Because, unfortunately, the courts have recognized this argument
I know Kaplan said as much in the Remeirdes case, but are there other court rulings that also support the argument that you are not entitled to full/original quality?
Note, that you generally can't do HD time-shifting today, so DRM would not "take away" that ability.
DRM could possibly "take away" my ability to do so in the future.
Before the VCR, I didn't have the ability to time-shift broadcast programming either, so by the above logic I would not have lost anything if the MPAA had been successful in forcing Sony to not include a 'record' button on the VCR.
Advances in technology create opportunities for rightholders to sell new products, and it also create new opportunities for fair use. DRM will preserve the rightholders' benefits of new technology, but might to a large extent deny the creation of new fair use rights.
I reiterate that the problem isn't DRM per say, but just what particular rights are being managed, and whether they're reasonable.
I don't agree.
DRM and related legislation will pose a large threat to innovation, encryption and security research and will blunt the development of fair use. Pay per view/use also raise potential privacy problems.
Copyright holders don't have the right to eliminate "fair-use" of material that we legally acquire, then toss us a few scraps and expect us to be grateful.
But neither do they have to provide the technology so that exercise of those rights is convenient or easy.
Current copyright law (except the horrid DMCA) was written in the pre-digital world. In that world, it was inconceivable that the copyright holder would be able to control what you do with your legally acquired copy in your own home. Therefore, it made no sense to require that rightholders make it easy/possible for the customer to be able to benefit from fair use/copyright exemptions.
The courts have held (in the U.S., at least) that so long as there is at least one non-infringing use, even the preponderance of infringing uses does not render the tool illegal. Sadly, the Napster case goes against this precedent.
Which court cases? Betamax was a very close call in the supreme court (5 vs 4), and the evidence showed that there was a substantial amount of non-infringing use of the VCR.
In MPAA vs Remeirdes, Kaplan ruled that distributing DeCSS was illegal - even though DeCSS can be used for perfectly non-infringing purposes.
I have come to, and written about, a similar conclusion: trusted DRM entities will exchange encrypted data between themselves, with final decryption for viewing and audio playback, right down to "protected" windows on computer displays managed on the video cards.
"trusted DRM entities" have to prove to eachother that they are "trusted" (if not, an enterprising young hacker could easily make a DeDRM) - most likely by a crypto handshake using keys that only manufacturers of DRM-enabled devices have access to or by using a PKI certificate system. These keys/certificates have to be controlled by some entity, and rules have to be made concerning who should be able to receive such a key/certificate. This entity will then be an all-powerful gatekeeper with complete control of who should be allowed to manufacture DRM-enabled devices. This gatekeeper will be able to control innovation.
If you can extract something, you can extract everything so you might as well permit lower resolution plaintext access.
So any "fair use" that requires copying outside the DRM black box will have to be analog. I'm sorry, but that doesn't actually make me jump with joy.
[On a related note - many pirates don't give a shit about quality anyway, so the net will still be full of warez. DRM won't stop those that _want_ to commit copyright infringement, so its main function will be to make legal use of works cumbersome]
Also, see this article by Fred von Lohmann: Fair Use and Digital Rights Management: Preliminary Thoughts on the (Irreconcilable?) Tension between Them
1. It kills fair use. Well, yes, but that's an implementation detail. It need not have to. In fact, I'd argue that it should be legislated that any mandatory DRM mechanism should protect fair use rights (and I generally hate more laws). That this scenario is unlikely is an attribute of the political climate and intense content provider lobbying rather than a defect of the principles of DRM. But, imagine a DRM mechanism which automatically releases copyright material into the public domain when the copyright term expires.
You run into two problems if you try to design a DRM that also protects fair use:
1) Fair Use / Copyright exemptions contain, as a matter of law, few clear black and white lines that can easily be translated to digital rules. Legal scholars often argue about the exact lines, and courts are often called upon to determine if a use is copyright infringement or fair use. Try for example to make a DRM that allows citation when it is allowed by law but not otherwise. A 'fair use DRM' would replace our current law with a law that can be translated to fairy simple digital rules.
2) The basic premise of a local DRM (i.e., a DRM that control what you can do with content on equipment in your own home) is that it has to protect the plaintext. As a consequence, acts like time- and space-shifting and backup copies have to be kept inside the protected 'black box' created by the DRM. This will have a direct impact on the ability to store local copies of a work you have bought and the ability to convert it to a format suitable for viewing on future equipment. The 'best' solution is an interoperable DRM system that exists in your PC and any other consumer electronics device in your home - your TiVO, your portable music player, your PDA. This would make DRM-incompatible players or storage devices close to worthless in the marketplace, thus creating an environment where DRM functionality will be a requirement for new equipment (required by market force, not by law - but the result would be the same).
Copyright law - a copyright grants the rightholder certain exclusive rights for a given expression, it doesn't protect the ideas embedded in that expression. That is - it is legal to read a book, learn from it and use the ideas on your own work, but you are not free to copy the text from the book verbatim.
Patent law - the inventor is given a time-limited monopoly on the commercial exploitation of an idea.
Trade secret - anything a company doesn't want you to know. It is not illegal to independently discover a trade secret (Volvo ripping the latest Mercedes apart to see if they have some good ideas), but it is illegal for a company insider or someone that is bound by contract to reveal the secret.
Copyright law doesn't apply as long as he is just using the ideas and don't copy diagrams or code verbatim.
Patent law only applies if his former employer has patented the idea in question.
Trade secret law might apply if he has recently left the former company and has signed an NDA or something similar.
Anyway, IANAL so if this is an important issue go get some legal advice.
What? DVDs and CDs are popular because there is absolutely NO subscription involved. Because you "OWN" the movie/music (yes I do know that it's just a license in court).
Just a nitpick - that's not entirely true.
When you buy a physical object like a book or a record, you own it. If I take your book without your permission, it is theft.
However, the material in a book or record is copyrighted and the copyright holder has certain exclusive rights regarding what you can do with that content. For example, making copies of the book and selling those copies on the sidewalk would be copyright infringement.
Also, it is not "just a license" in court. You have not signed a contract that tells you what you can and can't do with the content. It is copyright law - and not a license - that set down the rules regarding how you can make use of the content.
(With software, it is a bit different. Also, with click-through licensing becoming more prevalent for online shopping we're bound to see more copyrighted works 'sold' by license in the future. It is still unclear how the courts will rule regarding how legally binding such non-negotiable contracts are, but I digress.)
If Johansen had written a Linux DVD player which made a good faith attempt to obey region encoding and which made it difficult to output the raw mpeg to a file, it probably would have been legal.
He would certainly have a stronger case, but the DVDCCA would likely sue anyway since he didn't sign their precious license.
But why the region lock?
There is no basis in US law for the MPAA's assertion that the world is separated into 6 different markets. Look up the terms 'first sale' and 'global exhaustion'.
Even in EU, where we shortly will have community exhaustion due to the EUCD, import of movies for personal use is neither copyright infringement nor a violation of parallel import law.
Copying for backups (or similiar) is perfectly legal.
We have - in general - better 'Fair Use' rights in Norway. (Fair Use in quotes, because the US and NO/EU legal traditions regarding copyright exemptions are different - US Fair Use is a legal defence if you break copyright law. NO 'Fair Use' is a set of exemptions enumerated in our copyright law).
In Norway, you have a carte blanche exemption for creating personal copies. If you own a copy of a work (say, an audio CD), you have the right to take as many copies as you like in any format you like for personal use. So, DivX'ing a DVD to play it on your laptop, or rip and mp3 a CD to listen to it on your MP3 player is perfectly legal.
All I need is the random seed and the random number generation forumla....
A string of 'random' data that can be generated by a seed and an algorithm is pseudo random. For certain applications pseudo random is good enough, and it is used all over the place - from picking the next block in a tetris game to generating cipher streams.
In case someone feels like telling the USTR what they think about this:
http://www.ustr.gov/about-ustr/contactustr.shtml
By Telephone:
USTR Individual Offices USTR Public Information Line (TOLL-FREE)
1-888-473-USTR (8787)
By Mail:
United States Trade Representative
600 17th Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20508
United States of America
By E-Mail:
questions regarding information on our site can be directed to contactustr@ustr.gov. (Your e-mail will be directed to the appropriate office.)
You are right though, that there is no law or precident for supporting the secondary market when authorized copies are made directly onto a general-purpose storage device owned by the consumer, where transferring ownership of the device is not feasable.
mea culpa, you're right.
Perhaps it would be more correct to explain it in this way:
When I buy an intangible work, the following happens:
Technically, a copy of the digital work is transferred over the network and permanently stored on a medium I own - usually a harddrive.
According to copyright law, the sale of the work authorizes the creation of temporary copies required to transfer the work to my computer/device and also the creation of a permanent copy on a storage device in my possession.
Now, to 'give' an eBook to my mother require the following steps:
1) create a new copy on a device owned by her.
2) delete my own copies.
Fair Use allows me to make further copies for my personal use (copy music to my MP3 player, etc) but does not allow creation of copies on media owned by anybody else - even if I delete the copy/ies in my possession. Copyright law doesn't seem to make a distinction between 'moving' and 'copying' digital works. 1) above is copyright infringement.
If it isn't feasible to transfer ownership of the storage device itself to someone else, I have no First Sale right.
It even gets worse than that. Digital contracts coupled with the anticircumvention provisions like 1201 in the DMCA or Article 6 in the EUCD is effectively killing copyright law.
Copyright itself is supposed to be a balance between the interests of the public and the author. The author is given a set of exclusive rights (distribution, public performance,...), which are then limited for the sake of the public interest (Fair Use, quoting, derivative works, limited time, etc).
This balance has historically been created/maintained by laws and legal precedent.
However, in the digital world much of the power to write copyright law has been put into the hands of large publishers and distributors.
To listen to a digital music file, you need a player. In order to listen to, alter, take quotes from or perform any other action on the music file, you need digital tools that understand the file format. Thus, what you can and can't do with a digital work is determined by the functionality of the digital tools available.
The anticircumvention provisions are effectively giving the owner of a copy protected digital format complete control of these tools. For example, the movie industry is using their control of the DVD format to impose region locks on all 'legal' or 'authorized' DVD players.
In other words - we are entering a world where code is law. By enacting the DMCA and the EUCD, our governments are giving away much of their power to control copyright law. Lex informatica will be written by large publishers and the movie and music industry.
On top of this, add mass-market online contracts similar to the software EULAs.
So, copyright law is six feet under. Buried below technology, anticircumvention and EULAs.
A related question regarding first sale and digital:
The First Sale right is bound to the physical copy.
To explain:
One of the exclusive rights of the author is the distribution right. When you buy a copy of a book, movie, whatever, the distribution right to that particular copy is said to be "exhausted". In other words - once the first sale of the copy has happened, resale/redistribution of that particular copy is unrestricted.
This is the mechanism that give me the right to give away or resell a book once I have read it, donate it to a library, etc. In other words - First Sale creates the second-hand market for copyrighted works.
However, when we go digital we are effectively denied the First Sale right.
If I buy and download an eBook, I have no physical copy. With no physical copy, the distribution right has not been exhausted, and I have no First Sale right. The act of "giving" my eBook to someone else is thus illegal, since I don't have a physical copy to give.
Thus, no more First Sale for me, no second-hand market. The digital equivalent of the 'used book store' won't exist.
This issue might be unimportant today, but it will have a huge effect on the digital IP marketplace in the not-so-distant future.
So, my question to you is:
It is quite obvious to me that we need a digital right that is equivalent to First Sale. Do you have any ideas about how this right should be written as law?
All modern browsers allow users to turn off cookies completely.
People all ready have the choice.
No, we don't. The/. cookie is used only to save you some time logging in.
However, do you know how all the cookies on all the other websites you surf are used, exactly what they track and how they use the information they collect?
To comply with this directive is quite simple:
Tell the user that you are using cookies, how you use them, and how you use the information gathered by the cookies/session tracking. Then we have a choice.
I for one like being able to sign in to slashdot once per session and post without typing username and pword. I also like going to websites that remember who I am and what I like to look at. Maybe the price I have to pay is that they know that I, as the personality named by the login "malfunct", watch certain things.
Yeah. But you are an informed techie, and you give your _consent_ for tracking or non-tracking by enabling or disabling cookies.
I have a cookie for/., I see no problems with that cookie.
However, cookies can be used for a lot more than saving you from the hassle of typing a username/password combination. Does it make you feel warm and comfy knowing that DoubleClick or other companies can use cookies to track the browsing habits of your aunt? Does it worry you that those browsing habits can be matched with her name and address when she orders something online?
Then again binoculars and small video cameras 'may seriously intrude on the privacy...' of European people too. Are they going after things of that nature as well?
Just go right ahead and ignore the most important part of the amendment:
'The use of such devices should therefore be prohibited unless the explicit, well-informed and freely given consent of the users concerned has been obtained.'
So, video cameras or binoculars used for _surveillance_ could be illegal unless those watched give their consent.
This privacy directive is supposed to make sure that personal information is not collected and (ab)used without the knowledge and/or consent of the people being tracked. This amendment only covers things like cookies - 'covert' digital tracking of use.
This directive doesn't mean that the tourist standing on top of the Eiffel tower has to ask each and every pedestrian below for consent before he is allowed to take a picture. It does however mean that you have to ask for consent before you collect and use personal information.What's so terrible about that?
Too many consumer electronics ewuipment manufacturers will oppose it.
However, the RIAA and MPAA doen't really want the SSSCA. What they want is a wort-case scenario so that their 'compromise' bill (which woudl be completely unacceptable without the threat of the SSCA) will pass unoppsed.
Please keep an eye out for the 'comprimise' bill thely'll ask for when the SSSCA gets shot down.
How can you file a motion to dismiss a suit you're not involved in?
This is an amicus brief - that is, a statement from someone that is neither the defendant nor plaintiff, but has an interest in the outcome of the case.
RIAA et al has filed a motion to dismiss, and this is additional support from the DoJ.
If you look in the EFF archives, you'll see a wealth of amicus briefs in support of both sides in the recent legal battles - in addition to other material.
MPAA vs 2600
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/
DVDCCA vs the Internet
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/
Felten vs RIAA
http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/Felten_v_RIAA/#fi le s
DoJ vs Sklyarov.
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov/
Slashdot Mirror
Because, unfortunately, the courts have recognized this argument
I know Kaplan said as much in the Remeirdes case, but are there other court rulings that also support the argument that you are not entitled to full/original quality?
Note, that you generally can't do HD time-shifting today, so DRM would not "take away" that ability.
DRM could possibly "take away" my ability to do so in the future.
Before the VCR, I didn't have the ability to time-shift broadcast programming either, so by the above logic I would not have lost anything if the MPAA had been successful in forcing Sony to not include a 'record' button on the VCR.
Advances in technology create opportunities for rightholders to sell new products, and it also create new opportunities for fair use. DRM will preserve the rightholders' benefits of new technology, but might to a large extent deny the creation of new fair use rights.
I reiterate that the problem isn't DRM per say, but just what particular rights are being managed, and whether they're reasonable.
I don't agree.
DRM and related legislation will pose a large threat to innovation, encryption and security research and will blunt the development of fair use. Pay per view/use also raise potential privacy problems.
Copyright holders don't have the right to eliminate "fair-use" of material that we legally acquire, then toss us a few scraps and expect us to be grateful.
But neither do they have to provide the technology so that exercise of those rights is convenient or easy.
