Slashdot Mirror
Libraries Say DRM May Harm Their Services
Ernest Adams writes "The BBC is reporting that the British Library is concerned about DRM's effect on its ability to make materials available to the public. Libraries have a legal right to distribute materials under the Fair Use provisions of the copyright law, but DRM systems may block this. Furthermore, they point out that DRM systems don't automatically switch themselves off when a work goes out of copyright. DRM systems may allow copyright holders to retain control over their material longer than they are legally entitled to. Worse yet, if the software no longer exists to unlock a DRM-protected file, its contents may be lost forever -- exactly the thing libraries are intended to prevent." We've discussed stories like this before.
Libraries have a legal right to distribute materials under the Fair Use provisions of the copyright law, but DRM systems may block this.... DRM systems don't automatically switch themselves off when a work goes out of copyright.
Article summary provided by the Department of Obviousness Department
We don't have "fair use" in UK copyright law, at least not in the sense it's usually used around here to refer to the exemptions in the US.
However, a small number of national reference libraries in the UK, including the British Library, have a special legal right to claim a free copy of works published in the UK.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The librarians are making some good points about further flaws in DRM. I'm glad to see the media finally starting to pick up on this and report stories about the dark side of DRM. Now if we could only get more mentions of it on THIS side of the pond, maybe people other than the technically adept will start to get pissed about DRM and force some change.
OK, not likely, but a guy can dream, can't he?
... they're a lot more influential than people realise. They do run their own special forces unit, which for no adequately explored reason conducts all its business in Japanese...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Worse yet, if the software no longer exists to unlock a DRM-protected file, its contents may be lost forever -- exactly the thing libraries are intended to prevent.
:)
I would think that's where the people that enjoy breaking DRM protection comes into play. It would be nice to get a government sanction to break into content for the fun of it. Or at least I'm assuming it'd be nice for people that can actually do it
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
On top of that, non-slashdotters don't know and even care less than we.
Finally: even if everybody would boycott DRM enabled media, the distributors will blame piracy. It's a lose-lose situation in all cases.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
See, here's where we, the nerds and IT folk, need to work with the librarians and support them.
I had the priveledge of speaking with a librarian on a plane ride one time. While not particularly tech saavy, she was quite passionate about information freedom and privacy. It hadn't even occurred to me until that point that the librarians had been working for what so many of us had believed in for a long time. They were the Googles before we had Google.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
I wonder if any of the sony rootkits have made it into the music collections of libraries? Would the librarians even know to not stock those titles?
I was involved in some video Copy Protection Technology standardisation efforts in Europe and had to sit round the table with the MPAA. ANY attempt to bring an argument along the lines of "how do we put the copyright expiration date into the DRM metadata" was laughed at. None of the technology companies were interested in running with the idea either - the consumers rights could just go hang.
All part of life in the behind-the-scenes world of technology standardisation.
they point out that DRM systems don't automatically switch themselves off when a work goes out of copyright. Fortunately for us here in the US, works going out of copyright isn't an issue.
Stop! Dremel time!
"DRM systems may allow copyright holders to retain control over their material longer than they are legally entitled to."
I'm not sure I agree with this point of view. It seems to me that it's not a right to control material and copyright confers, but the right to legal protection from infringement on that material. If I decide I want to go a step further with something I produce, and lock it up in a way that will keep people from doing what they want with it after I can no longer count on legal protection, then isn't that my prerogative?
That said, I don't really agree with that approach, I'm just not a fan of telling a creator what they can do with their creation.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
Do your bit for information freedom.
DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management.
What, you heard it was Digital Rights Management? No, no, no. The purpose of the technology is to take away rights, like the fair use right to copy to an ipod or a mix tape, and to impose restrictions, like how if your subscription to Napster lapses then all your music stops working. It's Digital Restrictions Management.
Use the phrase in your posts, in conversation with non-techies, on IRC. Whenever the subject arises. Spread the meme. Subvert the language. It's Digital Restrictions Management, because they want to Restrict you. They care nothing for your rights.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Surely the best solution here is a modification to the law such that any protected digital work must have an unencumbered version of the data lodged with the copyright libraries? This copy is for archive use only until the work falls into the public domain, at which point it is made freely available.
Artists are protected, execs still get the most important part of their wet dream, and most importantly, the public gets it's dues.
