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Senate Bill Again Aims to Restrict Internet Radio
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Jan 13, 2007 07:46 AM
from the congress-killed-the-internet-star dept.
from the congress-killed-the-internet-star dept.
JAFSlashdotter writes "If you enjoy MP3 or OGG streams of internet radio, it's time to pay attention. This week U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander, Joseph Biden, Dianne Feinstein, and Lindsey Graham decided to reintroduce the 'Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act'. An Ars Technica article explains that PERFORM would restrict our rights to make non-commercial recordings under the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992, and require satellite and internet broadcasters to use 'technology to prevent music theft'. That means goodbye to your favorite streaming audio formats, hello DRM. The EFF said pretty much the same when this bill last reared its ugly head in April of 2006. It's too soon to get the text of this year's version (S.256) online, but it likely to resemble last year's S.2644, which is available through Thomas."
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games they play (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:games they play (Score:5, Funny)
Useful acronyms (Score:3, Interesting)
Fight the backronyms (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, well. I'm sure there's a way we can retaliate against Media Organization Representatives' Orwellian Nomenclature In Congress. If someone could just think of a way we could fight the Advocates for Spurious Senate and House Oligarchic Lobbying Efforts.
The hard part will be not stooping to their level in the process.
Acronyms (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, how I wish I could take credit for that one. I got it off Jon Stewart.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The politician needs a simple, memorable, word or phrase. Calling his new bill The Patriot Act and half the battle is won.
Goodby Internet Radio? I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Goodby Internet Radio? I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Say hello to Internet Radio {From anywhere in the world other than the US}
That is just what happened to crypto development when anal laws came in. The good thing is they will loose as the World now owns the Internet. I guess these politicians have too much spare time to come up with goofy unenforceable laws.
But the best solution is a consumer revolt. For example I don't buy Sony any more, between their support of DRM and it's very own root-kit I decided my last PC purchased 3 years ago was the last Sony product I will ever buy. It is now running a DRM free Linux.
s/loose/lose/ (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Goodby Internet Radio? I don't think so (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Look I'm working! I built a bridge to nowhere!"
It's all trucks and tubes to them, they have the technological savvy of slim jim.
Re:Goodby Internet Radio? I don't think so (Score:4, Funny)
And from a salary stand-point, most politicians don't make much money, at least when compared to other "higher ups" on the social ladder, and deducting campaign costs. The real money comes from sponsors and under-the-table deals.
These people make laws at random, it seems like it must be some kind of drinking game. "All right, Kennedy vs. McCain! Whoever drinks 20 shots first wins. Loser has to finish his, drink another 10 shots, then write 5 bills about regulating the Internet!"
Except... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about "level playing fields" until the US has to make a change, when it becomes about sovereignty.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
theft!?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:theft!?? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
'technology to prevent music theft' (Score:2, Insightful)
How is this going to work? Broadcast music in such a manner that a home tape recorder, Windows Sound Recorder or Audacity will not pick it up?
Sounds like they
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
First Amendment (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not legis
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bill text (Score:4, Informative)
Why this is necessary. (Score:4, Insightful)
- The 'technology community' in general has shown no interest in building systems and standards that contain provisions for reasonably safeguarding IP contentholders legal rights
Which might be fine, since there is a reasonable argument to be made that technology should be fairly agnostic with regards to things like this and instead we should rely on the good judgement and self-restraint of humans to implement such controls. Instad, we see that- The 'technological community' in general has shown little to no interest in establishing a culture that encourages the safeguarding of IP contentholders legal rights
By which I mean, for example, that any post here that happens to be 'pro copyright' will typically be modded down, attributed to astroturfing, or so on while even the most juvenile 'F the RIAA' post or 'alternate economic theory' post which attempts to argue that IP regulation is completley unecessary using third grade logic (which to real economists is roughly the equivalent of creationism) gets modded up. Now, slashdot is hardly the 'technological community', but its dominant voice is fairly typical.As a result, it is not unreasonable for lawmakers to address the problem by passing laws. Unfortunately, many of the laws they pass (including, at first glance, this one) are overbroad, over-reaching, ham-handed, unworkable, and/or completely ignorable. This is only partly because politicians and lawmakers are torpid and ignorant. The larger problem is because truly legislating such stuff is very very hard.