Current copyright law (except the horrid DMCA) was written in the pre-digital world. In that world, it was inconceivable that the copyright holder would be able to control what you do with your legally acquired copy in your own home. Therefore, it made no sense to require that rightholders make it easy/possible for the customer to be able to benefit from fair use/copyright exemptions.
The courts have held (in the U.S., at least) that so long as there is at least one non-infringing use, even the preponderance of infringing uses does not render the tool illegal. Sadly, the Napster case goes against this precedent.
Which court cases? Betamax was a very close call in the supreme court (5 vs 4), and the evidence showed that there was a substantial amount of non-infringing use of the VCR.
In MPAA vs Remeirdes, Kaplan ruled that distributing DeCSS was illegal - even though DeCSS can be used for perfectly non-infringing purposes.
I have come to, and written about, a similar conclusion: trusted DRM entities will exchange encrypted data between themselves, with final decryption for viewing and audio playback, right down to "protected" windows on computer displays managed on the video cards.
"trusted DRM entities" have to prove to eachother that they are "trusted" (if not, an enterprising young hacker could easily make a DeDRM) - most likely by a crypto handshake using keys that only manufacturers of DRM-enabled devices have access to or by using a PKI certificate system. These keys/certificates have to be controlled by some entity, and rules have to be made concerning who should be able to receive such a key/certificate. This entity will then be an all-powerful gatekeeper with complete control of who should be allowed to manufacture DRM-enabled devices. This gatekeeper will be able to control innovation.
If you can extract something, you can extract everything so you might as well permit lower resolution plaintext access.
So any "fair use" that requires copying outside the DRM black box will have to be analog. I'm sorry, but that doesn't actually make me jump with joy.
[On a related note - many pirates don't give a shit about quality anyway, so the net will still be full of warez. DRM won't stop those that _want_ to commit copyright infringement, so its main function will be to make legal use of works cumbersome]
Also, see this article by Fred von Lohmann:
Fair Use and Digital Rights Management: Preliminary Thoughts on the (Irreconcilable?) Tension between Them
1. It kills fair use. Well, yes, but that's an implementation detail. It need not have to. In fact, I'd argue that it should be legislated that any mandatory DRM mechanism should protect fair use rights (and I generally hate more laws). That this scenario is unlikely is an attribute of the political climate and intense content provider lobbying rather than a defect of the principles of DRM. But, imagine a DRM mechanism which automatically releases copyright material into the public domain when the copyright term expires.
You run into two problems if you try to design a DRM that also protects fair use:
1) Fair Use / Copyright exemptions contain, as a matter of law, few clear black and white lines that can easily be translated to digital rules. Legal scholars often argue about the exact lines, and courts are often called upon to determine if a use is copyright infringement or fair use. Try for example to make a DRM that allows citation when it is allowed by law but not otherwise. A 'fair use DRM' would replace our current law with a law that can be translated to fairy simple digital rules.
2) The basic premise of a local DRM (i.e., a DRM that control what you can do with content on equipment in your own home) is that it has to protect the plaintext. As a consequence, acts like time- and space-shifting and backup copies have to be kept inside the protected 'black box' created by the DRM. This will have a direct impact on the ability to store local copies of a work you have bought and the ability to convert it to a format suitable for viewing on future equipment. The 'best' solution is an interoperable DRM system that exists in your PC and any other consumer electronics device in your home - your TiVO, your portable music player, your PDA. This would make DRM-incompatible players or storage devices close to worthless in the marketplace, thus creating an environment where DRM functionality will be a requirement for new equipment (required by market force, not by law - but the result would be the same).
"IP" is four different creatures:
Trademarks - doesn't apply here.
Copyright law - a copyright grants the rightholder certain exclusive rights for a given expression, it doesn't protect the ideas embedded in that expression. That is - it is legal to read a book, learn from it and use the ideas on your own work, but you are not free to copy the text from the book verbatim.
Patent law - the inventor is given a time-limited monopoly on the commercial exploitation of an idea.
