The Worst Bill You've Never Heard Of 630
AWhiteFlame writes "IPAction.org is reporting on a section of the Reform Act of 2006 that's very shocking and surprisingly not that publicized. From the article: 'This will be a busy week in the House -- Congress goes into summer recess Friday, but not before considering the Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 (SIRA). Never heard of SIRA? That's the way Big Copyright and their lackey's want it, and it's bad news for you. Simply put, SIRA fundamentally redefines copyright and fair use in the digital world. It would require all incidental copies of music to be licensed separately from the originating copy. Even copies of songs that are cached in your computer's memory or buffered over a network would need yet another license.'"
Yet another reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
How are they planning to enforce this on existing setups? Oh wait... they can't!
Shame....
I could dance around about how im running linux etc, but the fact of the matter is even people running windows XP can avoid this, by : Yes thats right, NOT patching. I mean how do they expect to force anything on anyone using a computer?
One day they might learn, but it seems it will be no time soon...
distraction (Score:3, Interesting)
What will ISPs do? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another example of people making laws about things they don't have the foggiest idea about. And another example how the content industry wants to make money out of thin air. Quite literally.
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you saying that RIAA, MPAA, M$, et al are the entities behind the wave of viral malware? All just to softent up the user base for a frontal assult on the security, privacy, and integrity of their home PCs? What, are you paranoid?
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:3, Interesting)
I see that the Swedes resorted to street manifestations [theregister.co.uk] to show their support for Pirate Bay and freedom to download for personal use:
Re:Bah! (Score:1, Interesting)
As the distinction clarifies, the "whole" simply means, "without any qualification such as bloodline or land ownership". The rest of the article is equal claptrap :
"The People enjoy their God-given natural rights in the Republic."
Uh-huh. So that whole US Constitution / Bill Of Rights is what, exactly?
The God given right to bear arms? Which bit of the Bible is that in?
The simple fact that he brings God into it shows the author is talking out of his arse. That's just a libertarian making shit up.
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially since lots of code is still written by people who don't live in the US, and in countries where (so far!) the laws are not made by corporate interests?
And if the worst thing that happens to my computing experience is that I run FC5 forever
And if the worst thing that happens to my entertainment choices is that I stick with cc-licensed works, again, so be it.
Re:Enforce it, if you can (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I'd love to see the two dominant parties become the Libertarians and the Greens -- at least they still have platforms based on ideology, instead of just pandering to whoever bribes them the most like the Democrats and Republicans do.
Just like fall of the roman empire (Score:4, Interesting)
That is, when senato has become a hive of corrupt senators that exceedingly cater to the needs of wealthy elite, be it their family be it a bribing party, ignoring and debasing the public, despite many laws that are passed to calm the public down.
Public was too annoyed with this, there was much discontent. Senato and public were at discord.
Time and again grandeur/power-hungry prominent men tried to exploit this discontent to their ends, and one of them, julius caesar had succeeded.
He didnt single handedly destroy the republic, he just became the instrument. Republic was already destroyed by corrupt senators.
Well, in much resemblance to the situation at hand eh ? Just, we are at the stage of corrupt senators now.
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
People trotting out that line all the time are part of the problem. They are the people that are resistant to attempts to improve the situation because they think this is as good as it can get. If this is as good as it gets, we're screwed. Some of us don't want to take that lying down.. or bending over as the case may be. We want to come up with better ways of doing things, and I'm sure that there must be better ways. We need serious reform of our election system, first and foremost. Until then, we are stuck in a corrupt system that feeds off the cash of special interests and puts up walls to prevent the non-corrupt from getting in.
So.... (Score:2, Interesting)
How about a few steps further? So, What if I remember a song that I just listened to? Does that memory need a license? What if I told you that I am undergoing a strange new treatment for alzheimer's and I have an implant that helps me to remember? How about now?
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:3, Interesting)
David M. Israelite
President and Chief Executive Officer, National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA)
Jonathan Potter
Executive Director, Digital Media Association (DiMA)
Rick Carnes
President, Songwriter's Guild
Cary H. Sherman
President and General Counsel, Recording Industry Association of America, Inc. (RIAA)
Where's the witness list for the "prosecution"?
Re:Yet another reason... (Score:5, Interesting)
I've removed Microsoft software from production at my office because a) I am not about to pay for exchanged AGAIN when we expand and Exchange 2000 CALs are no longer available b) maintenance can be fully automated on Linux without having to resort to insecure vbscripts and c) No worries about Windows Update patches breaking the info store service ever again (yes this happened last year, M$'s solution was "reformat, reinstall, and restore the IS then reconnect the mailboxes to the user accounts" - Uh, no thanks. I worked on it for about 20 hours and managed to get the IS mounted again, and immediately started evaluating Linux groupware solutions, eventually settling on free-as-in-beer Scalix). Now all we use is our MSDN licenses for development/staging, no more Microsoft products in production. I'd put the old licenses up on feeBay, only Microsoft has a habit of suing customers for reselling unused or retired licenses [applelinks.com] despite the fact that boxed software sold over the counter is actually SOLD and not licensed, as established in many prior court cases.
Of course, I expect some Microsoft fanboy to mod my post down. Go right ahead, you know you want to. I used to really like Microsoft until they instituted anti-customer policies when they saw Linux looming on the horizon.
You can't go wrong choosing open-source and free-as-in-beer solutions. The up-front setup time may be a little bit higher, but you can rest assured that:
* you will always be able to access your data
* There is a much higher chance you can fully automate maintenance
* if the BSA comes knocking on your door, you can point them at the GPL and BSD licenses and say "here's all the info you need. Thanks, you can leave now. Don't let the door hit you in the ass."