Slashdot Mirror
Boucher's DMCRA To Get A Hearing On May 12
Mr. Firewall writes "It's been a long road since Slashdot first carried the story that Rep.
Rick Boucher (D-Va.) was speaking out about the DMCA's trampling of fair-use rights. Well, his bill (HR 107) gets a hearing this Wednesday and the multi-billion-dollar music and movie industries have called out their Big Guns to stop it. This morning an urgent message from the Professional Photographers of America arrived in my inbox characterizing Boucher's bill as 'A bill that would make it impossible for photographers to protect their work' and other lies (apparently, the RIAA and MPAA have recruited the PPA into their Axis of Evil). The alert finishes by saying that 'a strong grassroots effort combined with [our] recent lobbying efforts should be enough to keep this harmful bill locked in the subcommittee ... until Congress adjourns.' Let's give these folks a little taste of the slashdot effect and do a little 'grassroots' contacting of congresscritters ourselves." Of course, you can decide only for yourself what your thoughts are on the bill.
Your letters do seem to have an effect folks. It's stopping the damn Diebold voting machines. Maybe we can pull together on this one. It is election season you know!
"Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"
I personally think that the Congressmen would not wish to consider themselves so wrong on this; however, if the DMCA has an expiration date on it (like some legislation), there might be a chance of letting it lapse. Also, I think it far more likely that things such as signal flags and other copy protection devices have more support on the Hill.
I work in a professional photo lab and I am angling to become a professional photographer myself. AFAIC, the PPA can go fuck themselves on this one.
sorry to be off-topic, but does anyone have any good links on how the American policial system works, who has what powers. These debates that involve congressmen and sub-committees are all very interesting, but for an outsider it can sometimes be difficult to understand.
What do research, pharmaceuticals and semiconductors have to do with copyrights? They use trade secrets and patents. Scrapping copyright would be a Bad Thing, but there's no need to outrageously state your case.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The only thing that might pertain to photographers is the section about fair use:
Not coincidentally, this is my favorite part of the bill.
68.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Is this still true? I come from the postal district of the anthrax mailing. I know for some time Congresspeople stopped handling their mail, and I wonder if it's regained its cachet. Maybe faxing is the way to go...
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
total freedom of information does not mean I _have_ to supply information, just that if YOU come by information, say because I have been careless, you should NEVER be penalised for (a) finding out that information, (b) knowing that information, (c) passing on that information.
So if you found out my date of birth, a piece of information, I should not be able to have you thrown in jail. If you know my date of birth, I should not be able to have you thrown in jail. If you told somebody else my date of birth, I should not be able to have you thrown in jail.
The lesson of digital technology is that all information can be treated the same - substitute "movie" for "date of birth" in the above.
I would also point out that the Bank Account Details, SSN, Credit Card/Expiry date, examples are part of the _problem_, conceived by the same establishment that gives us copyright and other intellectual slavery laws - You can't easily change your SSN or credit card number, and you can't keep it completely secret and use it at the same time. So they are (numerical) NAMES, not PASSWORDS. The fact that the establishment requires us to treat them like PASSWORDS while they simultaneously do duty as NAMES means that the _system itself_ is stacked against freedom of information!
bill that would make it impossible for photographers to protect their work in any digital format is set for a hearing in the House on Wednesday, May 12. In response, Professional Photographers of America has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill to rally opposition to the legislation.
Key emotional words (some of which are outright lies as well) are impossible and rally. Not too bad so far, though starting off with a lie in the first paragraph is a bad sign.
Known as H.R. 107, the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act would give hackers explicit permission to distribute software and hardware devices designed to defeat copyright protection technology. Other provisions of the bill would set a dangerous precedent by making copyright owners who use anti-copying technology on music discs subject to regulation and fines from the Federal Trade Commission unless they meet extensive labeling and regulatory requirements.
