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Ask Prof. Felten About DMCA's Effects
Princeton Computer Science Professor Edward W. Felten has been mentioned and quoted frequently on Slashdot, usually about DMCA matters and, more recently, about new state laws that may make it illegal to use "unapproved" networking devices, VPNs or firewalls with your home or office Internet connection. Please avoid questions that can be answered by reading the pages linked to here or with a bit of Google research. We'll post Prof. Felten's answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions as soon as he has time to answer them.
Man that is right on the target for me. I lost my job eight months ago. I did phone support for a software package. It wasnt as high profile or sexy as being a coder, but the pay was reasonable and let me provide a decent life for my family.
And I was pretty good at it. I was promoted three times in the two years I was there and spent most of my day handling P1 cases or helping out the lower level techs. Well, the company did some cutbacks. They kept the H1 workers then had in the call center and they canned me and three other guys, all Americans. We got canned because we were making a few thousand more a year than the H1s.
So I've had to talk two jobs just to pay the bills. I'm on my feet eight hours a day, then spend the other eight doing word processing. I know some of this is my fault because I didn't finish college (newsflash! condoms not 100%!), but damnit I had a good job and I didn't deserve to lose it.
I have to shop at Walmart for clothes for my kids, my wife had to go back to work two months after our youngest was born back in July, and when our car broke down we couldn't even fucking afford to get it fixed. If I can't find another decent job in the next year, we'll probably have to sell our house and move into an apartment.
If I were a little more unhinged or if I didn't have a family to support, this could drive me over the edge, man. I think it'd do it to anyone. I'm not asking for life to be easy or fair, but to be fucked six ways to Sunday by greedy execs and their bitch politicans is just too much. How am I supposed to make it when I don't even get a fighting chance? Something's got to change.
Anyhow, vent over.
Prof. Felten has a weblog, Freedom to Tinker. It may answer some questions in advance. He is also teaching a class this semester called "Information Technology and the Law". The readings are online.
From a strictly technical standpoint there isn't much difference.
And this is the problem, and IMO a reason *not* to differentiate between the two - how can you make sure that no copy is being saved if you can't 'trust' the client that is downloading the content? To really make a difference, you need a working DRM-type system (which doesn't neccessarily mean it has to be protected by law); if you don't want DRM, it's *always* possible to reverse-engineer the protocol and record the content (case in point: ASFrecorder, a tool available to record Windows Media streams - which I do not actually use to 'pirate' streamed content, whatever that would mean, but to watch high-quality content on a low-bandwidth link).