Princeton CS Prof Edward W. Felten (Almost) Live

Some legal issues, some technical issues, a little personal insight... This is what Professor Felten gives us here. Some excellent questions rose to the top in this interview, and the answers are similarly thoughtful. Major thanks go out to Professor Felten, also to the many Slashdot people who submitted great questions!

1) From your discussions with them...
by burgburgburg

...do you perceive that legislators are aware of the extraordinarily broad negative implications of these new telecommunications laws that are being proposed/enacted?

Also, if you are aware of it, have the hardware/software manufacturers who will be affected joined together to fight these laws, or has it flown under their radar?

Prof. Felten:

Let me take the second part of the question first. Yes, various manufacturers have opposed the bills. The Consumer Electronics Association, for example, has opposed them. The MPAA has now changed the bills in an attempt to make some of the big manufacturers happier.

As to the first part of the question:

No, I don't think the legislators who support these bills really understand the harm they would do. In my experience, if you can explain to them what the problem is, they will want to do the right thing. (They may not kill a bad bill entirely, but they will at least try to amend it to fix problems.) The hard part is to get their attention, and then to explain the problem in a manner that non-geeks can understand.

The underlying problem, I think, is that geeks think about technology in a different way than non-geeks do. The differences have sunk deeply into the basic worldviews of the two communities, so that their consequences seem to be a matter of common sense to each group. This is why it often looks to each group as if members of the other group are idiots.

Here's an example. Geeks think of networks as being like the Internet: composed of semi-independent interoperating parts, and built in layers. Non-geeks tend to think of networks as being like the old-time telephone monopoly: centrally organized and managed, non-layered, and provided by a single company. It's not that they don't know that the world has changed -- if you ask them what the Internet is like, they'll say that it's decentralized and layered. But the *implications* of those changes haven't sunk deeply into their brains, so they tend not to see problems that are obvious to geeks.

Geeks will look at proposed network regulation and immediately ask "How will this affect interoperability?" or "Is this consistent with the end-to-end principle?" but non-geeks will look at the same proposal and think of different questions. They know what interoperability is, but it's just not at the front of their minds.

2) What sort of positive legislation?
by Viperion

Dr. Felten, do you have a suggestion as to what sort of legislation could be introduced that would soothe the minds of reactionary lawmakers while preserving the rights that we currently enjoy?

Prof. Felten:

Intellectual property policy is in a crisis right now, caused by widespread infringement and the excesses of the legal backlash against it. The biggest problem is hasty legislation that makes the crisis worse by overregulating legitimate behavior without preventing infringement. Obviously, it would be a positive step to repeal some of the bad laws that are already on the books. Part of the problem is a mindset that no matter what the problem is, the solution must be legislative.

But you asked about positive legislative steps, which is a harder question. The holy grail here is a non-harmful proposal that reassures legislators about the continued viability of the music and movie industries.

If you want positive legislation in this area, the best hope is a compulsory license, which would charge all users of the Net a small, mandatory fee. In exchange for this, it would become totally legal to distribute and use any audio and video content on the Net. The revenue from the fees would be split up among the creators according to a formula, based on how many times each work was downloaded or played. If you do the math, the fees can be pretty small while still replacing the revenue the music and movie industries would otherwise lose.

This is a controversial proposal. It does have drawbacks, and I'm not quite endorsing it at this point. But if you want to cut the Gordian knot and end the piracy wars, a compulsory license is one way to do so.

3) Network Identity
by Rick.C

One of the rumored new restrictions is that you may not mask the identity of a network connection. In your opinion, does this refer to the identity of each machine or the identity of the subscriber (who might be responsible for several machines behind a firewall, e.g.)?

In other words, are we talking about "people" or "boxes"?

Prof. Felten:

Some proposed bills would make it a crime to "conceal the place of origin or destination of a communication" from "any communication provider." I'm not sure whether "place" means a geographic location (such as my house) or a network address (such as my IP address) or an identifier (such as a DNS address or email address, either of which might correspond to a person). As far as I know, supporters of these bills haven't said clearly which meaning they intend.

Under any of these three readings, such a ban would cause huge problems. Lots of ordinary security and privacy measures, such as firewalls, VPNs, encrypted tunnels, and various proxies conceal the origin or destination of messages, either to protect privacy or as a side-effect of what they do.

4) Prohibition of what got us here?
by Xesdeeni

Do I completely misunderstand the scope of the DMCA, or would it have actually prohibited the actions of clone manufacturers, starting with Compaq, when they reverse-engineered the IBM PC BIOS in 1984?

It seems this simple fact alone would highlight the ludicrous nature of a law which would prohibit precisely the actions that provided the current state of the industry.

Prof. Felten:

The effect of the DMCA on reverse engineering is complicated. The DMCA does not flatly ban reverse engineering, but if you have to circumvent a technical protection measure in order to do your reverse engineering, then the DMCA will be an issue. The DMCA does have a limited safe harbor for reverse engineering, but it has been widely criticized as too narrow.

I hate to dodge your question, but I'm not really qualified to say whether what the clone makers did would be legal under 2003 law.

5) Signal to Noise
by sterno

One of the problems I see with efforts to try to get the DMCA and similar legislation revoked and prevented in the future, is a matter of signal to noise. Most voters don't care about the DMCA or even know about it, and those who do usually have to worry about more important priorities like the state of the economy or the war in Iraq. So, my question is, how can we possibly make the DMCA and its kin important issues to our legislators? Sure, I can write them, but if they are given the choice of voting for the DMCA and getting some campaign money, or voting against and pleasing a handful of constituents, which will they choose?

It's unlikely that the handful of consitutents is going to vote against the candidate purely because of their DMCA stance. Personally, I'm very against the DMCA but when the election time comes around, I'm not voting for the anti-DMCA candidate, I'm voting for the guy who's going to fix the economy and patch our international relationships. So how can somebody like myself really get their voice heard by the right people when the threat of "voting for the other candidate" isn't credible?

Prof. Felten:

In the short run, I think it's more productive to convince legislators than to threaten them. As you say, there won't be many single-issue DMCA voters.

But even if technological freedom issues like the DMCA aren't the only factor in a voting decision, they still might tip the balance for some voters in some races. Even that is enough to make a difference. Legislators do seem to care what their constituents think, and they do seem to have a fear of doing something that looks stupid afterward.

In the long run, I hope the public comes to see how technological improvement flows from the freedom of technologists to learn and create.

If average voters view censorship of technologists in the same way they view other forms of censorship, we'll be in much better shape.

6) DMCA and EUCD
by Brian Blessed

In your opinion, do residents of Europe and other US-friendly (business-wise) areas have a hope of avoiding being adversely affected by the DMCA (or superDMCA) or its foreign implementations (e.g. EUCD) and is technological civil disobedience the best form of activism to follow?

Prof. Felten:

There is still hope in Europe, but they seem to be heading for the same kind of regulatory regime we see here in the U.S. Parts of the U.S. government have been working hard for years to export the U.S. version of intellectual property law to the rest of the world. All indications are that Europe will follow us down this path.

7) Our position in the world
by TooTechy

Do you see this new legislation altering our ability to work remotely? Will these restrictions place undue hardship on US workers when compared with facilities in other countries? Is it likely that other countries will evolve faster technologically as a result of these draconian measures?

Prof. Felten:

The new regulations on technology will impose a drag on our technological capabilities, and hence on our productivity. If other countries are foolish enough to impose the same regulations on their citizens (and it seems that many will be), then we'll come out even from a competitive standpoint. More importantly, we'll all be worse off than we could have been had we all followed better policies.

8) Strategy
by Meat Blaster

Our current methods of informing the public and the government about the evils of the DMCA seem to be reactive and passive -- defending a lawsuit, writing public responses to the librarian of Congress periodically about the DMCA, setting up resources where the public if they were so inclined could stop by and learn about the problem.

Do you feel that it would be a good time for a shift in strategy towards more active measures such as forming a group to lobby representatives directly, issuing mailings about the DMCA particularly to those whose representatives support legislation like the DMCA/UCITA/SSSCA, or beginning a television ad campaign? Such an endeavor is bound to cost a bit, but I can't help but feel that particularly with 2004 coming up having a bit of organized PR on our side of the debate would be quite helpful.

Prof. Felten:

I agree that positive action is important. I view this as a two-track process.

The first track is the one you suggest, of building up lobbying muscle to challenge harmful regulations. This is challenging, given who is on the other side, and given the tendency of our opponents to buy off important players with special-purpose exceptions to their legal regulations. (For example, the DMCA has special carve-outs for ISPs and device makers.) We're really just starting in this area, but we need to remember how much progress has been made since the passage of the DMCA, which met very little organized resistance at the time.

The second track is to get better at explaining ourselves and at persuading people that they should support our positions. Especially, we need to do a better job of finding folks out there who are our natural allies, and convincing them to join us on these issues, even if we disagree about some other issues.

An example: auto parts manufacturers are worried by recent DMCA developments, such as the case where Lexmark has successfully (so far) used the DMCA against a maker of replacement parts for Lexmark printers. Auto parts manufacturers are worried that the DMCA mindset, which treats unauthorized analysis and interoperation as improper, will leak into their world.

9) Roadblocks to IP protections?
by Xesdeeni

Doesn't the DMCA prohibit a company from investigating a violation of their IP if the violation exists on the other side of encryption?

For example, if company M utilized a software algorithm (putting aside the argument about software patents for the moment) inside an encrypted data stream (audio file, video file, etc.) that was actually patented by company A, wouldn't it be a violation of the DMCA for company A to investigate this violation of their patent rights? And wouldn't any evidence they uncovered in violation of the DMCA be inadmissible if they tried to enforce their patent rights against company M?

Prof. Felten:

This sounds like a likely DMCA violation, but you'll have to consult your lawyer to be sure.

This is just one instance of a more general problem. Laws like the DMCA that limit the flow of information will inevitably make it harder to find out about certain types of misbehavior. Sometimes the misbehavior will be patent infringement. Sometimes it will be a manufacturer misleading their customers about the quality of their product.

We value free speech because vigorous public discussion benefits everybody, though many of those benefits are subtle and indirect. So far, the legal system has not fully realized that speech about technology needs to be valued as highly as speech about other topics. I think the law will eventually catch on, as it becomes clearer to the average person that their experience of the world, and their interaction with the world, is mediated by technology.

10) Tell me...
by Dicky

For the love of God, man, why???

Or to put it slightly less sillily, what was (and is!) your motivation for getting involved in this side of the Computer Science world, say, as opposed to the nice safe, clean theoretical stuff?

Prof. Felten:

I'm not entirely sure myself. Here's the best answer I can manage:

In deciding what to work on, I really just follow my own quirky sense of what is interesting and important. If others find the things I do interesting and important, that's a lucky accident.

But that can't really be the answer to your question, because many of my colleagues follow the same rule, and they end up working on different sorts of things than I do. So I must have a different sense of taste than they do, but I'm not sure why.

The answer doesn't lie in my personal life. When I leave work, I am not at all a rebel or nonconformist. I have a stable, boring, happy suburban life, which I wouldn't change for anything.

I should also point out that I do some work that fits into the traditional academic computer science framework. But you won't read about that on Slashdot.

Comments

This says it all...

[TopShelf]

"I should also point out that I do some work that fits into the traditional academic computer science framework. But you won't read about that on Slashdot. "

That's too bad, really - I'm sure something like that could squeeze out a couple Evil Bit dupes or the odd M$ bug...

Re:This says it all...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do read about the computer science studies that are "worthy" of headlines here. Remember the whole "Prime is P" thing? That was big. That made it to the headlines.

Most readers are probably not going to understand (or care to understand) the majority of current CS research. This isn't because Slashdot readers aren't smart enough, it's just simply because a lot of them don't have the background.

Things like small improvements on the runtime complexity of an obscure clustering algorithm might be important...but they don't necessarily belong on the headlines in your local newspaper.

If you want news like this, simply join the Association for Computing Machinery or subscribe to some other Computer Science journal.

Re:This says it all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most readers are probably not going to understand (or care to understand) the majority of current CS research. This isn't because Slashdot readers aren't smart enough, it's just simply because a lot of them don't have the background.

Doesn't prevent the multitude of IANAL comments on IP issues.

Re:This says it all...

[metlin]

No offense, but understanding a general nuance of a law and commenting on something like say, DMCA, doesn't require as much effort as would, say, a paper on graphics that talks about surface rendering using scattered data sets.

