Slashdot Mirror
Copy Protection a Crime Against Humanity
Trevalyx writes "An article over at Wired looks into the relation between copy protection and the reality of a rational amount of 'wiggle room' that is typically provided by the legal system. It's a topic covered often on Slashdot, but it's still a good read. Should be accompanied by a visit to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for your Daily Dose of Defending Digital Freedom." The article does a good job of giving examples of legal leeway that's granted every day.
And sold, and bought again. Including legal leeway. Money makes the world go round (c)
I love how shit gets twisted like this.
With all of the bullshit going on the world today, the real world, copy protection is a "crime against humanity"?
Give me a fucking break.
The author did a great job of describing why I personally am against DRM and strict copy protection schemes. I could never really put my fears into words before, but I have to say the article(sp) hit it right on the head. He's axactly right :)
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Hitler killing 6 million Jews and 4 million non-Jews is a "crime against humanity".
I would say this is more like withholding culture from the masses.
Vonal Declosion
Should be accompanied by a visit to the Electronic Frontier Foundation for your Daily Dose of Defending Digital Freedom."
Oooohh! It's the leader! All hail the leader. Look! I found a bean shaped like the leader. I'll put it with the others...
Not that I don't agree with at least some of what these groups represent, but sheesh! certainly not all of what they say, and I certainly don't need a "daily dose" of any argument if it is based on logic, morality, fairness, precedent, or other healthy systems we use to judge these matters. To suggest otherwise is to imply that their ideas would fade without heavy reinforcement.
Great truths don't need daily reinforcement. They are either self evident or emerge as truths on their own when we stray from them. You can draw your own conclusions from the fact that most major religions reinforce on a weekly basis.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Excuse me to nitpick but shouldn't that be
Copy PREVENTION rather than Copy PROTECTION?
IMHO, the article itself is a non-issue.
If the DRM / digital world sucks (for copyright or anything else) I believe that the market will have the right response....
Fair use not available? We will not buy!
Write boring code, not shiny code!
That's some really awesome reasoning. Nobody takes some laws seriously, so we should apply that mentality to other laws we object to, and your obligation to obey the laws is relative only to the seriousness of the "crime" committed. I'll let somebody else go on about the issue of moral relativism, but this guy really sounds like he wants to justify his mp3 collection.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
Flash forward 50 years in the future
//snaps out of daydreaming.. fighting for the resistance.. sweeeet
In the past, wars were fought over oil and other precious resources. Today the war is fought over media rights, and the rights to control and supress that same media as decided by the megalomanic corporations. The Rebellion Army is a minor threat, but is enlisting more and more recruits all in the name of digital freedom. The war has been bloody, the war has been long - but the corporations refuses to release it's iron grip..
The author rambles without actually making a definite point. But isn't that what most of these rambling articles do?
If copy protection (and prevention as is indirectly implied) of an intangible object is a crime, what about tangible objects? I should be able to apply his concept to music and movies sold in stores.
Problem is, that would result in a state of anarchy. Sort of contradicts his idea of a thriving society, doesn't it?
Okay, I've seen all the first posts about how crimes against humanity only applying to crazed mad dictators with axes to grind...but really, isn't the current trend of law just prelimenary for more of the same? People dismiss speeding laws as irrelevant almost every day, lives are lost, but how many people seriously consider abdicating their ability to excede those limits every day? Most of us probably don't know anyone who even might be a terrorist, but we'd probably put our foot down if the government decided to screen each and everyone in the country "just in case". The same applies to any law, maybe especially intellectual property laws because they're restricting the loose quality of ideas. Fair use, public domain, censorship...I suppose they're not exactly in league of mass murder. Swing them on a rope enough though, and you've got a dandy oppression.
I'm afraid that it doesn't work that way, people are far too ignorant and lazy to care about "fair use" anymore. Just look at the iTunes Music store. Of course, everyone is just so enchanted with the idea of being able to buy music one song at a time for cheap and instant gratification that they are willing to overlook the "minimal" DRM. Well I say that any DRM is too much DRM.
It seems that I am in the minority, however. Everyone insists on racking up insightful mods by saying how Apple couldn't get the "big five" to do it without DRM. Why? CDs don't have DRM (at least, not yet, and not on a large scale, I'm sure this statement is a little bit shaky but I haven't encountered any of these evil CDs yet). Why do the rules change when we are talking about files instead of plastic discs? Because files are easy to copy? CDs are very easy to copy too.
Oh well, I'm sure that everyone will just reply by saying how stupid I am and that they are so much smarter and more insightful that I am. So whatever.
I'm sorry, I just don't buy his reasoning that the DRM technology and laws are bad because they don't allow selective misinterpretation of them. He's really arguing that they're OK as long as they're not really enforced.
