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The Argument for Crackable Media
rubberbando writes "Wired is running a story about how the US Copyright Office is looking for input about a law that will allow some media to be legally cracked. This is aimed at certain uses such as cracking an ebook so that a blind person can use reading software with it and older software that requires a hardware dongle that no longer works." From the article: "The DMCA forbids cracking of copy-protected or encrypted digital media, with certain exceptions. When the law was passed, Congress mandated the register of copyrights revisit the anti-circumvention section every three years to make sure consumers have proper access to materials they purchased -- even if content creators have them locked down. If the copyright office finds instances where copy protection prevents fair use of the work, then those copy protections can be legally circumvented." We reported on the other side of the coin yesterday.
Copyright law allows you to make a backup copy.
Copyright law allows you to make a backup copy.
Please point us to the appropriate paragraph. For bonus points, find the exception in the copy protection paragraphs too. (If I encode my own CD to DRM'd WMA, I still don't have the right to break their encryption system. Copyright and copy protection systems have two different protections) You can find it here.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I've been reading /. for five years now, and I don't think I've ever seen one post with two sentances full of more shit than yours.
Congratulations, here's your kewpie doll.
I've been using computers on a personal productive goal basis since 1992 (I know, a very short time in comparison with some of you), and I absolutely think that the "average user" should be taken out back and shot in the head. Twice.
When someone turned me on to mp3s back in the day, I thought "how wonderful, I never have to change my cds out of the computer again." Then someone pointed out Napster, and I thought "Fuck. Now every AOL idiot capable of pointing and clicking will be doing this, word will spread, and the whole thing will go to shit." I was half-right: today we have Digital Audio Players thanks to those Napsterbots of Yesteryear, but we also have bullshit DRM and **AA awareness of what used to be a rather inside geeky thing.
Even my grandmother knows what an mp3 is nowdays.
What the hell do you want out of a media player ready to go out of the box beyond the ability to play mp3s & cds? XMMS does a great job of this and is standard on every ready built distro I've used (FC and DamnSmallLinux).
Or maybe I've just been trolled.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr57526.htm l
SUMMARY:
The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress is preparing to conduct proceedings in accordance with section 1201(a)(1) of the Copyright Act, which was added by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and which provides that the Librarian of Congress may exempt certain classes of works from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. The purpose of this rulemaking proceeding is to determine whether there are particular classes of works as to which users are, or are likely to be, adversely affected in their ability to make noninfringing uses due to the prohibition on circumvention. This notice requests written comments from all interested parties, including representatives of copyright owners, educational institutions, libraries and archives, scholars, researchers and members of the public, in order to elicit evidence on whether noninfringing uses of certain classes of works are, or are likely to be, adversely affected by this prohibition on the circumvention of measures that control access to copyrighted works. DATES: Written comments are due by December 1, 2005. Reply comments are due by February 2, 2006.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
More directly, there are a lot of old games that are unavailable, simply because their holding companies are waiting for someone to meet a "pie in the sky" bid to rerelease them.
Which is something quite different, really. Using Occam's razor, I think the answer is simply "Software is only free if your time is worth nothing". Selling it is probably an amount and a signature. Opening up the game means figuring out what third-party source code is in there, artwork, sounds, music and so on. A lot of this is probably licensed just for the game. Often, the entire team that once worked on it is gone. Someone have to take an interest to it and do quite a bit of work, none of which will bring in any revenue. Even if you do it for free, if you have to make any meetings, travel and so on, you might actually end up in a net loss. And you may still end up with some other company who has rights to some part of the code turn you down. Overall, you have to go through a whole lot of effort to get an obscure sourceforge page someone might take an interest in. Big whoop.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"Why shouldn't I be able to read or "bypass" what I own like the 1 and 0s on DVD/CDs/etc? "
Nothing is stopping you from doing just that. The law actually prohibits distributing, selling, and/or giving away such software. You are perfectly within your rights to write your own software to bypass what is on a DVD, etc. That is, as long as you are engaging in fair usage. (archival purposes, educational, etc.)
Thats one of the reasons I disagree with the DMCA in that you can write software to overcome encryption for fair use, but you can't distribute, or otherwise give it away. Or put another way, the wheel has to be reinvented everytime.
"How is the DMCA even constitutional?"
It was passed by congress, and does not trash any rights promised in the Constitution. There are only two ways to overturn this flawed law. The first is for a constitutional amendment which will probably never happen. And for congress to wake up.
"Oh wait, the Supreme Court just shit on that back in June. "
The supreme court simply interprets laws based on how your congress writes them. Blame congress for making such a flawed law. The only way the Judicial Branch overturns laws is if they are against the Constitution. And guess what, the constitution says that congress decides what rights intellectual property owners get.
So don't blame the Judicial Branch, they are just doing their jobs. They have no authority to overturn the DMCA at all.
Really Slashdot? How interesting. I wonder when the next review is due... Right now? Ya don't say! And comments are due by Dec 1, 2005!? Well fancy that. Certainly some kind souls out there must have submitted this information as a story. I wonder why we aren't reading about it? Ahhh, door handles of the future, I see. That's much more important. THAT is 'stuff that matters' I tell ya. Well, if anyone is still interested after reading about said door handles... here are some other interesting links regarding the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions:
Hmm... looks like the DMCA is being used to make lawyers rich and stomp on innovation and competition. And to think, I thought copyright was about 'promoting progress.' Silly me.
