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Analysis: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
from the corporatism-vs.-the-geeks:-first-blood dept.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) was passed by Congress and signed into law more than a year ago, but its true impact is only beginning to be felt. Corporatism squared off brazenly against the geeks, and handily won Round One. If you're wondering where your Napster really went, read more below.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is an especially devious title for one of the most significant pieces of Internet legislation yet passed. If you're looking for insight into how corporatism and politics work together to control software and technology -- and to potentially stifle free speech and individual choice -- you can't do better. Nor will you find a more textbook-perfect example of dubious, perhaps even unconstitutional, Internet law.
This is how the struggle over who owns ideas, software and intellectual property on the Internet will be waged; Round One in the battle that is pitting corporatism against the geeks. They won.
The DMCA -- largely the fruit of massive lobbying by the entertainment industry, including companies like Time Warner, Disney and other giants of recording and movie industry -- was passed quietly 16 months ago by a normally acrimonious Congress, and immediately signed by the President. Despite the law's profound and far-reaching implications, Clinton's signing of the measure drew little media attention, online or off, and only in the last few months has its impact begun to be felt.
Central to the law is a clause making it illegal to thwart copyright protection methods through the use of software or hardware. Without that power, argued the lobbyists for record labels, traditional publishers and film studios, their industries would be run out of business by the newly empowered Net generation. This is a generation, mostly young, who've discovered that they could create their own culture on the Net, and get the music they wanted rather than pick only from the choices preselected for them by the music industry. And for free, no less. Thousands of artists who wouldn't have gotten through the record industry's artist-selection machine suddenly had channels to distribute their work and find new audiences. Music software is a powerful example of how the Net gave individuals -- especially ones far removed from corporate models of culture and creativity -- a chance to be seen and heard. And it gave music lovers a chance to hear them as well.
And although the law passed more than a year ago (despite opposition to DMCA by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other online free-speech activists, the Act's proponents and their lawyers took their time strategizing about exactly how to enforce and implement it.
This year, the gloves came off -- and suddenly people at colleges all over the country are wondering what happened to their Napster sites. Despite what many schools are telling their students -- often that downloading music simply takes up too much bandwidth -- the real reason for their actions is the DCMA.
Pointedly high-profile lawsuits have been filed recently, as the entertainment industry takes the lead in the war against free culture and the spread of forums for artists to disseminate their work -- at least artists the industry doesn't control. The industry has obviously done its homework, studying how software really works and how information moves, and is using the Digital Millennial Copyright Act as its primary weapon against infringement by people using the Net and the Web.
As a result, with little political opposition or discussion, the DMCA is already beginning to redefine entertainment on the Net, and regain control of popular culture, as corporatists move against free music and movie users. As someone who's been writing about First Amendment issues for years, it's hard to imagine a piece of legislation with greater implications for free speech as well as corporate control of intellectual content. This legislation seems to have anti-trust implications as well: how could any law more actively discourage creativity and competition?
If there is a silver lining in the use of the DMCA to dominate entertainment, it's that day by day, the political issues become clearer. Even though many open source advocates see themselves as technologically centered, rather than politically, the DMCA pits the free software movement, squarely against the commercialist threat to the free nature of the Internet. The corporatists grasp what many young programmers don't: Open source is a powerful political idea, and it's antithetical to the way many modern corporations have always worked.
"The anti-circumvention clauses fundamentally change the balance of copyright," Alex Fowlier of the EFF told USA Today's Bruce Haring earlier this week. "Now we're not just talking about rights to the work, but about tying it to the system it is displayed on, or plays on, or is distributed by. That's one level deeper into control than copyright has been associated with." Tying the distribution, display or performance of a work to a system "affects the users in ways we can't even imagine," says Fowler. "It really hampers the future growth of the Internet." It doesn't do much for the present either.
