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Senator Pushes Bill To Limit Anti-Copying Schemes
Brushfireb writes "Republican Sen. Sam Brownback is pushing a bill that will limit the ability of record labels, movie studios and others to use anticopying technology on their products. Most notably, this is important because it states that people will be able to resell their used DVDs, along with putting a concrete limit on this behavior of DRM/anticopying schemes by the RIAA and MPAA."
I tried 5.1-BETA2 on my Thinkpad and it wouldn't even install or run the generic kernel. I guess that's why they call it beta :)
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
The release schedule had this release planned for may 30, and the release of 5.1 set for June 5. Is it just me, or is 6 days between first release candidate and final release cutting it a bit fine? I know that 5.1 is not -STABLE (which is why I'm using 4.8, and looking forward to 5.2), but even so...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is growing
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Windows community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has risen yet again, now up to more than 30 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has gained more market share , this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is sending other OSes into complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by topping the charts in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Daemon to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a long and prosperous future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Windows Server because *BSD is growing. Things are looking very good for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to gain market share. Red ink flows from Redmond like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most loved of them all, having gained 93% more core developers. The sudden and pleasant release of the long developed 5.0 only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is growing.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 70000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 70000/5 = 14000 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 7000 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (70000+14000+7000)*4 = 364000 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the release of OSX, cool new technologies and so on, FreeBSD is expanding into more desktops than ever. FreeBSD has become more than the sum of its parts.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily gained in market share. *BSD is very powerful and its long term survival prospects are very bright. If Windows is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to improve. The progress achieved is nothing short of a miracle. For all practical purposes, *BSD is alive and kicking.
Fact: *BSD will kick your ass
Nearly everyone agrees that you won't see a 5.x STABLE until around 5.2. It needs some time to mature before it's deemed STABLE.
For tradtitional reasons, it is still called the i386, even though by default it won't run on a real 80386. The source code is compatable, with either chip. (Except the SMP stuff, but that is off by default). Note that the option to compile for the 80386 is not compatable with the option to compile for the 80486 and latter chips. Those who wish to use a i386 have to go through some effort to make it work.
5.2 is due to have 3.3.something. 5.1 will still use 3.2.2.
Support for i386 was removed in order to reduce bloat of boot media and gain the advantage of a very useful instruction introduced in Intel's 486 chip. cmpchg or somesuch, feel free to search the mailing list archives if you're interested, the thread went on for a good month or more.
You can of course rebuild everything on your own and have it run on a 386, but personally I feel most anything prior to PentiumII is wasting more electricity than it's worth. Only places you'll find this is in embedded systems, and they're not directly supported by FreeBSD.
scott
I am still on 4.8-STABLE with an Athlon, so I cannot confirm. Maybe this will help: Re: Help :) Kernel compile fails.
Excerpt:
You need to add either SCHED_4BSD or SCHED_ULE to your kernel config. This is documented in the /usr/src/UPDATING file.
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
To be honest, I'm not sure if it's Linux people, nor someone insecure. Just some fuckwit with nothing better to do with his life. Kind of sad that with all the things open to people in this world, they get their jollies off posting the same lame jokes over and over. "Heh, cool, I have an AC posting bot, I trash BSD on slashdot, heh heh, cool Beavis".
I'd kinda like multiple kernels to choose from during the install. For example if you put freebsd on a laptop, you need to build an "old card" kernel for systems without cardbus controllers. This took me quite a while to figure out.
A Elected Offical trying to protect consumers as opposed to corp. rights. what a nice idea
What groups are lobbying for this stuff? I can't imagine a politician pushing for stuff like this without someone with money lobbying for it.
After all, these days, politicians care more about compaign money than actually pleasing the people who do the real voting; enough compaign money, it doesn't matter how much of a bastard you are. ~,^
Seriously, tho, who are the backers of this bill?
The same senator is trying to push through a bill demanding that hell freezes over sometime in the near future. Sources say he has much more chance with the second one.
Perhaps with Rep. Rick Boucher's DMCRA bill in the House, maybe our government isn't being as shortsighted as they have been in the past. Maybe the rumblings of consumers (read, voters) will outweigh the cash in the pocket from the **AAs.
