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Tennessee's Super-DMCA Rises From The Grave
Tsar writes "Members of the Tennessee Digital Freedom Network turned out in force as Tennessee's Super-DMCA Bill, its hour come round at last, slouched back to Nashville's Legislative Plaza. The industry heavyweights made their pitches, but were thwarted by thoughtful, intelligent comments and questions from the newly-formed Joint Committee on Communications Security. My favorite quote of the day: 'I stand here before you as representing the MPAA, one of the leading advocates of First Amendment rights...' I think I blacked out for a minute after that."
I'm an American. I love my country and I love the freedoms we have. But when will the copyright crap end? Its getting to the point where enough is enough, and the next president should be considering what to do about the situation.
On one hand, you have 60 million American felons, on the other hand, you wrestle control away from fat, rich corporations. It seems like a no-brainer.
hrrm.
If you're taking the time to write a comment on this story, DON'T. Instead, take that same amount of time to write a one page, reasoned, intelligent letter to your Senators (you have two, you know that?) telling them that you disapprove of this bill, telling them WHY (privacy violation, overextension of copyright, and so forth are good places to start), and encouraging them to work against it. Not tomorrow morning, RIGHT NOW. Get away from that Submit button and go write a letter to someone who could actually do something. Then send it snail mail to their LOCAL office (not DC office), or fax it. (Not email. Many offices don't pay attention to email, although some do.)
I don't want to see any replies to this post. Get away from Slashdot and do something other than whine, or you'll have no one to blame but yourself.
Are you still here? Stop reading and start acting!
I'm not Seth.
'I stand here before you as representing the MPAA, one of the leading advocates of First Amendment rights...
With Advocates like you, who needs adversaries?
The statement was true. The MPAA and RIAA for that mater promote 1st amendment rights. They advocate free speech for musicians and movie producers. They aggressively block attempts to sensor what they want to say.
Sure they spend millions trying to fight our attempts to freely use the stuff we have bought. However they spend billions producing junk^M^M^M^M^art that aught to be sensord for the preservation of what little intellect remains on this planet.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
The thing with the DMCA is that it's all about trying to thwart people from cracking copy protection mechanisms. And a key step in the process of breaking protection is its eventual transmission from its original source to its eventual destination. IANAL, but from my readings, the DMCA will be coming down as hard on mechanisms which facilitate the transmission of protected materials as much as the mechanisms which are used to circumvent that protection in the first place. Now, let me describe to you the perfect DMCA-circumvention transport tool. It's simple to use. It moves data (software especially) with a minimum of fuss. It can check for differences between the source and the sink, and make appropriate changes to what's being grabbed. And you can use it to upgrade Debian.
Yep, it's apt-get I'm talking about. This is something which has started to get some serious consideration on the Debian mailing lists. What if apt-get is in contravention of the DMCA? What is apt-get is considered to be a tool for the transmission, installing and dist upgrading of pirated/cracked data protected under the DMCA? It's something which is keeping people like Ian Murdoch, Bruce Perens and Joel 'Espy' Klecker up late at night talking with their lawyers just in case the worst does happen.
So fellow apt-get users...please take a moment to consider the precarious position we are all in as a result of this DMCA madness. Write your local congressman. They need to know how evil the DMCA is. And send them a Debian CD-ROM while you're at it...maybe we can win over some Windows users in the process!
apt-get peace out, comrades!
Freedom. It really does feel more free. I now have lived in the Netherlands long enough that I have grown used to the society and love it. But what became clear is that the Netherlands is, in many ways, a very controlled society (self control, government control, etc.). In that sense I feel more free in America. This goes hand in hand with the common belief that anything is possible (i.e. "I want to be an Astronaut!", response: "Great! go for it!"). You can argue that this is overly optimistic, but in the end this attitude often leads to life satisfaction. I honestly believe that the quality of life is good when living in America; yes, better than many places. Switzerland also seems quite nice, if you're Swiss.
Now America's actions on the international scene are simply awful, no question.
If you believe your choice of media (often) protraying the difficulties of living in America (e.g. everyone's mother was a crack whore, crime is terrible), then you're simply missing part of the picture.
