Slashdot Log In
SSSCA Hearing
Posted by
michael
on Fri Mar 01, 2002 09:34 AM
from the big-news dept.
from the big-news dept.
larsoncc writes: "According to this article on CNET, a Senate Bill will likely force the issue of adding copy protection to hardware. They are giving the industry 12 to 18 months to come up with a voluntary solution to the "problem" of copies, and if not... Well, you just have to read the article. Insane." Wired also has a story. The IP list published two interesting documents: an account of the hearing by an attendee, and a letter from Intel published immediately after the hearing. Read the letter carefully - note that the disagreement between the tech industry and Hollywood is not over whether or not copy protection will be implemented into every electronic device, but only whether or not this should be written into law. If the SSSCA isn't passed, Intel (and others) get a lot of leverage over Hollywood. If it is, Intel's leverage disappears. But since both sides want to build copy protection into everything, they only differ over the process, we're in trouble either way.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
SSSCA Hearing
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 779 comments
(Spill at 50!) | Index Only
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Bought and Paid For (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I like some of my representatives, I've put them on notice that I'll vote in someone else if they dare pass this scam.
Congress: Quit telling me how to run my business, or I'll tell you how to run yours!
*scoove*
Re:But Enron and Global Crossing were _un_regulate (Score:5, Insightful)
How about this?
The first rule covers the establishment of monopolies through legal means. The second rule covers monopolies that develop without legal support (i.e., natural monopolies).
Should I send this to my congressmen? (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. economy is in the midst of an amazing ascent from recession, having endured more than any of us might have imagined that it could survive.
The digital information infrastructure is in no small part responsible for our recovery. The ability of businesses to easily and quickly exchange large amounts of information is key to our ever-increasing productivity.
This infrastructure is made possible by a number of software applications that are made available for free, and these applications are maintained by organizations that derive their profits by charging for support.
Let us take, for example, the "sendmail" application supported by:
http://www.sendmail.org
It is both unfair and unreasonable to require this company, who gives their product away for free, and plays no direct role in piracy on the Internet, to shoulder the overhead of implementing digital rights management.
Furthermore, "sendmail" is such a widespread product that E-Mail on the Internet would effectively end if all copies of "sendmail" were
simultaneously disabled.
The SSSCA will take broad sectors of the IT market into violation of the law with the stroke of a pen. These sectors will include the entire free software movement, including one of my favorite companies, Red Hat Software (one of the most successful IPOs of 1999).
The damage to our information information infrastructure will be incalcuable should this legislation be enacted.
This legislation is a result of the lobbying efforts of the MPAA and the RIIA, who rightly desire some control over the perfusion of their digital content. Such content controls could easily be made voluntary by including a small message in an MP3 asking the user to purchase a legitimate copy of the work if a license key was not found in a local encyption key cache.
Instead, these media organizations wish to trample our constitutional protections on freedom of speech and fair use, and take the economy along with it.
Let there be no mistake; this legislation is a disaster. I urge you to vote against it.
Re:Should I send this to my congressmen? (Score:5, Interesting)
Senator Kit Bond
274 Russel Senate Office Building
Washington, DC. 20510
Senator Bond:
I am writing to express my deep concerns over recent trends I see in new intellectual property law, specifically the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA). From what I understand, this law will make it illegal to manufacture and/or sell an interactive digital device that does not have built in "content protection", where an interactive digital device is defined as any hardware or software capable of storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving or copying information in digital form.
Frankly, I am shocked and deeply alarmed that such a bill is even being considered on the floor of the US Senate. Intellectual Property was created by the framers of our constitution not to ensure that corporations can make money for the span of many human lifetimes, but to ensure that said property would eventually fall into the public domain by providing a (small) window of revenue for content creators. This act would violate both the spirit and the letter of past intellectual property law. Consider, under the SSSCA:
1. Fair use rights have been virtually eliminated. I can no longer make copies of media that I legally bought and own, and am legally entitled to copy.
