Boucher's Anti-DMCA Bill Gets High Profile Allies

Landaras writes "News.com is reporting that a newly-formed alliance called the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition is throwing their support and lobbying efforts behind Rep. Rick Boucher's (D-Va) Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act. Members of the Personal Technology Freedom Coalition include Intel, Sun Microsystems, Verizon, SBC, Qwest, Gateway and BellSouth. The EFF and the American Library Association are also in support."

Comments

I'm still skeptical though

[MikeXpop]

Could someone tell me the actual chances of this being passed?

Money Talks, Folks

[palutke]

It's time we started providing financial support for the elected officals who do the right thing. Rep. Boucher's contribution page is here.

By supporting him (and explaining why), we reinforce his commitment to protecting our copyright rights, and show his peers that there is a group of people (voters) who care enough about the issue to contribute.

To whom should we address our letters?

[Karrde712]

Assuming that slashdotters would like to add their support in a mail-in campaign, to whom should we send our letters? Would it be best to send it to the Personal Technology Freedom Consortium, to Boucher directly, or to our own senators and representatives?

What do other slashdotters think would be the most effective action?

Re:To whom should we address our letters?

[loyalsonofrutgers]

Well, the point of a mail in campaign is to sway a decision. Boucher and PTFC not only are already firmly in favor of the bill, their position is probably that which coincides with the vast majority of Slashdot readers. Therefore, a mail-in campaign directed to either of those would be completely ineffective.

As per usual, it is best to mail your own representatives in Congress. No one else's representatives have to answer to you in November, so they won't care.

Question

[Anonymous Coward]

So the question is: who has deeper pockets?

The state of American politics is at an all time low - votes are now strictly gathered by the $, either in congress or by the voting public.

The kicker? Politicians can voters on their side by taking high-profile polarizing issues (like abortion), but then vote on all other issues based upon the pocketbook of the lobbys. The DCMA and "Patriot Act" are two clear examples.

I would have never have said this before, but I'll say it now: next time, I vote for the ACLU.

About Time

[thebdj]

Well it seems like it is about time a bill would come along to solve the horrific problems created by that vile devil known as the DMCA. Now what we all need to do is write your senators and representatives. Let them know how much we want this bill to get through and how important it is to us.

If your elected officials are up for election this year iterate how important this issue is and a vote on this issue could sway your voting. The politicians are supposed to listen to their voters and we as voters need to let them know what we want. This bill and an election year may help give us more leverage when writing to our reps and senators.

What can we do??

[cOdEgUru]

Instead of debating whether this would pass or what hurdles it will have to clear to pass, can we talk about what I can do to help these guys?

And yes, we can be cynical and weep all we want about how money wins in the end, but how many of us did a darn thing about it?? If someone wants to put together an Anti-DMCA rally in D.C, heck, I will be with you shoulder to shoulder..

Lets not whine about how we are defenseless against the MPAA lobby's millions, lets talk about how we plan to kick their ass!

This is similar to my argument about outsourcing.. When news break out that another firm has outsourced to India/Vietnam/China/Russia, there is a sudden outpour of anger and indignation, but once the last post is written, no one seems to care.. What we need is a permanent revolution (yes I am well aware of who said that!)..

Re:This certainly smells of election-year politici

[beacher]

I think it smells of trying to get the genie back into the bottle. Right now the Microsoft/MPAA/RIAA axis is trying their damnedest to create a culture that is entirely controlled by the media corporations. I'm glad that this bill has the backing of some serious technology players. If DRM isn't controlled in the next few years, it could spin wildly out of control.

Re:This certainly smells of election-year politici

[emtboy9]

No it doesnt.... this is something that Rep. Boucher has been working on for quite some time, and its been mentioned on slashdot quite a bit as well here, here, here, and here.

and that was just the top four in a search of old stories by score...

And you are correct, at least, in that this is a bold move, and definitely in the right direction. It is indeed a folly to think that media lobbies will just ignore this, which is why we ALL need to come together and slashdot congress both via email and snail mail to get things like this pushed all the way through.

And besides which, they may have almost unlimited funds, but we have unlimited bandwidth collectively...

Why would these companies sign on?

[bigskank]

I can understand why the EFF, the ALA, and even an underdog like Sun are signed on as supporters of this bill, but what benfits are coming to companies like Qwest, Verizon and BellSouth - all major telecom providers? These companies are spending money to fight the DMCA, but what financial benefits does the destruction of the DMCA offer them? Is Telecom innovation being hurt this much by the DMCA so much that they're willing to take up arms and fight?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to see the DMCA nuked. But it would seem they've found something in this bill that suits them quite nicely in a financial sense, which immediately raises my skepticism level about how positive their support really is.

Re:Why would these companies sign on?

[femto]

They are the suckers who have to wear the cost of actually policing the DMCA. Receiving take down notics, removing content, dealing with pissed off customers, loosing pissed of customers, deciding whether content really is infringing, etc. Meanwhile it costs the studio's automated web crawler and takedown notice generator $0.00001 to generate each notice.

Notice the similarity between the economics of DMCA take down notices and spam?

Re:Why would these companies sign on?

[julesh]

Read the bill. It doesn't "nuke" the DMCA. It just amends it slightly to permit you to break copy protection for purposes which are otherwise legal. And requires copy protected CDs to be labelled accurately and prominently. All the rest of the DMCA provisions aren't touched by it.

If the DMCA was repealed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...how many of you would really you use the new ability to copy music/movies/games just for backups? I hear a lot of rhetoric about this sometimes quoted "right" on these boards. I think many would see a bill like this to be open season on P2P sharing again.

My opinion is that DMCA is wrong, but that's because copyright is inherently protected by the law and that we should be able to perform actions along the fair use doctrine.