The same bias is applied to the Netherlands: many people seem to think that the Netherlands is very liberal, supporting prostitution, soft drugs, etc. when, in fact, the society is quite conservative. The laws governing the "liberal" things are really just (good) ways of dealing with problems. Leagalizing hash and a war-on-drugs are simply different ways of dealing with an unavoidable market.
In the world of electronic data transmission the notion of theft is much blurrier than it used to be. A company that sold onions could point to an onion thief and say "he stole seven onions so we want seven equivalent onions as a remedy." They could easily prove damages because they have physical goods on hand.
The issue becomes blurrier in the case where - at the end of their season - the onion company ends up with a lot of rotten onions that they can't sell. They cannot claim unequivocally that the individual onion thief caused them any damage. They would have to know whether the onion thief would have bought the onions he stole, or whether those seven onions would have rotted with the rest.
In the case of cable tv or music downloads, it seems to me that a company has to be able to show that a given individual thief would have bought the item in question.
In other words, a million dollars in "theft" probably only amounts to a thousand dollars in actual damages. And that's a generous estimate.
Obviously companies have to sustain themselves somehow. However, it ought to be done in ways that make creative use of the newest technologies. It ought to be done through adaptation, not through shortsighted legal scheming.
If I were the President of Show Business I'd tell the music and movie folks to suck it up and send the lawyers home. The present may seem scary, but there's no need to panic and start making kooky demands. In the longer view this is just a little bump in the road.
-- thinkyhead software and media
Yes, residential customers really like flat rate plans because they know exactly how much they'll spend every month. But they have a Faustian downside: they give the carriers an excuse to severely limit and control how you use the service. Just as all-you-can-eat cafeterias have rules that regular restaurants do not (e.g., against sharing food or taking it home) most flat-rate broadband plans prohibit connection sharing, business use, running servers, etc.
If the carriers instead charged by usage for the shared part of their network, then they would have far less of an arguable case (i.e., none whatsoever) for claiming that a NAT box, even if you use it to provide service to your neighbor, constitutes "theft of service". If you pay for those bits, they're clearly yours to give away.
I know it's unpopular to argue for usage-based billing. But if I'm forced to choose (and I think I will be) between flat rate plans with lots of heavy-handed restrictions and a pay-as-you-go plan with no restrictions at all, I know what I'd do.
Groups like those opposing the Tennessee bill should educate their lawmakers that it's simply not their job to protect unsustainable business models. Although broadband service is frequently provided over cable TV facilities, it is nothing like cable TV. With usage-based billing, even your average legislator might see how analogies between NAT boxes, which support a two-way telecommunications service, and illegal cable descramblers, which gain access to a one-way broadcast service, simply don't apply.
Imagine also the public outrage that would finally be directed against Microsoft when end-users have to pay for all the traffic generated by their worm-infested machines. Not only might that create an incentive to get such machines quickly off the net, we just might see a lot of ordinary Joes defenestrating their copies of Windows. Clearly a good thing.
Even the MPAA and RIAA couldn't complain, since usage-sensitive billing would discourage file sharing. (We don't have to tell them that everyone would simply revert to the way music was widely pirated long before the Internet: by exchanging physical media.)
Oh, and the spammers would have to pay more, too. Wouldn't that alone make it worthwhile?
It's not a federal bill. Unless you live in Tennessee those senators are not real interested in your input.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Jefferson certainly knew about the writings of the Denis Diderot and the Marquis de Condorcet. Diderot was commissioned in 1763 by the Paris Book Guild to argue for a copyright equivalent to physical property; he went so far as to claim that works of authorship were in fact a truer form of property, as they were entirely the product of their creator, while physical property could be formed only from natural resources and the work of other men. Condorcet held that ideas originated in nature and, unlike real property, could be cultivated by all without diminishment; on the contrary, he wrote, the dissemination of ideas benefitted the common good. Diderot portrayed the artist as a creator; Condorcet saw a discoverer. Diderot perceived ideas to exist for the benefit of one man, Condorcet wished them to enrich every man.
Had the framers intended a Diderotian system, they would have implemented one. Instead, the American institution of copyright was informed by Condorcet and Locke. But if you want to speculate about Jefferson's mind, why not ask the man himself?
