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.

Comments

We do have an effect

[jasonbrown]

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!

Wow, easy read. Read it!

[Max Threshold]

I always thought there was some law that bills had to be 80 pages long and composed of unintelligible lawyer gibberish. That one is actually an easy read, and the ideas proposed are sensible.

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.

Re:This argument

[AndroidCat]

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.

PPA, what do they have to do with this?

[Chr1s-Cr0ss]

After reading the entire text, i have to say i have no clue why a photographers association would have anything to do with this. Pretty much the entire thing is about mislabelled CDs.
The only thing that might pertain to photographers is the section about fair use:

SEC. 5. FAIR USE AMENDMENTS. (a) SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH- Subsections (a)(2)(A) and (b)(1)(A) of section 1201 of title 17, United States Code, are each amended by inserting after `title' in subsection (a)(2)(A) and after `thereof' in subsection (b)(1)(A) the following: `unless the person is acting solely in furtherance of scientific research into technological protection measures'. (b) FAIR USE RESTORATION- Section 1201(c) of title 17, United States Code, is amended-- (1) in paragraph (1), by inserting before the period at the end the following: ` and it is not a violation of this section to circumvent a technological measure in connection with access to, or the use of, a work if such circumvention does not result in an infringement of the copyright in the work'; and (2) by adding at the end the following new paragraph: `(5) 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.'.

Not coincidentally, this is my favorite part of the bill.

Re:PPA, what do they have to do with this?

[cpt kangarooski]

Mainly, it sucks that in order to get the full protection of copyright, I have to submit a print to the copyright office to register it.

No, that's right and proper. First, if you want a copyright, it's important that you tell the world just what, precisely, you're trying to copyright. A sample is perfect for that. Second, the Copyright Office is a branch of the Library of Congress, and the purpose of copyright generally is to expand the scope of knowledge. If they have a copy of your photograph, they'll preserve it so that it won't be lost if at all possible. And it'll be available to the public to look at, and once the copyright expires, to copy. The LoC has a gigantic collection, and they get a lot of it through copyright deposits.

Frankly, this is just the cost of doing business. You can't reasonably expect to get something for nothing, can you? If you want a copyright, you need to submit a best copy of the work. It would be foolish of the public to give you a copyright for free, and it's hardly a notable cost. In the circumstance that a copy for deposit IS more than the copyright is worth, then your smart choice is to not get a copyright.

Now, I would say that it's possible that the LoC needs to start thinking about accepting digital best copies for deposit, but since they are interested in preserving works for as long as possible, and since computer media and formats change all the damn time, I'm willing to bet that they have a good reason for wanting prints. I sincerely doubt that it is intended to annoy you.

Re:Does it really have a chance?

[Kalak]

I've been asked to perform what could be considered DCMA prohibited activities for *my job* and in the name of *fair rights*. I work for an educational instution, and we have been contacted by an instructor who wants to use a part Bowling for Columbine in their humanities course, delievered over the net. Since the copy the professor owns is on DVD, DCMA would have to be violated for it to be used, even within the educational use guidelines for fair use. From talking with my co-workers, one of whom owns BfC on DVD also, it's a good movie, and he's going to loan it to me next week so I can watch it. We're waiting on permission / legal advice of the school to act on this content being brought into the course. Just what I need to have added to "duties as required". Personally, I think this could be a great addition to the course, and it should be well within normal fair use guidelines. (Streaming it, so it's not easily savable, quality will be crap so it can go over a modem, and a student may want to go buy/rent the movie after discussing part of it in class.) The movie even has a Teacher's Guide!

Sounds like a scenerio that should be protected, not made illegal, which, since it's on DVD and Macrovisioned on VHS, it is by the DCMA - even if permission is granted we'd have to circumvent encryption to do it! But IIRC, it's distributed by Miramax, which is a division of Disney, so who know if it will be allowed.

A little reversal?

[hawkeyeMI]

How about we do a little bit of analysis on this:

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.

Re:Why depend on other's readings of the bill?

[mr i want to go home]

From their home page it looks like your PPA is just like your RIAA - vocal supporters of mediocrity. Atleast half the photo's flashing up on PPA homepage are cheesy wedding photo's.

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.

Re:Rep. Boucher...

[nelsonal]

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).

Re:Why not give a better link to the PPA?

[zcat_NZ]

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.

DRM Virus

[kunudo]

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?