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Software Firms Lobby for Stronger Copyright Laws
Spy Handler writes "According to an article on CNN, the Business Software Alliance went before the Congress yesterday and lobbied for stronger copyright protection. Their key point: Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should be required to reveal the names of customers who may be distributing illegal wares on peer-to-peer networks. I guess they feel that the DMCA is too lax for them to be allowed to carry out RIAA-style raids on college students."
Guess the BSA and all concerned learned a lesson from the RIAA, go to the source and change the laws, if they do not work for you. Sounds like the NET Act all over again.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
In case you hadn't noticed, several ISPs have told them no, they can't have the names, and the courts have backed them up.
In the news.com.com.com.com article you read:
The white paper also suggests tightening the rules under which patents are issued to allow both proposed and issued patents to be challenged more easily.
This is very, very funny, indeed... emphasis mine.
You can defy gravity... for a short time
The US needs a Canadian style privacy commissioner who acts on the behalf of the people rather than a government that acts on behalf of big business.
Again.
If this was to be implemented I don't see why it would only affect corporations and business entities. It would provide extra protection for GPL'd software copyright holders in the event of their copyright being infringed amongst others.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
The phone company should be liable for the crimes plotted over their wires, and the credit card fraud charged, too, along with the P2P copyright violations over their DSL. Why stop at the ISPs? Oh, because they're not in the room with the lobbyists to defend themselves.
--
make install -not war
If the giant corps can still afford large teams of high-priced lawyers to file thousands of lawsuits and high-power lobbyists to blow congress, then piracy is obviously doing little to hurt the bottom line.
Yes! Evil rules! Good can suck it! Suck it, good!
And what business would these people have distributing illegal wares on peer-to-peer networks in the first place?
If it's illegal, as the author readily admits, then why should not the law crack down on such activities?
The owls are not what they seem
Actually, the way I would describe it is not censorship, but rather the erosion of our Constitutionally-protected due process rights.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of copyright enforcement (as a GPL user). However, I'm also all in favor of equal rights and equal responsibilities. And it seems like the corporations are trying to gain "more-than-equal" rights here, without accepting the responsibilities. When was the last time you saw a CxO pay the same kind of penalties that a regular person would?
C|N>K
It's not about "Stronger Copyright Laws" but in reducing the rights of the invidividual to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Businesses lobbying Congress in their own interest isn't exactly news, is it? The Reuters piece at the link isn't useful: What specific legislation is involved, and how? My guess is that CNN chopped the story to fit.
In any case, the key word is "may". I'm a copyright supporter, but don't have much use either for the entertainment industry or folks who argue that copyright doesn't exist. Acquiring the name of someone who's illegally distributing copyrighted material -- on the net or elsewhere -- ought to require a subpoena issued only after presentation of convincing evidence linking a specific, but unidentified, person with specific copyrighted material.
No one should be able to go on a fishing expedition with ISP's, any more than they can go on a fishing expedition with printing press operators.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
All they need to do is make it legally required for any ISP which offers service to residential customers in the US to put all those customers behind a NAT with absolutely no port forwarding of any kind... only communication sessions that are initiated by the home PC will go through, meaning that regular web use can continue uninterrupted (for web sites that are not hosted on residential computers). Sessionless packets like UDP can also be rejected unless they are directed at a port from which the designated computer had recently sent an outgoing packet. This might kill certain services, but none that would be liable to adversely affect the typical residential customer.
Of course, this would mean that residential customers would be unable to use their home PC's as servers of any kind, which I'm sure would tick off more than a few people... people who are highly inconvenienced by the change would have to upgrade their ISP accounts to "corporate" levels, paying a higher fee.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I've been waiting for just such an article as this to point out something that I've recently come to realize. Everytime there's a copyright article on Slashdot, there is the inevitable discussion on "piracy", "copyright infringement", and "stealing". In going over all of the arguments, I've come to realize that it is stealing, only everyone's got it backwards, the *AA, et al, are stealing from ME...
