Senate Hearing Webcast Today On DMCA Subpoena Powers

An anonymous reader sends this clipping from the Senate Commerce committee website about today's hearing into "consumer privacy implications of the use of subpoena powers by copyright holders to obtain the identities of Internet subscribers allegedly infringing on their copyrights. Members also will examine whether the government can mandate content protection technologies without limiting consumers' legal uses of digital media products. Senator Brownback will preside. Tentative witness list will be available at a later time." Here's a link to both the schedule and the webcast itself; it starts at 10:00 a.m., EST.

Comments

Heh

[4of12]

This should be fun.

After the parade of ridiculous witnesses showing the *AA lawyer goons going after Joe Citizen the Department of Justice and John Ashcroft will be embarrassed that their Patriot Act is a wimp by comparison.

Seriously, though, it should give some people pause when some random 11 year old getting sued by the RIAA for a "gravely serious violation of copyright law causing billions in loss CD sales" tells everyone that they aren't making tons of money selling "stolen" tracks that get off the internet, tracks that they hear all time on the radio anyway so what's the big deal?

It's really hard for common people to take this artificial issue seriously - they can't identify with the problem, because it's only genuinely serious problem to the people whose money stream is affected by unrestricted trade of media.

Re:Heh

[Oddly_Drac]

"This should be fun."

It was before the link crapped out. EMI Boss Jim Rose was claiming poverty, but I'm guessing that's got nothing to do with Mariah Carey's $28 million flop and the $49 million they gave her to get out and never come back.

The point has been made that you shouldn't expect privacy if you open your machine up to peer-to-peer networks, to which I suspect the DoD would be interested. Wouldn't this mean that anyone has a right to explore any non-firewalled machine?

EMI has claimed 2500 employees...which sounds a bit odd considering they run around 400 labels.

This whole thing is crap!

[Theresa Bean]

"Members also will examine whether the government can mandate content protection technologies without limiting consumers' legal uses of digital media products."

If Congress attempts to mandate any kind of copy protection technology, they have deliberately, knowingly, and unabashedly sacrificed their Constitutional responsibility to protect the rights of the people for the protection of billions of dollars for a few CEO's controlling the RIAA member companies. That kind of elitist "scratch-my-back" bullshit goes against everything that this country was founded on!

It's been said before, but the recording industry's business model is completely ridiculous. The reason people most download is because bands don't actually produce enough quality material to justify the price of a whole album. However, record companies no longer produce cheap singles. So rather than feed money to the hungry beast, consumers look elsewhere.

It's not the job of Congress to protect the interests of the self-righteous assholes who run the RIAA. The fact these money grubbers get so much attention, while our country is facing real problems shows just where our elected officials' interests lie. FWIW, at the time Napster was still around and Kazaa was waiting in the trenches, record sales were at all time highs. And the RIAA had the cojones to claim that file sharing was hurting business!