But if writing to the board, notice on the bottom of page 5 and the top of page 6 that you CANNOT object to the following points:
1) that a levy will be charged - no arguing that the whole thing should be thrown out
2) that only music copyright holders be compensated - no arguing for movie, software, etc. rights
3) that the levy is applied regardless of the use of the media - no arguing that you aren't copying music
4) that any group deserves a special exemption (other than disability groups) - no arguing for independent musicians, etc.
But other than that you can file any objection you can think of. Wow. Thanks. It sounds like just about the only thing you try and argue is to reduce all the amounts down to $.0001 or something.
You only have the right to make a copy for personal use if you have the right to the original. If you lend the original to the friend they do not have the right to copy it because they have no rights to the original. You still have the rights to the original. If you sell/give the original away then your friend has the right to make a copy for their personal use. However you lose your right to have a personal use copy because you lost the right to the original.
The license states very clearly a bit lower down that it does not prevent you from re-selling the cd, but that when you do the new recipient must be bound by the license as well. Of course since the whole license is revocable at any time they could take that clause out later.
"We hereby grant to you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Player and Content on your personal computer solely for your own personal, non-commercial use."
"You understand and agree that you may not reproduce, modify, display, distribute or otherwise use the Player or Content except as expressly provided herein, and you may not attempt to separate the Player or Content from the CD on which you received them."
So it is illegal to make a backup copy of the computer-playable audio files. It is also illegal to try and play them with any other app (or on any OS other than Windows). Plus, since it revocable, you can retroactively take away the right to play them AT ALL on a computer.
At least they specifically mention that the non-transferable clause does not prevent you from re-selling the CD.
While I like reading Kant (despite the fact that he is actually a terrible writer - technically I mean, not ideas-wise) he is not currently alive and hasn't been currently alive for several centuries.
This may partly depend on the type of company you are at. At our company (~1000 people) the basic IT setup is pretty much the same for all employees: basic windows, web browsers, office, email, etc. Developers then have to dump all of their own development tools on. And the tools that are used vary from group to group. Developers also need to be able to install products from partners that we are integrating with. Professional services often work on custom integrations that require 3rd party apps. So machines are constantly in flux, and having to go through IT every single time something had to be added would be a nightmare (for both us and them).
If on the other hand you are part of a small company where developers are given a default install that includes the necessary development tools and you don't work with a wide range of 3rd party apps that change all the time, maybe this would be possible.
That's better than putting up with sales and marketing co-workers who say things like "We must leverage our infrastructure in core technologies blah blah blah".
But it certainly isn't "groundbreaking" in any real sense.
Remember, due to the rumors people were expecting something more like an apple PDA/mp3 player.
Besides these devices will soon be illegal anyway with the SSSCA (or its offspring), and cds won't be rippable either. And we all know that therefore there will be no mp3s. Just look at how the RIAA managed to kill file-sharing by taking out Napster;)
From the apple site:
With an industry-leading 20 minutes of skip protection, iPod keeps playing without missing a beat. In addition to its 5GB hard drive, iPod has a 32MB memory cache. The cache is made up of solid-state memory, meaning that it has no mechanical or moving parts, so it's not affected bymovement of the device.
Since they specifically state that the memory cache is solid state and there is a limit to the skip prevention, it sure sounds like a normal hard drive.
Of course this would be illegal under the DMCA. The DOS attack is part of their copy-prevention mechanism and your honeypot is an attempt to disable that mechanism. Clearly anyone creating honeypots, distributing any related code, or publishing information discussing the use of honeypots is in violation and should be immediately arrested and exported to Afghanistan were they can be sufficiently bombed.
If you had read the article you might have noticed the section where they talk about that, and how the RIAA is lobbying for a clause that exempts copyright holders.
Emulators are generally slower than running native. Latency is the bane of pro audio software if you are trying to do anything remotely real-time (sequencing, sound sources, midi controllers, real-time audio manipulation, etc.). Since at least some of this is usually required in any pro audio situation, especially at a studio, any type of emulation is going to be a big problem. We're talking situations where milliseconds are extremely important.