The U.S. constitution makes it clear that works protected by copyright belong to the public, and granting of copyright should apply only to authors and inventors to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Well, each time Congress extends the length of copyright or strengthens patent law, they're stealing from me, they're stealing from you, and they're stealing from each person in this country who could gain anything from that work, even if it's just 90 minutes of enjoyment from watching an old movie for free. I, for one, am outraged, and now that Congress has turned to looting from me for the benefit of the few who are wealthy and powerful, I will feel no remorse when I download music, or copy DVDs.
It's high time we started taking back our country, and if you think that control of information isn't the most important thing we have to fight for, then you've never studied oppressive regimes. So, copy a DVD for your family, download some MP3s, and help to start a revolution (in thought)...
The problem is that they want names of people that *MAY* be trading..
Presumed guilt.. That is a big problem.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So why don't we just encrypt everything (including filenames) so nobody can tell who is downloading what? It sounds like big business wants an ISP to track suspicious activity and report back if they see anybody transferring copyrighted materials. Well if everything was encrypted, only the people who are supposed to know what's being transferred will ever know that it is actually BEING transferred.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Using money to influence government in this way is, in its end result, bribery. But it is different than bribery in that it does not require corrupt politicians-- it requires only politicians who are not all knowing. Even intelligent, well-intentioned people can be convinced of something if only one side of an argument is heard. This is especially true for a topic as complex as government policy.
Professional lobbying, because it is effectively bribery, needs to be outlawed-- it should be illegal to pay someone to speak to a government representative on your behalf. Instead of hiring lobbyists, companies can ask their employees and shareholders to contact, in their spare time, their representatives. If that is not sufficient, companies can, through advertisement, raise public awareness of their concerns. In this way, the influence of money will move one more step away from government.
Public interests groups, such as groups opposed to overreaching copyright and patent laws, will have little problem recruiting volunteer lobbysists, as many of them already do. Such lobbyists, since they are unpaid, would be perfectly legal. Not only will public interest groups be able to lobby almost as effectively as before, but they will also no longer have to compete with highly paid professional lobbying firms.
http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html#wwp
Sheryl Crow - confronted by Ambrose Kappos
Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis - confronted
Gwyneth Paltrow - confronted by Ron Galella
Rebecca Schaeffer - MURDERED by Robert Bardo
Barbara Mandrell - confronted by Edwin John Carlson
Madonna - confronted by Robert Hoskins who was ultimately shot (not killed by one of her bodyguards.
Olivia Newton John - confronted by Michael Perry who was found camping behind her house. He wasn't charged though and was sent home to his family, which he ultimately MURDERED.
Jodie Foster and Ronald Reagan - John Hinckley Jr. shot President Reagan to impress Jodi Fostter, whom he was stalking.
This doesn't only happen to female celebs. It happens to male ones too:
John Lennon - MURDERED by Mark David Chapman
Michael J. Fox - confronted by Tina Ledbetter
Scott Bakula - confronted by Tina Ledbetter
Steven Spielberg - confronted by Jonathan Norman
David Letterman
Rebecca Schaeffer, Theresa Saldana, Cher, Olivia Newton-John, Sheena Easton, Barbara Mandrell, Maddona, Michael Jackson, Michael J. Fox, Justine Bateman, Sarah McGlocklin, Belinda Carlisle, David Bowie, Whitney Houston, Vanessa Williams, Sharon Gless, Brad Pitt, Monica Sales, Nicole Kidman. Jeri Ryan, Meg Ryan, Mel Gibson, Anne Murray, Sonny Bono and even Steven Spielberg are just a few of the celebrities who have been stalked.
A law change to allow anyone to allege copyright infringement to gain personal data is absurd and will be a boon to stalkers everywhere.
It takes money to get laws passed. Lobby groups have tons of money and they can easily get laws passed in their favor. When it's business vs. business, it's still ~somewhat fair because their respective lobbying groups counteract each other.
But when it's lobby groups backed by the industry as a whole that lobby for laws that go against everyday people, how can we compete? How are we going to stop the billions of dollars of lobbying money that the industry has? This is a very lopsided match here. The companies can get laws passed almost unimpeded while the average citizen just has to sit there and live under those new laws. Some of these new laws, such as ones that favor patents and IP have the effect of stomping out anything open source or free (since it takes loads of money to get your ideas patented and if you're not working for profit, you won't have the money to get your ideas patented).