DRM technology and laws ARE crimes against humanity (sure, there are degrees of crimes against humanity) because they put gross profit opportunity ahead of the benefits to the commons. We're all better off if reasonable profits are protected and ideas are open and shared, than if Disney continues to make Megapoltroons indefiniteley off of Steamboat Willie while everything is locked down.
If your lease stipulates that you can't paint without explicit permission from your landlord, you will nevertheless patch up the scratches made by your yappy little dog on the bottom of the front door. If the high-priced industry analyst's report warns you on every page against duplicating, you'll still hand out at your weekly sales meeting copies of a page with a relevant chart. You'd snicker at the very suggestion of doing otherwise.
The high priced report is high priced because your company is paying for it. So its not a big deal to photocopy it and give it to people in your company. That might go against the letter of the law, but not the spirit. Try passing it out for free to your friend who works for the competition who doesn't subscribe to said report, and see who gets you first, the analyst firm or your boss (assuming they know about it of course).
The painting your house example doesn't even qualify here. File sharing of copyrighted material happening today is akin to someone creating an exact replica of a house thats up for rent and living in it rent free. Doesn't harm the landlord? Yes it does, cos now he/she/it will never get any rent. So logically, its akin to squatting. I live in NYC, and I've seen people try squatting the best they can, but I don't see much leeway given by the law there.
I do not support the RIAA, MPAA or any other Association of Assholes, and no, I don't deny using P2P networks in a manner that would violate the spirit of the law; but lets not get hypocritical here. Its stealing, and we (meaning us folk who do use P2P) need to see it as that. I am frankly surprised to see so many posts that try to portray it as otherwise on Slashdot. I would've thought that programmers and other techies who sell ideas for a living would've respected the rights of others that do the same to protect their livelihood.
The debate over copyright is the debate over the merits of a system of artificial scarcity. It costs virtually nothing to send a song over the Internet compared to shipping it via a physical medium -- CD.
The battles being fought here and now raise very important questions for our society. How much of what we create should be deemed personal property? To many, the very concept of "Intellectual Property" (Intellectual Robbery?) is absurd, due to there being no cost of distribution for an idea. This is summarized in the cliche idiom "information wants to be free".
But, what value does this artificial monopoly on an idea give to us? It obviously costs something in time and money to create ideas and technologies. Has anyone done a scientific study comparing the creativity levels of countries with differing copyright systems? I'd love to see one done, as its results could shed light on the (non-)benefits given by extending copyright terms.
"Copy Protection" is a lovely euphamism that hides the true nature of the technology. That is, robbing the public domain for the benefit of a single entity or person. It's a benefit to the few at the expense of the many. Its effects have already been taken to their logical extremes in many articles and posts (such as the article in question), so I won't go into them here.
Someday, scarcity for physical objects will be reduced to the level that we see for "intellectual property" on the Internet. That is, the cost of producing cars, gadgets, and MP3 players will be next to nothing. Will we battle over patents then just as we battle over copyright now? Will a future MIAA (Manufacturer Industry Association of America) sue dozens of college students for $96B because they "printed out" a copy of a new gadget?
Already, in genomics, the cost of discovering the function of a gene in the human genome confers upon the discoverer a monopoly on its use in drugs and treatments. This allows research firms to plant flags on the genes in our bodies, and charge whatever licensing fees they could imagine for their use. Even if the cost of the retrovirus to be distributed into our bodies to flip this genomic "switch" is virtually nothing, we will end up paying thousands of dollars per treatment, not just to fund the development of new therapies, but to line the pockets of the company's shareholders. In essence, we are turning our own bodies into a natural resource to be raped and pillaged by corporate interests, at the expense of the poor and less-fortunate of the world. We uphold these injustices with patents and law, humanely defending the inhumane capitalism which drives the pharmaseutical industry.
Someday we may see copy protection for gene therapy. What if a company found a way to control the ability of your body to propogate the benefits of a genomic treatment? What if your cells could not reproduce the gene after X cell generations, and you had to go back and pay for another treatment to continue seeing the benefits? Such a situation is not much different from the plight of AIDS sufferers, whose lives depend on a stream of artificially expensive, but lifesaving drugs.
I believe the copyright and copy-protection battles of today merely foreshadow a larger and more fundamental battle to come, one that will see the current government monopolies confered by Patents and Copyright turned on their heads.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Fair use not available? We will not buy!
Right. Remember the old digital video format, what was it called, DVD? It had regional lockout and macrovision copy prevention. A huge consumer backlash ensued and nobody bought any DVDs. The studios changed their minds pretty quickly after that one, heh. I guess we really taught them a lesson there.
If the DRM / digital world sucks (for copyright or anything else) I believe that the market will have the right response....
The problem I see with this response (and it is quoted quite often on here) is that "the market" is deciding in favor of DRM as we speak. Go down to your local store and look at the selection of DVDs vs VHS. There's this little thing called CSS on DVDs, remember? That's where the fun all started, at least in the recent round of DRM attempts.