One reason free music sources proliferated so rapidly was that they often piggy-backed on educational and other sites where music seekers congregated. College students could download music on their schools' sites, in part because the schools believed they were simply neutral, non-liable carriers of content. Since there was no Internet law governing content on Web sites, nobody knew if that was true or not. But it certainly isn't true anymore.
The music industry and its lawyers understood that colleges and universities are powerful channels for commercial music, places where artists, bands and even musical genres are discovered and become popular. They realized they didn't have to shut down every free music site on the Net -- those on instant messaging services like ICQ or AIM, for example -- in order to sharply curb the spread of free music. They could use the DMCA as a way to focus on a smaller number of sites, and on universities and colleges. For an industry that garnered $15 billion in revenues last year, the cost of that focused effort is chump change.
Rather than targeting music distributors or downloaders, they lobbied successfully to get a law passed that made it illegal to thwart copyright protection methods in software and hardware. Music industry lawyers then began notifying colleges and universities that they might be in violation of federal copyright protection laws if they tolerated the existence of Napster and other means of music dissemination. Free music users, accustomed for years to downloading what they wanted, were caught unawares.
The DMCA went a step further, in a legally ingenious way. The law decrees that Internet service providers won't be liable for copyright infringement by their users if the providers remove offending material once they're made aware of it. It's that provision that gains entertainment companies so many powerful new allies in their war against "pirates" -- recruiting, in effect, all the institutions and sites that allow content redistribution, and turning them into culture cops. If they block free music, they're off the hook legally. If they don't, they're liable.
Some colleges seem to think they have a far greater stake in avoiding lawsuits than they do in confronting the real issues involved -- like promoting free expression and diversity in culture. And college students are selective in political issues. There is, for example, a broad-based anti-sweatshop movement on many U.S. campuses, but no equivalently passionate and nationally-organized movement to keep culture free.
(Personal note: As an author who writes online and on paper, I am well aware of the complexity of intellectual content and copyright issues. Writing online, especially for this Web site, means relinquishing reprint, royalty and subsidiary rights that used to provide revenue to writers and artists. The work of me and other writers here and elsewhere on the Web is widely distributed, linked and even printed in paper form without permission or payment. But I've also come to believe that the free (open source, if you like) distribution of content -- even opinions -- offers creators new opportunities: broader audiences, greater impact, road-tested ideas, thus eventually, perhaps even more income.)
While the sweatshop issue (students accuse colleges as well as fashion retailers of buying merchandise produced by sweatshop labor) is perfectly valid, one could argue that the effort by corporatism to attack information software and control entertainment is ultimately of equal importance.
Before the DMCA, for example, a university -- or even a commercial Web site -- could look the other way as people presented, distributed and downloaded music. The legal issue was left between the record company and the so-called "pirates." But in recent months the DMCA has sparked legal actions like these:
- Jon Johansen, a 16-year-old Norwegian student who allegedly wrote software allowing DVDs to be played on Linux-based computers, was arrested at the behest of the Motion Picture Association of America. The MPAA claimed the code illegally circumvented DVD copy protection, and sent cease-and-desist orders to hundreds, perhaps thousands of Web sites, including this one, that had allegedly posted the source code or linked to it. The MPAA filed lawsuits against several sites, as well as charges against Johansen and other software developers, and announced it would pursue other offenders.
- RealNetworks obtained an injunction against a portion of software created by Streambox, designed to allow users to capture or record streaming media sent via Real's copy-protected format.
- The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit against Napster, which allows music seekers to trade song files directly from machine to machine without having to post them on the Net. Following the suit, Napster was removed from scores of college and other Web sites.
Tomorrow: The political issue is as simple as it is significant. Do individuals have the right to define their own cultural and entertainment experiences? Or must they depend on content and products sold by a handful of corporations?
Re:Read the bill...its important! (Score:3)
If a law takes away nine freedoms, and specifically permits you to retain the tenth, "BRAVO!" is hardly the reaction I'd have. Perhaps "This is awful" or "BULLSHIT!", but certainly not "BRAVO!".
In other news, I've announced that my new law will eliminate your ability to speak, read or communicate, but I'm still allowing you to think subversive thoughts. You also retain the ability to stand on your head and stick your tongue out (in your own home only, of course). Reaction from slashdot posters: BRAVO!
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
Protesting on slashdot won't do any good! (Score:3)
Hollywood is trying to keep us from watching DVD's on Linux. The recording industry is trying to keep us from listening to music on our computers.
They buy the politicians to pass legislation to do so.
So how do we fight back? I've heard some people on slashdot say that they won't buy dvd's until the dvd fiasco is straightened out. But is it really making a difference? Folks, I hate to say it, but they don't give a rats ass about you the individual and whether you choose to stop buying dvd's. The way to fight back is to take it to the masses. Stop buying cd's? Once again, they don't care.
We can complain all we want on slashdot, but how many people actually read slashdot? If we want to be heard, we need to take it to the mass media.
I live in Virginia. Our local newspaper didn't mention one thing about UCITA until the day after it passed. It wasn't until a week later that someone wrote an article talking about the possible downside to UCITA.
In order to be heard, we need to come together in an organized effort. Corporatism thrives on the basis that a company has more pull than individuals.
What would I like to see done?
1. The Academy Awards are coming up later this month. What better place than this to stage a protest on the Motion Picture Association and DVD than here? Can any linux mag journalists get passes to this to ask some tough questions? Ask actors, directors, and producers as well as executives about the dvd problems.
2. Hand out literature at movie theaters or video stores about the dvd situation. If they won't let you, stage protests.
3. When the summer concerts begin, go to the ticket lines and talk about mp3's and how the record companies are trying to prevent you from listening to what music you want. Call up bands on radio call-in shows and ask them about mp3.
4. Take it to your local paper. Most people still get their information from newspaper or television. Slashdot hasn't gotten that big, yet! Hopefully, in time, it will!
5. Vote. Not just in the main elections, but in your local elections. They affect you the most.
6. Support campaign finance reform. Stop letting corporations choose which candidates you will vote for.
Hopeless Stopgap Measures by a Doomed Industry (Score:3)
Well, with 1.4B growth last year, maybe they're not doomed dispite their very best efforts to the contrary. That testifies to how much people like music, not how much they care for the record industry as a whole (aka "the man").
Things like the DCMA only are legally binding in the good 'ol US of A. The land of the free, remember? Well, let me tell you - I'm a Canadian, and our commie red pinko way of looking at taxes looks pretty good right now compared to some of the scarey-ass things I see coming out of the politics south of the border.
The rest of the world has little to fear from the evil MPAA and RIAA, so don't sweat it. They can procecute all they want, but it won't stem the tides that have been launched. Do they have any apprecationf for the sheer VOLUME of bits being passed around? The movie industry is next, and they know it. What do you think is driving the amazing demand for huge hard drives? Excel spreadsheets? No! Porn and Mp3s. Once 100gb drives become common, DVDs next.
Consumers love freedom, and they're not as stupid as they look. But dispite all the fire blowing in washington, all the people whining about their rights being taken away - your rights in the "real world" are already gone. Has everyone forgotten that it is a FELONY to pirate software?
Too bad all the people calling for handgun legislation didn't understand the real reason that bit about arms is in the US consitution, and no, it wasn't so the NRA can hunt deer with M16 assault rifles.
Kudos from North of the border..
Re:Dismantling the Human Soul (Score:3)
The American system is different than other governments because it never had to deal with feudalism. We hear the phrase "a jury of ones peers" but the origin of that phrase is the fact that there was an aristocracy and peasantry, and the aristocrats could expect to be tried by other aristocrats, NOT peasants. (When Charles I of England was being tried, he refused, all the way up to the point his head was seperated from his body to acknowledge the authority of the court which tried him. This was perfectly valid according to feudalism, he was King, no one in England was his peer, and therefore none could judge him save God alone.)
