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The RIAA's Halloween Tricks
deus42 writes "BoingBoing has an interesting article about a joint RIAA/MPAA move started yesterday on Capitol Hill. From the article: 'Hollywood has fielded a shockingly ambitious piece of Analog Hole legislation while everyone was out partying in costume. Under a new proposed Analog Hole bill, it will be illegal to make anything capable of digitizing video unless it either has all its outputs approved by the Hollywood studios, or is closed-source, proprietary and tamper-resistant. The idea is to make it impossible to create an MPEG from a video signal unless Hollywood approves it.'"
You can't retroactively make something illegal.
The reason being that eventually, most if not all digital methods of transmittal will be controlled by DRM, and thus, the industry already has control of that. After that, it will still be possible to make copies via analog methods, and they want to make sure those copies don't wind up in some other digital, albeit slightly quality-degraded form.
They already have a hearing scheduled for Thursday. ;-) x ?committee=3
http://judiciary.house.gov/oversight.aspx?ID=202
And here is the list of the members of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, in case you're interested.
http://judiciary.house.gov/committeestructure.asp
From Dictionary.com
prise
v 1: to move or force, especially in an effort to get something open; "The burglar jimmied the lock", "Raccoons managed to pry the lid off the garbage pail" [syn: pry, prize, lever, jimmy] 2: make an uninvited or presumptuous inquiry; "They pried the information out of him" [syn: pry] 3: regard highly; think much of; "I respect his judgement"; "We prize his creativity" [syn: respect, esteem, value, prize] [ant: disrespect]
That word can mean what he wanted it to mean.
is go to your 3 elected representatives (in the US, each citizen is represented to the Federal Government by 2 Senators (per state; sorry, D.C. and Territories) and a Representative (per Congressional District)) -- seriously, call up their offices and arrange a face-to-face meeting -- explaining why any legislation that in any way restricts the current "fair use" of copyrighted material is so basically wrong. Join the EFF. Explain how all "survey papers" would be made illegal if this restriction of fair use is permitted (remember, as soon as it applies to one medium, it will shortly follow that it will apply to all media).
The MPAA & RIAA are both mired in a business model that is out of date, unfair to most of the participants, and robs blind all the consumers. Ask any so-called "indie" producer. We must put a stop to this.
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
How do they determine "regularly employs"? Will that mean that professional devices will come with a time lock tied to a dead man's switch that will permanently disable it if you try to use it at irregular intervals or fail to use it at regular intervals? (This paragraph is not serious and only seeking to be funny through ridicule.)
Further: so if you price your device too low so that people not in the publishing business can and do purchase it, your device is illegal and you face a $500,000 fine or 5 years imprisonment or both for first offense, and double for additional offenses.
That creates contributory infringement just for making a popular device!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
The broadcast flag was tossed out because the court found that the FCC did not have the authority to impose it. It was only a regulation; it was not a law passed by Congress and signed by the President. If the "A. Hole" bill passes and is signed, then the law will have to be proven unconstitutional. It won't be an unauthorized regulation like BF.
At least not until all electronic parts vendors require all purchases of each part to be bought in $1000 bulk purchases. And it's already happening: the only local vendor for a part to fix the power connector on my Joust machine would only sell to me if I bought $1000 worth of the part.
Go to mouser.com or digikey.com. They sell in small quantities and surely have far greater selections and far cheaper prices than any place local to you.
The parts will be kept in the hands of those trusted to assemble them into compliant devices. Individuals will still be able to get soldering irons and solder; just not anything to solder with them. (It will become harder and harder to harvest parts from existing devices as well. Entire circuit boards will be covered in black epoxy.)
Well that's just great; we can then kiss our entire electronics industry good-bye in this country. There's an enormous number of companies (most small ones) in this country that make and sell electronic devices using component parts. These items are designed in-house by engineers, and then prototyped, frequently with parts from Digi-Key and other such distributors, sold in small quantities. The prototypes are debugged, and then eventually the completed design is manufactured either in-house (if the company is large enough), or out-of-house by a contract manufacturer. I used to work as a component-level design engineer, doing schematic design and PCB layout at a small company, so I know a little about this.
