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.
DRM is a perfect solution for an imperfect world - A solution that ignores the fact that people are, by our very nature, unlikely to stick exactly to rules. Grey exists because we don't like black and white as the only two choices, and because we're quite capable of defining our own middle ground.
Until we can develop computers that are able to do the kind of fuzzy matching that the human brain does naturally, turning control of creativity over to them is fraught with risk. All it takes is an incorrect statement somewhere in the source, or the confluence of a couple of seemingly benign factors, and suddenly you can't watch that DVD you just bought - But you can't take it back because you broke the seal on the packaging.
The thing the article doesn't go into is the "analogue hole". Human creativity is very good at working around restrictions. We designed ladders to reach high places, and windows because it's nice to be able to see out without letting the weather in.
They can DRM CDs all they want - I've got a DiscMan with optical out, and a soundcard with optical in. Sure, I'll have to do it manually, but I can still make perfect digital copies of whatever CDs I own. Similarly, people will find ways around this "broadcast flag", even if it's just going back to VHS and a capture card. Old hardware's not just going to disappear.
Finally, as much as xxAA would love to, they don't control the legislative process in other countries. Until they do, there's nothing they can do to make companies build DRM-compliant devices for other markets. Some of them will probably deliberately ensure their devices aren't DRM-compliant, if they've got some marketroids with a clue. How do you stop people importing "un-broken" hardware?
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
I got from the article. That there are always acceptions and computers are crummy when it comes to those.. lets say you have to reinstall your operating system. But now your libary won't play.. DOesn't that suck.. Or lets say you don't have a net connection to make sure the cd you just bought isn't a copy... IN short DRM just causes more problems then it solves..
Isn't it ironic that this article about 'copyright protection a crime against humanity' is showing up in Wired, which is owned by Microsoft? Hello Palladium.
www.google.com
...IMHO to fight increasingly draconian DRM measures, is to simply continue proving that they WON'T WORK. If the end user is able play back the media in question even once, then it must also be possible to copy it. Granted, it may take a certain level of sophistication to get a *perfect* copy, but it can be done.
OTOH, if a not-so-perfect copy is all that's needed, most anyone can manage that. Witness the bootleg recordings of movies made with camcorders that get distributed all over the net, sometimes even before the official release date. Or the sealed-in-the-discman demo cds that people have managed to copy, sometimes by just cutting the headphone line and attaching it to a line-in jack.
I don't know when it will happen, but someday the media producers have to wake up and realize that DRM only costs them money for imagined protection, and in some cases -- when DRM doesn't allow legitimate playback -- hurts the very markets they are trying to cultivate.
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Nope, not iTunes. And definitely not some POS p2p spyware app laden with crappy rips. But free nontheless... (say it with me) usenet.
The other day I burned a CD for my cousin to listen to on his way to work. He bought a CD player for his car that plays MP3 discs despite the fact he rarely uses the net and probably doesn't even know how to spell usenet. He's into country but I make it my mission to widen people's horizons - the CD has music from the US, Sweden, Mexico, Russia, the UK, and even Egypt - all brought to him, via me, via USENET.
I'm working on "remastering" a few rock concerts that were sent to me (in a box of CDRs) by way of a friend of a friend in germany. See, the US hardly ever has live concert shows any more - but "rockpalast" is, so far as I know, still running. So, soon as I am happy with the results I'll commit these shows to MPEG2 streams and share'em with the world - most likely on DVD, since uploading even one would take me weeks online. What those broadband equipped friends do with this "data," however, is beyond my control.
I have several CDs worth of live SNL music performances (as well as a few favorite skits) that were ripped from my direcTV tivo. The quality is typical sucky direcTV, but let's face it: that's about as good as you're gonna get nowdays, and it's still (arguably) better than VHS. I also have pretty much every video PJ harvey has made - again, thanks to rips I made from my tivo when M2 was having its "women in rock" week.