But I am afraid this type of law (though good) would just reopen the door for any person to just start sharing copyrighted material again. As consumers, we need to respect copyrights.

Re:If the DMCA was repealed...

[Overzeetop]

Troll, no doubt, but it's a nice opening...

You don't have small children, do you?

Have you ever seen what they can do to a DVD? Have you tried to re-purchase "The Little Mermaid" on DVD in the stores recently? Have you ever wanted to make a copy of the movie that had JUST the movie (no mandatory ads in the beginning)? Did you know that VHS tapes degrade over time and viewing (and that MacroVision prevents their copying?) If you owned a copy of Song of the South, wouldn't you like to have a backup?

Have you ever wanted to leave your original DVD ro CD in the Jukebox, where it's safe, and burn a copy to take with you on vacation?

Did you know that these rights management schemes are effectively useless against for-profit pirates (aside: I'm not one of these)? Have you considered that, with 6 MILLION, ACTIVE file sharers, that accounts for less than 0.1% of the population (aside: I'm not one of these either)?

Now, ask me again: Would these new laws really make a difference to me? Hell yes. It's a PITA to rip and recode a DVD. It's a PITA to dub a VHS tape. It's a PITA to rip and burn a backup CD. It's a trivial process to copy VHS-VHS with two standard VCRs, if no macrovision is involved. It's illegal to manufacture an interface box. It would be a trivial exercise to build a jukebox with a recordable (CD/DVD) drive and let you dub a copy. You can't do that 'cause it's illegal to manufacture such a beast.

Quit treating me like a d@mned criminal.

Re:If the DMCA was repealed...

[PsiPsiStar]

I've had a few products that I legitimatly paid for remotly disabled. I would use this new law, which says it's legal for me to crack programs that I bought, to crack the programs that I bought. Legally.

If it's illegal to pirate software, it should be at least as illegal to shut it down when it was legitimatly purchased, but it's impossible to seek cost-effective redress in court. UCITA would limit damagaes to the cost of the software, if I read it correctly, so the software company never gets punished and I'd still have to pay court costs. Companies like Microsoft have not been at all careful with how they employ the 'remote disable' feature. I want the guns to take what's mine.

Re:If the DMCA was repealed...

[ajs318]

As a non-US citizen, I am puzzled by this. Surely the very fact that you own the disc on which the material is recorded, precludes anybody from telling you what you may or may not do with it so long as that use does not adversely affect others?

I mean, fair enough: if I own a knife, that does not give me the right to stab other people with it, nor does it give me the right to use it to cut up other people's property without their say-so. If I own a DVD, I can't legally throw it through somebody's window: I would be disrupting their common law property rights by damaging a window that they own. But I can legally watch the film that is recorded on it: that is my common law property right. And regardless of whether I watch that film using a player I bought in a store; or a player I made out of common household materials; or by looking at the pits and lands, translating the zeros and ones in my head, painting pictures on sheets of card and flicking the edges with my thumb; I am acting within my right to view the picture. It is the end that counts, not the means.

I can (almost) understand a prohibition against attempting to defeat encryption techniques, but the fact is that as the rightful owner of the DVD, I am the intended recipient of the encrypted message and I may use any reasonable means at my disposal to do so. Ownership of the DVD gives me the right to defeat the encryption, just as I cannot be arrested for picking the lock of my own front door.

And this is coming from a land without a written constitution! Surely the US constitution guarantees common law property rights?

Support the supporters

[MobyDisk]

Companies have constituents too. This is agreat opportunity to send positive feedback to companies that support the DMCRA, especially if you are a customer. If they perceive that their customers support them on this, then they will be more likely to spend money lobbying for this type of legislation since it may become a selling point in their service. A letter may make more of a difference than a vote.

Re:Hatch And Bono

[mapmaker]

You have a very valid point. Corruption is a non-partisan problem with our Congress. Lobbyists pretty much own our government at this point, and both parties are equally disgusting in this regard.

However, for the most part large corporations throw their money at Republicans, not Democrats, because Republicans are usually more eager to hand out tax cuts and other corporate welfare than are Democrats. And there is a corresponding amount of Republican sucking-up to large corporations in response to this phenomenon.

Let Companies live in the real world

[serutan]

treat the race to scramble and descramble content as a kind of market competition that should be unfettered by the DMCA--or new FTC rules

This is the most intelligent thing I've heard anybody say about the copy protection controversy.

Back in the 70s and early 80s HBO was broadcast through the air like DirecTV. People used to build their own receivers using antennas made out of coffee cans (I know -- I had one). After HBO had harassed and threatened antenna owners for several years, the courts finally ruled that the company couldn't control what people did with the broadcast signal in their own homes. HBO's next move was to scramble the signal, which was easily defeated by those with access to spectrum analyzers but largely stymied the coffee-can community. The eventual solution was for HBO to join the cable world.

I always thought this was the sensible way to handle the controversy. Make companies do business in the real world, rather than letting them reshape it to their needs. Lately our government has gone in the opposite direction, with legislators tailoring laws to suit the demands of their financial backers.

One thing that must be repeated over and over is that copyright infringement is not stealing, because copyright is not property. It's a temporary restriction imposed on everybody except the copyright holder. Copyright holders don't "own" anything, and copyright doesn't give them any extra rights, it takes rights away from everybody else for a limited time. Copyright infringement may cause financial losses, but so do lots of other things -- arson, vandalism, assault, murder, for example -- and we don't call those things theft.

It's important to keep repeating this because the content industry has essentially hijacked the concepts of property ownership and theft. They play the part of the little old lady chasing a purse snatcher, and they label critics of current copyright laws as socialists threatening the whole concept of private property.