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DRM More Important Than Life or Security?
An anonymous reader writes "Ed Felten of Freedom to Tinker has an interesting writeup regarding how copyright holders are still having serious objections to the built in exceptions of the DMCA even when it might threaten lives or national security. From the article: 'One would have thought they'd make awfully sure that a DRM measure didn't threaten critical infrastructure or endanger lives, before they deployed that measure. But apparently they want to keep open the option of deploying DRM even when there are severe doubts about whether it threatens critical infrastructure and potentially endangers lives.'"
They never have. Perhaps the biggest role of the corporations that belong to the organizations mentioned in TFA is to act as a middleman. Today they add almost no value to the economic equation. That means they're basically parasites. Parasites that, in this case, don't give a fuck about the host (the public) they prey upon.
As long as they get theirs, that's all that matters to them. And they will do everything in their considerable power to make sure that remains the case. They embody everything that is wrong with modern crony capitalism.
It's long past time for them to die.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
What you really need to keep in mind when talking about this is that the groundwork is already laid. The DMCA is law. What is being argued over now is the details of what types of media should be covered by exemptions. If you think that you are fighting over consumer rights, the DMCA is doing laps around you.
copyright infringement is already grounds for heftier punishment than some crimes against physical inviolability. What did you expect? He who pays the politician makes the laws.
"One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn't see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.
Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
"Hellooo Mr. Frog!" called the scorpion across the water, "Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?"
"Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?" asked the frog hesitantly.
"Because," the scorpion replied, "If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!"
Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. "What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!"
"This is true," agreed the scorpion, "But then I wouldn't be able to get to the other side of the river!"
"Alright then...how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?" said the frog.
"Ahh...," crooned the scorpion, "Because you see, once you've taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!"
So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog's back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog's soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog's back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
"You fool!" croaked the frog, "Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?"
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog's back.
"I could not help myself. It is my nature."
This is a story often told in psychology classes. To understand the immutable nature of something is vital. There is no point intellectualising, making excuses and analysis, sometimes something just is what it is.
For humanity it is necessary to recognise the intrinsic nature of capitalism . It is an unfettered force which puts the value of money and profit above life itself. There are too many examples and stories from reality which prove this time and again that we would be fools to ignore this force. Unless we take steps to moderate the present capitalist system a few unlucky people will be left sitting on a vast pile of gold upon the smoking remains of a planet .
But I'd rather see DRM and DMCA gone!
Practically anybody who's ever released anything into the world is a copyright holder, most of them just aren't that anal about users using their work.
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Well the answer is simple, you want drm, stick it on a specialist bit of external hardware, not on my general use computer, where the only rights management I care about if my user rights management (my box, my digital life, my privacy).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This all comes down to money and the fact that so many people are very very greedy.
/. readers know that providing specifications and helping people to tinker with a product usually helps the company in the long run. It is very sad to see that
Corporations fear that if they don't do everything to protect their precious products
from tampering, they'll lose some serious money.
We
this whole DRM thing has blurred the vision of so many managers out there and they
just can't get it that by making non-restricted products you help yourself. *sigh*
It doesn't matter that the "scenario is unlikely." It is an unlikely scenario that you will be wiretapped without a warrant, but that doesn't make it any more just.
The fact is that the scenario COULD happen where DRM takes down a machine that is needed to keep people alive. This is BS either way you cut it.
First you wedge in the "critical for life" exceptions and before you know it people will argue that voting machines should be open source.
While there is not an iota of love inside me for copyright holders, both the poster and the blogger are trying to stir up reader's emotions by their choice of phrases.
The poster says "DRM more important than life or security" and the blogger's headline reads "Future DRM might threaten critical infrastructure and potentially endanger lives."
I read the article that is linked to, and from what I could decipher of the legal wording from the RIAA is that they're afraid that until someone clearly defines "privacy or security" or even "threaten critical infrastructure and potentially endanger lives", they don't want to commit anything.
Nowhere does it imply that they said DRM is "more important than life or privacy" but merely that "till you can define privacy, security etc., we don't want to commit".
Based on their track record, the Copyright Office will likely do what is asked by these corporations. However, I'm curious as to why? What does the Copyright Office gain by not putting in these safeguards? Who do they answer to? Are these corporations truly funding them? I know little about the Copyright Office mentioned in this article.
Wouldn't the designers of any system entrusted to protect the lives of others automatically reject DRM as an elemnent of that system if it could prove to be a point of failure?
I am not a system engineer, but I don't see how DRM would ever be considered in a system of this nature. I would expect that a lot of the components used in such systems would either be highly modified/customized off the shelf components or custom made.
It may be unlikely, but this is what these companies are arguing for -- "We don't want you messing with our DRM systems, because it might be holding control over your computer/network, and screwing with it might break your computer."
You: "Wait, why would you have control over my computer? I don't want a screw-up with your DRM to mess up my computer!"
Company: "That's why you shouldn't play with it! Our DRM would NEVER break unless you fool around with it. It's completely bug-free and hacker-proof."
You: "Uh..."
And as for it being unlikely, I direct your attention to a certain Sony-distributed rootkit that broke your computer if you tried to remove it on your own...
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
MY interest is my security and safety.
THEIR interest is the security and protection of their property.
I get to decide which hardware I buy and use. So MY interest will be the one deciding which hardware will be sold.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're confusing individual copyright holders with the middlemen that some of them are tied to. Big difference.