Trade secret - anything a company doesn't want you to know. It is not illegal to independently discover a trade secret (Volvo ripping the latest Mercedes apart to see if they have some good ideas), but it is illegal for a company insider or someone that is bound by contract to reveal the secret.
Copyright law doesn't apply as long as he is just using the ideas and don't copy diagrams or code verbatim.
Patent law only applies if his former employer has patented the idea in question.
Trade secret law might apply if he has recently left the former company and has signed an NDA or something similar.
Anyway, IANAL so if this is an important issue go get some legal advice.
What? DVDs and CDs are popular because there is absolutely NO subscription involved. Because you "OWN" the movie/music (yes I do know that it's just a license in court).
Just a nitpick - that's not entirely true.
When you buy a physical object like a book or a record, you own it. If I take your book without your permission, it is theft.
However, the material in a book or record is copyrighted and the copyright holder has certain exclusive rights regarding what you can do with that content. For example, making copies of the book and selling those copies on the sidewalk would be copyright infringement.
Also, it is not "just a license" in court. You have not signed a contract that tells you what you can and can't do with the content. It is copyright law - and not a license - that set down the rules regarding how you can make use of the content.
(With software, it is a bit different. Also, with click-through licensing becoming more prevalent for online shopping we're bound to see more copyrighted works 'sold' by license in the future. It is still unclear how the courts will rule regarding how legally binding such non-negotiable contracts are, but I digress.)
Alan Cox clearly doesn't understand copyright -- what is that baloney about it being invented by oppressive regimes for censor?
As other people have already said - Alan is right.
A good introduction to the history of copyright law can be found in the first part of the article Copyright in a frictionless world by Brendan Scott.
If Johansen had written a Linux DVD player which made a good faith attempt to obey region encoding and which made it difficult to output the raw mpeg to a file, it probably would have been legal.
He would certainly have a stronger case, but the DVDCCA would likely sue anyway since he didn't sign their precious license.
But why the region lock?
There is no basis in US law for the MPAA's assertion that the world is separated into 6 different markets. Look up the terms 'first sale' and 'global exhaustion'.
Even in EU, where we shortly will have community exhaustion due to the EUCD, import of movies for personal use is neither copyright infringement nor a violation of parallel import law.
Copying for backups (or similiar) is perfectly legal.
We have - in general - better 'Fair Use' rights in Norway. (Fair Use in quotes, because the US and NO/EU legal traditions regarding copyright exemptions are different - US Fair Use is a legal defence if you break copyright law. NO 'Fair Use' is a set of exemptions enumerated in our copyright law).
In Norway, you have a carte blanche exemption for creating personal copies. If you own a copy of a work (say, an audio CD), you have the right to take as many copies as you like in any format you like for personal use. So, DivX'ing a DVD to play it on your laptop, or rip and mp3 a CD to listen to it on your MP3 player is perfectly legal.
Does this enable the MPAA to sue poor Jon for breaking a law that does not apply where he lives?
The hypothetical Jon was never sued under US law.
All I need is the random seed and the random number generation forumla....
A string of 'random' data that can be generated by a seed and an algorithm is pseudo random. For certain applications pseudo random is good enough, and it is used all over the place - from picking the next block in a tetris game to generating cipher streams.
Truly random data is an entirely different beast.
In case someone feels like telling the USTR what they think about this:
l
http://www.ustr.gov/about-ustr/contactustr.shtm
By Telephone:
USTR Individual Offices
USTR Public Information Line (TOLL-FREE)
1-888-473-USTR (8787)
By Mail:
United States Trade Representative
600 17th Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20508
United States of America
By E-Mail:
questions regarding information on our site can be directed to contactustr@ustr.gov. (Your e-mail will be directed to the appropriate office.)
You are right though, that there is no law or precident for supporting the secondary market when authorized copies are made directly onto a general-purpose storage device owned by the consumer, where transferring ownership of the device is not feasable.
...), which are then limited for the sake of the public interest (Fair Use, quoting, derivative works, limited time, etc).
mea culpa, you're right.
