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Would John Kerry Defang the DMCA?
dave981 writes "Over at ZDNet, Declan McCullagh asks, 'Would John Kerry defang the DMCA?' Kerry's response: 'open to examining' whether to change current law 'to ensure that a person who lawfully obtains or receives a transmission of a digital work may back up a copy of it for archival purposes.' It's not clear, though, how serious Kerry truly is."
For those who forgot their high school civics our live outside the USA...
The president cannot directly write make a law at all. Only members of the House and Senate can nominate bills for consideration. (When the "President's Budget" comes every year, some member of the House must support the bill enough to put it into "the hopper" or it doesn't get off the ground.) The president's only role in the legislative process is to approve bills that have passed both houses of Congress, and that can even be bypassed
Therefore, even if Kerry wins the presidential race, he still will have no direct impact on laws. He'll only be able to sign a DMCA repeal or softening amendment if Congress sends him one to consider.
As always happens in the even-numbered years, all of the House and 1/3 of the Senate seats are up for re-election. Right now, it's a "Republican steamroller" because Republicans control both houses and and the White house. However, the Republicans hold on to a very thin margin to make their majority in both cases, so this could completely flip or end up in a mixed state after the elections. The Congress has much more say over the laws than the President gets.
Would it really matter. It is already a law, and as president he has no control over it. However he would have power to veto it if changes came down the pipe to alter or kill it off.
Why do we as americans put so much into the presidential elections, when infact our congress critters have the power to draft and approve new laws, while the president is in the position to say yes or no to them?
Neither politician has the moxie to say in public that he agrees with gay marriage...
That's because neither of the candidates support it. Bush doesn't support it and wants a Constitutional amendment to ban it. Kerry doesn't support it but is against any such legislation.
Strangely enough, both candidates are nearly mirroring their stances on the issue of IP theft:
Said Bush: "I strongly support efforts to protect intellectual property and will continue to work with Congress to ensure all intellectual property is properly protected...We must vigorously enforce intellectual-property protections and prosecute the violators, not the technology." He noted that his administration launched an initiative to enforce such laws and has worked closely with China to support penalties associated with violating American intellectual-property rights.
Kerry, meanwhile, has a slightly different stance. "I do not condone the illegal sharing of copyrighted material," Kerry said, though he is "open to examining whether legislative action is necessary to ensure that a person who lawfully receives a transmission of a digital work may back up a copy of it for archival purposes."
Poor Jim Lehrer of PBS, who moderated the first presidential debate, was left scratching his head about what actually differentiated the two men who would be president.
I just pointed out a major difference... Bush is against X and legislates against X (including denying rights to Americans because he wants to bring religious morality back into the country). Kerry is against X as well but doesn't have any plans to do anything about it.
Weren't paying attention to the news at the time? Like most of the people who voted for it, he said it was flawed, but it was more important to get something in place first, then they could backfix. According to publicly stated positions of the people at the time, the majority of people who voted for the Patriot Act would like to revise it.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
In other words, the President may not be able to *make* the changes himself, but he is able to SET THE DEBATE and this is a power in and of itself.
:)
That and the whole commander in chief thing, appointing judges and other government officials, running foreign relations, etc makes it such that the President has the capability of really shaping and molding the federal government from top to bottom. Of course there is this whole bureaucratic thing that they have to get around.
Wikipedia does a good job covering these and other subtleties of the President's power. A must read for every American voter and/or the curious or concerned foreign citizen
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
He voted for it, of course.
Fellowship 9/11
They said bush would take the side of the church
If only this were true for Bush's favorite issue to talk about...
Vatican questions "preventive" wars
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
He voted for it, but the vote was 99-0-1. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d105:S.203 7:
For instance, Kerry and Edwards have missed something like 80% of the votes on the Senate floor this year.
That stat has been caused by the Republicans who control the Senate. They saw to it that most floor votes would happen while the Democratic presidential-wannabe senators would be out of town, and would suspend floor activity any time they were in town. In short, they made it intentionally hard to campaign and get in on the recorded votes, not knowing which Dem Senator would win, but making sure to muck all of their records.
It's no longer on the current official website for John Kerry, but one of the issues he had a stance for was about copyright, in which he stated that he would vigorously defend America's copyright system against piracy. Taken directly from his website back in Feburary --
* Copyright-Based Industries Are Critical to Economic Growth: Products of the mind from America's scientists, engineers, computer programmers have little value without intellectual property protections. Copyright based industries alone now account for nearly 6% of all jobs in America and 7.75 % of GDP. These industries are in jeopardy because of the Bush Administration's failure to enforce international treaties to protect America's creative community from piracy.
* Stop Intellectual Piracy: The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative estimates that losses theft of U.S. intellectual property in 51 foreign countries total $9.7 billion. In China alone we lose $1.8 billion to piracy. Yet even where we have strong agreements, piracy remains a major problem due to a failure to fully implement the TRIPS agreement and an unwillingness or inability to crack down on the problem. A Kerry Administration will take theft of the jobs of America's creative workforce a trade and foreign policy priority.
If you'd like to see the website yourself, it's right here:
John Kerry for President (Feburary '04)
Sure it doesn't say anything about copyright/piracy in the US, but you can guage his opinion on copyright from those statements. I don't think his stance on copyright has changed, and he would most likely support the DMCA, if not strengthen it further.
You're the one who's being deceptive. The truth and fact of the matter is that Kerry voted for the DMCA. No way around it, he voted for it. Period. End of story.
If you're trying to say it's not his fault because everyone else did too, then that's not a very good endorsement. You're arguing that he's pathologically susceptible to peer pressure.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
This has never made any sense to me, it's like people want to be mystified and are unwilling to accept the truth at simple face value.
Saddam ruled Iraq with an iron fist. The only way he kept power was through the threat of retalitation. That he had used these chemical weapons back in the Iran-Iraq war timeframe is evidence of that.
So if people thought that he didn't have these weapons any more... Saddam wouldn't be in a particularly safe position.
And that included not just Iraqi dissidents, but also the threat of invasion by Iran.
So Saddam tried to play a little game, where he walked to knife edge pretending to comply, but at the same time keeping just a hint of skepticism going, to keep his enemies uncertain about attacking him.
This is not my theory, it comes from David Kay and the others involved in the weapons inspection.
I've not heard Bush admit to any mistake. What he usually does is find someone, usually in the military, which he can blame the failure upon.
Kerry has said he'd make the same vote. Which is consistent, as you note, for he was voting to authorize threat of force to get the UN inspectors back in.
Where he differs from Bush, is he wouldn't have invaded if the inspections were working, as appeared to be the case back in March of 2003.