board, as are several associations and other organizations. If you like what you see, encourage your representative to support the bill."
If they have fax numbers, fax em. Its Quick, easy, and you can get your friends to sign it. Fax them periodically, once every couple of weeks. They take a tally on the issues of their constituents so if it piles up they will listen.
Anyhow, I think that is right...IANAL...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The 4th of your synposis is a necessary one. That means that people are allowed to write codecs to use proprietary files on other OS'es / apps. How likely is it that this section would get through after phone calls from Big Corporation(TM) wanting to make sure that only their OS can read their files created by their office app?
robi
Everyone knows that people will violate copy protection algorithms anyway, whether it is legal or not. And, the people who break the protection are not (in most cases) the average Joe. What I see this law doing is allowing enterprising individuals, who are the ones most commonly blocked by the DMCA's restriction of fair use, to continue to go about their business, in a legal fashion. This legislation just strips off the layer of rules that prevented currently legal activities from continuing, without weakening any of the rules for violation of copyrights.
Close, but not quite:
:-/
1. You are allowed to make a copy of the stuff you've bought legally: (a) for archival purposes, as long as you destroy any such copies when you no longer legally own the work, or (b) in order to "perform or display" the work, as long as it is not a public performance or display.
2. If a work is distributed subject to a non-negotiable license, that license is not enforceable to the extent that it infringes on fair use rights.
3. You are allowed to make a copy of a work and sell the copy, if you destroy the original and all copies you kept.
4. It is not illegal to circumvent copy protection if you need to do so in order to make any use of the work that is not copyright infringment, and if the copyright owners did not provide a method for such use "without additional cost or burden."
5. It is not illegal to manufacture, distribute, or market means of circumventing copy protection for purposes of enabling non-infringing uses of the work if the copyright owners did not provide such a means themselves.
All in all, this is a very big step in the right direction, IMHO, which also means that it has very little chance of actually getting anywhere.
I went ahead and read the article... not only does she seem to "get it," she also seems to be trying to put it into law in a relatively unintrusive way... by (a) extending some definitions, (b) codifying into written law some points long held in common law (e.g., those regarding fair use), and (c) definitively casting shrinkwrap licenses as unenforceable to the extent that they might be used to "take away" the Fair Use rights of consumers.
:)
It's a very well-written and fine-tuned attempt to swing the balance of copyright back toward the public again. It's not overreaching (as was the DMCA) and seems to be able to do only what it was intended to do - restore Fair Use - and no more.
It also supports things like DeCSS by making legal the disemmination of tools to allow Fair Use to be exercised IF the copyright holders do not make such means availalbe. This is tantamount to telling the RIAA and MPAA and BSA (Business Software Alliance), "Fair Use is here to stay - so you'd best figure out a way to deal with this issue technologically right now (something they have been VERY reluctant to attempt), instead of beating it to death with legislation. You have your choice - you may choose to find a solution you like - but if you don't/can't/won't address the problem, someone else can now fix it for you whether you like it or not."
Applause for Zoe!
Now, I'm off to write my congresscritter - or perhaps (since her local office is right across the street from where I work), visit in person to make my views on this matter known.
--Posted by myself.
One thing that it's important to realize is that the DMCA (and other laws of the same stripe) not only have no effect at all on piracy, they were never really intended to address piracy, regardless of all the lip service provided in that direction.
These laws are primarily a control issue, and those that bought these laws (and bought they certainly were, there is no evidence at all that the general voting constituency clamored for these laws), want to have complete control over how (and where and on what) you experience their content, and the concept of fair use is anathema to them.
The vast majority of piracy can be addressed by directly targeting the major pirating organizations that distribute in a mass production fashion.
I fully support the right of copyright owners to have the limited rights granted to them, and fully support targeting anyone who actively violates copyright law. But none of these laws, nor any of the other copyright protection schemes do anything but inconvenience the general user and attempt to criminalize legitimate fair use behaviour. The actual copyright violators out there are not detrimentally affected by these issues, at all.