Ask your average person about DRM and they won't have a clue what you are talking about, because it has been implemented so seamlessly. Sure, they might get annoyed at the "no fast forward" parts of DVDs (the ones that infuriate me personally...) and they might have to buy a little box if they had an old TV with only coax in, but overall it does what they want and they're happy.
Oh and remember Macrovision? VHS has also had DRM for years and years, it was just much less sophisticated. Still quite difficult to bypass though.
Like boiling lobsters, you just raise the temperature a tiny bit at a time and people don't realize they're being baked.
I think the true travesty (and this article sort of hints at it but doesn't pursue) is that some day, we won't have DVD players. A thousand years in the future, there are going to be worthless chips of plastic and metal dug up and they will have no clue what it all means. They kept copious records back in "the old days" too, and we are able to piece together some of what happened and the culture back then thanks to it. Imagine how much harder the job will be when they have to go decyphering encryption schemes on top of all the other problems.
Hell, forget about 1000 years in the future -- think 50 years in the future! It makes me depressed just thinking about it. Even without DRM in the picture it's going to be depressingly difficult to keep updating all our media. Add a million DRM schemes and it starts looking like an insurmountable problem.
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
In 40 years or so there will be replicators where all you will need is a carbon block and some [pirated] scripts and you can make whatever you want through the glory of nanotechnology. What will they do regarding copyright, copy protection etc. then? Outlaw replicators? Will corperations and law restrict us from advancing in technology/quality of life? Personally, I think we'll have to move into more of a socialistic/non-capitalistic society.
Is pretty simple. I don't want to buy rights to watch a movie once. Oh, I want to watch it again? Shit... now I have to relicence / rerent my movie. I have to pay more, and it's more of a hassle. So many of you say that if people don't like it, they won't buy it. You all know that's bullshit. I don't like windows all that much. I mean, it's ok, but guess what? I had to buy a copy for school. Is that terrible? No, not really... Is being forced to rent a movie for each vewing all that bad? No... but I still don't want to have to...
And it goes along the lines of renting cabin. I set off to rent a cabin the other day. Everyone kept asking me how many people were staying there. I said "The cabin says it sleeps 6. I want to rent the cabin. How much?" And come to find out I have to pay based on how many people sleep there..... It's still just one cabin... I get the whole thing... I still don't get it. Is that 20$ a person for the water bill? The electricity? I don't think so. It's for their pockets.
In the future we'll live in a world where we will pay each time we watch a movie or listen to a song. We'll pay for each pasanger we give a ride to in the car we rented for the weekend. We'll pay based on the number of people staying in the cabin regaurdless of the fact that we rent the whole thing. It goes on and on. Hell, some of that happens now.
It's all about people making money for free. Does it cost the recording company ANYTHING if I watch their movie twice? No. Does it cost the cabin owners more if I have an extra person over? $1.00 in water if they take a shower maybe.. Does it cost the car rental company more if I give a friend a lift? Wear and tear? $1.00 maybe?
It's comming, and nothing we can do will stop it. I'm just going to sit back and enjoy my right to bitch until that's gone too.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Wiggle room- the right to endlessly litigate 'cause those gray areas of law have dollar signs written all over them.
Given a choice, I'd prefer strict, principled laws. There should be no ambiguities ("Help me god, I'm hallucinating again") where law is concerned. I would like to know I'm well within my rights to copy a file, and not have to rely on 'wiggle room'.
The problem with DRM is that there is no choice.
which is lawyerese for "don't sweat the small stuff".
Try to imagine a world in which every detail of every law were perfectly and literally enforced. Imagine going to prison because you didn't file a change of address with the Selective Service when you moved. Imagine getting a ticket every time you switched on your turn signal 199 feet from an intersection instead of 200 feet.
There's an old bit of engineering wisdom that says that systems with loose tolerances tend to be more reliable. A Mickey Mouse watch with some slop in the gears will keep running if a little dust gets in, an expensive precision chronometer may not. Societies seem to work the same way, which is why we have laws full of words like "reasonable" and "prudent".
"justify his mp3 collection" -- OK, good example. Dunno about the author, but my MP3 collection consists entirely of imports from purchased CDs and has never gone anywhere except my iPod. In a world where "fair use" is defined by common sense and/or judges, this works. My interests and the interests of the royalty collectors are satisfied. In a DRM world, some bureaucratic twit of a computer might have prevented me from listening in my car.
Valid point.
An example on the other side is PC software in the 1980's. Uncopyable install disks used to be the norm. Market pressure eventually forced a change.
...un-broken hardware will be illegal soon enough. I wish I was joking, but within the next few years I can see large restrictions being placed on even "consumer-level" technology.
