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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.'"
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)
Meet the new schmucks, same as the old schmucks.
There is a saying in poker: If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is... it's you.
Why do we still think that we can swing between two parties that are the same in so many ways and have real change? Who's the real schmuck in that case?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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
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
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.