I'm used to seeing people use "might makes right" to try to justify their own wrongdoing, but it's very disturbing to hear the victim give that same justification -- what does that say about the police where you live?
Mostly it says that there are FAR too many laws on the books. So many that the police don't even know what's legal or illegal in many cases or with any reliable level of certainty. As for complying with an order from the police, I think that we have little choice right now but to comply due to the fact that allowing people to not comply if they don't like the order would lead to a lot worse situations. That said, people should always be allowed to record a confrontation with police, for their own protection, and in order to hold public officials accountable for their actions. In the meantime, we should be pushing for fewer laws, and a simpler legal code. It's simply unreasonable to have so many laws, in such arcane language, that one requires years of training to be able to interpret them, and would be hard-pressed to know all of them even then.
Actually it would absolutely not be illegal or even wrong by any measure point to copy the GPL source code for own commercial use... as long as you make the source code available. It's called "the right to fork" and it is A Good Thing(TM).
Well, if you're making the source available, then you're complying, so no problem. The gp poster didn't say anything about making the source available though.
Maybe there's not an easy way for MS to completely disable the add-ins without shooting themselves in the foot, or maybe they didn't have time to do it before the release date, or maybe they just didn't feel like it. So what? Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.
Well then maybe they should have actually said you can't use add-ins with it in the EULA at the very least. They didn't, so it's their own fault if people do that with the product that they paid for.
So, If I 'obtain' a copy of some GPL'd software, I can copy all the code, and sell it as my own product? Maybe it violates the GPL, but its still not illegal right???
Actually, that would violate copyright law, not just the GPL, so it would definitely be illegal. The GPL grants you rights that you don't have under regular copyright law, if you're willing to accept the terms. If you don't agree to the GPL, then you're bound by regular copyright law.
From what I've heard, it was more along the lines of "that was interesting. Now why don'y you try some other tactics, since we still have time left in the exercise"
Not sure what gets accomplished by using a scripted response. Doesn't sound like something that would actually improve strategic thinking or raise any new issues that they might want to consider responses for. More like a cakewalk so that everyone could pat each other on the back after they win.
Also, it is naive to believe that war in Iraq would be an easy task, and Rumsfeld is not of the naive type.
So you're saying that his thoughts that we'd be in and out in a matter of a few months weren't naive? He said as much on a number of occasions leading up to the invasion. He thought we would simply take out Saddam's government and the Iraqis would somehow come to a quick consensus and install a new democratically elected government. This despite all the warnings and advice to the contrary, which he persistently ignored because they didn't fit his idea of how he'd like to see things go, and his ideas of a leaner more mobile military that could do more with less troops. You're really saying that he wasn't terribly naive? If not, then what were his true motives in disregarding all of the information that didn't fit with his unbelievably rosey predictions?
Further, the tollbooth example is hardly just an implication, the very nature of a toll booth is to charge a toll. Upon receiving it, you have permission to use the road.
Yep, and I doubt that they set them up to let people through for free, but that's just what people do with their wireless access points. The very nature of a wireless access point is to allow or deny permission for computers to connect to the network. If your request is granted and you are assigned an address on the network, then you have permission to use the network. It can be configured to use any of a number of methods of determining who should be granted access. The simplest configuration is to simply grant everyone access who requests it. I'm tired of people not taking responsibility for their networks and constantly trying to shift the blame when they haven't even taken the most rudimentary steps to prevent unwanted access to their networks. Your router comes configured to give everyone access. It has a warning in the instructions telling you this. If you don't want it to give everyone access, then don't leave it configured to do so. Just like they wouldn't leave a tollbooth configured to let people through for free.
First off, we're talking about a specific case. It makes no sense to me to make an assumption that a cafe owner with an unsecure, wide open network has engaged in any programmatic or configuration exercises to consider permissions.
The owner is informed by the documentation, usually in big red print, that the router is not secured by default, and that he should secure it and use a strong password when setting it up. If he chose to ignore this, then he is, by default, allowing anyone to connect to the acces point.
