I wrote and hard-copied and sent this letter to all my congressmen over 2 weeks ago. Please Steal this letter from me and use as your own! Send it to everyone you know for them in turn to send to every congressmen on the hill!
Dear Representative,
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge
Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of pointing out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precedents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS.
No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am mistaken, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such total control would be the only sure fire method of defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and Internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture.
Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyrighted works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
This article is a joke right? Overall Bandwidth is increasing 4 fold every year. Whoever wrote this should learn a little about supply and demand. When you create the demand (everyone using 100mbit connections), then the supply side automatically chimes in. By the time they get around to installing a sizable amount of fiber to the curb, the backbone will be huming at lots of terabits/sec. More importantly several optronics companies are already ready to supply terabit routers to those who need them and they don't take up nearly the room that an arrays of cisco routers do. Sounds to me like this is Cisco Propaganda, because unbeknowest to most of their investors they are not ready for optical routing. If terabit optical routing takes off, Cisco's current market lead will wither away like dust, and they know it. This is a classic example of creating Artificial Scarcity to maintain current revune streams. And for a second I though we were talking about the MPAA and RIAA all over again. I guess Cisco is learning from these guys!
Creating Local EFF Chapeter
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 1
Well Jon Katz, what do you say? I'll be the first here to volunteer wherever I can to make this happen. Anyone here interested in organizing a national effort perhaps by creating local chapters of the EFF? The first person we should contact regarding such local chapters would be EFF's membership coordinator Kathleen Guneratne, who can be reached at kathleen@eff.org
If you live in Nevada, please feel free to contact me directly at paul@planetp.cc
I submitted "my letter to congress" to this forum at least 5 times. Had I known of this particular forum to the Library of Congress I would have immediately jumped at the chance. Obviously these anti-DMCA efforts are not organized, otherwiwse more people like myself would have known about them. Needless to say I sent a my anti-DMCA letter to all of my congressmen.
Not so. Sure people will be used to getting music for free. But how long will some good quality musicians continue to play without compensation? I'm not sure of the answer to that question, but its become clear to me, that if you really like an artists enough to see him/her continue to produce high qulaity music, woudln't you want to tip them as much as you would a street performer? Over time, I can see a bazaar type musical internet-wide extravaganza of voluntary tipping by people who really want to hear more of what they really want to hear.
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the
disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of
legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of
consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our
Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is
the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th
or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA
trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a
T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or
pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already
understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you
to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this
draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I
would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first,
and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms
of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must
finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those
found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the
Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source
code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however
by U.S. District Judge
Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the
use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley,
publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking
to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the
implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable,
but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also
now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical
journalist to court for the simple act of point out a newly discovered
crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property
legislation, dangerous precendents like these are being set in courts
cases like Napster and DeCSS. No longer are the people doing the
pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used
for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the
Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they
have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies
or kidnappings. Unless I am corrected, technology has never been the
culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder
trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But
now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and
RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential
to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC,
the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and
love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And
here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology
that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such
complete control would be the only sure fire method of fully defeating
piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and
watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through
the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection
Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make
such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media
technologies and internet protocols. Changing the technology is one
thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I
don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding
individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own
computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant
to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the
position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a
despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking
development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of
current corporate culture. Assuming corporations do manage to pull this
off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their
own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by
definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed -
a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format
exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to
duplicate copyright works. This is true, just as the automobile allows
criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough
to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have
fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate
power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A
desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution
and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for
us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the
Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the
rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new
peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you
have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in
transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
I have to disagree with CmdrTaco on this one. This is Microsft's first move to create a lock-in propieatry hardware and software format with a "Do not Tamper sticker" on the front. This is the exact opposite of the open-source movement keeping things as open and non-propieatry as possible. Give the Xbox a few more years, and pretty soon, you'll no longer be able to "own" and "fiddle" with your machine anymore. It will all be licensed. And with the DMCA, legally tamper proof.
Below is a letter I've sent to all of my congressman. Please feel free to use as your own if you feel the same way I do:
Dear Congressperson,
I write to you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening
developments and outcomes of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never
in my life have I see a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations
at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in
our Bill Of Rights, one of them has for most stood out as paramount, and for good
reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or
the 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial, ruled
that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt) not speech, but that
even linking or directing to people to such code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do, only that if don't already understand the chilling
implications of these trends, please do so at once. Since it was Congress who passed
this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I want to start
seeing legislation that is pro-consumer first, and pro-corporation second. One that
protects the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate
interests.
To anyone who knows anything about the use and programming of computers, source
code is definitely speech. Computer networks are the fastest-growing medium of
public and private expression; our rights and liberties, as we engage in commerce and
in other forms of discourse via that medium are protected by instructions to
computers. Source code is the means by which these instructions are expressed in
ways that people can examine and understand.
