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US Copyright Office Releases DMCA Advisory Report
Posted by
michael
on Thu Aug 30, 2001 08:29 AM
from the drowned-in-the-paper-sea dept.
from the drowned-in-the-paper-sea dept.
snogwozzle writes: "The US Copyright Office's congressionally-mandated advisory report on the effect of the DMCA is in, and at first glance it doesn't look too good. They're against undoing the definition of temporary RAM buffer copies as possibly infringing (which Jessica Litman in Digital Copyright pegged as perhaps the central dirty trick in the DMCA as it opens the door to technical access control by publishers) is turned down, so is a first sale doctrine for digitally distributed works, and the DMCA's effect on fair use is called out of scope for the report. On the other hand, they think everyone should have a backup right for media bought in digital form, like we have for software." Keep in mind that this is only looking at the DMCA's effect on the "first sale doctrine" (once a work is sold to you, the copyright holder can't stop you from re-selling it) and on the legal right to make backup copies of a computer program.
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DMCA Advisory (Score:2)
The DMCA has been rated A for Awful by the US Copyright Office.
Oh how I would like to see that happen.
Strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously, we didn't care (Score:5, Insightful)
Posted by timothy on Saturday March 18, @09:09PM
from the calm-collected-rational-and-persuasive dept.
Parent
Re:Obviously, we didn't care (Score:2, Informative)
Moreso, the format that was required by the Copyright Office was PDF only, I believe, and this is typically not an easily print-to format for the casual user.
The first comment of that thread was someone offering to PDF-replies for people, so at least someone extended the hand.
The other thing: look at the time/date posted: late night on saturday. By the time the mass-monday rush comes around, that story's already off the front page.
Re:Obviously, we didn't care (Score:2)
Re:Obviously, we didn't care (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, this cleared everything up for me.... ??
Isn't there a good chance that there are more comments? Did anyone stop to think that the comments/list itself might be moderated?
I think every single person who's thought about it has considered this possibility. Hence the disbelief at the tiny number of comments, when so many people must have posted.
Any idea how this list was moderated? Provide some information and I'll love you for it.
Re:Obviously, we didn't care (Score:3, Informative)
Ever since I read that quote from the head of the U.S. Copyright office which said something like, "any time a big corporation said they wanted something, we gave it to them", I've understood that public comments are for show only. They do not listen to what people want, only companies. Sorry, I can't remember the exact quote, but it really was that blatant.
Have no illusions. THe copyright office is a lapdog of the MPAA and RIAA. Public comments don't mean shit, even if you do manage to get them through.
Re:Strange (Score:4, Redundant)
People bitch about the DMCA on slashdot.
Some even come up with good arguments why the DMCA is bad and their arguments are moderated up and everyone else agrees with their point of view.
However, these readers fail to forward these same arguments to the people who need to read them.
Same for the dmitry case. Lots of people have come up with ideas on what dmitry should do or should not do. DMITRY has bigger things to do than read slashdot! If you come up with ideas on how to help him, make sure your message gets to him or his lawyer. Getting modded to +5 here does not help him directly.
Got any ideas how 2600 can fight back in the MPAA lawsuit? Email the ideas to them!
So please, aside posting to slashdot, do the necessary to send your messages to the relevant people.
Thank you.
Parent
Re:Strange (Score:2)
Precisely.
I personally wrote 3 letters to my congressman last night on various issues. I have 2 more to go that I didn't get done. (I thought it better to break it up topically than overwhelm the guy with one big letter he wouldn't read.) If you don't like what the government is doing, tell them! Whining on Slashdot doesn't help at all.
Re:Automatic Democracy - An Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't like this idea at all. Too many of the 5 posts are complete crap which know not what they're talking about. Take the Dmitry case for instance. I've seen far too many 5, Insightful, posts about how it's so horrible that he was arrested for giving a speech. Of course anyone actually following the case knows that the speech had nothing to do with the indictment. The proper way to get insightful posts to the proper people is A) for the person who wrote them to also write to the appropriate people and B) for others with the same viewpoint to read those posts and incorporate them into their comments.
Forcing people to post in PDF format was a good thing. It helped separate those who actually had insight into the situation from those "click me if you disagree with the DMCA and I'll automatically send a letter to congress for you". The U.S. was set up to avoid democracy where every person is expected to give their vote on every opinion. Congress is there to hear the facts and to make their own opinions, and the voice of the people comes at election time.