Perhaps it would be more correct to explain it in this way:
When I buy an intangible work, the following happens:
Technically, a copy of the digital work is transferred over the network and permanently stored on a medium I own - usually a harddrive.
According to copyright law, the sale of the work authorizes the creation of temporary copies required to transfer the work to my computer/device and also the creation of a permanent copy on a storage device in my possession.
Now, to 'give' an eBook to my mother require the following steps:
1) create a new copy on a device owned by her.
2) delete my own copies.
Fair Use allows me to make further copies for my personal use (copy music to my MP3 player, etc) but does not allow creation of copies on media owned by anybody else - even if I delete the copy/ies in my possession. Copyright law doesn't seem to make a distinction between 'moving' and 'copying' digital works. 1) above is copyright infringement.
If it isn't feasible to transfer ownership of the storage device itself to someone else, I have no First Sale right.
It even gets worse than that. Digital contracts coupled with the anticircumvention provisions like 1201 in the DMCA or Article 6 in the EUCD is effectively killing copyright law.
Copyright itself is supposed to be a balance between the interests of the public and the author. The author is given a set of exclusive rights (distribution, public performance,
This balance has historically been created/maintained by laws and legal precedent.
However, in the digital world much of the power to write copyright law has been put into the hands of large publishers and distributors.
To listen to a digital music file, you need a player. In order to listen to, alter, take quotes from or perform any other action on the music file, you need digital tools that understand the file format. Thus, what you can and can't do with a digital work is determined by the functionality of the digital tools available.
The anticircumvention provisions are effectively giving the owner of a copy protected digital format complete control of these tools. For example, the movie industry is using their control of the DVD format to impose region locks on all 'legal' or 'authorized' DVD players.
In other words - we are entering a world where code is law. By enacting the DMCA and the EUCD, our governments are giving away much of their power to control copyright law. Lex informatica will be written by large publishers and the movie and music industry.
On top of this, add mass-market online contracts similar to the software EULAs.
So, copyright law is six feet under. Buried below technology, anticircumvention and EULAs.
A related question regarding first sale and digital:
The First Sale right is bound to the physical copy.
To explain:
One of the exclusive rights of the author is the distribution right. When you buy a copy of a book, movie, whatever, the distribution right to that particular copy is said to be "exhausted". In other words - once the first sale of the copy has happened, resale/redistribution of that particular copy is unrestricted.
This is the mechanism that give me the right to give away or resell a book once I have read it, donate it to a library, etc. In other words - First Sale creates the second-hand market for copyrighted works.
However, when we go digital we are effectively denied the First Sale right.
If I buy and download an eBook, I have no physical copy. With no physical copy, the distribution right has not been exhausted, and I have no First Sale right. The act of "giving" my eBook to someone else is thus illegal, since I don't have a physical copy to give.
Thus, no more First Sale for me, no second-hand market. The digital equivalent of the 'used book store' won't exist.
This issue might be unimportant today, but it will have a huge effect on the digital IP marketplace in the not-so-distant future.
So, my question to you is:
It is quite obvious to me that we need a digital right that is equivalent to First Sale. Do you have any ideas about how this right should be written as law?
If you are in the UK, check out Foundation for Information Policy Research
:)
and Campaign for Digital Rights
Other than that, small groups are scattered here and there around Europe. If a group doesn't exist in your country - do something about it.
All modern browsers allow users to turn off cookies completely.
/. cookie is used only to save you some time logging in.
People all ready have the choice.
No, we don't. The
However, do you know how all the cookies on all the other websites you surf are used, exactly what they track and how they use the information they collect?
To comply with this directive is quite simple:
Tell the user that you are using cookies, how you use them, and how you use the information gathered by the cookies/session tracking. Then we have a choice.
I for one like being able to sign in to slashdot once per session and post without typing username and pword. I also like going to websites that remember who I am and what I like to look at. Maybe the price I have to pay is that they know that I, as the personality named by the login "malfunct", watch certain things.
