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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."
if he does defang the DCMA, maybe he can work on the patriot act as well.
Of course he's for it. He's for anything that might get him a vote, but not so much that might piss the people off would be against it.
Like the Patriot Act,Kerry also voted for the DMCA.
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
Using John Kerry's Senate voting history to say that he supported or opposed any given thing is like trying to upconvert a low-bitrate signal... you end up guessing to make data you don't really have.
For example, there never was a true vote "on the war". Congress has not ever even voted on an official decloration of war during recent years. What was actually voted on was permission to use the armed forces if things couldn't be resolved any other way. Kerry claims that Bush forgot about that if-clause and went to war too quickly.
This is a problem anybody who tries to advance from the legislative branch into the executive branch always faces. Legislators are always asked to vote on hundreds of things on the record, while the President and governors only have to consider the final versions that have cleared their legislature. It may seem like a flip-flop to vote yes "on" version A, but "no" on version B of the same bill, but versions A and B by definition cannot be the same thing. What such a voting record indicates is not that the person was opposed to the main concept of the whole bill and then changed their mind. It instead indcates that there was some flaw in version A that was fixed by the time version B came around so they could now support the bill.
Well, he's a Senator now. Since the Senate's one of two houses of Congress, and Congress makes the laws, it might be good to ask what Kerry's done -- if anything -- in Congress to change or even "examine" the DMCA.
I'd rather people voted like nerds rather than voting like sheep...
What's so wrong about voting like a nerd? Doesn't "Nerd" stand for "Noteworthy Engineer/Researcher/Developer" ?
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Yeah, and after he got into office what exactly did he do to promote legal marijuana?
A good lesson there for potential Kerry voters...
That does not matter, they should've taken the time to read it, and if they had NOT been afforded the time to read it, voted No.
Amendment X speaks loud and clear still, Congress can't pull this crap, and it's time we showed them who the hell is boss.
The People.
$
The president wants a bill introduced? Make a phone call.
The point is, Kerry doesn't have to make a phone call, he's a Senator - that means he can start a bill any time he wants, and has he started or supported any bills that are important to you?
If he has, and you think that he will continue to do so, then by all means - vote for him. If, however, you review his history and find that he has instead done nothing or voted against issues important to you - vote for someone else.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
And what did Clinton say about legalizing marijuana? Nothing. If Kerry just said "I burn copies of my CDs for my office and car, but I always buy the originals and never loan the copies", you might have a point. But instead Kerry has made a clear statement of his receptiveness to a revisions in a central issue of a specific law. Bush would splutter something about "sovereignty is... er... sovereignty". Which one is serious? Which one is going to even understand, let alone care about, this issue? Kerry.
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make install -not war
So while Kerry wouldn't say anything in support, he would happily sit by while activist judges (of the sort he would be appointing) rammed it down our throats.
If Bush is re-elected and the time comes to put new Justices on the Supreme Court what is he going to do? He's going to put judges on their that are sympathetic to his (not his party's) own personal goal of bringing religious morality back into this country.
I'm sorry but they are both worthless assholes. Bush has a political+relgious agenda while Kerry doesn't have much of anything.
Personally I believe that seperation of church and state is important. He calls them morals and I call it religion. Symantics... DO NOT SHOVE YOUR RELGIOUS VALUES DOWN MY FUCKING THROAT.
Congress' intent when creating the DMCA was two-fold:
They envisioned making it easier for legitimate, white-hat-wearing businesses to stop the violation of their copyrights. What they actually provided, of course, was "takedown", a sledgehammer a lawyer can use to swat a fly.
The "copyright managment information" Congress was most concerned about were things like holograms on jewel cases, but the wording of the law also include the text of copyright notices in programs, EULA wrappers, and so on.
Courts are becoming increasing sophisticated in how they interpret the DMCA in cases where it's invoked. I think as more and more people, including judges, get their information online instead of from the mainscam media, attitudes will change about what is "fair use" allowed by the DMCA and what falls under (what you'd think is the capital crime of) "piracy".
There is real tension that cuts across the lines between the Left and Right. On the left you have Hollywood wanting protection ("for the artists"), while civil libertarians want anarchy. On the right there is the limited government crowd, but also the capitalists. Probably it would be overstating it to say the tension within the two sides is greater than that between them, but I can't decide.
At any rate, I don't think either Bush or Kerry would do anything about it, but the courts probably will settle on good rules to curb the abuses of the takedown mess.
sigs, as if you care.
It sounds so...Bush. Start an underfunded agency with no real power to make it look like your doing something, then blame it all on China.
Here is the problem. It seems to me he wants to "vigorously enforce intellectual property protections and prosecute the violation".
Does this mean that the authors of Bnetd would go to jail, or people who make replacement toner cartidges, or people who make competing garage door openers all sued under the DMCA?
He mentions the technology is not the problem, but he doesn't mention that we are not the problem either, which is true. The problem is that the world changes, strategies hat once made money will at some point, fail. You don't see Standard Oil selling kerosine do you? You dont' see blacksmiths hauling in large sums of cash or whatever. I'm sure they were against cars back in the day.