I'll use an example just to give you an idea of what I mean. Let's say there was an "open source" pharmaceutical effort that came out with a drug to cure xxxx disease. That drug would never be allowed to be sold. Being open source, you wouldn't have the money to "convince" the FDA to approve your drug, and you wouldn't have the money to defend yourself against the bully lawsuits that the big rich established pharm companies would surely throw at you. Even though your product would help mankind, it wouldn't generate the money needed to defend itself. Instead, a company which generates lots of money by selling a product to *treat* the disease instead of curing it would have the money (and therefore political power) to stifle you.
Big Money rules the government in the US. Non-profit can no longer compete with for-profit, and that's a bad thing when the point of the organization was to donate their time and skill to give to the community. When you look at the net effect of all these laws as a whole, they basically amount to you *having* to give companies your money.
I'm sorry for the long post but I see where things are going and this is getting out of hand.
Actually, the way I would describe it is not censorship, but rather the erosion of our Constitutionally-protected due process rights.
Discovering the names of people possibly involved in a crime is part of due process.
I would prefer that society deal with and answer that general question, rather than just make a special case or limit the decision to just situations where copyright infringement is suspected.
My opinion is that pseudo-anonymity just isn't worth much, and that we should go one of two ways:
- Anonymity is guaranteed: ISPs are required to maintain customer anonymity, not keeps logs except for billing purposes, and this information should not be available to third parties by any means, including court orders.
- Accountability is guaranteed: ISPs should be required to maintain logs for a reasonable period, and automatically furnish information about who was responsible for an IP address as of a given time (within a reasonable window into the past).
Right now, we're sort of in between those two situations, where the ISP has discretion. This makes everyone a loser. Nobody can count on anonymity, so perceived anonymity is of dubious value (e.g. you can't really spread samizdat against your own government, if they can just order that you be exposed). Nobody can count on accountability, because there may be prohibitively expensive legal requirements to getting desired information, and even then, you don't have a guarantee that the ISP ever maintained a log (e.g. Joe-open-wireless-access-point didn't even know he was an ISP until he got a letter from a lawyer).Going either way would be fine with me. Each has problems, but also, each is better than an in-between situation.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Actually, there is an element of censorship there. You know that just because company XYZ says that someone is trading "illegal" material does not automatically make it so. You'll remember MPAA's automated messages accusing some universities and other mirrors of copyright violations because the GPL software package name they hosted somewhat resembled some of their movie titles - those were DMCA takedown notices. Any government-mandated removal of content which constitutes expression and speech is indirectly censoring those expressions.
If you continue with this line of thinking - most copyright violations are civil matters. I am guessing the way ISPs would remove content from their customers' hardware is by shutting of their service. How would you like your friend to notify your bank that he believes you owe him $50 and your bank was obligated to freeze all your accounts?
Even in criminal cases this is impossible. Even if someone accuses you of stealing $1000 from them, they cannot go to your bank and have your accounts closed without going to the courts first.
And don't believe what your parent post says about "equal protection" for little guys because that's bullshit. Most large ISPs have different contacts for corporate lawyers and for regular Joes. i.e. if Adobe believes someone is distributing Photoshop from AOL you can be sure they are not writing to abuse@aol.net level one support technician. Some ISPs (I don't remember which ones) openly post their corporate contact e-mail addresses in their whois records but warn that those are for corporate DMCA/copyright use only and any private messages will be disregarded. I wonder why.
Maybe where we do need censorship is for some "industry groups" like BSA and cartels like MPAA and RIAA to be unable to bribe lawmakers into passing unfair, unconstitutional, and mostly bad laws against the people.
Open source projects would find it easier to supoena source code of companies suspected of infringing on the GPL? Becuase there's an awful lot of source code just sitting around, and I suspect that a lot of corporate programmers find it tempting to "borrow" some of that code. I wonder how many of the BSA's clients are committing copyright infringement of their own...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Since when did being an "artist" mean you were owed wealth? An "artiste" is NOT owed anything other than an appreciative public is willing to toss in your frickin' hat. Always been that way and that is the way it should remain. You aren't curing diseases here, doing corrective surgery, putting out devestating brushfires, you're prancing around screaming "love me!".