Thats because the amount of basic background knowledge required to comment on something like a legal viewpoint, or express an opinion on DMCA isn't as much as it would be when it comes to talking about the Poincaré Conjecture or Finite Automata Theory :-)

Besides, a legal viewpoint is more of a personal expression - it might just affect you tomorrow, but Spintronic Devices aren't really gonna affect any of us tomorrow, contrary to whatever you may want to believe.

I guess its more of a social thing.

Professor Felten!

[Anonymous Coward]

Professor Felten is teh burn1nator!!!~!1

BURNINATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1~!~ @!1

Lobbying Campaign

[rcathcart]

Do you feel that it would be a good time for a shift in strategy towards more active measures such as forming a group to lobby representatives directly, issuing mailings about the DMCA particularly to those whose representatives support legislation like the DMCA/UCITA/SSSCA, or beginning a television ad campaign?

I for one would be willing to donate to such a campaign. If someone set something up on Paypal, I imagine there would be a significant amount of contributions. Maybe not enough for a television ad campaign, but certainly enough to get this issue more attention.

Re:Lobbying Campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd donate as long as it wasn't thru paypal.

Re:Lobbying Campaign

[j-beda]

I think the EFF has online donations ability.

Re:Lobbying Campaign

[jonabbey]

EFF abandoned their lobbying effort some years ago, in favor of legal assistance/court challenge type efforts.

Mandatory Licensing

[Anonymous Canard]

If you want positive legislation in this area, the best hope is a compulsory license, which would charge all users of the Net a small, mandatory fee. In exchange for this, it would become totally legal to distribute and use any audio and video content on the Net. The revenue from the fees would be split up among the creators according to a formula, based on how many times each work was downloaded or played. If you do the math, the fees can be pretty small while still replacing the revenue the music and movie industries would otherwise lose.

Indeed, I've come to believe the same thing. There has to be some (possibly voluntary) way of assessing what kind of content is being copied, and in what quantities in order to assign proportional royalty payments and thereby preserve profit motive among the content creators. But freely copyable data is the only system that really makes sense to me at a societal level. Data ownership just doesn't scale in proportion with data networks and immeasurable value is lost in this way.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[gbjbaanb]

in the UK at least, we pay a additional fee whenever we buy blank cassettes, either music or video, that go to support the music industry from 'illegal' copying onto them.

Charging ISPs would just be a continuation of this system which I think, no-one has an issue with.
ISPs can (and do) block filesharing ports so they could even charge only those users using them.

I agree thugh, that once you've paid this fee, all content should be freely available.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[gpinzone]

The problem with this system is that it disconnects piracy with this new "tax" on all consumers. For example, the actions of some 15 year old who downloads every mp3 in sight just to be "l33t" causes me to pay more for my Internet conenction.

Besides, I'd love to hear from the privacy experts how all this reporting is going to go on about what mp3s I like to play and still be 100% anonymous.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[dougmc]

in the UK at least, we pay a additional fee whenever we buy blank cassettes, either music or video, that go to support the music industry from 'illegal' copying onto them.

The US has similar fees as well. Some are mandated by law (like the DAT tax) and others (some of the money you pay for analog media goes to the RIAA and similar organizations, for example) seem to be more of an industry agreement.

(I've heard about the latter (analog) issue from people in the music industry, but have never actually seen anything more definate. Can anybody corroborate or disprove it?)

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. All I have to do is publish the most crap I possibly can (randomly created haikus and such). Then I too am entitled to a portion of the collected funds.

Who is to determine how the funds are distributed? It would likely go to the RIAA/MPAA, etc. The small companies would get nothing. It won't work.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[octover]

If we are already tracking how much something is downloaded couldn't we just take it a step farther and charge the appropriate parties. Seriously if I am only listening to band X, Y and Z I only want them to give them my hard earned cash. I don't want to support some band just because a label decided to sign them. Also you have the potential for abuse, just think how crap the music scene is that attracts those with lots of time on their hands who could artificially inflate band z's share of the profits. (read: the young pre-teen/teens who don't have jobs). Granted if you are in to the boy bands I imagine this would be a great system.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[mouthbeef]

We have many compulsory licenses in place that require auditing on these lines (live performance, radio, etc), and none of them are at odds with anonymity.

It seems like you're thinking that auditing for disbursement would have to be perfect, rather than representative. There are lots of ways imaginable for gathering statistical impressions of the traffic on P2P nets without mandatory loss of privacy:

* Paid Nielsen families who run spyware on their own HDDs

* Request monitoring at super-peers

* Network spidering

* A standards-defined API that clients can send an XML ping to, describing the tracks downloaded without any personal info

* Etc.

The anonymity argument is circular: we have no deployed technology in the field that can audit P2P networks without compromising anonymity *because* we have no compulsory license that demands such a system.

DRM is an enormous business that's sucking billions of dollars in capital and millions of talented engineer hours. If the need for DRM were obviated and a business were created for P2P auditing, do you really think that those engineers will be unable to come up with an anonymity-respecting system for deriving a good approximation of the relative popularity of digital music files on P2P nets?

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Unkle]

I am not a privacy expert, but I would not think that there would need to be a record of what any single person downloads, just how many times a particular item was downloaded (i.e., song X was downloaded 500 times this month.). That way, the record company would be able to be compensated for whatever 500 downloads a month is worth.

The concern about "1337" kiddies causing an increase to any other person's fee would be, most likely, insignificant. Remember, this would be spread out over a few million users, and I doubt there are so many heavy users that it would cause undue problems. Any true solution to this, though, would likely include tracking at the very least numbers on how much a person downloaded, which brings the privacy quesion up again...

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Smallpond]

There are some benefits to mandatory payment schemes. I'd love to see a tiny charge per e-mail. All spam would disappear instantly.

Instead of doing complicated formulas (ae?) for type of content, another approach would be to collect on a per MB network bandwidth basis. Recipient pays, provider collects. Slashdot would be well funded (as would every site mentioned here). And you wouldn't have the RIAA or MPAA getting a piece of the pie.

Obviously, everybody would want to be a content provider and would put enormous flash-trash files on their website, but browsers can be modified to do filtering.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Jason Earl]

I am perfectly happy with the content that I can legally download right now. Why in the world should I have to pay a fee so that the rest of you can get your N-Sync fix?

The solution to the current intellectual property problem is simple. The copyright holders should target abusers and prosecute the hell out of them. If people are faced with the prospect of being prosecuted for distributing copyrighted works illegally then the current problems will clear themselves up.

More importantly, prosecuting lawbreakers would make the copyright holders happy without making filesharing illegal. There are plenty of folks that are more than happy to have you download their work. This content would be a lot more popular if trading Eminem albums was likely to get you thrown in jail.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[jdavidb]

I don't believe that's the right solution, but I'd be willing to pay for it.

At least until the public wakes up. ;)

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[johannesg]

I can see numerous problems with this:

1) I don't see it working on the international level. I cannot imagine (say) France paying the record companies in the US, for example.

2) I don't think a fair solution to dividing the money exists. Any solution based on measurement of downloads or similar will instantly create a small industry around 'download boosting'.

3) Why should it be limited to music and video's? Why not software, books, patents, etc.?

4) Would this just be for personal accounts, or also for professional accounts? Would Microsoft have to pay a charge for every employee that has an account on their system (or do we simply assume that noone ever downloads anything at work?)? What if I had a one-man company?

5) Who decides how much money the record industry will get? The record industry themselves? The US government? The UN? How will we stop them from lobbying for ever-increasing income (which they will be sure to do)? How will we respond to lesser economic conditions, like now?

6) What incentive will exist for the record companies to create saleable songs? They might just as well sell white-noise (song argue they already do, but that's another point), once they have a guaranteed income.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[mouthbeef]

> 1) I don't see it working on the international level. I cannot
> imagine (say) France paying the record companies in the US, for
> example.

This is a failure of your imagination, then. France *already* does this. Billions of dollars are collected globally (including in France) by various rights societies as part of compulsory licensing schemes, for music companies.

> 2) I don't think a fair solution to dividing the money exists.
> Any solution based on measurement of downloads or similar will
> instantly create a small industry around 'download boosting'.

Another failure of imagination. We've had compulsory licensing since the Piano Roll was litigated in 1908, with rights-societies and disbursement. It doesn't have to be exact, just representative and fair. I think that the capability of technologists to create good stats from network traffic -- even decentralized netowrk traffic -- has been amply demonstrated (see Kelly Truelove's research when he was with Clip2, for some examples). The absence of a P2P auditing system is hardly surprising, given the absence of a compulsory licensing scheme (which would be the raison d'etre for such an auditing system), and is in no way indicative of the impossibility of such a system.

> 3) Why should it be limited to music and video's? Why not
> software, books, patents, etc.?

Why should it be? There's a compulsory *music* license for radio that doesn't include any compulsory *text* license -- IOW, you can legally play any song you lay hands on on your levy-paid radio station, but you can't read a book aloud without an author's permission. No one is credibly threatening to regulate both general purpose PCs and the Internet out of existence to enforce copyright on books. Why would we solve a problem that didn't exist?

> 4) Would this just be for personal accounts, or also for
> professional accounts? Would Microsoft have to pay a charge for
> every employee that has an account on their system (or do we
> simply assume that noone ever downloads anything at work?)? What
> if I had a one-man company?

MSFT could pay the levy, if they want to allow their employees to download music. Given the legal liability companies like Sun have faced when nailed with takedown and disconnect notice for file-sharing by their employees, it might very well be cheaper to buy a low-cost blanket license than to do the enforcement (which is not only technically challenging, but invasive of privacy and requires Vader-like HR policy) to shield them from contributory infringement liability. If I was a CEO faced with a choice of spending $N to allow my employees to download MP3s with impunity or spending $N to lock down my network, reduce its functionality, train my employees, audit my system, etc, I know which one I'd choose.

>> 5) Who decides how much money the record industry will get? The
> record industry themselves? The US government? The UN? How will
> we stop them from lobbying for ever-increasing income (which
> they will be sure to do)? How will we respond to lesser economic
> conditions, like now?

This is a good question: it's the important one. The amount of the levy should be negotiated. This negotiation will be a lot easier to accomplish, presumably, than the alternative: negotiating which kinds of network technology and general-purpose PC hardware is lawful. Those are the negotiations we're undergoing on the Hill today: I know which negotiation I'd prefer.

>> 6) What incentive will exist for the record companies to create
> saleable songs? They might just as well sell white-noise (song
> argue they already do, but that's another point), once they have
> a guaranteed

The music industry has been governed by compulsories since 1908. There are compulsories on reproduction, distribution, performance, broadcast and more. These compulsories certainly do change the way that record companies do business, but the idea that it would provide an incentive to produce tracks of dead air. For one thing, the levies collected for compulsories are proportionally disbursed: that is, the more popular your track is, the more money you get.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[MntlChaos]

Instead of doing complicated formulas (ae?) for type of content, another approach would be to collect on a per MB network bandwidth basis. Recipient pays, provider collects. Slashdot would be well funded (as would every site mentioned here). And you wouldn't have the RIAA or MPAA getting a piece of the pie. You are now making microsoft even richer than they are (every clueless (l)user is now downloading msn.com every time they open a browser. $$ for M$. Ditto such funds for google. in other words, BLOAT BLOAT BLOAT! Now nobody has an incentive to save bandwidth. make your whole website a 24-bit bmp screenshot of the page with an imagemap for links! I R GENIUS! Lots of money for nothing really useful because this is a TON of bandwidth. Translation: such a system might work, but we do need the complicated formulae for it.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[br0ck]

If they pay record companies or bands based on numbers of downloads, and the tracking isn't per user, it would be trivially easy for a band to just download millions of copies of their own music and reap the cash rewards.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[belrick]

The real problem with compulsory license is: where is the competition in the fee market? Although there may be competition among musicians and the're promoters for a larger piece of the pie created by the compulsory licence, what creates the market for that compulsory license fee to be driven down? How does that whole industry, whose total net income would then be determined by legislation and regulation, compete with other industries? Or rather, the reverse? How does the auto industry compete with the music industry when the music industry is guaranteed a piece of the consumers' "disposable" income?

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to support some band just because a label decided to sign them.

No problem then.

Because the artists wouldn't (and never have) see a penny of this tax.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[SiliconEntity]

It's sad to see civil libertarians like Felten and the EFF jumping on the mandatory licensing bandwagon. Few policies could be as unfair, misguided and unimplementable.

Mandatory licensing is unfair because people are forced to pay a fee even if they don't take advantage of what they are paying for. Everyone would be paying for music and movies and whatever other content people start pirating, even if they don't partake of those sources of entertainment.

(This is assuming that everyone is charged this "content tax" just to use the net. If we try to inspect what people download to see if it's music, etc., that just raises enormously more problematic issues in terms of privacy, restrictions on encryption, and a host of other negative consequences.)