If you have facts, by all means present them to your congresscritters. But spamming them with "Me Too" letters does nothing more than decrease the signal/noise ratio and keep them from making the right decisions. If they cared about your opinion they'd look at polls, or start their own.
Re:Automatic Democracy - An Idea (Score:3, Informative)
I've seen far too many 5, Insightful, posts about how it's so horrible that he was arrested for giving a speech. Of course anyone actually following the case knows that the speech had nothing to do with the indictment.
*BZZT* wrong answer, thank you for playing our game.
I knew some bozo like you was going to say that, which is exactly why I used the word "indictment" and not "arrest".
He did not sell any software. The software was sold by his employer.
Dmitry is listed on that software as the copyright holder of the software. Elcomsoft is merely a distributor.
If the crime was for selling the software, why was his boss not arrested as well?
1) Because they didn't have an arrest warrant for his boss, probably because 2) Because his boss was not listed as the copyright holder of the software and/or 3) Because they did not know his boss was going to be in the country.
If he was arrested for trafficking, why was the US broker (that handled the transaction) not arrested?
Because the US broker did not do so willfully, and stopped as soon as it found out about it.
If the crime was trafficking, why was the US broker not arrested when the crime was actually committed instead of months afterward?
Because he wasn't in the country, Russia would never have extridited, and he wasn't a big of enough deal to risk American lives to go over to Russia and capture.
The arrest warrant may have said that he was arrested for trafficking, but logic proves otherwise.
I'm not so sure about that... Adobe was trying to stop him long before they even knew about the speech. But I'll certainly agree that giving the speech pissed off Adobe and the government, perhaps enough to convince them to make the arrest where they otherwise wouldn't have. But that's just the way things work in this country. If I'm speeding and I get pulled over, and when I get pulled over I explain to the cop that I was going to a convention where I am going to give a speech on how to get out of traffic tickets, the cop is going to be much more likely to give me a speeding ticket. That doesn't mean I got the ticket for giving a speech, it just means I pissed the wrong person off and they found a way to get back at me.
Re:Strange (Score:2)
Some have said that people didn't care, or that the PDF format required was onerous. That may be true.
However, I imagine that the "only 30 comments" was more accurately described as "only 30 on-topic comments." Most slashdotter's response to the DMCA has to do with the copy control vs fari use aspects, and not the first-sale doctrine issues raised here.
If the Copyright Office has divided up the response according to different aspects, the torrent of feedback received may find new life, or they may just open up for more feedback later.
Re:Strange (Score:2)
Take the concept of digital first sale. The Copyright Office makes and maintains a firm distinction that first sale only covers the physical medium. Transmission of bits to your computer doesn't constitute a material copy of the work and instead falls under the copyright owner's ability to distribute said work. They repeatedly refer to Bobbs-Merrill and the legislative history of section 109 to support their assertion that first sale does not apply in this circumstance and arguements ranging from "progressing the arts and sciences" to "promoting access" are irrelevant.
The legal status of digital copies in RAM also doesn't look too good. (dang this is a big document:) The CO asserts that obviously RAM is tangible and is pretty willing to accept that it is a fixed medium as well. This puts the rights of the copyright holder first as the copy in RAM could be used to reproduce the protected material. I'll have to read further for their conclusions.
The problem, as I see it, is if the decision maker won't accept your axioms you lose the debate. From what I've read so far this is the case here. The problems people are pointing out simply aren't that big and the issues being raised aren't pertinent to the discussion at hand seems to be the recurring theme in the report.
Re:Strange (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, they missed my entire point because they appear to view "first sale" completely incorrectly. First sale is the beginning of ownership of ordinary property by the purchaser. That comes with all property rights not specifically reserved to the copyight holder by laws made in accordance with the Constitution. Because the first Supreme Court case (Bobbs-Merrill v Straus) on the interplay between property rights and copyrights found that the right to sell your property was one such property right, the copyright fascists latched on to that precedent and equated the conclusion with the reasoning. Judge Kaplan did this and so does the Copyright Office.
That view is profoundly wrong. One need look no farther than the plain text of section 109 and Supreme Court cases like PREI, INC. v. COLUMBIA PICTURES, 508 U.S. 49 (1993) to find the unsurprising idea that property rights entail more than just the right to sell. In particular, in PREI the Supreme Court agreed with the lower court that private viewing of movies is a first sale right that belongs to the owner of the copy, even when it occurs over the active objection copyright holder.
This wasn't even an issue in the case, though. The issue was whether that fact was so obvious that Columbia's raising it was "sham" litigation. The fact that the Court granted certiori on that issue says a lot, even if they didn't ultimately decide that it was a sham.
Isn't it interesting that no mention of this case is found in the Copyright Office's opinion, even though they explicitly consider the first sale rights of movie purchasers?
Property rights actually are property rights, while intellectual property rights are not. The copyright fascists seems to get this backwards.
Lots of items out of scope... convenient... (Score:2)
OF course, in the areas in which we're all interested, there is some frightning stuff. I'm not sure I want to know about the office's interpretation of some of the other items...(cuz ignorance is bliss... - well, no we tried that from 1998 to 2000 when the DMCA went into effect)...
--CTH
Re:Lots of items out of scope... convenient... (Score:3, Interesting)
------------
Dear Senator Murray,
I am writing to you today to voice my concern over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). I am concerned that the central issue with the DMCA - my "fair use" access rights to information I have purchased - was deemed "out of scope" in the governmental report DMCA Section 104 Report released by the US Copyright Office in August 2001. As a user of the Linux operating system I have grown accustomed to using tools created by others, or creating my own, when no corporation has deemed it worthwhile to provide those tools for me - namely a means for watching DVD videos on my computer. Under the DMCA those tools, and my possession or others' creation of them has been deemed illegal. Likewise it is now illegal for me to make a safe backup of information or computer software - for my own use - if that backup should require a tool to access the information locked away by a company's copy protection scheme. I cannot count the hundreds to thousands of dollars in software I have lost because I was unable to make a safe backup copy of the discs I purchased only to have those discs corrupted or damage. As you can see this law unfairly infringes on my rights to legal access to information I have purchased. The DMCA also infringes on our scientists ability to do research as you can see by the actions taken against Princeton's professor Felton. Professor Felton has barred from presenting research on the nature of cryptography because the DMCA had rendered his actions while conducting research illegal.
Ben Franklin said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance; I have no wish to stand by and watch as my rights are trampled on. I hope that I can count on your support to strike down or seriously amend this unjust and unlawful piece of legislation. If you have any questions for me or would like to know more about the public's stance on this law please feel free to contact me.
Thank you.
Your Constituent,
232 pages, eek! (Score:2)
I don't actually have to read the thing to take part in /. discussions, do I?
Bill, hasn't got the WPIconicSymbolsA font.
Re:232 pages, eek! (Score:2)
Not having read Section III yet, what bothers me is that it appears that since the content is "digital" first sale needs to be modified to accomendate the new media. I'm anxious to find out what they intend to do with it.
Waiting for preview to load.... I started reading section III. Arguments regarding CSS as it affects section 109 are "without merit."
Re:232 pages, eek! (Score:5, Funny)
That's never stopped anyone before.
Parent
Bad news can be good news (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Bad news can be good news (Score:2)
only so long as the RIAA, the MPAA, and other related orgasnizations do not take this as an opportunity to turn the screws event tighter.Gotta watch the bastards.
- - -
Radio Free Nation [radiofreenation.com]
a news site based on Slash Code
"If You have a Story, We have a Soap Box"
- - -
Bad news can be simply bad news (Score:5, Insightful)
CSS and first sale issues are completely ripped apart. They argue that the requirement to view DVDs on non-licensed devices is akin to requiring VHS tapes to be watched on Beta machines. The analogy is so poor and revealing of how clueless the Copyright Office is to the issue that it makes me despair.
So far the report has been, imnsho, uninsightful and focused on the here and now. The DMCA is doing what it is "supposed to be doing" and all that hippy protest stuff isn't very relevent. This is what your congress-critter is going to get out of this report after it is digested by some staff member. I reserve the right to change my opinion once I'm done with the other 98 percent of Section III but my initial reaction is no, this is bad news.
Parent
Clueless or Evil??? (Score:2, Interesting)
If I was evil, I'd use the exact same analogy to the anti-DMCA sentiment come off as petty liberal sticklers.
I appreciate anything that vindicates my apathy for your petty little freedom to write compatable software. Who are you to tell me what you can do with my copyrighted material? It's my right to be able to securly distribute my copyrighted material without the fear it's going to be Napsterized.
