Comment Fine tune Debate & Score only one for bad guys! (Score 1) 358
Although I am not an expert on the DMCA, after reading your post, I understand the gist of the law and for the most part I agree with your comments regarding the dangers of corporatism. In addition I agree with your reaction to the limitations created by this onerous law. I think it is anti-individual, anti-democratic, artistically and intellectually stifling and therefore just plain wrong.
I am however, a firm believer in the strength and the insidiousness of the technophiliacs who up until now have been stealing without limitation or regard for the extent of their crime. They have forced the corporations to take aim directly at their practices because these geeks have trashed all the traditional respect for intellectual and artistic copyright protection. This corporate retaliation is more than a shot across the bow because the corporations have already been victimized by a broadside that they cannot ignore.
As the battle ground stood prior to DCMA the free and unrestricted distribution of artistic and intellectual property over the internet was becoming a reality that would have obliterated these businesses as we know them. Maybe that's a good thing for mostly everyone, but to the corporate power structure that lives off of its heretofore monopoly of distribution this is a matter of life and death.
Don't misunderstand me, I am not apologizing for their heavy hand, in fact I am pleased to see the cracks that have developed in the corporate walls, but I don't hold any illusions that boardrooms will simply hand over their fiefdoms to a few smart serfs who have figured out that they don't have to live inside the corporate castle. I am not surprised that the corporate powers have sponsored legislation that will preserve their futures. I think that we would all be very naïve to believe that anything less would happen. They are, after all, due to their wealth and willingness to apply that wealth, the guiding forces in American politics and they tend to guide that force in their own direction whenever their well-being is at issue.
Any revolutionary idea that is backed by anything short of a grass roots uprising, a massive civil disobedience, or a well organized media campaign will always be faced with powers greater than the individual can muster. The labor movement at the turn of the last century is a case in point. The right of women to choose abortions is another. Individual rights were won in each of these cases only after hard fought political battles were joined by most of the voting public. The oligarchic nature of corporations with their close ties to political party power structures requires them to act in a way that is inherently pro-corporation.
I think that the most important next step is for individuals and small corporations to challenge the law and to challenge the corporations who are defending themselves. I am not sure how the DCMA can be legally challenged, but I hope that there are lawyers and activists working on that right now. In so far as challenging the large corporations, I see that as a function of the geeks and the nerds and techno wizards who can understand that people who produce intellectual property ought to be compensated. Everyone has to eat! I trust free enterprise to create an internet mechanism that is fair, allows profit, encourages mass participation, and rewards individual excellence. A company that does that and also recognizes and discourages theft and cooperates in the punishment of criminals will be hailed by all as a godsend to the internet legal landscape. The powerful entrenched corporations will have no battleground on which to fight if the artists and the thinkers sign on with small companies. The war will not be over until a new generation of the free owners of ideas decide to distribute those ideas in a way that will erode and gradually undermine the owners of the old forms of distribution. The best technique is to use our existing laws against them in a slow but deliberate way. New writers singers and thinkers have their lack of wealth going for them. They cannot lose what they don't have. Lets see if ideals can triumph over dollars by acknowledging that money ought to change hands in the distribution of property, albeit in a modest way.
The real enemy here is not corporate power. It is greed. Greed affects even the most impoverished person. Can the geeks give up their greed for a completely free internet in exchange for an acknowledgement by the powers of distribution that the cost to distribute has become miniscule compared to the past?
I am however, a firm believer in the strength and the insidiousness of the technophiliacs who up until now have been stealing without limitation or regard for the extent of their crime. They have forced the corporations to take aim directly at their practices because these geeks have trashed all the traditional respect for intellectual and artistic copyright protection. This corporate retaliation is more than a shot across the bow because the corporations have already been victimized by a broadside that they cannot ignore.
As the battle ground stood prior to DCMA the free and unrestricted distribution of artistic and intellectual property over the internet was becoming a reality that would have obliterated these businesses as we know them. Maybe that's a good thing for mostly everyone, but to the corporate power structure that lives off of its heretofore monopoly of distribution this is a matter of life and death.
Don't misunderstand me, I am not apologizing for their heavy hand, in fact I am pleased to see the cracks that have developed in the corporate walls, but I don't hold any illusions that boardrooms will simply hand over their fiefdoms to a few smart serfs who have figured out that they don't have to live inside the corporate castle. I am not surprised that the corporate powers have sponsored legislation that will preserve their futures. I think that we would all be very naïve to believe that anything less would happen. They are, after all, due to their wealth and willingness to apply that wealth, the guiding forces in American politics and they tend to guide that force in their own direction whenever their well-being is at issue.
Any revolutionary idea that is backed by anything short of a grass roots uprising, a massive civil disobedience, or a well organized media campaign will always be faced with powers greater than the individual can muster. The labor movement at the turn of the last century is a case in point. The right of women to choose abortions is another. Individual rights were won in each of these cases only after hard fought political battles were joined by most of the voting public. The oligarchic nature of corporations with their close ties to political party power structures requires them to act in a way that is inherently pro-corporation.
I think that the most important next step is for individuals and small corporations to challenge the law and to challenge the corporations who are defending themselves. I am not sure how the DCMA can be legally challenged, but I hope that there are lawyers and activists working on that right now. In so far as challenging the large corporations, I see that as a function of the geeks and the nerds and techno wizards who can understand that people who produce intellectual property ought to be compensated. Everyone has to eat! I trust free enterprise to create an internet mechanism that is fair, allows profit, encourages mass participation, and rewards individual excellence. A company that does that and also recognizes and discourages theft and cooperates in the punishment of criminals will be hailed by all as a godsend to the internet legal landscape. The powerful entrenched corporations will have no battleground on which to fight if the artists and the thinkers sign on with small companies. The war will not be over until a new generation of the free owners of ideas decide to distribute those ideas in a way that will erode and gradually undermine the owners of the old forms of distribution. The best technique is to use our existing laws against them in a slow but deliberate way. New writers singers and thinkers have their lack of wealth going for them. They cannot lose what they don't have. Lets see if ideals can triumph over dollars by acknowledging that money ought to change hands in the distribution of property, albeit in a modest way.
The real enemy here is not corporate power. It is greed. Greed affects even the most impoverished person. Can the geeks give up their greed for a completely free internet in exchange for an acknowledgement by the powers of distribution that the cost to distribute has become miniscule compared to the past?