Mandatory licensing is misguided because it throws in the towel prematurely. We don't know, yet, whether technological means for protecting content are going to succeed. The situation is still in flux, with proposals like Palladium and DRM, or the new ideas from Cryptography Research still offering the potential for letting content producers get paid.

Mandatory licensing is unimplementable because there is no way to fairly divide up the funds. Realize that the amount of money raised by the modem tax, excuse me, the content tax, would have to be comparable in size to the combined revenues of the music, movie, game and software industries, if we accept that those goods are all going to be pirated and this tax will replace their current sources of funding. We're talking probably $50 billion or more. What do you think is going to happen when you put that pot of money on the table and try to allocate it based on how many times things get downloaded?

People are going to cheat! They'll build all kinds of download bots and use other methods to get their statistics inflated. It's hard enough to measure popularity today; once you have tens of billions of dollars riding on the outcome it's going to be impossible.

That's one thing markets are good at: by making people pay for what they get, they reveal very clearly which items are worth more to the public than others. Trying to replicate this information service using some kind of polling or sampling of downloads is not only going to be invasive, it is just not going to work.

I wish we could nip this stupid idea in the bud, but apparently it is the best the "freedom" community can do. Taxing net users so the government can subsidize the arts is the worst possible solution to our problem.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Anonymous Canard]

I am perfectly happy with the content that I can legally download right now. Why in the world should I have to pay a fee so that the rest of you can get your N-Sync fix?

The current system, in which companies are trying to protect their digital assets through a combination of legislation such as the DMCA, lawsuits such as the ones posted last week, and copy protection systems that prevent fair use have a net negative impact on society that goes far beyond whether you would personally benefit from being able to download N-sync. I personally have not either purchased or copied music from an RIAA member in at least two years, but that doesn't mean that I'm not impacted by societal impact of current policies.

The solution to the current intellectual property problem is simple. The copyright holders should target abusers and prosecute the hell out of them. If people are faced with the prospect of being prosecuted for distributing copyrighted works illegally then the current problems will clear themselves up.

So you don't care about N-Sync... do you want your kid, or your mom, or your brother thrown in jail for a year and fined $500k? Do you really think that taking these people out of circulation will make the US a safer and better place to live? I hardly know anyone who has never gotten a copy of an album taped by a friend, or more commonly these days, a CD-R. These are regular people you are talking about, not the criminal fringe. I am amazed that you would advocate locking them all up over pulling a couple bucks out of your own pocket so that they could do as they please. You'll pay far more in taxes to imprison half the population than you'd ever pay to give them the liberty to share their music.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Mr. No Skills]

I am amazed that you would advocate locking them all up over pulling a couple bucks out of your own pocket so that they could do as they please. You'll pay far more in taxes to imprison half the population than you'd ever pay to give them the liberty to share their music.

I'm not willing to kick in a few bucks so that shoplifters don't go to jail. How is that different from illegal distribution of copyrighted materials? If my brother is distributing stolen material, I'll turn him into the cops myself (of course, after I've educated him on thou shalt not steal). Stolen copyrights hurts more than just overpaid musicians -- programmers get paid based on IP too.

The only reason this is a problem is because the technology has made it dirt cheap to copy/steal material and distribute it, to the point where a whole generation thinks its OK. I don't think the answer is to charge a tax on everyone just because some place no value on the ownership and law. And, it remains to be seen if technology goes the direction of letting the authorities more easily watch what I'm doing or quickly track down servers pumping out illegal copies of songs.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[geekee]

This is the worst idea I've heard on the subject. Socializing the movie and music industry will not help artists or the labels. If the govt. starts taxing internet users, who decides how the money is divided? The govt. certainly should NOT be involved in this. If this happens, how much money your company makes will be based on how well you lobby congress instead of how many people actually like the artists you're promoting. It's a terrible socialist idea that is also unfair to users. Users now have to pay the same amount whether they want 1 movie or 100 movies. If I only want 1 movie, I shouldn't have to subsidize someone elses 100 movies.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Jason Earl]

Of course I don't want my family thrown in jail for stealing copyrighted material. I don't want them thrown in jail for robbing a bank or stealing cars either. Stealing copyrighted material is just as illegal as these acts, the only reason that you feel differently is that you probably have thousands of dollars worth of stolen MP3s on your hard drive. Your arguments amount to trying justify an action that you know is wrong.

I am not talking about imprisoning half the planet. I am simply talking about targetting the most prolific distributors (who essentially have crossed into the criminal fringe) and trying them. The "normal folk" will get the picture.

As far as trading music, there are plenty of bands that actually encourage you to share their music with others. Many of them are even very very good. I think that in the long run file sharing is going to wreck the music industry, but that isn't going to happen as long as the music that gets traded belongs to members of the RIAA. So the solution is simple. If you really want to trade music, find a copyright holder that doesn't mind.

So keep your hands out of my pocket. If I want to purchase music, I will, but I am not paying for your music.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Anonymous Coward]

Existing compulsory licenses work a bit differently from how you describe the process. And there is at least one kink to work out in moving this paradigm to the internet, but the fundamental idea (I think ) is sound.

Currently things like ASCAP/BMI work by requiring businesses taking advantage of compulsory licenses to pay a fee. The fee is distributed back to copyright holders based on research indicating who wrote how much of what got performed. If all of the distribution on the net were done by businesses this model would be an easy paradigm transfer.

The problem is that P2P doesn't have a commercial aspect to it. So how are we going to collect the fees without simply levying it against all potential users (which I personally find distasteful)? I'd propose a standard fee, then require it to be paid by any business or group involved in the operation of a server, whether that server hosts the file or simply facilitates the file transer. Then that service can charge users a per download fee commensurate with their activity on the system (or a flat fee or whatever they want to do as long as they cover the required fees to the license agency).

The cottage industry around providing the needed servers for P2P is already out there (look at sites like torrentse.cx and the OpenNap servers). Other more central providers would probably charge not only a fee to cover the license fee but also to cover their bandwidth and central server fees.

Of course this won't help stop people from sharing via Usenet, but given what a pain in the keister that is, I think most people would opt for P2P (which would blossom under a compulsory license system).

I think your fears are based on perhaps an imperfect implementation of the notion of compulsory license. Charging all users a blanket tax is not the way to go. A system as much like ASCAP/BMI is as close to a free market as you can get, and probably a lot more efficient than all this fighting between the MPAA/RIAA and citizens.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[rabiteman]

I can just picture Metallica asking users to download as many of their tracks as possible...

``Sorry we were such jerks about Napster, guys. Knock yourselves out, we insist!''

Meanwhile they're laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Anonymous Canard]

The only reason this is a problem is because the technology has made it dirt cheap to copy/steal material and distribute it, to the point where a whole generation thinks its OK. I don't think the answer is to charge a tax on everyone just because some place no value on the ownership and law. And, it remains to be seen if technology goes the direction of letting the authorities more easily watch what I'm doing or quickly track down servers pumping out illegal copies of songs.

So you have two alternatives. Either you make criminals of this 'generation [which] thinks its OK', or else you change the law so that it actually is OK. I prefer the latter. Beyond that we'll just have to agree that our opinions differ.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Mr. No Skills]

Either you make criminals of this 'generation [which] thinks its OK', or else you change the law so that it actually is OK.

There are probably more than two alternatives (I thought of four):

Make criminals of this 'generation [which] thinks its OK'

Educate those who might be tempted to take others' property, and intellectual property is treated as property.

Technology develops which greatly restricts the ability to casually break the law, or that makes it easy to catch the large offenders.

Change the law so that it actually is OK.

The last item is the only one I have a problem with. It too greatly devalues the act of invention/creation, which makes it difficult to be rewarded for creativity. And I would agree the others are difficult to implement.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[Flower]

Your proposal only works if it is easy to find the offender and cheap to prosecute them. The first will become more and more difficult as P2P schemes become more sophisticated. The second will never happen imo. Besides the lawyers fees, court costs, etc., etc., you have to deal with the reprecussions of suing your customer base and the cost of the negative PR that will entail.

And it will have to be at the core of their customer base. Heck, you've already got a handful of students being sued for billions in damages and I haven't heard any news about how file sharing is dropping. Once you've got people talking about how the neighbors just got sued because the kids downloaded an album then watch copyright become a bullet issue. And I do believe that the media industries are completely aware that this type of backlash will happen if they actually go after the typical infringer.

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[jafac]

It's really the whole Toll Road dilemma.

Is it better to take every driver on a road, and extract fifty cents for their share of building and maintaining the road?

Or is it better to simply make everybody pay for the road through a general tax?

In the first case, you add the overhead of all those toll collection and enforcement employees, the overhead incurred to the users having to wait in long lines to pay, which increases the congestion, and reduces the overall efficiency of the road as a traffic conduit.

In the second case, you end up charging people who don't directly benefit from the road. But bottom line is, EVERYBODY benefits from the road (except maybe the people whose houses were bulldozed to build it). In fact, many stores and businesses will thrive only BECAUSE the road was built, and perhaps benefit even more than a person who shaves 20 minutes a day off his or her commute because they drive that road.
(this is the same as the argument that freely distributing music is a benefit to the musician because it increases exposure).

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[jafac]

I hate to reply to my own post, but I just thought of an additional argument in support of "socializing" IP consumption;

IP itself is a natural public resource, a monopoly access to the market, granted to the copyright/patent owner BY the government. And therefore, is actually a public resource established for private gain (presumably in exchange for eventual disbursement to the public domain).
In this way - funding public IP access via a general tax is really a no-brainer.

We just have to figure out how some old lady in Texas benefits from my weekly Buffy The Vampire Slayer viewing habit . . .

Re:Mandatory Licensing

[bdolan]

this is a can of worms ...

it would totally remove any incentive to make music or other content that has a high cost per sale ratio, i.e. small bands, any kind of music using a large orchestra for non-classical music, ancient music variations with instruments that may only last a few songs in their remaining lifetime, other audio/music contect that is of limited interest but high value, experimental or foreign music, and certainly almost any short story delivered through music.

much music will never achieve 10,000 copies sold through any means (that means you are not in the top 300 in the US) ... why does there need to be price fix. You absolutely can't tour on this, much of this is not club material (the audience might not stay up this late) At best, if you have a nationwide audience of, say, 10,000 who would buy a CD or CD track, you might have a club audience in, say a club in a particular location in LA on a given (non-Laker, etc, etc.) night at best of 1 or 0 fans! Exciting. You need electronic distribution.

As a separate if not equally difficult issue, is that you need to have pricing that makes sense for the market, i.e. if you have Indian, NZ, and US fans, you likely can't charge any of them a day's pay to listen to your track as much as they might like to buy your track. The reverse of region control is pricing for the average market, i.e. much less than the US market. It will still exclude most of the low end of the world market, because food is more important. Do I keep my rights if i move (or travel) or sell my collection?

Also, in any licensing, I want to be able to release in multi unit sizes--a 30 second ditty, a 2 minute song, a 4 minute song, and maybe a 10 minute song or along with a bulk buy of my best songs for a bulk price. My 10 minute song may be the superior version, my 4 minute song a standard version, but maybe the 2 minute version is the really great version of the short ones that should get the real premium! Also, I might have a 2 minute version which is a computerized sped up version of the 3 minute version that has the same content -- which is licenses at the high price -- the one that preserves my time or the one that lags? And how did you set a "fixed price for all the works?"

Professor Felton, the optimist...

[velo_mike]

"No, I don't think the legislators who support these bills really understand the harm they would do. In my experience, if you can explain to them what the problem is, they will want to do the right thing." ... "The hard part is to get their attention, and then to explain the problem in a manner that non-geeks can understand" Isn't the hard part convincing them to vote against the PACs who funded their campaigns and in favor of the individuals they're supposed to represent? Beyond that, so many laws are passed as riders or ammendments to unrelated bills. Several politicians have stated "I didn't know I voted for X". Shouldn't we expect our legislators to Read The F***ing Bill before voting?

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[skillet-thief]

Gee! You've ruined my whole day...

How can you be so pessimistic about our great democracy, the greatest democracy in the whole wide world?

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[Angry White Guy]

Don't shoot the messenger. I would say that the government ruined your day, and if that's all you got, you'd better count yourself lucky. Tomorrow might be better.

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[skillet-thief]

Sorry, but I was being sarcastic. Can't bring myself to do those tags...

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[gantzm]

We are not a Democracy, the term you are looking for is Constitutional Republic.

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[91degrees]

Surely not. We all know there are only a few types of government - Anarchy, Despotism, Monarch, communism, Republic, democracy, and fanaticism.