Mike
I am in total disbelief. Did they do a DNA check to make sure he isn't a replicant replacement?
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Unfortunately, our congress has been known to pass bills that sound strong but are actually crippled. I am wondering how this bill will be crippled in conference comittee if passed. Hopefully the EFF's lobby can at least moderate the MPAA/RIAA lobbying machine.
I applaud the congressman for taking such a bold step. I guess it is time for the all of us to get out a pen and write some letters of support. Can everyone please write in support of this? We all know that email is mostly ignored, while they actually have to carry the weight of our letters.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I think this bill may actually be his more creative way of saying he will not run for another term.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
It's about time for the Republicans to wake up and realize that they have so few friends in Hollywood that a scorched-earth policy on the entertainment industry is in order. It would be sweet to see the left coast starved of money.
Vote for the candidate that you think is best, not if they are republican, democrat, or some other party. I am mostly republican myself, but with them backing huge monopolies...
This is extremely good news....
It's also our big chance. Take the time to write a polite letter, encouraging your Senators and Congressman to support this bill. Then print it out, sign it and MAIL it (that's right, snail mail!).
Things are still very early. There's plenty of time for it to die in committee, or be riddled with amendments (some irrelevant, some helpful, some counterproductive). Your job, if you care, is to express your support for this bill-- and those who support it.
If you're from Kansas, you should be especially supportive of Senator Brownback's position in this-- even if you disagree with him on other issues, you should take the time to publicly agree with him on IP reform.
This is a great first step. We need to remember that it isn't the only step, and there's work in here for us to do, too.
I like the idea that I can resell stuff I buy, I like the idea of less DRM, I like the idea of government-mandated warning labels.
However, all of this back-and-forth runs the risk of over-regulation.. so let's just cut to the obvious solution: REPEAL the anti-circumvention garbage in the DMCA. Then companies would be free to sell DVD-copying technology, or stream decryptors, or DRM-busters, or whatever.
You'd be free to watch to your DVD on any player. You'd be free to make backup copies of stuff you were afraid of losing.
Copyright infringement would still be illegal.
At the same time, companies would be able to take advantage of the fact that most people won't bother with cracking the DRM, if the product is *reasonably* priced and access is *reasonably* limited.
Free market principles would apply (anybody remember those? Rather quaint, I know).
Seems like the best possible solution, don't you think???? Rather than piling on law after law.
PS: This story showed up on my RSS reader a few days ago, is it me, or is slashdot way behind the curve these days? Almost every story, I've seen days before..........
...to combat the RIAA? I mean, those guys can do some *heavy* lobbying and one has to wonder if they can rouse the support to stand up to the RIAA gang.
I hope this bill get's back some of the fair use we lost to the DMCA.
Forget DRM, the most important thing in this bill : requiring a judge's authorization to use the DMCA to shut down a website.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
These companies have a right to sell whatever product they want. If they want to make a DRM'd DVD that can only play in a special DVD player that is their right to do so. You do not have the right to force these companies to make the product that you want. You do have a right not to buy it.
Stuart Eichert
It's good to finally see a congress-person supporting what they feel is right rather than the opinion of whoever's giving them the most money.
Though this doesn't mean there won't be copy protection. It just means that if you download copy protected material, the DRM can't prevent you from moving it (copy&delete) to another computer.
There's also Zoe Lofgren's BALANCE act. I tend to be as cynical as the next guy when it comes to my expectations of Congress to watch the interests of consumers, but there are a handful of folks there who seem to get it.
Ultimately, whatever the lobbyists are pumping in, the one thing corporations don't have is the vote, and as consumers at large become aware of what's going on, I bet you will see more Congresspeople under pressure to come around to "our side".
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
More laws to protect consumers from themselves. I'm sorry, if I want to buy a crippled product, I should have that right.
As for requiring labels, that's a bit more reasonable. "This product is rated U for useless."
No, I am not a co-owner or anything, I just have never seen a store like this before, and the owner is truly righteous. They deserve all the praise they get (they are wildly popular amongst cubicle workers in the area).
Become an independent. Vote on the best person for the job as opposed to what the party (any) has already voted (primaries) for.