In the United States, our government rejected such a system from the first (though, of course, a version of it existed in the south even in the U.S.). People were not landed gentry or aristocrats. To this very day, it is illegal for Americans to accept titles from other nations if they hope to maintain their citizenship.
Frankly, I see corporations working to create a new kind of feudalism, with these new laws that give them broad powers over society. People associated with certain corporations would have more power, simply by virtue of that association, than ordinary citizens. Remember, a big part of the basis of feudalism was land holding. The lord owned the land and the peasant worked it for him, and it would be almost impossible under the old laws for a peasant to ever truly own land. If a peasant did manage to get land of his own, well, then he wasn't a peasant anymore.
The new feudalism will be based on intellectual property, for another important way of controlling people is controlling their access to learning. Sometimes the media giants own the rights to things which the creators of those things signed over to them... but sometimes the creators of content are long dead, and possible without families. Besides which, naivé content creators can be duped or cheated out of things. We've all heard stories of disgruntled musicians having troubles with their labels.
The point is that the DMCA is a new law, it's not some old law protecting corporate rights that already existed. It is creating new, special rights for corporations at the expense of consumers' rights of fair use. It is the same with UCITA. If these were just meant to insure "fairness," wouldn't enforcing existing laws dealing with intellectual property be enough? The excuse behind this new law is new technology, but is it really about new technology? Is copying songs onto a hard drive as an MP3 really that much different than recording them onto tape? Is watching DVDs under Linux really significantly different than running Macintosh or Windows programs under each others operating systems using an emulator? Or is the "threat" of new technology merely a useful boogeyman for large corporations to use to gain sweeping new powers?
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act needs to be repealed, and the corporations deserve to suffer a backlash because of it. We already have a legally elected government, we don't need to give corporations their own policing powers (as UCITA and DMCA do). When Adam Smith referred to the "wretched spirit of monopoly" in Wealth of Nations, I don't think he only meant one company owning all the rights to something. I think he referred to those monopolies granted by the Crown, in which the government gave special economic rights to certain corporations or individuals. Well, that's what the DMCA and UCITA do. So, I feel justified in saying that free people should oppose the "wretched spirits of the DMCA and UCITA" just as strongly.
Re:So, what do we do about it? (Score:3)
What can we, as a group, as a rising political force
I don't think we are a rising political force. Not in comparison to the elderly. Think about it - the demographics of this country are such that the number of people age X is growing faster than the number of people age Y, where X > Y.
In addition, older people vote more, so an rise in the number of 50 year-olds has greater voting power than an equivalent rise in the number of 30-year-olds.
We (younger, working people) are losing power, daily, as people live longer and longer, and the birthrate goes down. Power is more and more in the hands of those who no longer work, but instead are dependent for their financial well-being on the performance of the stock market, and thus, on the health of public corporations.
So, there's no way you're going to convince them that your freedom is more important than their financial security, and I doubt there's any way this balance of power is going to tip back the other way. It's going to get worse and worse, actually.
cultural control (Score:3)
For better or for worse, many people who share that view become hypocrites when there is something of value you can steal with little chance of being caught or punished.
However, bills like these pass with ease, and anyone who stands against it is painted as a pirate, similar to any other witchhunt in our history. While our vioce can be heard, and it needs to be, it's going to be very hard to change the environment (culture) that allows these bills to pass.
Some colleges seem to think they have a far greater stake in avoiding lawsuits than they do in confronting the real issues involved -- like promoting free expression and diversity in culture. And college students are selective in political issues. There is, for example, a broad-based anti-sweatshop movement on many U.S. campuses, but no equivalently passionate and nationally-organized movement to keep culture free.
Colleges and Universities have ALWAYS been this way. The leaders of change at any of these institutions have always been the students, and the administration and often faculty stand directly in opposion to them. The reason is simple: the people who run these insititutions are wealthy and powerful, and thus they generally stay with the status quo. Lawsuits are bad for PR. Bad PR means less funding. Less funding is less money.