I've noticed posts already criticising the article. Shame on them. They all cry about copy protection, then when real good material is presented they throw insults at it. This article is about the ethics of copy protection, not about money. There is too much speak of money when it comes to issues such as these. Too many fail to realize that money should not be the priority. Money can not and should not answer all questions. If you applied this reasoning to everything, then you would be supporting slavery, murder, terrorism, and many other bad things. For example, if I dodged the entire issue of human rights and when straight to money talk, then I could show slavery was necessary. I don't believe in slavery though, and I'm sure most here don't either. Yet, when you speak in terms of money, many evils prevail. There isn't any clear violation of ethics when it comes to copy protection, because when anyone talks about it, it comes down to money almost everytime. Ever take money out of the picture when it comes to issues such as these? You'll be surprised at what you find. In fact, slavery was bad economically no matter how it seemed when spoken in terms of money. This was not evident to those who owned slaves. Equality is more powerful than anyone can imagine. The closer we have come to it, the more prosperous we have become. Copy protection is something those that own IP believe in and those who aren't educated well enough on the subject. Many will disagree with me, but imagine this. Those that said the world was round, the ones that said there was no devil inside the insane, or the ones against slavery were considered crazy themselves at the time. Today we call many of these people attempting to prevent more IP protection and possibly turn it around communists, hippies, or simply people who want everything for free. I guess the world is flat after all.
Question everything.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
That's frogs. A lobster couldn't get out of the slowly heating pot even if it did realize what was happening. A frog could jump out but doesn't. Anyway, lobsters are properly thrown into a rolling boil.
..it seems to be saying what I believe: that the law should be a means to an end, not and end unto itself. or.. no harm, no foul. Blinding following the rules is why bad things happen.
Uncopyable install disks used to be the norm. Market pressure eventually forced a change.
You haven't bought many games recently, have you? I can't remember the last one that didn't use some form of copy prevention technology.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Big business is not in favor of deregulation. That's a myth perpetrated by the anti-big-business crowd.
Big business want regulations that keep away the competition. Many small businesses and individuals feel the same way. This has been true since the first business that discovered it could use government as a competitive tool.
Guilds, unions, professional licensing, etc., are all supported by the very people who are subject to the regulations. They're all ways of limiting the competition. Big business has the same motives. As long as they can profit from regulations keeping the competition limited they will be in favor of it.
By their nature, all regulations are going to favor the big business with lots of lawyers over the small business with none. Microsoft, IBM and Sun are large enough that they can afford the lawyers to manage patents. Small businesses can't. They can afford huge teams of programmers to reinvent the wheel from scratch and create their own copyrighted wheel. Small business cannot do this as easily so they spend money licensing other peoples' code.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If something is copy-protected well enough, then it will never become available to the PD. Imagine modern scholars trying to brute-force the 128-bit-IDEA encryption on Shakespeare's Macbeth. (Assuming they were licensed to use the IDEA patent, of course. ;-) (Have they had enough time, or would we need a few more universe-ages?)
If it doesn't reach PD, then when can the progress happen? It can't be built upon by the population at large, unless -- do you really think it makes sense that I should purchase a license to build upon "Steamboat Willy"? (Whoever thought that up, is dead and he got the 28 years that he expected. His incentive was fulfulled.) And while I know they are probably out there on the MAME-warez sites, I remember there are many C64 games that I don't have today not just because I got bored with them, but because they were inconvenient to take into the future. Would any of that stuff still be around in 2073 when it falls into PD, without the w4r3zd00dz? Funny: I bought Doom from ID and it wasn't copy-protected at all, but I know Romero's beautiful WADs will still be around in 2083, and no help from the w4r3zd00dz will be necessary. Little Johnny will find the files on grandpa's old file server, because grandpa was able to maintain continuous storage and migrate data, even though he never interfered with ID's rightful monopoly. And Grandpa learned from history so that's why there weren't any more Library-of-Alexandria-like incidents.
Wow, think of it: that great level, E1M3, will still be in people's minds a century from now. I really believe that. People will still see it and it will be an almost "real" place. The ideosphere was permanently enlarged. The arts were promoted. I won't kid anyone; I think the w4r3zd00dz might end up being responsible for that, but ID's decision to not use copy-protection is what guaranteed it.
If there are restrictions on access, then the very purpose of copyright has been subverted. It's a trade secret, not a published work. If it's copy-protected, then the progress of the arts and sciences is not being promoted.
And that's ok -- nobody should, of course, be required by society to act so altruisticly, because we are free men and not servants of some dystopian collectivist society, and we live for our own desires. But there are consequences that go with not working with Us. If it's copy-protected, then We should not extend copyright-protection to it. Society offered the creator a deal and the creator declined and decided to market his effort a different way. Fair enough. I think that's probably foolish, but it's his call to make.
But people who claim the privileges (monopoly) and yet reject the associated obligations (ease of data migration, format conversion, etc), are dishonest and not acting in good faith. Those who try to get such Free Lunches should, IMHO, be treated to "special" standards of respect or consideration, that are different than the treatment extended to decent folk. Their kind should not be encouraged. And remember that true Law is not set by those people in Washington, but by We The People. You can subvert my government, but you can't subvert me. Whitewash and social-engineer and bribe and play your games, but the ethical principles from which decisions are made, remain immutable.
