Slashdot Mirror
EU Weighs Copyright Law
Braedley writes "Some members of the European IT industry are unhappy with a proposed law that would penalize various parties, from software companies to ISPs, to even some hardware manufactures, but not the end users for infringing on intellectual property. Penalties for this aiding and abetting could include jail time for employees if found guilty."
Historically, prohibiting use of something does little to stop its use. In order to actually do something about it, you need to go after the supply.
Of course, what the bill totally ignores is that there is no technological solution. You can disguise your copyright infringement as any kind of other activity you like.
As such, there is no way for ISPs to prevent their systems being used for copyright infringement but to prevent all use, thus destroying the internet. Or at least, the ability of residents of nations adopting an idiot law like that one to access it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But the UK is all metric system, so everything looks heavier on paper.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
We need to get back to the system where copyright infringement is a civil matter and not a criminal matter. Then if the "pirates" are bad enough, the companies can sue them in civil court and quit suppressing our freedoms for the sake of their profits and then we can stop footing the bill to protect their corporate interests.
It's only paranoia if your wrong...
National Technology Association: "Copyright infringers don't kill intellectual property, hardware manufacturers and programmers kill intellectual property!"
If you do not respect it, about as much can be done as not respecting anyone or anything else.
We have moved to a period where a great deal of wealth is in the hands of patents, trademarks and copyrights. This means that "respecting copyright" or not can mean the difference between people being paid a salary or not. That starts to get pretty serious, at least as far as the affected people are concerned.
All the talk about rich corporations out to squeeze the last dime from the consumer is just a smoke screen. What it comes down to is can people rely on patents, trademarks and copyrights for a livelihood.
50 years ago the answer was an unqualified yes. Today, there are serious questions about this. In the near future the answer is likely to be no. This will certainly put a lot of people out on the street that today are employed because money can be had from patents, trademarks and copyrights.
I can't imagine that anyone growing up today will have any respect whatsoever for "copyright" in any form. Anything they can put their hands on will be redistributed, copied and plagiarized. DRM certainly isn't going to have the desired effect. Harsh lawsuits aren't having the desired effect. Education isn't working as most schools teach more about downloading music and copying software than the students find out of school.
I don't think this will pass, as no one is happy about. The law allows personal infringement in a lot of cases, so not even the record companies are happy with it. I think they will have to do a re-write, and maybe that version will be somewhat realistic.
http://bgcommonsense.blogspot.com
Far from serving citizens, all the governments of the world are all competing to create the most attractive country for businesses to trade at the cost of criminalising many of their residents.
Well, at least they are not focused on penalizing the end users...
Realistically however, theres only so much one can do. If ISP's start policing the nets more, it just means that the filetraders will resort to shadier and more secure methods of transport. The content distributors will rely more heavily on botnets and compromised webservers to hold the information, and we will see a higher prevalence of strongly encrypted darkets like WASTE for getting the information around.
If anything, people will go underground with sneakernet.
And how dare we hold hardware manufacturers accountable? Copying of information is just an inherent property of the technology. Writing implements can be used to copy written works, do we hold pencil manufacturers accountable? If sneakernet becomes the norm, do we hold ipods and portable hard drives the culprit?
Give it up. Filetrading is here to stay, regardless of what prohibitions the governments place on it.
for sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
This sounds like a horrible implementation of a good idea. I have thought that perhaps there should be a legal distinction between copyright infringement for monetary gain and copyright infringement not for monetary gain. For instance, it seems to me that there's a big difference between making a copy of a DVD for a friend and selling a bootleg DVD on ebay. In my ideal world, the former would be no worse than a misdemeanor, if it's even illegal at all. It's the people that are making a living off of copyright violation that I have no sympathy for.
However, it appears that the law is merely shifting the liability away from the people who are actually committing the copyright violation to the people that sell the products that they might use to that end (ISPs, hardware manufacturers, whatever). So it then becomes illegal for a company to help (or fail to hinder) their users from doing something that is for the user perfectly legal? That doesn't make any sense.