As far as the students, this isn't a very "sexy" issue as far as what students typically take up. Most college students who are also activists don't understand technology well enough to argue this issue anyway. Frankly its very rare for engineering and computer science students to be involved with the community/civil rights/etc. This is very unfortunate.
wha-what? (Score:3)
john katz, you ignorant slut.
i hate the Digital Millenium Copyright Act as much as the next guy, but it's hardly a grand conspiracy, and it has little to nothing to do with the consumers. The threat of MP3s come from artists who use them. If an open medium for distribution is embraced the recording industry is cut out of the picture.
As for that crap you were talking about universities...please. Napster IS a bandwidth hog, and a number of the universities have publicly stated they'd allow napster, were it to be "leaner."
John Katz, you talk a good game, but I listen to way to much Art Bell to be taken in by standard conspiracy theories. Provide more evidence, please.
It's all about intimidation (Score:3)
If you're looking for insight into how corporatism and politics work together to control software and technology -- and to potentially stifle free speech and individual choice -- you can't do better. Nor will you find a more textbook-perfect example of dubious, perhaps even unconstitutional, Internet law.
Well, apart from UCITA perhaps.
One reason free music sources proliferated so rapidly was that they often piggy-backed on educational and other sites where music seekers congregated. College students could download music on their schools' sites, in part because the schools believed they were simply neutral, non-liable carriers of content. Since there was no Internet law governing content on Web sites, nobody knew if that was true or not. But it certainly isn't true anymore.
If this is carried out to its full extent then no-one will have a web page hosted in the US unless its for something really inoffensive, like cooking - check out this [grits.com] site. By forcing sites to be legally responsible for their content this law ensures that content will remain minimal - for small organisations like colleges that would be unable to continually monitor the content of student web pages it will be far easier simply not to have these web pages. It's far easier for them to do this than to face repeated lawsuits.
The real point of this law is intimidation. It's main target is not professional pirates, most of whom don't live in the US anyway, or the people who download pirate music, most of whom it'd be very difficult and time-consuming to catch, but smaller bodies which can be easily accused and which cannot effectively fight back given such accusations. This law is just another way of the music industry asserting their control over music - one of the oldest parts of human culture and one of the few things which separate us from animals.
Bad as the DMCA may be... (Score:3)
That is more a case of the classical pre-DMCA tactic of filing semi-valid (at best) lawsuits hoping to scare someone into submission.
What goes around... (Score:3)
The recording industry is worried (and rightly so) about becoming redundant in our new information age where any joe blow can set up a worldwide distribution network through the internet, and so they are fighting back with everything they've got.
The same thing happens whenever technology empowers consumers to manage their own content... just look at the VCR. When they first came out, the movie companies all screamed bloody murder, and kept whining about how this was going to obliterate box office sales. Now 20 years later, box office sales are still soaring, and the production houses are making billions off of rental sales. The invention of the magnetic audio cassette was before my time, but I imagine a similar debate raged then.
Of course now the boogeyman is "perfect digital copies". One word: BUL^&$T! You ever listened to an MP3 on a hi-fi stereo? Sounds AWFUL compared to the real deal. How is listening to an MP3 from Napster any different from recording a song from the radio onto a cassette tape? They broadcast this stuff freely on the radio all over the planet and then sick the lawyers on us when we use technology to migrate to the internet, which not only makes sense, but is INEVITABLE! If the bloated media giants weren't drowning in red tape and shortsightedness, they'd have been selling music on the net 5 years ago.
The real solution, IMHO, is to get all of this out in the open, and talk to the people who really matter, the artists whose work is being spread. When exactly did the corporations that simply sell the music become more of a focus than the people who create the music?