And so I choose for the reality to be: copyright exists .. in situations where it is appropriate. The use of copy-protection influences my judgement of that situation. Catch up, Washington.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
However, at a less trivial level, DRM technology is essentially oriented toward the inhibition of communication. This is promoted under the auspices of the "benefits" (from the view of corporations) of preventing "theft" of intellectual "property." However, inhibition of communication is a tool that, like many, can be put to nefarious uses well beyond that which would fit nicely into a glossy marketing spin piece or a slick lobbyist presentation. In the long run, the inhibition of communication can readily serve those who would commit and/or foment direct crimes against humanity. Genocide, for example, is much more "effective" if those not immediately affected are left in ignorance.
The "secret" content of a movie you haven't seen yet doesn't hold a candle to the "secret" that an entire ethnic group is buried in mass graves in a remote forest, but the "benefits" of DRM technology will serve both equally. Free speech is critical to bringing such evil to light; however, the deeper DRM technologies are integrated into technology we rely on, the more we will wave goodbye to free speech.
No Laughing Allowed!
The trouble is, cut off one head, and another grows back. EG: The new "disposable DVD" format. It's DiVX by any other name, and more acceptable because it has more benefits.
As for those that bought DIVX players and are now left with a bunch of expensive coasters, I only have one thing to say, and that is "HA!". That's what you get for supporting a format that has "hardcore consumer fucking" built right in.
The problem is, most consumers are idiots. I'm not saying to troll or flame, they are. They're uneducated, they don't do anything to educate themselves. Basically they're sheep. Whatever Disney, Fox, whoever tells is good sells. Hence the pan'n'scan debacle with DVD. (Though consumers are actually getting a clue there which is enough to make a lot of widescreen fans drop dead of shock.)
The sad fact is, 99% of consumers will ignore all this DRM stuff, buying the party line that it's "only" there to stop illegal activity...
Actually, they're not. Why not? Reexamine your statement literally. CDs are not easy to copy. Only the information stored on them is.
The entire concept of "business" revolves around supply and demand of physical objects. That concept falls flat where digital data is concerned, and that's why all these political issues exist today. Everyone is used to the business model, and is trying to force digital data into the same constraints. Ultimately, they will fail.
In the meantime, that is the primary reason "the rules change". One requires physical material that you cannot simply create on demand, while the other has no such intrinsic cost -- it simply uses what is already there. When Star Trek style replicators come along, then we'll have this same discussion for physical objects, too.
How about resale? Can you alter the DRM signature on those files you've paid for to reassign them to someone else, i.e. can there be a second hand market for those tracks?
How about sampling parts of it, or reproducing it for use in teaching or research? Ah, you say, I can burn it to CD, and copy that into MP3, and work from that - substantional artifacts and all, on top of which you need a CD on which you've paid a tax because it's assumed you're using it for illegal copying. Admittedly, that is not a direct result of DRM, but it still an impact on Fair Use.
Now, what happens when the copyright on those apple DRM'd files expires, in 95 years + the lifetime of the author. Will we still be able to read those DRM'd files? will the DRM magically disappear as the files enter the public domain?
Yes, Apple's DRM is below most people's pain point, and I think it's good that the music companies have started to relax the death grip a little. But all DRM still has a serious knock on effect on our fair use rights, our right of resale of a good, and the entry into the public domain after the expiration of copyright (eventually. Assuming disney fails at some point in their quest to make worldwide copyrights continue to extend in length so that no work ever returns to the public domain - but that's another post)
The problem is, CD's are coming up to same restrictions of apple's DRM, not the other way around. And that DRM ignores the 'wiggle room' that is part of our actual rights.
On top of which, there is genuine breach of copyright, often as part of using those fair use rights. For example, it has been judged in court that you can 'time shift' a broadcasted work as part of your fair use rights. Technicially though, you cannot make a library of that work. So if you were to use your Tivo, or record a song off a radio, or use your tape machine to watch a work later, you're fully within your fair use rights to do so. Because DRM and the 'broadcast flag' don't include that wiggle room, you'll be stopped from doing so. "Ahah" you say. "That's a limitiation of the techonology, it can be fixed". well, that's the point. It's an on/off limitation. Even assuiming the DRM is fixed (unlikely) to allow you to record it for legal timeshifting, you'd only be allowed to watch it once, then the DRM would make it delete itself off the Tivo, as that is what a strict intrepretation of the law demands. Only watched it half way through before the phone rang? Tough.
Don't forget, these industries are the same ones that have accused people (and sued some of them) for 'theft' for singing happy birthday round a campfire, playing music on the radio when there are passengers in the taxi cab, and fastforwarding through the adverts.