Try playing the Devil's advocate and see how easy it is to not give a shit about details when you're trying to manipulate the public.
Write letters to Congressmen (Score:2, Redundant)
Some relevant DMCA Links: (Score:4, Informative)
Full text of the DMCA (see section 1201) [loc.gov]
Legislative history of the DMCA [hrrc.org]
Prof. Touretzky's page (lots of great resources here) [cmu.edu]
General DMCA/DeCSS paper [wickedbig.net]
I'm sure that there's a bunch of other places where you can go grab some knowledge...if you have any good links, post them below, because I'd be interested in reading more...
Re:Some relevant DMCA Links: (Score:2)
Re:Some relevant DMCA Links: (Score:2)
What does this mean (from the DMCA)?
(e) Law Enforcement, Intelligence, and Other Government Activities.-This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, information security, or intelligence activity of an officer, agent, or employee of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State, or a person acting pursuant to a contract with the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State. For purposes of this subsection, the term "information security" means activities carried out in order to identify and address the vulnerabilities of a government computer, computer system, or computer network.
Does that mean that the law doesn't apply to the government? The paragraph says "does not prohibit..."; does not prohibit from what? Does not prohibit from using anticircumvention devices for investigation? If so, that throws out using ROT-13 to hide my sensitive data from government authorities. I would have hoped that wrapping my (copyright by default) data in simple encryption that the data could not be used against me if it was obtained without a warrant. Wasn't this what Aimster was trying to do?
Oh my sides.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The next time you get stopped at a DUI checkpoint and asked for your papers and destination, ask the uniform about your Fourth Amendment rights. You'll be grabbing the trunk and wishing you had kept quiet.
Rights! You guys are so cute.
Re:Oh my sides.. (Score:2)
What does this mean (from the DMCA)?
(e) Law Enforcement, Intelligence, and Other Government Activities.-This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorized investigative, protective, information security, or intelligence activity of an officer, agent, or employee of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State, or a person acting pursuant to a contract with the United States, a State, or a political subdivision of a State. For purposes of this subsection, the term "information security" means activities carried out in order to identify and address the vulnerabilities of a government computer, computer system, or computer network.
Does that mean that the law doesn't apply to the government? The paragraph says "does not prohibit..."; does not prohibit from what? Does not prohibit from using anticircumvention devices for investigation? If so, that throws out using ROT-13 to hide my sensitive data from government authorities. I would have hoped that wrapping my (copyright by default) data in simple encryption that the data could not be used against me if it was obtained without a warrant. Wasn't this what Aimster was trying to do?
Re:Oh my sides.. (Score:2)
Maybe my memory's a little faulty, but I seem to recall that the Supreme Court recently ruled this practice unconstitutional.
The stop is, however, an unreasonable search... (Score:2)
Reselling software (Score:5, Insightful)
My next step was to email microsoft about this, and find out what was the problem. As it turns out, you cannot sell this particular software without the original box and install manuals. I explained that I have never kept a box, and the manuals are useless. So, I still have a Windows NT 4.0 CD that I will not use again, and am unable to sell it or transfer ownership to another company.
I tell this only to let you all know that our abilities to resell items can be hindered by licensing. Legislation like DMCA will give unnecessary power to license-givers, and the consumer will suffer. Imagine if you are next told in your end-user license agreement that you can never resell the software you have purchased!
Re:Reselling software (Score:2)
Re:Reselling software (Score:4, Informative)
Your problem is that you still think you bought the software. You didn't. You bought a license to use that software. A non-transferable license. You're screwed.
I don't have to imagine your example, because I ran into it in 1983, with my Zenith Z-100 (not the PC clone, the original Z-100, with the S-100 bus). All their software, including MS-DOS (they called it Z-DOS), was non-transferable. If I sold the hardware the buyer would have to go to Zenith for a new copy of DOS! What a bunch of crap, right? Perfectly legal, as I did not own the software, just a license to use it. I argued that the computer was useless without the operating system, but they claimed that it was not useless, since I could write my own code from scratch and get the BIOS to load it, just like it loads MS-DOS. I never bought another Zenith product again -- any Zenith product.
Parent
Washington Post (Score:3, Informative)
no surprises, unfortunately (Score:2)
Who -prepared- this slop? (Score:5, Informative)
But there are other concerns that are better, more poignant, as they impacts the emulation community. One court has held that Section 117 does not excuse the making of purported backup copies of a video game embodied in ROM, because that particular storage medium is not vulnerable to "damage by mechanical or electrical failure".