He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody.... -Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813
If you believe your choice of media (often) protraying the difficulties of living in America (e.g. everyone's mother was a crack whore, crime is terrible), then you're simply missing part of the picture.
I'm pretty familiar with both the USA and the Netherlands, and have spent some time in both countries every year for the last ten years or so.
The thing about the USA is that it appears more free if you're an orthodox sort of person that fits in with everyone else around you and doesn't actually want to make any choices that the rest of your culture think are somehow immoral or improper.
What the USA doesn't do very well, in my opinion, is brook difference or dissent -- and to me, a culture that is able to tolerate or embrace those those things is one that meets my idea of a free.
There's no equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan in the Netherlands, spewing hate across the airwaves. And if you want to smoke pot or have some kind of unorthodox sex, the state doesn't feel it has any role in policing those areas of private morality.
So while I think your main point is essentially correct -- the Netherlands is a conservative country, and the culture and many of its institutions are also somewhat conservative, but its profound and deep-rooted tolerance for me makes it a much freer environment than the USA could ever be.
That said, what you do have in the USA is a much greater degree of economic freedom -- be that the freedom to make a million, or the freedom to sleep under a bridge because minimum wage jobs don't pay enough to both feed and accomodate you.
I've already said it countless times, but if you haven't already read The Right to Read, do it now while you still have the right to do it. From what I witness it might change in the near future. That's funny that we all were laughing out loud at Richard when he wrote his "stupid dystopian science fiction which will never happen outside of a paranoid mind foolishly guarded with a tinfoil hat" and at the same time we all kept allowing it to slowly happen. And who looks like a fool now? Sadly, not Richard but us. It certainly doesn't make me feel proud at all. The DMCA is the fruit of our own inaction, our own inertia, our own plain stupidity. We all have to remember that. We have to take the responsibility if we ever want to overthrow the law system we don't agree with. The DMCA was introduced democratically and it can be fought only democratically, where everyone takes the responsibility for the will of the majority. It is a great time to renew our EFF memberships because that is our freedom at risk.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
What do you mean by "too much classism in England"?
If by that you mean we have a royal family (which we share with Canada and a whole lot of other countries too, by the way), then you're right.
But I hardly see how that's relevant. In the UK, our head of state is the Queen, who in many ways has fewer rights than the average citizen (for one thing, she can't vote), and has only a minor consitutional role - she has no say in how the country is governed, in deciding the law, etc.
In fact, for all practical purposes, the Queen is just a glorified ambassador, which is all I want from my head of state. The real power lies with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, all elected officials.
There's arguably more of a class system in America than in Britain. In the US, if you're poor and need expensive medical treatment then you're probably shit out of luck. But in Britain, or almost anywhere else in Europe, you'll get it (perhaps not straight away, but you will get it).
Also, further education is more attainable in Britain than it is in the US. It might not be as free as it once was, but British students don't need six figure bank balances to get there degrees. If you're from a poor background but smart, where would you rather be? A country that wants to see your green before it lets you realise your potential or one that is happy to help you attain it?
Want to attain office? Well, better hope that daddy and his friends have deep pockets. The fathers of our last three Prime Ministers were a shopkeeper, a circus performer and a university lecturer. A humble start in life doesn't stop you from running the country over here but can you say the same in the US? Heck, if you don't have millions of dollars to your name you don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of even running for Congress, let alone be elected!
There are other examples but I'll only bore you further. Suffice to say class (or, to give it it's proper name, wealth) is more of a barrier in the US as it is in UK or elsewhere.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
My point is while there is certainly nice tolerance it is a facade to some degree. Ask immigrants how they feel, the warm welcome that the Turkish and Marocans receive in Dutch society.
Well, my African-American friends say much the same things about the USA, only they aren't recent immigrants but have been there for several generations.
Turks and Marocans aren't very likely to be gunned down in their homes, or have a broomstick jammed up their arses by arresting police officers in the Netherlands either. Are these typical? Of course not, but such incidents do happen with a disturbing regularity in the USA and I can't recall ever hearing of such events in the Netherlands.
Tolerance just to ideas is also lacking. Try critizing the Dutch government in front of them, they'll either 1) tell you how broken American government is in response or 2) tell you you're clueless because you don't know how brilliant the Dutch system is.