Shame on the Washington Post for not reporting this "research" more skeptically
I agree they could have been a bit more skeptical, but at least they did explicitly state "the research by three
admittedly self-interested Internet
publishing groups " and also identify the Internet Advertising Bureau as an industry trade group and DoubleClick as an ad agency.
So basically, xenophobically claiming that this convention is going to hurt *MY* country doesn't engage with the debate,
and if these people, even RMS, want to make a serious defence against it, they're going to have to do so on the basis that
legislative imperialism is bad, not simply on the basis that US law or UK law is perfect and we don't want other countries
screwing it all up for us. Accept that different countries do things different ways and you might show that this is bad - it's
only those that think there's a perfect universal law that would support such legislation.
I don't see this as a fair characterization of the debate at all! First of all, claiming that the convention will hurt your own country isn't xenophobia. It's true. It's going to hurt virtually everybody's country. I don't think anyone is saying that only the US will be hurt. But people like RMS are _American_ and the people they can affect the most are _other Americans_. You can get other Americans most involved by directly showing how it affects the legal system they are familiar with, the US one. US politicians will look out for US interests first, so show them how it affects US interests. It's not xenophobia, its common sense.
Second, I don't think anyone, especially RMS would ever claim that the US legal system is perfect. One of the big concerns about the convention is that it will extend the ridiculous US IP laws, copyright, DMCA, etc and give large corporations and corporate groups (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) even greater power than they have already.
So, these arguments very much engage the debate. They demonstrate _why_ legislative imperialism (in the form of the Hague Convention at least) is bad. This is much more convincing than simply jumping up and down and shouting "legislative imperialism is bad!".
. . . as humans group into larger and larger groups, you need to create a
consensus of rules and bylaws for better, more peaceful organization . . .
I guess what I'm saying is that once you start to interact with the world without mom and pop to back you up, you realize
that you need a common framework of laws to amke society work. Once you realize national boundaries are swiftly
dissolving, a common international law makes a lot of sense.
But the Hague Convention isn't a 'common international law', at least in the sense that it is normally spoken about. Common international law suggests that there is an organized set of laws that everyone has agreed are common and will be followed by everyone. The Hague Convention allows any country to pass laws and have them enforced internationally. Far from a 'common' set of law this allows completely contradictary laws and has no process for the adoption of laws into a 'common international' set of laws. Someone passes it and demands enforcement. The whole concept of consensus about the laws is explicitly missing from the convention.
They aren't painting on your house. They're leaving a note on your windshield. Only you don't have to throw it away, you just hit
"delete". Sure, you do it 10 times a day, but it still doesn't compare to painting it on your house.
The Right to send email unsolicited is what's at question here. No self-respecting defender of Free Speech would limit offensive or
inconvenience causing speech. Hate spammers all you want (and I do) but they have a right to send you stuff you don't want to get.
Deal with it, don't outlaw it.
But it isn't possible to put thousands and thousands of flyers on thousands and thousands of cars in an extremely short period of time. There is a significant barrier to sending large quantities of flyers or junk mail which prevents us from getting completely overwhelmed. Production cost acts a limiting factor on the amount of junk that we will receive. This doens't exist with email. Anyone can easily collect/buy a large number of emails and spam away.
Also, no self-respecting defender of Free Speech would argue that are no limits on free speech. Certain limits are necessary. Its a matter of determining which are reasonable and justified and which aren't.
(i) If links are part of the content of a page, then the whole DeCSS case is sunk. You have to choose what you believe. Smart tags may indeed be the EFF's best friend here because if Microsoft can convince the courts that they are permitted to add whatever links they like because they are not part of a web page, then by implication you also have the right to link your page wherever you like and not be responsible for the content at the other end. So, either Microsoft and the EFF are both correct, or both are wrong. You can't have it both ways.
There is a difference between a link and the content contained at the linked site. A link is a REFERENECE to the content contained at the linked site. This is different from the actual content contained at the linked site. It's the same difference as that between a bibliography entry and the book itself.
Of course, as we learned from the "Law Review Article Says Port Scanning Illegal" article yesterday, Dr. Who would have been arrested immediately after performing the port scan and the aliens would indeed have insulted our intelligence before destroying us.
Using DeCSS to access the media in it's inteneded use, ie. watching the bloody movie, never seems to be mentioned.