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Congradulations, you are now a soldier of the Evil Empire.

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or at least vote to stay until they have.

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[Minna Kirai]

We are not mammals, we're quadrupeds.

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[gillisgirl]

But with the right wonders, you can change government type at will. Very helpful when you want to go to war.

Re:Professor Felton, the optimist...

[yoha]

Riders have to be voted on to be attached to a bill. They aren't just put there with glue. Any representative who says "I didn't know I voted for X" is playing politics.

I already pay a small fee to fileshare

[gbjbaanb]

for filesharing - my ISP has 2 offerings for ADSL - a cheaper version where filesharing and other ports are blocked, and a more expensive version (10% more) that has various other services and filesharing enabled.

So.. in effect, I am already paying a fee to share files. I have no problem with this - in the UK at least, some ISPs are putting limits on bandwidth usage to stop people sucking up everything they can see continuously, my ISPs way of reducing bandwidth usage is to make us pay slightly more for a better service (or slightly less for the basic service). I should point out that the basic service is cheaper than nearly all the other UK ISPs.

Charging a small fee to the ISPs who allow filesharing would just see the services my ISP offers being offered by other ISPs. No doubt some people will still complain about having to pay an extra $2 a month...

my ISP - PlusNet

Re:I already pay a small fee to fileshare

[mouthbeef]

What's more, there are a bunch of hidden costs that would be offset by an ISP levy that legalized filesharing:

* Legal compliance: ISPs are drowning in automated takedown/disclosure/termination notices from the recording industry to stop file-sharers. These aren't cheap to deal with and they're REALLY not cheap to litigate (check out the $millions that Verizon is spending to keep from having to disclose private customer info to rights-holders)

* Bandwidth: The primary design consideration in P2P design today is legal-attack-resistance. This makes superpeer, swarmloading and optimistic cacheing strategies very hard to implement. If P2P were legal, P2P developers could build tools that minimize the amount of non-local bandwidth used through optimistic cacheing and preferring downloads from nearby hosts on the same ISP's network. Given that bandwidth cost is the reason most often cited for ISP opposition to P2P, this should make a compulsory *very* attractive to ISPs.

There's a lot of worry about freeriders in such a system: "I don't download music, why should I pay for it," but your ISP is already *full* of freeriders. I have Earthlink DSL, but I manage my own mail on a server in a cage, and my own web-server on another server in another cage. Yet I still "pay" for these services. In some sense, I am subsidizing the activities of everyone with an @earthlink.net email address. But the cost of rebating my $0.50/month is more than $0.50/month: IOW, ditching the freeriders makes the service more expensive, not cheaper.

And FWIW, since I travel a lot, I use my "free" 20h of Earthlink dial-up nearly every month. Which means that I'm a freerider on Earthlink's dialup service, subsidized by DSL customers who never dial Earthlink from a hotel-room.

Let ISPs who don't want to offer file-sharing opt out of the levy. I could get DSL from another ISP, like RawBandwidth, which won't offer me POP or SMTP, but it's no cheaper than Earthlink's national DSL.

Re:I already pay a small fee to fileshare

[lexbaby]

I don't think this is his arguement for a "compulsory license." The fee is for the rights holders, not the ISPs.

I can see how ISPs would be against this. Filesharing and bandwidth use would go out the window, at least for a time. How many more P2P users would we have if everyone knew everything they download is 100% leagal? How many more broadband subscribers?

Re:I already pay a small fee to fileshare

[gbjbaanb]

you're right - I was talking about the fee going to the music industry, not the ISPs, just that currently I pay a bit more and I am not bothered by it - as are all the other people paying the extra too. My point is that the business model for the fee works.

If an ISP can charge more for filesharing users, ($1 to music industry.. $1 for me) and will attract more subscribers, then they'd be very happy. I doubt that all the filesharers will stop their addiction at all, they'll winge, but pay up.

If they worry about the amount of bandwidth used, they can still implement download maximums, even if its 1Gig a day (people *still* complain about even that level!!).

Another benefit is that if P2P is legal, and more people start using it, then all the other (currently legal) reasons for using it will become mainstream.

Wouldn't it be nice if

[Angry White Guy]

The politicians couldn't tack riders onto bills either a) completely unrelated to the bill itself, and b) designed to submarine a bill by being completely ludicrous?

Oh well, that's democracy for ya.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[elmegil]

I think along with lobbying for repeal of DMCA et. al. we ought to be lobbying for "truth in legislation" laws that force every given piece of legislation to be single topic. It can allow for broad topics with complex subparts, but every subpart must have language demonstrating its connection to the main topic (I spose that gives a loophole of sorts, but let's see). For those who'd argue that this removes a means of "getting things done" I have to say, too bad. If you can't get things done with clear, honest legislation, then you shouldn't be doing them, eh?

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[velo_mike]

IIRC, that was the point of the "Line Item Veto" dispute many years ago. Instead of your clean and simple solution, they prefer to obfuscate the matter even more...

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[Angry White Guy]

Your ideas validate my own and take me out of the "unabomber Nazi" category and place me directly in the "pinko commie" camp. At least I'm moving up in the world...

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[rcw-work]

The politicians couldn't tack riders onto bills either a) completely unrelated to the bill itself, and b) designed to submarine a bill by being completely ludicrous?

This could be accomplished by having representatives use an ordinal voting system such as Condorcet to vote on bills.

The bill with pork could be on the ballot right next to the bill without pork, and representatives would be able to pass the bill whether or not they felt the pork was worthwhile.

This would obviously require a constitutional amendment.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[velo_mike]

I think it was Woodie Guthrie who was quoted as "wanting to be a liberal in a room full of conservatives and a conservative in a room ful of liberals..." I suppose you could be both also..

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[elmegil]

I can definitely relate to Woodie's dilemma....

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[sulli]

Unfortunately line-item veto was found unconstitutional. Presidents of both parties lobbied for it, and finally the Republicans passed it in 1995's "Contract with America," but the Supreme Court ruled that it violated the separation of powers. So this issue is dead unless someone makes a constitutional amendment happen, which is very unlikely at this point.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[Exedore]

I have always been of the opinion that this kind of backdoor legislation is the bane of democracy. Imagine that congress finally composes a popular and seemingly bulletproof bill to "protect the children" or whatever. Now say that Senator Ima Porklover (R - Nebraska) says to his buddies "Hey, remember how I scratched your backs on that other bill a few months ago? How about we tack on this here amendment to build one of them supercollider thingies in my state." Now the bill goes before the president and for political reasons he can't very well veto the thing because the oposition party will have his lunch ("The president's a baby killer!"). Anyway, you get the idea. It's traditionally been a huge source of budget bloat.

That said, the line item veto was found unconstitutional, and rightly so. Not only did it give POTUS the power to nix silly, non-related riders and amendments (a good thing), but also the power to kill just about any section of a bill he disagreed with (a not so good thing). One could totally change the effects of the main legislation in a way that congress never intended and that would give the executive branch too much power.

I think the previously stated idea is much better: Have congress pass a law preventing themselves from attaching non-related riders to pending legislation. IANACS (constitutional scholar), but I think this has a much better shot of passing judicial review, as Congress has always had nearly exclusive power to define their own legislative procedures.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the real problem is who gets to decide when an amendment falls under the topic. Let's say we're working on an "energy" bill. The bill contains riders that:

• Fund the DoE
• Mandate the gas milage of cars built by Detroit
• Legalize drilling in ANWAR
• Regulate the pollution put out by coal-burning plants
• Establish incentives to electronics manufacturers to use less electricity
• Fund the Iraqi invasion

These topics (which I managed to come up with off the top of my head without much deliberation) all fit my definition of "impacts to the nation's energy supplies", but someone else could easily complain that I'm throwing in riders that should instead be covered in bills for National Parks, Defense, and EPA. And they'd be right too!

The problem is that Politics is **supposed** to be hard and difficult to separate. Politics (when it's working right) is the art of allocating scare resources among competing priorities when you can't get 100% agreement on the what "best" answers are (or even on the questions!). I wouldn't want to hobble legislators with any wierd bueracracy as to what can be discussed under what bill. I can not envision the full range of problems that need to be discussed today, let alone what needs to be discussed 50 years from now.

Furthermore, there is no way to codify a set of rules that someone SOMEWHERE won't figure out how to bend them to give themselves an edge. Mankind is the political animal, and we've had millenia of experience in gaming the system that we, ourselves, have created. The only solution is the one put forth at the founding of the US: "That which governs least, governs best."

That's really, really Libertarian, I know, but I also think that its true.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[m_christie]

This is an interesting idea, but the main problem is the notion of a "single topic". That's a huge gaping loophole. Your best bet would probably to get a truth in legislation amendment to the constitution stating that each bill must involve only a single topic (which, of course, is a long shot). Then it would be up to the courts to determine what a "single topic" requires. That way, you could take a bill that you believe goes off topic to the Supreme Court. If it's found to not stay on topic, the court can throw it out. This, of course, wouldn't prevent bills being passed with a pile of unrelated crap added on, but it would serve as a way of getting them repealed. And perhaps, if applied enough, it would significantly deter this kind of bad legislation.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[Anonymous Coward]

I think along with lobbying for repeal of DMCA et. al. we ought to be lobbying for "truth in legislation" laws that force every given piece of legislation to be single topic

You see the irony in this don't you?

any bill that propsed such a reform would loaded with riders....

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[Alphtoo]

re: elmegil and "truth in legislation" laws, absolutely! I agree with you 100%. It's about time that our legislature be forced to justify everything it passes on its own merits. And, regarding a previous post, if a legislator signs something he/she hasn't read, they should be booted out of office for being too stupid to make laws. The fact is, we have far too many laws; if we could get these people busy repealing the garbage instead of passing new crap, we'd be much better off.

Re:Wouldn't it be nice if

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost everything is now related to either the budget bill (federal dollars for X) or an interstate commerce bill (you may trade in X but not Y). Telecommunications is under the commerce authority, as is copyright and other property laws. So technically, it's already related to a single topic...

Average view of Censorship?

[elmegil]

If average voters view censorship of technologists in the same way they view other forms of censorship, we'll be in much better shape.

Given the prevalence of the "if you don't support the war you should shut up and stop supporting terrorism", I'm not sure I agree that the average voter really cares one whit about any censorship that doesn't directly and immediately impact them.

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[velo_mike]

"Given the prevalence of the 'if you don't support the war you should shut up and stop supporting terrorism'," Since that's all that has come out of our fearless leader's mouth in the last 2 years, I'm not surprised that line gets spouted so much. Even two of my otherwise "rational" friends have picked up on it and now sound like CNN/MSNBC drones.

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[bofkentucky]

If you don't support the war you should shut up and stop supporting terrorism

Concede defeat in the 2000 election and quit calling the prsident a Nazi and we will stop calling you uninformed appeasers of totalitarianism. There is plenty of mud coming from both sides, I personally will be glad when the DMCA and PATRIOT get struck down or sunseted, but Bush is doing what 70% of America, the best foreign policy team since Nixon, and his own heart tell him to do. Would you prefer the president not listen to the people?

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[elmegil]

You think he's listening to the people? I think he's listening to his corporate buddies. Just the other day I heard the Homeland Security representative of corporate interests (a valid role to have in the department, let me say) stating that the administration was uneasy about the idea of putting restrictions on companies, even in the name of protecting them from terrorism (I forget the exact situation, but it had to do with security requirements to be put on natural gas companies or some such; obviously there are exceptions in exceptional cases like the airlines). Funny how there was a RUSH on the part of the administration to get PATRIOT enacted--I don't recall anyone wasting breath worrying about the restrictions on the people. (And yes, I acknowledge that Congress is also culpable in that debacle, but without an eager administration I can't see it being shoved through with almost no debate, etc).

Now, if using terrorism as an excuse to restrict the rights of the people isn't directly comparable to when Hitler did the same thing with the beer hall putsch, I don't know what is.

The reason 70% of the people polled support him is because you can poll people in ways to make them support just about anything; it's all in how you ask the questions. Claiming that polls (which Bush says he doesn't listen to anyway, right?) show that he's listening to the people is silly; the people are listening to him (and following him like sheep for the most part), not the other way around.

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[elmegil]

BTW I never asked you to stop calling people "uninformed appeasers of totalitarianism" (though that label could quite easily be applied to people who want to let PATRIOT stand too). Mud is fine; advocating censorship (self or otherwise) is not, and that was the issue I was talking about.