Many of us will disagree with the use of hackers here, but explicit has dirty connotations, even if it's not a dirty word. We all know what the general public thinks hacker defines, anyway. My favorite is the "dangerous precedent" -- a slippery-slope argument
PPA believes that a strong grassroots effort combined with its recent lobbying efforts should be enough to keep this harmful bill locked in the subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection until Congress adjourns. To that end, we encourage all members to contact their Representative and urge them to oppose H.R. 107 the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act.
Just a plea here, nothing too exciting.
Of course, the comments with the post of the article are just as bad but you all must be used to reading that point of view by now.
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"It shall not be a violation of this title to manufacture, distribute, or make noninfringing use of a hardware or software product capable of enabling significant noninfringing use of a copyrighted work"
i can see where they are going to throw a fit. tis basically gives permission to reverse engineer...not that there's anything wrong with that in my view.
i'm just talking about in general
Without trying to sound like flamebait, I suspect they're a body mostly looking after the highly commercial, wealthy, and LARGE photo studios who have, ofcourse, made their money by milking wedding photography for all that can be had.
In other words they seem to have exactly the same respect and commitment towards the art of photography as the RIAA has towards the art of music.
Nill.
I have an idea, there are about 1 million people who read /. I think most of us have pretty similar agreement that regardless of other political beliefs, we're all for things that let us explore how things function. Since Rep Boucher is a firm supporter of fair laws regarding intellectual property what if we all vote with our dollars. I believe that any US citizen can give money to a congressional campaign. If we have to we could give to the re elect Boucher PAC. If even 5% of us gave about $25-$50 to his campaign that would be a nice warchest of hard dollars. If he knew (and word got out that there is a large group of people willing to give cash to elect officals favorable to consumer rights in the 21st centry it would definitely get attention.
Look at the Dean campaign, most of the media buzz came from the fact that he got lots of small donations over the internet from across the country. While common sense to us, this was huge to the political world, which generally counts two major democratic fund raising areas (Wall St and Hollywood).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I mean, I'm just waiting for a "DRM Virus" which makes use of some DRM scheme or another to prevent anti-virus people from reversing or deactivating it. And lest you think I'm kidding that a provision like this
I've already ranted at great length on this; when DRM becomes common enough, someone is sure to write a virus that wipes out everyone's decryption keys. And you can bet your ass that the **AA is not going to allow you to keep spare copies of your keys, or unprotected backups.
Also you might have missed it, but it's been mentioned several times on Risks already; WindowsXP has a restore feature which restores some of the system files from a 'backup' copy that normal software can't write to. A few times already viruses have managed to infect these backups, which results in Windows faithfully restoring the virus every time the AV software 'damages' it.
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Would be better if someone wrote a 'virus' that looked through people's harddrives for DRM-protected music and then stripped the DRM from them silently. That way, when people start getting subpoenas for DMCA violations, they can just say they had a virus, but removed it later. I don't think it would stand to reason that people should find some way to put the DRM back in place on the files that lost it, hm?
First off, their contracts with performers read like an indentured slave agreement -- an artist's copyright is transferred to the marketing firm; she loses the rights attached. Look closely at any music media, the songs will have author recognition, but the copyright is usually attached to the recording company. Why do you think the Beatles created APPLE? That's why an artist can't easily change recording companies and bring their past recordings with them.
These contracts should also be required to define how long the recording company can hold these exclusive rights to market a song and reap almost 100% of the profits from it.
We already have such a mechanism to determine that...Depletion allowances, as is used in the oil industry (I'm not advocating the oil barons, only pointing out the depletion allowance methodology as a fair way of setting time frames for exclusive rights to skim profit off an artist's copyrighted works).This would force recording companies to determine at the inception of the contract just how long they will have this exclusive right, then it reverts 100% back to the artist, who can then do as she pleases with it...market it herself, sell it to another recording company, or make it public domain, or GPL.
FPOAnd here is the rebuttal to his attempt to debunk the first set of claims.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.