No. But if I like the painting you whipped up, I'll pay for it and then it is MINE to do with as I see fit (even wipe my ass with it when I get tired of it).
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Don't you think one of the reasons why Windows is so popular is that many people can get a free illegal copy of it without any consequences ?
If Windows users really had to pay for Windows, maybe more people would think more about real free solutions for home computing.
Taken by itself, the request for additional copyright protection may seem like a reasonable request. However, when you consider that the copyright period has been extended to life+infinity, this is clearly an attempt to enhance the strangle hold that's already being imposed. This has nothing to do with "enforcing copyright." It's about "enforcing consumer behavior." When they start forcing content down your throat, you won't like the term "consumer."
The BSA is one of the worst offenders where "presumption of guilt" exists. If you start a new business, as soon as you get your state license you can expect a postcard from the BSA offering to "help" you make sure there's no improperly licensed software on your corporate lan. They'll even install software to periodically check. The BSA may lick my left nut. The sheriff doesn't come in without a warrant. Why would I let these self-appointed asshats in?
>Discovering the names of people possibly involved
>in a crime is part of due process.
So, isn't that allready possible with todays laws? File with the police and they can investigate if there is reasonable suspicion. Appearantly BSA seems to argue that THEY should be able to act police and directly go to ISP and demand infromation. That is hardly how it should be. Similary, just because I suspect someone might have commited a crime, I can't simply demand infromation on them from the bank, ISP or whatever, should I? Or perhaps I should even be allowed to search a companies office if I suspect they might have done something illegal to me? Would that be OK?
This is ultimately what is wrong with copyright law. There are large, monied interests with large, monied incentives to see law swing against public domain, but the public domain has no one to defend it.
Contrast this state of affairs with patent law, where the public domain has generic drug makers fighting for it, and note the difference in term limits. (copyrights last 70+ years today; patents last twenty-something.)
I don't know what is to be done about it, but that is the problem.
Has anyone considered the possibility that businesses going too far with laws like these might actually be a good thing? I mean, in the short run it will suck but perhaps the public will backlash against them and we will finally have a reasonable copyright/patent system.
I'm sure that if anyone who downloaded illegal music/games/porn/whatever on the internet got smacked with a $100 fine today, those laws would be fixed so fast you'd swear we had a functional government.
Right now the corporations are getting their way - but they are also quite greedy. Perhaps that is their weakness?
I make video [games] for a living. If people like you go around copying the products I make and giving them to your friends for free, I sell a LOT less copies. Likely result is that people who would have bought from me don't, and I go out of business.
So why do you feel that your video games still deserve copyright for 70 years after you're dead and buried?
I resent the characterisation of the BSA as a software firm, it's a (probably) legal extortion operation. The only thing that makes it's tactics legal is that they, being representatives of large corporation(S?) are able to get the local police (and courts?) to go along with their demands for breaking and entering. (I'd suggest suing the local police for malfeasance but, 1, it's not a good idea for a business to get on the wrong side of the police, and 2, I think only a DA can bring charges of malfeasance [or even misfeasance, but this would clearly be malfeasance].)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I've got my little home server that provides wired ethernet access to three others in our house. Am I an ISP? After all, I do provide internet service to those computers.
Now suppose I were to run cat5 to my neighbors (some of whom have DSL too), and specify their IPs as alternate routing addresses to my own gateway. Using IP6, we all give ourselves internal static addresses and have servers that act as external gateways. Are we all now ISP's? Suppose our little private network continues to expand, with people on the periphery plugging in and adding new external links, more bandwidth, etc. Eventually, we end up with an actual mesh network like the internet was meant to be!
(Also suppose, out of curiosity, that no unneeded ports are opened, that all known RIAA/MPAA/BSA IPs are blacklisted, and that the servers don't keep logs of any kind. If they want info, they can't get here and there's nothing to get ANYWAY)