Excuse me?? I've seen ROM chips blasted right off circuit boards due to voltage spikes. I know that the CDROM in my Playstation could easily get off-kilter and trash a CD beyond repair before I could stop it. But alas, this is the language of the law - dumping ROMs of any form is illegal because ROMs aren't killable, so thinks the court system.
The report reads in a contradictory fashion. They solicit views from the public against the sections of the DCMA, then get opinions from copyright holders backing the DCMA. Even their own recommendations are contradictory! Example:
1) The people writing the report feel that arguments against Section 1201 generally aren't valid (detailing the `first sale` doctrine - once a work is sold, you can do whatever you want to it [`disposition of the work`]). This section limits the rights of the copyright authors after a sale is made.
The specific grievance they haul out is CSS/De-CSS. They feel that altering first sale priviledges to require that all devices be capable of playing DVDs would be like demanding that PCs could play VHS tapes -- when, clearly, this isn't the issue at hand. They reporting group intentionally misconstrues this in their report. Then they go on to say that while CSS and region encoding may well destroy a market for reselling the used DVDs due to limited playability, that this action is not covered as a right by the first sale doctrine, so nobody's really losing anything in the scope of this law.
2) Not a half page later, the reporting group proceeds to state, -in writing-, that using encryption technology to tether a program or medium to a particular system a la WMV encryption. They state that copying a tethered copy onto a zip disk or CDRW is a useless exercise, since taking it to another system wouldn't work, regardless of whether or not you own the copyright to the media in question. This limits the ability to exercise control over the disposition of the work.
The paper notes that this limitation halfway violates the first sale doctrine, because circumventing the tethering protection in order to exercise your rights under the first sale doctrine would entail violating section 1201 as amended by the DCMA.
Does not CSS encoding and regional encoding tether your DVD to a particular player-type? If I carry my region-1 DVD to Asia, is it not preventing me from watching my licensed and owned DVD? Furthermore, if I seek to alter the disposition of the work - say, rip the DVD to MPG form so I can watch it on my computer - does not CSS encryption prevent me from exercising my rights under section 1201, as tethering technology does?
I swear, the more I read, the more infuriated I become. And congress is -reading- this slop.
As for making backup copies -- and circumventing copy protection to do so, which the DCMA prohibits -- the reporting group found that the ability to make or not make archival copies of software has little real impact on consumers as a whole. Thanks, guys - I'm not your average consumer.
They state that, for one, most copy prohibition is due to the software license itself not allowing you to make copies, so Section 117 never comes into play, as you're limited before you ever even think about the Copyright Act. Next, they say that if the software has no copy protection or licensing restriction, you can go ahead and make your one archive copy -- as per 117. Third, they state that most software comes on CDROMs, and that CDROMs *are their own archive copy*. Remember, ROM media is not vulnerable to destruction via mechanical or electronic forces. I suppose they've never seen a CD scratched beyond all recognition. *shakes his head*
The report is also loaded with obviousness.
"The recent phenomenon of the popularity of using Napster to obtain unauthorized copies of works strongly suggests that some members of the public will infringe copyright when the likelihood of detection and punishment is low."
Indeed. I wonder how much that little gem cost America's taxpayers to prepare.
All in all, I'm highly disappointed in the scope of this report, the effort expended by the people who wrote it, and the recommendations they make. I suppose I'll simply have to continue being an outlaw; these laws do not suit my idea of my rights after the first sale doctrine has been applied.
-
Wingchild
Re:Who -prepared- this slop? (Score:2)
The recent phenomenon of the popularity of using Napster to obtain unauthorized copies of works strongly suggests that some members of the public will infringe copyright when the likelihood of detection and punishment is low.
Unfortunately, statements like that will be used to justify stronger and stronger punishments for less and less significant "crimes".
This is the same country, remember, that will have a public school call the police when a 4th-grader points a piece of fried chicken at someone at lunchtime and goes "bang-bang".
I can't wait to see the anti-copying police state they'll come up with in 5-10 years.
It's already limiting resale... (Score:5, Insightful)
What really pisses me of is Californian law. If I, a norwegian citizen, choose to exercise my right to transfer a DVD to a different medium (e.g. a CD) explicitly granted to me by norwegian law, on my property (my DVD record), in Norway, being under no contract (or AUP, or EULA) with anybody, you would think that is legal right?