What can we do? Lose the RIGHT lawsuit! (Score:3)
If I Understand Correctly, as of next October, more provisions of the DMCA come into force. About that time, again IIUC, it may well become illegal to videotape information off of the air/cable/satellite, particularly if it's off of a scrambled (HBO, etc) channel.
Next October, someone needs to "illegally tape off of the air/cable/satellite" and force themselves to get charged for the "crime". Then they need to do a reasonably incompetent job in court, and LOSE. Then they need to get the story out - that VCRs are now illegal, except for playing back rental tapes. This involves the rest of the poplulation.
Obviously, first someone needs to review the DMCA and see if I do understand the DMCA correctly.
The strategy here is to force the right lawsuit, and show exactly how BAD some provisions of the DMCA really are, and how they hurt EVERYONE's rights. Right now, the general population really doesn't have much sympathy for 'some hacker kid in Norway.' General ignorance about hacker vs cracker doesn't help, either.
Re:So, what do we do about it? (Score:4)
That's the question that needs to be looked at here. What can we, as a group, as a rising political force do to stop this?
Be careful to remember something: The powers that be ("Power Elite" according to C. Wright Mills, "Ruling Class" according to Marx and Bakunin) like computer geeks right now. They think that we're interesting little beings that do things they don't understand and make them lots of money doing it. But we could very easily fall out of favor with them very quickly. All it takes is some good ol' fashioned free speech to make them revile us more than independant organic farmers.
Right now, we keep basically silent. We may post to Slashdot or usenet and bitch and complain, but the Power Elite/Ruling Class don't read Slashdot or Usenet, because they can't control it (yet, be cautious, Andover). Once we start to speak out against the decisions they're making about the way we conduct our lives, they will hit us. And the louder we speak out, the harder they will hit us. This is the way it is, and has been for centuries.
Now, don't let me discourage you or anybody who's interested in making themselves heard. Quite the opposite, I think that's what needs to be done. Here's a few suggestions that I can think of:
Forget emailing or writing your senator. Honestly, when has that ever really worked? Instead, stage a sit-in protest in his office. Force your way in, and refuse to leave until he hears you out. Notify the press. Bring U-Locks and lockboxes in case they try to drag you out. Contact people from the Ruckus Society [ruckus.org] or Direct Action Network [agitprop.org] to learn more about how to plan such an action, and what your legal options are.
Print up some honest-to-goodness propaganda. Check out Subvertise [subvertise.org] or (if you're really talented) Adbusters [adbusters.org] for some inspiration. My belief about propaganda is that it should be radical and in people's faces. Don't sugarcoat things, and don't be afraid to challenge people's concept of what's right and wrong. A poster that screams "Copyright Is Theft!" or "Information Wants To Be Free!" is going to intrigue people a lot more than one that says "We think that the DMCA is dangerous to the free software community because of the implications blah blah blah".
Third, there's going to be a lot going on in Washington, D.C. on April 16th. Remember Seat tle [adbusters.org]? Well, this should be even better [a16.org]. Get your butt out there and make a case against the monopolization of intellectual property. You may want to learn about more of what's going on (it's not just software that IP affects), such as the situation with AIDS drugs in Africa, or the patenting of crops by Monsanto. Also remember that the people protesting are not against globalization (well, unless you count Pat Buchanen as a protester). What we're opposed to, to varying degrees, is corporate rule, greed, and how the Power Elite/Ruling Class are using the idea of "globalization" not to open borders for the prosperity of all, but to create a new form of colonialization. Intellectual property is one major way that they're doing this.
These are a few of the options. I know you said that we should work from inside the system, and that's fine and dandy, but the truth of the matter is that direct action gets the goods. You have to get in people's faces, make them feel a little squeamish (or sometimes downright terrified if the situation is urgent enough), and force them to deal with the issues on *your* terms, without the benefit of having a speech writer churn out the BS beforehand.