I'm also thinking that this Michigan guy should have gotten a decent lawyer, as from what I've read, the Michigan law requires that you make some attempt to circumvent a login procedure in order to gain fraudulent access to a network in order for the law to apply. In the case where a simple DHCP request is granted and the router assigns you an IP, authorization is implied. The guy's lawyer is probably ignorant of either this law or of computers or both. Not surprising since this is apparently the first time someone has been prosecuted under this law. It's one thing to hack into someone's network, but it's quite another to connect to a wireless access point that requires no login, which most newer laptops will do automatically without even asking.
More pertinently, I can't think of an occassion where a machine didn't give or refuse me something where the permission or lack thereof didn't come from the decisions of a human. Doesn't matter whether the human gave bad instructions, used a random process, or whatever. In the human and / or legal sense, the machine does not choose whether or not you have permission, and will not do so until true AI comes along.
The permission is implied in most cases because the machines are programmed to control access by only granting it to those whom the owners want to give permission to. Like when you drive through the tollbooth and throw your money in. By opening the gate, the machine is granting you access to the tollway, and the permission for you to drive on it is implied. The human decisions are made in the programming and configuration of the machines. In the case of this wi-fi incident, I think that the shop advertising free wi-fi and the fact that the router was configured to grant access to any machine that made a request, should count as implied permission. The router gave his computer access to the network because it asked for it. There was nothing fraudulent about the transaction. So, I think the law is being applied in a ridiculous way, and the punishment is even more ridiculous. A felony on your record for connecting to a wi-fi network advertised as free, and which most laptops would connect to automatically without any input from the user? That's pretty sad.
I don't disagree that many copyright holders are beyond greedy and that their behavior is unacceptable from my personal perspective. However, it is their content and they should have the legal authority to do with it as they see fit.
Only because we have deemed it useful to allow them to have a (supposedly limited) monopoly on distribution of that content. Unfortunately, copyright law isn't something that most people outside of the "copyright industry" pay attention to, and it has been massively expanded in duration and scope over the years, without giving any more compensation to the public in exchange for that monopoly. In fact, it's questionable whether anything that has been copyrighted since the 70s will ever fall into the public domain in the future if things keep going as they have been. On the positive side, as online distribution has gained popularity, copyright law is starting to get dragged out into the light so that people can see how hideously disfigured it has become. I'm hopeful that we may be able to get some changes for the better in the near future.
The reason these "bad copyright holders" succeed is because the general population is willing to admit, by the simplest of market gestures, that they find the terms acceptable for the price.
Actually, I think it has more to do with the ease of breaking the law without getting caught. I actually think it might be pretty wonderful if the industry ever manages to implement truly unbreakable DRM and gets their EULAs enforced. The backlash from people realizing that they are allowing this industry to run roughshod over the public's interests should be fun to watch. When they can no longer easily get what they want the way they want it without paying extortionate prices or agreeing to ridiculous licensing terms, I think people will finally start questioning our great leaders about why we are giving these jerks so much power and getting practically nothing in return.
Copyright is nothing more or less than a secured method of transfer designed to encourage sharing of the arts with the public (and that sharing is only an effective mechanism if it includes controls and restrictions--it's not "sharing" if one party has no responsibility to the other; that would be "gifting").
That's probably about the most optimistic (read: pollyanna-ish) description of copyright that I've seen in quite a while. The purpose is not to share the arts with the public. The purpose is to allow the largest copyright holders to extract the maximum amount of money possible from the public for a given work, which means re-selling the work in every possible format while simultaneously prohibiting people from converting it to other formats themselves, even though it would be trivial for them to do so. Copyright is supposed to protect a work from being distributed and/or sold by anyone other than the copyright holder, not to prohibit people from doing what they like with a work that they purchased so long as it doesn't involve re-distributing it. Copyright is continually being warped into a set of laws to increase profitability, not to increase availability.
The exemptions for parody and criticism are GUARANTEED as fair use exemptions to copyright law, and that INCLUDES works protected by DRM or other means. The use of an illegal tool to achieve those rights is a separate question, and it's not on topic for this video.