Eliminate the ability to buy parts in small quantities and you wipe out virtually all prototyping of electronic designs. The effects of this on the economy are incalculable.
prise
v 1: to move or force, especially in an effort to get something open; "The burglar jimmied the lock", "Raccoons managed to pry the lid off the garbage pail" [syn: pry, prize, lever, jimmy]
Yes. Wait, not the Prize synonym, dumbasses.
2: make an uninvited or presumptuous inquiry; "They pried the information out of him" [syn: pry]
Yes.
3: regard highly; think much of; "I respect his judgement"; "We prize his creativity" [syn: respect, esteem, value, prize] [ant: disrespect]
NO! WRONG! TOTALLY WRONG! WHERE'D YOU LEARN THIS? STOP DOING IT!
(Apologies to Bob the Angry Flower)
"Pri S e" and "Pri Z e" are TOTALLY DIFFERENT WORDS, with completely seperate meanings. Fucking dictionary.com are on fucking crack, the cocksucking motherfuckers ! It's fuckheads like these that will spearhead the demise of the english language. Can't they recognise a simple fucking homophone when they fucking see it!? Fucking Idiots.
There. I feel better now. Continue.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
CDs and DVDs can say they can't be resold all they want, but first sale law trumps any licensing agreement you might find on the packaging anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I always thought the doctrine of first sale prevented the "no resale" markings on CDs and DVDs.
I knew it was a bad omen when Japanese publishers started marking media (especially videogames) with the "No Resale" tag to kill the secondary (used) market about 4 or 5 years ago. One court case later, SoftMap loses against the publishers and "No Resale" becomes enforceable in Japan. What it means is that you need permission from the copyright holders to resell copyrighted goods. Fat chance getting this permission since the publishers/rights holders would rather sell an extra copy than allow a used copy to change hands.
Fast forward a couple years and now it's making appearances in the US too. Why am I not surprised?
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
And lest you think all lobbyists are evil, Public Knowledge and the Home Recording Rights Coalition will also be testifying at the hearing.
There are no representatives from my state (Arizona) on the committee, and they get so much correspondence that they essentially ignore anyone who is not their direct constituent, but if your congressman is on the list, then now is the time to let them know how you feel, especially if you are from Texas or California.
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Tell me again when the DMCA was passed? Oh, right, 1998. Telecommunications act, which resulted in massive cosolidations and generally screwed users? Oh, right, 1996.
Yep, passed by a Republican Congress. The same shady individuals who are still running the legislative branch of the government....
Representative Boucher (D-Virginia) is on this commitee. He is a strong opponent of the restrictions sought by the RIAA/MPAA. There will be at least one voice on the committee that will tell them where they can put their draft.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Heh, they can have my Haapauge PVR-350 when they pry it out of my cold dead hands.
Or for just video capture or play on a computer, all you needs is a Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-150 (cheap). The funny thing is that it works better under Linux than it does under Windows XP. Kudos to the people on the ivtv and MythTV projects - you rock. The pace of adaptation to new/changing hardware and the production of new drivers is amazing. (Disclaimer: users of a 150 need the absolute latest stable versions of both, and you will have to spend some time RTFMs - it may be free as in beer and free as in libre, but it won't be free of your time invested - that's fair.)
I was "interviewed" by an investigator during a mail-bombing investigation, because I purchased a lot of parts from Radio Shack, and apparently parts used in one (or more?) of the bombs was purchased at Radio Shack. Apparently those of us who build things ourselves are already on the watch list.
For about one year, in Osaka only (it's "Sofmap" BTW). Then the Osaka high court overturned the lower court's ruling. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, the lower court ruled against the publishers, and the high court upheld that ruling. Finally, in 2002, the Supreme Court upheld both high court rulings (Japanese link), reasoning that the doctrine of first sale overrules any distribution rights. So those "no resale" stickers are utterly meaningless now, and nobody pays any attention to them.