Wrong. Under Californian law, I can be sued there because it is considered an attack on the MPAAs interests which reside in California, to create a tool, *which is nessecerry to exercise my norwegian rights*, that can convert the DVD to a different format, because such a program must circumvent the copyright protection. In other word, I can be sued by a state in a *foreign* country for making a tool that *if* spread to foreign countries *could* be used for piracy.
In fact, this is reducing my fair use rights, and everybody outside California's rights to those granted in California. I believe the DMCA to be blatantly unconstiutional in the US, but that is besides the point. I find the law to be violating national soverignity, by extending it's domain to the entire world.
The only intern- and transnational courts I will answer to, are those granted authority by us, specifically the EU/EFTA-courts, and the international court in Haag. If I am ever arrested based on Californian law, I will consider them hired bandits acting for the MPAA under cover of practicing justice.
Kjella
It's a brave new world (Score:2, Insightful)
And Digital Media is not the same as tangible items.
"Digital transmission of a work does not implicate the alienability of a physical artifact. When a work is transmitted, the sender is not exercising common-law dominion over an item of personal property; he is exercising the central copyright right of reproduction with respect to the intangible work. Conversely, the copyright owner's reproduction right does not interfere at all with the ability of the owner of the physical copy to dispose of ownership or possession of that copy, since the first sale doctrine applies fully with respect to the tangible object (e.g., the user's hard drive) in which the work is embodied."
In other words when you copy anything in a digital form it's not only as good as the original it's IDENTICAL. Which means...
"The concerns that animate the first sale doctrine do not apply to the transmission of works in digital form."
I.E. Fair use laws DO NOT apply in terms of digital media.
A couple of tiny good points (Score:2, Informative)
1. The copyright office recognizes that backups are often done on a "whole device" basis, data and all. The current archival exception doesn't actually protect this right -- it covers only computer programs. Although there is a good case for finding fair use, the CO recommends a statutory change protecting the right to do backups this way.
2. Though against a wholesale exemption of RAM copies as infringement, the CO supports special legislative exemption for streaming reproduction of licensed digital works.
Though carefully worded and limited, any official support for a right to make temporary buffer copies that are essential to the purpose of using properly licensed works for their fundamental purpose is a good thing.
Must "circumvention devices" be software? (Score:2)
Senator Feinstein's (CA) response to me abot DMCA (Score:5, Informative)
Dear Mr Keal:
Thank you for writing to me about the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act.
I have always believed that the protection of intellectual
property rights is as important as the protection of any other
property right. Moreover, the protection of intellectual property is
vital to a flourishing economy -- particularly in California.
America's music, movie, and software industries are second to
none, and we export far more intellectual property than we import.
This is good for employment, and good for consumers.
Without strong copyright protections, the incentive to
innovate would be diminished. In fact, this issue was so important
to the Founding Fathers that the ability of Congress to protect
copyrights is actually written into our Constitution itself.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act was Congress'
attempt to address the issue of copyright protection in a new,
digital age. As new technologies have developed over the past few
years, it has become increasingly difficult to protect intellectual
property from illegal copying and distribution. It is a delicate
balance, to be sure -- nobody wants to restrict the development of
new and exciting technologies, but we must work to prevent the
creation of perfect, digital copies of copyrighted works which can
be illegally distributed throughout the world.
Please be assured that I understand your concerns, and I
will keep your views in mind.
If you have other questions or comments, please do not
hesitate to write to me again, or contact my Washington, D.C. staff
at (202) 224-3841.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
http://feinstein.senate.gov
Re:Senator Feinstein's (CA) response to me abot DM (Score:2)
Re:Senator Feinstein's (CA) response to me abot DM (Score:4, Insightful)
innovate would be diminished. In fact, this issue was so important
to the Founding Fathers that the ability of Congress to protect
copyrights is actually written into our Constitution itself.
Except that the Founding Fathers were wise enough to know that by making the term limit on Copyright too high, they were depriving the People (and further artists, musicians, and authors) of work from which they could build upon and grow new works from. While the Constitution reads "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;", no mention of actual time limits exists within this document. The limits were proposed by Jefferson to be 14 years, which were then extended to 28 years, as is demonstrated by reading ancillary documents of the time.
