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10 Years Later, Misunderstood DMCA Is the Law That "Saved the Web"
mattOzan writes "On the tenth anniversary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act [PDF], Wired Magazine posits that the DMCA should be praised for catalyzing the interactive '2.0' Web that we enjoy today. While acknowledging the troublesome 'anti-circumvention' provision of the act, they claim that any harm caused by that is far outweighed by the act's "notice-and-takedown" provision and the safe harbor that this provides to intermediary ISPs. Fritz Attaway, policy adviser for the MPAA weighed in saying 'It's not perfect. But it's better than nothing.'"
It's true, the notice-and-takedown is a bitch for the user but without the safe harbor that it provides, the service providers would do a lot more validation and the web 2.0 would not be so user oriented.
Now the DMCA applied to hardware makes me scream so it's not perfect but the safe harbor is one thing that they got right.
The anicircumvention things should go, certainly, and the illegal search-and-seziure stuff should be purged, but the article makes a good point. Without the explicit "fair use" bits, the Web wouldn't look like it does today.
This article is complete and utter bullshit.
How about we celebrate rape and murder too, while we're at it? After all, if it weren't for rape and murder, we wouldn't be living in this violence-free Utopia.
They have no financial incentive to defend you, and all past activities suggest they'd kick you to the curb and say "Use someone else for your ISP" regardless of whether or not that's possible.
I mean, do you really want Comcast fighting for your rights?
How a 'bout a whac-a-mole(TM) analogy?
As a result of whacking the mole on the head with a mallet when it tries to pop up out of four of the five holes, the DMCA is responsible for the mole's successful appearance out of the last hole.
I've always felt like the DMCA is like an authority figure that tries to sound lenient by saying, "You know, we could have made it a lot worse..." or "Aren't you thankful you can still have your toys/music?"
Not one user ever says, Gee, I wish that today I could do *less* with my music today than I could yesterday.
The DMCA is a corporation-driven, draconian rule that is abused on both sides, by the enforcers and the afflicted. Increased government regulation is rarely the answer to any of our societal/economic ills, much less so in the case of digital media.
Nothing is better.
Despite the problems and abuses, it's impossible to gauge what the internet landscape would look like today had it not been for the DMCA
Er, you could look at the Internet landscape found in other countries that didn't have a DMCA-style law in 1998.
So if not for a draconian law that takes away fair use rights and introduces excessive and harsh penalties for minor infringements, we wouldn't have a buzzword laden technique for dynamically changing the content on a web page withuot a full refresh.
I don't think I've heard anything this absurd, even on slashdot, in quite some time.
(And yes I know I've over-simplified, but come on people!)
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I don't know about you, but for me it says a lot that the mere fact that any law is being backed by a MPAA policy advisor makes me distrust it more.
Perjury by the legal establishment and it's practitioners is given a nod and a wink. It is only perjury if you or I do it.
And they are then free to resell, or even to give away your work. All that hard work and the bastards are just giving it away for free!
Wait, maybe the GPL is about being free. (Free speech, and free beer. CentOS is the perfect example of the GPL in action. Even if RedHat already give away the source to everyone.)
I wank in the shower.
The article contains a serious flaw in logic. Given the legal environment of the DMCA, if the internet we have now is a Good Thing, then how does that imply that the DMCA is the cause, without considering how much potentially better things could have been instead?
This kind of false rationalization is neither legitimate news reporting, nor is it respectful of those who have fought against the abuses of a poorly conceived and implemented law.
After all, it's a bit like saying that because my car got towed yesterday, I wasn't able to get into a car accident. That I had no car to wreck does not mean I am better off for having it towed--in fact, it is very probable the time and money I spent to retrieve it could have gone to something much more rewarding and useful.
Sounds like the typical "I've done nothing wrong" diatribe of a man who refuses to admit a mistake despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=bogus+dmca
I'm not impressed, and since I'm outside of the US, I've a good mind to make a bogus DMCA complaint to Wired's Teleco and get the apologist's blog taken down.
Yes there is. It's called Sweden.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
The MPAA's Attaway, who calls himself the lobbying group's "old man" for his 33 years of service, recalls that the DMCA was a compromise from the start. "The ISPs wanted safe harbor provisions in return for their support for the anti-circumvention provisions, which was one of the major and most important compromises in this legislation," he says. "It's not perfect. But it's better than nothing."
This MPAA lawyer speaks of a compromise between themselves and ISPs. As if they are the only parties involved.
What about the 300 million actual human bodies that the politicians are supposed to represent? Attaway knows what the MPAA and the ISPs wanted. Does he have a clue what the actual human beings wanted? Did congress?
Evidently the MPAA has successfully convinced Washington that those humans should be considered as "customers" and not "voters".
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Trouble is, the DMCA is two laws rolled into one. On the one hand you have the way hosting sites such as Youtube are not held responsible for copyright violations of user-uploaded content so long as they immediately withdraw material on allegation of infringement. This is what the article is saying is responsible for current sites such as Youtube, MySpace and others. This is a supportable argument (i.e. you may or may not agree with it, but there is certainly a case to be argued). On the other hand, you have the restrictions on circumvention technology. An entirely distinct law that most people here would probably agree is far less supportable from the viewpoint of social good. Yet these two very different things have been rolled into one, probably to increase the chances of getting the latter part passed. This has the effect of making it much harder to evaluate or debate the DMCA law in the USA.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I personally think we'd be best off just going back to the original terms that we had back in 1790. It provides copyright protection for a full third of an average artist's life, for crying out loud, and I believe it was a fair balance keeping 100% in spirit of what the Copyright Clause was trying to achieve. Why is it not enough to exclusively profit from a work for that long, and why is the artist's individual right to profit for the rest of his fricking life considered more beneficial than the right of society to benefit from that artist's work after he's had a reaonable chance to do so?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas