US Register of Copyrights Says DMCA Is 'Working Fine' 224
Linnen writes "CNET News.com writer Anne Broache reports that the head of the US Copyright Office considers the DCMA to be an important tool for copyright owners. '"I'm not ready to dump the anticircumvention," [Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters] said in response to a question from an audience member who suggested as much. "I think that's a really important part of our copyright owners' quiver of arrows to defend themselves." The law also requires that the Copyright Office meets periodically to decide whether it's necessary to specify narrow exemptions to the so-called anticircumvention rules. (Last year, the government decided it's lawful to unlock a cell phone's firmware for the purpose of switching carriers and to crack copy protection on audiovisual works to test for security flaws or vulnerabilities.)'"
Who do they work for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Out of touch with reality (Score:2, Insightful)
Ohh wow (Score:2, Insightful)
DMCA is indeed working fine! (Score:5, Insightful)
DMCA was designed to protect copyright, and it is protecting it.
The question we should be asking ourselves is whether or not copyright (the way it is righ now) is protecting public interest.
Its a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, authors usually don't retain the copyrights on their works. Their publishers get them.
I don't know if this is true of bookwriting, but it is true of music. Also, chemical/scientific patents of any form are usually held by a large corporation that provided funding, rather than the scientist/engineer who created it. The same goes for most non-open-source software. Also, the wealthy production companies wind up owning the copyrights on movies....not the actors, musicians, painters, stuntmen, scriptwriters etc.
So....in general...the talent doesn't own the work, but rather the investor owns the work. Hence, it is the investor that gets special treatment (which seems to amount to control over the private property (hardware) of millions of consumers across the globe) So these laws do not protect the workers so much as the large businesses that pay them.
It's just another case of the rule of the rich.
Re:Who do they work for? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who do they work for? (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as I've been following these stories, it all comes down to people not really selling you anything anymore but a very restrictive right to rent something.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Who do they work for?-The individual. (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no "The People". Society is made up of individuals and for society to work like our founders intended. An agreement was made up amongst those individuals that had the skill, talent, and time to create. The beneficiaries were to be those that didn't have, time, talent, or skill. Make note that the individual has to prosper before "The People" can prosper. Serving "The People" without serving the individuals first is backwards and defeating behavior.
Prime Example (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Come on, you can't have it both ways! (Score:3, Insightful)
> the UK's no parallel imports, so I can't import Vista from the US
Laws like this, and measures like DVD Region Coding a flagrant violation of WTO rules against artificial trade barriers and market segmentation. Not that the rules were ever intended to protect us. I laugh to even think that was ever the intent.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Insightful)
eventually created a market where you *must* buy the product
Well, "must" might be going a bit far. I mean, we could all just live without music or movies. Of course, we could also live without the internet, computers, electricity, running water, houses, and civilization in general. A person could technically survive living in the woods, gathering berries from the local plant life and things like that... I guess.
On the other hand, I think you're right that people won't always be given the choice of a "better product". There are situations where it is simply not in the best interest of a company to produce a better product, particularly when a single entity (or several colluding entities) control a market.
Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
First, the DMCA was designed not to protect copyrights, but to extend them... far beyond what was allowed by law before.
Second, it is not "working fine". I think most people agree that it has done a shitty job of "protecting" anything except Corporate interest in a defunct business model. Further, it has hurt the market, consumers, and industry in general. If you want to know how, see the "unintended consequences" report on the eff.org website.
Copyrights were established to encourage the arts and sciences, in order to further the public interest in these fields. Those are the words that were used when the laws were first established. Copyrights were allowed for a limited time, so that people would have an incentive to create original works. After that, the public gets them. But the main interest has always been that of the public! The problem was that the public could not just take what others created, because then individuals would have no reason to do the creating. Copyrights were a compromise.
Today, certain copyright laws exist in the interest of not the public, but of private interests who want to preserve those rights and profit from them forever. That is NOT in the interest of the public, and was NEVER the idea behind copyright or patent law. Until now.
