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More Unintended Consequences of the DMCA
BrianWCarver writes "In the seven years since Congress enacted the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), examples of the law's impact on legitimate consumers, scientists, and competitors continue to mount. A new report released today from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 'Unintended Consequences: Seven Years Under the DMCA,' (pdf) collects reports of the misuses of the DMCA -- chilling free expression and scientific research, jeopardizing fair use, impeding competition and innovation, and interfering with other laws on the books. The report updates a previous version issued by EFF in 2003, which Slashdot also covered."
The problems is (a) if you're a media or software company, you view these as "good" consequence (b) if you're a member of congress, you're routinely told America's financial health is dependant on the strong protection of IP, so you don't see any problem with this (c) hardly anybody has any direct consequence because of DMCA, so they don't see the problem.
So in the face of all that intertia, no one really cares about the extreme cases. I'm guessing the cutover to HDTV in the U.S. (a.k.a. "The Disaster") will generate a lot of problems and make cause a backlash, but right now, it's hard to see anyone in charge or in authority speaking out against the law, and there is almost zero groudswell against it.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
From the article: HP's Region-Coded, Expiring Printer Cartridges: Hewlett-Packard, one of the world's leading printer manufacturers, has embedded software in its printers and accompanying toner cartridges to enforce "region coding" restrictions that prevent cartridges purchased in one region from operating with printers purchased in another. This "feature" presumably is intended to support regional market segmentation and price discrimination.
The software embedded in HP printer cartridges also apparently causes them to "expire" after a set amount of time, forcing consumers to purchase new ink, even if the cartridge has not run dry.
Now that's damn evil. After I moved to England, I discovered the that my DVDs no longer worked. But I never knew that this was now in printers as well. How long before some jackass decides to regin-encode my whole laptop?
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Jeopardizing fair use and impeding competition and innovation are not unintended consequences. They're major reasons some DMCA supporters wanted it passed.
Every law passed by the State with the honest and sincere intention of being for the public good turns out *in practise* to be to the (sometimes enourmous) public harm, while hugely benefitting a very small number of people.
Of course Nikon will happily license out those decryption routines so one has access to the RAW format; but there's no need to introduce encryption in the first place, or keep the file format non-disclosed, for that matter.
Assume, you're a pro photographer and therefore store your pictures in that very RAW format for maximum resolution. The pictures are *your* creative work, not Nikon's. Who says that they will still support that format in 5 years? Who guarantees you that their software will work with your PC of choice in 5 years?
You buy a camera for making pictures, and you probably want to use that very camera for a period which is usually way longer than what's currently supported by any software manufacturer. There are people who still use old Leicas or Rollei cameras... No pro photographer wants to change their equipment with every new OS generation.
With that licensing model -- Nikon creating an encrypted format which *they* own all rights to and *they* have the power to give and revoke licenses as they want -- they directly affect the photographer in accessing his own creative work.
It's like bringing out an analog camera where the photos are taken scrambled and you can view the photos only using a camera-manufacturer provided lens. Which is provided for a limited time only.
An outburst by a programmer who had too much coffee? Maybe you didn't have enough to see the implications of such artificial crippling of file formats...
Like nearly everyone else involved the EFF has an agenda and a spin.
You'd have an agenda if you had the Secret Service come to your place of business back in the day and take virtually every top-of-the-line computer you had sunk all your cash into, and then a few years later return those very same computers crushed into small tiny bits.
Does noone remember History? I remember Steve Jackson helping out the WorldCon in New Orleans by loaning us his computers so we could rewrite the dBase III code that their author/artist registration ran on, so we could actually hold the convention with panels.
A year later, he couldn't do that, because the Secret Service took his computers since he was writing a game about Hackers.
Maybe you like living in Soviet Russia, but I don't.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It's school policy that we can't use copyrighted images for any purposes
If that's the policy, you can't use any images except some that are so trivial that they cannot be copyrighted, and the few the copyright of which expired (but make sure that the digital version you downloaded off the internet isn't covered by a new copyright). Even images you produce yourself are automatically protected by copyright.
That might be in part because good laws are written so as not to have negative unintended consequences. Good laws sometimes do have negative unintended consequences, but they are quickly revised to deal with them. For example, most people agree that laws against speeding are desirable. If such a law is formulated too broadly, it will make it illegal to speed even in emergencies where the risk from speeding is overshadowed by the emergency. The speeding law can be formulated carefully so as to except emergencies, and if it is written too broadly can be revised. The problem with bad laws like the DMCA is that their proponents either haven't formulated them carefully or do not see the negative consequences as negative and so are happy with the overbroad formulation.
