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Senate May Rush Copyright Legislation
iman1003 writes "According to an article on Wired, the Senate may soon pass a bill labeled HR2391, a bill which lumps many other copyright bills. If passed the bill would "would criminally punish a person who 'infringes a copyright by ... offering for distribution to the public by electronic means, with reckless disregard of the risk of further infringement.'" In addition the bill would "permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited." The bill would also punish people "who bring a video camera into a movie theater to make a copy of the film for distribution" with up to three years imprisonment and fines. If any of this worries you please contact your Senators and Representatives and voice your concern."
http://www.aipla.org/Content/ContentGroups/Legisla tive_Action/108th_Congress1/House/hr2391.pdf
now that you've read what they're voting on (even if they probably haven't) write or e-mail your representative.
-Teiresias
This is about broadcasting, time shifting, and the notion of "copyright" as it relates to the combination of content and advertising. No one is stopping you from editing the movie or whatever in your own home, it involves redistribution.
It would have nothing to do w/Tivo as there is no "redistribution". It's just a recording that you are fastfowarding through. It might affect those Tivolike devices that skip the commercials automatically though.
Like I said in my post... They were never specifically clear in what a "motion picture" is and because they also claim that recording a "motion picture" in a theatre with a camera is a punishable crime I would go out on a limb to say that they WERE NOT talking about TV and they WERE talking about movies.
From the Wired article:
In addition, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairmanship of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) will expire next year, with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) in line to take over the committee. Bill opponents hope Specter would take a different approach to copyright law than Hatch, who has been an advocate of several bills that have rankled public-interest, technology and consumer-electronics camps.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Your TiVo doesn't automatically skip commercials, which is what would be disallowed by this law. It's not forcing you to play commercials, or even stopping you from manually skipping them.
By forcing manufacturers to lock out any commands on their remote control/dvd player/future technology while the 'advertising bit' of the digital broadcast is on. Could see this happening in the very near future.
Sure there will be hacks, as there always are, but Jane and Joe Sixpack will not be hacking their systems and simply let it happen.
The Senate bill is S.2192
The House bill is H.R.2391
See the S is for Senate, the H in H.R. is for House...
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
I don't see how this fits into the Republican ideal of smaller government. Should the government be concerned with if you decide to skip any commercials or promotional announcements? I'm sure the democrats will oppose this bill, and I would urge all Republicans to do the same. It is against the core values of your party.
PS- No matter what your political affiliation is, Do you think sending people to prison for three years who "bring a video camera into a movie theater to make a copy of the film for distribution" is a good use of your tax money? Those three years probably come to around/at least $150,000
Your TiVo doesn't automatically skip commercials, which is what would be disallowed by this law. It's not forcing you to play commercials, or even stopping you from manually skipping them.
Maybe, but the article wasn't clear about that. It said, However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited. The article said nothing about whether the skipping was automatic or user-initiated.
The technology certainly is there to prevent us from skipping commercials, for example, on DVDs, the hardware can be prevented from fast forwarding through content they don't want us to skip. I had to assume this was what they wanted to do for future TiVos.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
I found this interesting:
The groups that lined up against the bill include the Consumer Electronics Association, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, the American Conservative Union and public-interest advocacy group Public Knowledge, which hosted a press briefing on Friday as the opening salvo of its campaign to stop passage.
and
Hollywood's involvement has even irked the American Conservative Union, which holds considerable sway with conservative Republicans in Congress. The ACU plans a major print ad campaign this week to oppose the bill, mainly because some provisions would require the Justice Department to file civil copyright lawsuits on behalf of the entertainment industry.
"It's just plain wrong to make the Department of Justice Hollywood's law firm," said Stacie Rumenap, ACU's deputy director.
Sounds like there's some pretty good opposition lined up. Besides writing your Congressbeings, it may be worth keeping track of what these groups are up to.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
My anchor tag was flawless. Slashdot is broken.
link
I realise that research on foriegn governments may not be your thing, but if you are going to talk about them, you should know about them. The president does not make laws. Not only does he not, he cannot. He can endorse them, and he has the power to veto their passage (subject to override), but he doesn't make laws.
