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United States Your Rights Online

US Copyright Office Releases DMCA Advisory Report 253

Posted by michael 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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US Copyright Office Releases DMCA Advisory Report More

US Copyright Office Releases DMCA Advisory Report

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  • The DMCA has been rated G for Good by the MPAA.
    The DMCA has been rated A for Awful by the US Copyright Office.

    Oh how I would like to see that happen.

  • Could someone with a lot of time summarize this thing?

  • Strange (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @09:37AM (#2234468)
    What I find Strange about this is that it says about halfway through that the Copyright office and the NTIA both issued a Notice of Inquiry (a request for public comment). In response to this notice, the recieved 30 comments. Only 30!!! How many people on slashdot alone has the DMCA brought to a raging boil?? A shitload. Why only 30 comments then?? Another example of how the bureaucracy that has taken over in this country makes it nearly impossible to take part in the process. How do you find out about things like this? I've written my congressman about the DMCA, but this may have been a better forum in which to voice these particular concerns... AAARRGH.
    • Having once been part of our fine gubbermint, I saw a lot of that. Notices were generally posted in places so obscure at to make the Hitchhiker's Guide seem like Open Government. You know, in the third sub-basement of a locked building, behind a door marked "beware of the jaguar". I admit having no specific knowledge of the case in point, but I've seen fixes like that put in many, many times. . ..

    • Obviously, we didn't care (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @10:16AM (#2234585) Journal
      Copyright Office Needs Comments On DMCA By March 31 [slashdot.org]
      Posted by timothy on Saturday March 18, @09:09PM
      from the calm-collected-rational-and-persuasive dept.

      • I don't we didn't care.

        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.

      • We cared enough to generate 100 posts on Slashdot. I for one wrote a comment, and I'll bet at least 10 other people did. So the rest of the world was only capable of generating 20 comments? Seems a bit broken to me. Seems like a single University's faculty could generate 30 comments if they'd been explicitly notified.

    • Re:Strange (Score:4, Redundant)

      by simpleguy ( 5686 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @10:23AM (#2234612) Homepage
      Thats the problem!

      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.

      • 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:Strange (Score:2, Insightful)

        by sealawyer ( 473327 )
        It's important to note that only a relatively small range of DMCA effects were fair game for this exercise.

        After reading the responses to the comments that were submitted, I concluded that it really doesn't matter how many comments were received. Every argument I can come up with that is relevant to the topic was received and summarily dismissed with for the most part relatively poor arguments. Even where there was acknowledgement of a problem, the recommendation seemed to be to wait until the problem was big enough to more of a bother.

        If you are short on time for reading, I'd recommend skipping to the Evaluation and Recommendations" section. Most people are already familiar with the arguments summarized in the rest of the document anyway.

        These positions found in the report suggest that the Register of Copyrights is not your friend in this issue:

        1) You don't need the ability to back up software anymore because it's distributed on cdrom and the cdrom is your backup.

        2) Technological measures that tether e-books to a particular PC do interfere with first sale doctrine, but Congress should wait until the problem is more widespread. (Of course at that point we should expect intense lobbying from copyright holders)

        3) Arguments about using DVD's on non industry approved devices (like on a linux based pc) are akin to suggesting that consumers should be able to playing Betamax casettes on VHS players.

        4) The ultimate question is whether an equivalent to the first sale doctrine should be crafted to apply in the digital environment. (In other words this issue isn't about restoring rights at all, it's about whether we should create new ones at the copyright holders expense)

        I seems to me that the author of this paper was prepared to reject any argument. If more people had submitted responses, I suppose there is some chance one or more of the stupid responses the Register came up with might have been debunked, but I doubt it.

        • Re:Strange (Score:2, Insightful)

          by jiheison ( 468171 )
          I seems to me that the author of this paper was prepared to reject any argument.