On the Internet, there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a
protected form of speech. This principle is attacked, however, by U.S. District Judge
Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and
dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600
magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD
content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the act of
a crime a crime, but discussing it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal.
The current anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property laws are dangerously moving in that
direction. No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology like
Napster or Gnutella which makes it possible is also illegal. This same logic could
just as easily be applied to the internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal
because they allow people to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am
corrected, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is
criminal. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of it. But now
with the help of statutes in the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to
outlaw any and all technology that can be used to facilitate piracy. If they get their
way, we might as well say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the
internet, Napster, Gnutella, and just about any other new technology that doesn't give
them complete control over all its content. This a chilling prospect indeed. Imagine
everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and
censored through power of consolidated corporate interests.
Dangerously, companies are already discussing plans to re-vamp the whole array of
consumer computer products and internet protocols to do exactly this. Imagine buying
your new computer with a label on it saying, "Do not open or tamper with under
Penalty of Law". I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding
individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or
running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles
of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for
mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a
shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of
modern corporations. But if the corporations do manage to create an entirely new
information infrastructure, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute
their music or creative work online as they have up to now, as doing so would mean
they'd be using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - which by definition
would become outlawed if corporations get their way.
Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero thanks to the computer revolution,
what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create
artificial scarcity where there is none, in a desperate attempt to maintain their
previous monopoly of media distribution and revune streams.
Just imagine if the blacksmiths of days past were allowed to pass equivalent
legislation prohibiting any technology which might circumvent their ability to make
money; any transportation device not using horses now becomes illegal. It may have
seemed a small sacrifice at the time to protect people's livelihood, but where would
we be today without our modern transportation systems?
In the regards to the DeCSS case, the Supreme Court has already laid the foundation
for reversal of this ruling, in Justice Stevens' majority opinion striking down the
Communications Decency Act of 1996. That opinion described the discourse of the
Internet as a "dynamic, multifaceted category of communication... as diverse as
human thought," and included the vital statement that other cases involving other forms
of mass communication provide "no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment
scrutiny that should be applied to this medium."
Given the Supreme Court's unambiguous statement, it is shocking to consider the
precedent that Judge Kaplan proposes to create. If it is unlawful to publish the means
of breaking DVD encryption, then isn't it also unlawful to publish a detailed critique
of any other encryption algorithm that explains its vulnerabilities?
For that matter, wouldn't this ruling hamper any form of consumer activism that
independently examines the ingredients, the design or the behavior of any product
whose vendors demand "trade secret" status? Sounds awfully convenient to me.
Those who approve of Kaplan's ruling assert that it merely enforces the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act of 1998; this assertion surely invites the Supreme Court's
scrutiny of that law, since any U.S. copyright law must ultimately trace its authority
back to language of the Constitution.
Article I, Section 8 merely authorizes Congress "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." Copyright law is not property law,
despite the attempts of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording
Industry Association of America to paint themselves as aggrieved property owners
merely trying to protect what's theirs.
What's constitutional is what "promotes the progress" of creative expression.
Increasingly, source code is the lingua franca of "science and the useful arts," and
source code must therefore enjoy full protection against any law that abridges its
freedom. This should also be extended to provide protection of technology creators
to not be held liable for how some criminals decide to use it.
If you read this far, you have my deepest gratitude.
Below is a letter I've sent to all of my congressman. Please feel free to use as your own if you feel the same way I do:
Dear Congressperson,
I write to you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening
developments and outcomes of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never
in my life have I see a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations
at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in
our Bill Of Rights, one of them has for most stood out as paramount, and for good
reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or
the 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial, ruled
that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt) not speech, but that
even linking or directing to people to such code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do, only that if don't already understand the chilling
implications of these trends, please do so at once. Since it was Congress who passed
this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I want to start
seeing legislation that is pro-consumer first, and pro-corporation second. One that
protects the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate
interests.
To anyone who knows anything about the use and programming of computers, source
code is definitely speech. Computer networks are the fastest-growing medium of
public and private expression; our rights and liberties, as we engage in commerce and
in other forms of discourse via that medium are protected by instructions to
computers. Source code is the means by which these instructions are expressed in
ways that people can examine and understand.
On the Internet, there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a
protected form of speech. This principle is attacked, however, by U.S. District Judge
Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and
dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600
magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD
content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the act of
a crime a crime, but discussing it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal.
The current anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property laws are dangerously moving in that
direction. No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology like
Napster or Gnutella which makes it possible is also illegal. This same logic could
just as easily be applied to the internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal
because they allow people to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am
corrected, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is
criminal. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of it. But now
with the help of statutes in the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to
outlaw any and all technology that can be used to facilitate piracy. If they get their
way, we might as well say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the
internet, Napster, Gnutella, and just about any other new technology that doesn't give
them complete control over all its content. This a chilling prospect indeed. Imagine
everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and
censored through power of consolidated corporate interests.