IP protection is like pollution: any single individual has an incentive to pollute/violate copyright. Therefore, collective pressures must be put in place to curb it. Again here we see another slashdot article whose ostensible purpose is to bitch and whine about how some politicians made some dumb law. Are we ever, even once, going to see an article that says "hi - look - the RIAA and MPAA may be arseholes, but they do have a point. software / movie / music / whatever piracy is a serious issue. how would YOU solve it?" Of course, we can expect the usual dumb answers, which are:
- It's not really a problem (implied: since the 90% of technologically behind the curve people can continue to subsidize the 10% serious pirates in places like the USA and Europe, while the consumers of the western world can continue to subsidize mass-pirating countries like China and Russia)
- Leave it to market forces (ya, like that would work so well with pollution)
- All patents and copyrights are nonsense and do no social good. And the waters of Noah's flood were held in a vast vapor canopy were held up because the gravity was less in 3500 BC when the flood happened and the dinosaurs drowned)
- Fuck the RIAA / MPAA. Good point, but not relevant
- Artists make too little from the contracts they agreed to. Possibly, but not relevant.
- It's not for me to solve. Let the rightsholders solve it themselves (fine, then dont complain when overbroad laws come down the pike and high schoolers get sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars).
Before us we have the skills to create some really cool content delivery mechanisms. For example, we have the brains to come up with ways for small artists to completely bypass the MPAA and other middlemen and make rasonable incomes directly from their fans. However, as it stands right now even the tiniest independent artist or software maker's work can be found on, for example, eMule in a pirated state. This encourages even more heavy tactics, ham-fisted laws, and DOES cause, for example, small software producers to go out of business.What should be done about it?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Short answer (Score:5, Insightful)
1. We are technologists. Like any other sort of craftsman or artist or artist, we have a deep respect for the tools and methods of our trade.
2. The effect of these laws is to either blunt our tools into uselessness or turn them into convoluted black boxes that only a privileged few are allowed to completely understand and manipulate. Blunting a knife so that you can't cut yourself is morally equivalent to how the interest groups want to solve the issues you brought up.
I have little trouble understanding why Morimoto thought Bobby Flay an ass for standing on his cutting board. In the same vein,
Frank Zappa didn't think much of the stage theatric of smashing a guitar on stage. Both are merely tomfoolery however. What the xxAA and the politicians want to do is send thugs into our hardware stores to remove the beautiful and useful in favor of stunted ugly things "Da Boss" approves of.
We are technologists (Score:4, Insightful)
2. We are technologists. We know that DRM on an open machine is mathematically impossible. And so to institute effective DRM, machines would have to be locked away from us, the end users. Us, who love the machines.
3. We are technologists. We know that leaked copies spread exponentially, not linearly. Hence, if one person leaks something to the internet, everyone has it, and this DRM is useless.
4. We are technologists. We know that all this level of DRM does is force people to spend thousands of dollars re-buying the same hardware, without actually solving the problem.
We are technologists. But we are not one. Grandparent post, whose pro-copyright post claimed that pro-copyright posts were never modded +5, was modded +5. We are many people with many different opinions. We're all just looking for answers.
In defense of the engineer (Score:4, Interesting)
No, the people who build the atomic bombs were giants, the people who decided to use them were midgets (actually, they were not, but that it another discussion).
Refusing to impose your own morality on other people does not make you a midget. We scientist, engineers, and craftsmen create the tools with which humankind can build paradise on Earth. We do not impose paradise (or our view of paradise, which may be a hole lot nerdier than others) on them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In short, your view is that technologists should not be concerned with how their creations are used. In your view, laws that restrict how or what technology you create are bad. Because you are a 'craftsman', you are completely absolved from any real thinki
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Re:Why this is necessary. (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt the 'technological community' [sic] is quite as homogeneous as you give it credit for. That being said, I think you're giving said community the short shrift.
I suspect a wide range of people, 'technological' or not, would agree that:
What the 'technological community' — and I would argue it's really more the 'tech-savvy consumer community' — is reacting to is the fact that the deck appears stacked in favor of the RIAA/MPAA/patent trolls side:
The 'technological community' therefore tends towards promoting anarchy (e.g., turning a blind eye towards 'pirated' music) as an easy means of providing a check and balance to the entrenched powers, even if such anarchy tends to run counter to the ideals of the 'technological community'.