Having to sue the creator of a work in order to get a DRM-free copy of the work that I have purchased in DVD format in order to criticize the work is not my idea of protecting fair use, as it constitutes an undue financial and time burden. I already bought the work in a format that would be suitable for extracting a clip, except that it's illegal for anyone to sell or distribute a tool to me for that purpose (trafficking clause), and illegal for me to do so without an explicit exception being granted by the Library of Congress. I really don't see how that is protecting fair use. Of course huge numbers of people violate these laws every single day, which leads me to believe they are simply bad laws to begin with.
The copy protection on those files is a direct component of the low price (and yes it is low, compared to what people were paying per-track for album singles in decades past [adjusted for inflation, of course]), and as such, format-shifting where there are specific prohibitions tied to the content license is NOT fair use in any courtroom in this country.
I agree with you that most format-shifting is not considered fair use. I think the methods that the content industries are using to sell the works in various formats while prohibiting people from converting them from one format to another violate the spirit of copyright law (but then again most of copyright law these days violates the spirit of copyright law as it was conceived). Besides, singles have always been horrifically overpriced. You pay most of the cost of a new release album for a track or two and a remix or two if you're lucky. We should compare track prices with the per-track cost of an album. Otherwise we're simply allowing ourselves to be cheated. They don't even have to produce a physical product when you buy online. No CD, no case, no liner, none of it. Where's the savings?
Right. And if you follow the trail to the Copyright website where the Librarian publishes those exemptions as per that section, you see number 1:
"1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university's film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors."
You asked for where in the US Code the authority for said exemptions were granted, not where the exemption was explicitly named.
Now we're right back where we started. I said that there are no exemptions for the typical fair use scenarios. The one you point out is a very narrow educational exemption, that doesn't provide the sort of coverage that is accepted for use of unencrypted works in an educational environment for educational purposes. Nor are there any exemptions for parody, criticism, etc. That was my point. The anti-circumvention clause prevents you from circumventing DRM even for uses that would be considered fair use if the content wasn't protected by the DRM.
In other words, if the appropriate copyright-protected sections are not made available in another form for these purposes, the prohibition on bypassing the security system does not apply
No, (a)(C) contains the tests used by the Library of Congress to grant exemptions to the clause (which are reviewed every 3 years), but those exemptions (which I linked to earlier in the Wikipedia entry) do not cover typical fair use scenarios, but only a few select and very narrow scenarios. This is the text of that clause:
`(C) During the 2-year period described in subparagraph (A), and during each succeeding 3-year period, the Librarian of Congress, upon the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights, who shall consult with the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information of the Department of Commerce and report and comment on his or her views in making such recommendation, shall make the determination in a rulemaking proceeding on the record for purposes of subparagraph (B) of whether persons who are users of a copyrighted work are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by the prohibition under subparagraph (A) in their ability to make noninfringing uses under this title of a particular class of copyrighted works. In conducting such rulemaking, the Librarian shall examine--
Then it goes on to list the things that are to be considered in making the exemptions.
I'm not citing Wikipedia. I'm citing the US Code. The use of this material is not a copyright violation.
I'm citing US Code as well. I included the Wikipedia entry because it was the easiest place to find the most currently enacted exceptions to the circumvention clause, as established by the Library of Congress. I never claimed that the material itself was a copyright violation. I said that the circumvention clause does not make exceptions for fair uses, such as news reporting, criticism, parody, etc. Those aren't "pseudo-fair uses", they have been well-established.
You are permitted to use the clips in this capacity per section 107. You are permitted to break encryption to access software content if there is no legal means of doing so while preserving said encryption per chapter 12 (primarily infra 17 USC 1201).
You are permitted to use the clips in this capacity, but I don't know what part of chapter 12 you think allows you to circumvent the protections for that purpose. Can you cite a specific paragraph?
My only point is that there are exceptions allowed to break copy protection where necessary for specifically authorized purposes (simply obtaining clips is not categorically one of them). See also copyright.gov for the recent added exemptions to the DMCA.
