ACM vs. RIAA 136
stinkbomb writes "The venerable Association for Computing Machinery has posted a legal brief on it's site regarding Felten vs. RIAA. The ACM position is: 'ACM believes that the application of any law to limit the freedom to publish research on computer technology will impose a cost not only on ACM's members, but also on the academic community, the process of scientific discourse, and society in general.'"
Science and the useful arts (Score:5, Informative)
Someone explain to me how outlawing science and research in order to protect overextended copyrights (life+70 only helps Disney...) "promotes the progress of science" or the useful arts.
It's in the plain language, kids. Someone else want to try to explain that to Congress and the Supreme Court?
Note: a good history of Copyright is available at http://netizen.uoregon.edu/documents/ethics.html (I have nothing to do with that page, but found it and it's pretty good)
Look into the future ... (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, we all know that no business can see past the end of it's wallet, so it's unlikely they'll suddenly grow the foresight to recognize that laws they have sponsored or are pursuing will hurt them in the long run. Ah, ya gotta love cycles.
It's much like the oil and gas industry; what exactly do you expect to be selling when you're inadvertantly being detramental to the very thing that makes you money?
History doesn't teach us anything, it seems. It teaches us about 2 or 3 heros and villains, and usually with a better ending. And you can quote me on that.
DMCA is being used to squelch non profit websites (Score:4, Informative)
I know this is somewhat offtopic, but oh well...
Whether you agree with the politics of these websites or not, it is pretty repugnant that the law is now being used to squelch criticism. The story is HERE. [salon.com]
Also here is a rough draft [indybay.org] of something I am writing to address the DMCA and to explain the problems with this law to Joe and Jane sixpack. Please suggest changes, criticize and flame etc.. and also feel free to use it. Thanks.
Uncle Sam: the book (Score:1, Informative)
Get a copy of this magnificient comic [ninthart.com] by Steve Darnall (of "Empty Love Stories" fame). A cynical and eye-opening exploration of the US of A, it takes us on a disturbing ride, from its inception on ideals of freedom and equality, to the present day where corporations have the government and the law in their hands.
Its relevance is all the more strong with the advent of lopsided laws such as the DMCA [educause.edu] and the UCITA [arl.org].
Expect to see this publication banned in the near future.
DMCA Does Not Depend on the Copyright Clause! (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed, this was one of the points made by DMCA's advocates during the hearings in opposition to the fair use amendments.
The ACM code of ethics has deliberate loopholes! (Score:3, Informative)
Are you sure you've read the code properly? Just because you don't agree with the executives of the society doesn't mean you can't argue against them. That what scientific debate is for, and from what I can tell having just checked, those executives haven't influenced the idea behind the code of ethics at all.
As it should be with any good society, the ACM does not dictate to its members. On the contrary, the members define the ACM and what it stands for. This isn't rhetoric, it's realtime definition generation and the ACM's code of ethics demonstrates it perfectly.
In the past couple of weeks I've been looking around for papers crossing ethics and databases for some postgraduate work I'm doing. The presence of papers in the ACM digital library was strangely vacuuous, but I did find one paper by Donn B. Parker titled Rules of Ethics in Information Processing. It was published in 1968 in the Communications of the ACM. You can see the abstract here [acm.org], but you might need an ACM login for the abstract and probably a member to download the pdf.
When he wrote it, Donn Parker was the Secretary of the ACM as well as the Chairman of the ACM Professional Standards and Practices Committee. He was arguing in favour of the first ever edition of the ethical rules of conduct for ACM members that was adopted in 1966.
One of the major points of his argument was that it was important to have guidelines to effectively say that "members must be ethical". On the other hand, the guidelines were very cleverly written so as not to say what ethical was. Everything that mattered was left to the judgement of the member.
The idea was not to impose any specific rules on members, but to simply require them to use good judgement and common sense in what they consider ethical, and abide by it. If, on the other hand, a member did something that they clearly should have known was wrong and couldn't offer a reasonable argument against it, there would be grounds to have them thrown out of the society.
Even looking at it now though, I think it would be possible to argue that it's written in the same form. Consider section 1.5 where it says "Copies of software should be made only with proper authorization. Unauthorized duplication of materials must not be condoned."
Nowhere does it define what "proper authorization" actually is. This is left up to the member to decide, and it's feasible that under some circumstances someone might argue that proper authorization doesn't require consent of the copyright holder.
Section 2.3 specifically says "ACM members must obey existing local, state,province, national, and international laws unless there is a compelling ethical basis not to do so. Policies and procedures of the organizations in which one participates must also be obeyed. But compliance must be balanced with the recognition that sometimes existing laws and rules may be immoral or inappropriate and, therefore, must be challenged. Violation of a law or regulation may be ethical when that law or rule has inadequate moral basis or when it conflicts with another law judged to be more important. If one decides to violate a law or rule because it is viewed as unethical, or for any other reason, one must fully accept responsibility for one's actions and for the consequences."
This is a complete let-off by the ACM if you want to protest against the DMCA with civil disobedience. It's saying that you shouldn't drag other people (eg. employer) down with you unless they consent. But if you seriously disagree with the ethics of the law then go ahead and protest.
Whether it was in 1966 or 2001 and regardless of how many words there are, the ACM code of ethics has been very cleverly written. In so many words, it basically tells people to trust their common sense and don't do anything stupid. That's exactly what ethics are, and the ACM isn't telling you otherwise. I think you should consider rejoining.