Senator Brownback surely must be the only one in the government without a yellowback and not accepting greenbacks.
because regulating large corperations[sic] is not their thing
That's a fairly recent problem, though. I'd like to see the party return to the Teddy Roosevelt trust-buster style instead of catering to the evil bastards like the RIAA, and this legislation is a good start.
Amazing .. Sen Brownback actually introducing something rather than just tow the Republican party line with nary a comment.
.. though it has about a snowballs chance in a warm place of actually getting to the floor for a vote .. or even debated in committie (If I remember correctly, Brownback doesn't have any committie chairs or other bully pulpit to push this from)
Being one of his constituants, I welcome this type of legislation
Why are you surprised? When the term "Hollywood liberal" refers to members and associates of the MPAA and RIAA, and the "D" before many congressmen's names refers to "Disney", I don't particularly perceive the Democrat party as one championing my rights to listen to the music I have purchased.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Wow, I sent some of those EFF faxes to this guy - you know, the ones that take a minute flat to send - about this topic essentially? Anyway, he sent back letters that he was working on it, you know, the typical political response, I figured that was exactly what it was.
I'm pleasantly surprised I was wrong and will have to call and thank him or something. Kansas roxors.
Yeah, but is he? Is there an IMMINENT, PRESSING NEED for this law? Isn't there just a need for a warning label? I guess what I'm saying is that we should consider whether we should allow the government to just take away the right to copy-protect CD's without an imminent need. I mean, just becuase it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. I, for one, think that the US was not created to take away liberties without societal need, and here there's no need past a warning label to the extent of "this cd can't be copied. don't buy it" or some such. Allowing the government to take away rights just because it's popular is dangerous. See DMCA, Patriot Act. And it's expensive. Consider the small record label that wants to copy-protect its CD's, but can't afford a lawyer to appear before a judge. This isn't fair. There's no reason the government should regulate this beyond a label, the forces of the market should handle this.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
his contributions to legislation
He seems to be quite good, and in many ways opposite certain cenators such as Hollings. (doesn't mean I think hes the greatest at all, but from our evolution-not-required state, certainly beats some states.)
Actually... For all that I disagree with them on many, many issues, the Republicans do a fair bit of this sort of thing. They are all about personal rights and privacy, in theory. In practice, they have this weird (to me, and in comaprison with their stated political thought) obsession with morals and family values. But when they're not all family-valued, they often do rspect privacy, at least the more extreme members...
Wait for sending out messages to random Congressfolk until the bill is submitted and has a number. If you contact your Senators or Rep to support a bill without a number, it's not going to reflect well on your position unless you have a relationship with them to begin with or know that they're so into the issue that they might sign on to cosponsor.
Hitting Sen. Brownback's website, there's no mention of this bill at all. My guess is that we're ahead of the curve on this. The work to do now is going to be more along the lines of organizing the effort to work this bill. It's going to take time and commitment (not to mention attention span). If the bill's not submitted yet, selected calls to the right senators can help collect cosponsors. After it's been submitted, it's a good idea to contact the committee staff and committee members of the appropriate committee (especially if they're from your state) to encourage their support in scheduling the bill for a hearing and their vote to report it out of committee. This process is slow and long (review "I'm Just a Bill" from Schoolhouse Rock for a brief reminder).
It is good to contact Congressfolk to tell them what you want them to do. It's very good to be polite, succinct, and thoughtful in your presentation. It's very important to have the right message at the right time -- they get so much mail and email and phone comments every day that asking for their support for something that won't need their attention for months (or years) can seem to them an annoying waste of time.
Contacting Sen. Brownback's staff to thank them for this bill is a very good idea, especially for Kansans. Asking how you could help would also be a good idea.
Take care,
Blain
each "frame quasi-copy": [ key 64 bits of quasirandom to decipher data ][ data 4096 bits ciphered ]
R = 4096 / (64+4096) = 0.984% useful space
ItÂs harder to say that each "frame quasi-copy" is copyied from another "frame quasi-copy" in medias.
Please, donÂt patent my idea.
European JCPM (c) (copyright)
I'm from Kansas, and I actually voted for Brownback. He's a great guy...I recently send an email to all the politicans from Kansas regarding the Patriot Act. Brownback was the first one to respond...a few hours after I sent the email. He also followed up with a letter in the mail. I'm not suprised that he is pushing for this legislation.
hmm.. I thought "Dust in the Wind" was pretty okay..