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[bofkentucky]

Why would CNN and Fox be showing similar job satisfaction numbers for Bush, both sides have clearly set agenda's IRT the 2004 elections and they are mutually exclusive of each other. I'm smart enough to see it, you are too, and so are most American's. The power grab will be halted in the courts, remember that conservative judges are pro-states rights, which Patriot and the DMCA are clearly in oposition to.

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[elmegil]

Sorry, got my history confused for a moment, not the putsch, but the reichstag fire.

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[elmegil]

Because they're citing the same survey because it's easier? Because media is big business, and that drives as much or more of their agenda as the theoretical "liberal bias" they have? (Funny how NPR, one of the most frequently cited "liberal mouthpieces" regularly is citing and interviewing representatives from conservative and libertarian think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, giving such views quite good exposure and coverage).

Conservative judges are pro-states rights? Bah. That's why the enforcement of federal drug laws against the state legalized marijuana clubs for medical marijuana have all been thrown out, right? (that's sarcasm). Conservatives such as Bush and the conservative judiciary etc are all in favor of states rights when it suits them, and turn the concept on its head when it doesn't. Some of the most amazing judicial brain twisters have come from the Supreme Court (Scalia for example) trying to justify how a given restriction on the states doesn't really violate the idea of state's rights. I'm all for "strict construction" in constitutional interpretation, except that the idea seems to be used more frequently as a proxy for "states rights to allow discrimination". I've followed a lot of S.C. decisions and dissents and it's amazing how the politics of a situation seem to turn directly analogous situations into diametric opposites in the view of the members of the court (and that applies to both sides of the political aisle, so don't let me give you the idea that I think only conservatives do this--but only conservatives use "strict construction" as their excuse).

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK.
Gore lost in 2000.

I'll stop calling the president a Nazi after I stop beating my wife (IOW, it's not something I've done, unless "warmonger" = "Nazi")

I'd say the same percentage of Californians are supporting the war as voted for the president - so a disproportionate amount of that 30% live here, deal with it. If you think we should secede - well, so do I.

Happy now?

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[bofkentucky]

CNN and Fox (and the other cable news outlets, but those two are the only ones with reasonably large viewerships) do spin their coverage to fit their agenda's, most people seem to prefer Fox's take these days (based on recent viewership data, CNN has ben supplanted as the leader by Fox). NPR is making headway into becoming more ballanced in the last few years, probably to help cater to audiences that are transitioning to AM talk radio (Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, local acts). There is talk of libs trying to break into the fold, but if they can't sell ad time, they won't last very long. That is free market economics at its best, competition for the listeners ear and ad dollars.

As for the issue of states rights/strict interpretation, the SC is split 5-4 ideologically, but your arguments about discrimination seemed flawed. The SC, if following the Constitution IMO, has grants no state the right to restrict cross (or flag) burning, allow affirmative action to stand (We are granted equal opportunity, not added opportunity based on race color or religion, or to allow schools to censor student's right to display their views (Confederate flags, "redneck" t-shirts, Malcom X or Black Panther symbols). The question of drug laws is interesting. Congress has determined that marijuana usage is detrimental to society (I tend to agree). Various states wish to allow usage in violation of Federal statutes. If people want to smoke dope, they need to either elect congresspersons who will repeal the 1938 Narcotics act or demonstrate to the court that marijuana usage is unfairly restricted by said act. Until those are proven, lock the bastards up IMO.

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[elmegil]

Either the states are free of encumberment by federal restrictions or they're not. You seem to argue both ways, depending on whether it fits your beliefs. So does the Supreme Court. In both cases, it's not a matter of constitutionality so much as a matter of personal/political bias that is driving the judgement call.

Let's take a couple of those issues: First I will agree that quotas, per se, are not the right answer. However, to pretend that if all laws regarding race are stricken from the books we would suddenly become a race-neutral equal opportunity society is extremely naive at best, and extremely cynical at worst. The fact is that in most transactions there are opportunities to make judgements based on personal criteria, and it is quite easy (as demonstrated in the texas case about jury selection) to inject unconstitutional unequal bias into transactions unless there are laws specifically created to prevent and disallow such bias being used, and putting in place methods to measure and determine whether or not that bias is occurring. If today we struck all such laws from the books, there would of course no longer be any "Jim Crow" laws, but I am absolutely certain that there would be plenty of equivalently biased "policies and procedures", even if such policies and procedures were hidden because they would be an embarassment. The really sticky problem is how to craft a law that goes far enough without going too far; obviously the supreme court believes that quotas go too far, and I agree. I do not believe that most affirmative action implementations SINCE that was made clear go too far. I have done hiring under EEOC rules, and it was made clear to me that my first job was to come up with an objective measure of each candidate's fitness for the job, and THEN from the pool of candidates fit for the job, I would be using race and gender as two of a handful of other deciding factors to pick from among that pool. If I were to pick a non-minority from that final round pool, I'd have to justify why, but I was not forbidden from doing so. This is still not a perfect solution, but it seems to me better than the alternative which allows any personal bias to shut out those who are different, be it outright racism/sexism or the more subtle problems of "I don't like those kind of people 'cos I never had to know one of 'em like a person."

As for drug laws, I hardly see Congress as being in a position to make laws about drugs. If they had to amend the constitution the first time to ban alcohol, then how exactly is it they've banned all these other substances that are quite analogous in their usage and behavior without one?

Re:Average view of Censorship?

[elmegil]

(I had other things to attend to, so the latter section was abbreviated).

So again, you might make the case that there is no constitutional justification for federal affirmative action laws, but then the same argument should be applied to the fact that there is no constitutional justification for federal drug laws. On the other hand, if drug laws are ok because "they're for our own good" or whatever, then I would think that an appropriately scoped affirmative action law falls under the same justification--it seems to me that "equal protection" should actually mean equal, not equal as long as you have the money to ensure it.

As I said before, it seems that conservatives want to have it both ways; a limited federal government, except when they don't want a limited federal government. That is ridiculous. It's in the same vein as criticizing liberals for their "tax & spend ways" when in fact it's much more irresponsible to "not tax & spend" the way the current administration is going. If I were to try the same fiscal policies (cut income, increase spending) in my personal life, I'd be broke, and possibly in jail. I'm all for cutting taxes, but you have to be willing to cut spending to accomplish that.

And don't even get me started on cutting taxes for corporations that have moved offshore so they don't have to pay taxes anyway (like divisions of Halliburton and many many others).

This has gone waaay offtopic at this point; attempting to drag it back on topic, I find it amazing that the federal government has encouraged courts to deny demonstration permits (a LOCAL issue in NYC, not a federal one) and still claims to be "pro states rights" and claims that the war was to "protect our freedoms" when in fact our freedoms are more restricted in the current circumstances than they have been in a very long time. Peaceful protesters being rounded up and jailed in Washington DC, regular pronouncements that those who oppose the administration's policies are traitors,fast track passage of PATRIOT, the cajones to even think that PATRIOT II might fly, trying to remove the sunset provisions on PATRIOT.... And more to the point, the fact that the majority of the populace is either going along with these things or keeping themselves ignorant of them leads me to believe that Prof. Felton is being excessively optimistic when he thinks that the people will care about censorship, whether via DMCA or otherwise, if it doesn't affect them personally.

OK... So Now What!

[spiedrazer]

A great interview with an obviously insightful man.

The question concerning positive, pro-active action in support of sane technology regulation leaves me wondering how a bandwagon like that can get rolling. Is the EFF the obvious conduit for that type of activity. Do we need a concerted PR compagn to raise additional $ for the EFF with the specific intent that the EFF use it to start a PR arm that operates with 'traditional' political insider methods.

I swear the lawmakers can't all be morons (as we know) but someone needs to educate those who have decided to stay passive on these issues, and relying on the few enlightened lawmakers who have about a thousand other things do do probably won't get it done!

What's the next step???

When would it stop?

[andres32a]

I somewhat agree but...

If something like this passes, forced licensing won't likely stop with music; mandated contracts for e-books, movies and even software could be next.

So... the "math" could suddenly get much larger.

And suddenly you could be paying for the downloading of a whole bunch of music, e-books, movies that you never actually downloaded.

Just a thought.

Re:When would it stop?

[elmegil]

True enough. We're also already paying such fees on CD-Rs I believe, and blank cassettes etc in the US as well as the UK.

Re:When would it stop?

[Planesdragon]

And suddenly you could be paying for the downloading of a whole bunch of music, e-books, movies that you never actually downloaded.

But you now have the legal and moral right to download them--and a reasonable expectation of having reasonable quality copies of said items.

A nice way to roll this out would be at the ISP level. Each IP assignemnt would be either "good" or "not-good", and the "good" ones could access a new Napsteresque P2P system in exchange for paying a slight ($2/month?) fee. Of course, this would have to be governmentally mandated and policed, but it would end the 'piracy wars', to use Felden's term.

A better way to do it would be to change the copyright model from "buy license with one media" to "buy lifelong crossplatform license and right to make own personal copies." Change the laws to assume that the user will be making digital purchases and making their own physical copies, rather than trying to force purely physical laws onto the internet.

Re:When would it stop?

[Dexx]

Rather than just good or not good, an entire scope of ratings could be used. ISP assignment would range from doubleplusungood to doubleplusgood, depending on how well they record and report your downloading habits to the assigning agency.

Re:When would it stop?

[jovlinger]

but... but...

we already have this sort of tax: In canadia and also (I think) in germania there is a tax on all CD-R media that goes directly to the music industry.

It has always seemed to me a bad idea: since I've already paid the fine, I can commit the crime with a clear conscience.

Re:When would it stop?

[mouthbeef]

"we already have this sort of tax: In canadia and also (I think) in germania there is a tax on all CD-R media that goes directly to the music industry."

This isn't the kind of policy that's being proposed: the Canadian and German levies don't have any compulsory: IOW, paying the levy doesn't get you the right to use copyrighted works.

The important part here is the *compulsory license* (which allows you to share any song ever recorded) not the *optional levy* (which you only pay if you intend to share songs).

Germany and Canada have mandatory levies (everybody pays) but no compulsory license (paying doesn't get you the right to rip/burn/share).

Re:When would it stop?

[crgrace]

Rather than just good or not good, an entire scope of ratings could be used. ISP assignment would range from doubleplusungood to doubleplusgood, depending on how well they record and report your downloading habits to the assigning agency.


FINALLY!!! Someone on Slashdot that understands irony, and makes (somewhat) subtle allusions!
MOD HIM UP!

Re:When would it stop?

[ratboy666]

Of course paying the levy in Canada gives you the right to use copyrighted works. The law changed in 1999 -- personal copying is permitted. It perfectly legal in Canada to DOWNLOAD music. Can't UPLOAD it though... (remember "personal" copying). Still, lots of people upload, so we are PERFECTLY legal. Must burn music onto CD, or tape, it's not legal to leave it on the hard drive...

Ratboy.

Re:When would it stop?

[sketerpot]

(paying doesn't get you the right to rip/burn/share)

How odd, and how seemingly tailormade for the music industry. You pay for copyright violations, but you still don't get to commit them.

Screw the law, I say. If you pay, I'd say you have a moral right to rip/burn/share.

Re:When would it stop?

[geekoid]

but what if you could download anything you wanted, and the fee was a 10% 'Tax' on any digital media storage device?
Not really so bad. My 100 dollar hard drive is not 110 dollers. I think it would be a deal, as long as the people who got funds from it HAD to put their content online.

Re:When would it stop?

[rinderpestofshank]

isnt that the whole point of the open source economic model vis commercial apps? i.e. buy once, run anywhere you want

Re:When would it stop?

[jovlinger]

Sorry, I was being cute. What I meant was that as soon as you charge for a presumed infraction, you legitimize it. Perhaps not in the eye of the law, but definitely in the eye of the consumer.

So what is the point of a levy? A bribe to stop the RIAA suing today, without any guarantee about tomorrow? Seems shortsighted. But at least with a levy you can choose to buy CD-Rs or not.

How is this mandatory license going to work? Do I get to choose between the (non-gratis) RIAA sponsored free (speech) internet where I can send whatever bits I want, or the (gratis) open internet which censors what I can say? Pay for free speech? That seems like a horrible world -- we are now thinking of making reality WORSE than orwell's imagination. Great :-|

Look: no business model deserves protection by mandatory licensing. The net was not invented to only be accessible to people who want to pay a music tax. Who next? Movie studios too? Up-and-coming Sci-fi authors who publish their work online? I want my share of the pie as well.

Not that I'd mind communism... I like Iain M Banks. I just never thought I would get it via capitalism. Perhaps that was what Marx was on about all this time.

Seriously, I pay for things all the time: I don't shoplift even when I could get away with it, I tip well for service already recieved. Thus is a PR (primarily) and marketing (secondarily) problem. That has to be the fix. Legislating morality (c.f. drug war) won't work. Making it more attractive to be a legal downloader than illegal will.

