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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?
Although the bill passed with an overwhelming margin, that doesn't mean a lot of the MPs will support it next time it comes up for vote. In New Zealand MPs often support a bill in its first reading because they feel it requires more thought and debate.
For example recently a bill to raise the New Zealand drinking age to 20 was passed in its first reading by a large margin before being voted down in the second - MPs back off from drinking age hike
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.
---
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
The best thing for everyone at this point would be for the investors in the entertainment industry to invest in oil futures and leave entertainment to Youtube. People get their free entertainment and the investors can still make money since oil stocks are likely to climb for the forseeable future. Okay the entertainment will mostly be Weird Al wantabes and uncle Simon getting hit in the nuts by a baseball but hey it'll be free and everyone will be happy.
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
This message is ROT-26 encoded. You're violating the DMCA by decoding and reading it without permission.
It gets attention because it's a western country with an above average interest in technology. I lived for seven months in New Zealand and six months in France, I'm a Yank myself. I found New Zealand on pare with France and England and the US as far as access and interest in technology. A lot of those 121 countries lack the access to technology that New Zealand, Europe and the US have. Not surprising there's a lot of references to New Zealand. I'm sure english speaking doesn't hurt as well. Even in Europe english speakers aren't as common as you'd think. When I was in Spain I found when they realized It didn't speak Spainish well they'd try French or Italian but few spoke english. English may be considered the current world language but a large number of people still speak little or no english. People forget but at one time French was considered the world language. One day I'm sure it'll be something else. When Slashdot is mostly Chinese they'll still be wondering why there are so many New Zealand references.
From my blog:
m entID=28024
A 1-42C2-AE75-9200DD87F738/48250/DBHOH_BILL_7735_401 93.pdf
My notes I posted to mailing list reproduced on this:
Here is the major announcement from the government:
http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?Docu
and the actual proposed legislation is here:
http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/5A88D15B-C4
Some quick highlights as I read the act: (Note I am not a lawyer)
- Reverse engineering IS allowed under some circumstances - basically for interoperability
- format shifting is allowed but only initially for 2 years, this can be extended though (or not)
- time shifting is allowed provided you don't keep it and it's not available on demand
- ISPs are basically not liable (provided they follow take down notices)
- allowed to alter commercial software if the vendor doesn't fix problems in reasonable time
- anti-TPM (DRM via another name) is prohibited for sale or for producing (seems to cover open source). Fines of $150K or 5 years jail. Doesn't seem to prohibit if you have a copy but you can't write it yourself, sell it or tell others about it. Does make it an offence if you use it to copy copyrighted material. But you are allowed to use anti-TPM for "interoperability of software" so conceivably you could use software to play Itunes or DVDs on Linux. But this only applies if
you have asked vendor for a copy you can use and they don't supply in a reasonable time.
Overall this seems to be much better than DMCA of the USA but not perfect. It is probably better than people could have hoped for.
Ian
Most countries around the world that have DMCA-like laws put in some sensible exceptions of course.
No they don't.
Fair use being the most obvious.
Buahahahahaha!
And the work being "protected" has to actually be under copyright.
There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from putting DRM on public domain content. It's technically not criminal for you to strip the DRM off of public domain content, but it is still criminal for anyone to actually supply you with the means to do so.
There are no meaningful execptions to any of the DMCA laws, there is certainly no Fair Use exception, and it even effectively enforces DRM on non-copyright content.
if you're going to attack them
If you're going to defend them... Chuckle. Here's a link to the text of the USA DMCA anti-circumvention law.
Note that 1201(c)... the supposedly "Fair Use" provision... note that it merely states that Fair Use defenses to copyright infringement are not affected. Fair Use is a defense to charges of copyright infringment, and only to charges of copyright infringment. Circumvention and trafficking circumvention tools are not copyright infringment, they are simply criminal. Therefore there *is no* Fair Use defense for DMCA violations. So in effect what 1201(c) really says is that a non-existant defense is not affected. That's the sort of stupid legal games you get when we allow industry lawyers to literally write the text of our laws. The Fair Use provision literally does nothing, but it sure looks pretty doesn't it? It sure creates the appearance that the law is reasonable, the appearance that it reasonably addresses and defends the public's interests. And that is far from the only example of legal tricks slipped into copyright law. The notice-and-takedown section of the has another great public interest sounding clause that doesn't actually do anything... the clause that gives the appearance that takedown orders are filed under penalty of purjury... it is effectively meaningless. Another lovely stunt they pulled was in the NET act, they slipped an apparently insignifigant single little sentence that redefined the legal term "financial gain". This redefinition of terms radically altered the very landscape of copyright law. It redefined "financial gain" to encompas almost any case of copyright infringment (especially P2P), and it took almost all fairly insignifigant cases of non-commercial copyright infringment and though the back door slammed them all under the extremely sever FELONY LAWS that were intened and designed only to apply to serious cases of COMMERCIAL copyright infringment. Individial noncommercial infringment was suddenly thrown under the laws intended to target major criminal commercial enterprice priracy. Individual non-commecial infringment which *was* considered a minor and purely civil matter was suddenly subject to 3 and 5 year felony prison terms. This is the sort of legal trickery you get when we literally allow industry lawyers to write our laws for us, and our legislators simply and ignorantly vote through that prepared text. Oops.... I'm ranting.