ELiTeUI
"The DMCA was a carefully crafted compromise and balance struck by Congress." -- RIAA Fool (quote from article)
I spit the yogurt i was eating all over my keyboard when I read that one. It's funny and sad at the same time. Yes, it was a compromise all right. Between the RIAA and MPAA.... very carefully crafted and balanced indeed.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
The DMCA is applied as a 400 pound gorilla, or rather, a 4 000 000 pound sterling gorilla: nobody that the DMCA is used againt has the resources to do the legal fight. The DMCRA doesn't help that; you have to use your day in court to demonstrate that your use falls under the DMCRA. The 400 pound gorilla can still intimidate you into giving up.
The Brownback bill allows the FTC to stop technologies before they can be used as a threat, so the DMCRA is never an issue, and the 2600s of the world don't need to spend way too much to assert that they didn't do anything wrong.
Perhaps a compromise: the FTC can declare DRM technologies to be "overreaching". Overreaching DRM may still be sold, but DMCA protections do not apply, only traditional copyright protections. (The provisions of the DMCRA then become redundant.)
This needs some work, but may be an idea.
We need to let the market drive the mechanism for backups, resale, time shifting, format shifting, etc. Otherwise, consumers lose because certain companies don't see a profit in making those things convenient. This bill attempts to substitute a government beaurocracy for market forces, which is inefficient and ineffective.
On the other hand, these items are all great:
I wouldn't support this particular bill because it's a band-aid when stiches are needed.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
The only way to eliminate dumb laws is with other laws. It takes a law to repeal a law after all. Granted, this doesn't look like it'll be a full repeal, not by a longshot, but then again, it isn't even a bill yet. What exactly do you propose that they do? They're Congress. Aside from arguing and wasting my money, what can they do but make laws?
Stop yer useless yammering. Go write a letter, or if you are too lazy, join eff.org and submit one of theirs. Show the government the /. effect is not to be messed with, and turn it from the bane of low bandwidth webmasters into a tool for the good of all mankind!
Copyright is so fundamental that it's clearly provided for in the U.S. Constitution. That document also talks about the reason for copyright. It's NOT to make more money for Disney. It's "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". Specifically, in return for the legal protection of copyrights and patents for a limited time, the public is promised that these works will eventually become public property.
This legal concept is being completely perverted in two different ways, and there is an IMMINENT, PRESSING NEED to correct this. The first problem is, of course, that our own lawmakers are giving the special interests longer and longer extensions on these rights. Some have even openly stated an intention to continue to extend copyrights perpetually so that any current copyright would never expire. This needs to be stopped to prevent even further erosion of the constitution. The second is DRM technology. In extreme cases DRM technology can give the publisher so much control that it would be unreasonable to expect a work to ever pass into the public domain. Imagine for example a movie released only to a digital rights managed medium that can not be re-recorded and must be authorized by the publisher for every single viewing (and be confident that work is progressing towards this end). While such a company would enjoy all the protection of copyright laws (even the excesses of the DMCA), they might never pass their protected works on to public ownership, even if copyright extension creep is stopped. Even if they are still around when the copyright expires, there is no provision in the law that would compel them to activity take actions to turn over digital rights keys or other technology that could be needed to avail the public of their eventual ownership of previously protected works.
Look at patents - in this case a patent is granted in return for disclosure on how the invention works. You are not required to patent an invention. You could, for example, make some invention a trade secret, and never disclose it's secrets outside of your organization. In such a case others are free to try to invent it also, but if no one legitimately can duplicate your invention you might well have complete use of it for more than the term of a patent. But if you do want patent protection, you must disclose it so that it will be owned by the public after the patent expires in exchange for your exclusive patent monopoly for the term of the patent. DRM presents the danger that a corporation can get the legal protections of a copyright but also keep private the work as if it were a trade secret. The need to correct this problem is indeed IMMINENT and PRESSING now, before it becomes widespread.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The overly-powerful minority segment of the Republican party that is obsessed with "family values" is an embarrassment to mainstream Republicans, who are indeed very much about personal rights (including privacy) and responsibilities. Limiting special-interest power over the average citizen is definitely on target, and that's what this bill is about.