The problem is not goint to be solved by some dumb ass task force that arrests people because the problem is not organized piracy. The problem is that laws in the US are bought and sold by big business and the DCMA is simple wrong. I know that and I'm just one guy, not even a task force.
Do you ever get the feeling that our country has been through this kind of thing before?
Civil rights was rammed down America's throat, too. It wasn't the executive or legislative branch paving the way--it was the judicial branch. Without those "activist judges" going against the mainstream American values of the day, there's a very real chance that you'd see a "whites only" sign hanging in the window of your local Starbucks. Which was right--the judgement of the activist courts, or the will of the American mainstream?
This kind of thing is exactly why we have a judicial branch. Fundamental human rights aren't open to debate on the grounds of "what the majority is comfortable with". The founders were keenly aware of the "tyrrany of the majority", and they went to great lengths to keep the majority from trampling the rights of the minority. One of these safeguards is the judicial branch of the federal government.
Over the years, the American mainstream has maintained that blacks are worth 3/5 of a human being, that women are property, that the Irish are a race of sub-humans, that it is perfectly appropriate to sell and purchase human beings, that marrying an individual of the wrong race was a capital offense, and that Indians either needed to move out of our way or be killed. Today, the American mainstream believes that gays and lesbians shouldn't be allowed to marry those they love--or even enter into civil unions, for that matter. Occasionally, the Legislature or the Executive will take it upon themselves to right these wrongs. In most cases, though, it's the Judicial branch that steps in and upholds the individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Be thankful that our highest court is not subject to the whim and fancy of American mainstream thought.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
They think presidents make laws
This is a particularly interesting statement. The story is about a law that Kerry would work on if he became president. Yet, as a member of the Senate, now is the time that he can introduce legislation and help fix bad laws. As president, he can only veto stuff he doesn't like.
Oh, the irony....
Do you have ESP?
Some times, such as announcing to Saddam that he had to allow unfettered nuclear inspector access by a certain date or face military action, you have to follow through, even if you change your mind (which I doubt Bush did), just so people know you mean business.
I agree with you that Bush didn't want to change his mind on this subject, but this is a dishonest description of what his decision was according to every account I've read by both Republicans and Democrats in the know. He made the decision when he came into office to take Saddam out. I'm not going to give you any of this left wing baloney about invading Iraq for oil - this has always been a pretty silly argument, and just look at the price of oil now. His motivators were probably something like A) Saddam is bad - this point I can agree with him on B) Saddam tried to kill his father C) Saddam is the thorn in the legacy of his father's Presidency, D) his advisors support a strongly neoconservative agenda and told him this was an opportunity to create a "domino effect" and restructure the Middle East in a more democratic fashion (again, this motivator I think is an admirable one, but it's a bit of exitus acta probat, or the ends justify the means).
September 11th provided a convenient way to make this invasion plan actually happen. And the nuclear inspection stuff, well, that was the icing on the cake. But we were effectively mobilizing for war behind the scenes before the whole nuclear inspection access issue was was even there.
Saddam had to know an invasion was coming. I will admit that I am as mystified as the next guy as to why he didn't just let the inspectors back in at that point, so he'd have the rest of the world on his side when it did. I think in part it was radical overconfidence in his military that years of purging anybody who wasn't a yes-man from his upper echelons had given him. But this was never about inspections - how many inspectors are in Iran and North Korea, and how unfettered is their access again? And are we even discussing invasion over that?
I too wish that our candididates would be more straightforward about things they change their minds on. Unfortunately, there is an election going on, and the two leading candidates are playing to win, and thus neither can be fully honest about their mistakes or changes of heart in the past. Sure, the Naders and Badnariks of the campaign can speak their mind till the cows come home, because it doesn't matter, they are running to make a statement, not to win.
The substantive "flip-flop" that people keep bringing up is the Iraq war issue. You can see what Kerry said on the Senate floor before the vote on the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. He seemed to strongly back the idea of forcing UN inspections back, and if that failed, to use force together with the international community. He emphasized throughout that speech how important it was to act with the support of other countries in the Middle East and throughout the world, because if we went to war, it would be a long and hard process to rebuild Iraq.
This isn't really that different from what he has said recently. The only issue he has changed his mind on was that he thought at the time, based on the intelligence reports he had been given, that the thread of Saddam developing WMDs was much more imminent than it was. But I think everybody, including Bush, admits this mistake now.
I don't think Kerry has "flip-flopped" in the sense of saying that knowing what we knew then, going to war was a fundamentally bad idea, though perhaps he might not make the same vote knowing what he knows now (I'm not sure if he ever answered that hypothetical question explicitly). He has said that we rushed to war by failing to obtain the backing of a real coalition including strong commitments of troops and pledges for reconstruction aid from neighbors in the Middle East and the rest of the world (not a "Don't forget Poland" coalition). I think this is pretty consistent with his position from 2 years ago as expressed in the above speech.