My point is that the DMCA alters the US Code to prohibit the circumvention of copy protection mechanisms, and that it doesn't really make the exceptions you are talking about. Certainly not even close to being in line with normal fair use parameters. Try the Exemptions section of the Wikipedia article. The closest thing to an education exception is this, "Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university's film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors. (A new exemption in 2006.)" That's a pretty narrow exception, and hardly seems like it could be considered a general educational use exemption. I don't see anything in that article, or in the text of that section that allows for a non-profit exception, other than for library evaluation purposes. Aside from that, only security research seems to be a valid defense. So really, anti-circumvention rules seem to trump fair use.
It doesn't matter because the DMCA itself includes exceptions for non-profit and educational purposes, not to mention that as part of Title 17 it is subject to fair use exceptions.
I'd love to know what part of the DMCA makes an exception that allows you to circumvent copy protection, for educational purposes, or any other reason for that matter. I don't recall ever seeing such an exemption. Yes, fair use exceptions are applicable in those cases, but only to the use of the works, not to circumventing their protection schemes.
Curiously, could you provide an example of a "modern great artist," and a great work he/she/they have created?
Roger Waters
Interestingly enough, the greater an artist is, the less they need a long term of protection. As others have pointed out as well, people turn a profit on their work much faster than ever before in our history. The vast majority of works earn very little after only a few years of turning a profit. Then you have the long tail of earnings dropoff. A relative handful of works will continue to be profitable, but those works will have made so much money already that the creator will hardly be starving (unless he gets lost for a week in one of his mansions). The astoundingly small fraction of works that make little money up front, and a lot later, are an aberration, and not something to base the law on when compared to the public need to have access to our culture to reshape and use to express new ideas. Setting the copyright term to something that is at least defensible, maybe 20 years like patents, would help to balance the interests involved here. If the public is going to grant a monopoly on something, then the public should be getting something back from that deal. We used to, but we haven't gotten anything back for decades now.
1) Asshat consultant installs warezed Vista for hospital's prescription tracking system. 2) Vista's MS-supplied built-in DRM timebomb goes off, shutting down the system and forcing people to temporarily use pen and paper as a backup system. 3) Backup system takes longer to issue prescriptions, and/or is more prone to errors. Patient the right drug - but 10 minutes too late, (or the wrong drug altogether!) and dies. 4) Under the old law, someone might have sued Microsoft as well as the consultant.
Now explain how any of that has anything to do with the proposed law...
You're still doing it. You're still trying to lump every person into one huge borg-like collective, as if no one individual has the ability to think for himself, nor the ability to disagree (even in their own minds?) with any policy centralized power comes up with. That's what "the people" means, does it not: each and every individual subject to a common centralized power. Otherwise you'd say "some of the people", wouldn't you?
If you read my whole post, I wasn't claiming it was everyone, but that it is a good majority of people. Those that aren't like that are not enough to make more than a dent against the majority in most cases.
For christ's sake, at least acknowledge that government policy is at best a product of majority rule (meaning a subset of the whole of society)
I did.
To quote myself (with emphasis this time):
I'd say it's spot on, at least for a solid majority of the population.
Would it be too much to ask that you find out Rep. John Conyer's position - hell, even his name would be an improvement, and perhaps understanding why Rep. Smith is considered "key" (hint: check the committees) - before you start tarring him with the same brush as Rep. Lamar Smith?
Good point, but historically speaking, it's a pretty safe bet that the democrats are behind any bill that strengthens IP laws. It's generally a bi-partisan no-brainer since most people don't pay attention to these bills and they bring support from the copyright industry.
The idea that "society" somehow authorized this near-exponential growth of centralized power -- each individual "volunteering" themselves to oppression, year after year, "volunteering" more and more of their money to centralized power, year after year, like mindless drones who exist only to serve the collective -- this idea is not only absurd, it's laughable.
I'd say it's spot on, at least for a solid majority of the population. People allow it to happen by allowing themselves to be snowed by politicians. By continuing to squabble over petty differences in the party as if it makes a bit of difference in the long run. By continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils rather than voting for someone who isn't running a huge expensive campaign that makes them beholden to the interests that funded it. By allowing themselves to be distracted by the conflict and finger-pointing that goes on between the two major parties rather than realizing that both sides are so corrupt that it makes little difference which side is responsible for the current scandal. Make no mistake. The people of this country are very much responsible for the government they have.
