Slashdot Mirror
Senate Bill Again Aims to Restrict Internet Radio
JAFSlashdotter writes "If you enjoy MP3 or OGG streams of internet radio, it's time to pay attention. This week U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander, Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and Lindsey Graham decided to reintroduce the 'Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act'. An Ars Technica article explains that PERFORM would restrict our rights to make non-commercial recordings under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, and require satellite and internet broadcasters to use 'technology to prevent music theft'. That means goodbye to your favorite streaming audio formats, hello DRM. The EFF said pretty much the same when this bill last reared its ugly head in April of 2006. It's too soon to get the text of this year's version (S.256) online, but it likely to resemble last year's S.2644, which is available through Thomas."
When will US politicians realise that giving an act a really silly name just to create an acronym makes them look like lightweights?
How will I get my daily fix of CowboyNeal's gentle croonings in his finest country ballads?
Ninjas use italics.
Say hello to Internet Radio {From anywhere in the world other than the US}
For fox sake, copyright infringement is *not* theft!
and require satellite and internet broadcasters to use 'technology to prevent music theft'.
How is this going to work? Broadcast music in such a manner that a home tape recorder, Windows Sound Recorder or Audacity will not pick it up?
Sounds like they have a little hurdle on their hands.
Wonder what Alex Jones would think of *this*?
Looks to me like an attempt to squash free speech. There are technologies available to produce copy protected streams. There are technologies for those wanting to make their content available freely. Looks like they want to kill the latter.
Why not legislate technology to prevent copying text? After all, text can be copyrighted.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
Oooh I can play that game
BRIBE:
Bringing Really Innocent Bills in Exchange Act
And they were cheating! Half the letters weren't used. And they used a whole word for 3 letters. Jeez no wonder they're in politics.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
Say hello to Internet Radio {From anywhere in the world other than the US}
That is just what happened to crypto development when anal laws came in. The good thing is they will loose as the World now owns the Internet. I guess these politicians have too much spare time to come up with goofy unenforceable laws.
But the best solution is a consumer revolt. For example I don't buy Sony any more, between their support of DRM and it's very own root-kit I decided my last PC purchased 3 years ago was the last Sony product I will ever buy. It is now running a DRM free Linux.
The bill text is already available at pages S446 and S447 in Feinstein's remarks: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r110:FLD001: S00447
Why not just get some content filtering technology in place to filter internet radio since we don't exactly control the rest of the world. We can get the software from China. Its to bad because the best internet radio stations that I know of are on www.shoutcast.com and ran by AOL. Who ever thought anything good would come out of AOL, and the RIAA squashes it. I guess I'll have to use P2P networks again to listen to music off of the internet.
Anything that your computer plays / outputs through speakers, can be recorded. And easily too. And in quality indistinguishable from the source, if you have the right equipment. Those facts will never change, no matter what DRM is used.
The sooner you realize that in a free society, the citizens are responsible for everything, the sooner things might start getting better.
- The 'technology community' in general has shown no interest in building systems and standards that contain provisions for reasonably safeguarding IP contentholders legal rights
Which might be fine, since there is a reasonable argument to be made that technology should be fairly agnostic with regards to things like this and instead we should rely on the good judgement and self-restraint of humans to implement such controls. Instad, we see that- The 'technological community' in general has shown little to no interest in establishing a culture that encourages the safeguarding of IP contentholders legal rights
By which I mean, for example, that any post here that happens to be 'pro copyright' will typically be modded down, attributed to astroturfing, or so on while even the most juvenile 'F the RIAA' post or 'alternate economic theory' post which attempts to argue that IP regulation is completley unecessary using third grade logic (which to real economists is roughly the equivalent of creationism) gets modded up. Now, slashdot is hardly the 'technological community', but its dominant voice is fairly typical.As a result, it is not unreasonable for lawmakers to address the problem by passing laws. Unfortunately, many of the laws they pass (including, at first glance, this one) are overbroad, over-reaching, ham-handed, unworkable, and/or completely ignorable. This is only partly because politicians and lawmakers are torpid and ignorant. The larger problem is because truly legislating such stuff is very very hard.
IP protection is like pollution: any single individual has an incentive to pollute/violate copyright. Therefore, collective pressures must be put in place to curb it. Again here we see another slashdot article whose ostensible purpose is to bitch and whine about how some politicians made some dumb law. Are we ever, even once, going to see an article that says "hi - look - the RIAA and MPAA may be arseholes, but they do have a point. software / movie / music / whatever piracy is a serious issue. how would YOU solve it?" Of course, we can expect the usual dumb answers, which are:
- It's not really a problem (implied: since the 90% of technologically behind the curve people can continue to subsidize the 10% serious pirates in places like the USA and Europe, while the consumers of the western world can continue to subsidize mass-pirating countries like China and Russia)
- Leave it to market forces (ya, like that would work so well with pollution)
- All patents and copyrights are nonsense and do no social good. And the waters of Noah's flood were held in a vast vapor canopy were held up because the gravity was less in 3500 BC when the flood happened and the dinosaurs drowned)
- Fuck the RIAA / MPAA. Good point, but not relevant
- Artists make too little from the contracts they agreed to. Possibly, but not relevant.