Yeah, I think that's right. However, in my experience, they're far less strident than the United States in their defence of 'my country right or wrong', and I can perfectly understand their unwillingness to be lectured on how they should run their government from an American. I certainly don't have the sense that the only way to achieve high political office in the Netherlands is by being in thrall to vested interests. In reference to Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan, did you not hear about Pim Fortuin? He wasn't as hateful as good ole Rush or Pat, but he was pretty radical in views
I don't think Fortuin was comparable for a moment -- and if anything, Fortuin is a pretty good counter-example to the things that you're saying.
Firstly, he was gay. Can you even begin to contemplate a gay Jesse Helms?
Secondly, he was critical of the existing Dutch system -- and gained an immense amount of support from the population for expressing what were effectively heretical views that broke with the longstanding liberal consensus.
Finally, Fortuin wasn't opposed to immigrants simply because they were different -- inferior mongrel races -- but rather, was concerned about the impact that immigrants from certain other cultures were having on the Dutch way of life -- and most particularly, those enlightenment values of tolerance, equality, etc. that the Netherlands has worked so hard to enshrine.
This isn't an issue that's ever likely to arise in the USA because you insist that every immigrant pledge allegiance to the flag, motherhood and apple pie before they ever get citizenship, and the moment you begin to even start perceiving them as a potential threat you start locking them up or expelling them, regardless of the evidence against them.
Don't get me wrong. The USA has many great qualities and I love the place as much -- perhaps even more -- than I love the Netherlands. But freedom and tolerance just aren't the first things that spring to mind when I think about the place and I often have to struggle to reconcile the good things I like about the political system there (such as the very spirited defence of freedoms of speech and expression, the constitution, etc.) with the reality of how that system actually operates.
It is true that the "Founding Fathers" were divided about just about every issue. The whole State power versus Federal power took 2 tries because the States won the first time, but the Articles of Confederation proved impractical.
But when referring to the Constitution, we assume the "Founding Fathers" were the ones whose ideals were codified. Many of the ones about copyrights orginated with Thomas Jefferson, just like the banking system came from Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson and the rest of the Founding Fathers were able to find compromises between those who believed free spread of information was important, and those who believed that business would suffer without the monopolies granted by copyright. These compromises are what made our system flexible enough to survive. In this instance, the compromise was that there would be monopolies, they would be granted to the creators (rather than the publishers), and they would exist for a LIMITED time.
Today, we are violating the spirit of this. Big business has wrested control of many of the copyrights from the creators for music, and made a good effort to do the same for books back in the 1970s. And the time limit is almost useless. Rather than 17 years with one possible renewal, it is now life + 50 years and growing. We have also contracted with Europe to defend this practice, so it is unlikely that the U.S. can fix it internally.
Many stories published on the early internet came with copyright notices that allowed the works to become public domain after 120 days. There is little reason for computer books to keep their copyrights beyond a decade, as the technology could be obsolete in 4 years. Creators can limit their own copyrights, and many do. Big business will never relinquish anything unless forced by law. It will probably take another revolution for the public to win back control of ideas.
Technology has changed the need for copyrights. Historically, they were granted to a specific publisher to prevent other publishers from stealing popular works. Then they were granted to the creators, to encourage them to create more. Then the publishers bought them from the creators. But every law assumes that the COPYING takes effort, and that is no longer true. I did not need to publish this as a pamphlet and try to sell them on street corners for a penny each. I wrote it; I published it; you are reading it, and any costs in the process are subsumed in the overhead of having a computer attached to the internet.
---
I would like to use a well-thought license that allows works to enter public domain for most purposes within 20 years, but still allows me to benefit if Disney decides to turn my work into a movie. Of course, this clause in itself would prevent Disney from making a movie from my books, because they only publish material if they can retain all the profits. They wouldn't publish something like Star Wars because Lucas insisted on keeping the associated toy franchise. Why should they make my book into a movie when there are still tons of material already in the public domain from before their efforts to extend copyright into eternity?
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
Small mistake. USA has approx 12% of its population living below the poverty line. That is absolutely unheard of in western europe for example.