This is just the silliest overstatement I have ever seen! Actually, what the Nikon RAW encryption is almost *exactly* like, is if Kodak had patented the formula for the developing solution for their film, and only Kodak, or people who licensed the formula from Kodak, could make the chemicals to develop the film you shot. You know, kind of like the exact situation that has been the case since the introduction of Kodachrome film!
I get so tired of how people think that something being digital, suddenly means that any abridgments of their 'freedom' (even freedoms they never had before) is a violation of their "rights." Nikon made the camera, and they have every right to have it record in whatever format they want. If you, as the consumer, don't like it, instead of whining about how it is a horrible misuse of the DMCA for them to decide who can and can't license their proprietary format, just buy a damned Canon!
If you are so worried about them revoking the license and rendering your photos useless, then make a copy in Kodak Cineon, or a 16-bit per-channel SGI file, or OpenEXR, or any number of other formats that can support a High Dynamic Range Image without loss. No one is stopping you from doing that, any more than anyone is stopping you from copying your negatives, or making prints of your film. Nikon justs wants a cut of the 'development' costs, just like Kodak, AGFA and Fuji have been getting for years! I bet if you are a professional photographer, you don't have much of a problem with the streamlined copyright procedures that came with the DMCA though, do you? I am guessing that while you want them to repeal any part of the DMCA that causes you the even the smallest inconvenience, you are in no hurry to have to go back to making a print of your picture, filling out a form, and registering it with the copyright office in order to get the benefit of copyright law, are you?
Interesting quote, the DCMA does indeed harm those legitimate examples of Fair Use, except ultimately, the DCMA _doesn't_ stop piracy. It is my impression that the real net effect is that it only harms the law-abiding. Hence my sig...
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
However, with the Nikon approach you are either forced to go for a crippled format (and JPEG *is* crippled from a graphical point of view) or use their very own RAW format. It's not like the camera would support a gazillion of (especially competing) lossless formats by default.
And, sorry, but if Nikon wants their development costs back, then they should raise the price per camera, but not via licensing fees on their oh-so-holy *file format*. While the Kodakchrome process may (or may not) have been superior to other films, it never the less was based on true research. A *file format* for pictures definitely is not. It's a container for pixels and, in the case of digital camera, some color/hue/saturation coefficients derived automatically through a calibration process.
Btw, I'm no photographer. For this discussion it also shouldn't matter whether I am one or not. Exchange "Nikon RAW" with "Word DOC" or "Eagle SCH/PCB" if photographers are such a red flag for you. Maybe you'll then get the point.
You know, this sounds a lot like drug enforcement. Not to sound too radical, although
For the record, I'm rather cynical when it comes to trusting the government to solve most problems.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
If the aclu is so concerned about my rights, how come they don't protect my right to bear arms?
Maybe because the NRA already does that and the ACLU doesn't want to waste money that can be put to other causes?
I agree to a point that companies can employ means to control the use of their product(s), but there are BIG differences between your Kodak example and this. A patent expires, allowing competition to take place - other companies can now offer you those chemicals that only Kodak (or Kodak approved companies) could.
A digital restriction like this never expires - Nikon can force its way into a monopoly hold on products to manage the images from its cameras FOREVER.
Despite that, my biggest concern is not the fact that companies might be able to create and indefinitely maintain articial restrictions. My concern is the fact that it's illegal for consumers to do anything about it. Kodak can't prevent companies from making a different chemical composition to take the place of their patented version. They can't prevent companies from selling kits to modify a Kodak camera to use other types of film. They can't prevent me from publishing how I took apart my camera and added/removed something. But Nikon can stop companies from trying to interoperate with its products digitally. They can stop me from publishing details on my tinkering with my camera's onboard software.
When the law gives them the ability to restrict my rights (rights that did already exist) and the rights of other companies then there's a problem.
At least by the corporate legal staffers who presumably actually wrote the bill.
The real problem here is that organizations like the EFF that are supposed to represent our interests are tax-exempt non-profits.
If we want the political power to do something about this, we need our own PAC, our equivalent of the NRA or AARP.
What's going on with telecomm legislation (you heard that the net neutrality bill got killed in committee?) is another example of why we've got to organize to buy our own politicians, not put up with what happens when major corporate interests who don't want real innovation and who don't want the public to find out what's really wrong with their products are the only ones with cash in hand.
We have the best politicians that money can buy, if we want to be represented, we have to ante up.
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