- It's not for me to solve. Let the rightsholders solve it themselves (fine, then dont complain when overbroad laws come down the pike and high schoolers get sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Before us we have the skills to create some really cool content delivery mechanisms. For example, we have the brains to come up with ways for small artists to completely bypass the MPAA and other middlemen and make rasonable incomes directly from their fans. However, as it stands right now even the tiniest independent artist or software maker's work can be found on, for example, eMule in a pirated state. This encourages even more heavy tactics, ham-fisted laws, and DOES cause, for example, small software producers to go out of business.What should be done about it?
For god's sake it isn't delivered using radio waves, it gets to us via tubes!
When will this game of whack-a-mole end?
Will it end?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Wow, 2 out of 3 of those names are Democrats. Didn't most of you say they were all about really important issues and would never trample on fair use rights. How dare they!
I can't wait until we vote the Republicans out and the Democrats get control and fix all this.
Oh - wait - we just did that.
Proof once again that they all suck....
Listen to Soma FM while you can. It's an awesome station with several streams, each playing a different genre. They've already had to deal with outrageous demands related to the DMCA which were fortunately cut back. And now this. It seems the RIAA, yet again, are using legislation and money as a bludgeoning tactic to quell truly independent outlets of music.
Of all the problems in the US, and around the world, they decide that this is something they should work on. Ignore all the letters from the people they represent, and take care of special interests. This is what is wrong with our government. I am sure each and every one of these people have received thousands of letters on Iraq, and healthcare, and numerous other problems from everyday voting citizens. I would love to see the letters they have received that convinced them that this was an issue that needed their attention over all these other issues. I doubt they can produce even one that came from a private voting citizen.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
A giant step forward for american creativity and ingenuity.
Broadcasters would be required to "use reasonably available and economically reasonable technology to prevent music theft. WHY??
DRM is theft as it prevents material released to public domain after copyright expires.
"Look I'm working! I built a bridge to nowhere!"
It's all trucks and tubes to them, they have the technological savvy of slim jim.
That's renumeration for rights holders not for artists.
Beep beep.
I read the article, yet, as is almost always the case, it is unclear why the bill sponsors have committed their names to it. Clearly there is only one benefactor: recording industry groups obsessed with piracy. The radio stations do not benefit, the listeners do not benefit. However they [the lobby] are probably well aware that Internet Radio area is, most likely, not a common place for piracy.
This leaves us the option that they are trying to push this through as an attempt to soften the ground for a larger blitz on personal freedoms on commercial products of a digital nature.
But can anyone say for sure why these alleged representatives of the people have deemed it necessary to impose a law that most people will not need, understand and be worse off for in the long run? I can think only that, someplace, there is a trail of money, or of gratuity, or of favours and deals or offers that are the real reason that any member of the nation might even acknowledge the phantom problem of audio piracy.
This is forcing a small almost non existing industry to another country.
COVERUP: Censorship Of Voyeuristic Explicit Reporting on Underhanded Politicians Act. KEEPING CORRUPTION QUIET: The KEEPING of CORRUPTION in the government QUIET Act.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
as a person responsible for over hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Sony products sold. And one that has mostly Sony products I too will never ever recommend or purchase another Sony product as long as I breathe oxygen on earth for the same reasons you listed above.
A point by point back and forth isn't needed here. The "Slashdot Perspective" is very simple and very straightforward:
1. We are technologists. Like any other sort of craftsman or artist or artist, we have a deep respect for the tools and methods of our trade.
2. The effect of these laws is to either blunt our tools into uselessness or turn them into convoluted black boxes that only a privileged few are allowed to completely understand and manipulate. Blunting a knife so that you can't cut yourself is morally equivalent to how the interest groups want to solve the issues you brought up.
I have little trouble understanding why Morimoto thought Bobby Flay an ass for standing on his cutting board. In the same vein,
Frank Zappa didn't think much of the stage theatric of smashing a guitar on stage. Both are merely tomfoolery however. What the xxAA and the politicians want to do is send thugs into our hardware stores to remove the beautiful and useful in favor of stunted ugly things "Da Boss" approves of.
"For fox sake, copyright infringement is *not* theft!"
Neither is formula "borrowing"
No mod points, sadly - but entirely true. Personally, I am hoping for a standoff where the pirates keep a marginal upper hand, so that me and other tech-savvy people can continue to reap the benefits of piracy while product flow is uninterrupted. I haven't bought a CD or rented a movie in years. (2000/2001 or something for CD:s I think, 2002 for movies)
You are absolutely right in your analysis of all of the other players in this. No one stands to benefit from it since satellite radio is not a source of piracy. The answer is Occam's Razor: remove all of the other players from your formula.
Headlines appeared recently announcing that Howard Stern received a huge stock bonus due to the large number of satellite subscribers. Suddenly Congress needs to introduce legislation to regulate some aspect of the industry. I noticed the same thing starting happening when video games sales shot through the roof. Suddenly there was a need to regulate.
Congress is all about getting re-elected which of course requires money. They can only go to the same sources so many times, so when a new industry or technology issues a press release to lure investors or some trade magazine interviews a CEO on their success, it is like chumming the waters for Congress to step in and "regulate".
This is really a way for Congress to get a new source of campaign donations flowing in their direction. Introduce a bill that will appear to substantially drive up costs or lower sales for an industry and the industry heads will realize that it is going to be a lot easier for them to donate to the campaigns of the named sponsors than to try a fight the bill with a PR campaign or by donating to their own proxies in Congress. Then, after some time has passed and enough donations have been squeezed, the bill will be removed of any teeth and Congress can claim a "victory" for whatever straw man they set up to knock down whether it is copyright infringement, exposing children to violence, or whatever.