Common sense and wiggle room are part of how any system of law works. People break several laws every day, technically (in the UK, just parking your car is technically causing an obstruction, and just have a look at some of the really obscure state laws in the US). Certainly, if we applied driving laws with the same strictness they're trying to apply copyright law, then nobody would be able to drive.
Oh, and by the way, your last point 'if you don't like the terms of use of the product, you don't have to buy it' is not a get out clause for corporations. The recording industry has an effective group monopoly on the production of music. That's why they are often called an oligarchy. since they produce all the recorded music, and additionally are trying to control all outlets of digital distribution as well, there simply isn't a market alternative to their works. If I could buy the same artists' music from different providers with different DRM schemes, at different prices, you might have a point. As it is, they are using DRM to not only enforce their existing rights rigidly, they are using it to give themselves extra restrictions they do not have under the law.
Let me give you one example. Imagine when you bought a book,
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Oh pish, people just want whatever gets them the most money. Advertisers want self regulation so that they can lie, music and movie companies want stricter IP controls so they can release the same crap over and over with no competition, big business wants a high barrier to entry, small business wants no barrier to entry, companies that give out stock options want no regulation on stock options, cigarette companies want their toxic products not to be banned. Everybody wants an uneven playing field with them at the top. I just thought I'd highlight one particular example of hypocrasy.
Trouble is, if you buy a DVD or perhaps even a CD, sooner or later it's going to end up as a coaster either through nornal wear and tear or as a result of faulty manufacture and degradation. Common sense and decency dictates that you should be able to secure the content in case of this contingency, but the RIAA et al are neither sensible nor decent.
(yr wrtng s strng nd u mk sm ntrstng pnts . .. .)
That said, VHS copy protection (nothing digital about it) was never difficult to bypass. The electronics industry immediately offered an inexpensive solution.
(tht's th // i'm mprssd wth)
But here's what I really want to say. I can't stress it enough.
If government, in collusion with industry, suppresses something people truly want, then pirates, in collusion with dissidents, will fight to restore or retain supply.
This is a situation that threatens to see the world's best minds hide their favorite tools in the basement.
Of course, if people would just get along, and give each other some leeway, as David Weinberger suggests, then maybe the Celestial Jukebox and the Hefner-Tarantino Movie Multiverse--both available on demand, 24 hours a day--can get out of my hippie dreams (and into my flying car!)
Yes, you fucking well can have something for nothing. It happens all the time; I can throw some seed in the garden - ignore them completely - and in a few months still have watermelons. I can walk outside, hold my mouth open to the sky in a rainstorm and drink all the fresh water I care to catch. I breath, and no one charges me for the air. I think, and no one questions my thoughts.
These rights of commerce are not inalienable, and are not moral. When it comes down to you trying to charge me for something as free as air or water just because you, at one time, drank from the same well then it's become time for you to leave the island.
This was a tragic lost to the civilized world, and possily lots of Homer's other works were destroyed never to be seen again, not to speak of of the astrometery of Ptolemy and Eratosthenes.
o ph y/philosop8.htm used to get the spelling correct]
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Eratosthenes, who i've always been a personal fan of, is credited with measuring the earth with a stick, or rather, by making measurments of the shadows cast at noon on a stick between Alexandria and Syene. No rockets, no computers, simple geometry established, assuming the earth was a perfect sphere, he determined represented 1/50th of a circle. Using modern mesurements, that's 500 miles * 50 = 25,000 miles (mental reference from scientific american sited verivied on the web) Pretty useful for people like Columbus, oh but wait.. we lost alot of our useful navagation knowlege cause it was burnt. Guess it wasn't christrian enough for Emperor Theodosius of Rome.
[http://www.planetarybiology.com/science_philos
There are so many other scientists, artists, pholophiers from this era. Hell Galileo wrote his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Principal Systems of the World" was published in about 1632, which chalanged Aristotle's geocentric view, something debated by atleast Aristarchus of Samos circa 230 BC or so. Who else might have published works who's theories can be proven by modern day methods.
[http://bell.lib.umn.edu/map/PTO/WRITE/erat.htm
Now would you consider this act a crime against humanity. Lost wealth of knowlege leading to the fall of knowlege it self?
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Now... can we compair private libraries of books and music by users of P2P networks to the Library of Alexandria, a center of civilized thought? Could be, because for the first time in history distance has become obsolete. What survived from this era are not what could be considered the holy grail of wisdom, but literal scraps of information scattered from a varity of sources, not employed researchers or librarians, but something close to our amature collectors.
If it wasn't for this new Eutopia, I wouldn't have been able to find Eratosthenes's experiment, and been able to reproduce it, for the benifit of my nieces and nephews. A simple experiment over 2000 years ago that shows someone good evidence of the fact that they live on a planet.