Your goal — finding a reasonable middle ground — is noble but too soon, particularly since your suggestions smack of asking the 'technological community' to unilaterally disarm.
If you really want to get to a reasonable middle ground, here's the windmill I'd tilt at:
Admittedly, this is probably 10-50 years in the making, and so from a practical standpoint it might not have much of an impact over the specific issue of IP rights in the digital era. Personally, I'm more concerned with fixing the over-arching system (raising citizens' voice in government) than fixing individual problems (IP rights in the digital era). But, that's just me.
One Argument Does NOT fit all (Score:3, Insightful)
1) By using the term Intellectual Property(IP) you already chan
Re:Why this is necessary. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why this is necessary. (Score:5, Interesting)
Come up with different business models to respond to changes in tech, instead of trying to enforce systems that were created to deal with very different technological/business environments.
When copyrights were invented, it was unthinkable for one person of modest resources to be able to quickly a cheaply send unlimited copies of a written work across the world at no charge. Now nearly every household in the western world can do this. I don't think we can abandon copyright, but I do think some different understanding is required.
I think of the movies Cars, for example. My kids really like that movie. We have the DVD, but I'm sure Pixar have made more from us out of merchandising than by the DVD sale. I'm pretty sure that financially succesful movies could be made even without ever doing anything to stop downloaders. Commercial pirates could still be prosecuted, but have liberal fair use for non-commercial purposes. If they went so far as to promote it as free to download (a reasonable time after the cinema release) they could potentially gain a much larger market share and therefore merchandising revenue.
Looking at software: Microsoft use copyright violation to sustain their market share. It is a part of their business model, they don't openly admit it, but it's not a secret. If personal copies were permitted, but copying for commercial use forbidden, in reality it would not destroy their profits. Most people buy their computer with software on it, and would continue to do so. Most people simply don't want to install their own operating system. Redhat seems to remain a viable business, despite CentOS. Probably CentOS helps Redhat retain market share in much the same way that pirated windows does for MS, but without requiring the law to be broken.
In short:
1 - There are currently viable business models that don't require changes to copyright law/enforcement. Use and improve on these.
2 - Accept that some businesses may have to operate with smaller profit margins. Deal with it.
3 - Accept that some industries may have to become smaller. Deal with it.
4 - Acknowledge that there is much "content" produced today that would not harm society in the slightest if none of it ever got made again.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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The only serious issue here is that all these businesses are founded on a contradiction: the idea that they can sell information, but their customers can't turn around and redistribute that information on their own. An
whack-a-mole (Score:2)
Will it end?
You got to ask (Score:5, Interesting)
Of all the problems in the US, and around the world, they decide that this is something they should work on. Ignore all the letters from the people they represent, and take care of special interests. This is what is wrong with our government. I am sure each and every one of these people have received thousands of letters on Iraq, and healthcare, and numerous other problems from everyday voting citizens. I would love to see the letters they have received that convinced them that this was an issue that needed their attention over all these other issues. I doubt they can produce even one that came from a private voting citizen.
You will notice (Score:3, Insightful)
Money Trail (Score:5, Interesting)
I read the article, yet, as is almost always the case, it is unclear why the bill sponsors have committed their names to it. Clearly there is only one benefactor: recording industry groups obsessed with piracy. The radio stations do not benefit, the listeners do not benefit. However they [the lobby] are probably well aware that Internet Radio area is, most likely, not a common place for piracy.
This leaves us the option that they are trying to push this through as an attempt to soften the ground for a larger blitz on personal freedoms on commercial products of a digital nature.
But can anyone say for sure why these alleged representatives of the people have deemed it necessary to impose a law that most people will not need, understand and be worse off for in the long run? I can think only that, someplace, there is a trail of money, or of gratuity, or of favours and deals or offers that are the real reason that any member of the nation might even acknowledge the phantom problem of audio piracy.
Two sponsors are funded by the media industy... (Score:3, Insightful)
Joe Biden, as well, gets a great deal of money from the media instustry, its in his top 10. [opensecrets.org]
The motivating force behind Graham [opensecrets.org] and Alexan [opensecrets.org]
Letter to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) (Score:5, Insightful)
As a content creator in my own right, and a Copyright holder of both written and recorded content, I do not see the PERFORM Act legislation, put forth by Sens. Alexander, Biden, Feinstein and Graham as being conducive to protecting the pre-eminent rights of "fair use", encouraging competition and creativity in the marketplace, or protecting the rights of copyright owners from substantial losses.