          Exactly. In order for this excercise to be worth participating in, I would have to beleive that US Copyright Office and lawmakers actually care about representing my rights as a citizen over the interests of their corporate sponsorers. If that were the case, we wouldn't have the DMCA in the first place!
          1. Obviously the author does not scratch CDs. Perhaps some steel wool, a malicious 13 year old, and some free time with the author's CD collection would change her mind.
          2. I can't imagine a committee coming up with a reasonable solution to this problem. Perhaps they'll allow three devices in the future.
          3. What if it was technologically feasable to create an adapter to allow playback of betamax tapes on VHS decks. Would marketing this adapter violate copyright? What if the adapter removed Macrovizion in order to allow a clearer picture. Would that violate copyright (note, I didn't mention using the defeating of Macrovision to make a copy, just to play back the tape).
          4. Personally, I stand behind the first sale doctrine until they can come up with doctrine that doesn't violate a consumers rights out of the box.
      • 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.

        of course, some of those people aren't Americans, too. for example, I doubt any American politician is quaking in his boots (okay, Hillary isn't worried either :) at the thought of losing my vote.

        not that I've voted for anybody who won in an election that wasn't municipal in my life. curious, that. I have a very good history of voting for the winning alderman. in many different cities. :)

    • People here are all talk and no action? How many people would even know how to file the comment or take the time to do so. Don't automatically suspect a conspiracy.

    • I know damn well I wrote one...
      I'm positive it wasn't me and 29 other people.

    • 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.

    • Reading Section III I don't think it would have mattered if they received 5 comments or a thousand. Many of the arguements we've seen on slashdot are simply dismissed out of hand.

      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.

    • Well, you're blaming the lack of comments on the failure of the system. How about looking instead to the failure of the people to take part in the system? Sure, the DMCA brings many on /. 'to a boil', but how many people on /. actually 'put their money where their mouth is,' so to speak, and actually do something about the things they like to bitch and moan about? My guess would be a very low percentage. Clearly you have, since you've written your Congressman. I did the same thing, and he politely told me that he would 'look into the matter, and see how it plays out.' This coming from a Congressman who is well-known for his connection with his constituants (Peter DeFazio). Whether he ever did anything, I don't know, but hopefully whenever he sees a piece of news about the DMCA, he'll think of the letter that I wrote him and the complaints I raised.... who knows. At any rate, I don' think the system is at fault in this case... the people are, because they're lazy or unwilling to do anything more than rant and rave and preach to the choir, or simply unwilling to do anything at all.

    • Re:Strange (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bwt ( 68845 )
      I sent mine in. In fact, the Copyright office cited to my comments serveral times.

      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.
  • It's amazing how much of the really important issues are 'out of scope'. Certainly convenient for the authors of the report... I have to look back at the congressional mandate to see exactly what was requires. It seems this report if woefully lacking...

    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
    • I thought that was odd too, this is the letter I wrote to my congression representatives (all three). It was actually a letter too. I typed it, but it cost me 33 cents of my hard earned money to get it to each of them. Somehow that seems to make worlds of difference over email letters. Anywhow, I hope everyone else will take the time to do it too. Letters don't have to be long or eliquent (as mine surely isn't) but hopefully it'll get the point across.
      ------------

      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,

  • I don't actually have to read the thing to take part in /. discussions, do I?

    Bill, hasn't got the WPIconicSymbolsA font.

    • If you check out the Executive summary section it explains what three issues are being dealt with in the report and a beakdown of each section of the report. From a very cursory read so far, they only cover the proposal for a initial digital first sale doctrine, an exemptoion for temporary incidental copies and the archival exemption. Section III looks to be the real meat of the report which has the Copyrights Office's recommendations. That reduces the report to slightly under 100 pages, fwiw.

      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)

      by Pseudonym ( 62607 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @10:15AM (#2234582)
      I don't actually have to read the thing to take part in /. discussions, do I?

      That's never stopped anyone before.

  • Bad news can be good news (Score:4, Interesting)

    by YIAAL ( 129110 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @09:41AM (#2234480) Homepage
    This may actually be good news. There's a building sentiment that DMCA is horrible and should be repealed or reworked. The worst thing we could get would be a workaround that would be good enough to save DMCA as it is, but without fixing the main problems.
    • There's a building sentiment that DMCA is horrible and should be repealed or reworked.