2. Media that I created (home videos, pictures, etc.) will no longer be viewable on SSSCA compliant hardware. You will lose the home movies of an entire generation.
3. Some greeting cards, credit cards, calculators, picture frames, children's toys, answering machines, cell phones, etc. will now be illegal. (Anything that can store data digitally will have to be manufactured to this standard.)
Perhaps most insidious, however, is the ramifications for who can publish and who cannot. This "content protection" works by the content providers agreeing on a standard for "watermarking" their products, and the hardware manufacturers interpreting said watermark. The watermarking method will have to remain secret; otherwise illegal copies could be watermarked and distributed. Thus, only people with access to this watermarking method will be able to produce media viewable by the American public. In other words, only approved media will be viewable by the American public. As a private citizen, I can no longer distribute digital copies of a video I created with my current camera, because it does not hold an MPAA watermark, and thus all SSSCA compliant hardware will treat it as a pirated copy.
I sincerely doubt that such a law would survive a constitutional test. I urge you to demonstrate that you really do work for us, and not for Hollywood. Vote down this legislation.
Sincerely,
Missouri Citizen
Here's my letter (Score:4, Interesting)
This letter is being addressed to your office for your capacity as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and co-sponsor of the proposed legislation the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA). The legislation that you are proposing will have a definite, immediate, and chilling effect on the economic growth of the technology and entertainment industries for the foreseeable future.
I would like to point out that your legislation intends on preventing free market forces from being allowed to shape the economic growth of these industries by creating artificial barriers intended to maintain the current balance of power/wealth held by the copyright holders. This is very similar to the competition felt by the railroad industry from the automobile, in that both the railroad and record/movie labels depended upon their absolute control over all major distribution channels for their sources of revenue (the record industry receives 94% of total revenue from CD sales). The PC/internet is like the automobile/highway system in that it frees the masses from having to rely on a bulky, inefficient, and tightly controlled distribution channel that allows for illegal price fixing, for which the record industry has been found guilty of in the past. I am not an advocate of any form of piracy because if the government were to allow the markets to naturally rebalance themselves, they could now do so in such a way that piracy would no longer be an attractive option for consumers, unless you feel that every citizen is a thief at heart. This would be do to the volume of scale involved with the internet distribution of data including songs and movies.
To illustrate this point the average cost per song on a CD is ~$2 for the consumer. This $2 includes certain privileges like owning the physical media, protective case, label and lyrics, the ability to create copies for personal use within the fair use doctrine, unlimited listening, portability, and then the right to sell the CD provided that you don't keep any copies. Under the current overpriced CD distribution scheme, very few successful CDs will sell a million or more copies. By contrast is the reported popularity of some pirated songs on the Internet which regularly exceeded ten million downloads. If the record companies were to offer their songs for sale on the internet with the legal right to download the songs, giving the buyers full fair-use privileges, the ability to create playable audio CDs, unlimited listening ability, and portability for a cost that reflects the volume of scale, lack of overhead, and fair profit margins they would see immediate, dramatic, and profitable sales.
Instead these companies are moving their businesses online in a way that allows them to continue to maintain the same near absolute control over the online music industry that was had by their control over the traditional distribution channels. Should the railroads been given control over all highways? If allowed to continue, your proposed legislation will allow these industries to continue their abuses on the consumers by way of forcing consumers to pay every time they listen to a song/see a movie/read a book, without regard to any legal fair use. As proof of their true intensions the record industries current online ventures have proposed an insulting royalty payments from online sales to the artists they claim to represent/protect. Some of these songs being sold online by the record companies don't even have a legal right to sell online, and the artists' who own the online rights are threatening them with lawsuits and sending cease and desist orders, which the record industry has chooses to ignore.
To end I would like to include a quote from Robert Heinlein's "Life-Line"
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
All opinions expressed within are mine alone and by no means represent those of my employer.