If the CEOs are not forthcoming with the donations, then the next step to shake them down is to hold Congressional investigations and hearings. Because Congress sits as both judge and prosecutor, they have (as we have seen time and time again) and extremely unfair advantage in their ability to paint whoever they are questioning in a bad light (greedy, ignorant, uncaring). These have the potential to be PR disasters for the industry or company and will affect their bottom lines with much bigger numbers than any campaign donations.
Congress is often the lackey for various interests to take a comparative advantage and turn it into a monopoly, but when there is no obvious beneficiary of legislation, the true beneficiary is usually Congress itself.
How long will people continue thinking only about themselves...on both sides?
I for one and tired of getting upset about this crap. Fact is, the US and the current powers-that-be in the "content industry" are just going to get smoked over the next decade. They're trying t o sell horses and buggies to people who already own free fusion-powered rocket cars. Have you guys seen Jamendo? Thousands of records; download as you please. Stream 'em. Only 20 or so from the U.S. last time I counted. Good music, though.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Two reasonable posts (One sitting at troll. Imagine that). The only thing I have to add at this point is that slashdot forgets that piracy isn't JUST an RIAA issue. Nor is it MPAA. Piracy affects EVERYONE that creates. All the slasharguments like to cast it as David vs Goliath. But it's not. It's bigger than that.*
*It's a failure of human society in general, but that's a discussion for another time.
"Stealing", as defined by (insert favorite industry group/misguided Congressman here) is WRONG WRONG WRONG! Got that? It is WRONG! But intimidation, lying, cheating, and misrepresenting facts and relevant law is entirely okay so long as you're doing it to preserve and protect your cash flow.
Are these the same folks who are supposed to represent us, the people? I don't believe that the democratic majority of us would agree with such a bill. Man, something smells fishy here...
She's most notorious for her advocacy for the 1994's Assault Weapons ban in the U.S, which did absolutely NOTHING to lower homicide rates. I hope the Senators who are against this realize her history of stupidity and vote against this.
Did you ?
A quick " please dont support this act", took no time.
If your in the US, take an extra minute, and let your congressperson(s) know what you think.
Meet the new government, same as the old government.
After you strip away abortion & gay marriage, what the fuck is the difference between (D) and (R)?
The so-called choices we have at the polls are just an illusion.
It's getting pretty damn near time for some real ass-kicking in this country, with bullets, baseball bats, whatever. When it does come, however, I hold no hope, that anything will get any better. Seems there's just too many people that want to get and keep power, that even the leaders of the next revolution will probably turn out be even worse.
Crap, now I'm *really* depressed.
Dear Amy:
As a content creator in my own right, and a Copyright holder of both written and recorded content, I do not see the PERFORM Act legislation, put forth by Sens. Alexander, Biden, Feinstein and Graham as being conducive to protecting the pre-eminent rights of "fair use", encouraging competition and creativity in the marketplace, or protecting the rights of copyright owners from substantial losses.
In 1996, I authored a paper on internet music distribution as a student conducting research at the University of Minnesota. It was clear then that the world is moving into an age of internet distributed content. What was not clear, least of all to the senators who enacted the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was that the negative reaction to internet distribution from the recording industry had little to do with losses from piracy.
The truth is, RIAA is scared to death of the internet. It threatens a distribution monopoly they have held since the 1940s (see Shemel and Krasilovksy's "This Business of Music"). The internet represents an opportunity for individuals such as myself to gain audiences worldwide without resigning to the fiefdom of a recording contract in which the recording artist is made a debtor to the recording company. In the 1990's, fewer than 15 percent of recording artists from major recording labels sold enough copies to break even on the recording advances paid to them to cover the COSTS of recording the album being produced for the record company's gain and to a lesser extent their own. This means that 85 percent of the recording artists then did not see a dime of royalties for their creations.
The world is on the edge of a revolution in independent film making and music making... and the recording industry wants to stop this under the guise of antipiracy legislation. Note that I discourage people from supporting illegitimate downloads because that only solidifies RIAA/MPAA's case to lobby senators just like you to enact such unnecessary legislation... putting a clamp on internet distribution. RIIAA throws lawyers at every grandmother and twelve year old and from my experience employed in internet security enforcement, I can see they're ice-skating uphill. Again, I refuse to support their business case by piracy and instead voice my support of internet distribution by purchasing exclusively through legitimate services like iTunes to show this IS a profitable channel of distribution. However, they're ice-skating uphill nonetheless... but they know it. They have no choice because when artists realize we don't need to subject ourselves to the modern form of indentured servitude, record company executives will be forced to either think innovatively or find another business to work in.
I urge you to condemn the PERFORM Act which seeks to stifle the rights of consumers IN THEIR OWN HOMES, rights which were established by 17 USC 1, 107, and further reinforced by the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act which protected the consumer's right to record broadcasts for their own, personal use. There are already laws protecting piracy and illegal distribution, and these cases should follow due process of law and have their days in court... but this legislation is, like DMCA, aimed squarely at attempting to stifle the inevitable decentralization of RIAA's distribution monopoly and seems to make criminal even the recording of content from individuals such as myself who have created our own material on our own dime, in our own studios, with our own equipment, our own imagination, and hoped that the internet would give us a chance for our creative expressions to be heard.
The internet is the common man's greatest weapon in the information economy against the tyranny of a majority or minority... and it is every Senator's duty, under Oath to the Constitution, to protect our pre-eminent rights from being eroded in this manner.
