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?
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.
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
- 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?
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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!"
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?
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
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
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.
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
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!
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.
Seriously.