The irony of the situation (Score:4, Insightful)
"The truth is, if you cannot protect what you own, you don't own anything."
Unfortunately for the consumer:
"The truth is, if you cannot do whatever to things you own, you don't own anything."
wont work (Score:3, Insightful)
IF the media thinks it can use laws to curb such things it is mistaken. In a democracy you cant always have what you want, compromises are necessary.
Foregone conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
It also appears that they are shouting down anyone who objects as enabling criminal activities.
Tech Industry players don't want to be seen as supporting criminals, and don't have the guts to stand up for enabling the user (Other than Intel, who got beaten up for it)
So, in the name of not looking bad, and not getting more bad law, it is a foregone conclusion that we will have copy-protection- it's just a question of whether it will have force of industry, or force of law, behind it.
As much as I hate bought legislation, why didn't the Tech Industry buy off their own Congressmen to compete with this foolishness?
I know MS only started contributing to campaigns in the last presidential election, and they've already patented the DRM OS, and IBM stands on moral and ethical ground of not getting involved- Compaq and HP are too busy fighting to merge to get involved-
By the time they realize what they've lost it will be too late to turn the tide. At least Intel tried.
Re:Foregone conclusions (Score:4, Insightful)
Because the Tech Industry doesn't care about us. They care about making money. They will still be able to make money post-"enforced copy-protection".
If there's anything that Cisco's "Wall Of Oppression" firewall proved is that these tech companies that people on Slashdot adore and identify with as being the corporate embodiment of themselves are anything but. They are simply corporations in pursuit of money. People have ideals and ethics. Companies do not.
We all thought the tech companies were different from the other megacorps because they were started by people like us. They aren't different.
Hollings lashes Intel rep for resisting CPRM (Score:4, Informative)
Full story below.
Senator brutalizes Intel rep for resisting CPRM
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Posted: 01/03/2002 at 14:41 GMT
Entertainment industry lapdog Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) lashed out at Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz who warned that the copy-protected PCs Hollings is obediantly promoting on behalf of his MPAA and RIAA handlers would stifle growth in the marketplace.
"We do not need to neuter the personal computer to be nothing more than a videocassette recorder," Vadasz said in testimony before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Thursday.
An obedient Hollings tore into the witness, calling his testimony "nonsense".
"Now where do you get all this nonsense about how we're going to have irreparable damage?" Hollings demanded. "We don't want to legislate. We want to give you time to develop technology."
The "we" he mentions, it's quite obvious, refers to the entertainment industry flacks and lobbyists who wrote Hollings' pet bill, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA), which would require hard drives to fail to load 'insecure' applications, and perhaps even operating systems at some point in future. Tinkering with one's own personal property to defeat this Orwellian innovation would be criminally punishable.
This is of course the entertainment industry's dream, as it seeks to hobble all equipment so that it can determine when, where and how its content can be enjoyed by consumers. Copying any content from one medium to another could be blocked on the pretext of piracy prevention, so it's entirely possible that one would have to purchase two CDs with the same content -- one for the computer and one for the stereo, say. It's this sort of extortion the industry has relentlessly lobbied Congress to enshrine in law.
Defeating piracy is the pretext; but obliterating the consumer's right to fair use is the true goal. But because Congress can't quite bring itself to eliminate fair use directly and up-front, a series of laws like the DMCA and SSSCA have been devised to eliminate it practically, or 'incidentally'.
Naturally, the hardware industry is going to resist any law which forces it to break its products. It understands that consumers will be disappointed by equipment which fails to let them enjoy content which they've purchased. They see a slump in sales in the SSSCA. And they're probably right.
The hearing was a typical Congressional dog-and-pony show designed to stroke Hollywood fat cats like Michael Eisner and Jack Valenti pursuing the Holy Grail of pay-per-use technology. No critics were invited to speak, and no harsh criticism was expected.
