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Pro-DRM Law May Be Coming To Australia
paxmaniac writes, "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Federal Government will soon introduce laws making it illegal to circumvent copy control 'technological prevention measures' (or TPMs). The laws will make it illegal to modchip a console, to hack a DVD player to make it multi-region, to install DVD decoders on your PC, or to circumvent DRM in any other way. From the article: 'Anyone found to have used technology to circumvent copy control TPMs will face fines of up to $6600, while those guilty of distributing enabling devices and services to others through a variety of means face imprisonment for up to five years and possible fines of $60,500.' Australia is obliged to introduce these laws as part of it's Free Trade Agreement with the USA. Gee thanks, George!"
No. It just disgusts me. I am ashamed to be an American.
"technology prevention" is certainly what DRM does.
"while those guilty of distributing enabling devices and services to others through a variety of means"
you mean like.. computers?
-- lol pwned
what.. you seriously thought FTAs were about trade and import barriers?
They've been trying this on south america for decades. Some countries have aligned themselves with the US (chile, mexico), others refuse to accept such kind of conditions though I don't know for how long they'll be able to resist. International and Internal pressure from investment groups and the like on the governments is huge.
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
The more DRM the more diversity in P2P downloads.
(Think about the range of US jurisdiction and countries with sane laws (like Sweden) before you answer)
in other news, australian will have to
...
stop doing basic algebra. it will be
illegal to do following:
1+1=2.
you may not have your computer COMPUTE
certain code (101010010100...) so it can
do certain(*) tasks.
sheesh
(*)example: understand/read a DVD from a
different region.
When it was passed in the US we were told it was required for harmonization with Europe.
I primarily use my modded XBox for emulating very old systems, and using XBoxMediaCenter. However, without a doubt, the primary use of mod chips is to pirate games. Console manufacturers sell consoles below cost with the idea that they will make the money back on games. When you pirate games, they lose out.
So the car analogy doesn't work well.
Honestly, what I would greatly prefer is to meet in the middle. Allow for unsigned code so indie developers, homebrew games, media center apps, emulators and the like can be run on the console, but focus on protecting the games since that is what they're really upset about.
With the XBox 360, there are ways currently to circumvent the security sectors on the DVDs and make backups, but I still won't buy one. Honestly for me, I'd rather have my media center and emulators than pirated games, but I believe myself to be in the minority.
However, consoles are inherently proprietary. Things like music and movies are not. Music is meant to be played on any player. I think things like DRM and region encoding on movies and music is plain silly.
If someone wants to pay extra to import your movie before they get their normal regionalized release, let them! They are good word of mouth advertising. They will tell their friends how much they loved the movie and generate positive buzz before the official release date. And someone buying your movie is still someone buying your movie. And in many cases, a movie is only released in one region. Isn't it rather innane that I can't import and watch Japanese movies on my DVD player? Why lose out on business like that?
As for music, people said the iTunes and Napster models wouldn't work. No one would pay for music legally when they could pirate it. You know what? Those models are extremely successful. They provide a good, conveinent service, and people are sick of CDs that stop playing, and buying a second or third copy of their favorite CDs. Digital music is awesome, and worth paying money for. Why use DRM? There is no good reason to penalize the people who opted to give the recording industry money, when they could have easily pirated that music.
I refuse to use services like iTunes, because I will not be told how often I can copy my music, nor be forced to use proprietary software, or select MP3 players. Give me a completely DRM-free music service, and I'll gladly pay for all my music again.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
There will be a HUGE uproar if they try to ban multi-region DVD players in Australia or Europe. In the US most folks don't care, because nearly everything is released here... But DVD releases in other regions are spotty and MOST DVD players in those regions are multi-region for this reason.
The market for region 1 DVDs in Europe and such is huge. I don't think they'll go far with this law before a lot of bitching results.
-Z
Of course it's unnecessary, not to mention incorrect (as you point out with the free trade agreement, plus, our own DMCA was signed in 1998, PLUS the president can't really do much re: laws anyway, since that's congress' job... but if we can get in anti-Bush comments, who cares about facts!). But whoever this new "kdawson" editor is is even worse than the old editors when it comes to selecting stories free of flamebait. I think he specifically seeks out the stories where the submitter added some stupid comment. (And if it's anti-Bush, all the better.) Probably helps keep up the page and ad views.
/. here, but I've been starting to agree with them. I suppose I could go to Digg more often instead, but at least /. sometimes has a reasonably good comments section on some articles. I've yet to see any sort of intelligent life over in the Digg comment section.