Dangerously, companies are already discussing plans to re-vamp the whole array of
consumer computer products and internet protocols to do exactly this. Imagine buying
your new computer with a label on it saying, "Do not open or tamper with under
Penalty of Law". I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding
individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or
running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles
of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for
mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a
shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of
modern corporations. But if the corporations do manage to create an entirely new
information infrastructure, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute
their music or creative work online as they have up to now, as doing so would mean
they'd be using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - which by definition
would become outlawed if corporations get their way.
Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero thanks to the computer revolution,
what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create
artificial scarcity where there is none, in a desperate attempt to maintain their
previous monopoly of media distribution and revune streams.
Just imagine if the blacksmiths of days past were allowed to pass equivalent
legislation prohibiting any technology which might circumvent their ability to make
money; any transportation device not using horses now becomes illegal. It may have
seemed a small sacrifice at the time to protect people's livelihood, but where would
we be today without our modern transportation systems?
In the regards to the DeCSS case, the Supreme Court has already laid the foundation
for reversal of this ruling, in Justice Stevens' majority opinion striking down the
Communications Decency Act of 1996. That opinion described the discourse of the
Internet as a "dynamic, multifaceted category of communication... as diverse as
human thought," and included the vital statement that other cases involving other forms
of mass communication provide "no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment
scrutiny that should be applied to this medium."
Given the Supreme Court's unambiguous statement, it is shocking to consider the
precedent that Judge Kaplan proposes to create. If it is unlawful to publish the means
of breaking DVD encryption, then isn't it also unlawful to publish a detailed critique
of any other encryption algorithm that explains its vulnerabilities?
For that matter, wouldn't this ruling hamper any form of consumer activism that
independently examines the ingredients, the design or the behavior of any product
whose vendors demand "trade secret" status? Sounds awfully convenient to me.
Those who approve of Kaplan's ruling assert that it merely enforces the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act of 1998; this assertion surely invites the Supreme Court's
scrutiny of that law, since any U.S. copyright law must ultimately trace its authority
back to language of the Constitution.
Article I, Section 8 merely authorizes Congress "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." Copyright law is not property law,
despite the attempts of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording
Industry Association of America to paint themselves as aggrieved property owners
merely trying to protect what's theirs.
What's constitutional is what "promotes the progress" of creative expression.
Increasingly, source code is the lingua franca of "science and the useful arts," and
source code must therefore enjoy full protection against any law that abridges its
freedom. This should also be extended to provide protection of technology creators
to not be held liable for how some criminals decide to use it.
If you read this far, you have my deepest gratitude.
They don't have to break any laws to be oppressive they just change the laws! The DMCA is a perfect case in point. As for corporations being just tendencies - bullshit. Most decisions are made by committee, and those committees are less than 12 guys in suits sitting on the top floor of some high-rise. So now we have a society where money becomes the dictating force, in which the majority of decision are made by those with the most money (rich stockholders) and those few lucky enough to be in those committees. And even more disturbing, most members of a corporation's board are also members of at least 6 other corporations' boards. So it's even less people running things that you might have thought.
As far as the accusation that I hate money - I happen to love money. That's why I'm so behind the peer-to-peer revolution - if allowed to continue its ultimately going to completely revolution the economy by bringing more and more of this centralized power base to the people. It will totally decentralize the flow of intellectual capital, ideas, music, movies, and the entire culture. No longer will culture be dictated by large corporations and obsolete marketing driven drivel, but by consumer demand. The economy will work from the bottom up, rather than the top down as it does now.
There, I think I've just succinctly shredded any argument you may have had on the matter.
Hypocricy? Hardly. I could care less if they steal it outright. Becuase they would be taking an open-source creation and making it propietary, thereby killing any real improvements to their version from then on. The code that remains open continues to improve while the locked up code increaingly falls behind becuase it not open to wide-spread scrutiny.
If it comes down? It already has come down. Right now the corporations are winning becuase they are the ones who can afford all the lobbyists, and large pay-offs to our elected officials. So the threat to out liberty is both technological and legal. But I remain cautiously optimistic for the following reasons:
1) Creators and Consumers will find each other through through more open-source channels. Intel, Sony and Hollywood may make extremely propietary systems of distibution like DivX, but when open source standards of distribution and copying take off and more and more upcomng artyists start putting out their works on this format - what are you going to buy?
2) These IP laws are becoming so draconioan that a consumer backlash is inevitable. And what is a company going to do without a customer base, or at least an angry customer base? Your going to start seeing larger and larger boycotts, with the Seattle Boycott last year as a humble beginning.
I'm getting really tired, so I'm going have to stop there. But I hope you can think of other ways that consumers can fight back. Please add to this list if you can. Thanks!