Anyway, the point is that there is absolutely nothing reasonable or Fair about DMCA-style anti-circumvention law. And for purposes relevant here, the various international versions of the law are effectively the same as US law. The US "free trade" negotiators forcibly cram crazy terms into every single trade deal, and those terms pretty well prohibit any meaningful softening or exemptions to the DMCA. The law would become 100% worthless if they allowed any meaningful exception at all. DRM security is 100% dependent on circumvention means being COMPLETELY unavailable. If there is any meaningful excemption at all for anything, you would need some means of circumventing the DRM available. You would need someone to be able to supply you with
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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
The more I think about it, I'm coming around to the idea that the DMCA (and its ilk) might not be the end of the world.
Think about it... What would your reaction be if you were in business and your chief competitor cut their own legs off at the knee caps? Would you view it as a bad thing?
Now recast that as RIAA and friends vs. Creative Commons and friends. Surely the DMCA will only serve to drive people towards the Commons?
So in the absence of the abolition of copyright, perhaps copyright+DMCA is a better position for the producers of Free content than copyright-DMCA? Think of the DMCA as the equivalent of the GPL's "liberty or death" clause, applied to the RIAA's content. The DMCA ensures that non-free content will die, leaving Free content to take its place.
Don't forget this bill also legitimises the age old practice of placing your cd's onto your mp3 player, which is currently illegal here.
Surely they are civil issues if anything
No. As I said, the act of circumvention and the act of trafficking in circumvention are both criminal acts. Not some civil law suit.... it is criminal as in the FBI can come and arrest you and toss you in federal prison for up to a decade. (Five years on a first offence, a decade on a second offense.)
and nothing if simply opening or copying a DRMed file is not related to copyright issues, as you imply.
No. It is indeed criminal even if you do not commit copyright infringment. If a 12 year old girl copies a few seconds of a video for a junior high school multimedia project and brings it into school and all the students distribute copies of their projects to each other, that is non-infringing Fair Use. If she circumvents the encryption on a DVD in the process, she did not commit copyright infringment but she DID commit a criminal act and she can be arrested for it.
I gave a link to the text of the law itself in my last post. I will repeat the link: US Code Title 17 Chapter 12 Section 1201.
The problem is that you assumed that the DMCA was a reasonable sane law. It's not. If the DMCA were a reasonable sane law it would opperate exactly in the way you expected and wrote in your post.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Everything you bring out nowadays is automatically copyrighted. Everything.
It used to be so that you had to register your copyright at an agency that kept a record of it, but that became expensive to maintain. So now every work that's put out, be that digitally, or on paper, on tape, on disk or any other means, is copyrighted.
DMCA is also not an electronic protection means, that's DRM. Now, if DRM gets in the way of my fair use right (it is allowed to make 1 copy of a music disk for personal use, just to name one of the fair use terms that is hindered by DRM), then that DRM should be illegal, and I should be allowed to 'crack' it.
Do you really think that DRM and the DMCA stop the illegal sharing of copyrighted files?
If anything, DMCA is one of the most abused/misused law in the US. Just look for all those DMCA take-down notices on parody songs, or other legal uses of copyrighted works.
80 CC D8 AF AE D3 AB 54 B7 2E CE 67 C7
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.
is Playstation 2 Memory cards. 8 Mb of flash ram for $25 bucks. Why? Because of what Sony affectionately terms "Magic Gate", a really basic system of controls for what can and cannot be copied from a memory card. Thanks to this stuff triggering the DMCA, we get no 3rd party Memory cards (except the Nyco ones, that are also $25 dollars). This kind of stuff is what the DMCA is all about. It's about giving companies absolute legal control over their products. Hell, Lexmark tried to use it to keep 3rd party printer cartridges off the market, and I'm still convinced the only reason they didn't succeed is the judge didn't want to have to pay more than he already was for the damn things.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So I have just read the whole thing. Takes a while. Anyway this is a long way from DMCA. Fair use is fully protected and now we have fair use (we didn't in NZ untill now). For NZ its a big step forward IMO.
Now when I say fair use I mean you are alowed to use cracks etc if the DRM is preventing fair use. You are can also distrubute these cracks providing you have ensured that its only going to be used for fair use provisions. Its by far the best "DMCA" i have seen. You are even able to decompile code to create interoperable products and the EULA cannot deny that right.
But its not perfect. I would like to see DRM vendors forced to respect fair use. And format shifting is for 2 years unless extended. There is also no expcit right to produce backups.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
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).
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
Probably you are a troll, but I will bite.
1. copyright DOES exist
It was 14 years long for books originally. You should probably look at the motivation for the original laws and compare it against publishing monopoly abuse that existed prior to that.
Are books now so advanced that a 95+ year monopoly is needed to encourage people to write them?
There is no real justification for a monopoly that last a century and/or beyond a persons life-span.
2. it exists for good reason (we couldn't have the GPL without it)
The GPL, Open Source and Creative Commons are reactions to the effective termination of the Public Domain. Specifically, GPL is a reaction to copyright law that does not fit software. Software is obsolete in 10 years, and in 95 years, when public domain, the software is only available in binary form.
3. creators have the right to control the distribution of their works
It's not the "creators" that are worrisome, it is publishing collector companies that expect to buy and "own" information, even of the dead, and profit from it forever.
Creators should expect a system that compensates people for new invention.
There is no eternal publishing right. It was intended to be a temporary monopoly that encouraged people to innovate.