The DMCA and similar laws passed since were always bad ideas. I would say that they have outlived their usefulness, but I think it is obvious now that they were never really "useful" to society in the first place.
Re:Prime Example (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The True Legacy of the DMCA (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice job, there's now a smouldering crater where that straw man used to be. As far as I know, the conventional wisdom on Slashdot isn't that copyright should be abolished completely, or made unduly hard to enforce. Many of us are copyright holders.
Speaking only for myself, I object to the DMCA because it lacks concrete provisions protecting fair use; academic analysis, review, parody, copying for backup, time-shifting, transfer to other media. I submit that a copyright law which lacks those provisions is deleterious to the public interest far out of proportion to how much it might benefit copyright holders like yourself, and that it should be scrapped altogether until such time as a suitable law can be adopted.
We might even have an interesting debate on that point, i/e the relative value to society of strict copyright versus fair use. But to characterize the landscape of this issue as "Support the DMCA or support widespread, bald-faced piracy" is disingenuous.
Re:Out of touch with reality (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who do they work for? (Score:3, Insightful)
They're really not any different. If I wanted to, before I sold you a toaster, I could first make you sign a contract stipulating that you won't open to toaster, or won't replicate the toaster's design, or pretty much any other limitation I wanted to impose.
The problem is, you might resell the toaster to someone else without telling them about this restrictive agreement. They might think they own the toaster free and clear when you don't actually have the right to sell them the toaster free and clear.
Copyright does not prohibit free and clear sales. If I want to sell you a book and include the right for you to write your own similar book or make copies of it, I can. And if you don't want to buy a book knowing that you have to agree not to make copies of it, you don't have to.
All copyright law does is protect innocent third parties. It prevents you from selling the book to someone, claiming they can do whatever they want with it, when you actually agreed not to copy it.
In other words, it simply sets the default agreement when I sell you a book differently from the default agreement when I sell you a toaster. But it doesn't make other arrangements impossible.
Arguing that there shouldn't be a copyright is simply arguing that there should be a different default agreement. There's never any answer to how you protect innocent third parties without copyright.
Re:Has It Ever Worked? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's important in cases like these to differentiate between the DMCA's take-down/"safe harbor" rules and the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision.
The take-down rules probably ARE a reasonable balance between copyright holders and ordinary joes; certainly that's YouTube's position. Under the DMCA take-down rules, YouTube can't be sued for hosting illegal material, but rather the copyright holder (e.g. Viacom) has to send take-down letters specifying exact material to be removed. Users get notified that their material is taken down, and are allowed to send counterclaims to defend themselves.
It's not at all clear what would have happened in that case without the DMCA; the DMCA came into existence partly to make it clear/formal what should happen when people violate copyright online. In a material sense, I don't think YouTube could exist unless the DMCA existed, in the sense that I don't think they'd have big investors (e.g. Google) willing to risk their money without the DMCA's safe harbor provisions. (Without the DMCA, YouTube could argue in court that they ought to be treated as a safe harbor, but they'd be on considerably shakier grounds.)
The anti-circumvention provision is the one that totally sucks. That's the provision that says that you aren't allowed to develop and distribute tools to circumvent DRM. (It's also the one that impacts researchers the most.) The point of that provision is simply to discourage people from developing and distributing DRM cracks. Since it's supposed to act as a disincentive, you wouldn't expect to find a big public "example" of it working; you'd expect fewer cracks to be developed and for those cracks to be criminally penalized when they are made available.
Unforseen Consequence (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to buy a DVD, take it home, and rip it to my hard drive, then store the DVD itself in my closet. Then I want to stream it to the media center connected to my TV. That is to say, I want to give them money and then use the video in my own home. I don't want to share it with friends, I don't want to sell it, and I don't want to waste my bandwidth sharing it with the world. I just want to watch it without having to deal with the physical disk.
Alternately, I could buy a movie download. But then I would still want to use my own media player, not whatever software they thought I should use, so I would still have to circumvent.
However, thanks to the anti-circumvention clause, I might as well skip the money-to-them part and just pirate my movies. I'm breaking the law either way.