Well there you have it the powers that be starting to show their true colors as their power and financial base becomes threatened. Lets face it, if and when peer-to-peer file sharing becomes a dominant paradigm of the internet, all traditional ways of doing business will be fundamentally altered. The vacuous rhetoric that the internet would usher in a world of global grassroots democracy and the end to centralized power structures could actually happen if P2P becomes reality. In fact P2P was supposed to be the operating paradigm of the internet in the first place until corporate interests have co-opted it.
Until the ridiculous Napster decision came down, I hadn't given IP much
thought. But as I've watched the rhetoric fly both ways in the Napster and
DeCSS trials, I began to see that it has nothing to do with IP in the end,
but the beginning of a global war between corporate interests and the forces
of democracy. Although the corps make a good argument about compensating
intellectual creators, does this justify the complete elimination of freedom
online? Already the MPAA is calling its initial victory in the DeCSS case a
warning to all Silicon Valley types, that if they keep it up they will shut
the whole internet down if it facilitates piracy! Such a statement is
completely insane, yet Jack Valenti, president of MPAA actually said it. And
since he and the majority of corporate interests agree with that sentiment,
their wishes could become reality. This despite the fact that there are
already 25 million people and growing who feel otherwise.
If the courts and politicians decide to ignore their constituents and pander
as usual to their corporate backers, it could mean a complete re-engineering
of the infrastructure to prevent so-called piracy in the future. The nature
of the internet is so dynamic, that to accomplish such a monumental task
would effectively mean squelching any remaining freedom left on the
internet. We'll be left with some draconian super-surveillance network,
where all communications will be monitored and censored, and all
communication will be increasingly centrally channeled. That is the only
system I can imagine that could possible have any chance of stopping piracy.
Since such a system is completely repugnant to most people, rather than stop
piracy, the nature of business and society should accept it for the
prosperity that it really is. Prosperity for the people that is. Imagine
that - a society based on individual rather than corporate profits!
Regardless of how anyone feels on this issue, they need to ask themselves do
they want a society based on consumer power or corporate power? When
corporations start telling its customers what to do, rather than vica versa,
then we can start saying good bye to a democratic society. If only the
Democratic and Republican Parties, both supporters of stronger IP laws, got
a clue. But since when did they give a hoot about the people anyway?
Has anyone noticed that back-up devices have always exceeded hard drive capacities by at least a factor of 2, but now with the new 75GB storage, you'll need at least 2 tapes to back-up everything.
Actually this isn't the case, as holographic means that means the data is stored everywhere but in increasingly lower resolutions as you chop it up. That means access times are almost instantaneuos. According to Imation, they have already been able to achieve throughput in excess of 60GB/sec. For obvious reasons though, they are keeping the specifics of how it works under wraps. They are confident that a commercial holographic storage product should be available by the end of 2002.
Yes! Whether we are ready for it or not, humongous storage capacities are right around the corner. Imation and Lucent Technologies is expected to release the first holographic discs sometime in 2002. Introductory capacities should be in excess of 125GB of removable storage! As the technology matures, holographic storage has the capacity to store nearly a terabyte per cubic cnetimeter. Becuase its holographic, access times will be more than a 1000 times faster than current hard drives.
I love Zardoz! As I have it on video, I've watched it at least 20 times. I especially like the whole ring interace with holographic displays. Very far out for its time!
Three other movies on the list which I felt are undeserved, meaning I they were entertaining enough to watch a second time
Freejack - its got Mick Jagger!
Solarbabies - unique film with some special moments
Jade - Linda Fiorentino is hot!
Do the math, if the Artic ice sheet has melted by 45%, that would have already risen the worldwide sea-level by at least a dozen feet! That means places like Florida, New York and L.A, as well as Hong Kong, Tokoyo, the Bay Area would all be substantially underwater!
Ok, while we're at it lets go after the auto manufacturers, their cars are contributing to bank hiesta and drug deals across the country. And lets go after Kodak Film, for facilitating child pornography.
Your argument, as well as Patel's in completely unprecendented in western law!
Ok then, The phone company runs a service in which people can commit all sorts of fradulent activity - shut down the phone companies. And while we are it lets shut down all the internet service provdiers. They are a service, and that service is being used to download all sorts of pirated material.
Why not? It can easily be contrued that everything one says and does is in some way a creative work. Just copyright yourself as a full-time performance artist and voila! - you become a real-time continuos art piece! Just think of all the fun you could have with this, no one could repeat anything you said or record you with security camera's without being held liable for piracy.
I can think of no better way to subvert what has become a corrupt copyright legal framework, than to copyright yourself in your entirety.
Slashdot Mirror
I wrote and hard-copied and sent this letter to all my congressmen over 2 weeks ago. Please Steal this letter from me and use as your own! Send it to everyone you know for them in turn to send to every congressmen on the hill!
Dear Representative,
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of pointing out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precedents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS.
No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am mistaken, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such total control would be the only sure fire method of defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and Internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture.
Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyrighted works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
Respectfully Yours,
Well Jon Katz, what do you say? I'll be the first here to volunteer wherever I can to make this happen. Anyone here interested in organizing a national effort perhaps by creating local chapters of the EFF? The first person we should contact regarding such local chapters would be EFF's membership coordinator Kathleen Guneratne, who can be reached at kathleen@eff.org If you live in Nevada, please feel free to contact me directly at paul@planetp.cc
I submitted "my letter to congress" to this forum at least 5 times. Had I known of this particular forum to the Library of Congress I would have immediately jumped at the chance. Obviously these anti-DMCA efforts are not organized, otherwiwse more people like myself would have known about them. Needless to say I sent a my anti-DMCA letter to all of my congressmen.
Not so. Sure people will be used to getting music for free. But how long will some good quality musicians continue to play without compensation? I'm not sure of the answer to that question, but its become clear to me, that if you really like an artists enough to see him/her continue to produce high qulaity music, woudln't you want to tip them as much as you would a street performer? Over time, I can see a bazaar type musical internet-wide extravaganza of voluntary tipping by people who really want to hear more of what they really want to hear.
Please send it. That goes for everyone, take this letter and do it with it as you please.
I'm writing you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I seen a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights one has stood out above all others. For good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt or even spoken) not protected speech, but that even linking or pointing people to that code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do only that if you don't already understand the frightening implications of these trends, I'm urging you to do so now before its too late. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I would like to see legislation that again puts private citizens first, and corporations second. Laws that protect the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests. It must finally be asked if intellectual property protections as strict as those found in the DMCA are worth sacrificing the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution?
On the Internet there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked however by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the criminal itself culpable, but discussing the details of it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. Such a legal precedent could easily bring a typical journalist to court for the simple act of point out a newly discovered crack house! In the realm of anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property legislation, dangerous precendents like these are being set in courts cases like Napster and DeCSS. No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology that has the potential to be used for piracy is also illegal. This same logic could easily apply to the Internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they have the potential of being used by criminals to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am corrected, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is culpable. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of the knife. But now with the help of statutes within the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that has the potential to facilitate piracy. If successful, we could say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the Internet as we currently know and love them, as they all have the potential to be used for piracy. And here I suspect is the real agenda, which is to outlaw any technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. As such complete control would be the only sure fire method of fully defeating piracy. This is a chilling prospect. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through the power of monopolized corporate interests.
Dangerously, a consortium of companies called the Copy Protection Technical Working Group (CPTWG), are already discussing plans to make such a reality possible by changing the entire array of media technologies and internet protocols. Changing the technology is one thing, but making it illegal to create anything else is another. I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of current corporate culture. Assuming corporations do manage to pull this off, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their own music or creative work freely online, as doing so would by definition mean using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - a technology they want to outlaw! Their reasoning is if such a format exists, as it does now in the case of mp3, then pirates will use it to duplicate copyright works. This is true, just as the automobile allows criminals to conduct bank heists or kidnappings. Is this reason enough to outlaw automobiles?
It all boils down to one salient fact. Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where none exists. A desperate attempt to maintain previous monopolies of media distribution and revenue streams in the face of advancing technology. Luckily for us, the Pony Express didn't try to the same with the advent of the Telegraph.
Advancing technology has always changed the nature of society and the rules of business while bringing prosperity to millions. These new peer-to-peer file sharing technologies promise to do the same. May you have the wisdom to see past the current struggles of business in transition, by allowing these liberating technologies to flourish.
Respectfully Yours,
I have to disagree with CmdrTaco on this one. This is Microsft's first move to create a lock-in propieatry hardware and software format with a "Do not Tamper sticker" on the front. This is the exact opposite of the open-source movement keeping things as open and non-propieatry as possible. Give the Xbox a few more years, and pretty soon, you'll no longer be able to "own" and "fiddle" with your machine anymore. It will all be licensed. And with the DMCA, legally tamper proof.
Your absolutely right, luckiliy I haven't sent the letter out, I'm chaning any mention of the word consumer to citizen as we speak.
Below is a letter I've sent to all of my congressman. Please feel free to use as your own if you feel the same way I do:
Dear Congressperson,
I write to you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I see a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights, one of them has for most stood out as paramount, and for good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or the 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial, ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt) not speech, but that even linking or directing to people to such code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do, only that if don't already understand the chilling implications of these trends, please do so at once. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I want to start seeing legislation that is pro-consumer first, and pro-corporation second. One that protects the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests.
To anyone who knows anything about the use and programming of computers, source code is definitely speech. Computer networks are the fastest-growing medium of public and private expression; our rights and liberties, as we engage in commerce and in other forms of discourse via that medium are protected by instructions to computers. Source code is the means by which these instructions are expressed in ways that people can examine and understand.