Trouble is, it's become politically correct to at least mouth the "family values" line of bull, because otherwise come the next election, you won't get the needful financial backing from the party powers-that-be. (Just as a Democrat who wants to be elected has to voice support for "social programs" or find himself unfunded.)
Speaking as a more-or-less Republican (who does not necessarily vote the party line), I don't even know what the hell "family values" MEANS. Whose family? Which values??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I am from and currently reside in Kansas. Several months ago I wrote Senator Brownback a letter requesting such a Bill! The form letter I recieved as a reply didn't make me too enthusiastic, but apparently he has recieved enough requests or he was just morally compelled to create such a bill.
I encourage all of you to write your senators and get this thing passed!
The language is vague at this point, though. The bill hasn't actually been introduced yet.
I'm against this law. I don't think we should have a bill that limits a company's ability to copy-protect its intellectual property. I also don't think we should have a law restricting a citizen's ability to break that copy-protection (DMCA) either. It ruins the whole sport of it.
Let's be honest. The one thing we all truly respect around here is hacking ability. And that's how this whole game used to (and should still) work. If you were hardcore enough to figure out a way to copy-protect your stuff so that people couldn't easily break it, you deserved to have your IP protected (remember when the first SimCity came out and it shipped with a purple and black page of codes that you couldn't photocopy? Good Stuff!). And if you were enough of a cracking stud to find the tiny, oddly-named file in which X-Wing hid its copy protection (or figured out how to decrypt a DVD), by God you deserved a free copy.
It was a delicate balance, but it worked! We the technologically-gifted were able to either crack stuff on our own or find people on BBS's that could, while the lamers who made fun of us at school kept the IP-producing companies rolling in dough by buying their products at Wal-Mart.
But now they've gone and ruined the game. Where's the fun in not being able to crack stuff, and where's the fun in not being able to wrap your IP in stuff for other people to crack?
This tagline is umop apisdn.
I intend to write this man a simple 'thank you' e-mail. I would encourage other slashdotters to do the same. Most politicians want to be popular. Thank you emails would express that what he's doing is a popular idea (amongst us anyways)
You may be better off switching countries.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
He has my eternal vote. I intend to hand write a thank you letter, I think it would be great support if others did the same. Let people know when their work is doing good.
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
That is the way it is taught to us. However, in reality the Democrats support the interests of lawyers and media conglomerates while the Republicans support the interests of industry. Very few actually fight for the rights of the people that vote for them, and usually only around re-election time.
Rumor has it that it is because there are almost always only 2 contenders likely to win the election and voting for anything else other than a Democrat or a Republican is usually a throw away vote. Both groups are almost wholey owned by the formentioned interests; so, we basically get stuck voting between a pot and a kettle.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Copyright is a limited monopoly, both limited in time, and in extent (read: Fair use).
Copy prevention takes away both. Under the excuse of enforcing the rights granted by copyright law, they use it to leverage complete and utter control, something the law was never intended to do.
And the law makers fell for it with the DMCA, essentially granting both eternal copyright, the right to revoke a work out of existance, and to deny all fair use rights.
I, for one, think that the US was not created to take away liberties without societal need
I agree completely. So when you see that corporations have taken away the liberties of the Private Citizen using US law as a puppet, you work to restore those rights. Or did I completely misunderstand your subject line? Corporations have no interest in the public domain nor in fair use, those are your liberties. Protect them indeed.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Read this...
o ciation/Offices/ALA_Washington/Events10/National_L ibrary_Legislative_Day/brownback.pdf
Permits the FCC to establish a functional requirement preventing unauthorized Internet
retransmission of digital television signals to the public, but only if such a requirement preserves
reasonable and customary consumer, educational institution and library access and use practices. *
Ugh! I guess that would give the FCC power to actually take down bit-torrent links. Realisticly speaking, I guess fair use doesn't include making a copy of Enterprise and letting random strangers download it before local air times. It doesn't mean I have to like it.
But on the other side of things... would this permit Libaries from doing the service instead?
It's actually something I thought about. One issue that concers the entertainment industry is file sharing of telivision programing. Like it or not, comercials pay for programing on comercial telivision. I know I have to tell my self that. And unfortunatly, this is the part I have to grumble at, getting a copy of enterprise online circumvents the comercials.