Thank you for your valuable time and consideration.
That did not take long. Already the Demos are in the pockets of big business doing business as usual. All hail the the golden rule, and welcome our **AA overlords;
make your time, all our base are belong to them.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
Thank-you.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I'm one of those externally financed researchers, who are involved in a lot of different projects. Giving these projects some short and easy to remember shorthands makes life much easier. So finding a good acronym is useful. I suspect the same is true for bills in the political scene.
It will remind everyone that Internet has a worse enemy than Republicans. The elephants are pretty hands off with the Internet, while the nannie party, well their gearing up to protect everyones children now.
The US will strongarm other countries into alignment with its own laws.
It's about "level playing fields" until the US has to make a change, when it becomes about sovereignty.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I disagree. Posters on slashdot, as you yourself concede, is hardly the technological community. Microsoft, Apple, Sony, Real Networks, Adobe, Intel, and 90% of the commercial businesses in the digital content arena have put a great deal of money and effort into "reasonably safeguarding IP". There exists plenty of tools out there that reasonably safeguard IP contentholders' legal rights and Apple has sold over 2 billion songs including it. How much money has been spent developing TPM?
Not true. The 'technological community' in general are proponents of copyright (the GPL couldn't work without it, after all) and does not encourage disregarding anyone's legal rights. They have, on the other hand, encouraged the corporations bent on restricting users' legal rights be denied that power.
I would posit that it is not unreasonable for lawmakers to address the problems their political party, campaign contributors, power brokers, and other peddlers of influence bring before them...regardless of whether the "problem" is in the best interest of their constituency in particular or the country as a whole because *that* is how they get re-elected. And
that is what this bill is really about.
I'll agree with you 100% here. But not only would I say it's hard, I would go so far as to say it is impossible. The simple fact remains: if it can be read, it can be copied. Period. There is no getting around that basic tenet. And with digital distribution over the Internet, ONE copy is all that matters.
Doubtful. Because the argument that it really IS a serious issue are specious at best.
Saying someone's point is "dumb" hardly refutes it.
I'm not sure how you quantify the difference between those "behind the curve", those who are "penny ante pirates", those who are more "mid-level pirates", and those who are "serious pirates". I have yet to see a study not bought and paid for by a content producer that really indicates a problem. Is piracy in China a problem? Well, it's certainly widespread, from all accounts. But is it an economic burden? Does it actually cost "Billions of dollars" every year? Again, the only studies I've ever seen are produced by the BSA, the MPAA, the RIAA, et. al., and include numbers for th
"Some are born posthumously" -- Nietzsche
Wikileaks, no DNS
What did you all expect?
The Democrats are historically anti-freedom; pro-Hollywood and anti-gun. Their anti-freedom platform is just different than the Republicans, who sell your freedoms to big business.
I mean, after all it was a Democrat, everyone's (not mine) favorite Al Gore and his wife who came up with banning music under the guises of the PMRC.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
No, the people who build the atomic bombs were giants, the people who decided to use them were midgets (actually, they were not, but that it another discussion).
Refusing to impose your own morality on other people does not make you a midget. We scientist, engineers, and craftsmen create the tools with which humankind can build paradise on Earth. We do not impose paradise (or our view of paradise, which may be a hole lot nerdier than others) on them.
There's another answer, and people have talked about it for years now, although its never ...and there's absolutely no way in the world to stop it as long as its decentralized
really caught on: P2P Casting.
and headquartered (if its headquartered at all) from offshore.
Its time.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Oh, how I wish I could take credit for that one. I got it off Jon Stewart.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
but Americans don't like stuff made elsewhere.
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
Not to get too political, but the summary ought to include the party affiliation details:
Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Joseph Biden (D-DE), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Two of those Senators are Democrats, and this is one of those nefarious 'bi-partisan' bills. In other words, having won majority (barely) in the last election the Democrats are back to screwing over the citizens whom just voted them back into power. -sigh- Nothing ever changes.
{ - Generic Guy - }
To continue with the slim jim analogy, they are also shirvled up, wrinkly strips of flesh. =p
And from a salary stand-point, most politicians don't make much money, at least when compared to other "higher ups" on the social ladder, and deducting campaign costs. The real money comes from sponsors and under-the-table deals.
These people make laws at random, it seems like it must be some kind of drinking game. "All right, Kennedy vs. McCain! Whoever drinks 20 shots first wins. Loser has to finish his, drink another 10 shots, then write 5 bills about regulating the Internet!"
DRM schmeeee RM! I grow weary of all this legislation lobbied by the RIAA and MPAA. Their brick-and-mortar way of rakin in the big bucks is dying and they panic. I wonder how much they spend rying to save money that isn't getting stolen??? Just because one method of delivery is under attack doesn't mean the end of streaming either. People get very innovative when the want something they been told they cannot have. It wouldn't surprise me the see a new method of streaming arise from it all. Remember the sharpie marker defeating Sony's copy protected CD?
...and remember there's always the analog hole too. If you can hear it, or see it, you can copy it & broadcast it!
If I wanted my mind made up for me, I'd do it myself!!
These senators should be focusing in on providing health care for American citizens, at a time when many citizens can hardly afford basic health services and/or do not have health coverage. Certainly, their time would be far better spent doing something good for 300 million Americans, as opposed to spending their time lobbying on behalf of the music industry for their own self-serving rea$on$. ...but I could be wrong...