In addition, laws such as the DMCA are far more often being used to hamper and threaten legitimate competition, rather than address real copyright violations.
The suggestion that has the most chance of working is to target the actual violators, and stop treating the general population as criminals simply because they actually bought the product.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
From page 8:
(c) Circumvention for Noninfringing uses -
(1) Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, a person who lawfully obtains a copy or phonorecord of a work, or who lawfully receives a transmission of a work, may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to the work or protects a right of a copyright holder under this title if -
(A) such act is necessary to make nonifringing use of the work under this title; and
(B) copyright holder fails to make publicly available the necessary means to make such noninfringing use without additional cost or burden to such person.
I don't agree with (A) "and" (B); I think it should be (A) *or* (B) there. Why should anyone's fair use be impacted by any "means" that copyright holders may or may not provide? In fact, this word "means" is not defined anywhere. Since when is it *fair use* that everyone has to use the "means" that copyright holders provide for consumption of their content?
They should have a copyright only on content, and, as long as I don't violate any other laws, I should be able to use whatever "means" I want to enjoy that content, whether or not similar "means" already exist from the copyright holders.
Finally, an attempt to plug the holes left open by the DMCA. It would seem that the RIAA, MPAA, and many software companies are largely to blame for their own predicament since the former two were willing to enter the electronic age on their own and only recently began initiatives to do the same whiole the third had reps using false advertising then suing customers who proved them wrong. While artists/musicians do have a right to recieve compensation for their works, the RIAA should not have a legally-protected monopoly on CDs even in the face of fair use. Many of the people who use Kazaa and similar services would likely stop if the greed of the CEOs and certain musicians allowed for a drop in price. Similarly, software companies should not be allowed to make false claims like "unbreakable codes" then litigate people who show how fradulent these claims are. If anything, the latter companies should be liable for false advertising and deceptive business practices, not allowed to prosper and benefit from a protectionist corporate cloak. How can we balance the need for protecting consumer and producer alike? I wonder if it would be possible to use binary files of some sort, like MP3s that could be transferred all over the place but would only work given another piece of software encoded by, say, an IP address. Artists and companies who work hard and play fair should get some benefit back, but we also need a counter-DMCA to punish both the pirates and the companies who blatantly exploit the technology for profit.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
First of all, I think you are looking at things in a sort of strange way. I am assuming you are not a troll in this response and that you truly believe what you are saying and are asking the question with honest intent.
I think that the purpose of copyright law is to build an intellectual commons by leasing the commonly owned intellectual property back to their contributors. The emphasis needs to be on fair use and the transition to the public domain rather than the sort of perpetuity of ownership and control over these things that are now the focus of the law (remembering that the CTEA was passed because Disney was about to lose copyright on the Mickey Mouse character).
So rather than asking "how can publisher's protect their investment" we need to be asking "How can we entice publishers to release material so that it can eventually become public domain?"
This is not an easy question to answer, so most people have answered simply by not asking.
My proposal would do as follows:
1: Reduce the copyright term for digital works back to 28 years.
2: Require DRM-free versions to exist in an escrow service provided by the US Copyright Office. When the copyright term expires, anyone can, for cost of copying and shipping, requiest a copy of the DRM-free content.
3: Allow total restriction for the duration of the copyright term including any DRM and overriding first sale.
4: If software is the content being protected, require that the *source code* be escrowed, not just the binaries.
Then we can try to reduce the copyright term of print items too.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
These laws are primarily a control issue, and those that bought these laws (and bought they certainly were, there is no evidence at all that the general voting constituency clamored for these laws), want to have complete control over how (and where and on what) you experience their content, and the concept of fair use is anathema to them.
This is exactly the kind of rhetoric that I see on here all the time. It's insightful from the perspective that it points out that it's detrimental to society to have restrictions in place that prevent the free flow of art and information. I wholeheartedly agree. On the other hand, this kind of argument fails to address the real question here.