On the Internet, there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked, however, by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the act of a crime a crime, but discussing it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. The current anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property laws are dangerously moving in that direction. No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology like Napster or Gnutella which makes it possible is also illegal. This same logic could just as easily be applied to the internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they allow people to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am corrected, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is criminal. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of it. But now with the help of statutes in the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that can be used to facilitate piracy. If they get their way, we might as well say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the internet, Napster, Gnutella, and just about any other new technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. This a chilling prospect indeed. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through power of consolidated corporate interests.
Dangerously, companies are already discussing plans to re-vamp the whole array of consumer computer products and internet protocols to do exactly this. Imagine buying your new computer with a label on it saying, "Do not open or tamper with under Penalty of Law". I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of modern corporations. But if the corporations do manage to create an entirely new information infrastructure, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their music or creative work online as they have up to now, as doing so would mean they'd be using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - which by definition would become outlawed if corporations get their way.
Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero thanks to the computer revolution, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where there is none, in a desperate attempt to maintain their previous monopoly of media distribution and revune streams.
Just imagine if the blacksmiths of days past were allowed to pass equivalent legislation prohibiting any technology which might circumvent their ability to make money; any transportation device not using horses now becomes illegal. It may have seemed a small sacrifice at the time to protect people's livelihood, but where would we be today without our modern transportation systems?
In the regards to the DeCSS case, the Supreme Court has already laid the foundation for reversal of this ruling, in Justice Stevens' majority opinion striking down the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That opinion described the discourse of the Internet as a "dynamic, multifaceted category of communication ... as diverse as
human thought," and included the vital statement that other cases involving other forms
of mass communication provide "no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment
scrutiny that should be applied to this medium."
Given the Supreme Court's unambiguous statement, it is shocking to consider the precedent that Judge Kaplan proposes to create. If it is unlawful to publish the means of breaking DVD encryption, then isn't it also unlawful to publish a detailed critique of any other encryption algorithm that explains its vulnerabilities?
For that matter, wouldn't this ruling hamper any form of consumer activism that independently examines the ingredients, the design or the behavior of any product whose vendors demand "trade secret" status? Sounds awfully convenient to me.
Those who approve of Kaplan's ruling assert that it merely enforces the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998; this assertion surely invites the Supreme Court's scrutiny of that law, since any U.S. copyright law must ultimately trace its authority back to language of the Constitution.
Article I, Section 8 merely authorizes Congress "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." Copyright law is not property law, despite the attempts of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America to paint themselves as aggrieved property owners merely trying to protect what's theirs.
What's constitutional is what "promotes the progress" of creative expression. Increasingly, source code is the lingua franca of "science and the useful arts," and source code must therefore enjoy full protection against any law that abridges its freedom. This should also be extended to provide protection of technology creators to not be held liable for how some criminals decide to use it.
If you read this far, you have my deepest gratitude.
Most Respectfully,
Your name here.
Below is a letter I've sent to all of my congressman. Please feel free to use as your own if you feel the same way I do:
Dear Congressperson,
I write to you this letter through actual tears of distress at the disheartening developments and outcomes of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Never in my life have I see a single piece of legislation give so much power to corporations at the expense of consumer rights and individual liberties. Of all the amendments in our Bill Of Rights, one of them has for most stood out as paramount, and for good reason it is the First Amendment. Our founding fathers did not make it the 3rd, 6th or the 10th. In the most recent case, Judge Kaplan in the DeCSS vs. MPAA trial, ruled that not only was source code (which can be written on a T-shirt) not speech, but that even linking or directing to people to such code is also illegal!
I'm not sure what I am asking you do, only that if don't already understand the chilling implications of these trends, please do so at once. Since it was Congress who passed this draconian piece of legislation, it is Congress who must overturn it. I want to start seeing legislation that is pro-consumer first, and pro-corporation second. One that protects the liberties and freedoms of individuals against over-zealous corporate interests.
To anyone who knows anything about the use and programming of computers, source code is definitely speech. Computer networks are the fastest-growing medium of public and private expression; our rights and liberties, as we engage in commerce and in other forms of discourse via that medium are protected by instructions to computers. Source code is the means by which these instructions are expressed in ways that people can examine and understand.
On the Internet, there can be no genuine freedom of speech unless source code is a protected form of speech. This principle is attacked, however, by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling that, "society must be able to regulate the use and dissemination of code." The judge then enjoined Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 magazine, from assisting his readers from even linking to the code that unlocks DVD content. My head is spinning from the implications of all this. No longer is the act of a crime a crime, but discussing it or pointing to people who do is also now criminal. The current anti-piracy/pro-intellectual property laws are dangerously moving in that direction. No longer are the people doing the pirating liable, but any technology like Napster or Gnutella which makes it possible is also illegal. This same logic could just as easily be applied to the internet itself. It's equivalent to making cars illegal because they allow people to conduct bank robberies or kidnappings. Unless I am corrected, technology has never been the culprit, only the user of such technology is criminal. In a murder trial we don't hold the knife trial, only the user of it. But now with the help of statutes in the DMCA, people like the MPAA and RIAA are trying to outlaw any and all technology that can be used to facilitate piracy. If they get their way, we might as well say goodbye to the PC, the fax machine, the telephone, the internet, Napster, Gnutella, and just about any other new technology that doesn't give them complete control over all its content. This a chilling prospect indeed. Imagine everything we say, do and watch through media is tightly controlled, filtered and censored through power of consolidated corporate interests.