Please note that while the copyright office can grant exemptions to allow the act of circumventing technical protection schemes, they cannot grant exemptions to allow the manufacture or trafficking in devices which can circumvent those measures. So even if your special pleadings get you an exemption, you can't legally make or purchase a device which can do the job.
the constitution states that property may be seized for PUBLIC use, but Kelo stated that property could be seized for PRIVATE development, based on the argument that this would improve the local economy (i.e. by creating jobs).
Yep, and that's not a new concept by any means. Public use is not the same as public ownership. So, for example, back in the 19th century, the government seized land, gave it to railroad companies so that they could put privately owned tracks on it, serving the public by improving our transportation infrastructure.
If you look at the history of eminent domain law, you'll see that Kelo is not novel. Given that the government still has to fairly compensate the owner (and can be sued for more money if they offer too little), I don't see a big problem. These are forced sales, but they're not robberies.
Meanwhile, no one is suggesting that the eminent domain power extends to private takings with no ultimate public purpose.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
XMMS on Fedora Core won't play MP3s. IIRC, they even yanked the MP3 decoder source out of the SRPMs. I had to download a real copy of the XMMS source and compile it from scratch to play MP3s on FC.
What idiot moderated this as "informative"? Not all of copyright law is contained within statute. A lot of it is contained in case law, or in the inherent rights humans have before the government takes them away.
Go talk to a lawyer please, Kjella. Yes, a few of the more common examples of fair use are codified in federal statutes. But please don't be so uninformed as to think that those few examples cover the entire field - they do not.
Slavery was accepted until the 1860s. Yet was plainly unconstitutional the entire time
No, it was plainly evil the entire time. It was constitutional, however. If you disagree, please point to the part of the antebellum Constitution (i.e. everything before the 13th Amendment) that prohibited it.
Privacy is not even a right mentioned in the BoR
It's in the penumbra.
But protection against unlawful search and seizure specifically protects property.
The seizure in question is of one's person and of evidence to be used against that person. It's not related to takings, which is why you don't need a warrant to condemn property, and you don't need to pay a fair price to put the smoking gun in an evidence locker.
Bizaare? Have you ever read history and noticed that the societies w/o property rights are usually the most restrictive in all the other ways? Soviet Russia for one. Feudal Societies for another. There is a correlation there.
No, not really. They also didn't have free speech, for example. Does that mean that free speech is the basis of property rights? Of course not. Those sorts of societies didn't care about their people at all; it had nothing to do with any specific right that was infringed upon.
You are confusing "cannot" with should not.
Nope. This is a pretty standard part of civil liberties jurisprudence. It has its origins in the clever ways that segregationists would employ to deny minorities their rights when the blatant ones were overturned. No one was fooled, and the clever methods got overturned too.
we don't have the complete command of ourselves?
No, we largely do. Not entirely: it's unconstitutional for you to sell yourself into slavery, for example. But these are liberty interests, not property interests. People aren't property; this is part of how their freedom is ensured.
copyright has been completely perverted anyway because the flip side has been ignored
And I agree, which is why I'd like to see copyright fixed, and why I spend time working on that.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I mentioned this in my journal almost 2 years ago (yet another rejected submission:) All links are still good, mostly covering the e-book and fair access for the blind.
There are over 10 million visually impaired people just in the US who are being blinded by the DMCA. On the back page of Software Developer, Warren Keuffel has a commentary (free reg) that summarizes what he found to be issues still brewing over the use of the DMCA to prevent people from implementing technology designed to translate eBooks into Braille. XML is being used now to facilitate the translations of eBooks and other electronic formats and to help disabled people get simple access to reading material that others of us may take for granted. The DMCA effectively blocks many of these new innovations (go figure). Is short, the American Federation for the Blind has sent comments the US Copyright office, Congress is looking at the issue, The Association of American Publishers is fighting it, all the while fair-use and disabled students continue to suffer.
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
A couple of comments; note that IANAL.
> "Why shouldn't I be able to read or "bypass" what I own like the 1
> and 0s on DVD/CDs/etc? "
> Nothing is stopping you from doing just that. The law actually
> prohibits distributing, selling, and/or giving away such software.
Correct. This, of course, requires every ordinary user in the world to roll his own software. The law doesn't "prohibit" exercising your fair use rights. It just makes doing so in fact sufficiently difficult that it become effectively impossible for most people.
> You are perfectly within your rights to write your own software
> to bypass what is on a DVD, etc. That is, as long as you are
> engaging in fair usage. (archival purposes, educational, etc.)
Of course, you may still be sued by the MPAA or RIAA. The fact that you are not guilty doesn't mean they can't abuse the legal system against you. You may win, but defending yourself may be expensive.
> "How is the DMCA even constitutional?"
> It was passed by congress, and does not trash any rights promised
> in the Constitution.
Correct; fair use rights are not enumerated in the Constitution, and their effective removal by DMCA is a technical side-effect. As explained above, these rights still exist. It's just prohibitively difficult to exercise them.
> There are only two ways to overturn this flawed law. The first is
> for a constitutional amendment which will probably never happen.
> And for congress to wake up.
Actually, three. The courts could still overturn it, or at least overturn some of the provisions. But someone would need to find a legal reason for them to do so, that hasn't yet been ruled on. This is somewhat unlikely.
Good response. Thanks.