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USCO Reviewing DMCA Anti-Circumvention Clause
ahknight writes "The United States Copyright office begins its required review of the effects of the anti-circumvention portions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act on November 2nd. This review period lasts until December 1, 2005. They will be accepting your well-thought-out opinions on the web and by mail. If you're reasonably ticked that you can't legally get around encrypted files to get at the media you've bought, start writing a coherent stance for the USCO today."
Maybe we should do an 'Ask Slashdot'. CmdrTaco can then submit the best 500,000 :o)
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
1: it kills 'fair use'. Traditionally, we've been allowed by copyright law to use small amounts of a given work for quotation, for review, for parody... However, the DMCA kills that off. Even if I'm allowed to use that small segment of the copyrighted work for my own purposes, I can't do so if it's technologically protected, even in the feeblest manner: the DMCA forbids that.
2: it encourages monopolies. Other than by means of Hymn, or burning to CD and then re-ripping, I can't play music downloaded from Apple on anything other than an iPod. Or, conversely, if I own an iPod I can't play music downloaded from anyone other than Apple on it. This has a chilling effect on the free market.
3: it threatens free speech itself. Even scholarly, academic discussion of cryptography has been curtailed by the DMCA, in cases where it touched on techniques that have been used to protect copyrighted works. Is it really more important to protect Hollywood's latest blockbuster than to have a free research base driving technology forward?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
A good reference is the American Jury Institute and Fully Informed Jury Association (AJI/FIJA)
Some states get it right:
In the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact (Maryland)
In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts. (Indiana)
In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law (Oregon)
the jury shall be judges of the law and the facts (Georgia)
Chances of the federal government willingly accepting the concept that the lowly pee-ons of the citizenry are smart enough to spot a bad law when they see it? None to rolling of the floor laughing. And even in states where the juries have the right to judge the law the juries are often kept in the dark regarding the true nature of their position.
Other related takes can be found here and here.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
IANAL, TINLA.
Why is it that slashbots are so uninformed about copyright law, and what it actually means and does? Either that, or you're being deliberately obtuse and playing on words.
Copyright law itself differentiates between an idea (a truly nebulous concept that literally exists only as a construct of the mind), a copyrighted work (defined as the semi-nebulous set and ordering of words, notes, digital bytes, or what have you that are the particular expression of an idea), and a copy (defined as the physical object upon which the set and ordering of words, notes, etc. are actually set down/recorded upon). Once you understand these three things, you'll better understand copyright law.
When you download a Linux distro off the web, to copyright law, the "copy" you downloaded is literally that little physical slice of your hard drive upon which the bytes are stored.
Copyright law is... drum roll... basically about the right to make copies - those physical copies. Because the nature of some works (like movies and recorded music, not so much books or written music) is that they are only "understandable" when actually performed (usually with the aid of a mechanical device), it is also about the right to control *public* performance of said work.
The problem is we use "copy" as a noun and a verb in the English language, and rarely differentiate between "first generation copy, the creation of which was authorized by the copyright holder" and "second generation copies, the creation of which was NOT authorized by the copyright holder."
Simply put, copyright law states that the copyright holder has the (mostly) exclusive right to authorize the creation of new copies. This right is separate and distinct from the physical copy itself. When he sells, trades, throws away, or otherwise disposes of a particular copy (the physical object, remember), he relinquishes control over how that particular copy is used - EXCEPT that he does not relinquish the right to forbid people from using that particular copy to make "Second generation copies" and/or publicly performing it. This is where the Doctrine of First Sale comes from - when Disney sells you a copy of Cinderella, they relinquish the right to forbid you from using the disc as frisbee, coaster, or (big) earring, for instance.
So yes, you own the DVD. Disney sold you a copy. But they did NOT sell you the copyright. These are two separate and distinct things. "Fair Use" might (IANAL, TINLA) allow you to rip/mix/burn copies for your own personal use. You could also argue that because copyright law defines a "computer program" as a set of instructions to be interpreted by a computer to achieve a desired effect, and your computer can interpret a DVD as a set of instructions to create the desired effect of playing a movie, you are authorized to back it up by the software backup clause of copyright (which provides you the right to make archive/backup copies of software - with no limiton the number of copies, I might add - provided that you dispose of all such archival copies when you dispose of the first-generation copy they came from).
Where Disney *IS* off its nut is in saying that the disc is "licensed for home use only." COPYRIGHT HOLDERS DO NOT HOLD THE RIGHTS TO LICENSE SOMETHING FOR "HOME USE!" They *only* hold the rights to license something for public display... in other words, they can say, "this is not licensed for public display" because they hold those rights... but telling you it's "licensed for home use" is misleading - when you purchase a lawful copy of something, you automatically have the right to use it in your home (that is not a "public performance") regardless of whether the copyright holder wants you to or not.
In other words, they're telling you that they're giving you a license/right to (a) something you ALREADY had the right to do and (b) something they do not have the legal right to restrict you from doing anyway. It may sound stupid, but it's a semantics game, and a nasty one at that, bec
So the government counted all the emails as one response, and concluded that the public were in favour of ID cards.
They did eventually backtrack on this (but are introducing ID cards anyway). However, my point is that the USCO may ignore emailed responses if they receive a large number that are generic or spam. Don't take the piss.