Dangerously, companies are already discussing plans to re-vamp the whole array of consumer computer products and internet protocols to do exactly this. Imagine buying your new computer with a label on it saying, "Do not open or tamper with under Penalty of Law". I don't know about you, but the thought of corporations forbidding individuals from producing and distributing media or building their own computers or running their own software should be completely repugnant to anyone with principles of a free society. To legally support the position that the common man is fit only for mindless consumption is a despicable point of view, and to forbid otherwise is a shocking development that speaks volumes about the perspective and motivation of modern corporations. But if the corporations do manage to create an entirely new information infrastructure, then the individual user will no longer be able to distribute their music or creative work online as they have up to now, as doing so would mean they'd be using a format easily copyable and cheaply distributed - which by definition would become outlawed if corporations get their way.
Now that duplication costs have fallen to zero thanks to the computer revolution, what you have here is nothing less than a corporate power grab attempting to create artificial scarcity where there is none, in a desperate attempt to maintain their previous monopoly of media distribution and revune streams.
Just imagine if the blacksmiths of days past were allowed to pass equivalent legislation prohibiting any technology which might circumvent their ability to make money; any transportation device not using horses now becomes illegal. It may have seemed a small sacrifice at the time to protect people's livelihood, but where would we be today without our modern transportation systems?
In the regards to the DeCSS case, the Supreme Court has already laid the foundation for reversal of this ruling, in Justice Stevens' majority opinion striking down the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That opinion described the discourse of the Internet as a "dynamic, multifaceted category of communication ... as diverse as
human thought," and included the vital statement that other cases involving other forms
of mass communication provide "no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment
scrutiny that should be applied to this medium."
Given the Supreme Court's unambiguous statement, it is shocking to consider the precedent that Judge Kaplan proposes to create. If it is unlawful to publish the means of breaking DVD encryption, then isn't it also unlawful to publish a detailed critique of any other encryption algorithm that explains its vulnerabilities?
For that matter, wouldn't this ruling hamper any form of consumer activism that independently examines the ingredients, the design or the behavior of any product whose vendors demand "trade secret" status? Sounds awfully convenient to me.
Those who approve of Kaplan's ruling assert that it merely enforces the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998; this assertion surely invites the Supreme Court's scrutiny of that law, since any U.S. copyright law must ultimately trace its authority back to language of the Constitution.
Article I, Section 8 merely authorizes Congress "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." Copyright law is not property law, despite the attempts of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America to paint themselves as aggrieved property owners merely trying to protect what's theirs.
What's constitutional is what "promotes the progress" of creative expression. Increasingly, source code is the lingua franca of "science and the useful arts," and source code must therefore enjoy full protection against any law that abridges its freedom. This should also be extended to provide protection of technology creators to not be held liable for how some criminals decide to use it.
If you read this far, you have my deepest gratitude.
Most Respectfully,
Your name here.
They don't have to break any laws to be oppressive they just change the laws! The DMCA is a perfect case in point. As for corporations being just tendencies - bullshit. Most decisions are made by committee, and those committees are less than 12 guys in suits sitting on the top floor of some high-rise. So now we have a society where money becomes the dictating force, in which the majority of decision are made by those with the most money (rich stockholders) and those few lucky enough to be in those committees. And even more disturbing, most members of a corporation's board are also members of at least 6 other corporations' boards. So it's even less people running things that you might have thought.
As far as the accusation that I hate money - I happen to love money. That's why I'm so behind the peer-to-peer revolution - if allowed to continue its ultimately going to completely revolution the economy by bringing more and more of this centralized power base to the people. It will totally decentralize the flow of intellectual capital, ideas, music, movies, and the entire culture. No longer will culture be dictated by large corporations and obsolete marketing driven drivel, but by consumer demand. The economy will work from the bottom up, rather than the top down as it does now.
There, I think I've just succinctly shredded any argument you may have had on the matter.
Hypocricy? Hardly. I could care less if they steal it outright. Becuase they would be taking an open-source creation and making it propietary, thereby killing any real improvements to their version from then on. The code that remains open continues to improve while the locked up code increaingly falls behind becuase it not open to wide-spread scrutiny.
If it comes down? It already has come down. Right now the corporations are winning becuase they are the ones who can afford all the lobbyists, and large pay-offs to our elected officials. So the threat to out liberty is both technological and legal. But I remain cautiously optimistic for the following reasons:
1) Creators and Consumers will find each other through through more open-source channels. Intel, Sony and Hollywood may make extremely propietary systems of distibution like DivX, but when open source standards of distribution and copying take off and more and more upcomng artyists start putting out their works on this format - what are you going to buy?