Michael Chisari
Analyze this! (Score:4)
The biggest threat the DMCA poses is that corporations are afraid of it. In true CYA (Cover Your Ass) mode these corporations are pre-emptively censoring and removing customers from their networks for things that may be offensive, illegal, or libelous - often with little or no supporting evidence other than an e-mail saying "I don't like so-and-so and will sue if you don't remove him."
The DMCA has locked us into a form of public-censorship by allowing ISPs to do this legally without regard to the evidence. The DMCA removed accountability controls for dozens of services and acts. This is the threat, this is why it MUST be stopped. Corporations are beginning to realize that they were not thinking when they signed on to this.. they are now realizing it is a sword that cuts two ways... and some of the smaller corporations are realizing they are ill-equipped to defend themselves against this. And how can they? The DMCA has removed the ability to fight unfair denial of resources.
Re:Read the bill...its important! (Score:4)
Yes the DMCA does permit reverse engineering for content delivery, but if you need to bypass some copyright protection to RE the content delivery than that is flatly illegal.
Read the full text of the preliminary injunction in the New York DeCSS case and you will see that this is exactly how the MPAA is going after DeCSS.
We got duped, now we need to figure out what to do to fight it. although Jon doesn't remember the media coverage around the DMCA going through congress, I do. There was a tremendous amount of lobbying done by the software industries and the EFF. Everybody relaxed and celibrated when the Reverse Engineering clause went in, without even relizing that it was taken away immediatly in the 'Copyright Protection Mechanisms" clause.
That is where we died. That is the battlefield that we must fight on now. They thought they could beat us technically with poorly implemented encryption and we trounced them. But now the battle has moved to their battlefield, the legal system.
IANAL so what the hell do we do now?
Don't flame - DO SOMETHING. FILE DMCA COMMENTS (Score:4)
Rulemaking on Exemptions from Prohibition on Circumvention of Technological Measures that Control Access to Copyrighted Works [loc.gov] ( http://www.loc.gov/copyright/1201/anticirc.html [loc.gov])
DO NOT JUST EMAIL! READ THE SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS [loc.gov]
File a reply comment to the MPAA's or other pro-DMCA submission.
Not All Geeks Share Your Politics (Score:4)
SW indus doing DMCA like cellular indus did ECPA. (Score:5)
Now the software industry is doing the same thing. Constitutional rights be damned.
So, what do we do about it? (Score:5)
('we' being 'the citizens of the United States of America' for all the foreign slashdotters.)
That's the question that needs to be looked at here. What can we, as a group, as a rising political force do to stop this? They ('they' being 'the forces of big business who want to control our minds in a way that Orwell may have not imagined at all') have managed to run this through the Congress using tremendous amounts of money that your average geek doesn't have. (The only one that DOES would be Gates, and we can be pretty sure he doesn't care either.)
Some ideas:
Anyone else have ideas as to how we can turn things around within the system? I'd prefer to start inside than try to break it from outside.
You're wrong - it IS the bandwidth issue. (Score:5)
I spoke with the admin of a large university in upstate New York, who told me that the actual content of the traffic doesn't concern him unless someone complains about it - but if any one person or application starts using huge amounts of bandwidth, irrespective of what they're doing, he'll move to shut them down.
So long as bandwidth isn't free, Napster cannot exist in the high-speed environment of a university LAN. While I personally don't like the DMCA and would like nothing better than to see it repealed, this particular issue has nothing to do with it.
Re:Hey Katz... (Score:5)
Oh puh-lease. The primary purpose of MP3's is and always has been to steal the latest best-selling albums? Wake the fuck up! The primary purpose of MP3's has been to make it easier to widely distribute audio--something that big companies have had a stranglehold for a long time now.
It's no suprise that the MP3 format gets used for piracy--it's made for distributing audio! You say that "the whopping majority of mp3s being traded, however, are the works of the bigshot celebs who have already made it." I know this is probably obvious to most people but I'll take some time to explain this to you:
Local musicians commonly spent US$10 PER CD to have CD's manufactured so they'd have something to give to their fans, AT A LOSS. The big studios, OTOH manufacture billions of CD's at a fraction of the cost, then sell them in thousands of stores across the world. Now, does it really seem like much of a suprise that most of MP3's available happen to be the same music that has been the most widely available?