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Sitting here on my x86_64 laptop running 64bit Ubuntu I severely doubt any kind of equality would exist with a law like this (but I doubt it will get passed anyway). Clearly it would be a Microsoft Windows only implementation, with no way for others to implement it on other architectures, just like Windows Media formats (emulation of OS or hardware is not equality by the way, it is a dodgy, sneaky hack to get around the inequality by makng everything into 32bit Windows on an x86 [from the codec's point of view]). I know MP3 has it's problems, but with sites like this http://www.mp3machine.com/ (came up in a quick Google search), and software like this http://home.online.no/~ingeroey/AROSAmp/ being released one has to admit that MPEG audio truly does have "platform equality".
This is the true meaning of "bipartisan:" both parties getting together to act like idiots.
It should be Buying Representation In Backroom Exchanges
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
would restrict our rights to make non-commercial recordings under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992,
One remarkable thing is that the language used in the summary, and indeed the language of the law and our 'culture' as it surrounds this topic, makes it seem by the above that people will be restricted in their right to use a microphone attached to their recording device of choice to record the natural sounds around them, and their own creative output.
Whereas what most people actually mean by 'home recording' is the right to make yet more copies of copies of copies of the sounds a very few people made in expensive rarified environments.
I'm sorry, but shuttling around copies of copies isn't impressive, and very few people's creativity is thwarted when they're prevented from doing so.
When I read the /. summary, it sure put a scare in me: restrict our rights to make non-commercial recordings??? I record my own music for fun, so that seemed pretty bad. But if you read the article, it doesn't say anything about that. It talks about recording (copyrighted, commercial) songs off of the radio, not making your own music.
Anyway, for audio, the analog hole is basically impossible to plug, so the whole issue is vastly overblown. The analog hole for audio is like missile defense, where the countermeasures against any given defense are orders of magnitude cheaper and simpler than the defense. When people wig out about this stuff, they're really wigging out about the inability to easily make lossless, digital copies. The analog hole will always give you a way to make copies of audio through an analog step.
The really scary thing about DRM isn't its application to audio, it's it's application to software, which could end up making all computers into sealed, proprietary systems.
Find free books.
*Dances on Australian soil*
Ya know, Biden and Feinstein are those specific globalists who claim to be democrats whose only purpose is to do the corporate bidding of their masters (although I believe Feinstein is among the plutocrats as well).....The other two are just Bushtards.....
I've noticed that the word freedom isn't as synonymous with America anymore
so much for being a beacon for the world, now we all look to Sweden
Some people are going to start wanting computers that they actually have control over. Call these people "zealots" and "fanatics". Associate them with hippies, communists... When conversing with/about them, explain that most people "just want to get their work done, and don't have time for 'religious' issues like this." etc. etc.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Dianne Feinstein has a long history of being in the pockets of media industry, Time Warner and Disney in particular.
Joe Biden, as well, gets a great deal of money from the media instustry, its in his top 10.
The motivating force behind Graham and Alexander is less obvious to me.
I'm not optimistic that their reasons were any more noble than Feinstein and Biden, however.
-Sean
Me, too. There are several companies that I have permanently sworn off because of the egregiousness of their past conduct:
SONY
Microsoft
Valve
I get along fine without them. Do they get along fine without me (and others who feel like me)?
Let's see, I dunno about Valve, but in recent years Microsoft and SONY both have suffered from stale revenues and stock prices. Hmmmmmmm.
How about some real 'platform equality'? Impose the same DRM requirements on terrestrial broadcasters. Not likely, of course, as this appears to be yet another move on the part of the NAB to eliminate competition through lobbying.
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't even think the Constitution is a consideration these days for politicians, if it ever was. I think they just pass whatever the hell their corporate sponsors want, and let the courts sort it out. Then rewrite as needed. But the way some of the supreme court justices act towards the constitution, it seems as if its barely in effect.
"The Federal Reserve is a fraudulent system."--Lew Rockwell
End The FED. -
1. We are technologists. DRM slows down our machines. Would you expect car enthusiasts to help create a top speed 65 MPH lock on their cars?
2. We are technologists. We know that DRM on an open machine is mathematically impossible. And so to institute effective DRM, machines would have to be locked away from us, the end users. Us, who love the machines.
3. We are technologists. We know that leaked copies spread exponentially, not linearly. Hence, if one person leaks something to the internet, everyone has it, and this DRM is useless.
4. We are technologists. We know that all this level of DRM does is force people to spend thousands of dollars re-buying the same hardware, without actually solving the problem.
We are technologists. But we are not one. Grandparent post, whose pro-copyright post claimed that pro-copyright posts were never modded +5, was modded +5. We are many people with many different opinions. We're all just looking for answers.
The ______ Agenda
... it is the solution. There are RIAA free radios (Epiphany Radio is a pretty good one). This law will just push the other radios to play RIAA free content and it will finally promote the people without a label. At the moment the popular artists are pushed by the payola and you see internet radios without any payola benefits (though I might be wrong on that) pushing the same overrated artists just to sound like "real" radios. It annoys me and I'm glad to learn that we will now see a sustainable promotion platform for independent artists. With adequate radio playtime those artits will get known and will attract people at theirs shows and will sell the swags and everything. Radios play a really important role in the music world: they filter out crap. Yeah, in the independent world their is a lot of crap too and the home listener should not be expected to dig into that haystack in search of the proverbial needle.