The punishment in that instance seems reasonable to me.
But why do we need a new law to create yet another special case of causing death or injury while doing some specific thing? There are already plenty of laws and precedents out there to handle the causing of death or injury. This is just ridiculous.
Increase the maximum penalty for counterfeiting offenses from 10 years to 20 years imprisonment where the defendant knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause serious bodily injury, and increase the maximum penalty to life imprisonment where the defendant knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause death;
So, what exactly is wrong with the laws we already have against "knowingly or recklessly causing or attempting to cause death"?? Why do we need a new law for this?
Slashdot Mirror
Mostly it says that there are FAR too many laws on the books. So many that the police don't even know what's legal or illegal in many cases or with any reliable level of certainty. As for complying with an order from the police, I think that we have little choice right now but to comply due to the fact that allowing people to not comply if they don't like the order would lead to a lot worse situations. That said, people should always be allowed to record a confrontation with police, for their own protection, and in order to hold public officials accountable for their actions. In the meantime, we should be pushing for fewer laws, and a simpler legal code. It's simply unreasonable to have so many laws, in such arcane language, that one requires years of training to be able to interpret them, and would be hard-pressed to know all of them even then.
Well, if you're making the source available, then you're complying, so no problem. The gp poster didn't say anything about making the source available though.
Well then maybe they should have actually said you can't use add-ins with it in the EULA at the very least. They didn't, so it's their own fault if people do that with the product that they paid for.
Actually, that would violate copyright law, not just the GPL, so it would definitely be illegal. The GPL grants you rights that you don't have under regular copyright law, if you're willing to accept the terms. If you don't agree to the GPL, then you're bound by regular copyright law.
Not sure what gets accomplished by using a scripted response. Doesn't sound like something that would actually improve strategic thinking or raise any new issues that they might want to consider responses for. More like a cakewalk so that everyone could pat each other on the back after they win.
So you're saying that his thoughts that we'd be in and out in a matter of a few months weren't naive? He said as much on a number of occasions leading up to the invasion. He thought we would simply take out Saddam's government and the Iraqis would somehow come to a quick consensus and install a new democratically elected government. This despite all the warnings and advice to the contrary, which he persistently ignored because they didn't fit his idea of how he'd like to see things go, and his ideas of a leaner more mobile military that could do more with less troops. You're really saying that he wasn't terribly naive? If not, then what were his true motives in disregarding all of the information that didn't fit with his unbelievably rosey predictions?
Yep, and I doubt that they set them up to let people through for free, but that's just what people do with their wireless access points. The very nature of a wireless access point is to allow or deny permission for computers to connect to the network. If your request is granted and you are assigned an address on the network, then you have permission to use the network. It can be configured to use any of a number of methods of determining who should be granted access. The simplest configuration is to simply grant everyone access who requests it. I'm tired of people not taking responsibility for their networks and constantly trying to shift the blame when they haven't even taken the most rudimentary steps to prevent unwanted access to their networks. Your router comes configured to give everyone access. It has a warning in the instructions telling you this. If you don't want it to give everyone access, then don't leave it configured to do so. Just like they wouldn't leave a tollbooth configured to let people through for free.
The owner is informed by the documentation, usually in big red print, that the router is not secured by default, and that he should secure it and use a strong password when setting it up. If he chose to ignore this, then he is, by default, allowing anyone to connect to the acces point.
I'm also thinking that this Michigan guy should have gotten a decent lawyer, as from what I've read, the Michigan law requires that you make some attempt to circumvent a login procedure in order to gain fraudulent access to a network in order for the law to apply. In the case where a simple DHCP request is granted and the router assigns you an IP, authorization is implied. The guy's lawyer is probably ignorant of either this law or of computers or both. Not surprising since this is apparently the first time someone has been prosecuted under this law. It's one thing to hack into someone's network, but it's quite another to connect to a wireless access point that requires no login, which most newer laptops will do automatically without even asking.