I don't understand why this hasn't been pushed harder. Even if the MPAA, RIAA, etc. (hereafter referred to as Rat Bastards) can show that DeCSS has caused harm, which they haven't so far, why is that considered an argument for banning it?
There are all kinds of things that can be used for illegal purposes. Pawn shops have a bad reputation for dealing in stolen goods. Cars are frequently used for illegal activities (smuggling, robberies, drunk driving). Let's not even start on handguns. None of these are illegal though. This is because they have a clear legitimate use and the illegal use is a side-effect. Some other things, like drug paraphernalia, are illegal because it is considered that the primary and overwhelming purpose of these tools is illegal. Rat Bastards are trying to use the DMCA as justification for banning anything that could have an illegal use, regardless of whether it can be shown that it is actually used that way, or any other non-illegal uses that exist.
In the absence of evidence that DeCSS has caused any harm, with the stated purpose of being used for playing DVDs on Linux, and with the easily demonstrated rise in popularity of DVDs, computer DVD drives and Linux, there seems to be a clear case for legitimate use that should be stressed.
The Rat Bastards' lawyers are right that issues of free speech can be limited and superseded by other concerns. Even if the Rat Bastards lose the free speech aspect of the case it doesn't prevent them from winning the case overall. I think it is very important to raise as many other issues as possible (that are reasonable) that fall outside the realm of straight free speech.
Naturally, IANAL but IAAC (I am a canadian) WICI (which is completely irrelevant).
And suggesting that Macrovision is the correct model for digital content protection doesn't make any sense. Either devices will be able to copy content or they won't. Only devices that allow copying will allow fair-use copying, and devices that won't allow copying will harm fair use. His view that including watermarking recognition code in all digital recording devices will somehow permit fair use is illogical. How is a recording device supposed to determine whether I am copying "The Matrix" for ten of my riends, as opposed to recording five movie scenes for my college special-effects class?
Mr. Boucher specifically mentions preventing the copying of rental movies, not all movies. Presumably there would be two versions. He specifically says "When there is no reasonable expectation of being able to make a copy, such as in the case of a movie rented from a store, the VCRs will block all copying in response to the macrovision encoding."
Presumably there would be two versions. Movies sent to video stores for rental use would have copy protection enabled. Copies for sale to private people would not have copy protection, as there is an expectation of being able to make copies under fair use. So the recording device wouldn't know whether copies are allowed or not. The media you buy would. There would of course have to be legislation on both sides, to ensure that devices prevent recording when required and to ensure that the evil bastard **AA groups and their members provide non-copy protected media appropriately.
Whether that is a good model or not is a different question, but it seems to me that this is what he is suggesting.
Slashdot Mirror
But if writing to the board, notice on the bottom of page 5 and the top of page 6 that you CANNOT object to the following points:
1) that a levy will be charged - no arguing that the whole thing should be thrown out
2) that only music copyright holders be compensated - no arguing for movie, software, etc. rights
3) that the levy is applied regardless of the use of the media - no arguing that you aren't copying music
4) that any group deserves a special exemption (other than disability groups) - no arguing for independent musicians, etc.
But other than that you can file any objection you can think of. Wow. Thanks. It sounds like just about the only thing you try and argue is to reduce all the amounts down to $.0001 or something.
You only have the right to make a copy for personal use if you have the right to the original. If you lend the original to the friend they do not have the right to copy it because they have no rights to the original. You still have the rights to the original. If you sell/give the original away then your friend has the right to make a copy for their personal use. However you lose your right to have a personal use copy because you lost the right to the original.
But once you're in the army you can drink even if under the age of 21 (with an Armed Forces id card).
The license states very clearly a bit lower down that it does not prevent you from re-selling the cd, but that when you do the new recipient must be bound by the license as well. Of course since the whole license is revocable at any time they could take that clause out later.
"We hereby grant to you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Player and Content on your personal computer solely for your own personal, non-commercial use."
"You understand and agree that you may not reproduce, modify, display, distribute or otherwise use the Player or Content except as expressly provided herein, and you may not attempt to separate the Player or Content from the CD on which you received them."