Incitement to infringe an intellectual property... OK, let's simplify that to "incitement to pirate"; works nicely with the existing "incitement to riot". Makes for a good sound bite and gets the knees jerking. Still, to analogize incitement a la rioting to piracy, that would be saying or doing something that would en masse cause law-abiding people to resort to piracy from yelling FREE COMMERCIAL MUSIC FOR THE NEXT HOUR AT ALLOFMP3.COM in a crowded chat room to, maybe, forcing over-restrictive DRM on your customers....
Looks like the purveyors of DRM may be about to sue themselves.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Maybe it's time in the evolution of things for copyright to go away. Yes alot of people's job's rely on them, but then again alot of people relied on factory positions that vanished because of technological progress, too. Where do they go? What do they do? I can't say for sure, but (IMHO) I imagine future job growth will be in services and tangible goods, things that can't be freely distributed across the globe.
We are all just people.
...If the ISP's and other services that the data goes through failed to provide the identity of individuals who were pirating music-- But I don't think that's been a problem.
How could they hold the harware manufacturer's responsibe? That'd be like charging H&K for every peron murdered with one of their guns.
Your analogy is a little unfair. Factories require less manpower today because much of the mundane, manual labour can now be performed by machines and software, with results as good or better than what went before. Do you really think machines and software can write a gripping novel, paint a beautiful picture, or develop the next great computer game?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
copyright is... a healthy 6.4 lbs! (*badum clash*)
thank you! thank you! i'll be here all night.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I suppose they'll mandate that people use perpetual motion machines next, in order to save the environment, right?
Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. - Bruce Schneier
Copyright (and Patent) Law causes problems because it has been applied in an extreme way and is thus unnatural and unworkable.
Whilst it appears logical to protect one's intellectual property from 'copying', the morality of this originates in authorship - protection of the income generated from the work, and protection of the work itself (as being the 'original'). However, works age rapidly. The value of ideas is in their timeliness. So, an idea should become free once it has been sufficiently disseminated, since at that point the idea is 'free' in the wild.
If we treated copyright law in this way, then the survival time of a copyright (or patent) will depend on its market lifespan. Since practically all products (applied ideas) have a market life shown by a rise then a fall in sales as the market is produced, filled, then saturated, so too should a copyright expire once the peak of the sales (or marketing hype) has been attained. This is the marker for successful dissemination, and that is the just reward for the maker of the work.
Therefore, some ideas necessarily have longer copyright lifespans (perhaps a textbook or novel whose sales momentum is often more gradual and sustained) and others have very short lifespans (one-hit wonders on the radio - the purpose of which should really be as a sweetener to sell the rest of the CD).
Also, the way the idea is released should determine the nature of its copyright. Mass-broadcast of a film or a track on a CD or a concert should render the copyright null, since the work has been disseminated.
So, in this view, infringement of copyright by downloading a fresh DVD while it is still in the cinemas, or has just been released for sale in the market where it is downloaded, is copyright infringement. Downloading a music track you heard on the radio is not. Copying Windows XP (or the second-latest major version of anything) should not be copyright infringement because its market penetration is complete and it is being superseded.
With the above model, ordinary people with PC's are left alone, and those who are really stealing the work (eg: by leaking it out of the cutting room, or filming it in the limited preview then publishing it) are liable.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
IIRC, this particular legislation would, according to the masterplan, be about 2 or 3 years ahead of schedule.
The EU is a very sinister machine. Power resides in the hands of the Council 100%. The Council proposes legislation, and submits them to the European Parliament for rubber-stamping. In most cases, the MEPs haven't read the legislation they're voting on (this isn't a piece of Slashdot bull - this is really the truth) and wouldn't be able to understand it anyway. They are there because it's a very easy way to get fat without doing anything. The European Parliament can send a piece of legislation back to the Council for amendment (and the Council usually just makes superficial changes), but the second time around it goes through (different rules regarding the majority).
Make no mistake: the Council itself is a puppet of the G6, the Carlyle Group and other secretive friends. It's been decided the internet (in the form it is in right now) has to go down. The Council has to formulate a 5/10 year plan and direct national governments and the EU about what they have to do.
Let's add them to the list aswell. After all it's their software that's being used to run the downloading software....
Privacy is terrorism.
Reduce, reuse, cycle