/., I see no problems with that cookie.
Yeah. But you are an informed techie, and you give your _consent_ for tracking or non-tracking by enabling or disabling cookies.
I have a cookie for
However, cookies can be used for a lot more than saving you from the hassle of typing a username/password combination. Does it make you feel warm and comfy knowing that DoubleClick or other companies can use cookies to track the browsing habits of your aunt? Does it worry you that those browsing habits can be matched with her name and address when she orders something online?
Then again binoculars and small video cameras 'may seriously intrude on the privacy...' of European people too. Are they going after things of that nature as well?
Just go right ahead and ignore the most important part of the amendment:
'The use of such devices should therefore be prohibited unless the explicit, well-informed and freely given consent of the users concerned has been obtained.'
So, video cameras or binoculars used for _surveillance_ could be illegal unless those watched give their consent.
This privacy directive is supposed to make sure that personal information is not collected and (ab)used without the knowledge and/or consent of the people being tracked. This amendment only covers things like cookies - 'covert' digital tracking of use.
This directive doesn't mean that the tourist standing on top of the Eiffel tower has to ask each and every pedestrian below for consent before he is allowed to take a picture. It does however mean that you have to ask for consent before you collect and use personal information.What's so terrible about that?
I live in the Netherlands and we don't have the DMCA.
But come Dec 2002, you will have the EUCD instead.
They harrassed an Norwegian,
Somewhat. The MPAA sent a complaint to the norwegian 'economic crime unit', which acted as a "useful idiot" and put him under investigation.
A good reason for the rest of the world to take notice...
The rest of the world should take notice because the US is applying a lot of pressure.
There are two issues, really:
Jursdiction - that is, when can a court in country A convict a citizen in country B. This is what makes the 'Hague' treaty so scary.
Similar laws - all EU countries will have an anticircumvention law similar to 1201 in the DMCA before Dec. 2002. EUCD background information
Australia has a similar law. Sorry, I don't have a link at the moment.
Canada is considering an anticircumvention law.
USA is trying to push 1201 on other countries through the FTAA.
Non-US citizens should be aware that this isn't a purely US problem.
The SSSCA is not going to pass unamended.
Too many consumer electronics ewuipment manufacturers will oppose it.
However, the RIAA and MPAA doen't really want the SSSCA. What they want is a wort-case scenario so that their 'compromise' bill (which woudl be completely unacceptable without the threat of the SSCA) will pass unoppsed.
Please keep an eye out for the 'comprimise' bill thely'll ask for when the SSSCA gets shot down.
The reason the RIAA was concerned was that this law may now keep them from shuting down illegal ftp and web sites.
Strawman.
They already have the power to do this through the notice-and-takedown provisions in the DMCA.
How can you file a motion to dismiss a suit you're not involved in?
i le s
This is an amicus brief - that is, a statement from someone that is neither the defendant nor plaintiff, but has an interest in the outcome of the case.
RIAA et al has filed a motion to dismiss, and this is additional support from the DoJ.
If you look in the EFF archives, you'll see a wealth of amicus briefs in support of both sides in the recent legal battles - in addition to other material.
MPAA vs 2600
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/
DVDCCA vs the Internet
http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/DVDCCA_case/
Felten vs RIAA
http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/Felten_v_RIAA/#f
DoJ vs Sklyarov.
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov/
They want version 1.0. 1.0 says, "Hey, this is stable, it won't kill, maim or cause your machine to implode."
You must have been hiding under a rock while MS redefined the meaning of "1.0".
I know that Scott said that we should 'Get over it', but anyway..
Anyone know the technical details on this stuff wrt 3rd parties getting hold of your location information?
Now, the EU is issuing a Directive to other European states to pass laws similar to the DMCA
It received the final approval on April 9. The final version, with official translations was published on May 22.
The timeframe for the implementation of the directive in all EU countries, is 18 months. In other words, 22nd December 2002.
For background information check eurorights.org