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New Zealand DMCA Moves Forward
nzgeek writes "The DMCA-like amendments to the New Zealand Copyright Act passed their first hurdle in parliament today, with an overwhelming 113 to 6 vote to pass the Bill to the Commerce Select Committee for further discussion. The detail-oriented can read the full debate (or rather lack of debate), and one enterprising New Zealand legal blogger has an excellent series of posts on the Bill, its background, and its implications. New Zealanders interested in fighting this legislation have until the 16th of February 2007 to make submissions to the Select Committee, before the committee makes its recommendations and sends the Bill back for a second reading."
Here lately we're starting to hear the beginnings of experiments into actually USING P2P techniques to distribute content and experiments in dropping DRM, and yet the DMCA is continuing its march across the WTO.
I wonder how long it will be before the media people realize that it will always be a minority of people who will actually bother to copy and crack and skip commercials and never buy. This leaves the majority going along in their mainstream way taking things as they are packaged and delivered.
I'm hopeful that the experiments in dropping DRM will be as successful as the software industry was when it gave up on their copy protection schemes that involved odd and flawed formats on floppies and CDs. (Is anyone here old enough to remember the floppies with the errors in specific locations and all that?) Now they haven't given up entirely, but they have definitely become more friendly about it as they matured. I'm hopeful that the content people mature more in their new digital frontiers and realize it's all pretty much the same thing as before and that people will continue buying regardless of other options being present.
Or writing a letter, or suchlike. But even if the law gets passed, it wont make any difference to me, will still keep playing DVDs in Xine, will still tell others how to play DVDs on Linux, and I doubt any enforcement will happen. But I thought the government was smarter than this, I guess not. If anything, the opposite should he happening, the government should really be actively seeking to eliminate DRM.
o..k. Maybe you misunderstood the DMCA. It's a law that makes it illegal to crack any "protection mechanism", no matter how easy it is to do so. Most countries around the world that have DMCA-like laws put in some sensible exceptions of course. Fair use being the most obvious. And the work being "protected" has to actually be under copyright. As for whether or not this is "insecure".. I'm confused. A copyright "protection mechanism" has nothing to do with security. You don't use copyright protection mechanisms to keep secrets, you use them to electronically enforce copyright. Claiming that they are "insecure" makes as much sense as claiming that a parking inspector is "insecure".
I'm no fan of laws that say what I can and cannot do with my own computer, but if you're going to attack them, at least be coherent.
How we know is more important than what we know.
That's right. Introduce an important bill just as the country is closing down for the rituals surrounding the Christmas holiday and set the date for submissions just a few days after most people surface after the haze has cleared.
If this is what is called Consultative Democracy, then frankly I've just become rather envious of the Fijians. Now we know why the leadership of the NZ Government was saying such condemnatory things about the actions of Cdr. Bainimarama.
We are very isolated from the Real World(tm) here in Little Ol' NZ, so don't get to hear very much about what's happening out there. Do the governments of other countries which purport to be ruled "by the people for the people" get up to these tricks?
And the work being "protected" has to actually be under copyright.
Which is bizarre. DRM'ed content breaks the copyright bargain, the first sale doctrine and fair use provisions. It should not be possible to copyright DRM'ed content.
A copyright "protection mechanism" has nothing to do with security.
Sorry, but that's double-think. Double-plus un-good.
It has everything to do with security. The vendor's security. Security is all about physically enforcing somebody's view of ownership in the face of other people's different view of ownership. Ownership, by definition, is simply the legal right to control something to the exclusion of others. Security in general has nothing to do with secrecy though secrecy is often used to achieve security.
In this case the vendor thinks they should be able to legally enforce their view of ownership. This happens to be in conflict with most people's view of ownership which includes the right to share. Reasonable people can dis/agree with either point of view.
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Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
Companies would rather you weren't able to break their technical protections in the first place, the DMCA is a legal-smackdown on those that do. I'm not sure what you're trying to say with "hard encryption" because DRM implies that the key already is in your posession, but that they're relaying on obscurity/tamper-proof hardware to prevent compromise.
The difficulty prevents more casual hackers, and DMCA prevents large commercial efforts, funding expensive equipment etc. and overall makes it more dangerous to create a huge cracking effort.
Also one of the important reasons is to stomp out end-user tools. already people expect to be able to transfer CDs to the iPod, not that many expect to transfer DVDs to their HTPC, video iPod, cell phone etc. but many enough. They can tell consumers "You weren't supposed to be able to do that with DVDs either" but they'll still get a "screw you" when trying to push HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
If you don't see what use they have of the DMCA, you must really be blind. I'm not saying that it's good uses, but if you had the RIAA/MPAAs goal of control, profits and pay per view/playing, pushing it makes good sense.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Recently apple opened up their iTunes store in NZ. On that very day the NZ govt passed a law making it legal for people to copy their music from one format to another. Before that it was illegal in NZ to rip your CDs to MP3 or any other format.
Here is the odd thing. If it's now your right to be able to format shift the music you bought wouldn't any technology that prevents you from doing that be illegal?
evil is as evil does
4. and what we are doing IS illegal.
Speak for yourself. I like to legitimatly reverse engineer all kinds of stuff for hobby as for a living. The DMCA is the biggest source of stress in my life and i have 2 teen-age daughters.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
That's right. Anal retentive publishers using the DMCA restrict themselves and their art into obscurity, whilst libertarian artists emancipate their fans, proliferate their art, and reap the audience adulation.
If you don't want the public to have your art, don't publish it.
The notion that the artist has a human right to prevent their published art being copied is a myth - it is, and always has been, an artifical monopoly created out of incumbent commercial interest.
If artists wish compensation, there's nothing stopping them making a deal with their audience directly: Art for money, money for art. This does not require copyright, patents or the DMCA.
It's easy enough to claim "most countries that have a DMCA" when there are very few examples, and only one original.
It's as specious as the US DEA argument that there is no valid research in the United States demonstrating medical use of cannabis, while other US departments prevent any such research from being done. Catch-22. It's Schedule I because there is no documented medical use; there is no documented medical use because it's illegal to research.
Technically the viewpoint and phrasing is correct: there is no such research in the US. But there is in the rest of the world.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Copyright is a bargain, an agreement between Us (the non-creators) and Them (the creators).
Yes. The bargain was we allow them hold a monopoly over their creations for a short term (20-30 years), at which point it becomes public domain.
We started to break that agreement (by infringing copyright) long before They did (by implementing DRM).
No.
They started to break that agreement (by perpetually extending copyright to the point where none of us will ever get to enjoy something produced in our lifetime), long before We did (by infringing copyright).
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