In recent years, I've read a number of comments from people in the publishing industry that mention a statistic: The average published book is read by four people. The contexts of the quote is usually that this is considered a problem, and Something Should Be Done About It.
;-)
One way to understand this is to think of the books that you own. How many of your books have been read by three or more other people? Probably none, right? So where does this supposed average of four come from? Right again - libraries. The publishing industry generally considers libraries to be a serious problem. Libraries pay for a book only once, and then they let anyone read the book. All those readers should have bought their own copy. If publishers can make this happen, they think it will quadruple their income.
One of the things going on with DRM is that publishers see a solution to their problem, in the form of software that will prevent anyone other than the purchaser from reading a book. The intent is to prevent public libraries from doing what they're doing. They're also looking at the possibility of making you pay a second time if you want to reread a book.
Most publishers aren't in business to educate their readers or to contribute to our culture. They are in business to make money. If they can't make money from a book, they have no reason to let you read it. They certainly don't want you to read a book for free.
So if you think libraries are an important part of our culture, you should also be thinking about ways to preserve public access to their content. Publishers think they will soon be able to end such public access. They'll probably succeed, unless steps are taken to preserve access.
(Of course, here in the US, most of the population hasn't been inside a library in years.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I don't see any compelling reason to believe that any work created since the term "DRM" was invented will ever go out of copyright.
As a defence of DRM, that would be fine... if the content cartels hadn't managed to get a law passed that makes the exercise of fair use not only difficult, but illegal.
Absolutely. The evil thing about the WIPO treaties' laws (DMCA included) is that they play lip-service to respecting fair use, but make it impossible to claim it. In the US, you are technically permitted to break the DRM for your own personal use (this is exempt under the DMCA), but you are forbidden from ever telling anyone how you went about breaking the DRM. This effectively limits legal fair use to advanced electronics and computer engineers who have a lot of time on their hands.
What I'd love to see (and I know I never will) is for copyright protection to only be granted to works that can be copied. If you publish a work (book, software, music, etc.) on a medium that permits someone to make copies, then you can legally enforce your "copy right" against anyone who infringes that right.
If, however, you publish something that prevents copies from being made, then you forfeit the legal mechanism that the government has granted you. You are taking the job of preventing infringment of your work out of the government's hand, and taking responsibility for that yourself. After all, why should you be given protection from illicit copying of their work when your work is "uncopyable"?
I know, it won't happen. It probably tips the copyright balance too far in the other direction. But dare to dream...
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
I was recently in a room with a high ranking IT person from the U.S. Library of Congress.
He essentially said the same thing, but here is where it gets interesting.
He remarked (from my imperfect memory) "People don't understand the amount of money thrown at senators and congressman from media companies to get some favorable legislation. It's so political now that we've been instructed by the head of the library of congress to not comment on this issue, so you can see where this is all going".
This is scary. The LOC knows congress is selling us out, but they've been told to keep their big mouths shut.
One of the problems with fair use in the United States is that it's generally not considered a "right" per se. Most choose to look at it as an affirmative defense- that is, something brought up when you're accused of copyright infringement. It's all about the framing used to determine who has the burden of proof. If it's a right, then the people who are trying to affect your rights have the burden of proof. If it's a defense, then you have to prove that you weren't infringing copyright. The law itself mentions neither rights nor defenses- it just says that fair use is not an infringement of copyright.
Librarians are great allies to intellectual freedom issues, including those involving DRM. Look at the briefs that the American Library Association has filed with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Many librarians are also quite knowledgable about technology-related issues, as well as fun subjects like copyright.
Libraries have it rough with the increasing prevalence of electronic journals and DRM technologies. Even with material that is accessed online, there's a good chance that once the library stops paying for access, the patrons lose access to that materials- something that never happened with print journals. DRM and licensing are currently putting libraries between a rock and a hard place.
A better question might be, fifty years from now, will anyone have the technology to even access the works? Think how hard it is to play an eight-track, or even an old 45. If it's copy restricted, will anyone remember how it works? I'll bet no one is playing old WMAs in 2050.
This might be a huge problem if these copy restriction schemes fade into obscurity, people forget about the works and suddenly, decades later, they want to access them again. But then again, by then it might be easy to reverse-engineer these schemes.
Penny - plain text accounting
I was the coauthor of a technical book, "Using Samba", published in the United States and Canada by O'Reilly and associates. Despite being made available electronically for no cost, the book was the outstanding seller in its class, and made me substantial royalties.