Take comic strips for example. The vast majority of new comic strips (within the last 15 years), have artists that own their own copyrights. (That didn't used to be the case).
If you're saying the middle men don't add anything to the equation, well, that's wrong too. They do... it's just they don't add as much as they THINK they do.
Again, comic strips... The syndicates that 50% of the sale. The other 50% goes to the author.
Is that worth it? In this day and age on the web, hell no. In the past, when individual salesmen had to go around selling to each paper (and, yes, some still do that), then that's arguably with the "worth it" category, since that's how the newspaper business works.
Some of the copyright holders are corporations themselves, which paid the salaries of the folks that wrote the software for the months/years it took to write that software. If you're saying THAT'S unfair.... well....
We can thank a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing extension to 100 years, infinitely renewable. Maybe with Roberts as Chief Justice we'll get sensible rulings. Just don't wake up Ruth Bader-Meinhof Ginsburg.
See, conservatives aren't so hard to understand. You just have to start thinking for yourself.
Capitalism and socialism are both means-oriented philosophies. That is, the means by which an end is achieved is considered more important than the end in itself. {This goes against the Principle of Equivalence, which states that "all means to the same end are equally valid"; its corollary is "means that are not equally valid serve different ends".}
.....
To a capitalist or a socialist, obeying orders -- even if the intended aim is not achieved -- is considered more important than achieving aims.
If a high-ranking officer orders an NCO to lead troops to their certain death, but the NCO thinks on his feet and at the last minute finds a way to save the lives of his men and take the ground, he will be court-martialled and executed for gross insubordination. If the NCO instead leads his men to their death, he will be hailed posthumously as a hero, and the deaths recorded as tragic but necessary. Their deaths will not be considered the fault of the NCO for obeying orders, nor the HRO for issuing the orders, but the fault of the Enemy.
It would be better for an entire city's worth of innocent civilians to die in screaming agony, than for the law to be broken. If the law says property is more important than life, then property is more important than life. In fact, US law is quite explicit that is is OK to kill a human being in order to protect {real, physical} property. {UK law stops just shy of this. In some parts of Continental Europe, a shopkeeper must actually allow a hungry person to shoplift food, or face penalties.} Killing to protect false, "intellectual property" is surely the next logical extension of this principle. The DMCA is there to protect intellectual property, which is considered equal to physical property and thus to be protected from harmful pirates. Any damage done in the name of protecting intellectual property is surely the fault of the pirates against whom that property was being defended, and not the fault of the defenders.
That's the means-oriented view, anyway. If you take a more ends-oriented view like the filthy libertarians {disliked equally both by capitalists, for their perverse ideas about how some things can be more important than money, and by socialists for their ideas about the individual [individuals are an unhealthy concept] as an extreme case of a minority [minorities are to be protected]} then you probably think it is a little strange
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
DRM is the act of a producer to make reproduction of their creation difficult. I don't see a problem with this any more than by putting a lock on my front door.
You really don't see a problem with someone putting a lock on your front door and keeping the key for themselves?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Maybe a good solution to the copyright problem that you hinted at there is to not allow corporations/organisations/whatever to own a copyright on something. Only the original creator(s) of the work should get a copyright. Sure, people could license their copyrights to their company/whatever in a style similar to the Creative Commons Attribution license, but if an unspecific group of people were unable to own a copyright, the problems would slowly fix themselves.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
...something is bothering you when it pops up everywhere you turn. The public needs to be more aware of the lasting implications of the DMCA. It should be a household word. Last evening i was flipping through the channels and it happened to stop on "Wheel-Of-Fortune", it was time for the prize puzzle, 3 consonants and one vowel. The lady choose D-M-C-A. She solved the puzzle and i don't even remember what it was. All i remember was her choice of letters. It stuck in my head. If this keeps up the future will not belong to us, but to corporations and those that govern. My 2 cents.
Eg. a bum on the street doesn't suddenly gain the right to take products from a food packed supermarket just because he's starving to death.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
Why does anything that requires DRM going to show up on critical systems? Why do you need to shoev that music CD into your Nuclear monitoring system?
Or am I missing something?
the kinda people who the word applies to have been so bad for so long that the word now carries a negative connotation all by itself. You don't call someone you like a "copyright holder" anymore then you call them a "Politician". You use artist, or Statesman, or something along those lines.
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Kang: "Yes, it's true, we're evil aliens, but there's nothing you can do about it. It's a two-party system! You'll have to vote for one of us!"
Guy in Crowd: "Well I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate!"
Kang: "Go ahead, throw your vote away! Hahahahahaha"
This classic Simpsons quote has been modded funny (and it is), but its an incredibly insightful comment.
It's the aliens that don't represent the majority of humanity that tell us that voting for the 3rd party is a waste. On the contrary, voting for the 3rd party is the only possible thing that can break the 2-party status quo that the US (and as a consequence the rest of the world) is suffering.
People who echo the "voting for a 3rd party is a waste" are just repeating the GOP and Dems message, and it's the one thing the major 2 will always "agree" on.
Car analogies break down.
Who cares? Both parties are a complete joke now anyway. I hate Bush but he's done one good thing for this country: he's shown just how bought the entire congress is.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
No, this is more like edible plants are patented and he has to break the law to grow some carrots by and for himself.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.