In the US laws are made by the legslative body congress. It is a body of two houses. The lower body, called the House of Representitives, is composed of 435 representitives. They are divided across the US based on population. The upper body is called the Senate is is composed of 100 senators, two from each state.
For a law to be made, a bill is introduced in one of the bodies of congress. The bill is then debated and voted on (there are a number of ways this can happen and most bills are killed before a full vote). If the bill passes a majority vote, it is tehn sent to the other body for another vote. If it passes a majority in both bodies, it is then given to the President to sign in to law.
So no, the President isn't responsible for this. The person most responsible is Senator Orrin Hatch, from Utah. However the president has nothing to do with this legslation, and hasn't commented on it either way. The only say he'll get is if it does pass both houses, he can veto it (which congress can then override with a 66% vote).
Please, if you are going to comment on the America political system, at least do some cursory research in to how it works. The President is the Chief Executive, meaning he is responsible for the enforcement of the law, not the creation of it. The legslature handles that.
Same thing with treaties. It is not the president's responsibility to make a treaty law. The president signs treties, but that means nothing. A treaty is not law in the US unless ratified by the Senate. The President can sign whatever they like, the Senate has the final say on if that gets to become US law (though the judiciary can override them if it is unconstutional).
1) Only applies to motion pictures (ie: movies) 2) Prevents any commercial skippage... so when they show a movie on TV, you are legally required to not skip them? From here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:5:./tem p/~c10864QF67:e20039:
`(B) no changes, deletions or additions are made by such computer program or other technology to commercial advertisements, or to network or station promotional announcements, that would otherwise be performed or displayed before, during or after the performance of the motion picture.';
Agile Artisans
skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited
This bill contradicts itself. I find most commercials/promotional announcements objectionable, and more and more these days are sexually explicit. Does the "skip objectionable content" part trump the "prohibit skipping commercials" part? Really, I don't want my kids minds to be warped by the likes of Britney Spears selling brown sugar water or any other product.
I'm glad I live in Canada where the government doesn't try to tell us what we can and cannot watch...Oh wait...
A nearly lame duck House and Senate passed both the Bono Act and the DMCA about a week before the November 1998 election, and they did it by voice vote so that constituents couldn't know which way anybody voted.
A motion pictures according to copyright law are:
"audiovisual works consisting of a series of related images which, when shown in succession, impart an impression of motion, together with accompanying sounds, if any."
That is not just movies.
http://www.publicknowledge.org/action/hr4077
Just fill out your info and click.
Armaments, 2-9-21 And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, 'O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade' N
However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited.
This is wrong. The proposed law does not prohibit skipping commercials.
What this portion of the law is about are products like ClearPlay, which is a DVD player that "sanitizes" movies by eliminating the naughty bits. Some object to this as censorship, others endorse it as personal control of content.
Movie producers have claimed that ClearPlay violates their copyrights on movies. This new bill incorporates an earlier proposal that would basically make it clear that the system does not violate copyright. It explicitly says that these kinds of filtering systems are legal.
However, the exemption from copyright does not apply to systems that eliminate commercials. That is the clause which is causing so much controversy. It leaves open the possibility that filtering commercials might be said to violate the copyright held by the original producers of the content.
Here is where the big mistake is made in interpreting this. The new law does not change the legal status of filtering commercials. It might be legal, or it might not. Generally, it is untested. What the new law FAILS to do is to explicitly state that it is legal.
I hope that readers are intelligent enough to distinguish between a law that criminalizes skipping commercials, versus a law that fails to legalize them. The truth is that this law does not change the legality of the action.
Unfortunately the Wired author either was not intelligent enough to make this distinction, or chose to present an inflammatory and false interpretation in order to increase his readership and make more money for his employer.