I've been involved heavily in internet radio for over 3 years and running my own station ThereIsNoRadio for over a year now. We are constantly trying to keep within the guidelines of the DMCA and keep streamrippers off our streams when we see them. Unfortunately streamrippers would not function in the way described in Senator Feinstein's comments if not for the DMCA. The DMCA requires that we digitally include the artist, song title, and album that we are playing in the stream. The main reason for this seems to be to ensure that the RIAA can police us by tuning into any station stream and logging all the music played so they can collect evidence of DMCA violations and get us shut down. What it does instead, is allow streamrippers to search stream lists like shoutcast and find the songs they want, connect to the stream, and record just the songs specified by the user. If we were not forced by law to send this information, the streamrippers would only be able to record a long time chunk of our stream and the end user would have to listen to it and edit the file to extract the songs they wanted without any reference points. The only internet radio stations that I know of that actually make money are backed by major corporations (yahoo, aol, clear channel) or are the internet streams of corporate terrestrial am/fm stations. The rest of us pay for our bandwidth, our royalties, our music, etc. The royalties we pay to the RIAA are not just based on the music we play and how many people hear it. Our royalties are also based on how much money we spend to run the station as well as how much we earn. They get money based on our website hosting costs as well as our website advertising revenue, which is completely separate from the streams. We also pay a percentage of what we spend for advertising and marketing for the station. Our station and lots of other stations are heard on cellphones as well, with DRM forced formats, we will have to use additional bandwidth to send our stream to the cellphone stream provider. We will also have to spend more money on stream hosting to ensure that we don't alienate any of our listeners by streaming both windows media, and quicktime or realmedia drm formats, nevermind having to find a new hosting provider that can support it. If congress would do some research and quit letting the RIAA make the laws, maybe internet radio could grow as an industry, but they are pretty successfully forcing internet radio into the realm of hobby and making the costs prohibitive for even that. We have done and continue to do everything that congress asks of us and we still get accused of enabling theft, when it is the legislation that they write that is actually enabling the theft. They were better off when it was filesharing, but due to ignorance, they have made it a lot worse for everybody involved and this is the next move to destroy the internet radio that the RIAA can neither influence nor control.
Feinstein clearly does not understand that the point of the copyright allowed in the constitution was to promote progress, not to protect rich corporations. She is clearly not a Democrat in this area. Here are some form letter responses that her office sends to complaints.
8 92380
p onds-to-perform-act-dispute.html
= 2234915
Feinstein responds with a form letter about the PERFORM DRM act:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193819&cid=15
And the same response to someone else:
http://www.orbitcast.com/archives/congressman-res
Feinstein response with a form letter about the DMCA:
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=21099&cid
"....
If you have other questions or comments, please do not
hesitate to write to me again, or contact my Washington, D.C. staff
at (202) 224-3841."
You know what I feel needs to be done, Internet Radio stations need to put up informative on-air "public service announcements" every 30 minutes about this bill. Force the vast majority of users to speak up, as 99% of people listening out there probably know nothing about this, nor will ever until it gets passed into law.
Too bad congress hasn't got anything *important* to worry about.
It's GOT to get converted to analog at some time, you worthless bunch of clodds.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
arr... the best way to escape this legislation along with having your servers located in sealand.
There isn't any such technology, and there never will be. So, does this law outlaw all broadcasting, or is it a NOP?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I got one for ya, its called "Read the Bills Act". We can call it RTBA ehh? It makes politicians read and publish what they want to vote on and wait for us to have a chance to read it also.
DownsizeDC.org
no.. RTBA probably isn't "cool" enough for these slick cats.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Lamar Alexander (R), Joseph Biden (D), Dianne Feinstein (I) , and Lindsey Graham (R)
No perfect solution, but in fitting with the dead ideals that the USA once inspired the world with, the error should be on the side of liberty not on the side of state-imposed monopoly holders.
1) By using the term Intellectual Property(IP) you already change the language of any argument towards 1 side. Property does not imply any temporary rights, its a permanent thing. Don't forget the power of terminology, the people who promote such terms don't.
2) A great deal of man's progress was possible and still continues without great monetary incentive; which is the purpose behind protection of creative works, on the premise it will encourage more progress than occurs without it I shouldn't have to expand on this, other than to say that anything truly new comes from creativity (I'd argue even the accidental ones.)
3) The creative works encouragement lost its focus long ago and now it is a protectionist racket. Most incursions on other liberties are incidental because the primary concern is protecting the racket.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
No, they understand they can extend the boundaries of legislation to be enforced outside the country by using WTO treaties to their advantage.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
America, home of the brave, land of the free?
LOL!
What an irony...
Couple of decades ago, many people considered USA a good country, but its gone down hill, especially the last decade and since Bush was elected. USA is loosing all its freedoms, its constantly creating war with other nations and lobbying other countries to loose their freedoms. Yell some bullshit about "terrorists" and people are willingly giving up their freedoms even though they're more likely to get struck by lightning.
USA is day-by-day becoming more and more like the crazy Muslim Arab countries like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. They both have death-penalty. Difference is that USA don't "officially" torture people.
USA is getting hated more than by just the militant islamists (read: terrorists).
You offer some words.
Lobbyists offer big financial rewards, favors, vacations, etc.
Consider human nature; who do you believe the legislators will choose to follow?
I'm not saying we shouldn't try, but, there are bigger problems at play here...
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
That's okay... The rest of the (Western) world doesn't like stuff made elsewhere, either.
That's why the majority of their music, and movies, were made in the US.