So when Intel's Vadasz showed the spine to blast the entertainment industry's pet scheme, he had to be beaten down, and Hollings was of course eager to please his masters.
Eisner and Valenti also testified, exhibiting their profound ignorance of technology and their sneering contempt for the rights of consumers, under Hollings' admiring gaze. Hollings, clearly, is an honest politician according to Brendan Behan's formula: when he's bought, he stays bought.
Hollings has also adopted the industry's basic stance, that copying is primarily about piracy, and only rarely about honest fair use. But the best expression of this comes from Recording Industry Ass. of America President Hillary Rosen, who wrote yesterday that, "surely, no one can expect copyright owners to ignore what is happening in the marketplace and fail to protect their creative works because some people engage in copying just for their personal use."
The 'some people' says it all. Most people are criminals, and only a tiny minority are honest and decent, Rosen assumes. This is the also official perspective of Hollywood -- of Eisner, and Valenti, and Hollings. It is a perspective natural to a certain class of person. Consider that we all imagine others to be more or less like ourselves. Decent people expect others to be decent, just like themselves. Criminals expect others to be criminals, just like themselves. When Eisner and Rosen and Valenti and Hollings see a world populated by cheats and frauds and freeloading scum, what does that say about them? ®
Re:Foregone conclusions (Score:4, Informative)
As to Microsofts donations as you can see here [opensecrets.org] Microsoft was in the top 20 industry donators to congress back in 1992. You can do a more detailed search for All Microsoft soft-money, donations by Microsoft Employees, and other groups here [opensecrets.org]
If you want to go Here [opensecrets.org] you can look up everybody's two favorite Senators.
Not too serious... (Score:5, Insightful)
THE BIG FREAKING POINT. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that copyright is NOT there to guarantee that people make lots of money, copyright is there to guarantee that society has literature, art, and music, by making sure artists can earn money through creation.
Huge corporations stopping fair use and extending copyright limits for the length of several human lifetimes is unAmerican.
I'm all for REAL copyright that still provides for fair use. I don't trust these goddamn people to do it for me. If it was a legitimate matter of wanting to protect themselves, i'd be more sympathetic, but its not secret that they want to find more ways to fuck you out of your money.
Re:THE BIG FREAKING POINT. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, and the problem with most technological "solutions" is that they either seriously impede fair use by design, or make it cumbersome to excercise one's fair use rights. Horror stories of content being tied to particular hardware abound. What happens when the hardware breaks?
However, I think the hour is not as dark as it seams, and there may be a silver lining to this particular cloud. As Lawrence Lessig points out [barnesandnoble.com], code is becoming a proxy for law enforcement. By itself, this is ominous only because laws can be repealed, but code can't. But, what if every law had sunset clauses, and code to enforce it had to honour them? A copyright law enforced by code could also enforce release into the public domain at the appropriate time. No "Sonny Bono" act could change that, though, I suppose the act of benefitting from this "earlier law" enforcement could be made illegal. Still, I'd question the constitutionality of a law that made existing equipment functionality retroactively illegal.
I think, sadly, it's a given that we'll have hardware copy protection. Given public key cryptography, and an escrow mechanism for user-specific secret private keys within the equipment you own, it is technologically feasable. The challenge is for the public to standardize and control the depoloyment of same to ensure that the law it enforces reflects balance in copyright of digital content, as the constitution broadly intends.
I see a great potential here for crypto-hackers to ally with hardware manufacturers to produce a system with which we can live, and not one that enforces Hollywood's idea of maniacal control. While the best proportion of SSSCA-mandated hardware in a system is none at all, I'd settle for 1%, in playback or transcoding interfaces, espescially if I can leverage it to protect my own private content, and not in storage devices.
My Copyright Plan (Score:5, Interesting)
2. ALL copyrights expire after 20 years. (Not this 95-150 years BS when original copyrights were 14 years)
3. When a copyright expires, it must be released without DRM (Digital Rights Management) software.
Personally, I think this is a perfect balance. While I would deam circumvention devices illegal, I would also release TONS of MODERN works in the public domain. You're probably thinking, "Big deal, you're realing everything prior to 1980 into the public domain. I'll get to watch old movies."