      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)

      by Flower ( 31351 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @10:31AM (#2234633) Homepage
      I've gotten through a mere two pages of Section III on the report and, for the issues it covers, I'm not very pleased. It isn't very forward thinking. Issues like tethering a document to a specific device do have tepid warnings that they could affect a consumer's rights but then sidestep the issue by saying there is so little of the practice going on that the effect is minimal.

      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.

      • Clueless or Evil??? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by JohnDenver ( 246743 )
        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.

        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.

  • This echoes the letters that I just sent to the 4 Congressmen for my state. Basically, besides the "Free Skylarov" message, I told them that you should have a right to the content of something you buy, and that converting its form for viewing on other platforms or making backups should not be illegal. Hence, if I own a DVD, I should be able to watch it on Linux. If I buy an eBook, I should be able to convert it, print it, or do whatever I want with it, provided, of course, that I don't redistribute or sell it. This isn't about piracy, its about having access to something you already paid for.

  • Some relevant DMCA Links: (Score:4, Informative)

    by UM_Maverick ( 16890 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @09:41AM (#2234484) Homepage
    Before people go ranting and raving about the DMCA, take some time to poke around these sites:

    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...
    • How about anti-dcma.org [anti-dmca.org]? The freesklyarov.org [freesklyarov.org] website (protests today btw, check it out [freesklyarov.org]) has a whole page of articles about the DMCA [freesklyarov.org], including statements from Rep. Rick Boucher, and Brad Templeton (head of the EFF).

    • 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?

      • I don't know which section this is from. however, I can tell you what the subsection means, but a little more context would be nice.

        what this means is that government employees and persons working under contract to municipal, state or federal governments may engage in activities that would normally be prohibited by the other parts of that section (this where the context would be nice) if - and only if - they do so in the course of a lawfully authorized investigative, protective, information security, or intelligence activity. Lawfully authorized means that it has to be a cop (or reasonable facsimile), acting within jurisdiction; the local water works cannot decrypt your email, even if they know you're selling secrets to Iraq. At least.

        I'm not trained in American law. In some jurisdictions, lawfully authorized could be extended to mean "needs a warrant." Any American lawyers?

  • Oh my sides.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AppyPappy ( 64817 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @09:41AM (#2234486)
    Rights? We don't have rights. We exchanged those old useless things for free school lunches and Medicare.

    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.
    • You can damn well bet if I get stopped at a 'checkpoint' there is going to be a scene. Government, at least here, is BY the people, OF the people, and FOR the people. The reason this shit happens is because people DON'T stand up for their rights, bunch of cows bein' led to slaughter.

    • 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?

    • 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.

      Maybe my memory's a little faulty, but I seem to recall that the Supreme Court recently ruled this practice unconstitutional.

  • Reselling software (Score:5, Insightful)

    by totallygeek ( 263191 ) <sellis@totallygeek.com> on Thursday August 30, 2001 @09:41AM (#2234489) Homepage
    A while back ('bout a year ago), I tried to sell my Windows NT 4.0 Server CD. I had the license sheet, and this was the original CD with the original casing. The Microsoft piracy folks on eBay cancelled my auction for this item, claiming that it might not be legal. So, I reposted it thinking maybe they overlooked something -- since this was original media -- nope, cancelled it again. Then, my eBay account was suspended. I wrote to eBay explaining the situation, and they put my account back as active (I have over 100 feedback, and have performed over 300 transactions).


    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!

    • I'll give you 50 bucks. Canadian.
    • Yeah, but that won't matter in a few years when all software is subscription based. there won't be anything to resell.

      sucks, doesn't it?
      • No, it's a good thing... It lets those who are using the software pay for it, and doesn't force them to pay for freeloaders who are copying it from their friends for free. Plus, and most importantly IMHO, it eliminates the need to have a law which half the country breaks, thus alleviating our court systems and law enforcement systems, and all around making people not have to choose between paying for other people's software and breaking the law.

    • Imagine if you are next told in your end-user license agreement that you can never resell the software you have purchased

      Well, if it's OEM that's already true. This is of course, so counterintuitive, so contrary to the way that commerce has been conducted for thousands of years, that few people even consider the possibility.

      I frequently come accross OEM Windows CDs at second-hand stores, flee markets, etc. The people who are selling them are usually not selling "warez" or other contraband. When the OEM clause is mentioned to them, they are usually shocked.

