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Mandatory DRM for Podcasts Proposed
Knytefall writes "Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and two GOP senators are sponsoring a bill called the PERFORM Act that would require podcasts with music and satellite radio to be locked-up with music industry-approved DRM software. From the article: 'All audio services — Webcasters included — would be obligated to implement "reasonably available and economically reasonable" copy-protection technology aimed at preventing "music theft" and restricting automatic recording.'"
I have not read the act itself but the TFA (and summary) is worded in such a way that implies that it applies across the board regardless; whether the content is free or not. What about all those podcasts with 100% legal content? Music from the podsafe music network or other Creative Commons licensed work for instance?
Implement a DRM system but do not force us to use it. I would much prefer the RIAA simply not license content to DRM free broadcasts and sue those who don't have a license.
Requiring DRM by law for all statutory licensed work is massive overkill.
Let's just stick to streaming audio, or even downloadable mp3s. You don't have to "podcast" to be heard. There are other alternatives.
From the article: 'All audio services -- Webcasters included -- would be obligated to implement "reasonably available and economically reasonable" copy-protection technology aimed at preventing "music theft" and restricting automatic recording.'"
What about copyleft-licensed broadcasts? You can't "steal" something that's free.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Don't they have something better to do? How about funding our troops? Working out a resolution with Iran? etc etc.
Damn. Feinstein needs to be doing stuff for me, a Californian. I want her to get us off of using Oil, not worrying about Podcasts.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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I get it... By making everyone use DRM on their podcasts, each terrorist will have to legitimately purchase Osama Bin Laden's podcasts off of iTunes, thus driving up the price of terrorism!
Brilliant!
The availability of entertainment and the distraction it is to persons who might otherwise be motivated to do something more productive than consuming entertainment is what keeps the majority of Americans disinterested in the political process.
It makes me wonder if these senators know they are poking a sleeping beast with a stick. If I were a senator who preferred constituents who didn't care, I would be wont to introduce such legislation that may them from their distractions.
"Joe Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and two GOP senators
The "two GOP senators" are Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).
Here goes my support for Joe Biden in the Democratic primaries.
This is old news. At least two days old: http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/13/07 55256
People who voted for democrats thinking liberty would be restored should take notice. Only Libertarians truly stand for constitutionally protected freedoms!
My blog
If it's not your music, why do you care?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The bill is meant to secure music libraries and broadcasts, but there's nothing there about exclusions for educational (non-music) streams and podcasts like JapanesePod101.com. They also go on to say this:
Ok then, what the hell is DRM if it's not inhibiting the consumers' recording habits??
I'm an independent filmmaker who releases all my movies under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License that allows anyone to freely copy, distribute, display, and perform my work.
This pro **AA act could be the nail in the coffin for not only the Creative Commons, but MY freedom as an artist.
I admit I am Anti-DRM, but there's two sides to every viewpoint. When big business wants to trample on MY rights, they'll trample on yours next. Call your House and Congressional representatives immediately to stop allowing big business interests to stomp on the rights of the actual artist.
Although my rant here is over, I won't quit until this legislation is dropped in a hole, set aflame and then buried.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
DRM doesn't work. I would ask, "when will they get it?", but it's pretty clear that they do "get it". Look at the recent crack of HD-DVD protection. That's the best they have, and it's already cracked. They know full well any DRM they put out there is not a deterrent against piracy, which means their goal with DRM is clearly to control legal activity.
When it comes down to it, DRM is not intended to control piracy. It's intended to maintain **AA stranglehold over the market, to be used as a cudgel against hardware manufacturers, and to be used as a way to extract money, justified or otherwise, from the content-buying public.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Write them and your own rep and let them know how you feel- I mean are you shocked? Biden is from Delaware where most large corporations are headquartered, Feinstein is from California, Lindsey Grahama and Lamar are well known freakamazoid. Check out who donates to these clowns and see if this isn't exactly what you'd expect!
? cid=N00009975&cycle=2002
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/sector.asp
Of course they represent those who donate to them and unless you write their offices and your own they'll get away with this sort of crap!
wow, what a bold, scary strategy considering that about 99% of streaming internet radio for example is captured in almost full quality internally on the sound card by changing the recording device to stereo mixer (or WAV on older ones I think) and pressing record. DRM won't change that because it would still be getting it from the sound card's final output. Who the heck tries to steal the audio data out of the place its cached or something like that that DRM could actually protect. That's why intel motherboard manufactureres agreed to disable the stereo mixer to work as a recording device on most recent motherboard after they found out a ton of people were stealing music that way. Of course, they have to then cross their fingers and hope people don't hook the digital out to the digital in port, which loses almost no quality and record it that way
And all this useless protection is on top of the fact that most podcasts and other streaming audio is really low quality, and thus undesireable for most ppl that download it to steal it. Well at least they're wasting their time and money doing stupid stuff like this and not something really restrictive and effective.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
they dont want webcasters, citizen journalists to broadcast the shit politicans and their big-money backers pull around. so that it can be good old 1950s again
Read radical news here
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 more of a Republican in this area. Here are some form letter responses that her office sends to complaints.