We don't even have a dictionary in the public domain that is clear enough to scan in with OCR software. (I'm not sure of the current status.)
We have nothing, as far as modern works is concerned, in the public domain. Imagine the wealth of information published prior to 1980, now imagine it's all free. Now imagine you're free to plaigerize from all those works to create an uber-encyclopedia of data structures, gardening, renewable energy guide, home medical guide, medical diagnosis software, etc.
It would create a whole new landscape for a whole new type of aggrigate content. You would be free to mix the best of two books or entire volumes and magazines, and put it on a CD or DVD. The amount of knowledge that could be compiled would be insane.
You might as well give new works the ability to protect themselves for a limited amount of time.
It's time to educate the people with the free information they are entitled to. The US Constitution acknoweldges that information is inherantly free, because they had to make a provision for limited copyrights and patents.
The only reason they would make such a provision is because it was self-evident that information, specific works or vague abstractions, belong to the public and no individual.
In other words, copyrights and patents are privledges, not rights.
Re:THE BIG FREAKING POINT. (Score:4, Insightful)
Before anyone misinterprets this, the SSSCA is about indefinite copyright. Or rather, about de facto indefinite copy-control. Because even when the copyright on the content runs out (if it ever does), it will still be illegal to obtain the tools to extract, use and distribute the content. It's like putting copyrighted material in a locked safe with a tiny window in it, and saying "In 70 years, you can open the safe and put the contents into the public domain. Only we're not telling you the combination, and if you so much as enquire about safe-cracking kits, we'll assume in a very real and legally binding fashion that you actually want to crack open other safes, and have you prosecuted." Append a maniacal laugh, if you like.
Re:There's alway a way to break copy protection (Score:5, Insightful)
When electronics are outlawed, only outlaws will develop electronics.
I think we're on the verge of self-destructing our $1T technology industry goodbye for the $50M Hollyweird industry.
Right now, there's some geeky Chinese kid tinkering with a soldering iron. When he's in high school, he'll be playing around with FPGAs. When he goes to university, he'll meet another kid from India (he spent his childhood salvaging parts from our junked computers), and together, they'll develop a way to mass-produce quantum transistors.
Your kids, by government edict, won't have such advantages. Valenti, Eisner and Hollings would rather have the nation's kids watch The Lion King so Disney can make a 5-year profit projection.
25 years from now, your kids will be working in sweatshops assembling quantum computers. Because that Chinese kid and that Indian kid will form the next AT&T Labs. Your kid could have done the same in America, but his government destroyed his economic future for the sake of a fucking cartoon mouse.
On the other hand, the education budget can be cut - if SSSCA passes, all you'll need to prepare your kids for the future is a mop and a spatula. There'll still be some money for the gifted and talented ones -- they'll get squeegees.
I will accept copy protection. (Score:4, Interesting)
All media has a lifetime guarantee against anything I do to it.
Basically, I want to back things up for my personal use. But, if the media companies wish to stop me doing that myself then I feel that they ought to provide me, for free (or the cost of production), with as many replacements of the original media as I want. If they are unwilling to accpet this financial undertaking (it'd be big, I'm a clumsy/forgetful/stupid person) then they ought not be able to stop me protecting my initial investment.
Re:I will accept copy protection. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010921_eff_sssca_aler
from EPIC:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/drm/ [epic.org]
overseas.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Porn companies? (Score:5, Interesting)
Jesus H. Christ. So any pocket calculator with a M+ key on it is going to be illegal? What a bunch of assholes.
On another note, where do the porn companies stand in this? I think I'm going to start writing the big porn video companies and let them know that movies they make are being shared online. That could be the one thing that could kill this bill. Imagine telling Mary soccer mom that the reason her computer is hobbled is to protect the profits of pornographers. She'll get into her Suburban and drive right over to her Congressman's office with a letter.
Stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting how they point out that the Alaskan Senator is a Republican, yet never point out what party Hollings is from....
My feelings (Score:3, Insightful)
But, see, the thing is, this mandates DRM - to Hollywood's specs - not only in Windows, but in Linux, *BSD, MacOS, PalmOS, and every single device I own. That's unreasonable.
If I'm told that I'm not allowed to use FreeBSD anymore because the TCP stack doesn't check incoming packets for copyrighted material, and because FFS lets me store mp3's, then I'm going to be really pissed. If I'm told that there are going to be some components that can no longer be 'open source' - or, more importantly, Free Software - I'm going to be really pissed. If every hard drive that I see in the store has built in DRM, I'm going to be even more pissed.
Well, guess what? That's what this bill says. My rights are getting pissed on by this bill, and it pisses me off. I'm calling my reps and telling them that if they vote for it I will not vote for them.
So basically (Score:4, Funny)
Bipartisanship could actually save us. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, our government is largely corrupt, and IMHO, neither Hollings or Bush should be in office. But if Hollings does introduce this bill, and it passes through Congress, there would be a good chance of Bush vetoing it. Of course, since the Senate is so closely split with Republicans & Democrats, I'm hoping that with the right pressure placed by us geeks, this bill won't pass in the first place.
If you can't copy, it's not a computer (Score:5, Interesting)
This whole effort is somewhat like trying to outlaw the laws of physics. If they could, these guys would try to slow down the speed of light because it allows copying to happen too fast.
Copying is how computers work. Would somebody with some influence and a clue please tell them this?
What about information that WANTS to be free? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand how it would be possible to differentiate between content that was once DRM-controlled but no longer is, and content that was never DRM-controlled.
What if I write a story and distribute it? Of course it isn't going to have an appropriate digital signature on it. What am I supposed to do, go to some kind of appropriate authority and somehow publish it through them? What if I can't afford whatever fees they charge? Heck, paying for the right to publish? Talk about a prior restraint on free speech.
But then again, I forget, I'm not supposed to want to publish anything, and even if I do I'm not supposed to be able to do it. After all, the Internet is supposed to be just like television, right?
New law (Score:5, Funny)
The MPAA applauded them move. "Now that digital movies weigh 300lbs casual piracy will be elimiated and we can safely distribute films without concern of terrorists." Blockbuster announed that all new members will receive a free pallet jack.
Chinese peasents who have been hoarding illegal CDR technology in their villages were gleefull. "Perhaps Lik-Sang will buy this @#$%% for paper to cdr converters for hackers". The I-Pod Mafia could not be reach for comment.
SD
Wow, lets make laws for everything! (Score:4, Funny)
Politicians: Well then, we'll just make a law that says you have to make something to prevent copying. That will solve the problem.
Later on...
NASA: We can't make a spaceship that travels faster than the speed of light, it's against the laws of physics!
Politicians: Well then, we'll just make a law that says you have to make a spaceship that travels faster than the speed of light. That will fix the laws of physics.
A little bit of perspective... (Score:4, Insightful)
psxndc
The biggest problem IN THE UNIVERSE! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is obviously a bigger problem than cancer, AIDS, world hunger, or the state-sanctioned violence going on all over the world.
They say the SSSCA will "boost hardware sales." That is because you will have to dump the system you just bought and get a new one if you want to take advanage of all of the 'great new online content.'
I think the only solution is to boycott this crap when it comes out. Refuse to buy the new DRM 64GHz system. Waive your right to watch Madonna or Jurassic Park 47 online. Point out to these corrupt politicians that you are not stupid enough to let them obsolete a system that you bought last month.
It is annoying that we (taxpayers) and the hardware industry end up spending the time and money involved in implementing these systems for the entertainment industry, while they sit back and do nothing basking in the glow of the inconvenience that they have caused everyone.