All real world examples illustrate just exactly why most of this is irrelevant. I used to be pretty zealous about these legislations, but frankly I jsut don't care any more. Why? Because there's nothing at all stopping your fave garage band from producing their own release and getting exposure via the internet. (In fact, I've downloaded several this way and still have a few of these "underground" releases in my collection because they were actually GOOD.) There's also little (ie pretty much nothing except bandwidth or time) to stop me from ripping my fave music and sharing it with the world - or to prevent me from sharing my collection of SNL skits and music vids - in fact, I've shared Cdds with several friends.
None of these laws matter because they relate only to commerce. Sure, a few folks have put them to the test (and more power to them) by intentionally breaking the law and then taking the case to court. But for the "average user" (or even the "power user") who isn't an activist or a business owner, the laws mean pretty much nothing. They didn't stop the worldwide digital release of the new Matrix, they didn't stop me from recording countless hours of TV via my PC - nor could they.
I don't support these new "corporate legislations," nor do I support most publishers (no magazines, no pay tv, never listen to radio and watch TV only until I get so fed up with commercials I close the damn window on my desktop to bask in the silence.) Yet I'm still (again, arguably) better informed than most people I know because "most people" let Dan Rather spoon feed them their only news each day and probably have never even heard of WIRED or /. My music collection is more diverse than it's ever been in my entire 40 years of life (and I was pretty "out there" even in the 70's). I have hours and hours of various TV shows, movies, and music videos. And even if we woke up tomorrow and all media (including TV) was digital and had these "broadcast flags" and watermarks, you know it would be only a matter of days before workarounds were spread across the world. In the meantime the greater audience wouldhave been alienated and the proverbial other shoe would, no doubt, fall.
What ever happened to "the letter of the Law vs. the Spirit of the Law"? How hard can you squeeze a yellow light and not draw blood?
It's all based on a personnal observation on the ticket writer. If the "officer" thinks you pushed that yellow light to the point that it bleeds, then you are guilty, no matter how much time or money you spend in court.
You have no way to dispute it,no "instant replay".
In this case, DRM will know that you have already viewed/listened to that data.
Hello Mr. Orwell.
What ever happened to that "American Spirit"?
The author makes the point that most rules are meant to be bent, but DRM is wrong because it doesn't allow any flexibility. Well, he's wrong. Personally, I'm not in favor of DRM. However, I think in order to have an open debate on the subject, we need to be honest, and avoid ridiculous hyperbole.
Aside from his poor taste in word choice, the author makes the flawed fundamental assumption that all works will employ DRM in the strictest terms. This, I'm quite sure, will not be the case. There will be some recording that come with limitations like "this can only be played once, on a tuesday between 12:14 and 12:18," and that sucks, but that will be the exception rather than the rule. Leeway can be programmed in, too. I use iTunes and the Apple Music store. I can buy a song once, and then copy it to my other authorized computers and my iPod, and burn it on a CD. That's reasonable. However, I can't make a million copies and send them to everybody on the internet. That's reasonable, too. I think that passes the authors "snicker test."
Look, if you don't like the terms of use on the product, you don't have to buy it. Crimes against humanity? So, we have some kind of inalienable right to listen to the latest Britney Spears blather, and DRM infringes upon this right? Since when do you have a right to any piece of information somebody else creates?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
All this is technically possible today. Drivers of big trucks have had their performance monitored at that level of detail for a few years now.
A decade ago, people would have objected. But today? It could happen. It might be applied first to teenagers, the elderly, and people with lousy driving records. Who could object to that?
It might not be a Government mandate, either. Insurance companies might insist on it.
