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Copyright Defeats?
Uruk asks: "Over the last few years, we've seen what looks like the victory of copyright and business interest at the expense of the consumer. There's been The DMCA, the UCITA, all of the legal wranging over DeCSS, and so on. Copyright holders can even shut your website down without doing the research about whether or not it was appropriate. Johansen did seem to be acquited of some of what was brought against him as a result of the DeCSS situation, but that was in Norway. Does anyone know of any copyright or consumer victories on the net in the last few years? Something that limits the abilities of these laws, or otherwise acts in the copyright spirit of free use? My hat is off to GNU and EFF, even Project Gutenberg. What is the status of this ongoing battle? I'm looking for the sunny side to a situation that seems littered with defeat."
The biggest consumer victory over the last years isn't really related to copyright. It's the whole Internet in general.
Cheap, high speed cable access. Almost everyone has an email address these days, even my mum has two.
Even taking into account the enormous amount of crap out there, viruses, script-kiddies, etc, there is still an enormous amount of fantastic and free (as in beer and speech) software for the taking, useful information, online dictionaries - you can find something for almost every subject.
The dot com bubble spoiled (or educated depending on your view) people to expect things for free, but the biggest consumer victory is the wealth of information and content available to all who seek it.
Those who are old enough, try and remember the time before you had regular internet access.
Yes, people may be clamping down on copyrights, yes there are idiotic patents out there, and Microsoft is currently pouring money into nanotechnology in an attempt to turn humanity into a "perfect" society.
On balance the "good internet" outweighs the bad (at least for now). Having that resource available beats the shit out of being able to download the latest Britney Spears mp3. (as in fact would repeatedly punching yourself in the nuts, but you get the idea)
The victories are everywhere, but no matter how good it gets most folks seem to be focused on what they want. Well, if you know how to get everything you want, right now in real life then do clue us in so we can get on with the rest of it. In the meantime we've got to look at what we got and where we got it.
Example: my father is in his 80's; my 20+ aunts and uncles are nearly all dead. And all through those Nixon years and the Carter years and even the Reagan years I remember many an afternoon having to listen to them sit around and bitch about corrupt politicians and (get ready) an out of control press that had way too much freedom and power. Two decades later and this nation of sheeple elects a candidate who told us during his campaign he thought "maybe we have too much freedom."
This is the generation that forged the corporate nonsense we are living with now; this is the generation that put most of these corrupt fuckers in office, that passed most of these corrupt laws. And yet, in spite of their best efforts we now have a nearly unlimited, worldwide press, the ability to exchange copyrighted media and culture in the blink of an eye, and (believe it or not) more voice than ever - but we need to learn to use it on real shit instead of squandering it on essentially meaningless yellow press nonsense like "who gave the president a blowjob." Trent Lott was a good example of a move in the right direction - and I don't know how many of you noticed, but even CBS (er, viacom) and ABC (I mean Disney) were, in the end, forced to give some face time to chairman Mike's idiocy.
Most of these laws you all wring your hands over have become essentially meaningless for private individuals (and especially for indivduals who have an iota of technical knowledge). The victories are all around us, every day.
And speaking of which: I gotta run now; Dog Eat Dog is on...