This is not hard: a voluntary, non ursurous licence, would suffice. They could subcontract (civil contracts, not law!) to ISPs to track mp3 transfers. Eventually, they build up a case that they present to the court, and the downloader has to produce a license or pay a HEFTY fine. Just like busses work in europe.

If you finess license and tracking just a little, they could also get free grass-roots marketing, and fantastic marketing data. All you need to do is work with the consumer, not against them.

Getting their attention ...

[richg74]

The hard part is to get their attention, and then to explain the problem in a manner that non-geeks can understand.

I think Prof. Felten is right about this one. I'm reminded of an example from personal experience; it's not related to the DMCA, but is analogous, I think.

I've discussed the issue of privacy in a networked world with my Dad a few times. His initial reaction was along the lines of, "I'm not worried about it, I don't have anything to hide."

I took a bit of time one evening, and searched for and printed all the information about him that I could find on the net: residence, phone numbers, driving record, credit report, ... (I did not use any privileged access to get this stuff.) When I handed him the pile of paper, he was flabbergasted -- but I think he gets it now.

Non-geeks are just not used to thinking about these issues in the new context.

Why can't we get a straight answer?

[gpinzone]

This sounds like a likely DMCA violation, but you'll have to consult your lawyer to be sure.

I thought he was a lawyer?

The real answer is that not even your lawyer can give you a straight answer. The only way you'll ever find out is if the event actually occurs, parties sue, they don't settle out of court, and the rulings keep getting appealed until it gets to the Supreme Court.

I've had a couple years experience with new technology and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance. While the ADA representatives in Washington would deny vehemently that the law was unclear, the only way you'd really know if you were in violation was if you (or someone else in the same position) were sued and lost.

Re:Why can't we get a straight answer?

[j-beda]

I thought he was a lawyer?

You thought wrong. He's a comp sci prof, and his CV doesn't list any legal trainging, just physics, comp sci and engineering.

Re:Why can't we get a straight answer?

[gpinzone]

If he has no law degree and can't answer legal questions (especially those that affect technology), then what business does he have teaching a class called Information Technology and the Law?

Re:Why can't we get a straight answer?

[gmhowell]

The law isn't unclear. It's stupid. What is a reasonable accomadation (sp) is largely an excercise for the disabled person. Because of the impossiblity of this being 'hard coded', the law can appear vague on one side, and crystal clear on the other.

Re:Why can't we get a straight answer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, don't be silly. Would you rather have a law professor who is not an expert in information technology teach the course?

It is perfectly reasonable for him to teach a course that considers law issues in broad strokes, while still declining to answer specific legal questions. And I'm sure he could always walk across campus and consult one of his colleagues in the law school when necessary.

Re:Why can't we get a straight answer?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI Princeton doesn't have a law school. It has a policy school (Woodrow Wilson) and a politics department. Overall, it has no professional schools to speak of ( Buisiness, Law, or Med)

I agree with you though.

Re:Why can't we get a straight answer?

[gpinzone]

Oh please, don't be silly. Would you rather have a law professor who is not an expert in information technology teach the course?

What I'd prefer is someone who knows both.

--

Student #1: Dude! I got an A+ on the COS 491 exam!

Student #2: Geez, I only got a C. What did you write for the essay?

Student #1: You mean the one about violating the DMCA by detecting a stolen software algorithm inside an encrypted data stream?

Student #2: Yeah, that one. I wrote pages and pages of opinion and supposition based on all my research. What did you write?

Student #1: I just wrote: "This sounds like a likely DMCA violation, but you'll have to consult a lawyer to be sure." Pretty easy, eh?

Student #2: WHAT?!!!!

Reverse Engineering....

[GeekWithGuns]

The effect of the DMCA on reverse engineering is complicated. The DMCA does not flatly ban reverse engineering, but if you have to circumvent a technical protection measure in order to do your reverse engineering, then the DMCA will be an issue. The DMCA does have a limited safe harbor for reverse engineering, but it has been widely criticized as too narrow.

I hate to dodge your question, but I'm not really qualified to say whether what the clone makers did would be legal under 2003 law.

As to weather or not the DMCA would have been broken by reverse engineering the BIOS is still not know, but I'm sure that had it back then, some IBM laywer would have added to the the lawsuit as a bit more leverage.

One of the worst things about the DMCA is it's chilling effects. People are not doing things that are totally legal for fear of the law. For example, including a DVD player that uses the DeCSS code in a Linux distro because they might get sued under the DMCA. Now they would probabily would win, but not after loosing Billions of dollars in a drawn out court battle. That part of the law just makes me sick.

Re:Reverse Engineering....

[rusty0101]

Something to remember about reverse engineering the IBM PC BIOS. When IBM created the BIOS they made all information about it available to the public. Including all instructions, the API, everything.

They did this because they were at the time working in response to an anti-competitive lawsuit against them.

One of the side benifits of doing this was that they believed they could earn licence fees from companies that tried to sell clones of the PC, because they could point at the publically available information and say that the clone used their code.

Compaq's end around to this was to take the API, which was not something IBM could licence, and have their own people (vetted so they had no information about the IBM BIOS code in the first place) write the underlying code to support that API. They then had another group go through the code, instruction by instruction, and compare it against the IBM code, and reject any functions that came too close to the code from IBM.

There was no encryption involved, so the reverse engineering would have eluded any anti-circumvention devices. That is not to say that if IBM were working under the internal ruleset they are today, that they would not have implemented some anti-circumvention devices in the code. After all when Epson can implement encryption of some sort in the chips they put on their printer cartridges, it isn't like there are many places where it can't be put.

As a result of the work Compaq did, Phoenix, AMI, Award, and a couple dozen other companies were also able to come up with their own implementations of the BIOS.

-Rusty

NEVER!

[Anonymous Coward]

Never! Have every studio collecting taxes on us for surfing the web!

Ironic?

[Anonymous Coward]

So when this law passes, the music labels are actually going to "download" the own titles over and over so the can get more money!

Blackboard

[Anonymous Coward]

"Blackboard expects that this
type of collaboration and partnership will continue on an ongoing basis."

Riiiiiiiiight...screw the hackers, but please continue to help! Jackasses.

Not qualified? Huh?

[Anixamander]

I hate to dodge your question, but I'm not really qualified to say whether what the clone makers did would be legal under 2003 law.

I guess he's new here. Since when did not being qualified to answer a question stop a slashdotter?

Re:OK... So Now What!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the next step???

Mass-suicide. But in a peaceful way. Don't take anyone else out, just ourselves. I'll get things rolling...

Re:Mandatory Licensing - where does it stop?

[scrotch]

This idea seems to have slippery-slope issues.

If I design some nice web graphics and you download them an view them as part of visiting my website, do I get a chunk of this tax? You just downloaded and distributed my copyrighted material, right? What if it's Flash instead of graphics? What about the text on my site? That's my copyright.

What about this post? If you download this page and get this post on your screen, then I want my royalties.

Compulsory Licensing

[Dunedain]

I can't bring myself to agree with Felten's compulsory licensing arguments from two directions.
First, as a producer of content: there's some content I want to give away for free. I don't want any recompense for documentation I write, or for some software. I just want it out there getting used. Other stuff I want much stricter protections on -- some of my security-related work, for example. Compulsory licensing schemes I've seen proposed prevent me from doing either of these. In addition, they typically compel a license for distribution, but not for modification. In the case of CDDA files, which must be modified (into MP3s) to be useful, this is useuless.

That ties into the second problem: advocating a compulsory licensing regime without closly tying that advocacy to an inverse DMCA is very dangerous. Imagine a compulsory licensing world where Palladium and TPM-backed digital restrictions management prevent you from copying or modifying the files you acquire. In order for compulsory licensing to be even worth considering, it has to be tied to a ban on opaque formats and on technical measures to prevent modification and distribution.

My Room mate...

[Greyfox]

My room mate is a non-geek internet user. She doesn't know what the DMCA is. Her eyes glaze over when I try to explain it to her.

She does understand, and becomes quite annoyed when I explain to her in the future she won't be able to rip her CDs to MP3 format or download missed episodes of her favorite television show off the internet. The average user does not understand technical details, but they do understand consequences and inconvenience. Don't forget that when explaining a problem to the people, you have to start where the people are at.

Re:My Room mate...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we should start doing this to congressmen.

Raid their homes and start showing them how they are breaking the law.

Of course they are all pretty good and covering things up....

Not viable solution

[debrain]

The revenue from the fees would be split up among the creators according to a formula, based on how many times each work was downloaded or played. If you do the math, the fees can be pretty small while still replacing the revenue the music and movie industries would otherwise lose.

This is a dangerous assumption, and I have lobbied against the instantiation of such a system as being too easily abused, ignoring independent artists, and lacks adequate measurements.

Let's start with the 3rd point, that it is too hard to measure. In the Napster universe, this might have been possible, but in a truly peer-to-peer universe like Kazaa, there is no way to adequately measure the downloads. And even if there were, there is no way to associate a download with the semantically acquisition worthy of remuneration; if I download something I already own, rather than burn it again, does that indicate demand? Worse, it is possible to spoof acquisition to boost perceived demand through which remuneration is measured; record companies would just set up Vanatu companies and download copyrights of vested interests.

We have two problems: how to measure downloads that are valid and worth remuneration, and how to not measure downloads that are not valid and worth remuneration. I have proven, I think, in the mathematical sense (I am a mathematician), that these problems cannot be solved in peer to peer like Gnutella; that no application of encryption, authentication and verification can guarantee valid measurements, while still retaining the policies of open peer to peer (ie. no centralization). The question then becomes: If one restricts peer to peer to closed or centralized models that cost money, why would people not just use free open peer-to-peer? It is a question, then, of incentive to use my bandwidth to facilitate a distributed commercial download model, which undermines (mostly) the ability to uniquely distribute end-point secure copyrighted materials; one inherently has the ability to redistribute. Content industries want to control the content, but to implement peer to peer, with download accounting, they must facilitate the one control they most wish to restrict: copying. It seems like flying in the face of a dragon.

The ignoring of independent artists and abuse of the system tie together in that conglomerates can monopolize the remuneration much like they monopolize radio, as a result of the spoofing mentioned above. This happens now, in Canada, as the CPCC (Canadian Private Copying Collective) bases remuneration to the copyright industry from a levy on CD's, tapes, etc., based on radio play time. But radio play time is a function of multinational conglomerates such as ClearChannel, which in turn prohibits independent artists inasmuch as it artificially promotes artists of vested interest.

Great QA, btw.

Re:Not viable solution

[Eraser_]

Now, my solution to the problems raised in your excellent post aren't going to be so well worded, however, decentralized networks can have a central node to them, sort of.

So you have implemented optimistic caching so you get local area downloads, etc, which speeds up the process for end users and ISP's alike. One thing is, ISP's will need to offer you faster downloads from LAN clients (lets say, Verizon DSL clients who are hooked into the same NOC as me) than from internet clients, which I should still get my usual 70KB/s from, this would entail doing server side traffic shaping on the ISP's part, something they should do anyways a la the cable modem uncapping.

Now how do you make said P2P network work with the pay model of total tax multiplied by the % that is your share? You take your distributed superpeers and local caches, and have them phone home. A central server or 20 can manage the statistics tracking, etc. Who downloaded what? Now, anonymously, this is harder to do because you have problems with people flooding the server. ISP's could offer you a unique ID with each account, similar to how they assign a user id to login to their networks. This is "more anonymous" than say using your email address by less anonymous than paying cash at the store.

While we are thinking of paying cash at the store, if this content is paid for, how does it get there in the first place? Are the record labels etc forced to MP3 or OGG everything they offer and put it on the networks? There is a supply problem here in legitamising this sort of network.

As for a model for this sort of deal, akamai seems to have this down. They mirror high demand websites (like msnbc, cnn, things like that) onto their servers which your ISP rents. This makes pageloads a few minutes off from live, however at the gain of performance, and not having to worry that the real server is bogged down.

Re:Not viable solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I have proven, I think, in the mathematical sense (I am a mathematician), that these problems cannot be solved in peer to peer like Gnutella

People wouldn't download music from p2p networks if they could just download straight from the artist's website. To make compulsory licenses fair, the music industry simply needs to publish their music on the internet and make it available for free. If they only provide low-quality mp3s rather high quality alternatives, people will turn to immeasurable p2p networks, and the artists will lose revenue.

If we use compulsory licenses for music, why not use them for everything? Movies, newspaper articles, books, software, etc. After all, it's only fair that I get paid to post stuff on Slashdot.