Yes, good point. I do understand this, but then again, Isn't that the point of this whole "fair use" argument? If DRM is brought in and incorporates enough leeway for good 'ol average Joe to burn compilation CD's for his car or transfer .oggs to his portable player, I don't see it having the impact that others fear. I know i'm playing devil's advocate on this one ;o) but I guess (as a musician myself) that a line has to be toed in the sand somewhere, or else any form of media becomes intrinsically worthless. Frankly, I would hate to see any form of rights management, but unfortunately (and I know this'll cost me a bit of karma) it seems that a lot of people do want something for nothing, and when it costs me money from my own pocket to record and release a CD free of DRM (check out my link above, heh) to the public only to have it traded freely, it can only make it harder for struggling musicians. I guess what i'm saying is I don't agree with mp3 trading on the net, but I do believe **AA has no right to fuck with products in order to prevent it. Boy, how hypocritical is that? Well, not too much really, but obviously a trust based system won't work. What we don't have, however, is reasonable alternatives.
Never fight naked, unless you're in prison...
Not quite... here's what I see happening in 50 years.
Finally, someone invents what was considered to be impossible, cheap and efficient matter cloning that can finally put an end to the starving masses and bring poverty to its knees. It can clone prescription drugs and cure millions and all this with practically no cost. This is considered to be the pinnacle of human endeavour, surpassing even the Genome project and the invention of the computer. Scientists throughout the world rejoice at the thought of their invention bringing happiness to the lives of the destitute.
Then comes the DRM. "Sorry, you have not been authorised to clone this loaf of bread... request denied!" and suddenly the cycle starts all over again. Over in poverty-stricken parts of Africa and Asia, bootleg food-images become popular along with illegal cloning hardware. The lab where matter cloning was developed is shut down and the scientists in question are given life sentences for "terrorist-like crimes against the USA" under the jurisdiction of PATRIOT 5.
Food industry crackdowns become increasingly popular, with a record 50 people per month sent to the electric chair for the crime of grand larceny (copying a loaf of bread) and mass initiatives are started, appealing to people's conscience so that the multi-million-dollar foodmanufacturers aren't put out on the street. Media-introduced words such as "rapist" to represent someone who copies items they are not allowed to become commonplace. The act of creating food only now happens in secret basements through secret food-sharing networks and even they are subject to increasingly brutal crackdowns.
It IS stealing, after all.
By reading this comment, you immediately waive any and all rights regarding it.
That's fascinating. Let's try a little gedankenexperiment.
I'm a...poet, we'll say, for the sake of our experiment. I write a book of poetry when I'm a lovesick college freshman. Legally, it is my right to release that work and retain total say as to how my work is distributed. I do so, all full of the ardor (and feigned weariness) of youth, and it's a moderately popular success among the "candles and angst" goth set.
Two years later, I go back and reread Love and White Makeup, or whatever I call the book, and realize it's crap. Big, steaming, awful crap. So I tell the publisher, "Hey, let's not do any more printing runs on my book." (We'll assume I was savvy enough not to sign the rights over to Nobody Understands Me House Publishers.)
What you're saying is I have no right to do this? Are you insane? The right to the destiny of my own original work is a tradition extending back at least 50,000 years (the Australian Aborigines respected the work of authors and musicians as being akin to physical property), and still respected in nearly every modern society.
I agree that I could do nothing about the copies of the book that were already in existence when I decided not to make any new copies, but I still have the right to say, "Hey, don't archive this in some electronic format that'll last forever, don't get Shatner to do a 'Book on CD' reading this, and don't make a movie version."
The intent of copyright is to protect the right of a content creator to determine how and when something is copied. Hence the name. Yes, it provides an incentive for other individuals to create their own art, but only because they know that if they create it, they have recourse against those who wish to arrogate to themselves the right to copy the artist's work.
They that would sacrifice their
I've always thought this would be a pretty close to ideal solution and just assumed that a lot of people would have thought of this; so far, I haven't seen it mentioned.
Why not have a protection flag that will limit the maximum sound quality of a recording. Before you object, think about this for a minute:
You would have all the benfits of being able to search and preview music in Napster, Audio Galaxy, Kazaa, etc. and we could have access to some great new services for searching and finding music we like. Frankly, the thing I miss most from these services is not all the free songs but FINDING NEW SONGS that I like. But honestly, we can't protest that the RIAA wants to protect their interests and I wouldn't want it all to be free. The artists would then stop production.