The permission is implied in most cases because the machines are programmed to control access by only granting it to those whom the owners want to give permission to. Like when you drive through the tollbooth and throw your money in. By opening the gate, the machine is granting you access to the tollway, and the permission for you to drive on it is implied. The human decisions are made in the programming and configuration of the machines. In the case of this wi-fi incident, I think that the shop advertising free wi-fi and the fact that the router was configured to grant access to any machine that made a request, should count as implied permission. The router gave his computer access to the network because it asked for it. There was nothing fraudulent about the transaction. So, I think the law is being applied in a ridiculous way, and the punishment is even more ridiculous. A felony on your record for connecting to a wi-fi network advertised as free, and which most laptops would connect to automatically without any input from the user? That's pretty sad.
Probably a world in which we are granted or denied access to all kinds of things by machines every day of our lives.
Only because we have deemed it useful to allow them to have a (supposedly limited) monopoly on distribution of that content. Unfortunately, copyright law isn't something that most people outside of the "copyright industry" pay attention to, and it has been massively expanded in duration and scope over the years, without giving any more compensation to the public in exchange for that monopoly. In fact, it's questionable whether anything that has been copyrighted since the 70s will ever fall into the public domain in the future if things keep going as they have been. On the positive side, as online distribution has gained popularity, copyright law is starting to get dragged out into the light so that people can see how hideously disfigured it has become. I'm hopeful that we may be able to get some changes for the better in the near future.
Actually, I think it has more to do with the ease of breaking the law without getting caught. I actually think it might be pretty wonderful if the industry ever manages to implement truly unbreakable DRM and gets their EULAs enforced. The backlash from people realizing that they are allowing this industry to run roughshod over the public's interests should be fun to watch. When they can no longer easily get what they want the way they want it without paying extortionate prices or agreeing to ridiculous licensing terms, I think people will finally start questioning our great leaders about why we are giving these jerks so much power and getting practically nothing in return.
That's probably about the most optimistic (read: pollyanna-ish) description of copyright that I've seen in quite a while. The purpose is not to share the arts with the public. The purpose is to allow the largest copyright holders to extract the maximum amount of money possible from the public for a given work, which means re-selling the work in every possible format while simultaneously prohibiting people from converting it to other formats themselves, even though it would be trivial for them to do so. Copyright is supposed to protect a work from being distributed and/or sold by anyone other than the copyright holder, not to prohibit people from doing what they like with a work that they purchased so long as it doesn't involve re-distributing it. Copyright is continually being warped into a set of laws to increase profitability, not to increase availability.
Having to sue the creator of a work in order to get a DRM-free copy of the work that I have purchased in DVD format in order to criticize the work is not my idea of protecting fair use, as it constitutes an undue financial and time burden. I already bought the work in a format that would be suitable for extracting a clip, except that it's illegal for anyone to sell or distribute a tool to me for that purpose (trafficking clause), and illegal for me to do so without an explicit exception being granted by the Library of Congress. I really don't see how that is protecting fair use. Of course huge numbers of people violate these laws every single day, which leads me to believe they are simply bad laws to begin with.
I agree with you that most format-shifting is not considered fair use. I think the methods that the content industries are using to sell the works in various formats while prohibiting people from converting them from one format to another violate the spirit of copyright law (but then again most of copyright law these days violates the spirit of copyright law as it was conceived). Besides, singles have always been horrifically overpriced. You pay most of the cost of a new release album for a track or two and a remix or two if you're lucky. We should compare track prices with the per-track cost of an album. Otherwise we're simply allowing ourselves to be cheated. They don't even have to produce a physical product when you buy online. No CD, no case, no liner, none of it. Where's the savings?
Now we're right back where we started. I said that there are no exemptions for the typical fair use scenarios. The one you point out is a very narrow educational exemption, that doesn't provide the sort of coverage that is accepted for use of unencrypted works in an educational environment for educational purposes. Nor are there any exemptions for parody, criticism, etc. That was my point. The anti-circumvention clause prevents you from circumventing DRM even for uses that would be considered fair use if the content wasn't protected by the DRM.