On top of that, after we go through the expenditure and wast of accomodating these paranoid jerks, we inevitably find that it has basically zero effect (except the waste of time and money). How much time and effort was spent on the copy flags implemented on every CD you buy? Has it ever prevented you from doing anything you wanted to the contents of a CD? Have you ever seen a pirated copy of a CD on DAT tape? I haven't.
But still, this is the most pressing issue for human society to solve today.
Non US Citizens (Score:3, Interesting)
God I hate problems that I am powerless to help solve.
The only way to send a message to politicians (Score:3, Insightful)
Hollings isn't up until 2004, though, and I imagine he'll retire then.
I just want to write software (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want to write free software and give it to the world. I want the thrill of producing something with my peers that is as good or better as what the commercial world offers.
We're not interested in breaking copyrights; I don't even listen to any music from the last 30 years, and the only movies I watch are Star Wars. (Well, almost.)
The net effect of this is to reserve the privilege of publishing software to the elite few that can be certified as providing DRM. The Internet brought publishing to the masses -- now the big guys want to shut that off with trademark domain name rackets, etc. The free software revolution brought the art of producing software, the high art of hackery, to the masses. Now that's going to be shut off, too.
Fundamentally there's no difference between a gigantic big-city newspaper and a tiny neighborhood newsletter. Both should be accorded the same rights and protections. Well, fundamentally there's no difference between Microsoft and me, except Microsoft is big enough to be able to survive this DRM stuff. If it goes through, I won't be able to write software any more. Children won't be able to legally learn to program in the 4th grade like I did. Software will only come from crufty companies, and you can forget about free software (as in speech or as in beer, either one). There will be NO innovation anymore, and society will get what it justly deserves for passing such laws. I guess at that point only a revolution will bring back liberty.
Richard Stallman once wrote an essay [gnu.org] dipicting a future of software controls and unreasonable DRM. In the story, debuggers had been declared illegal because their primary purpose was to subvert copyright protections. I laughed the first time I read it, thinking that was ludicrous.
Media Coverage in SC (Score:3)
One of the things that has really bothered me during the whole SSSCA debate is the media coverage, or lack thereof. I live in South Carolina, and I've never even ONCE heard any mention of this issue from any SC-based media outlet. A quick search of some newspaper archives (Columbia's The State [thestate.com] and Charleston's Post and Courier [charleston.net]) confirms this. It seems that most of the state adores Hollings and most news stories present him in glowing fashion. I just find it sad that very few of the people actually responsible for putting and keeping this guy in office even hear about major policy he is spearheading. If that's not a breakdown of democracy, I don't know what is.
How the SSSCA will kill public domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Even assuming that copyright isn't extended indefinitely, which is a pretty big assumption, the SSSCA will effectively kill the public domain, and here's why.
Even when content comes out of copyright, how are you going to get access to it to use, modify and distribute it? Work through it with me. What you will have is (e.g.) a SSSCA-compliant DVD-2 disk containing an AV stream with a watermark that says "I belong to Disney" weaved in.
But it's out of copyright (let's ignore trademarks, although god knows that's a huge assumption), so now you can quite legally give a copy to your friends, or make your own edit of it, right?
Er, how?
You need to strip the watermark, or it will keep screaming that it belongs to Disney, and I very, very much doubt if any watermarks will have dates on them. No problem, you've got a quantum computer that can crack the pathetic 70 (90, 110, 130 or whatever it is by then) year old protection and remove it, right?
Not legally, you don't. You're allowed to do it, but you're not allowed the tools to do it. This is already the case under the DMCA. But the SSSCA just makes it worse because now you don't have (legal) access to any devices that will play any copied or modified versions unless you strip the watermark. Now you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
(Apologies for the re-use of the analogy, but it's a good one). The content is in a safe with a tiny window that means only you can view it. The clock has run out, and you're now legally allowed to open the safe and get access to the content. Only you don't know the combination. And you're not allowed to buy safe cracking tools, because the assumption is that you'll use them to crack open safes holding still copyrighted material.
