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Disney Suggests Mandating DRM On All Media
Ethan Butterfield writes "Cory Doctorow posted this on his blog this morning. Essentially, Disney wants the FCC to regulate all devices capable of recording from any audio broadcasting medium or from the Internet."
Tape recorders are a nono? How about wax cylinders? Punch cards?
Very, very vague.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Because, as we all know, once something falls into the public domain, no one will want to keep it around anymore and it will forever be lost.
If you don't think that disney can get the government to change something so important, google around for "Mickey Mouse copyright act"
As highly as it would like to think its own influence is, I don't think Disney is capable of forcing the entire tech sector to follow their restrictive standards. I've personally written some of my own content to DVD; would I be mandated to include DRM because of Disney's bought-and-paid-for laws? Worse yet, I bet there would be either an explicit or hidden licensing cost to Disney or whoever for the DRM technology. Whatever happened to free speech? If I want to put something of my own creation, isn't that protected free speech? What can Disney possibly have to do with me, my content, my DVD burner, and the friends I give my content to?
And one more thing. DRM is a joke. With the state of current DRM anyone can crack DRM by downloading a simple program such as DVD Decrypter. You don't have to know anything at all about encryption. Assuming DRM gets better in the future, which is debatable, it may be harder for the individual to crack the protection, but there will always be the hardcore hackers who hack the video and upload it to a P2P network for all to share. Assuming DRM gets so restrictive that it cannot be cracked, what can you possibly do to stop people from pointing video cameras at a monitor or TV screen in their own home?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I believe the fact that we are able to rewatch recorded programs is a happy coincidence of the fact that DRM or self-destructing media have not been practical schemes to date. I suspect our legislators and courts would at least entertain the concept that if it's broadcast once you can timeshift it and consume it only once, as you're effectively getting the same service as you'd get by viewing it during broadcast (with the added feature of skipping commercials).
Disney's trying to get a bigger slice of the pie, of course, but there's nothing inherently wrong with what they're trying to do. If you have a problem I suggest contacting your representatives and electronics/software manufacturers.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Well, yes, but remember that copyright applies to anything that is created/creative; and the creator may license the creation as he or she sees fit. DRM had better respect that. As for me, I shall try and persuade my children to license anything they create (until they turn professional) under an open licence such as Creative Commons. I'm sure they will prefer the potential exposure their work will receive. Give it a few years, and the Disneys of this world will be snowed under by people whose work is equally good because of this newfound ability to share.
I applaud this move. The sooner all this nonsense becomes unbearable, the sooner (educated) consumers will tell the media companies to take their DRM and shove it.
> Buy prison stock now.
Isn't that voting with your dollars? Profiting from heinous acts is nearly as bad as commiting them.
d. Taylor Singletary,
reality technician techra.el
From Lessig's book Free Culture:
"Indeed, the catalog of Disney work drawing upon the work of others is astonishing when set together: Snow White (1937), Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), /Song of the South (1946), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), /Robin Hood (1952), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Mulan (1998), Sleeping Beauty (1959), 101 Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), and The Jungle Book (1967)--not to mention a recent example that we should perhaps quickly forget, Treasure Planet (2003). In all of these cases, Disney (or Disney, Inc.) ripped creativity from the culture around him, mixed that creativity with his own extraordinary talent, and then burned that mix into the soul of his culture. Rip, mix, and burn."
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think copywrite has a place and protection of art has a place also, but at some time the business model just has to change. Once the medium has become so ubiquitous it seems it is going to be hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It is SO easy for distribution of music, video, etc., and any attempt to shut that down will either: be too hard; be too confusing for the mass market consumer; or some mix.
Part of the ability for the artists, the people who create the artists, and the people who owned the artists, to own the marketplace relied heavily on the ability to control the media. With the explosion of media options, control is barely doable, and if doable is going to be way unreasonable.
So, the shift in the business model will be a sea change (a sea++ change?). And while the grubby money mungers at the top have always been able to be filthy rich with their controls and sleezy contracts now they will have to settle for less control, more flexible contracts with artists, and ultimately less wealth. They'll be dragged kicking and screaming, but eventually that's where I see the marketplace going.
(case in point: Grateful Dead completely bypassing the record industry, and basically cutting CD's live and in person at their concerts.... and encouraging fans to make copies....)