So it is illegal to make a backup copy of the computer-playable audio files. It is also illegal to try and play them with any other app (or on any OS other than Windows). Plus, since it revocable, you can retroactively take away the right to play them AT ALL on a computer.
At least they specifically mention that the non-transferable clause does not prevent you from re-selling the CD.
In a similar vein, but a bit more expensive, the Encyclopedia Britannica offers a similar 60-volume set called Great Books of the Western World.
While I like reading Kant (despite the fact that he is actually a terrible writer - technically I mean, not ideas-wise) he is not currently alive and hasn't been currently alive for several centuries.
This may partly depend on the type of company you are at. At our company (~1000 people) the basic IT setup is pretty much the same for all employees: basic windows, web browsers, office, email, etc. Developers then have to dump all of their own development tools on. And the tools that are used vary from group to group. Developers also need to be able to install products from partners that we are integrating with. Professional services often work on custom integrations that require 3rd party apps. So machines are constantly in flux, and having to go through IT every single time something had to be added would be a nightmare (for both us and them).
If on the other hand you are part of a small company where developers are given a default install that includes the necessary development tools and you don't work with a wide range of 3rd party apps that change all the time, maybe this would be possible.
That's better than putting up with sales and marketing co-workers who say things like "We must leverage our infrastructure in core technologies blah blah blah".
Remember, due to the rumors people were expecting something more like an apple PDA/mp3 player.
Besides these devices will soon be illegal anyway with the SSSCA (or its offspring), and cds won't be rippable either. And we all know that therefore there will be no mp3s. Just look at how the RIAA managed to kill file-sharing by taking out Napster ;)
With an industry-leading 20 minutes of skip protection, iPod keeps playing without missing a beat. In addition to its 5GB hard drive, iPod has a 32MB memory cache. The cache is made up of solid-state memory, meaning that it has no mechanical or moving parts, so it's not affected bymovement of the device.
Since they specifically state that the memory cache is solid state and there is a limit to the skip prevention, it sure sounds like a normal hard drive.
Of course this would be illegal under the DMCA. The DOS attack is part of their copy-prevention mechanism and your honeypot is an attempt to disable that mechanism. Clearly anyone creating honeypots, distributing any related code, or publishing information discussing the use of honeypots is in violation and should be immediately arrested and exported to Afghanistan were they can be sufficiently bombed.
Just wait until they lobby for the right to break into our houses and smash things with hammers.
If you had read the article you might have noticed the section where they talk about that, and how the RIAA is lobbying for a clause that exempts copyright holders.
Emulators are generally slower than running native. Latency is the bane of pro audio software if you are trying to do anything remotely real-time (sequencing, sound sources, midi controllers, real-time audio manipulation, etc.). Since at least some of this is usually required in any pro audio situation, especially at a studio, any type of emulation is going to be a big problem. We're talking situations where milliseconds are extremely important.
I agree they could have been a bit more skeptical, but at least they did explicitly state "the research by three admittedly self-interested Internet publishing groups " and also identify the Internet Advertising Bureau as an industry trade group and DoubleClick as an ad agency.
The only flaw with plan is that it doesn't make any profit for Microsoft, and must therefore be A Very Bad Thing and unAmerican.
Most contracts already do. This decision is affecting mainly older material that was published before these contracts became standard.
I don't see this as a fair characterization of the debate at all! First of all, claiming that the convention will hurt your own country isn't xenophobia. It's true. It's going to hurt virtually everybody's country. I don't think anyone is saying that only the US will be hurt. But people like RMS are _American_ and the people they can affect the most are _other Americans_. You can get other Americans most involved by directly showing how it affects the legal system they are familiar with, the US one. US politicians will look out for US interests first, so show them how it affects US interests. It's not xenophobia, its common sense.
Second, I don't think anyone, especially RMS would ever claim that the US legal system is perfect. One of the big concerns about the convention is that it will extend the ridiculous US IP laws, copyright, DMCA, etc and give large corporations and corporate groups (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) even greater power than they have already.
So, these arguments very much engage the debate. They demonstrate _why_ legislative imperialism (in the form of the Hague Convention at least) is bad. This is much more convincing than simply jumping up and down and shouting "legislative imperialism is bad!".
