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Congressman Hollywood Wants To Make DMCA Tougher
Stormy seas writes "Congressman 'Hollywood' Howard Berman (D-CA) used a House subcommittee hearing today to express his view that the DMCA was in need of a rewrite. In his view, it doesn't go far enough. During his opening remarks for a hearing on the PRO-IP Act, Berman said that the DMCA's Safe Harbor needs further scrutiny and that it might be time to make filtering mandatory. There's more: Berman also 'wants to examine the "effectiveness of takedown notices" under the DMCA, and he'd like to take another look at whether filtering technology has advanced to the point where Congress ought to mandate it in certain situations.'"
And to think, I was happy when the Democrats took control of Congress back in November.
Meet the new schmucks, same as the old schmucks.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
His view that the DMCA is in need of a rewrite? Has he been getting letters from his voters / constituents that the DMCA needs to be tougher?
If not, then why is he pushing for greater power?
(In an ideal world, corporations are not constituents. People are)
The scary thing is, is that this is very likely to pass. As many personal freedoms that the DMCA stepped all over it was passed with a 100% vote. Since no one wants to be seen as soft on crime, I predict this one will too. Quite sad actually as some parts of the current contradict the Home Recording Act of 1984(I think that's when it was passed). I hope the ISPs fight this tooth and nail and get it killed on the universal filtering provision and someone points out that the phrasing of what he wants is similar to China's Great Firewall.
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"Chinese Amazons, power armor, laser swords.... things just meant to be." - Shampoo, A Very Scary Bet
I was going to make a flippant remark about how you could implement the new government and call it "Communism", but it occurred to me that a bit of education would be better.
You see, Direct Democracy (rule by consensus of the masses) has been considered many times in history. Unfortunately, no such democracy really got off the ground or survived. There are simply too many competing interests to make it viable. In the few instances where there is a consensus, a Tyranny of the Masses can often create worse conditions for some individuals. Effectively, you have no real justice.
Representational Democracies are intended to blend the best aspects of consensus with the best aspects of a Benevolent Dictator. (An example of such a dictator was Emporor Trajan of the Roman Empire.) By electing someone to represent their views, the majority is able to have their viewpoints expressed but with their competing interests solved at the level of the representative. The representatives then work out their differences and come to an agreement that (if they're doing their job correctly) generally pleases the people they represent.
Of course, what is to stop the representatives from carrying out tyranny against people they do not represent? What is to prevent them from creating unjust conditions for individuals in their attempts to improve the life of the majority of those they represent? Worse yet, what is to prevent an official that the representatives grant power to from using that power to take control? (e.g. The Roman Republic being overthrown to become the Roman Empire.) That's where checks and balances step in.
In modern democracies, these checks tend to take the form of legalistic means or division of power. The U.S. Constitution, for example, grants basic rights which are then upheld by the courts. It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court to ensure that the representatives never override the intent of the basic rights granted by the Constitution. Another example is the control of the military. The direct control of military assets in the U.S. are divided among individual states. Funding for those assets is controlled by Congress. Use of the assets is controlled by the President, but War may not be declared without the approval of Congress.
This division of power ensures that neither the President or Congress can turn the military on their own people. Those in the military report to the President of the United States, but their actual responsibility is to the citizens and the states. (In ancient Rome, the responsibility of the soldiers was to their commander. A mistake that allowed Julius Caesar to seize control.)
What I'm getting at is that the design for modern governments has been well thought through. There are a lot of reasons behind the layout of our governments, and they are (to date) the best balance for free societies that history has been able to produce. Simply throwing away the government in favor of anarchy ignores the thousands of years of history that have lead to the abolishment of empires and dictator rule.
Today's governments can still be improved, but let's make sure we're making those improvements with a full awareness of what our ancestors learned.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
a bill that could boost statutory damages for copyright infringement
I'm pretty sure damages are about steep enough as it is. Something $250,000 per album is the metric I think. Correct if me I'm wrong, that's just what I've seen suits for ip infringement go for (RIAA). I sincerely hope this guy does not get his way. With breaking net neutrality and introducing content filtering on the table I worry for the future of the web.
I got a catholic block.
The DMCA needs a rewrite, direly.
But I fear the agreement ends here.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Pardon the tinfoil hat, but this is clearly a ruse to force ISPs to put in a Chinese-style, government-controlled way to limit free speech. Even if you don't have any interest in stealing the crap that Hollywood and the record companies spew out, you should be very concerned about this bill. I've sent my representative and both of my senators the letter blow. Feel free to copy and modify it as you like if you'd like to write to congress as well.
