Content Faction v. Tech Faction

An Anonymous reader writes: "This essay describes the current battle between two former allies in the DMCA fight - The Content Faction (Universal, MPAA, etc.) v The Tech Faction (IBM, Microsoft, etc.). It gives a great overview of what the battle is, who is taking what position, what's at stake - and how consumers are going to be taking it in the *** no matter who wins, it's just a matter of how rough it will be. "

Cry me (another) river...

[symbolic]

As has been said so many times before, all of these stupid ownership and copyright battles can be over and done in a matter of a few months, if consumers would just WISE UP to what it is they're buying, and refuse to purchase anything with unreasonable strings attached. As long as consumers LET them call the shots, they WILL. Without the money, though, they're nothing.

It's time to stop whining, and start doing (like I have). Stop buying the stuff. SIMPLE.

Re:So let's see...

[wheel]

I don't think it's ever going to be possible to prevent copying anyways- that's not even legal under fair use! (as I understand it)

At the risk of being moderated redundant, fair use gives you the right to make a copy under certain circumstances. It does not mean that content distributors have to provide the means to allow you to do it. In fact, they can quite legally make it technically challenging for you to do so.

Re:damn right

[TTop]

Yesterday we saw that many artists are upset about how they're being treated by the content distribution companies [slashdot.org]. Well, except some of them [metallica.com].

Re:So let's see...

[Anonymous Coward]

that's not even legal under fair use! (as I understand it)

I don't think you understand it very well. To quote Disney [wired.com]:

"There is no right to fair use ... Fair use is a defense against infringement."

Re:Cry me (another) river...

[Lemmy Caution]

You make it sound like its ok to ignore a minority of people. You also ignore another fact. I buy a movie, i am allowed to watch it. How i choose to do so is (and should be) irrelevent. So what if i want to play in on my linux computer? Or a device of my own design? I bought the fucking thing, i will watch it any damn way i please.

That's just the point the original poster was making - that the whole "you should just not buy their products" line is not an adequate or useful strategy because it doesn't protect the rights of the minority. The only real remedy is political guaranty of the rights of all the consumers, not just small individual acts of boycotting. Yet there is such an aversion to participating in the political sphere in techie circles that there is almost always a knee-jerk "let the market take care of it" "just don't buy their products" chorus whenever these developments appear.