      I'm squarely against Microsoft on this particular point, but let's not single them out. Instead, let's make make restrictions against selling parts of a system illegal. The OEM, however, should be able to disclaim liability in such cases. Otherwise we would have people re-selling cars without brakes and then trying to sue General Motors. I can't think of any other real pitfalls in making the OEM clause illegal.

    • If you sell the cd with a DEAD hard drive that meets the requirements for selling OEM copies of Windows and MS office. Although you probably won't get much for NT4 these days.

    • You should feel lucky that Microsoft and the BSA didn't come after you and FORCE you to buy another copy of NT, to rectify your terrible mistake of not having the box or manuals. Weren't using it anyway? Doesn't matter. After all, Microsoft is careful about retain rights to the presentation of Windows to the user, and aren't the box and manuals just as important for presentation as the splash screen and Desktop?

    • Re:Reselling software (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rick the Red ( 307103 ) <Rick.The.Red@nOsPaM.gmail.com> on Thursday August 30, 2001 @08:05PM (#2237304) Journal
      Imagine if you are next told in your end-user license agreement that you can never resell the software you have purchased!


      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.

      • Re:Reselling software (Score:2, Informative)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 )
        Not to mention, did it clearly state on the outside of the package, that this limitation existed? I'm betting not!

        That's another big problem with the world of software. You don't even know what you're agreeing to until after you buy the product and unwrap it. Once you've done that, they tell you it's non-returnable since it's opened - and you're stuck, supposedly agreeing to all sorts of outrageous licensing terms.

        Have you ever examined the EULA for DeLorme Street Atlas products? I don't know about the latest version, but I've owned 2 versions of Street Atlas USA that both said it violated the license agreement to use the product with an unauthorized GPS device not manufactured by DeLorme! How many people bought this product to use with a 3rd. party generic GPS such as a Garmin, and *never* suspected that's not even allowed!
        • Not to mention, did it clearly state on the outside of the package, that this limitation existed? I'm betting not!


          I'll take that bet! Sorry, you lose. The ONLY good thing Zenith did was print the license on the outside of the disk envelope. You had to read the license to open the envelope (pretty hard to claim you missed it). Microsoft used to do that, too, remember? But Microsoft said you could transfer the license if you transfered all disks and destroyed any backups. Zenith said you could transfer the license with their permission, but they never gave permission. I asked, they said no. Hard to believe anyone could be worse than Microsoft, eh?

  • Washington Post (Score:3, Informative)

    by wiredog ( 43288 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @09:42AM (#2234492) Journal
    The Washington Post article [washingtonpost.com] has quotes from the eff and American Library Association and a paragraph on Skylarov.
  • I think the most positive thing to come out of this article is that at least the legislators are realizing that we currently have no metaphor linking the online world to the real world. They make several references to similar situations involving books/VCRs (especially when trying to pin down fair use) -- but also note where that real world metaphor breaks down.

    While I think the DMCA sucks as much as the next person, it is forcing people to come up with a way of thinking about online media, and forcing legislation to define things like fair-use and distribution in terms of things that aren't necessarily physical.

  • Anyone made a t-shirt with the source code to crack ebooks on it? Maybe the source code on the front and "I READ STOLEN BOOKS" on the back. I bet those would be a hit..
    • the whole point is to make us not look like we steal stuff.. perhaps "I back-up my ebooks for my protection" would be better.

      • There's a good comment. What about making back-ups? I saw a comment a while back from a user here on /. that said something about the ripping of cd's to mp3 and other audio formats. The user said something along the lines of 'Ford would not like it if was a situation where if you crash your car that you could just push a button and make yourself a new one.' Logically, this is true, however one must remember that if you have a car, you most likely have car insurance, and in many states you are required to have it. There is no insurance when you buy a CD from the local CD store, or if your computer crashes and you lose your ebooks. ripping to mp3's and backing up allows us to provide our own insurance. I think that that might not be a bad idea for record companies to look into, especially since not that big of a part of that 18.00 cd price goes to the artist. If my CD gets damaged, I should be able to mail it back to Sony/Columbia/BMG and get a replacement CD, shouldn't I?
        • That whole analogy is incredibly stupid. While Ford may not like it, they have no legal right to stop you from using your magical car creation button.