2) These IP laws are becoming so draconioan that a consumer backlash is inevitable. And what is a company going to do without a customer base, or at least an angry customer base? Your going to start seeing larger and larger boycotts, with the Seattle Boycott last year as a humble beginning.
I'm getting really tired, so I'm going have to stop there. But I hope you can think of other ways that consumers can fight back. Please add to this list if you can. Thanks!
Wow! Well said! I can only hope that your right in the end. Please read my post Corpocracy: End to Freedom.
Well there you have it the powers that be starting to show their true colors as their power and financial base becomes threatened. Lets face it, if and when peer-to-peer file sharing becomes a dominant paradigm of the internet, all traditional ways of doing business will be fundamentally altered. The vacuous rhetoric that the internet would usher in a world of global grassroots democracy and the end to centralized power structures could actually happen if P2P becomes reality. In fact P2P was supposed to be the operating paradigm of the internet in the first place until corporate interests have co-opted it.
Until the ridiculous Napster decision came down, I hadn't given IP much thought. But as I've watched the rhetoric fly both ways in the Napster and DeCSS trials, I began to see that it has nothing to do with IP in the end, but the beginning of a global war between corporate interests and the forces of democracy. Although the corps make a good argument about compensating intellectual creators, does this justify the complete elimination of freedom online? Already the MPAA is calling its initial victory in the DeCSS case a warning to all Silicon Valley types, that if they keep it up they will shut the whole internet down if it facilitates piracy! Such a statement is completely insane, yet Jack Valenti, president of MPAA actually said it. And since he and the majority of corporate interests agree with that sentiment, their wishes could become reality. This despite the fact that there are already 25 million people and growing who feel otherwise.
If the courts and politicians decide to ignore their constituents and pander as usual to their corporate backers, it could mean a complete re-engineering of the infrastructure to prevent so-called piracy in the future. The nature of the internet is so dynamic, that to accomplish such a monumental task would effectively mean squelching any remaining freedom left on the internet. We'll be left with some draconian super-surveillance network, where all communications will be monitored and censored, and all communication will be increasingly centrally channeled. That is the only system I can imagine that could possible have any chance of stopping piracy. Since such a system is completely repugnant to most people, rather than stop piracy, the nature of business and society should accept it for the prosperity that it really is. Prosperity for the people that is. Imagine that - a society based on individual rather than corporate profits!
Regardless of how anyone feels on this issue, they need to ask themselves do they want a society based on consumer power or corporate power? When corporations start telling its customers what to do, rather than vica versa, then we can start saying good bye to a democratic society. If only the Democratic and Republican Parties, both supporters of stronger IP laws, got a clue. But since when did they give a hoot about the people anyway?
Has anyone noticed that back-up devices have always exceeded hard drive capacities by at least a factor of 2, but now with the new 75GB storage, you'll need at least 2 tapes to back-up everything.
Actually this isn't the case, as holographic means that means the data is stored everywhere but in increasingly lower resolutions as you chop it up. That means access times are almost instantaneuos. According to Imation, they have already been able to achieve throughput in excess of 60GB/sec. For obvious reasons though, they are keeping the specifics of how it works under wraps. They are confident that a commercial holographic storage product should be available by the end of 2002.
I stand corrected! How I could have missed this obvious fact is beyond me. Thanks.
Three other movies on the list which I felt are undeserved, meaning I they were entertaining enough to watch a second time
Freejack - its got Mick Jagger!
Solarbabies - unique film with some special moments
Jade - Linda Fiorentino is hot!
There, I'v said it!
Do the math, if the Artic ice sheet has melted by 45%, that would have already risen the worldwide sea-level by at least a dozen feet! That means places like Florida, New York and L.A, as well as Hong Kong, Tokoyo, the Bay Area would all be substantially underwater!
Ok, while we're at it lets go after the auto manufacturers, their cars are contributing to bank hiesta and drug deals across the country. And lets go after Kodak Film, for facilitating child pornography.
Your argument, as well as Patel's in completely unprecendented in western law!
Get a friggin clue!
Ok then, The phone company runs a service in which people can commit all sorts of fradulent activity - shut down the phone companies. And while we are it lets shut down all the internet service provdiers. They are a service, and that service is being used to download all sorts of pirated material.
Dude, get a friggin clue!
Why not? It can easily be contrued that everything one says and does is in some way a creative work. Just copyright yourself as a full-time performance artist and voila! - you become a real-time continuos art piece! Just think of all the fun you could have with this, no one could repeat anything you said or record you with security camera's without being held liable for piracy.
I can think of no better way to subvert what has become a corrupt copyright legal framework, than to copyright yourself in your entirety.