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CATO Institute Releases Paper Criticizing DMCA

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the keep-saying-it-and-people-might-start-listening dept.

flanksteak writes "The CATO institute has published a paper criticizing the DMCA entitled 'The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.' From the article: 'The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders--and the technology companies that distribute their content--the legal power to create closed technology platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do little to stop pirates.'" A report worth taking a look at that puts into words what most of us know already.

4 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Re:more paper by wiggles · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you hold cordial discourse and publish papers, those in power will be more inclined to listen to you, especially if those in power have agreed with you in the past. If you arm yourself and demonstrate in the streets, you're branded a nut and hauled off to jail for weapons violations, and noone pays any attention to you.

    The important thing with this story here is that we have a significant victory. We, the DMCA opposing people of the country, have succeeded in convincing an organization with considerable influence with those who disagree with us that we're right. Now, this gives our lobbiests, such as the EFF and FSF, some significant ammuntion when trying to convince congress that the DMCA is a bad thing. Maybe there's some hope after all.

  2. Don't underestimate David Koch's money by Valdrax · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Don't underestimate the political pull of the Cato Institute and other lobbying institutions founded by the Koch family. They are very influential to the other business-friendly, anti-regulation political think-tanks including those followed by more Republican than Liberatarian politicians. In addition, the David Koch donates an awful lot of money to Republicans. If his think tank gets involved against the DMCA, we might see to chance of progress here.

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    If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
  3. Re:CATO == dorks by Steve+B · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Ever since I heard a CATO "expert" explain that gas prices were so high because a lot of people were topping off their tanks at the gas station, I kinda take whatever they say with a grain of salt.

    You slept through the Economics 101 class where they explained "supply and demand", right?

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    /. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
  4. France's recent bill by Submarine · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I note that France's National assembly recently adopted a bill that balanced criminal and civil penalties for circumventing systems deemed to implement DRMs with a clause saying that publishers of DRM systems should be ready to give out specifications of these DRMs to anybody willing to implement a compatible player.

    This move was derided in the US as some "anti-iPod law".

    Well, the motivation for this was that the criminal and civil penalties initially envisioned by the DADVSI law would have de facto created a new kind of intellectual property around DRMs, with DRM companies potentially being able to prosecute competitors for making compatible players (which can be easily construed as facilitating the weakening of the protection).

    The law was then balanced so as to avoid this.