Missing the point..

[Ogerman]

But you asked about positive legislative steps, which is a harder question. The holy grail here is a non-harmful proposal that reassures legislators about the continued viability of the music and movie industries.

The assumption that the existing music and movie industries NEED to be viable any longer is the biggest mistake of all. Until this assumption is torn down, we'll continue see all sorts of garbage legislation to try to prop up failing businesses. Let capitalism run it's course for crying out loud! The music industry (read: RIAA members) is already dying due to independent artists, lack of big name album successes, and the general public's unwillingness to pay for old music that ought to be public domain by now. Hollywood may not be too far behind considering how many independent films have recently enjoyed smash successes. Compare also, the proprietary software industry is headed for total collapse due to the Open Source movement. Microsoft is already going down in flames, looking at its stock, the continual bad PR, industry alliances forming against it. (IBM/HP/etc.) Face it, society is striving to become more open! I know it's an overused analogy, but we're seeing the "printing press" revolution all over again.

If you want positive legislation in this area, the best hope is a compulsory license, which would charge all users of the Net a small, mandatory fee.

So basically, the aging big-shot players get to impose a tax on everyone using the internet to prop up failing businesses since their customers have already left for greener pastures. And regardless of whether I partake in the crappy content, I still have to pay. This type of system is straight out socialism. Great idea, Felten. Not.

Re:Missing the point..

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically, the aging big-shot players get to impose a tax on everyone using the internet... And regardless of whether I partake in the crappy content, I still have to pay.

Exactly!!! I have only downloaded 2 movie trailers and 1 audio song from the internet the entire time I've used for more then 8 years. I also seriously doubt that I will download and audio/video in the future. Why the hell should I have to pay then?

This type of system is straight out socialism.

Ah, someone who recognizes something for what it really is!

Re:Missing the point..

[frank_adrian314159]

The assumption that the existing music and movie industries NEED to be viable any longer is the biggest mistake of all.

Well, they need to be unless you want the economy of California (and probably the rest of the country) to crumble.

In some idealistic Libertarian fantasy land, maybe having established corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of people (and a few million indirectly) crumble makes sense. But in this REAL WORLD(TM), there is no way in hell that any elected official is going to vote against some measure of protection for this industry. Especially when this industry controls the media and their access to the public at large. Get a clue. You may think that the xxAA are evil (they are), but unless we come up with some compromise that allow them to continue to generate dollars and keep their minions employed, we are going to continue to get these Draconian laws, if for no reason than the economic conequences that would happen should these industries collapse.

P.S. No fair issuing "buggy whip" analogies. The buggy whip folks had ample time and opportunity to retool to other leather goods. The rapid increase of technology has not allowed the same luxury to these industries.

Re:Missing the point..

[Ogerman]

Well, they need to be unless you want the economy of California (and probably the rest of the country) to crumble. In some idealistic Libertarian fantasy land, maybe having established corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of people (and a few million indirectly) crumble makes sense. But in this REAL WORLD(TM), there is no way in hell that any elected official is going to vote against some measure of protection for this industry.

So basically, what you're implying is that "big media / software" is a necessary evil because inefficient corporations employ lots of people. I wholly disagree. If these companies crumble because the market shifts out from under them, the folks they employ directly or indirectly will simply work for smaller, more efficient companies instead. Studios and production companies will still exist. Software companies (well.. consulting and services) will still exist. They just won't monopolize and force-feed the market the way existing ones do. And the economy will be a lot healthier as a result.

Part of my point is that change is going to happen regardless of the law. State-run churches didn't want people printing and owning their own Bibles--after all, they had a monopoly on religion--but the technology enabled this to become a reality regardless. Technology will continue to press changes forward. The question is more how many legal casualties will be inflicted along the way against those on the cutting edge.

No fair issuing "buggy whip" analogies. The buggy whip folks had ample time and opportunity to retool to other leather goods. The rapid increase of technology has not allowed the same luxury to these industries.

I don't think this analogy really fits anyhow. The existing content industry is about selling control, not products. Those who produce actual products--the artists, musicians, coders, etc.--will always have a market for their works, performances, and services.

Re:Missing the point..

[Quino]

"In some idealistic Libertarian fantasy land .."

Sorry to nitpick your typo, because surely you meant to say:

"In some countries with a form of free market capitalism, like the United States .."

Besides, what is the economic cost of propping up inefficient, outdated and (in the case of the RIAA, actually unnecesary) industries?

The buggy whip analogy is very appropiate -- that hypothetical situation where improvements to society stand in the way of some industry's profits -- and the private industry wins! This is the ridiculous situation we're in now. That's the point of the analogy, and it's germane and accurate.

Re:Mandatory Licensing - where does it stop?

[mouthbeef]

If I design some nice web graphics and you download them an view them as part of visiting my website, do I get a chunk of this tax? You just downloaded and distributed my copyrighted material, right? What if it's Flash instead of graphics? What about the text on my site? That's my copyright.

Last time I checked, no one was advocating compulsories for web graphics: probably because there's no widespread alarm over infringement of web graphics.

We have a compulsory music license for radio. We don't have a compulsory *speech* license for radio. It's legal to play any song you can find on the radio (provided you've paid the levy), but it's illegal to read someone's book in its entirety over the radio.

This isn't binary.

I'm sorry, but this is not the best

[paranoic]

If you want positive legislation in this area, the best hope is a compulsory license, which would charge all users of the Net a small, mandatory fee. In exchange for this, it would become totally legal to distribute and use any audio and video content on the Net.

So what you're saying is that deaf/blind users have to pay this?

Why?

Re:I'm sorry, but this is not the best

[SilentTristero]

Same reason everyone has to pay a surcharge for VHS and cassette tapes, even if they never record copyrighted material. Because it's way easier than charging per use, and the fee is not so onerous as to drive people away (in your case the ones not trading music/videos).

-- Tristero

Re:I'm sorry, but this is not the best

[gillisgirl]

This isn't a new concept. Gasoline taxes are supposed to be used to pay for road maintenance. When you buy gas to run your mower, to start a bonfire or to immolate yourself, you still pay the road maintenance tax.

You might want to stop asking "Why?" when it comes to the law... You'll drive yourself crazy.

Bring in Homeland Security

[shotfeel]

Prof. Felton says:

" Laws like the DMCA that limit the flow of information will inevitably make it harder to find out about certain types of misbehavior."

Maybe we should bring this to the attention of the Dep. of Homeland Security. If they don't like things like strong encryption, how could they possibly want to make it illegal to break even weak encryption. Or is there an excemption for law enforcement with regard to circumvention.

In any case, it would be a fun battle. The MPAA and RIAA vs. Homeland Security. That I'd watch on pay-per-view!

Case in point

[sulli]

the so-called "Amber Alert" bill, which was initially intended to provide a national alert system for missing children (ooh, tug at those heartstrings!) yet is larded up with all sorts of crapola that would never have passed otherwise, including mandatory minimum sentencing, expanded wiretaps, and Joe Biden's "RAVE Act" that would make it a felony to hold dances with electronic music if someone gets high there. Ri-fucking-diculous. (Good discussion over at plastic.)

"You'll have to check with your lawyer . . ."

[SquareOfS]

Consider these quotes:

I'm not sure whether "place" means a geographic location (such as my house) or a network address (such as my IP address) or an identifier (such as a DNS address or email address, either of which might correspond to a person).

The effect of the DMCA on reverse engineering is complicated. ... I hate to dodge your question, but I'm not really qualified to say whether what the clone makers did would be legal under 2003 law.

An example: auto parts manufacturers are worried by recent DMCA developments, such as the case where Lexmark has successfully (so far) used the DMCA against a maker of replacement parts for Lexmark printers.

This sounds like a likely DMCA violation, but you'll have to consult your lawyer to be sure.

Felten says "The new regulations on technology will impose a drag on our technological capabilities, and hence on our productivity." And this is clearly true.

But consider that it's actually true in two ways:

• The obvious sense - DMCA and kin will make it illegal to do things we otherwise would have done
• The "meta" sense - DMCA and kin mean that we have to stop what we're doing and ask it if would be legal if we did it

So, obviously, all laws have these two kinds of cost. But the pernicious effect of regulation in spheres of otherwise normal activity (and particularly of regulation as poorly drafted as the DMCA) is that it brings vast swaths of life into the domain of expert legal opinion.

Can we reverse engineer this? Will this interoperability be allowed to work? Even, is my firewall legal?

The chilling effect on development and innovation will be horrible until these developments get filtered through the courts. No one can innovate well in a world where much innovation may be bluntly illegal.

Re:OK... So Now What!

[GigsVT]

What's the next step???

Just elect Felten. The only people legislators are required to listen to is the other legislators. Get him in there, and you are set.

Re:Mandatory Licensing NOT GOOD

[iplayfast]

We have that in Canada for writeable CD's. It's a levy so that everytime you buy a CD you have to pay a bit extra (hidden in the cost of course) for the CD. This bit extra (I think it's 23cents per cd, but going up to close to 50cents) is supposed to go to the copyright holders of music, because as we all know, if you are buying a writeable cd you must be stealing music...

As far as I know as of last Christmas none of the 17Million collected has gone to any copyright holder.

The reason I don't think this is good for the Internet, is that it will become a creeping cost that gradually goes up and up. It's also a cost that may have nothing to do with what you are buying! If you are just looking at slashdot, and not looking at music or movies then why should you pay for this tax?

The Internet should be viewed as air. Free to all, and if you pollute it you should pay to clean it.

Natural allies

[jdavidb]

The second track is to get better at explaining ourselves and at persuading people that they should support our positions. Especially, we need to do a better job of finding folks out there who are our natural allies, and convincing them to join us on these issues, even if we disagree about some other issues.

I am a conservative, a libertarian, and a laissez-faire capitalist. I believe in minimizing government control. As such, the DMCA is clearly something I must stand against on principled as well as practical grounds. I am your natural ally.

Sure, we disagree on some things. But is it worth it to let those stand between us when it comes to opposing the DMCA? Is it worth it to drive off people like me by alienating them on slashdot? I really do believe the principle of least government control is what you want ... and you will find that in conservatism and libertarianism. And even if we never agree on that principle, we agree on many, many of the specific issues (intellectual property laws, DMCA, internet regulation, free speech)

Court conservatives. Make them see that draconian laws like this just build up big government. Court libertarians. Make them see that intellectual property laws abuse state power to impose an artificial and damaging scarcity. Minds are changing, one at a time.

nsa, fbi, cia

[Anonymous Coward]

does anyone really thing it stops there? Is this not an issue of the gov spooks being able to track you and hunt you down? No IP spoofing, cell phones located by signal or gps, emails search by TIA before you get on airplanes... Wow, America is such a free country!

Voting

[kingbill]

But even if technological freedom issues like the DMCA aren't the only factor in a voting decision, they still might tip the balance for some voters in some races. Even that is enough to make a difference. Legislators do seem to care what their constituents think, and they do seem to have a fear of doing something that looks stupid afterward.

Speaking of this, I live in Nevada and have been trying to figure out where my representatives stand on issues involving digital rights. It hasn't been easy. There are obviously some very high profile figures in this fight (Hollings, Boucher, etc.), but I'm not in a position to vote for or against any of these individuals. Does anyone know a place I can see how my representatives have voted on certain issues? These sorts of issues would profoundly affect how I vote.

Re:Voting

[bofkentucky]

Opensecrets.org provides voting records and money sources for politicians. They have a slight liberal slant IMO (CNN level, minus Peter Arnett) but they do make it easy to dig up the dirt. Offf their site I got that 84% of the media industry's money went to dems in the 2002 elections, based on their data, which is damming to some Republicans and to all but a few "clean" dems on this issue.

Re:Voting

[ciphertext]

There are a couple of good sites.

• thomas
• senate

Re:Voting

[Alphtoo]

"...been trying to figure out where my representatives stand on issues involving digital rights". Check and see, but there's a good chance they have websites, or at least e-mail addresses. Send 'em an e-mail and ask. I live in SC, and I think Hollings will drop out after this term (couple of years... kinda hate I won't be able to vote against him, but as long as his sorry store-bought ass is out of there, I can live with it). But yeah, I'll vote against them, campaign against them, anything I can do to knock them out of office (within reason... I won't beat 'em up or shoot 'em or nothin') Oh, almost forgot... an old friend of mine was a retired Navy Commander and retired lawyer, and he used to get right drunk and fire off collect telegrams to his Senators and Congressmen. Anything they were doing that he disapproved of, they'd get a collect (key word) telegram from him. I asked him once, "Man, will they accept those?" and he said, "Hell, yeah, they don't have a choice. They can't refuse them!" I always got a kick out of that. }:~) All the best, -Alph

Paranoid Rant

[Tony]

If they don't like things like strong encryption, how could they possibly want to make it illegal to break even weak encryption.

