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EFF Is Suing the US Government To Invalidate the DMCA's DRM Provisions (boingboing.net)
Cory Doctorow, writes for BoingBoing: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just filed a lawsuit that challenges the Constitutionality of Section 1201 of the DMCA, the "Digital Rights Management" provision of the law, a notoriously overbroad law that bans activities that bypass or weaken copyright access-control systems, including reconfiguring software-enabled devices (making sure your IoT light-socket will accept third-party lightbulbs; tapping into diagnostic info in your car or tractor to allow an independent party to repair it) and reporting security vulnerabilities in these devices. EFF is representing two clients in its lawsuit: Andrew "bunnie" Huang, a legendary hardware hacker whose NeTV product lets users put overlays on DRM-restricted digital video signals; and Matthew Green, a heavyweight security researcher at Johns Hopkins who has an NSF grant to investigate medical record systems and whose research plans encompass the security of industrial firewalls and finance-industry "black boxes" used to manage the cryptographic security of billions of financial transactions every day. Both clients reflect the deep constitutional flaws in the DMCA, and both have standing to sue the US government to challenge DMCA 1201 because of its serious criminal provisions (5 years in prison and a $500K fine for a first offense).Doctorow has explained aspects of this for The Guardian today. You should also check Huang's blog post on this.
Although I have no idea why it took this long.
You might want to put a link to EFF's donate page. Thanks.
Need to get trump on board
Well, the federal government has not, with very few exceptions, ever repealed or reduced any laws.
I don't expect this to be changed. Lobbyists, greedy congressmen, and the strangely rigid-standing FBI (stick up the ass)
will fight any change that they see as detrimental to their well-being.... or profit... or perks, whatever.
Change is always harder than the status quo.
What about enforcing anti trust and other laws so the DMCA abuse does get as bad as it is? Or you do want an apple car that must do oil changes each 3000 miles at the dealer with an a cost of $100-150 or the car will go in an limp home mode?
We're all counting on you!
Here is the complaint, in case anyone wants to read it.
Their argument in brief: those provisions of the DMCA are preventing people from expressing themselves (free speech) which violates the first amendment. The Library of Congress is supposed to approve various exemptions to the DMCA for the purpose of research (or other), but the LoC failed to do so (in 2015). Even if the LoC had correctly fulfilled their duty, having them as a gatekeeper on what speech is allowed violates the first amendment.
This is a great lawsuit, I can't wait to see what the government's response will be. Incidentally, there is a third plaintiff besides the two mentioned in the summary, a company called Alphamax (but I've never heard of them).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I, write right here: that manishs, does not know, how to use commas.
At the bottom of the
Why would you even need to do that? I don't recall copyright having an amendment. Don't Constitutional rights trump pretty much everything else, period? Remind me when this happened exactly? Copyright/patents are a short term monopoly IN EXCHANGE for sharing creative works and discoveries with society. That means that you have to explain everything completely. If you don't like that, you can always just keep your creations & inventions private. (Coke's formula is a trade secret for example).
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I don't recall copyright having an amendment. Don't Constitutional rights trump pretty much everything else, period?
Copyright is one of the enumerated powers of Congress (U.S. Const. I.8): "The Congress shall have power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This power is subject to other rights retained by the people, such as freedom from Congressional interference with freedom of speech (U.S. Const. Amendment I).
I am unsure why the DOJ is on the list.
Because the law has criminal penalties. Suing the sitting Attorney General for an injunction on enforcing a law is the standard legal fiction used to challenge a criminal statute's constitutionality in the United States.
Coke's REAL weapon is trademark law. If somebody started selling a beverage that tasted exactly like Coca-Cola, but never represented it as tasting like Coke or having anything to do with Coke, there's very little Coca-Cola could actually DO to stop them.
The thing is, it would only be a matter of time until some employee was overheard claiming to someone that it WAS the same as Coke, and Coca-Cola could sue them into oblivion based upon the actions of that employee.
That said, AFAIK, Coca-Cola is the ONLY company authorized to buy de-cocanized coca leaves from the federal government's sole authorized supplier. So as a practical matter, even if you downloaded their allegedly secret formula online, you'd never be able to replicate it exactly unless you wanted to risk getting raided and arrested by DEA agents, since there's no legal second source for that key ingredient.
A veto from President Clinton could not have stopped the Digital Millennium Copyright Act from becoming law, as it passed both houses through voice vote. A voice vote requires 80 percent assent in each house, a veto override only 67 percent.
If you want to use a portion of DRM proctected film in your own film (as part of a narrative etc), you can't do that
For educational fair use, the MPAA encourages teachers to cam the monitor.
And that's what Regulatory Capture looks like when it grows up. Effective legal monopolies are the dream of every CEO, and we seem intent on making more of that happen under the guise of "protecting the little guy from corporations through additional regulations" (which may even be true for the first few years).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Hollywood supports Republicans? Really?
Some do, some don't. Hollywood is not a person with a political stance; it's a place that has people in the film industry on all sides of the political spectrum, ranging from Mel Gibson to Jane Fonda.
Don't Constitutional rights trump pretty much everything else, period?
Evidently the 9th circuit court and state of California disagrees.
Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D): "This is California; we don’t pay too much attention to the Constitution"
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
You're exactly the reason I threw those two words in there. Frankly, I don't believe it either - but it is the ideal state of our form of government. Never mind that it doesn't really work that way.
Tell that to Red Bull. You're mostly right -- there are only certain companies licensed to trade in coca leaf, probably because it'd be too easy otherwise to trade coca leaf under the cover of it being de-cocanized coca leaf -- but Stepan can sell to other beverage makers besides TCCC.
What has got lost is the 'promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts' bit. The 'by securing' bit has become a religious dogma. In the modern world, examples like Free Software show how the current 'implementation' does not fulfil the aim of 'promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts'. In the light of the relatively modern invention of modern computing, the 'by' but (the implementation) needs a serious rethink. But those who benefit disproportionately are economically bound to campaign to move law more in line with their interests, and the 'promot[ion of] the Progress of Science and useful Arts' is the victim.
John_Chalisque
So why isn't the library of congress making these exemptions?I usually think of librarians as being pretty good guardians of research and free speech. It seems like the LOC does not follow that spirit.
It should provide safe harbor protection without requiring content take down notices be processed. For example of abuse look at the Gavin E Long videos on YouTube; he filmed himself and uploaded blog videos as the sole owner of the videos. Then he died after doing a mass shooting. In response provocateurs submitted fake DMCA copyright claims and now all the videos are offline, but only he could access his account to submit counterclaims to have the videos put back up. YouTube follows the DMCA which requires the videos or content to be taken down even if the request is invalid, because without the due process checks of a judge or jury there is no way to know if the content is infringing or not.
No one but Gavin could defend himself but in the case a judge or jury were involved, they might never issue take down orders because the requests were obviously frivolous.
obamasweapon.com
It sounds more like an unlimited time to authors
The limit to individual authors is the record human lifespan. "Life" for works of corporate authorship is reckoned at a fixed 25 years after publication or 50 years after creation, whatever comes first.
As for retrospective extensions, so long as the term is finite at any given moment, and so long as nobody manages to prove what the Supreme Court in Eldred called "legislative misbehavior" on Congress's part, the term complies with the "limited Times" restriction. The Copyright Term Extension Act was ruled a one-time harmonization to the copyright term in the European Union. But I imagine that a further extension prior to 2024 would be stronger evidence of "legislative misbehavior".