Re:Who do they work for? (Score:3, Insightful)
They get canned, that's what happens. And they're going to act against that.
This is a great little interview, because it makes no effort to disguise the fact that these laws exist to provide weapons to be used against us all. It disarms any claim that the organization might put forth to be working for the common good, and that's a powerful thing.
Re:Who do they work for? (Score:4, Insightful)
Take something that isn't covered by copyright law.. say, the recipe to a cake, or whatever.
You give it to my friend after making him sign an NDA stating that he will return all copies to you after 30 days.
My friend gives it to me and I make a copy.
After 30 days, my friend gives the original back to you.
I start selling my copy. What recourse do you have?
If you can prove that my friend gave me the original to copy, you can sue my friend for any loss of revenue that you can prove you have suffered as a result of my competition.. but you can't stop me from selling copies.
That's what copyright stops.. the ability of third parties to make copies. And the result is not in the public interest.
Re:The True Legacy of the DMCA (Score:3, Insightful)
Right on the money. Interestingly, that is exactly the same kind of (ahem) "logic" that the big copyright holders and their legal beagles (RIAA/MPAA, etc.) have been using for decades. It's always an either/or 100% polarized proposition with them (and, for that matter, most politicians.) Give us what we want or the End of Days will be upon us! Remember Jack Valenti's impassioned pleas about the VCR? He repeatedly pronounced to anyone who would listen, "It will destroy the industry!" Sure, Jack, and after billions of dollars in videocassette sales that you and your kind somehow couldn't foresee, I gotta say
There's always a middle ground, and in fact, that's what copyright was supposed to be: a middle ground between the creative minds and the public domain (which was, ultimately, to be enriched by their efforts.) Copyright also wasn't supposed to be a concentrated form of politico-economic power, either: it was supposed to protect the creators, so that they could continue to create, not enrich the weasels that figured out how to cheat our best and brightest out of their rights. Consequently, I don't necessarily equate "content creator" with "rightsholder".
Most of the complaining about modern copyright you hear on Slashdot revolves around the fact that it isn't a middle ground anymore, is no longer a reasonable compromise. It's now a rightsholder's paradise
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately even that option is not possible. In what woods would this neo-primative live? I sure hope it's property that he owns, and has a fund setup to pay property taxes in perpetuity. I hope he doesn't ever what to have children, because the state would take them away. I hope never encounters the police, as they may well assume that he is some kind of homeless squatter and haul him away, perhaps after tasering him for resisting arrest. I hope the local county doesn't pass any ordinances on minimum house size, or lawn maintainence. One of the most annoying problems that the modern America has is that they don't know how to leave people alone, even on their own property or concerning their own property.
Living in or even beside society requires a steady stream of money, and that usually means a job, and that increasingly requires a mobile phone, and quasi-fashionable clothes, and transportation. Consumerism isn't entirely optional, and the more you have to deal with society, the less optional it is.
Re:The True Legacy of the DMCA (Score:2, Insightful)
It all boils down to whethor or not copyright is a natural or legal right. The framers of the Constitution felt it was not only NOT a natural right, but that it was in fact a violation of natural rights. I agree with them. However they felt it was a necessary evil for society, so they reluctantly included provisions for copyright into the Constitution, but not into the Bill of Rights section. I also agree with them on this.
The problem with copyright and why it cannot be a Natural Right [wikipedia.org] is that it is proactively coercive against everyone else's natural rights. Here I am speaking of your right to use and own the contents of your own mind. To be able to use the contents of my own mind is about as basic as it gets. If I hear a song somewhere and I remember that song, then I cannot play it, hum it, recreate it, or do as I see fit with what has now become knowledge in my head. I did not enter into a contract or agreement to give up this right. I am forced by the power of guns to abide by it. (That is probably what the other poster meant by 'subsidy' though I disagree with his terminology.)
Because copyright actually allows the government to apply the threat of force against people to prevent them using their knowledge and information, it is very dangerous. It is an area of the Constitution that trumps the First Amendment and the Framers were very reluctant to include it. They finally did so for they felt it was a necessary evil, but they tried to keep it very limited in scope. It only applied to sheet music, maps, and a few other very specific things. It did NOT apply to derivitive works. I could make a play based on a book for example and that would not violate copyright. It was also for a very limited time.
