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"Super-DMCA" Bills In Tennessee and Arkansas
David Turner writes "Tomorrow, Tennessee's Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing
on two nearly identical DMCA-like bills. These bills threaten
personal privacy, anonymity, and security research. SB
213 and HB457
are similar to state laws
introduced all over the country by the MPAA. Despite amendments, the bills still threaten digital freedom. Last
month, twenty people showed up at the Massachusetts public
hearing, and effectively opposed the one MPAA lobbyist. If you attend, speak from notes rather than simply reading a statement (but you
may be able to submit written testimony). Please come to Legislative
Plaza in Nashville, rooms 12 and 14 at 3:30pm." And Kraken137 writes "The House and Senate of the Arkansas state legislature have passed the MPAA's "Super-DMCA" Bill, and it is now sitting on the Governor's desk awaiting his signature. It's not too late to convince him to veto this bill! Arkansas residents are urged to contact the Governor's office to express their opposition to this violation of rights. The ever-vigilant EFF has a page where residents can send a fax to Governor Huckabee's office to let their voices be heard. Remember, paper and phone calls make more of a difference than emails!"
Time to once again send a fax to my senator. This is really getting to the point of rediculous by the MPAA and the RIAA. People will still be cracking their movies and music and spreading them over systems they cannot touch.
The EFF has also set up a page to Fax, email, or print a letter to your Tennessee reps:
t em =2628
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&i
Knowing /. most people will just fax him a black page. The MPAA will be quaking in their boots at the huge bills for toner!
In Soviet Russia, beowulf clusters imagine YOU!
Friends, we are wasting our time with petty faxes, emails and written letters. We need to band together and purchase a Tomahawk cruise missile and then, only then, will be convince these infidels that they are wrong.
Someone (not me, I have things to do) needs to set up a website tracking this type of event, which allows people to enter their zipcodes and email addresses to be alerted when a lobbying opportunity arises in their area. I would be the first to sign up for Southern California.
If you feel you are up to the task - email me at ian[@]locut.us and I will do what I can to help, within the time contraints of my other projects.
Thank goodness someone brought this issue to light. I tried submitting an article earlier and was rejected.
This DMCA stuff is serious. Together with the USA PATRIOT act, we are *seriously* look at an Orwellian future, people.
It's really time to do something, no more procrastinating.
If you can't go out and do something in person, then at least make a donation to the EFF and the ACLU. They both even have a monthly recurring system where you can have a small charge made to your credit card every month. A monthly contriubtion will make you feel a lot less guilty when going to the movie theater or blockbuster.
Please don't let this pass you by. The ??AA lobbyists are subverting our freedoms to tell us what we are allowed to do with the things we already own!
It's ridiculous that corporations have more political power than the people who actually elect our officials. Can we not read the bribery between the lines? This is offensive on so many levels...
It's time to act, people. How do you want your future to be determined -- by youself or by a corporation?
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
The dangers of this are entirely in the disturbing broadness in the definitions, and the "everything not permitted is forbidden" catch. I much prefer the "everything not forbidden is permitted" way of things.
This would make it illegal for me to use fake referrer IDs (which I sometimes use) on my web browser. This would forbid me to share the DSL connection I share with my father's computer- why would ISPs ever want to allow shared connections? This would forbid me from burning my own music to CD, meaning the music that I myself composed.
The way it's worded actually outlaws power-line networking! While I don't really see that as a bad thing- people picking up on that will oppose the bill, and I think power-line networking is a Really Bad Idea(TM), it's more devious than that- with the "express consent required," you would have to get written consent from the companies in question whenever you want to plug something in to a wall outlet if power-line networking occurs.
This is a truly horrid, debilitating law- which I have every intention to flagrantly violate if I get a chance- start a company that specializes in making nothing but those things, use resources that law would forbid...
The "must get permission" thing is the part that scares me the most.
Warning: Poster of this comment is a nerd. Just like everybody else here.
Essentially what this "Super DMCA" is geared at is allowing copyright holders access to ISP private information (including but not limited to, IP address, street address, phone number, etc) of "copyright infringers" in the hopes of halting online music/movie piracy. It would basically outlaw any network address translation device (e.g. routers, gateways, firewalls) that could coneal the IP address of a suspected infringer.
posessing a natural number
2 39 847923847293847092394 1738178274821797837491 238747 4368522 342637464 2348273498 2374
27829379428734982379487239847293847923487293487
488794879872082407187409167
987238471287491387492874827493874365873658
327647234729384727394823794823747234923
is illegal and will be prosecuted by the full extent.
Because this number just happens to be a Britney song encoded in Radix-50 MPEG-4 format.
If you got this number in your calculations, you MUST
stop now and erase it as soon as possible.
Agreed. I've gotten about 20 people to fax him today, and I'm planning on calling his office later today, as are a couple of my co-workers (2 of whom are also college professors). We're also sending a carefully crafted email to our CEO to try and point out the places where this 'Super-DMCA' could possibly harm our ability to effectively do business in this state.
It's a shame people hold their entertainment as such an important part of their life that there could never be a successful boycot of the MPAA or RIAA.
No way would most people skip out on Matrix 2! Can you imagine, not forking over $8 to the MPAA to see a movie?!
Forget freedom, what's on TV?
This is *not a troll*, he actually said it!
I read an interview with Rick Mercer about this, and it's one of the funniest things I've ever read.. the story behind the whole thing is funnier than what you saw on TV..
Rick and the crew were outside the Arkansas legislature building, getting the typical "man on the street" responses, when someone from the Governor's office comes out and asks where the're from... Rick gives them the "we're from CBC television getting reaction from the people of Arkansas, blah, blah (he notes that nobody questions why Canadians would want to know the opinion of someone from Arkansas).. they immediately get hustled into the Governor's office, where they get an interview with Mike Huckabee.. he said he was sweating bullets, because he knew that anyone could just open up an internet connection and see that the House of Commons is not an igloo, but nobody ever did..
Then, just before the interview, Huckabee says he wants a private chat with Mercer, and pulls him aside.. at this point, Rick is thinking "damn, we've been made.." but Huckabee just says to him: "This here igloo, it's not controversial in any way is it? Because it wouldn't look right for me to be making a comment about something that's controversial to Canada." Rick assures him that no sir, there is nothing controversial about it at all..
They get their interview, and as Rick put it "got the hell outta Dodge, before anyone wised up."
The RIAA and MPAA send their lobbyists to individual state legislatures in an attempt to get Senators and Representatives they feel will be sympathetic to their cause to introduce the bill. Those Senators and Representatives then contact their friends in the Senate and House of the state to gain support for their proposed bill. The bill is then drafted and a hearing often takes place before one or more committees in the state house and senate. During these hearings the MPAA and RIAA lobbyists are often called on to speak and say why the law should be adopted. These hearings are usually done in such a way that the average Joe can't participate, nor can groups opposed to the bill such as the EFF and ACLU. Once the RIAA and MPAA lobbyists have addressed the state congress they will then have presented a completely one-sided view of their issue to the congress, which will only see one side of the coin, and vote before they can really look at the other side. A lot of this gets hurried through because of the large number of issues that come before the state house and senate, and some of it gets hurried through by the Senators or Representatives that introduce the bill because they want to get it passed.