All these posts saying "If it can be heard, it can be copied" and the ilk are missing the point. The publishing industry's agenda for perpetuating their needless existance is something like:
It's not going to matter if it can be copied-- simply the act of having the capability to copy will be illegal. If you don't have all DRM-compliant devices, or if you tamper with your DRM-compliant devices, you'll be charged and trucked off to prison.
We need a revolution in "intellectual propery", and we need it quickly. Too many people already fail to understand that the system is a social contract, and the terms of that contract are negotiable by the people-- not dictated by the corporations.
It is no stretch to think that, if they could get it, the DRM helmet is their ultimate goal.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
I don't think Piracy is the real concern here. It's all these irritating people who are avoiding the goal of the media oligarchs to control *all* media, all content, all music.
Once only the RIAA can manufacture music that can be played they can finally crush all those troublesome musicians, artists, actors and film directors because there will be nowhere else to go, there will be no alternative music available in the USA.
It is the same play that was made by threatening CD manufacturers with lawsuits for aiding and abetting that was used to make it harder for small businesses to get CD music manufactured, and which backfired only because the CD writer became cheap.
The media companies wish the printing press to be a monopoly granted by government (to them of course). It worked in the USSR why shouldn't it work in the USSA
No. A key element in capitalism is the free-market. Government regulation, such as mandating DRM in all devices, is counter to that element. The word you are looking for is "corporatism," the other side to socialism's coin.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Then Disney wouldn't have been able to steal also many movie plots from Rudyard Kipling and the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Anderson.
Infuriate left and right
The only thing magic about Disney these days is their almost bottomless capacity for greed. Their products are unimaginative, formulaic and their theme parks are little better than entertainment sweat shops. Disney lawyers suing day care centers for having the audacity to paint one of their characters on a wall, DRM, the Bono Act. The list gets rather lengthy.
A greedy, ugly, disgusting company.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That being said, I'm not surprised that it's Disney who made the official proposal. I give it 10 years before DRM violation arrests are second behind drug possession arrests.
How the fuck is this Funny? Prison populations for DRM-related and "intellectual property" related offenses aren't going to reach the proportions the poster indicates in 10 years, but they are going to be a serious component of the prison population. You're fucking deluding yourself if you think that, 10 years from now, you're going to be able to "circumvent" DRM technologies w/o consequences. The Copyright Police State is coming, fucktards.
The Attitude Adjuster, I hate me, you can too.
Back in the Soviet Union, they had extreme security for anything that could be used for duplication of information, lest it be used for spreading subversive information. Now Disney wants the same thing, except that the claimed reason is different. The ability to quickly and easily spread information as far and wide as possible is what has allowed our society to get as far as it has. Now they want DRM technologies so that information flow would be restricted. This is about as far from progress as a proposed law can get
Some people think it's wrong to cavalierly profit from the misery of others, even if you don't cause that misery.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." -Plato
Actually, the poster isn't the one confusing cause and effect, you are.
If you build a prison, you have an interest in prisoners being produced to lock up.
If you pay someone else to build a prison, you have the same interest.
If you buy a prison, you have the same interest.
If you buy a portion of a prison, you have a (presumably diluted amount of) the same interest.
Divorcing ownership from management works well for liquidity, but do not pretend that somehow that divorce also provides absolution from the moral responsibility for the actions performed by the company of which you are buying ownership. If your dog bites someone, claiming that you co-own the dog, and anyway you don't and can't manage the dog's every move isn't a convincing argument for abdicating responsibility.
Unless you are willing to assert that prison builders would prefer to go out of business, and are simply acting from sad necessity thrust upon them, your logic does not hold. And if believe that is the case, I encourage you to post links to examples of the profits from prison-management going to any sort of effort, useful or not, to reduce the inmate population (other than clever new laws that lead to executions, which would technically fit the bill, but... you get the idea.)
Legally speaking, things are different, in terms of actionable responsibility (tort claims, etc.) following from ownership of public firms. As I don't believe there are many who will advance the notion that our current legal regime is the embodiment of perfect moral authority, I don't feel the need to defend the contrast. I'm referring to moral responsibility in this post.
I forget what 8 was for.