Ah, I see - the world consists of Western Europe and North America, and the rest of the world doesn't count. My bad.
But I didn't mention poverty level, did I? I mentioned death by starvation. According to the World Health Organization, Protein-Energy Malnutrition (PEM), the most lethal form of malnutrition, affects 1 out of every 4 children worldwide. "...more than 70% of PEM children live in Asia, 26% in Africa and 4% in Latin America and the Caribbean." The United States isn't mentioned. Neither is Europe. If I were a child, I'd rather live in the US or Europe than, say, Asia or Africa - nevermind the climate, I'd like to eat on a regular basis!
Now let's take a look at that 12% figure. If you'll reread my previous post, you'll notice that I said that even the poor of America might be considered wealthy by the standards of many other nations. According to the US Census Bureau, 12.6% of all Americans over the age of 15 earn less than or equal to the dollar amount which it says defines the "poverty level" income of an individual. This excludes government aid payments, and every person is counted - including non-working teens aged 15-18 who live with their parents (even if those parents are wealthy), people who need not work because their spouses make money by the bushel, retired people who live on pensions, savings, and Social Security retirement benefits, permanently and temporarily disabled people who live on Social Security disability benefits and private disability insurance, and those whose wages are paid "under the table" and do not report or pay taxes on their income.
"Poverty level" is defined by the US Census Bureau strictly by individual income per year, and doesn't take into account the income of other family members, government aid income, or "allowances" such as the $5,000/month Little Rich Johnny gets from his parents every month while he attends college out of town.
Note that I didn't say that American poor were wealthy by the standards of the United Kingdom, or France, or Sweden - I said "many nations". Places like Ethiopia, Somalia, Laos, Cambodia, Bhutan, Malawi, Haiti, and so forth. Places where you're likely to see Sally Struthers pitching another Save The Children fund-raising campaign.
Now, let's take a look at someone who is part of that 12.6% who's under the poverty level - me. My income put me below the "poverty level" last year, as well as 2001, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1994, and every year from 1988-1993. I will probably just barely clear the poverty level this year, but only if the Dow Jones doesn't close out for the year any lower than its level as of last Friday (capital losses due to drops in stock prices deduct from your Adjusted Gross Income dollar-per-dollar). I own a modest but nice 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house with a mixture of new hardwood floors and new carpet, on a 1/2-acre level lot, in a good neighborhood. I own it outright - no mortgage. I own a 1996 Ford full-sized pickup truck outright, no payments. I have 4 computers, a cellular phone, thousands of dollars worth of books, cable television with 300 or so channels, high-bandwidth internet access, a refrigerator full of food, a Ridgeway grandfather clock/curio cabinet made from cherry wood, and about $9500 in savings. But according to the US Census Bureau, I've been hovering right around the poverty level since I became old enough to be included in the statistics, with the exception of 2 years when I lucked out and made a "middle-class" income. According to the rhetoric spewed forth by the liberals, I've been screwed over by the rich, and should be getting big fat checks every month, financed by the "wealthiest 10%" - which, BTW, means those making about $65,000 a year or more.
Don't be so ready to accept statistics blindly. Sir Benjamin Disreali was right - there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
(B) sounds an awful lot like it would be illegal for me to spoof an email header, browse the web through a proxy server, or perhaps even use Freenet.
Note that the language of this bill specifies a "device," but does not require that the device must be hardware. "Device" is defined later in the bill as "any type of electronic mechanism, transmission lines or connections and appurtenances thereto, instrument, drive, machine, equipment, technology, or software." Freenet is, by its very nature, a "device" which attempts to "conceal the place of origin or destination of [a] communication."
The major problem with this bill is that the language is too broad - apparently by design: The bill allows for felony charges for violations, and allows for $1,500 - $10,000 fines per device. The bill stipulates that counts and fines shall be imposed per day, that is, if you use 2 unauthorized "communications devices" for a week, you're guilty of 14 violations of this bill (well beyond the qualification for a felony charge) and you're liable for anywhere from $21,000 to $140,000 in fines.
This bill needs to die, or to have its language strictly clarified. If neither of these things happen, don't be surprised when you see "TN Resident Gets 15 Year Sentence for Open WAP" in the YRO section.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.