But with reduced quality music, we can hear and preview music much like we do with radio. Nobody ever makes copies off the radio because FM just isn't good enough. For that matter, a second generation tape with a song I like would always make it into my CD collection.
Think about this. If the RIAA approved such a thing, it could be a serious win for everybody. Wouldn't we love to get all our music for free at top quality? Of course. But somebody has to pay and this is a good, if not great, trade off.
Sunny
Be my Friend
The discussion will hardly be the same, for the simple fact that molecular manufacturing will let loose an economy of abundance (that the 'information economy' alone couldn't do) which vastly reduces the incentive to be a greedy "intellectual property" fucker.
Imagine just some of the implications of an anything-box that can rearrange the molecules of your garbage into gourmet food, clothing, razors, inkjet cartridges, a new computer, whatever ... no more starving artist problem; no more wage-slaves; no more dependance on on fossil fuel if you could fab your own solar cells; open source can extend to the physical world with GnuBurgers, and GnuHDTV's, and GnuDiamond, and GnuArtificialImmuneSystem...
(buy desert realestate now! there's tons of molecules to play with under that sun powered property! :)
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Power to the Peaceful
'Article' was actually right, but 'exactly' takes an 'e.' Anyway, I was disappointed with the article myself. The real question is whether companies should be allowed to refuse to sell material to consumers who refuse to give up their fair use rights. The point that Lessig hammers home is that they should not. I'm not saying that it doesn't make any difference whether companies try enforce agreements that include the sacrifice of fair use rights by contract or by code, as Lessig would put it---building the enforcement mechanism into code means that enforcement of lousy contracts will be much stricter. But even though this is of some importance, it is still really secondary.
This post is dedicated to all of those
The number one rule in international law, the only one the UN actually enforces, is "Thou shall not kill thy neighbor's people." Killing your own people is fair game. Hitler was stupid for expanding his mass murder into neighboring slavic countries. Stalin just killed other Soviets and got puppet governments in other countries to do the dirty work for him. The UN is just fine with that just as it's fine with the mass murder of Cambodians, Rwandans, Kosovars, etc.
Why bother with a book burning when you can just have your license server stop providing the key necessary to unencrypt a particular e-book?
Now does this imply that they are all missing the truth that you see so clearly? Or that your own beliefs are the ones in error?
If programmers and IT workers attempted to unionize in order to weild technological mastery over the heads of their employers, then yes, I would agree about "protecting livelihood." But the majority of programmers do not code novels or code movies that they sell to a code publisher or code producer. They, for the most part, toil anonymously (or as a line in the About page) while whatever copyrightable material they produce goes to their employer. And other types of IT workers (admins & support, in this example) do not produce, they maintain. What types are hardware techs and admins doing to "protect their livelihood" in the first place?
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Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Would you say that the burning of the library at Alexandria was a crime against humanity?
If everyone did like you, the artists would scarcely get paid. It would hurt the musicians pretty badly, and the film makers even worse. In the end your music collection would again grow less diverse, and worse, our entire culture would lose freshness and diversity.
I therefore think your actions are morally wrong, and should (at least partly) be illegal.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Instead, digital media, e.g., software, music, video, are on par with ideas: copying and distributing them increases their value and does not diminish existing copies. With cheap storage and fast networks, the cost of production is nearly 0.
And this is where Weinberger's article resonates for me. I think we are dealing with a tension between the rules and a subconscious desire to "do the right thing". I claim that everyone, deep down, feels that they *should* share with their friends, especially when the cost of production is nil. On the other hand, such sharing is illegal. It's time to come up with a new model for the creation and funding of digital media.
In the meantime, the record companies, to give one example, are still trying to promote a model that acts like producing each and every CD is like pressing a new piece of vinyl: costly and requiring uncommon facilities and machinery.
Today, digital media contains most of its value in the "R&D" or development stage, and production is just a button-push. Of course marketing still adds value, but P2P networks are moving toward making even that segment as irrelevant and off-point and production.
alwas interesting to read: http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/philosophy/right-to-read .html