Dear <Fill in the blank>,
I understand that the House Judiciary Committee recently introduced the PRO-IP act. I've read that Representative Berman of California has even discussed a congressional mandate of filtering technology. (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071213-time-to-revisit-the-dmca.html)
As a computer programmer, I generate intellectual property and I am all for tough laws to protect my rights. However, as a citizen, I am far more concerned about laws that force companies to raise their prices without benefiting their consumers (which is simply the equivalent of a tax on everyone that's spent on projects benefiting only a very few) and my personal freedoms.
The success of the Internet is entirely due to the ability of telecom providers to do their job: facilitate communication. They are not liable if a telephone or internet connection is used for committing a crime. The actual criminal is. As a consumer, I don't want to pay more for telecommunications because hollywood is too cheap to pursue legal action against pirates. After all, I don't ask the government to pay to put an alarm system on my home or car. Hollywood should bear the expense of protecting their intellectual property and pass that on to their customers so we all pay for the cost of producing movies and music based on how much of it we consume.
Furthermore, I have a much deeper concern about a congressional requirement for filtering technology. It is simply one more step towards a totalitarian state of big government with too much power. In America, we enjoy freedom of speech and press not only because our constitution mandates it, but because the free market has created the technology to facilitate it. Unlike in other countries such as China or North Korea, the government simply can't restrict speech because no one in America would obey such unconstitutional laws or policies. If the government puts in place a system that can limit what information can flow freely over the Internet, we're simply one law or government policy away from destroying the first amendment. Free speech is far to important to the American way of life to wait for the courts to declare such a thing unconstitutional.
Whether the technology is there or not, please vote against any legislation that attempts to mandate that internet service providers and/or telecommunications companies filter the information they are charged with transmitting on behalf of their customers. Such a policy would be devastating to both our economy and our democracy.
Sincerely,
Adam Carheden
The founders were smarter than that. The US Constitution instead assumes that people have these rights (as expressed in the Declaration of Independence), and limits government interference with them. Read the 1st amendment: "Congress shall make no law...", later clarified to mean that no branch of the government at any level can do those things (interfere with speech, religion, the press, gathering).
Do you have ESP?
Actually, the Nazi Internet filtering and monitoring program wasn't nearly as effective as they had hoped. It was one of the great failures of the Nazis, and one wonders if the war would have turned out differently had they been successful in their attempts at truly effective Net filtering.
Their first attempts were very crude, and basically involved having operators inspect each packet by hand before allowing them to be sent. This was slow and time consuming, and delayed packet switching so badly that the Net in Germany became near unusable. As the Nazis wanted to be able to monitor communications, rather than simply eliminating communication, they knew they needed a better way.
They weren't able to come up with automated solutions until 1941, and even then they were slow and unreliable. The first techniques involved large machines with automated "hands" to pick out the packets and text scanners to look for offending text. However, the machines broke down frequently, and were easily defeated by employing simple encoding such as rot13, or even by intentionally misspelling banned words.
It wasn't until late 1944 that they were able to come up with a fully digital process, but of course by then it was too late to do much good.
Politics is the enemy of technology.
It seems that the priorities of our politicians lie not with expanding the market for new technologies and benefitting the whole of the United States, but rather, with protecting the outdated market models of a few dominant players in the industry. It occurs neither to the politicians nor the industry that there is a lot of money to be made by embracing technology. If you want examples, look at Google. Look at Microsoft.
But instead of the RIAA and MPAA embracing technology, building new markets, and experiencing the stock-increase-frenzy of being the Next Big Thing(TM), they seek to expand copyright law, stifle the market, and strangle the industry. And when their efforts don't produce the increases they seek, what do they do? Blame piracy, of course!
Of course the artists are starving; the record companies don't know how to sell music!
And we're slipping farther along into becoming the technological backwater of the first world. Truly sad, that technology is being vilified for the evil that can be done with it, rather than the good that it already does society.
It must be nice to have a job where you can always blame your poor performance on the actions of others.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
of all the FUD and bullshit Howard Berman spews. Personally, I'd like to see laws requiring EVERY dollar a senator or representative gets - regardless of the source - accounted for. If they can't account for it with a clear paper trail then they get fined - $250,000 per dollar unaccounted for. Grandma sent you $10 for Christmas but you can't find the card that came with it? I'm sorry Howard, that will be $2.5 million dollars payable to the United States of America to relieve the tax burden on the middle class. If they have to have a personal accountant keep track of all of it, then they pay for it out of their salary AND the salaries of all those serving in the House or Senate are frozen for 6 years - so no pay bumps to cover hiring that personal accountant.
I say we squeeze them so tight they literally crap themselves when they take "campaign contributions" from big business. I say we make the task of keeping track of all that "soft" money and other contributions so onerous that it will be more than it is worth -- for the most part. I say we, the people, take back our country (for those of us who live in the USA) and make the politicians once more SERVE the people and not their own self-interest, pocketbooks, or corporate greed.