I've often thought if this really became an issue that I would actually support comercials in downloads in order maintain this service I enjoy. It looks like there are a couple other concepts in this Legislative Alert that I agree with, and that would be a small price to pay.
* http://www.ala.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Our_Ass
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Finally, the voice of reason: someone who understands what copyright is really about.
Copyright is a temporary period of exclusivity granted to authors, in return for a promise eventually to release the work into the public domain. In other words: releasing material into the public domain is the price you pay for having the law protect your exclusivity. As an author, you get a short-term assurance that nobody is going to make money by pretending that your work was actually theirs {which, I am sure, some people are nasty enough to do}. Or at least, if they try, the law will be on your side. As a consumer, you get an assurance that you will - eventually, at any rate - be able to obtain the works you are entitled to {for, as I have stated before; no person is an island, and all the fruits of all human endeavour belong to all humanity} for only a nominal cost.
The compromise is determined by the duration for which exclusivity is provided. It should be long enough to permit authors to make a reasonable amount of money, but short enough to allow consumers reasonable access to material. This is, by definition, a highly subjective matter and I don't believe it improper for government to attempt to define some guidelines as to what is "reasonable".
The corollary of this is: if an author has no intention of ever releasing a work into the public domain, then they have no right to expect anyone - least of all the taxpayer - to assist in the maintenance of their exclusivity. Put it like this; either you make your work available to everybody (sooner or later), or you don't make it available at all. There is nothing in between.
There should also be a requirement for anyone wanting to use technological measures to prevent copying of a copyrighted work, to have an unencumbered copy kept in escrow, in order to ensure that when the time comes for it to be released into the public domain, this actually can be done. Any author who does not wish to comply with this measure, and who does not wish to release their work into the public domain after a fixed, non-extensible {though I would not say it shouldn't be shortenable -- this is analogous to the defence being allowed to appeal against a conviction but the prosecution not being allowed to appeal against an acquittal} term, should be denied the protection of the law; and, if they use technological measures to attempt to prevent people from copying their work, then no action should be taken against those who circumvent such measures {cf. reasonable force -- when polite requests fail, less benign methods may legitimately be employed in pursuit of one's rights}.
But the law should never protect any excess of authority, not even one achieved through the (mis)use of technological copy-restriction measures.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Negative on that. It was once true that a published work had to be registered with the copyright office, and that the registration process involved submitting a number of copies of the work, at least one of which would find their way into the Library of Congress.
However, the Berne Convention, which all but a handful of the world's nations implelement, banned copyright registration for foreign authors so that the author did not have to go through the separate registration processes of hundreds of nations to secure international copyright. Rather, if one had a copyright in one's own signatory nation, one had copyright for at least life+50 years in all the signatories.
Of course, the logical next step is that if foreign author's don't have to register, why should domestics? And this step has been taken. Now, in most Berne nations, copyright is inherent in the work, meaning that it exists automaticaly from the moment of the work's creation, and no action is required to copyright a work.
But even in the early days, registration was only necessary for published works. While published works required registration and had a limited-term copyright, unpublished works automatically had a perpetual copyright (mainly as a protection against unauthorized publication). In fact, the Sonny Bono act can be said to have done one good thing in actually limiting the copyright term on unpublished works.
Yeah, I hope he can get Bill to remove that pesky Windows Activation scheme, it doesn't work anyway.
Money for nothing, pix for free
2. The "free market" for DRM consists of cartels--the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, etc. If intrusive DRM is allowed, then that is the only format in which the cartel will make media and software available. The cartel controls 99 44/100% of all media and software made.
3. The "free market" won't be able to work its magic, because of a bigassed barrier to entry known alternately as TCPA, Palladium, and the Next Generation Secure Computing Base. The cartel will hold the signing keys needed to run software on this platform. (Yes, I know they say this is not how it will work, and that the first iteration probably won't be that restrictive. Think "frog boiling.")
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Simply put, our economy does NOT have a problem with volume. The money is quite obviously here. We have the largest GDP in the world, nearly twice that of Japan, who ranks second. No, that is not the problem. The problem is velocity of exchange -- money isn't moving around enough. People aren't buying, selling, transacting...
