30 Days of DRM

sonofollson writes "Michael Geist, a Canadian law professor, in the middle of a 30 Days of DRM project, which is targeting the planned introduction of the DMCA in Canada. Each day, the project identifies an exception or limitation that is needed to address the danger of anti-circumvention legislation. Issues covered so far include interoperability, privacy, region coding, and reverse engineering. The project is also supporting a wiki version for broader participation."

Comments

Re:Great idea

[kimvette]

FWIW, I'm not Canadian, just pointing this out so Canadians here know to contact their reps:

OK, if DRM and the equivalent of the DMCA is introduced in Canada, effectively eliminating their equivalent of Fair Use, will the levies on blank media be repealed?

Reverse Engineering ...

[Gopal.V]

Different standards exist for reverse engineering. For example, reverse engineering a binary is illegal, while reverse engineering a protocol (for compatibility purposes) isn't.

But the real question to ask is, a .doc a binary file or a protocol ?

(and then there are EULAs ... which have started saying "You shall be responsible for anything any user does... to cover shared envs")

Great, more angrying up of my blood.

[w33t]

I am glad that Michael Geist is forcing a very close examanation of the limitations a DCMA - but why is a DCMA even needed in the first place?

In a way it feels like he's discussing ways to make a noose more comfortable and less abrasive to the victims throat.

The thing is, whenever DRM is discussed I cannot help by attempt to prognosticate into the deep mysterious future. Imagine a future (not too distant perhaps) in which we have direct brain interfaces of some sort. How would it be to have certain thoughts blocked? How would it be to not be able to think something?

Thoughtcrime - in other words. Oh, it's disgusting to me.

After all, DRM is basically a way of locking-down information. But information is so close to just thought. It's one step away from a pure idea.

When I hear DRM I think "Idea Stopping" - and being an idealist as I am, this is deeply disturbing to me.

DMCAs are so prehistoric to me - they seem to hail from the time in the past when the distribution of information required printing presses and tape-duplication facilities. When information distribution liked physical mediums for distribution.

In those ancient times of the 20th century only the wealthy could afford these behemoth machines. There was no way a consumer could copy a novel and send it to 20 or 100 of their closest friends.

Of course nowadays I can find the entire works and easily distribute them without all that mucking about with the physical constraints that plagued the old.

DRM and DMCAs seem analogous to a cart and buggy and wagon industry forcing automobile owners to not drive faster than the horse-drawn carriages because of their "right" to the road.

It is old-world philosophy being artificially forced into the modern mindset.

Cold Mexico just doesn't get it

[ColdWarrior]

From the eschewing of media at soldier repatration ceremonies to the introduction of a Canadian DMCA, I have started to surmise that Harper is one of those fallocrats who is totally out of touch with his citizenry. Now, before you Harper-loving people start saying "But... but... but... the Bern convention requires this sort of thing". I ask you, when was the Bern convention signed. In my mind there is no coincidence that all these "harmonizations" are going on under Mr. Creepy-eyes reign. This is just one more sign of the coming North American Union .

If I am the copyright owner

[tepples]

Uh huh - and what happens when your media player *only* accepts DRMd media? where will you be then?

If I am the owner of copyright in a work, why don't I have the authority to apply true and correct copyright management information to the work? Or are you basing this on yerricde's hypothesis that it is impossible to create an original musical work?

Re:If I am the copyright owner

[wall0159]

I think you misundersand me.

Imagine an ipod in the future. The ipod doesn't play mp3s anymore - it *only* plays Apple's DRMd music. I'm a musician, and record my band playing music, but I can't put it on my ipod directly - I have to implement DRM on the music for the ipod to play it.

This could happen.

"If I am the owner of copyright in a work, why don't I have the authority to apply true and correct copyright management information to the work?"

I don't know exactly what you mean by this, but I think you're looking at it the wrong way around. If I pay you to experience your creation, by what right to you seek to regulate the way I experience it? Will you try and tell me what colour shoes I may wear, for example?

Note that there are two issues here. The first is artist renumeration. This is important, because without it people will be less inclined to produce art. The second is control, and it has nothing to do with renumeration for the artist. Instead it's about power for the distributers of the art - power over both the artist and those who wish to experience their art.

Remember that copyright is not a 'right' per se - it's a TEMPORARY incentive given by the government to help people to profit from their creations, thereby encouraging creation for the benefit of humanity.

Re:If I am the copyright owner

[penix1]

" This is important, because without it people will be less inclined to produce art..."

I challenge this concept. Nowhere has it been proved. In fact, there are several studies that show that those things that are pirated also enjoy a higher profit margin. To say that all media content will dry up if copyright didn't exist flies in the face of logic as well as human nature. The only one that benefits from copyright is the distributors.

I'll go one step further....

I say to fix the copyright problem, disallow the transfer of copyright except to the public domain. All rights to a work belong to the originator of that work. Then what the **AA is touting (namely that artists suffer when copyright is violated) would be true. Make it so that the only place an artist can relinquish copyright to is the public domain which is the purpose of copyright to begin with.

This is just my take on it. Reality differs dramatically.

B.

Re:the most important

[Kaenneth]

The problem is, that corporations keep lobbying to extend the duration of copyrights retroactivly, and for longer and longer terms; when with the increased pace of creation and distribution I think the terms should be getting shorter (at least for Software, and such).

Re:This is great, but....