7.It all comes down to theft. We want to steal music that other people have spent millions to produce, and they want us to pay for it instead. We're pissed off because they're coming ever closer to preventing us from illegally copying their works. We have no right to be as righteously indignant as Jon Katz has portrayed himself
It does NOT all come down to theft. The fact is that MP3's are gaining popularity with local musicians who want a method to distribute their music without getting bent over by a major record label in the process. Stopping the distribution of MP3's is the only way for the big labels to insure their dominance. In case you haven't been paying attention, piracy by MP3 has not hurt them. The threat is music that is distributed by MP3 that is NOT pirated.
There is no music revolution. We're just trying to find better ways to steal.
God this is such a troll...you keep using the word "We" a lot, and I know that should have been an indicator early on... If you're speaking as a member of the RIAA then I apologize, you're not a troll and I applaud your honesty on this point.
Well "we", as in my group of friends, are very excited about the opportunity to use the MP3 format to distribute music globally. The fact that the MP3's we will produce in the coming month will face hurdles getting onto college campuses due to the efforts of the RIAA helps no one but the members of the RIAA.
No, without the ability for everyday people to distribute digital audio without the RIAA as middle-men, there will be no music revolution.
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Hey Katz... (Score:5)
- Katz talks about how wonderful the Net is in allowing new artists to make it around the record industries selection procedures. The whopping majority of mp3s being traded, however, are the works of the bigshot celebs who have already made it. Sure the new kids have a chance to distribute their music, but it's not as though they've suddenly found an equal market. The primary purpose of mp3s is (and always has been) to steal the latest best-selling albums so that you don't have to fork out a couple bucks for it.
- The DMCA is not trying to redefine entertainment on the web. It is trying to reclaim what is legally theirs. Record companies spend millions of dollars signing artists and releasing albums so that they can make a profit -- this is no less noble than any other business. People have found an easy way around this, however, and they're taking advantage of it. The purpose of the DMCA is to defend against outright copyright infringement, which is what we are all doing.
- College students don't have the ability to download mp3s onto college sites simply because the schools think it's harmless; They can do it because the schools generally don't know about it. Most schools will attempt to eliminate any type of non-official server they are aware of.
- I hate having to repeat this, but copyright issues are not why schools are concerned. They're primary issue is with *bandwidth*. If napster didn't hog up so much space in the pipes, nobody would give a damn.
- Free music sites did not proliferate because they piggy-backed off of educational sites where users. They proliferated because they had FREE MUSIC. Sites run off of school servers are nearly impossible to find. Go to the UC Berkeley web page and tell me where you see mp3s.
- Katz admonishes colleges and universities for worrying more about copyright infringement than about free speech; He absolutely fails to realize that these artists' never intended that their work be given away. Free speech doesn't mean "gratis."
- It all comes down to theft. We want to steal music that other people have spent millions to produce, and they want us to pay for it instead. We're pissed off because they're coming ever closer to preventing us from illegally copying their works. We have no right to be as righteously indignant as Jon Katz has portrayed himself.
There is no music revolution. We're just trying to find better ways to steal.ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Read the bill...its important! (Score:5)
Before people snipe at it based on the above (which is certainely a valid perspective), I would highly encourage people to peruse the bill for themselves. Its long, yes, but very clear and direct as these things go. The complete text [gpo.gov] can be found online, but there are also many good abridged versions! Give it a shot....this is a very accessible and important document for all of us (even non-americans).
Sometimes I think its better to institute a clear law I agree with less...than to continue using a decrepit and unreliable set of rulings. AT least now I have some idea of the "official" stance on things.
-nullity-
I am nothing