8 92380
p onds-to-perform-act-dispute.html (scroll down)
= 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."
Recent raids here in Europe proved that your "recordings" of any kind could harm you. Some guys here were tracked by police due to their over-usage of torrent networks, then their appartment raided. Everything you've ever recorded, that you do not have a hardcover or original CD/DVD from can backfire at you. Learned this I would be cautious even about iPod stored MP3s purchased over MP3.com or elsewhere, because there is virtually no proof to that MP3 was purchased and that is really yours. I actually welcome Microsoft's DRM management in hope it would give me a protection in such an event.
Sigh.
-tom
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
...stuff like Nullsoft's Disk Writer plugin for Winamp, through which I can dump streaming radio to disk (I think, I've never really tried it). Of course some radio stations discourage this by commenting over the end/beginning of songs or mixing songs into each other for a track transition, thus making ripping undesirable. But still... DRM is rather useless if I can send the output to disk instead of my speakers.
Funny how this is being introduced now.
/. won't lift a finger to slow this one down. This is one of those times I wish you all would.
An incredible coincidence that the Democrats control the Senate and House now. ("control" being very loosley defined in the sentence)
Sad, especially since the legions of
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The full paragraph containing summary's quoted section is:
So, on the face of it, this particular "feature" of the Act shouldn't affect the use of music that is licensed freely (e.g., many Creative Commons licenses). In that case, the step of "negotiate a licensing agreement through the market" is done up front in the form of the music license.
What would probably cause problems for free music is the terms that restrict what players can do (e.g., "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."). Hopefully, we can figure out a way to create players that support restricted features but only use them against music with appropriate licensing metadata, versus those features simply not being implemented.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
I used the form interface on Senator Feinstein's website to post the following letter to her concerning PERFORM:
Senator Feinstein,
I continue to oppose your misguided attempts to impose draconian digital rights management on consumer electronics.
The so-called PERFORM act will put the government in the business of mandating technology, and instituting what amounts to price controls on media distribution, and will prevent important technological and social innovation that increases the agency of the mass public, and will instead further entrench dangerous media consolidation in our republic.
The so-called rights of big media are a creation of 20th century technology, and did not exist before centralized mass production instrumentalities utilizing expensive technologies out of the reach of the people were invented by technologists such as Thomas Edison and Philo Farnsworth. Newer technologies now are changing the means of production and distribution, and make these "rights" as appropriate as the "rights" of 18th century Russian noblemen to own their landed serfs. Importantly, the new technologies of the PC and the Web are cheap, fast, and decentralized, and allow the people to re-assert democracy rather than passively consume the "Spectacle" offered by Fox and other media conglomerates.
The copyright and patent clause in the Constitution has been warped out of recognition by Congress passing such laws as the Sonny Bono act of 1998 in response to the corrupting influence of campaign financing on the part of members of the RIAA and MPAA. Current law bears no resemblance to the intent and practice of the founders. Your quotes of the Constitution in response to my previous two letters to you on this subject are dissembling, at best.
Although I am a "liberal", I will vote for an opponent of yours who opposes DRM in the next election.
Please change your position, so that I may support you in the future.
Robert Tow
At least, nobody I know. I voted Democratic to have Congress run in opposition to the President.
The machine works best at a standstill, IMHO.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
GOP actually stands for "Grand Old Party", though I agree with your sentiment. Copyright seems to be one of those odd issues that rarely follows party lines.
Why must the entire nation implement DRM, anyway? If the RIAA members don't want their stuff broadcast for fear of piracy, why don't they simply withdraw it and not allow it to be broadcast? Anything you publish is out there for pirates. This makes absolutely no sense. If piracy is a problem, the members of the RIAA should simply not put it on the airwaves. It's their content. Why should every free broadcaster have to deal with a layer of useless DRM? How could it be enforced, anyway? If some university doesn't DRM their creative commons lectures, the government is going to do what to them?
I live (and vote) in California. What were we supposed to do in November? These were our choices:
- Richard Mountjoy, a far right Christian with all the usual values.
- Diane Feinstein, a bleeding-heart liberal who is a bought and paid member of the mafiaa *.
A lose-lose situation. I voted for technofascism over theocracy.
* To avoid a slander lawsuit, I note that the misspelling of "mafia" with an additional "a" is intentional and is a known term on this discussion forum. It does not mean the Cosa Nostra.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Only Libertarians truly stand for constitutionally protected freedom
Libertarians (at least, your traditional anarchocapitalist) also have their problems, often including a rather large blind spot towards the abuse of private power and some seriously inconsistent views regarding the trustworthiness thereof and the strength of the profit incentive.
Not that I don't think it might do us some good to turn the entire Democratic and Republican parties out of office for a term or two, and I agree with the libertarians that civic power presents the problem of misuse. But a vacuum leaves only private power to protect from other private power, and once collusion sets in, the problem becomes nearly intractable, and freedom is again lost. The alternative -- having a democratic republic where civic power is accountable to the citizenry -- also has flaws, mainly that it's only as good as the citizenry attempts to keep it, but it's more easily subject to change when the citizenry chooses.
Tweet, tweet.
This is about killing the advantage of unsigned bands selling their own MP3s.