The History of "Using Samba"
This book was published without any form of explicit DRM, in a format suitable for printing from personal computers, with no limitations on distribution of personal printing, and with a license reserving only commercial printing rights to the publisher.
There was an implicit form of rights management, in that only commercial printers have equipment capable of printing and binding on sufficiently thin paper to make a manageable book: if printed on conventional photocopier paper, the book is over three inches thick. Printing small sections for reference on photocopier paper is perfectly practical, but large-scale printing is not.
This effectively reinforced the reservations in the license: printing for profit is both illegal and impractical, but personal printing, excerpting and copying is unrestricted.
The net result is that the book was widely used as a reference, and the on-line readers bought the physical book for its more convenient form in great numbers. O'Reilly has since published a non-trivial number of other books in this manner.
How copyright deposit libraries should deal with DRM issues
Copyright and other deposit libraries, such as the National Libraries of the U.K., Canada and the United States should seek and retain unrestricted copies, offering suitable statutory protection to the authors or publishers.
Upon the expiry of the copyright, the deposit libraries should make the originals available for a nominal fee.
Upon the failure or discontinuance of a DRM scheme, the publishers should retain the option of republishing under a different scheme under ordinary copyright law.
On cessation of publication, the copyright should by statute continue for no less than seven years. After this time, upon request by a member of the public, the copyright deposit library should advertise that copyright is deemed to have lapsed, and that it will offer the unrestricted copy within no more than one year. A copyright owner may then give notice that they have in fact recommenced publication, and if so the copyright deposit library shall advertise that fact and not release the unrestricted copy.
davecb@spamcop.net
DRM systems don't automatically switch themselves off when a work goes out of copyright. DRM systems may allow copyright holders to retain control over their material longer than they are legally entitled to. Worse yet, if the software no longer exists to unlock a DRM-protected file, its contents may be lost forever -- exactly the thing libraries are intended to prevent.
Of course, it seems unlikely that there is anything out there - or likely to be - that couldn't be cracked. But here's a question: something only exists as a DRM protected file. Its copyright expires. The DMCA is still as it is today. Is it still illegal to crack the DRM on this file?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Furthermore, they point out that DRM systems don't automatically switch themselves off when a work goes out of copyright.
That's not much of a problem. As Disney has so carefully demonstrated, that will never, ever happen for any copyrighted work that has been published since 1928. The real problem however:
Worse yet, if the software no longer exists to unlock a DRM-protected file, its contents may be lost forever -- exactly the thing libraries are intended to prevent
This will happen a lot sooner than the copyright will expire. Like in maybe 10 or 20 years. And not just that the software might not support old DRM formats (remember, they'll be producing new ones every 6 months because hackers will always find a way around them), but what about the hardware? Will it work in 15 years? Will someone be there to make replacement parts in 15 years? DRM is all about tying one electronic copy to one device at a time, whether it's a PDA-style book reader or a PC. But the whole point of electronic formats is reproducability so that you can prevent data loss (among other things).
The Disneys and Sonys of the world don't give a rat's ass about whether a historian can understand our culture (and by extension, their own) in a hundred or six hundred years. They care only whether or not they can make money this year.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I am an etwork admin in a library. Many libraries have cd and dvd repairing machines (the professional kind) so all it takes is to let them know that a cd is scratched. Second Atleats the libary that I work in has a bigger dvd collection then probably the local blockbusters and holywood videos. This could harm many libraries because people dont read books anymore. Libraries depend on free computer and wifi access and the cd and dvd takeout. Oh trust me the riaa and mpaa will hear about it.
I always thought that DRM was appropriately named, it just depends on the frame of mind that you are coming from.
DRM - Digital Rights Management. The system is managing your rights... by taking them away, instead of you managing your rights.
A community-oriented lyrics site
So the whole "what about when copyright expires" spiel is a read herring (pun intended).
The answer to that would seem to be no, as the dmca only applies to copyrighted material.
Under your interpretation of 1201 and foreign counterparts, it's legal to crack Charlie Chaplin DVDs and to make and sell circumvention devices that work with Charlie Chaplin DVDs. Under another interpretation, as long as a given DRM format is in active use to restrict even one copyrighted work, it's illegal to make or sell circumvention devices that work with such a format. Courts haven't yet clearly stated which interpretation they will apply.