While some would agrue that music and movies are not a human right. This is true. Got to make a living, we do presently have an industry, stuff costs money. Ok.. great! But DRM threatenes to permit the loss of works. At present i'm willing to pay for a CD... to play for my self and a friend. If I really like it, i'll keep the CD for 5 years, 10 years, and until I am dead. Someone who is curious about me, my life, like at the dawn of the 21st century might be at a loss if no one can obtain the right anymore. While you may think a obscure mixed metaphore like "the way the beach is kissed by the sea, poluted now but in our hearts still clean" {Insane Jane in a tribute to Pete Townshend) is important enough to preserve... but what about the works of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, or Einstein. With DRM... if the companies who published their work digitaly no longer exist, how can we access it.
We no longer need a natural disaster, global war, nor fanatical zeliot oh a quest for our welfare in the afterlife in order to drive this planet into another dark age. All we need are hard core encryption schemes, criminal penalities for circumventing them, and the loss of ability to lock them, a loss by some site on the net shutting down after declairing bankrupsy.
This isn't about depriving copyright holders of their rights to publish their works, nor about our distaste for an established system of enterprise. This is about standing at the edge of a new dark age where we stand to loose countless millenia of history, and a responciblity we have to the human race, and so long as we continue to permit these actions we are as guility as those responcible for the loss of the library of Alexandria.
Moraly it's wrong, their for it must be politicly correct.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I have a large problem with this concept that is behind a lot of our current thinking about why copying is wrong. Whenever I have a conversation with someone about copyright, I get the argument: The guy worked hard to produce X, he deserves to be recompensed. This is a very strange concept. Nobody has a 'right' to profit from anything they do (unless this is stipulated in a contract of some kind, and then it really isn't an inherent right like these people are trying to make out). If I put in a lot of hard work to create the most beautiful music/art/whatever, but nobody buys, I can't say I have a right to profit from these works. Profit is mostly good fortune, definitely not a case of the most deserving case profits most. I think that much of the world's (IMHO broken) views on copyright stem from this one.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
DRM will only work if people actually want the content and actively consume it. I can't speak for everyone else, but I'll be damned if I'm going to buy a copy-protected CD (I haven't bought a CD since the first red book-breaking disc came out). However, I'm not going to steal it either. Essentially, the more they protect it, the less I want it.
Put copy protection on your CDs? Fuck you, I don't want anything you sell. Use that Palladium thing to put copy protection on your analyst's report? Fuck you, I won't use your services.
Hell, here goes a big Fuck you to anyone who can't respect that I am a rational person and assumes that I am incapable of following the law (if there even is one).
The problem is that they are a minority today. The same number of people may well complain, but they will be ignored because the majority of PC users today are clueless and haven't the slightest idea what's going on. The masses will let themselves be manipulated, and the few that try to raise warning flags drown in a sea of ignorance.
So the times are different. You can't compare today, where everyone is ignorant and basically uses whatever is handed to them, to the 1980s, where a PC user was someone who actually knew what he was doing and wasn't going to let himself be stepped on just like that.
Back then, the knowledgeagle geeks were the market. Today, the ignorant sheep are the market.
Clever signature text goes here.
Well, it will almost turn out this way, except for one small detail - the anything box will need to know how to fabricate whatever it is you want to make. So, someone who works for Levis designs a new style of levis jeans and then stores the "formula" for creating the jeans with an "anything box".
Now, some people will be nice and just share the formula, and others will try the "IP" route and force people to pay for it, and take legal and technological steps to artificially restrict the proliferation of the formula. Can you say "RIAA/MPAA Returns" boy and girls? I knew you could.
I can't afford a sig!
Doubtful. The thing is, we already have such an "economy of abundance" when it comes to ones and zeros, but we still see lots of intellectual property owners going to every imaginable extreme to enforce the scarcity that served them so well in times past.
When nano takes off, it will start us on a path towards abundance. But it's going to be a long, winding path. The reason is simple: Few corporations are willing to allow a market to grow if it means giving up their control over it.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
In the USA and Canada I would say that that's true. Most people here have not heard of DVD regions. But there aren't a bunch of adjoining countries who have other region numbers. Thus in the USA, it's quite hard to run into a DVD region problem. Can any europeans or asians comment on this? Is awareness of DVD copy protections greater in areas where different regions are connected by land?
"Oh and remember Macrovision? VHS has also had DRM for years and years, it was just much less sophisticated. Still quite difficult to bypass though."
All you need is one of those little 'video stabilizer' boxes you can get at electronics stores for less than $100 and you're home free.
Also, many DV Capture devices will strip Macrovision. If I wanted to do it, I could copy many Disney VHS tapes to VCD quite easily and Macrovision would not be a problem for my Canopus ADVC-100 converter.
If my Athlon can break CSS, I'm pretty sure the whizbang AI computers 1000 years from now will be able to do it too :)
I see your point though, and the problems you speak of will no doubt take place within 50 years. Take for instance the Library of Congress. They are known for archiving copyrighted works. So if they are all DRM'ed and the DMCA makes it illegal to break it, what then? Kiss this chapter in history goodbye.