While your Senator believes that protecting the intellectual property of the US is vital for the economy and provides incentive, it actually has a retrograde effect for content providers who do not hold the Copyright on current work, as they cannot build on existing works until those works leave copyright (A period currently longer than most human lifespans), or until they pay Copyright holders for the privledge of using their work. This effectively shrinks the pool of content creators to those already holding Copyright, or those financially entangled with Copyright holders.
And while those Copyright Holders may provide large donations to your Senator's campaign, they are not the majority of voters in the State of California. It is the will of the Voters that your Senator swore to represent in our Government, and if she is failing in this regard, then she is unfit to hold office.
Parent
Effect on fair use acknowledged (Score:2)
Or in other words, "We know it destroys fair use, but we don't care as long as we keep getting brib^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions from the large media cartels."
CSS and first sale. (Score:2, Interesting)
This argument makes no sense, and makes me believe it was written by a shill. Although circumstances can cause a piece of media to become worthless, the causes are mostly out of the distributors control. What we are talking about is equipment manufacturers and media conglomerates (who are often one and the same) _colluding_ to control the distribution of media.
Taken to the extreme ,if I bought a DVD and found that I could only sell the DVD to people who lived within 5 miles of me due to the whims of the DVD consortium, this would almost certainly limit the market which I could sell it, and be an undefendible practice. The author might have tried to make the argument that since DVD regions are large, the market is not severely limted by region encoding, but they chose not to. Even this argument is not really supported by the facts, since there is clearly an nonzero demand for imported DVDs [nbci.com] due to pricing descrepencies between the different regions.
The author of this text is presenting the view that the intent of the distributor doesn't matter, which may or may not be the case with regard to copyright law, but is not true on the face of it. Whether DVD encoding is illegally limiting first sale doctrine is something needs to be worked out by looking closely at the law and certainly isn't an argument that is "without merit"
no first sale=less value (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically, this is a HUGE gob of inflation in the ecomomy - but it's inflation that won't be measured or accounted for in "cost of living" calculations, and will slip under the radar. Life will be perceptibly more difficult for consumers, but nobody's going to make an adjustment for it for people who are on fixed incomes, etc.
I believe this is also the main aim of "market segmentation strategies". Lower the value of the product for the consumer so you can give the appearance of not raising prices. Rake in profits for "prosumer" and high-end market segments that can bear the cost, and can't bear the lower value of the product (usually through technical crippling or inconvenient feature-bundling) - though that product has the same manufacturing cost as the low-end version. In effect, you increase profits, and you're getting more money from the consumer per intangible, unmeasurable "units of quality", without being accused of price-gouging, or feeding the inflation demons.
Of course, this kind of strategy only works in the absence of competition. And it's working very well today, and I suspect it will be working extremely well in the future.
Educating our congressmen (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, in an atmosphere of self-serving corruption led by gargantuan special interest groups, they are scrambling to pick up pieces and make laws that put this technology in a perspective they can understand. It makes sense that these laws support the big corporations and associations that will benefit most from the regulation. Afterall, who is educating our congressmen? The MPAA, RIAA, Microsoft, etc. These conglomerates have an immeasurable headstart on us, because they've had their foot in the door and hands down the pants of the House and Senate for decades! Anyone you help educate is going to learn what YOU teach them. Imagine what happens when you have a legislature sorely lacking in technological education being educated by people whose agenda includes technological regulation for the sake of their bottom-line?
The question we have to answer is relatively simple: Which of us is going to stand up and begin educating our congressmen as to the REALITY of the cultural advancements of technology? Who is going to teach them what it means to be an end user? I don't think that writing individual letters to our congressmen is the answer. I think that each one of us writing a letter expressing our individual views will water down the message that this kind of regulation is WRONG. It will beget the same reaction as each of us writing to legalize marijuana, LSD, cocaine, etc.
What we need is a single concerted effort--the only way any dissention has ever resulted in success. Imagine if Martin Luther King, Jr. had asked each and every black person in the US to just write a letter to his/her congressman asking for an end to segregation... Sometime soon, all of these voices protesting the immorality of the DMCA must gather together and approach congress in an organized fashion. Begin holding educational workshops for your legislators, giving speeches on the effects of such draconian regulation on end-user's rights, the unconstitionality of the DMCA and its like.
I fear, as do many of you, that unless such an effort is made, we will soon see ourselves fighting this battle beneath an already well-established DMCA.
Otto
Re:T-Shirts (Score:2)