No, (a)(C) contains the tests used by the Library of Congress to grant exemptions to the clause (which are reviewed every 3 years), but those exemptions (which I linked to earlier in the Wikipedia entry) do not cover typical fair use scenarios, but only a few select and very narrow scenarios. This is the text of that clause:
Then it goes on to list the things that are to be considered in making the exemptions.
I'm citing US Code as well. I included the Wikipedia entry because it was the easiest place to find the most currently enacted exceptions to the circumvention clause, as established by the Library of Congress. I never claimed that the material itself was a copyright violation. I said that the circumvention clause does not make exceptions for fair uses, such as news reporting, criticism, parody, etc. Those aren't "pseudo-fair uses", they have been well-established.
You are permitted to use the clips in this capacity, but I don't know what part of chapter 12 you think allows you to circumvent the protections for that purpose. Can you cite a specific paragraph?
My point is that the DMCA alters the US Code to prohibit the circumvention of copy protection mechanisms, and that it doesn't really make the exceptions you are talking about. Certainly not even close to being in line with normal fair use parameters. Try the Exemptions section of the Wikipedia article. The closest thing to an education exception is this, "Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university's film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors. (A new exemption in 2006.)" That's a pretty narrow exception, and hardly seems like it could be considered a general educational use exemption. I don't see anything in that article, or in the text of that section that allows for a non-profit exception, other than for library evaluation purposes. Aside from that, only security research seems to be a valid defense. So really, anti-circumvention rules seem to trump fair use.
I'd love to know what part of the DMCA makes an exception that allows you to circumvent copy protection, for educational purposes, or any other reason for that matter. I don't recall ever seeing such an exemption. Yes, fair use exceptions are applicable in those cases, but only to the use of the works, not to circumventing their protection schemes.
Interestingly enough, the greater an artist is, the less they need a long term of protection. As others have pointed out as well, people turn a profit on their work much faster than ever before in our history. The vast majority of works earn very little after only a few years of turning a profit. Then you have the long tail of earnings dropoff. A relative handful of works will continue to be profitable, but those works will have made so much money already that the creator will hardly be starving (unless he gets lost for a week in one of his mansions). The astoundingly small fraction of works that make little money up front, and a lot later, are an aberration, and not something to base the law on when compared to the public need to have access to our culture to reshape and use to express new ideas. Setting the copyright term to something that is at least defensible, maybe 20 years like patents, would help to balance the interests involved here. If the public is going to grant a monopoly on something, then the public should be getting something back from that deal. We used to, but we haven't gotten anything back for decades now.
Now explain how any of that has anything to do with the proposed law...
If you read my whole post, I wasn't claiming it was everyone, but that it is a good majority of people. Those that aren't like that are not enough to make more than a dent against the majority in most cases.
I did.
To quote myself (with emphasis this time):
Good point, but historically speaking, it's a pretty safe bet that the democrats are behind any bill that strengthens IP laws. It's generally a bi-partisan no-brainer since most people don't pay attention to these bills and they bring support from the copyright industry.
I'd say it's spot on, at least for a solid majority of the population. People allow it to happen by allowing themselves to be snowed by politicians. By continuing to squabble over petty differences in the party as if it makes a bit of difference in the long run. By continuing to vote for the lesser of two evils rather than voting for someone who isn't running a huge expensive campaign that makes them beholden to the interests that funded it. By allowing themselves to be distracted by the conflict and finger-pointing that goes on between the two major parties rather than realizing that both sides are so corrupt that it makes little difference which side is responsible for the current scandal. Make no mistake. The people of this country are very much responsible for the government they have.
But why do we need a new law to create yet another special case of causing death or injury while doing some specific thing? There are already plenty of laws and precedents out there to handle the causing of death or injury. This is just ridiculous.
So, what exactly is wrong with the laws we already have against "knowingly or recklessly causing or attempting to cause death"?? Why do we need a new law for this?