In 1996, I authored a paper on internet music distribution as a student conducting research at the University of Minnesota. It was clear then that the world is moving into an age of internet distributed content. What was not clear, least of all to the senators who enacted the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, was that the negative reaction to internet distribution from the recording industry had little to do with losses from piracy.
The truth is, RIAA is scared to death of the internet. It threatens a distribution monopoly they have held since the 1940s (see Shemel and Krasilovksy's "This Business of Music"). The internet represents an opportunity for individuals such as myself to gain audiences worldwide without resigning to the fiefdom of a recording contract in which the recording artist is made a debtor to the recording company. In the 1990's, fewer than 15 percent of recording artists from major recording labels sold enough copies to break even on the recording advances paid to them to cover the COSTS of recording the album being produced for the record company's gain and to a lesser extent their own. This means that 85 percent of the recording artists then did not see a dime of royalties for their creations.
The world is on the edge of a revolution in independent film making and music making... and the recording industry wants to stop this under the guise of antipiracy legislation. Note that I discourage people from supporting illegitimate downloads because that only solidifies RIAA/MPAA's case to lobby senators just like you to enact such unnecessary legislation... putting a clamp on internet distribution. RIIAA throws lawyers at every grandmother and twelve year old and from my experience employed in internet security enforcement, I can see they're ice-skating uphill. Again, I refuse to support their business case by piracy and instead voice my support of internet distribution by purchasing exclusively through legitimate services like iTunes to show this IS a profitable channel of distribution. However, they're ice-skating uphill nonetheless... but they know it. They have no choice because when artists realize we don't need to subject ourselves to the modern form of indentured servitude, record company executives will be forced to either think innovatively or find another business to work in.
I urge you to condemn the PERFORM Act which seeks to stifle the rights of consumers IN THEIR OWN HOMES, rights which were established by 17 USC 1, 107, and further reinforced by the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act which protected the consumer's right to record broadcasts for their own, personal use. There are already laws protecting piracy and illegal distribution, and these cases should follow due process of law and have their days in court... but this legislation is, like DMCA, aimed squarely at attempting to stifle the inevitable decentralization of RIAA's distribution monopoly and seems to make criminal even the recording of content from individuals such as myself who have created our own material on our own dime, in our own studios, with our own equipment, our own imagination, and hoped that the internet would give us a chance for our creative expressions to be heard.
The internet is the common man's greatest weapon in the information economy against the tyranny of a majority or minority... and it is every Senator's duty, under Oath to the Constitution, to protect our pre-eminent rights from being eroded in this manner.
Thank you for your valuable time and consideration.
SOMEBODY get fucktard Feinstein out of Congress (Score:3, Insightful)
This bitch is more corrupt than Hermann Goering.
She's also on board with attacking Iran (see my sig) - which, by the way, is heating up as Bush sends another carrier group to the Gulf, and is activating a third to follow, as well as delivering attack aircraft to Incirlik in Turkey - and now attacking Iranian personnel in Iraq. It's on for this year - maybe soon.
Folks, if you thought Iraq was bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. William Lind is predicting a possible loss of the US military forces in Iraq if Iran is attacked. That's not a "defeat" he's talking about - he's talking about a LOSS - as in tens of thousands of dead Americans and headlong evacuation of the remainder and the loss of every piece of US equipment left there. All it takes is for the Shia militias in Iraq to support Iran and cut the 600-mile supply lines from Kuwait. Within thirty days, no food, water, or ammo left for the US in Iraq.
Bush (and the rest of the stupid bitches in Congress supporting him including Feinstein) need to be stopped NOW by a Congressional resolution prohibiting Bush from launching ANY military action against Iran without a declaration of war by Congress and prohibiting him from using ANY nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear nation without authorization by Congress in advance.
Re:PERFORM ??? (Score:4, Funny)
BRIBE:
Bringing Really Innocent Bills in Exchange Act
And they were cheating! Half the letters weren't used. And they used a whole word for 3 letters. Jeez no wonder they're in politics.
Re:PERFORM ??? (Score:5, Funny)
It should be Buying Representation In Backroom Exchanges
Re: (Score:2)
I'm willing to be proven wrong but I'm not sure the Democrats aren't worse on these