          Companies would pretty much automatically prefer anything that makes them money. That doesn't mean they have a right to it.


  • They're against undoing the definition of temporary RAM buffer copies as possibly infringing.



    On the other hand, they think everyone should have a backup right for media bought in digital form, like we have for software.


    Now, what happens when I back up all my media into temporary RAM buffers. What about handheld devices that use only RAM to store data. *Sigh*...more evidence that the government is on autopilot.
  • I think perhaps a reason why there have been so many problems regarding the DMCA is it was written to broadly. Sure, it's great to see better copyright protection for items that are released in a digital world, yes it means that some of your freedom is taken away, but in most situations, the DMCA has been no different than regular copyright laws. It IS in fact ILLEGAL to trade music mp3's that are copies of originals that you do not own. The same goes for warez and other software. We live in a world where we wish everything was free, but it isn't. In some cases though, like in the whole reverse-engineering scheme of things, the DMCA is taken out of context. To say that I can't modify something that is my personal property is blasphemy. As long as I am not making an exact copy of your product, it shouldn't be a problem (and this is the patent offices division too) I guess that is another problem, too many departments and lawmakers in washington scrambling to protect the intellectual property of individuals, with good reason, while not exactly understanding what it is they are going out to protect. Now I don't want to say that they are all imbeciles or fools, but imagine trying to explain tons of material relating to IT to someone who is also being lobbyed from 12 different directions on one item. I guess that what I'm trying to say is that the DMCA, while it had it's good intentions, has turned out to be a bad egg. Unfortunately it's a law that is in place, and the only way we are going to be able to get rid of it is to flood our nations representatives on capitol hill and in the white house with letters explaining WHAT the problem is with the DMCA and HOW they need to go about fixing it. Just remember though, that intellectual property needs to be protected too. Open Source is great, but there are people out there who have to make money off of software, and so they sell their products, and musicians and writers must make their money also. Don't write Washington and say that they should make all warez and illegal mp3 trading legal, but do write them and try to guide their decisions in the right direction and explain exactly what things are to them.
  • I'm not sure about conversion algorythms, so someone tell me if I'm wrong. But wouldn't there not be enough of a particular bit of media in the RAM buffer to count as infringement? I mean, when I burn a backup CD with Service Pack 2 for windows, and winamp, winace and the like, I only have 4MB of buffer in the writer.

    Hey, if at the least, maybe a pair of ASCII quotes could surround all the code or music we decided to store or copy.

  • well, I haven't read all of it yet, but what I did read, sounded a lot like 'it's not the DMCA itself, but license agreements that are causing problems'. I believe it noted that when software is purchased, you only buy the rights to use not make an archival backup. If that's the case, perhaps DMCA isn't bad, just our whole license structure that needs reworking?
  • Don't know if anyone's said this yet...

    What if we were talking about water instead of data:
    There is an [almost] infinite amount of water (there are an infinite amount of combinations of binary sequences) and you needed a container (a cd,dvd,hd etc. vs. tank or cup) to store a decent amount (more than you could store in your cupped hands or remember in your head). Water is free to anyone - as long as its in a public place (the sea/oceans) if someone takes some water home thats fine, you can't get at it (if i write a document and store it on my computer you cant get at it). but they could get a simarlar amount of water. (yes i know the analogy isn't perfect). If someone starts selling water, generally they are selling the cost of transport (to tank it or pipe it to my home) plus whatever they've done to clean it. But if people start taking ownership of water by say colouring it with dye and taking legal action against anyone who tries to resell that water it would be mad. (watermarking data).

    There's all sorts of stuff i've left out of this, but generally if i come up (independently) with a random bin sequence which just happens to match someone else's copyrighted sequence how do you deal with it?

    -tfga

    • Independently creating works that are copyrighted by other people is completely legal, unlike, say, patents, which the fact you came up with it yourself isn't an excuse.


      Good luck convincing a judge you magically came up with the exact bitsquence on the latest Chumbawumba album, though.

