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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."
Unfortunatly I'm convinced the Republic can't survive a Kerry win and that while Bush is screwing up a lot of things pretty badly, we can survive another term with him at the helm.
I'd rather have individual people survive than the Republic any day. Besides, the Republic has basically been dead since the Corporations were allowed to enter politics in 1885.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Seeing as he voted for the Patriot Act, not likely.
Kerry, on the other hand, might still feel beholden to some of the big-name stars that have been stumping for him.
If copyright law and the DMCA are your single issue, I'm not at all sure that you want to vote Kerry.
See what I've been reading.
Why is it that every post on Slashdot these days that mentions Bush or Kerry winds up with partisan nonsense? This article is about the DCMA and how Kerry has indicated that he would be open to re-eximining it. However, half the posts are about Iraq and the possibilty of the American Union crumbling if one or the other is elected.
I for one, feel that Kerry indicating that the DCMA may be opened for examination is a positive point. This discussion may raise the issue to the fore such that it becomes a issue for debate (or relentless repition of partisan talking points as the American media is wont to do). Lets hope that the tech folks out there continue to voice their concern over the stupid DCMA and that Senators and possibly presidents are open to understanding just how sweeping that law is. The may lead to change and rewriting of the law.
Let's hope so at least.
Kerry was a senator when the DMCA was passed. How did he vote?
Both of the candidates will say whatever they have to to win, so it's better to look at their actions rather than their words. There has been one case so far where Senator Kerry had to decide about security vs. freedom, and he came out on the right side: when offered by the secret service, he refused temporary flight restrictions around his campaign stops, so that private aviation is not disrupted or shut down the way it is when the president or vice-president visit a town.
Since he's not likely to win any votes that way (I mean, how many of you really care?), the choice suggests a real personal preference for freedom over security. Perhaps that preference will carry through to the DMCA, though that may depend more on the cabinet than the president.
That tells me nothing. He's been busy running for President while the issue became heated, so now he's reacting because it's reached a high point in the election year, but seems silly to work on a law that when you might have a job change coming up. Specially when that law isn't remotely as important as other issues of late.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
I was unaware that anyone had forced you into a gay marriage. Good thing, or they might have forced you to have an abortion too, if you were in a traditional marriage.
I don't particularly like gay marriage or abortion either. But I think that there are far worse things in the world, and in these particulars, I'm not going to force my beliefs on others, and I ask them not to force theirs on me. Gay marriage is, in particular, a victimless 'crime,' and perhaps it is more a statement of property rights. In that light, perhaps Vermont's Civil Unions were a good idea, because marriage *is* a religious institution, and the state shouldn't be messing there. (Current ammendment proposals tend to outlaw Civil Union rights, too.) As for abortion, it leaves me queasy, the later the queasier, but there are *worse* things. If the "religious" forces expressed half the love for babies that they do for foetuses, maybe I'd feel differently about this.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Wait. So they voted for it, before they were against it? I'm glad Russ Feingold is my senator, the only smart guy in the Senate that day...
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
He could have spent the last eight years in the Senate introducting DMCA-defanding bills, but he didn't. That's right, he did not. Not once did he lift a finger to castrate the DMCA.
I think there's far too many people out there living in a Pollyanna world who think Kerry will magically change if he becomes President. But guess what? He's going to be the exact same person as President as he was as Senator. Surprise! Some of you Democrats are like girlfriends, thinking they can change their boyfriend if they got married. "Oh, I know he leaves the toilet seat up now, but after Kerry and I get married I can change him! And I'll also get him to stop scratching his nuts in public and stop supporting the DMCA!"
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
What I read into his statement is that Kerry knows how to govern a giant, rich country of highly polarized competing constituencies. When he's president, he'll actually get into negotiations over revising laws. While Bush will protect even invented "property" rights, like monopoly access to markets, regardless of the cost. That's a big difference. As a human without a big corporation, I prefer the president who can balance those conflicts to one who ignores them until they explode. That's mis-/management.
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make install -not war
That's actually a good point - massive piracy for money (as in China, Tiawan with the $2 VCDs) is very bad, as is massive piracy online for free (Napster). But localized disorganized piracy (I burn you a copy of a CD I have) doesn't really hurt anything, as the VCR and audio tapes have proved.
Fellowship 9/11
The Patriot act is a big law with many parts. Kerry wants to fix the Patriot act disaster. Bush sees no problem with the current Patriot act (despite the fact that at least one provision has already been ruled unconstitutional). Bush wants to pass Patriot act II.
Kerry can't just make a blanket attack on the Patriot act because Bush will cite some obscure non-evil provision and cite a case where it helped, and then he'll bash Kerry as leaving us open to terrorist attack. Sadly presidential debates are a battle of sound bites. There's no way to get into a rational analysis of what parts of the Patriot act are bad and why.
Kerry has stated he sees a problem with the Patriot act. Bush has stated the Patriot act does not go far enough. I'd say that's a huge difference.
I would like to see Kerry seriously dedicated to not only balancing the budget, but paying down the debt as well. Kerry says he wants to balance the budget, but honestly his math may be a bit optomistic. However Bush went from trillions in surplus to the fastest growing deficit in history. I can't imagine Kerry being any worse on the debt than Bush, and maybe Kerry really will fight to balance the budget.
Perhaps most important is that whoever becomes president will likely get to appoint one or more Supreme Court justices, in addition to hundreds of district judges. This will have an indirect but massive impact on the course of our legal system and civil liberties and other constitutional issues. Bush has been appointing wildly off-center radical social conservative judges in the district courts. Bush will appoint wildly off-center radical social conservative judges to the Supremes Court. In the debates Bush dodged a DIRECT question about appointing judges to the Supreme Court with a lie that he has no "litmus test" - it was a direct lie because he then went on a bizzare tangent about the Dred Scott ruling. However it was only bizzare if you aren't aware that Dred Scott is a standard pro-life refference to Roe v Wade. So Bush was lying to the general public majority that he had no "litmus test" for judges on the abortion issue while secretly telling the pro-life minority that he would indeed apply a litmus test and refuse any judge that would uphold Roe v Wade. Well, if you want to overturn Roe v Wade then Bush is your candidate, but Bush is still an ass for being intentionally deceptive about it.
Any judges that Kerry gets to appoint will have to be moderate judges with impeccible credentials because they have to be approved by the Republican controlled senate. So if you want centrist judges then Kerry is your candidate.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
"He voted for the Iraq war"
But W said that that wasn't a vote for war, but a vote for peace. Was W lying?