One way or another, you have to break the law to create a copy or a modified version or to use such a copy, even though the act of making the copy is entirely legal. It's as simple as that.
Now consider that this also applies to fair use before the copyright expires. Bye bye using clips or images for parody, comment or review. Oh, you can copy the clip, it's just that owning anything that enables you to do so, or to view the copied clip, is illegal.
I do believe that the DMCA and the SSSCA are primarily about stopping piracy. There's no sinister long term motive to stop all fair use dead, or to extend copyright (or copy-prevention) indefinitely. No, those are just nice side effects that polarise society into two groups: licensed content creators, and consumers. Nothing in the middle. No independent multimedia artists or satirists, no amateur editors, no Project Guttenberg, no public domain libraries... no public domain. Just corporate producers, good little consumers... and criminals.
That's not a world I relish living in.
This seems so Dilbertian... (Score:4, Funny)
Marketing Weasels: "This online piracy is hurting sales. The solution is obvious: Make all computers unable to copy anything."
PHB: "Yup. That sounds right, take care of it Dilbert."
Dilbert: "That's impossible. All computers copy. It's part of their basic operation. You might as well tell me to design a perpetual motion machine."
PHB: "I don't understand what you're saying. Logically, anything I don't understand isn't important. You have 12 to 18 months to make all the computers in the world unable to copy. Oh, and the marketing weasels get to decide on the specs. Don't worry, they rarely change their minds more than twice a day."
Dirty nasty filthy bits (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm no techno guru, so I can't say I understand all the issues involved in building 'secure' systems, but I dunno how they can stop the "laws of physics" (as some posters have put it), and prevent bits from being copied.
They can only make it harder to copy stuff, but then it only takes one person to crack it. They can make it illegal to distribute copies, but then we have huge illegal distribution networks in place. They can put people in jail for posession, but then they can't examine the contents of a CD found on your person without taking it to the lab. They can make a device report every single file you open to some central database or whatnot, but who the hell is going to track billions of needles in terabytes of haystacks?
Just what do they expect to be able to do? Frighten people? Make 'em think, "gee, this is illegal... I'd better not do it?" -- but music and films appeal to young people, the ones most likely to have less need of "respectability".
Is Dirty Data is going to become a new rhetoric, a sort of new morality, making people believe that data can be "filthy" and "rotten". Listen to a Bach copy and you'll be corrupted by those dirty nasty un-authenticated bits??
Is that all they hope to achieve? Get the tech industry to admit that it might be sort of maybe possible, (thus creating pretense that the law is enforceable), and then use the existence of the law to create a cultural notion that copying is bad and can damage your health and well being?
Silly, but I do wonder. Or perhaps they already realise that the game is up. Digital technology is to data what mass cheap produced energy available through a socket in your home is to the local cart and coal merchant. They know the game is up. Their distribution model is dead. And they're just buying themselves some time.
So long as they can maintain the illusion that they still have something to own and distribute (see, we prevent copies with DRM, and we sell online to new markets), then their credibility as a business will continue... just a little while longer. Maybe until they figure out what to really do, maybe just to milk the market until they retire.
Either way, when an empty shell of an industry only has it's image of power and worth left, then "The show must go on...."
I bought a shirt from copyleft once (Score:3)
Then DO Something! Here are some IDEAS! (Score:3, Informative)
I suggest contacting people like Rick Boucher(info here [techlawjournal.com]). He seems to have a clue [techlawjournal.com]. Get ahold of his office, and find out who else could help out. Then help them organize resistance to this bill.
It's been said a thousand times, but listen anyway: contact your state's Congress memebers. Write down your comments before hand, making them concise and lucid. Leave the vitriol and belly aching on
Creedo