It would be only too ironic for music made in the US to be exported to the rest of the world, only to be streamed back to US listeners, due to utterly moronic copyright laws.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"1) By using the term Intellectual Property(IP) you already change the language of any argument towards 1 side."
Of course the anti-IP people would never be guilty of THAT.
"Property does not imply any temporary rights, its a permanent thing."
Eminent domain disagrees with you. Getting a title also disagrees.
"Don't forget the power of terminology, the people who promote such terms don't."
*rolls eyes*
You must think everyone's a fool then.
Please!
This bitch is more corrupt than Hermann Goering.
She's also on board with attacking Iran (see my sig) - which, by the way, is heating up as Bush sends another carrier group to the Gulf, and is activating a third to follow, as well as delivering attack aircraft to Incirlik in Turkey - and now attacking Iranian personnel in Iraq. It's on for this year - maybe soon.
Folks, if you thought Iraq was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. William Lind is predicting a possible loss of the US military forces in Iraq if Iran is attacked. That's not a "defeat" he's talking about - he's talking about a LOSS - as in tens of thousands of dead Americans and headlong evacuation of the remainder and the loss of every piece of US equipment left there. All it takes is for the Shia militias in Iraq to support Iran and cut the 600-mile supply lines from Kuwait. Within thirty days, no food, water, or ammo left for the US in Iraq.
Bush (and the rest of the stupid bitches in Congress supporting him including Feinstein) need to be stopped NOW by a Congressional resolution prohibiting Bush from launching ANY military action against Iran without a declaration of war by Congress and prohibiting him from using ANY nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear nation without authorization by Congress in advance.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"2) A great deal of man's progress was possible and still continues without great monetary incentive; which is the purpose behind protection of creative works, on the premise it will encourage more progress than occurs without it I shouldn't have to expand on this, other than to say that anything truly new comes from creativity (I'd argue even the accidental ones.)"
I forgot to address this point. The piracy argument isn't just about money (even though slashdot would like to turn this into a "money bad guys vs non-money good guys"). It's also about respect. Respect for the artists, and the work they do. Respect for when they ask you nicely not to do something. You don't give them the digital middle finger and continue doing it. The creation of open-source fits your "without great monetary incentive" (except when slashdot is doing a "how to make money with open-source" story). But no one in their right mind would argue that an abused and disrespected open-source community will continue to produce a quality product (hence the Tivo, Linksys, etc incidents). But you all do expect artists to contine producing, at quality levels, whatever it is you feel you have a right to no matter how you treat them which really is the gist of most "back before copyright" posts.
Which would mean something if the Geek was a significant presence in the domestic consumer market.
How many American radio listeners have ever regularly tuned in foreign broadcasters?
Shortwave, satellite, or streaming media.
So we threw out the bums who coddled the Oil Industry, only to bring in the bums who coddle the Entertainment Industry?! Great, just great.
Ah, well. I'm sure there's a way we can retaliate against Media Organization Representatives' Orwellian Nomenclature In Congress. If someone could just think of a way we could fight the Advocates for Spurious Senate and House Oligarchic Lobbying Efforts.
The hard part will be not stooping to their level in the process.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
This bill is a bad idea: there are bound to be some artists who want to copyright their work but 'not with DRM encryption' but will be forced to encrypt the work anyway, which is bull shit. I'm a student and I'll record streaming internet radio when I want or die trying.
The technology community has shown that it is a practical impossibility to prevent copy-ability, and attempts to do so are burdensome to the consumer, stifle innovation, and are doomed to be cracked anyway.
Ultimately the answer to this problem is not a technological one. You (the *AA) need to spend your efforts educating people as to what is and is not fair use.
When people are taught why copying a friend's CD is theft, but ripping to their iPod is not, a *surprising* number of people will do the right thing most of the time.
This may sound hopelessly naive to you (or to anyone with a heart pumping greedy green goo), but there are tons of examples of the efficacy of public awareness campaigns if you just look.
Would the easiest way to sidestep the whole mess be to just broadcast music that doesn't fall under the corrupt system of copyrights? I can't see how any legal argument could be made against broadcasting independent music with a non-DRM internet signal.
If their intent is to find a way to slide in an FCC-style regulation into internet broadcasting, then I believe the constitution prohibits that.
-dave
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
Just another day in California,
Why is that either Feinstein or Boxer are always at the heart of legislation that screws consumers? Hell, each so damn wealthy it's hard to understand why they need to line their pockets any more than they already have.
The real source of our misery is not these self-serving politicians, it's the voters with the short memories. Damn us all.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Can you explain the hostility toward Valve? I cannot recall anything especially egregious.
Thanks.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
Don't worry, knowing these bunch of fucks they'll make it illegal to operate from servers located in a foreign nations, but I can bet that the would be a loop hole allow the government and corporations to continue to do so.
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
Hey, just wait until the **AA starts to push for levies on recording and production equipment. They already do it with CD-Rs, flash drives, and hard drives in some jurisdictions. All they have to do is claim that the components being sold can be used to reproduce copyrighted material. Then they'll extend that law to include instruments which a could also be used to reproduce copyrighted material.
Then when they decide they aren't getting enough money from the taxes and fines they could switch to licenses which are expensive and require approval before purchasing through some sort of **AA designed system.
Oh, the possibilities and oh crap... I hope I didn't give anyone ideas!
Pagan? Geek? Check out #paganism on Freenode IRC
Seriously.