Strictly economically speaking, the RIAA, MPAA, and their sympathizers have in the last few years shot themselves in their proverbial feet. If their only provably claim is that they're losing money, but someone actually believes them when they sling the blame elsewhere (like on you and me, for proudly participating in the great experiment called "freedom"), then they will continue to get away with it because their revenues will certainly continue to fall. (I am not speaking of nominal revenues, but of real revenues -- taking inflation and other economic factors into account.)
I, for one, am glad to see that the US government is finally starting to do something about this, even if 9 in 10 Congressmen probably don't understand the economic impact of their actions (kinda makes you wonder why Congress makes all the laws about money).
These issues have nothing to do with political party. To a great extent, they have to do with integrity-- how much is one willing to stand up to monied interests (i.e., the RIAA and the MPAA), or serve them? There are Republicans like Sam Brownback and Rep. Tom Davis who get it, and there are Democrats like Joe Lieberman (aka Sen. Microsoft), Fritz Hollings, and Reps. Adam Smith and Howard Berman who don't. They prefer to speak for those who bankroll their campaigns.
Brownback's bill sounds like a good starting point, especially the provision that allows the FTC to ban certain DRM schemes. But it doesn't address the real problem with the DMCA, that the copyright terms are much too long, and violates the Constitution's express language of "for a limited time". Copyright was established to encourage innovation and creativity, not to be an income security arrangement for large corporations.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
It has always been my belief that copyrights on software should be signifigantly shorter then that on music or litature. Simply put, the comercial value of software is pretty damn short. Let's assume the Microsoft world, as microsoft has supported downward compatiability for longer then anyone else. It's 2003...
m l. Technicaly it's still their IP if i'm not mistaken, and i've heard nothing about them releacing the source. DesqViewX in it self has NO comercial value, and clearly Symantic has no interest in releasing it as a product.
Windows 95 was released roughly in 1995...
windows 3.1 was released roughly 1992
windows windows v1.00 was released in roughly 1985
[unsure about v2 aka 286 or windows 386.
For the most part, windows 3.1 is still implemented on some machines, not many though. Internet Explorer was released for it oddly enough, which isn't bad for a circa 1992 platform.
For some reason I was under the impression that copyrights were held in place till like 100 years after an authors death, which honestly I don't know if that's still true. But I can say it's kinda pointless for software copyrights to be that long cause, typicaly speaking software kinda looses it's comercial value after 10 - 20 years.
The copyright length should reflect that. Comercial enterprises can still make a buck with their IP for up to 20 years, and after that, let it go into the public domain.
While the downside is companies like microsoft might loose some of their early IP if it's still implemented, it would be hard to sell folks on that point.
Additionaly, I think there should be some form of manditory registration of copyrights on software, let's say every 5 years or so. This way, inovations that got purchaced by a bigger fish but got ignored cause they were interested in some other product they developed. Ignore it, loose it!
Why such a radical plan? Cause already we have experenced lots of dataloss due data stored on obscure platforms with little to no hope of recovery cause no one knows where to buy them anymore. No one knows who owns the rights to the software, and no one can get them.
DesqViewX was going to be one of my examples of something inovative but was bought by a bigger fish [Symantec}. http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/27/1950244.sht
Don't use it, loose it.
But alas my attidude is alone, it seems big corps want to hold on to copyrights forever, even if it no longer holds profit for them to do so.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
It's a sad day when consumers have to run to Republicans for protection.
And I'm a Democrat. It's mostly because of his work trying to improve human rights in North Korea. For a glimpse at this see yesterdays Senate hearing on "Life in North Korea" at this URL.: rtsp://video.webcastcenter.com/srs_g2/foreign06050 3.rm
Now if we can only get him to fight for the "breaking the information blockade by dropping radios" idea.
See
http://www.freenorthkorea.net
North Korea can be freed without war.. Lets do it!
I'd trust it a lot more if the brouhaha had happened BEFORE the decisions. It's easy for congressmen to blow hot air to make their constituents happy once it makes no difference.
.nosig
Okay, it's Friday, so I'll bite ... there's nothing new here.
My guess is that he's just pissed he couldn't rip his new "Queens of the Stone Age" CD. I know I was!