Those restrictions have all been removed. Copyright now applies to almost everything and in virtual perpetuity. It has exploded well beyond the bounds of what is moral and right and it is becoming the sword to destroy freedom. This will only become worse over time becuase now that the cost to 'copy' information is now effectively zero then the only way to enforce copyright is with more stringent laws, more surveilence, and more powers. In effect it is becoming such that enforcing copyright as it exists and as it is being expanded to will require a police state.
Personally, I think that if copyright were limited in both scope and duration that it is better for society. I am also a content producer and I am currently writing a book, and it will be copyrighted. However copyright laws have gotten so out of hand that I no longer feel that anyone is morally bound to follow them. Copyright law has crossed the line from a necessary evil to a tool that will do great harm to our society and to our freedoms if it is not reigned in soon.
Re:Unforseen Consequence (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the DMCA that keeps you from taking songs from iTunes and using them on non-Apple portable players. That forces you to follow Apple's vertical business model.
Selling multiple copies of the same DVD is a part of the movie industry's business model. If you can back up your discs, you'd only buy one.
Others have attempted to use the DMCA to force you to buy a certain manufacturer of printer ink or garage door openers.
If anyone has ever checked out the Pirate Bay they'd learn that the DMCA has not made any dent in the actual protection of copyrights.
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who do they work for?-The individual. (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell that to the Constitution
Re:Unforseen Posts. (Score:4, Insightful)
Incorrect. it'd be easier without having to bypass. However, creating an artificial barrier with anti-circumvention is only a short term solution for protecting copyrights. Which means it's not really a solution at all.
"And it's the policy I signed with Farmer's insurance that's "forcing" me to follow their business model. Darn I wished there was no contract law making me."
Wow, that's not even remotely analogous. The protection of Apple's business model has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with contract law. A better analogy would be General Motors forcing you to only use General Motors parts. Or a refrigerator manufacturer forcing you to only use particular brands of foods. Merely because the government enacted a law which allows such a practice.
"It's also a part of COPY-right."
Actually no. We used to have a fair use right to copy software, but due to encryption we no longer do. Thus, the the encryption is given more protection than the actual copyrighted material. It's the same with a music CD. We in the US have a fair use right to make non-commercial mix tapes for friends and family. But if the CD is encrypted, that right disappears. Once again, it's not protecting the copyrighted music, it's the encryption that it given higher protection.
"And yet no one seems to have a problem with buying cheap printers or cellphones. How odd."
I don't even understand how that's even relevant. Are you saying that the government should be in the business of protecting business models that would never survive without protection? I long for the good old days when Conservatives wanted the government out of the way, not interfering with our daily lives.
"The thing with the decay of a society isn't the "I'm in it for myself". Nor is it the "I'm doing it for others". It's the imbalance between the two were the former ultimately subsumes the later.
Once again, pure nonsense. My point, which you failed to refute, is that the DMCA does not protect copyrights. it protects business models. The overwhelming success of P2P and bittorrent proves that. And furthermore, if anything is causing the decay of our society it's governments locking up of thoughts and ideas... not the use of those thoughts and ideas.
Re:Duh (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The True Legacy of the DMCA (Score:3, Insightful)
Nor do I care for 'compromise' because we should be uncompromising in pursuing whatever copyright laws provide the greatest public benefit, without any regard as to authors, with one exception: if providing some benefit to authors resulted in an even greater benefit to the public, so that there was a net public benefit (i.e. even after we account for the cost of providing that benefit to authors) then it should be done, not because it benefits authors, but because it benefits the public. Naturally, if there is no copyright that could yield a net public benefit, then we'd be best off without any. But I don't think that's presently true.
So, while it's a mouthful, I'd suggest that the copyright should be that which yields the greatest net public benefit. And at present, it is not doing so, and might even be yielding a net public detriment!
Re:Duh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its a lie (Score:5, Insightful)