The main reason I have a problem here is that I can't imagine a boardroom full of executives coming to the conclusion that free use is anathema. "Yes," they say, "if we were to prevent our product from being sampled and redistributed for educational purposes, we'd make millions!" In my mind, there's simply no way that's the case.
Remember that the people behind these corporations are exactly that; people. They're not monsters hell-bent on destroying civilization, they are simply under pressure from their constituents (anyone who owns stock) to make money doing what they do. That's the way it should work; capitalism is about profit motive. If owners of copyright all over the country want to prevent the reproduction and distribution of their intellectual property from being so easy that an autistic chipmunk could figure it out, they probably have a genuine fear of losing real customers.
Don't get me wrong here, I hate copy protection. All I'm saying is that you haven't provided an answer to my question. Given that copy protection is both worthless and harmful to the consumer, how should a copyright owner go about preventing their information from being spread all over the world and enjoyed without their being recompensed? Peace, ~SL
I am writing to encourage you to support Representative Zoe Lofgren's "Balance Act" (HR 1066).
As a software developer AND digital content consumer, I strongly believe in striking a balance between both content consumers' and producers' digital rights. HR 1066 does just this by addressing some of the more onerous effects the DMCA has (and will continue to have, if unchecked) on our future in the Information Age.
I am a strong believer in the power of the free exchange of information, and many content producing corporate media groups and organizations (at their worst embodied by organizations such as the BSA, the MPAA, and the RIAA) have so far shown absolutely no concern for the content consumer's Fair Use Rights OR the content producer's (in the form of artists, programmers, musicians, etc). rights of control over their own creations.
A balance MUST be struck, and thus far no organization or group has had the resources to combat the huge amount of money that corportate lobbiests have used to further their own profit-driven goals.
Copyright and intellectual property rights exist for the Public Good, not an unlimited, government-guaranteed revenue stream. HR 1066 is a start to bringing those ideals back to what our founding fathers had in mind when they established this great country.
I would like to close with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:
" If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices."
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson, August 13, 1813
Please SUPPORT HR 1066, and oppose any further laws that seek to erode our Fair Use Rights.
I know this isn't strictly on-topic; my point is just that you conclude from the fact that Congresswoman Lofgren has the same position you have on this issue that she's the greatest leader our nation has ever seen. Keep an eye on her, and judge her by her entire record, not just her most recent bill.
I write in my journal
Reading the p2p text something stood out that kinda shows the thought of some elected officals.
;)
HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
Songwriters can actually quantify their P2P piracy losses. By statute, a songwriter is both entitled and limited to collecting 8 cents for every digital phonorecord delivery of sound recordings containing her songs. Each illegal P2P download of a song robs the songwriter of that 8 cents.
Those 8 cents may not seem like much, but multiply 8 cents by the reported 3 billion monthly P2P downloads. It calculates out to $240 million a month. Even one-tenth of that amount represents real money to the 5,000 American songwriters.
Now another fact: If piracy profiteers were truly concerned about security and privacy threats to P2P users, they would address the security and privacy threats posed by the P2P networks themselves. A recent white paper by the University of Tulsa Center for Information Security details how KaZaA, Gnutella, and other popular P2P networks expose P2P users to spyware, Trojan horses, system exploits, denial of service attacks, worms, and viruses. A joint paper by Hewlett-Packard labs and the University of Minnesota details how the vast majority of P2P users are exposing personal information, such as credit card numbers, to every other P2P user. In fact, the United States courts, the House, and the Senate all block the use of public P2P networks because of the security concerns they pose.
So, they had to block p2p because they USED p2p programs. The madmen of washington.
Does anyone else find irony in the fact that the bill is distributed in Adobe PDF format? I seem to recall them bringing a certain Sklyarov character running afoul of them and the DMCA a few years ago....
The government needs to at least provide the option of PostScript, text-only or other non-corporate formats for bills and laws.
If this is passed, I can't imagine a situation where someone will be found guilty of breaking the circumvention law, where their action wouldn't have already been a crime in 1997.