But not to worry, the said AI computers can combine the works of Ray Bradbury and George Orwell and make a pretty good reconstruction.
-R
> > Like boiling lobsters, you just raise the
> > temperature a tiny bit at a time and people
> > don't realize they're being baked.
> That's frogs. A lobster couldn't get out of
> the slowly heating pot even if it did realize
> what was happening. A frog could jump out but
> doesn't.
Not that it matters much, but this is indeed a myth.
Frogs don't tend to sit still for long, and if
they can jump out of a pot of water, they will.
The reason why everyone is overlooking the DRM of the iTunes Music Store is because it is transparent to most people.
That's right- if you are within fair use, you don't have to worry about the DRM in Apple's AACs. Apple's DRM is enough to keep honest people honest, without restricting their rights. This is much like the way ipods cannot copy music to a computer (without 3rd party software).
If you want to be dishonest, it is trivial to get rid of the DRM, but I hope that you get prosecuted to the full extent of the law for it.
As for me, the DRM stays, and I will be quite content listening to my music on 3 computers (I have 2), any number of cds, or any number of iPods.
If the DRM / digital world sucks (for copyright or anything else) I believe that the market will have the right response
DRM is not the problem, and "the market" can't fix it.
So what is the problem? The problem are laws that try to make DRM work. DRM cannot survive in a free market with equivalant non-DRM alternatives. DRM cannot survive when manufacturers are free to make hardware that does not enforce DRM. DRM cannot survive in a society where people are free to discover and communicate methods of defeating DRM. DRM cannot survive when people have the right to modify the things that they own.
In order to make DRM work the DRM lobby must turn to illgeal monopolies and cartels. They require laws to force manufactures to restrict features and to include DRM enforcement. They require laws making it a crime to think, reasearch, learn, and explore methods of defeating DRM. They require laws making it a crime to communicate the idea of how wo defeat DRM. They require laws restricting the use and modification of your own property in the privacy of your own home.
"The market" cannot defeat laws, it can merely suffer and stagnate as it muddles along as best it can within those laws.
And those laws already exist.
The DMCA 1202 (e) (2) states that it will legally enforce the standards set by an industry "consensus standard-setting" body. I can't find it right now, but someplace there is is a law or rule granting that body exemptions from anti-trust violations. Can anyone find a refference for this?
It is illegal to manufacture a digital audio device without Serial Copy Management System. It is illegal to VCS without Macrovision. The DMCA makes it a crime to manufacture a device without including the restrictions set by the standards body in the previous paragraph.
The DMCA makes it a crime to figure out how to circumvent DRM
The DMCA makes it a crime to communicate that knowledge.
Various laws make it a crime to modify your property such as removing Macrovision, the Serial Copy Management System, or any other control, and the DMCA 1202 (2) makes it a crime to so much as flip a bit in protected files.
These laws are here, and their impact is just beginning. That have already killed the entire DAT market. They are impeding the development of digital TV. Even when we finally do get digital TV it may die under these restrictions just like DAT died. We have scientific conferences being moved overseas because of these laws. We have scientists abandoning certain fields of research because of these laws. We have programming projects being moved overseas and American programmers being denied full access because of these laws. Domestically manufactured devices cannot compete in forign markets against non-crippled devices. Fair use is being exterminated. Libraries are threatened as they are increasingly denied the use of more and more content.
The laws are alread here, and they want more and stronger laws. Are we just trying to fight a holding action? Have we already lost?
I say let them use all the DRM they want! Just scrap all the f*ckign laws that enforce DRM! DRM is not the problem. LAWS are the problem.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
This is a bit of a stretch.
Actually had had an excellent point to make, the problem is that he did not support it as well as he could have. His examples about "may not paint" and "may not copy" were valid, but they lacked impact.
A better example would be the rule against driving throught a red light. That's a good rule. Everyone agrees with it. But what if it were impossible to break that rule? What if you are driving to the hospital? What if you someone is after you with a gun? Or what if the timer on the traffic light burns out and the light never turns green?
The way DRM enforcement works is that your engine would freeze up whenever the light turns red.
That example has impact. It's one thing to have a rule against something, but it is an entirely different thing to make something impossible.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Why would you need "money" in such future? Today you need people doing manual labour for you - the more, the better. That's why you want to get paid for your creative work. In the future you will be able to lead a wealthy life (and have the options of VR and eventually posthuman life) without paying for anything. That means you will not have any economic insentive to ask for payment for your work. And the jeans designer will probably be happy to share his work with the people.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
As with any "strong" DRM, in order for this to be effective you have to ban a whole lot of software. For starters, you can't allow any open source encoders because it would be trivial to modify them to ignore the flag.
The only way I see DRM being reasonable is if it is *not* intended to be effective. The iTunes store is an example of this; copying is only made inconvenient, not prohibited.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.