I know this will probably never happen, at least not in my lifetime, but it is a nice dream to have.
Here is a parting quote I found interesting many years ago (and still do):
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commissioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
That is a cogent discussion of the differences between American republicanism and direct democracy, however, it does not (as you imply) apply to all 'modern' democracies. The concept of checks and balances is by no means unique to the American system but it is an idiosyncrasy in the international sphere. Our presidential system (which is really what you are describing) is much less common among modern democracies than is the parliamentary model, which is based not on separation of powers and individual accountability for the executive but rather on fusion of powers and mutual accountability at the head of government level. Observing the British Parliament, and popular perception of it, you will find that the Prime Minister has power virtually unchecked by formal law, leading many in the press to bemoan the free exercise of power by that office. It is also worth noting that the form of separation of powers considered most important by our founding fathers was not the separation between branches of the federal government but the division between the federal government and the states, which was to a great degree a rejection of the British unitary model, in which ALL governments (national, city, and local) have only dependent power upon the will of Parliament. That model, with its attendant rejection of that crucial form of separation of powers, is by far the most common amongst modern democracies.
To address a few other points:
1) The constitution does not grant rights, and the courts cannot uphold them. They are considered 'intrinsic' and are therefore beyond the scope of law to judge. It is the burden of the legislature to prove that its actions do not interfere with the enumerated rights or, very importantly, with the non-enumerated rights guaranteed- but not provided- by the tenth amendment.
2) Separation of powers does not give you certainty that the military will not launch a coup, or that the military will not be used by one branch of government against another. A case in point is the Nullification Crisis of 1832, another would be the 1876 elections in the Southern states.
3) The argument that modern governments (and, by extension, our government) are well thought through is to some degree bolstered by the extraordinary longevity of our constitution, but we must recognize that the elastic clause (article 8, section 18, U.S. Constitution) is not the iron band it once was. The original form of government envisioned by our forefathers is, mercifully , dead. We have since performed massive, but piecemeal, renovations on that framework, and have in doing so created a new form of government which we do not understand very fully. Personally, two quotes come to mind- the first, from the Langoliers, is that "I'm not sure that knowing what that is will save our asses, but I'm damn sure that not knowing will get us killed!", and the second, from Joel on Software, is that "it is easier to write code than to read it", in this case meaning that we had better understand what is changing, and why, if we are to preserve the freedoms we hold dear.
OK, I expect the Representative from Hollywood to demand even more special privileges for Hollywood - that's what they send him there for. And I expect the Reps from the rest of the country to slap him down - that's the other 299 million of us send them there for.
What I'd really like to see would be a Congress enforce the Constitution, which says Congress can infringe our rights to free expression only to promote science and the useful arts by securing for limited time exclusive rights of authors to exploit their own work. Since exclusivity is at its lowest utility to protect motivating return on investment as it ever was, and free dissemination is at its greatest utility, I'd expect that limited time to be the shortest in history, at most its original 14 years, if not eliminated entirely.
But then I guess Hollywood Berman would have nothing to do.
--
make install -not war
Yes, they have. Black powder, repeating rifles, the steam engine, the radio, interchangeable parts, the assembly line, the affordable and reliable motor car, the airplane, the telegraph, the telephone, cocaine, television, LSD... technology is more than the Internet and public-key cryptography. Many advances that have changed life and civilization have had to be considered by our ancestors.
The governments of the world, if they were not effected by technology, would still be fighting wars using rocks and sticks and would not be taxing or regulating driving a car. Stories like Watergate may have never broken, and Tienamen Square almost certainly not. Our entire economy would be quite different if it wasn't for large sea-traveling things called ships which allow for import and export of goods.
People are running political campaigns online now. The people in Washington are trying to get a grasp on what "digital" means in connection with "copyright". They realize that it doesn't take thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours to make a printing press followed by a substantial effort to make a pamphlet. They also realize it takes just a few moments to get an entire book, movie, or music album copied now. That's why they're trying to adapt. They're clueless about it, and are doing a generally bad job. The next generation of people won't be.
The thing I find most humorous is this is largely the rebellious, rioting, demonstrating, power-fighting generation of the 1960's that is trying to squash the expression and civil disobedience of a younger generation. What's that old saying about maturity, that "Youth is when you blame everything on your parents, while maturity is when you learn everything is the fault of the younger generation." See, the problem is the 60's generation didn't grow up -- they just sold out. They changed what they believe and are still blaming everything on someone other than themselves. Meanwhile, the people who think it's wrong to upload copyrighted content for the whole world but who borrow an MP3 or two here or there are being made villains in the press and before Congress like they're pressing disks and making millions of dollars in some back alley.