Man has Slashdot turned to crap. I usually hate when people post complaining about
Can't wait for my offtopic mod! Or maybe a troll, or the coveted "overrated". If I'm really lucky, someone will go through my post history and mod other posts down too, which usually happens when I disagree that anything anti-Bush is automatically goodthink.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
the more educated, the more likely you're a voter
I don't know if you meant that in general or just wrt the US but from where I come(India) most of the educated abstain from voting as they do not like any of the political candidates and consider them to be incompetent. It is the poor and uneducated folks who make up the numbers as they vote based on religious/caste based grounds.
In other news, Australians past a new 'future crimes act' which will make it illegal to purchase video cameras, audio recording devices, or pants that would be too tight if you were to put them on.
-Todd
Put down the sig, and step away from the computer.
These should all be legal in the confides of your own home. But what should be illegal is you trying to make money and selling your hacks/modchips.
No.
As long as there is a legal use for DRM Circumvention, then the devices should be legal to sell.
We don't throw Xerox sales reps in jail just because their technology could be used to infringe on copyright.
Copyright law struck a balance between the rights of creators to benefit from their work and the ability of the public to benefit from the work once it was published. And it balances the Freedom of expression rights of both the original creator and those that would make use of the original work in a derivative work. The concept is fair use. Enshrining DRM into law without allowing for reliable ability to make fair use of content throws fair use out the window and undermines the foundation of copyright law. DRM lets the content producer have it both ways and effectively invalidates the time limited provisions of copyright law.
In the US, prohibitions on DRM circumvention are unconstitutional because they violate Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 which allows congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"
Anti DRM circumvention laws violate this provision, "securing for limited times", because the legal effect is to allow authors or their delegates to control copying far beyond any expiration of copyright.
As far as I am aware the most of the challenges so far to the DMCA have focused on peripheral issues. Whereas they should be focusing on the lack of any type sunset provision for legal use of DRM. Congress certainly has the right to allow DRMs use, but if it legally and effectively prohibits copying well beyond the expiration of copyright, then the law is quite clearly unconstitutional as well as unwise.
And of course the numbers could come out different depending on if you use mean or median education level, etc. In the end I'd guess that the average education levels of voters is more or less the same for Democrats and Republicans.
First of all, fuck you for being the 'love it or leave it type'.
Yeah, I deserved that.
You don't like listening to people like him, then you can go to China or anywhere else free speech isn't tolerated. Americans are allowed to hate anything about their country that they choose and are allowed to seek change any legal way they want; including by complain on slashdot.
Which is exactly why the original poster should not be "ashamed to be an American". I tolerate people saying all kinds of bad things about my country and my gov't, some true and some not, but I will not sit by and hear someone claimed to be ashamed of being something they can change. Now if a Cuban were to be ashamed, I'd understand because they are not free to leave, but shame of being an American is not like being ashamed of being white. There are a lot of places where the populace is trapped, but the US is not one of them.
Secondly, the point of the post is that the US and EU are muscling every nation into these kind of copyright regulations. So, leaving it, is becoming increasingly less of an option.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
To be even more specific, Canada won every round in every court that mattered, INCLUDING the WTO and the NAFTA arbitration panel (that consists of 2 Americans and 1 Canadian). Unfortunately for our lumber industry, winning in court has no effect on the USA since they have shown they are totally willing to simply ignore the results if they do not fall in their favour. The current conservative government is more concerned with sucking up to the Americans than they are about protecting the interests of Canada, so they are ramming the agreement through, and the industry and provinces are pissed off but reluctantly agreed in order to get some semblance of normalcy back to the market.
Ultimately, however, I suspect that the lumber situation will mean the end of NAFTA. The conservatives under Harper have demonstrated a distinct lack of backbone when dealing with the USA, so are unlikely to be elected in their current form, and pretty much every other party has declared that they want NAFTA renegotiated. What is the point of having an "arbitration panel" if the USA simply ignores their decisions?
And this is precisely why democracy doesn't work very well in practice. I think America's founders may have had a good idea when they restricted voting to landowners.
Examples:
+Anti-Nuclear policy - 1985 refused nuclear powered and armed ships access to their ports
I agree with everything else you said, but what's wrong with nuclear-powered ships? I can understand not allowing nuclear-armed ships access to your ports, but what's wrong with nuclear
power
? It's clean, safe (no naval accidents I know of except for a Soviet sub (Kursk); the Americans have a perfect record I believe), requires no refueling for 2 decades, and a lot better than burning enormous quantities of fuel oil (or diesel or other fossil fuels) and polluting the ocean air.