  • Since the US Copyright Office is pretty much a rubber stamp for industry negotiations over what the next copyright law will look like, allowing congress to abdicate their responsibility to protect the interests of the people, it should be no surprise to anyone that the report basically upholds the DMCA provisions. It's interesting how they claim that backup copies are exempt, but the law ought to be modified to explicitly prohibit sharing of these copies. Hell, at this point, it's prohibited to share the originals, so why bother?

  • Who -prepared- this slop? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wingchild ( 212447 ) <brian.kern@gmail.com> on Thursday August 30, 2001 @10:24AM (#2234613)
    I found that section 117 also has a provision built in due to Title III in the DCMA that grants limited licensing transference to bodyshops that do work on your PC. If they turn on the computer, and software runs, they are not violating the licensing by not being the authorized users. This came up because one PC repair shop sued another when shop 2's technician turned on a computer and it booted windows -- which shop 2 didn't own and had no license for. Windows entering RAM was considered to be a copyright violation due to the licensing restrictions. The modification to Section 117 prevented this lawsuit from happening.

    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

    • 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)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @10:26AM (#2234619) Homepage
    ...because if I move with my Zone 2 collection to the US, 98% of the people there can't play my disc, if I tried selling them. Of course they can buy it and use it as a coaster if they like, but...

    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
    • Interestingly enough, though, there is a footnote on page 116 which states:

      ...purchasers outside North America who are willing to buy region 1 DVDs, that concern has nothing to do with section 1201. Section 1201...has no effect outside the United States. Consequently, a purchaser in Hong Kong could modify a region 6 player so that it could play a region 1 DVD without fear of any repercussions under section 1201.

      This kind of makes it a twisted double standard in more than one way. We can export region 1 DVDs, but can't import anything else. Because we're only going to enforce the DMCA inside the US...

      riiiiight...

    • Stomping on other nation's soverignity isn't unconstitutional as far a I know. Other countries also do this all the time. The ability to enforct those laws outside of the United States is somewhat limited, but California it seems can pass their stupid laws.
  • That this document concerning the DMCA is in .pdf format, the format of Adobe Acrobat!

    But seriously, undoing the non-infringement of temporary RAM-buffer is nonsense, because any internet surfing woiuld be deemed illegal under the DMCA. And how would they enforce it, since internet usage is so widespread?

    Copyright control is out of control.

  • 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.

  • Some good with the bad:

    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.
  • Question for people who've actually read the DMCA. If I sell house door locks and don't tell people that I have a master key for all their houses, can I sue anyone who squeals for violating the DMCA? After all, there are books, videos, and other copyrighted materials in people's houses, so such knowledge could be used for copyright violation. Could someone who's actually looked at the DMCA give a pointer to the relevant part?

    • Circumvention devices do not have to be software. An interesting point: The most common circumvention device available today is not DeCSS; it's a CD burner. CD burners got to be too common though; I suspect they're illegal under DMCA. The argument against is that they do have a lot of non-infringing uses. However, most burners, especially cheaper ones: this would be questionable at best.

      Your specific example is not so good. I believe that in most jurisdictions, locksmiths are legally required to keep master keys: or at least they're allowed to, and they commonly do. Therefore, the squealer would not be revealing secrets: no consequences. Shouting fire in the middle of a forest fire is legal. :)

  • Senator Feinstein's (CA) response to me abot DMCA (Score:5, Informative)

    by TornSheetMetal ( 411584 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @11:41AM (#2234915)
    I wrote my Senator complaining about the DMCA a month or so ago and here's the response I got. It doesn't look good.


    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
    • hm . word for word, the same exact reply I got from her almost a year ago. . .
    • ...All I see are trees!

      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.

      I can't figure out if this woman is really ignorant, or just does a good job at playing that way as long as the cash keeps rolling in... Someone should point out the other things "actually written into our Constitution", like say the first amendment rights of free speech (Which the DMCA does away with if you are using those pesky rights to talk about encryption).

    • Re:Senator Feinstein's (CA) response to me abot DM (Score:4, Insightful)

      by StaticEngine ( 135635 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @01:27PM (#2235481) Homepage
      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.

      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.