But the Hague Convention isn't a 'common international law', at least in the sense that it is normally spoken about. Common international law suggests that there is an organized set of laws that everyone has agreed are common and will be followed by everyone. The Hague Convention allows any country to pass laws and have them enforced internationally. Far from a 'common' set of law this allows completely contradictary laws and has no process for the adoption of laws into a 'common international' set of laws. Someone passes it and demands enforcement. The whole concept of consensus about the laws is explicitly missing from the convention.
But it isn't possible to put thousands and thousands of flyers on thousands and thousands of cars in an extremely short period of time. There is a significant barrier to sending large quantities of flyers or junk mail which prevents us from getting completely overwhelmed. Production cost acts a limiting factor on the amount of junk that we will receive. This doens't exist with email. Anyone can easily collect/buy a large number of emails and spam away.
Also, no self-respecting defender of Free Speech would argue that are no limits on free speech. Certain limits are necessary. Its a matter of determining which are reasonable and justified and which aren't.
There is a difference between a link and the content contained at the linked site. A link is a REFERENECE to the content contained at the linked site. This is different from the actual content contained at the linked site. It's the same difference as that between a bibliography entry and the book itself.
Of course, as we learned from the "Law Review Article Says Port Scanning Illegal" article yesterday, Dr. Who would have been arrested immediately after performing the port scan and the aliens would indeed have insulted our intelligence before destroying us.
Using DeCSS to access the media in it's inteneded use, ie. watching the bloody movie, never seems to be mentioned.
I don't understand why this hasn't been pushed harder. Even if the MPAA, RIAA, etc. (hereafter referred to as Rat Bastards) can show that DeCSS has caused harm, which they haven't so far, why is that considered an argument for banning it?
There are all kinds of things that can be used for illegal purposes. Pawn shops have a bad reputation for dealing in stolen goods. Cars are frequently used for illegal activities (smuggling, robberies, drunk driving). Let's not even start on handguns. None of these are illegal though. This is because they have a clear legitimate use and the illegal use is a side-effect. Some other things, like drug paraphernalia, are illegal because it is considered that the primary and overwhelming purpose of these tools is illegal. Rat Bastards are trying to use the DMCA as justification for banning anything that could have an illegal use, regardless of whether it can be shown that it is actually used that way, or any other non-illegal uses that exist.
In the absence of evidence that DeCSS has caused any harm, with the stated purpose of being used for playing DVDs on Linux, and with the easily demonstrated rise in popularity of DVDs, computer DVD drives and Linux, there seems to be a clear case for legitimate use that should be stressed.
The Rat Bastards' lawyers are right that issues of free speech can be limited and superseded by other concerns. Even if the Rat Bastards lose the free speech aspect of the case it doesn't prevent them from winning the case overall. I think it is very important to raise as many other issues as possible (that are reasonable) that fall outside the realm of straight free speech.
Naturally, IANAL but IAAC (I am a canadian) WICI (which is completely irrelevant).
punchdrunk
And suggesting that Macrovision is the correct model for digital content protection doesn't make any sense. Either devices will be able to copy content or they won't. Only devices that allow copying will allow fair-use copying, and devices that won't allow copying will harm fair use. His view that including watermarking recognition code in all digital recording devices will somehow permit fair use is illogical. How is a recording device supposed to determine whether I am copying "The Matrix" for ten of my riends, as opposed to recording five movie scenes for my college special-effects class?
Mr. Boucher specifically mentions preventing the copying of rental movies, not all movies. Presumably there would be two versions. He specifically says "When there is no reasonable expectation of being able to make a copy, such as in the case of a movie rented from a store, the VCRs will block all copying in response to the macrovision encoding."
Presumably there would be two versions. Movies sent to video stores for rental use would have copy protection enabled. Copies for sale to private people would not have copy protection, as there is an expectation of being able to make copies under fair use. So the recording device wouldn't know whether copies are allowed or not. The media you buy would. There would of course have to be legislation on both sides, to ensure that devices prevent recording when required and to ensure that the evil bastard **AA groups and their members provide non-copy protected media appropriately.
Whether that is a good model or not is a different question, but it seems to me that this is what he is suggesting.