[CastrTroy]

Joe Sixpack does care, to the extent that it starts to bother him. My GF recently got an iPod, and despite me telling her not to, still bought a couple tracks off iTunes. She quickly learned that she was unable to burn an "MP3" CD, to listen to them on her stereo. She also got quite a big scare when she deleted all her music and thought she had lost the music (she had just deleted them from the library, and they were still on the computer). She also gets quite annoyed when she plugs her iPod into another computer to charge it, and all the tracks get erased because that iPod isn't registered with that computer. She would also love to be able to just drag and drop from windows explorer right onto her iPod, but it seems as though that doesn't work either. Once DRM starts to infringe on people's rights enough, they will start to care. I'm still waiting for an MP3 player to come out that's actually better than the iPod, then watch all the iTunes users rise up, because they don't really own any of their music, but rather just own the right to play it on an iPod (yes i'm aware you can burn and rerip, but that loses quality on an already inferior quality copy).

Re:Great idea

[CastrTroy]

They can be used, does not they must be used. There are so many other uses of CDs that it's pretty much impossible to charge a levy. When you look at audio cassettes, there are very few uses apart from recording audio, so it's easy to argue that a levy should be charged. If there is a levy in Canada, how much is it? Because I can go to the local discount computer store and get 50 CDs for $12. That works out to $0.24 for each CD. The Canadian copyright board states that they levy on CDRs is supposed to be $0.21 per CD ($0.77 for CDR-Audio). I find it highly unlikely that the levy is being charged, and that I'm only paying $0.03 per CD including retail markup, transportation, manufacturing, and all the other costs of delivering CDRs to the end user. Also, to reiterate, there is absolutely no levy on DVD+/-Rs.

Re:Great idea

[Jardine]

Because I can go to the local discount computer store and get 50 CDs for $12. That works out to $0.24 for each CD. The Canadian copyright board states that they levy on CDRs is supposed to be $0.21 per CD ($0.77 for CDR-Audio). I find it highly unlikely that the levy is being charged, and that I'm only paying $0.03 per CD including retail markup, transportation, manufacturing, and all the other costs of delivering CDRs to the end user.

That store is doing one of two things. They're not paying the levy or they're selling CDRs at a loss to get you into the store to buy other things that they will make a profit on.

Re:This is great, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

I never cared much for the iPod, but I'm starting to like it for one reason: DRM on iTMS. They'll buy a couple DRM'ed songs from iTMS like your GF did, and soon after find out it doesn't work with anything else/anything non-apple (doesn't work in winamp, foobar2k, xmms, xbmc on xbox, or other software mp3 players - or any other portable mp3 players for that matter). Hopefully it'll get enough people to realize how bad and problematic is DRM.

I want my information (databases, emails, documents, sound, video -- EVERYTHING!) in a format that's *open*. It doesn't have all to be free or open source, but I want interoperability - be able to use my data anytime (that also means a few years down the road), on anything (any device or OS).

Something as trivial as lossy compressed music that requires hardware or software from only one specific vendor to work? I'll skip. As much as I dislike MS' business practices, I find their approach to DRM BETTER! At least you can buy players (a very wide selection of very different ones) and also DRM'ed contents from MANY different vendors. Heck, you can even "rent" songs like you can do today with DVDs -- like napster to go; thousands and thousands of songs for a month for about the same price as renting one single ~2h long movie/DVD at blockbuster (it's really not that bad - and you can find lots of good new stuff to buy as CDs later on -- kind of like you would using pandora). There's countless stores: Napster To Go, Rhapsody To Go, Yahoo Music, MSN Music, etc (well, all these, except for the iPod, where you only have one place - iTMS, and it's "buy-only" too). That the rental model is DRM'ed is not too bad, as it's only temporary, I don't really want it forever. If I want to buy, I buy plain old DRM-free Audio CDs. It still doesn't work with every OS or device, but it's still better than only a single hardware player brand and only one software app that's not very good except on their very own OS too - that also happens runs on their own hardware platform... It just doesn't get any more "single-vendor" than this! Apple-DRM'ed songs on an Apple mp3 player, using an Apple software mp3 player, on an Apple OS, on an Apple computer. Worst interoperability and lock-in EVER.

Last election

[saskboy]

In the last federal Canadian election, Dr. Geist can take at least partial credit in helping to defeat the Liberal's MP that was pushing a Canadian DMCA through the House. It would be wise of geeks and nerds from around the world to support his effort on educating politicians on the implications of DRM protection in laws.

Re:Great idea

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

I don't know about Canada, but in the US, I can buy CD-Rs dirt cheap (i.e., at similar prices to those you mention), but I can only buy *CD-R Music* discs at a significantly higher price. Only the latter will work in my rack CD recorder (made by Yamaha). The difference in price goes mostly to the RIAA.

The only difference between the discs is a simple flag specifying the type. It is allegedly illegal to sell an audio CD recorder (non-computer peripheral) here that allows recording onto a non-taxed disc.

If it is currently legal in Canada to deal in such equipment, please let me know, because I would love to be able to use cheaper spindles of CD-Rs for those audio recordings that I do not make through my computer. What's more, I would love to keep whatever money possible out of the hands of the RIAA, and as much as it shocks and dismays me to find myself saying this, I am willing to break United States law if it means exercising my fair use rights while reducing their influx of cash. Not long ago I would not have gone that far, but I'm afraid the time for mealy-mouthed opposition to these crimelords is long past.