    • Of the MANY letters that I've written to our lawmakers regarding this issue, I've only received ONE response and that was from Sen. John Kerry (MA). His "excuse" was that we needed the DMCA to comply with the WIPO trade agreement.

      Sigh...

      -S
    • I wrote to my Senator (John McCain, AZ) as well, about the DMCA and Dmitry. The letter I received back sounds suspiciously similar to yours, except there was a little Dmitry blurbage in it. I will have to check the letter when I get home, but I am wondering if there is a form letter or boilerplate being used for responses to these issues - if that is the case, then what is even the point of writing your congresscritters?

      • but I am wondering if there is a form letter or boilerplate being used for responses to these issues - if that is the case, then what is even the point of writing your congresscritters?

        All the better. Boilerplate responses means that they have heard of this issue enough that they wrote it. That means they are wondering if this is big enough that they need to become "un-bought" to win the next election. They are not counting all the pro and con letters they get.

        Your congrescritter is still unlikely to read your letter himself, but someone is now reding enough of it to get your position, and then making a mark. Your congress critter is seeing those marks, and if there are a significant number of them he will act knowing that to now act could cost him the election.

        Of course I think it is wrong to ever vote for an incumbant, so putting a check next to my letter won't help, but he doesn't know that because the ballot is seceret.

  • the DMCA's effect on fair use is called out of scope for the report.

    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)

    by bperkins ( 12056 )
    The first sale doctrine codified in section 109 limits an author s distribution right so that subsequent disposition of a particular copy by its owner is not an infringement of copyright. The first sale doctrine does not guarantee the existence of a secondary market or a certain price for copies of copyrighted works. If fewer people may wish to purchase a used DVD, or if they would pay less for it due to CSS, that would not equate to interference with the operation of section 109. Many circumstances in the marketplace may affect the resale market for copies of works improvements in technology, introduction of new formats, and the quality and cultural durability of the content of the work. None of these factors can properly be said to interfere with the operation of section 109, even though they could reduce the resale market for a work or even render it nonexistent.

    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)

    by jafac ( 1449 ) on Thursday August 30, 2001 @12:21PM (#2235127) Homepage
    The worst part about losing the "first sale" qualities of a product is that that product will likely be sold for about the same amount, but carries a much lower value for the consumer.

    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.
  • It is apparent to me that we are witnessing the effects of answering to a legislature unversed in and unused to the current state of our technological culture. Sure, they understand the effects of technology's cultural advancements on their supporter's bottom lines, but they don't understand the effects of those advancements on the end user. THEY have never really been the end user.

    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

  • Pondering about the subject of the DMCA, I have reached an interesting insight.

    The legislators of the DMCA saw a strange situation. Mega-Corporations are producing digital content, gaurded with various kinds of "protection" systems to prevent certain uses of thier content, and to allegedly enforce their copyrights. Then, "hackers" come and circumvent this protection, publicly posting their results. This situation of cat-and-mouse race sounds unreasonable. Either the rights of the copyright owners should be protected and it should be illegal to circument them (as the DMCA suggests), or (and this is what should have been decided) that the "protection" mecahnisms themselves are unethical and bypass the fair-use rights and the expiration of copyright.

    The answer therefore is that they passed the wrong law. It's not illegal to circumvent the "protection" mecanisms. The mecanisms themselves contradict the fair-use rights that have been established.

    The law that should have been passed, is one preventing use of any mechanism that prevents exercising of fair-use rights by legitimate owners. If the court decided I'm entitled to fair use rights, Mega Company X cannot deny me of those rights.

    Right?

  • give up on selling CD's as the exclusive media for the music. They should sell cheap CD's, and increase the amount of live music presence thier artists have. Music is meant to be live, and everyone prefers live music most of the time, for the atmosphere.
  • ...are surely 'fair use', aren't they?

    As the owner of a work copyrighted by someone else, aren't I allowed by 'fair use' to make as many personal copies of that work as I like, so long as I have destroyed all those copies if I ever get round to reselling that work to someone else?

    Copies in RAM are certainly not going to stick around (ditto copies in swap) for any length of time; they're not for commercial gain; they require me having a copy of the work already. Why on earth is extra legislation needed for these 'RAM copies', when fair use seems to cover it so well?

    K.

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