"We are technologists. But we are not one. Grandparent post, whose pro-copyright post claimed that pro-copyright posts were never modded +5, was modded +5. We are many people with many different opinions. We're all just looking for answers."
Not as different as you think. Calling yourself technologists to begin with on a site titled "news for nerds" shows more in common than apart. If the news media can be accused of bias (both specific and as a general case), then so can slashdot.
The owners of each and every one of these creative works already have the right to deny these services permission to use their works. Let them negotiate with these services for those protections in exchange for permission to use their works instead of creating new law.
"Never limit what you know to what you do", Me
The comments in the Congressional Record do not make this as bad as it first appears:
The main idea is that ``a company may not provide a recording device to a customer that would allow him or her to create their own personalized music library that can be manipulated and maintained without paying a reproduction royalty.`` This would be if an internet radio station distributed stream ripping software that split tracks and labelled them accordingly.
``This does not mean such devices cannot be made or distributed. It simply means that the business must negotiate the payment for the music outside of the statutory license.`` That would also mean that radio stations that have negotiated deals directly with their artists/rightsholders would be able to do this.
``In addition, if the device allows the consumer to manipulate music by program, channel, or time period that would still be permitted under the statutory license.`` So it's explicitly targeting streamripping that uses the meta data transmitted to split the tracks apart. Not to simple recording a broadcast, as pointed out in the next sentence:
``For example, if a listener chooses to automatically record a news station every morning at 9:00 a.m.; a jazz station every afternoon at 2:00 p.m., a blues station every Friday at 3:00 p.m., and a talk radio show every Saturday at 4:00 p.m., that would be allowable. In addition, that listener could then use their recording device to move these programs so that each program of the same genre would be back to back.``
``What a listener cannot do is set a recording device to find all the Frank Sinatra songs being played on the radio-service and only record those songs. By making these distinctions this bill supports new business models and technologies without harming the songwriters and performers in the process.``. This is largely targeted at Sirius and XM who are selling devices that scan their channels and pick out the tracks that a customer wants to listen to automatically. Basically, a programmable stream ripper in the satellite radio receiver. Devices like the Sirius S50, which are being promoted as an iPod replacement that's automatically loaded with new music from Satellite.
Here is the irony for internet broadcasters:
Stream ripping is possible because the RIAA demanded that net broadcasters send the information on what track and artist is playing, and this got put into the DMCA. This is what led to stream ripping.
Internet radio broadcasters could simply turn off meta-data and prevent track-splitting type stream ripping. Simple solution.
So the issue is that we need to separate DRM from stream-ripping. We don't have to add DRM to stop stream ripping... and DRM would likely stop all stream recording as well.
This is the issue that needs to be presented to congress. DRM is not the solution to the problem they are trying to solve. Of course, the RIAA would love to trick legislators into mandating DRM, because the RIAA doesn't want you to be able to record ANYTHING.
All your premises fail to understand that people have a right to copy information that they posess, share it, sell it, or whatever. It is as pure as the right to free speech, and the right to free religion. So how will you make money without copyrights? That is a Red Herring, it's like asking "How will I make money without slaves on the plantation?" and an appropiate answer is, "respect my rights and figure it out".
There is also only one appropiate way for lawmakers to address the copyright issue. Set the term to zero. Anything else is not only unacceptable, but obviously unworkable as society enters the information age. And that's the point, copyrights have always been overrated sewage, immoral, and a burdon on society, but in the age of print society could bear those costs. Now enforcement is having obvious, suvere, and unbearable costs everywhere we look. Any idiot can see it, but the rational follow it thru to a logical conclusion. Copyrights must be killed no matter what.
Just like our US laws succeeded in eliminating a worldwide problem known to our ancestors as "spam" right?
Please consider the politics of your FUD before you spread it. Thanks
Even if sometimes good. Looking at things objectively involves recognising that "good" and "bad" are sometimes orthogonal to "true" and "false".
Wikileaks, no DNS
In 1983 in the case Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) the Supreme Court ruled that the recording of broadcast television (and by extension, radio) was not a copyright violation and constituted fair use.
I imagine a similiar attempt by the RIAA/MPAA against satellite and internet radio broadcasts would also eventually be ruled unconstitutional and overturned by the Supreme Court. I can see Sirius, XM and other companies banding together to challenge the law -assuming it ever passes, which hopefuly it doesn't.
are speed limits also against your fundamental rights? in some ways, yes, of course they are. But rational people understand that they at times they must come to collective agreements so that all of society works better. Despite your immature ranting, any economist will show you thay copyrights and patents have been invaluable in history in fostering innovation and creativity. I repeat again: your view has about as much respectibility or defensibility as creationism does in serious science circles. Well, hopefully someday you'll grow up, perhaps study a bit of economics, and pull your head out of your ass. I'm not holding my breath.
The real money comes after they've left office. Even a 1 term state congressman can make an easy lifetime 6-figure income as a lobbyist, plus all kinds of borderline illegal kickbacks, tips, and business deals. If you're a US Senator (especially multi-term) you're talking 7 or 8 figures minimum.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Scary amounts of americans think that saddam was behind 9/11. I remember the numbers being terrifying, around 90+% at times. Here is the first link (showing 70%) I found
It got so lame. I remember Bush giving a vague uncommittal denial of any link, and the next week polls showed a majority of americans still believed Saddam had a personal responsibility for 9/11. It really doesn't help that to this day Bush et al talk about Iraq and the war on terror as if they were inseperable.
Man, you really need that seminar!