<rant mode="paranoia">

Y'ever think this is exactly where they want us? If it's illegal to attack weak encryption, or even publish flaws in the encryption we use, then They can decrypt it illicitly, but we can't.

And since we can't really even work together to create a better encryption, we'll always have sucky and weak encryption which They will always be able to intercept.

It's all a plot to keep us survielled, catagorized, analyzed, and oppressed. It's not a conscious thing they do, but it works out the same. We're becoming thought-slaves to the perverted desires and whims of corporate B&D masters and their Tony Blair-like lap dogs, our lovely legislators.

Put on your consumer-grade, MPAA-approved red leather masks! (And bring out The Gimp.)

</rant>

Seriously, it is kinda scary, isn't it?

Re:The new and improved topic icon

[Anonymous Coward]

you were bought into this world by retards and mongoloids!

PC clones, DMCA, and reverse engineering

[Phronesis]

Do I completely misunderstand the scope of the DMCA, or would it have actually prohibited the actions of clone manufacturers, starting with Compaq, when they reverse-engineered the IBM PC BIOS in 1984?

One interesting thing about the PC clones that both the author of the question and Prof. Felten miss is that IBM used the protection offered by copyright law to publish the entire source code of the original PC, XT, and AT BIOS and the full circuit schematics of the motherboards. Anyone could buy these technical reference manuals from any IBM dealer, and for a reasonable price.

The problem of reverse engineering then was exactly the opposite of what DMCA protects against. Since the source code and electronic schematics were published, a clone manufacturer had to prove that it really reverse-engineered the system and didn't just buy a technical reference manual and copy it.

One great thing about all this was that you could easily burn custom BIOS chips for personal use because you had the complete documentation in front of you.

The failure of this approach, together with the cost of generating high-quality documentation, led clone manufacturers (both hardware and BIOS) to close their source and documentation.

Mod parent up!

[Steven Blanchley]

The parent makes a very good point. Some of us don't give a damn about trading content (currently) illegally. If all I want to do is read rec.games.abstract and post to Slashdot, then I should not have to pay more for my internet access just because some jerkos are downloading music they don't have rights to.

Re:faggot fuck

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, feckfeck would interpret that as fagg otfu ckco ckti ttyb itch fuck cock titt yass shit cock lolf agfu cku. Whitespace is ignored.

Excellent quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem is a mindset that no matter what the problem is, the solution must be legislative.

I'm not sure if any comments are even needed with this one...

Re:OK... So Now What!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you started taking other poeple out it wouldn't be mass-SUICIDE would it?

What the DMCA says about reverse engineering

[SiliconEntity]

From the DMCA:

REVERSE ENGINEERING... a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer program may circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that program for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer program with other programs...

It seems pretty clear that reverse engineering the BIOS for interoperability would have been fine. Besides, the DMCA only applies to circumventing a technological protection measure like encrypted content, and there was no such protection applied to the BIOS source. Felten doesn't quite come out and say this, probably because he doesn't want to say anything good about DMCA.

This should also put an end to the claims that the DMCA would prevent reverse engineering Microsoft's new encrypted file formats for compatibility with OpenOffice and other such programs. But it won't.... Sigh...

Re:What the DMCA says about reverse engineering

[Phronesis]

My point in the comment you reply to was that if IBM published the source code and electrical schematics, there were no "technological measures" to control access to any of the software or hardware.

As you note, there were no technological measures in place, so the DMCA was irrelevant.

The point to reverse-engineering the BIOS is rather as though I wanted to publish a clone of a Stephen King novel. I could buy the novel and photocopy it, but that would violate copyright law.

An analogy might be that reverse-engineering Microsoft file formats would be like The New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers. These were secret, but there was compelling interest in making the content known to the public. Phoenix reverse-engineering IBM's BIOS was more like someone writing a clone of a Stephen King novel. The original is out there, but the person wants to produce something similar without being prosecuted for plagiarism. The DMCA exists to keep the Pentagon Papers secret, but does not address the Stephen King issue.

GeekPAC

[Tablizer]

Do you feel that it would be a good time for a shift in strategy towards more active measures such as forming a group to lobby representatives directly

What ever happened to the idea of the GeekPAC group (political action committee)? It would deal with intellectual property and communications issues, H-1B visas, etc.

Someone suggested that it could use techniques perfected by the NRA; namely randomly targeting a legistlator (perhaps one in a close race) who supported an anti-Geek law and buy radio and sign spots against them.

Other politicians would realize that they could be next, and pay more attention to GeekPAC's stance.

Re:OK... So Now What!

[Graspee_Leemoor]

"Mass-suicide. But in a peaceful way."

If this happens please be sure to have the Iraqi Information Minister comment on it- for once he could be right!

graspee

DCMA is not very relevant

[Durendal]

It is a small step in the wrong direction. A stupid, ugly, small step. Legislation is a symptomatic solution. By the time a law is needed, passed, enforced, and sucessfully prosecuted, folks will find a different way to achieve the same end.

Wow. I like question #9

[cornice]

The DMCA is so broken that it _is_ very possible to use it against itself. The concept that information wants to be free fits much better with the framework of the US legal and legislative systems than the DMCA. I think it would be an interesting exercise to dream up as many examples like question #9 as possible. In other words dream up a DMCA violation and then dream up a DMCA method for hiding or protecting the original violation. I bet some awesome examples exist. I bet that this might be the best way to demonstrate how broken the DMCA really is. I suppose Freenet is an example. What would it take from a legal standpoint to prevent the cracking of Freenet under the DMCA? What part of the law takes presidence in these cases?

Re:Mandatory Licensing - where does it stop?

[scrotch]

I think you're missing my point. Probably because I didn't make it well.

What I'm suggesting is that there are content providers online other than the RIAA and Hollywood. Me for instance. Am I afforded the same rights (and royalties) as large record companies under this scheme? Put me in any category you want: I'm a band with mp3s, I'm a small film maker with a movie online, I'm a photographer with images online, I wrote the book you're talking about and put it online to sell ad space.

What if someone downloads my song/film/image and violates my copyright? Is it still illegal if they paid the tax? If I want a cut can I get my royalties the same way the RIAA would for a Backstreet Boys song?

Does this tax scheme scale to this level? I don't think it can. It think it will protect and serve the big guys by taxing me. Unless there's a way to sign up all content to be tracked for fees to be paid. And then, obviously, you've got to take into account how to make sure that I'm not claiming to have recorded a song by someone else.

How do you do it? Do you limit copyright protection to large companies? That's ridiculous. Do you extend this scheme to everyone putting content online? That's also ridiculous.

Re:Wow. I like question #9

[cornice]

Better yet, can the DMCA be used against the Patriot Act?

Re:Wow. I like question #9

[droleary]

The DMCA is so broken that it _is_ very possible to use it against itself.

I've been saying this for the longest time. What most people don't understand or care to understand about copyright is that they can be a copyright holder as much as big, faceless corporations. Any laws they use against you can be used against them. That's why I thought it was hilarious when I heard that they were going to make some hacking legal if it involved protecting your copyright.

In other words dream up a DMCA violation and then dream up a DMCA method for hiding or protecting the original violation. I bet some awesome examples exist.

All I can say is that the massive archives at DataFetish have yet to be the basis for any complaint or action. In some ways, it takes the concept to the extreme and forces you to acknowledge that binary can mean whatever you want it to. It is by giving data a context that it acquires meaning. In my opinion, copyright law and the DCMA don't even begin to get interesting until people start a fight over ownership of an actual sequence of ones and zeros.

Best answer is to #4

[Amazing Quantum Man]

"I hate to dodge your question, but I'm not really qualified to say whether what the clone makers did would be legal under 2003 law."

A wise man is one who is not afraid to say "I don't know". I'm glad he respected us enough to say that instead of trying to BS us.

Erosion of traditional conservative values

[IndependentVik]

Court conservatives. Make them see that draconian laws like this just build up big government.

I'd like to see this work out, I really would. Now, maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but it seems to me that the largest conservative political party in the US (the GOP) are taking traditionally conservative values and throwing them out the window in favor of the Neoconservative agenda. It's going to be hard to court the right wing of politics in this country when the "less government" creed of conservatism is being thrown out in favor of "less government . . . when it suits our purposes."

Re:Erosion of traditional conservative values

[Anonymous Coward]

The GOP is a coalition of big business and religious fundamentalism. Most of its legislators don't care about anything else.

Not that the other lot is much better. In a few respects, it could actually be worse, as (unlike most big, powerful corporations) the copyright cartels seem to favor the Democrats over the Republicans. However, most lobbyists divide their bribes between parties, ensuring that they get what they want whoever wins. Every senator voted for the DMCA.

Re:Mandatory Licensing - where does it stop?

[ratboy666]

You're a small band. Someone, somewhere, rips your stuff and puts it on-line. I download it in Canada. I put it onto a CD-R. You know what? You are screwed. You CAN'T prosecute me (well, if I entered your country, you could). And if you happen to be Canadian as well? Too f*cking bad. Its your problem. So, get active, and protest. Actually, US copyright section 100x (the 1992 law) looks interesting. I just have to make sure that generational (SCM) isn't being violated, and that the royalty has been paid. After this, apparently you CAN'T be prosecuted for copying anymore. A flat (small) percentage on a hard drive that you intend to use for MP3 storage. Remit the cheque, and go nuts! Since there is NO SCM on CDs (by design), it isn't being circumvented. Any US Copyright lawyers want to comment?

Ratboy.

Compulsory license

[debest]

I'm glad to see that, despite starting to lean in this direction just to end this stalemate, that Prof. Felton is still not firmly in the compulsory license camp.

I have three big problems with it:

1) Unfairness in the collection - How will they possibly be able to determine a fair method of determining which bits you download are restricted from distribution by copyright, and which ones aren't? You know damned well that this will just end up being a $/mb tax that will be charged to the ISP, who will have to pass this charge on to all consumers. Workers just doing business over an encryted tunnel all day (working on no content that applies to the piracy debate) will be charged far more than the occasional Kazaa user, who is actually doing the illegal/unethical (pick your adjective) act.

2) Unfairness in the Distribution - There will never be a just method of distribution of these funds. Obviously, the MPAA/RIAA will be first in line at the trough. With them most assuredly getting the lion's share of the payments from this tax (with no reliable data to prove what percentage of their content was distributed), they will be in all the better position to put the squeeze on distributors not in their organizations (ie. the Indies). Such as regime would take away an Indie's ability to find a way to profitably distribute their content online, and receive only crumbs from the tax grab.

3) The bad precident - Once this is set up and enacted into law, how difficult do you think it would be to increase the tax rate up a few notches? Or to add more beneficiaries (think software companies, book publishers, magazine publishers, etc.) to the line-up with their hands out for free money? It will not be very long before the idea of the Internet to be used as a decentralized method of sharing information from one computer to another will be just too expensive to use in this fashion.

If you need a good idea on how bad it can be already for this kind of idea, look up information on Canada'a experience with taxing CD-Rs. Currently, there is debate over an amendment to increase this tax, and levying new taxes on removable hard drives and flash memory. As an example, the Creative Nomad player will more than double in price, and Creative has said that it will pull the product if this passes. All the while, not a penny of the money that has already been collected (millions of dollars) has been distributed because of arguments over the formulas.

Re:OK... So Now What!

[Alphtoo]

We, the People, cannot hope to compete against the RIAA and the MPAA unless we can afford to buy more "lawmakers" than they can. I don't think that's going to happen. But we can hit the RIAA & MPAA where they eat, simply by not buying their products, and we can vote the swine out of office who have been supporting them.

Pay Me Too

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make sure that I get 1/40th of all the fees, to pay me for my license on the letter "W", as duly registered in the Democratic Republic of West Easternly.

Felten's real work: Secure Internet Programming

[AaronSw]

I suspect Felten was referring to his work on Secure Internet Programming.

For example, he's done some excellent work on Proof-Carrying Authorization, where instead of relying on a server-side list of people who are allowed access, the client proves he should be let in based on a collection of signed statements.

Example: You said that any employee of a member of the Consumer Electronics Association could read this page. You said that IBM is a member. IBM said that everyone in the security department is an employee of IBM. The security department said I'm a member.

OT: /. filters

[shdragon]

Wow.. I really need to adjust my /. filters. This whole thread is nothing but you. Hahaha. That or maybe its proof that my filters actually work. :)