Can anyone think of a situation where the circumvention provisions won't be useless?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Representative McDermott,
I wish to express my support of California Representative Zoe Lofgren's Balance Act (H.R. 1066). It promises to fix the gross injustice imposed on consumers with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that inhibits fair use and ultimately restrains trade. It makes illegal the circumvention of technological restrictions in any case, even that which involves fair use such as the compression of a copyright-protected CD for use in an MP3 player or the burning of a "mix" CD of licensed songs. When a consumer buys a CD, they do it not for the media that a song is recorded on, but rather the song itself. The DMCA unreasonably limits the consumer's rights over their own property and makes criminals out of those who attempt to regain them.
Furthermore, the DMCA fails in its original intention of addressing the very real problem of Internet piracy. Draconian restrictions do not fix the problem, but rather exacerbate it by alienating consumers by effectively requiring illegal activity for fair use. It places special and unreasonable restrictions on digital recordings; someone can sell a used book or lend it to a friend but cannot with a digital recording that is lawfully obtained.
Please vote for H.R. 1066 and encourage your fellow representatives to do likewise.
that *with* the DMCA in place, as she is writ, the easiest way for me to play a DVD on my Linux install, or to have a backup copy, is to avail myself of the pirate market, thus driving that very market which the act was ostensibly intended to forstall.
Go figure.
This is always a good sign that a bad law was written for the wrong reasons. The Lexmark case is a real life example of a reductio ad absurdum argument agains the DMCA. I believe the correct Latin term of legalese for this is "doofey."
Another irony is that the very existence of the DMCA serves to retain VHS as the major consumer media. People like to copy shit. They will continue to use whatever medium is available to them to do so freely. Thus, VHS will also remain a valid market for pirates.
But think of this. I have a DVD legally purchased. I have a legal DVD player as well. I am thus licensed to output the content *without any violation of the DMCA.*
So, I use this to pump output to a VHS recorder and BINGO! I'm in the VHS pirate business, each VHS tape a first generation copy of the digital source, with perferctly legitimate licenses for everything but the final VHS.
The DMCA isn't an antipiracy tool. It *enhances* the output of analog piracy. Legally.
What's wrong with this picture? As you so eloquently show, the DMCA is *not* an antipiracy measure. It is a control of the legitimate licensee measure, and one step on the road to pay per view/read/listen.
I keep buying books, on paper. I advise you do the same. It beats the hell out of trying to memorize them on a pay per read basis.
KFG
The real evil isn't the DMCA, but copyrights being taken to their logical conclusion. In the mind of the RIAA - the DMCA is just a way for them to secure rights they've always been told that they have.
If I told someone that they owned a house, but then said they couldn't sell it, rent it, go inside it, use it, or even take a loan out on it - it would be a fraud. Either they own the house or they don't, and the same is true with copyrights today. We cant keep crying out that copyrights are some type of glorious rights that will help artists, and expect people never to try and transfer, sell, or secure them from new technologies that threaten them, like the internet.
That is why this whole compromize debate is pitifull. It reminds me of the people who insisted and desperately believed that the free states could peacefully get along with the slave states in the 1850's. Then as today, they just couldn't see that the root cause of the problem was people trying to exercise rights that they've been told they have, but didn't.
IMHO, the sooner we get to the point that copyrights are not really a just right - and get rid of them, the sooner we will be able to get on with the information age and make everyone happy.
For those who may not know it, Zoe Lofgren is representing Silicon Valley in congress.
So rather than being a rare honest and insightful figther for What's Right, she is just another politician running the errands of the corporations in her district. These just happen to be corporations whose agenda is aligned with the average Slashdot reader.
That doesn't mean this legislation isn't "right". But it's naive to believe that is why she is pushing for it.
It's hard to do anything with a bill that's introduced a month before the Congress ends, as was the case with H.R. 5522. But a lot of times a late bill like that isn't introduced so that it will be passed, but rather so that it's on the record and available for consideration in the next Congress.