I don't see the benefit of this act, to anybody. Surely, if you're webcasting/podcasting music at the moment, you're either:
Number 1 is the one affected by this, but then the purpose of all of this, stated in TFA, is to prevent music theft. If the music cannot legally be stolen (because it is being given away), can the act still apply?
Number 2 is not affected, because they're already using DRM. (I'm not sure if this one actually exists yet, but I stuck it in for completeness.)
Number 3 is the bad guy that the RIAA could go after with some amount of moral justification, but if he's already breaking copyright laws then he's not going to be particularly bothered about breaking the PEARFRHIM (sorry, PERFORM) act either. And if there's already a law to prosecute him with, why introduce another one?
Of course, the bad guy in the RIAA's eyes might be Number 1, if the RIAA have acknowledged that independent artists are competition that must be crushed...
>> would be obligated to implement "reasonably available and economically reasonable" copy-protection technology aimed at preventing "music theft.
I propose ROT-13. Its free and easily available.
They are not affected. If you own the copyright, or get explicit permission from the copyright holder, you can do whatever you want, or they allow. However, working out licencing deals with potentially thousands of copyright holders is impractical, and therefore in order to to make radio feasible congress created an exception to normal copyright law called a statutory license, which basically says that can broadcast any song you want without negotiating a license, if you pay a broadcast fee to a regulatory group, who then "fairly" distributes the money - see section 114(d) of the copyright law.
But see that is the whole point - with statutory licensing the RIAA doesn't have a choice - the license is required by the law, hence the word statutory. They cannot block radio stations from playing their music as long as the stations are paying the appropriate fees, and following other applicable laws.
Ever since the internet came into existance, the major labels have been doing everything they can to keep internet radio impractical including convincing congress to make the statutory licenses fees for online broadcast fairly hefty and apply per-listener, which makes them financially infeasable. Because of this, all of the major successfull online radio stations have forgone statutory licensing, opting instead to make deals with the major 3, thus giving the RIAA far greater influence in how the station is run (including what codec are allowed).
There is one other caveat I should mention. Even if you are playing only free music you need to keep good records of all the songs played, and documentation of the licenses of those songs in case you ever get sued. Remember - civil court cases have a weaker burden of proof, and in the past online radio stations playing only free music have been shutdown because they could not provide reasonably supported argument that they did not play the plantiff's music.
pavon - at work and forgot my password.
Libertarians, to do anything effective on the national level, need to acquire power within one or both of the established parties. So far they've tried mostly within the Republican Party
It makes sense Libertarians work more with Republican than they do Democrats. The Libertarian Party was started by Republicans who were fedup with Republicans under Nixon. Some opposed cointel and the efforts of Hoover, others were fedup with Nixon policies ans statements. One such statement was that no matter what Nixon's Presidential Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse decided after studying marijuana. He said no matter what conclusion they came to he would never support legal hemp, marijuana. And in fact that is what they concluded, that hemp was such a useful plant and marijuana didn't present a danger the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 should be repealled.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The RIAA screwed up and didn't make DRM mandatory on their media - the CD - and so, it turned out that just about anyone in 2000 could produce and reproduce and sell a fairly decent product without needing the "music industry".
The MPAA learned from this, and since video gear is about two decimal places more expensive, they've had a head start in making sure that independent film makers are fucked when it comes to producing next-gen video. I can shoot, edit, and create totally fine high-def product - but the MPAA is preventing me from distributing it. I have to go thru them, or pay an insane price to ensure that high def disks (BR/HDDVD) will play on consumer gear by going thru a high priced disc publisher so-as to get the new DRM put on the thing.
The point of DRM is to prevent the next George Lucas (his beginnings, not his shitty blockbusters of the 2000s) from going out, making a damn fine movie on prosumer gear, editing it in Final Cut, and burning copies of the disks that will look stunning on all those plasma/LCD/DLP screens that people will want to buy and see more of. Right now, it could be done on DVD since you can make DVDs without CCS. You can't make movies without AACS and BR+ that will playback on consumer gear.
They have, by all logic, prevented independent production of next gen video disks ahead of the formats even being available. You want to make a disk - you gotta pay the toll, or you don't play. No more small, independent firms making a living heling folks get their content onto next gen disks... no more making home movies that you can send to other people.
That's what it has been about all along, it has been very little to do with piracy. Its all about making sure that when the equipment is up there with what Peter Jackson and Spielberg can get that you can't compete with them.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I did not know that voters are obligated in any way to vote for the candidate with the most money. The real problem is that nobody pays attention.
Suddenly reminded of the story of Mozart and the Miserere. The Miserere, a choral piece of exceptional beauty, was written around 1630 by Allegri. The Church in due course decided this was too good for the plebs so one of the Popes decreed that only it could only be performed in the Sistine Chapel in Rome and furthermore, this is the part I love, any of the performers who divulged, copied or gave any part of it to anyone else would be excommunicated. Ahhh original brand DRM.
When Mozart was 12 years old he went to Rome and witnessed the performance. Then later wrote it down from memory.
DRM didn't work then, and wont work now.
My 2 cents worth.
Bitter and proud of it.