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Let's make a point that both these essays come from ardent open-sourcers
and not copyright/legal experts.
Although interesting, they fail (as all these arguments) to address the
solutions: how do you protect copyrighted material while still allowing
people to use it?
They don't address this because, quite simply, these people want their
cake and the right to redistribute it too. They want everything and they
don't want to pay for anything. They think everything should be freely
available for them to rip off, trade, and use without paying.
Great - move to Russia. I hear they love those ideas. Back here in
reality-land, somebody has to pay.
> No. What is going on with the DMCA is a ghastly attempt by corporations
> to grab privileges they've never had under copyright law and to do away
> with rights the public have always had.
Because the line between "fair use" and outright stealing is blurring.
Copying CDs on to tapes had a built-in mechanism to prevent widespread
misuse: you lost quality in the process. But MP3s and other technologies
have made it possible to not only perfectly copy work, but copy it over
and over again with zero degradation of quality. Thus, this presents a
challenge. Under the guise of "fair use" people can easily turn to "unfair
use." Which hurts everybody in the long run by driving up the prices of
those works.
> Under the DMCA, it becomes illegal to bypass an access control
mechanism,
> even for "fair use", clearly legal under copyright law.
>
> Moreover, it becomes illegal to distribute tools for breaking an access
> control scheme. The tools are "guilty unless proven innocent". There
> are clearly perfectly legal "fair use" applications, but that is not
> considered relevant.
That's because if you were truly using the product in a fair manner, you
should not need to break or bypass security measures. There are few, if
any "fair uses" of these technologies that require bypassing the security.
There is no need to make "backup" copies of DVDs or CDs as they cannot be
overwritten.
The "fair use" claim is a red herring. Its an attempt to lead people away
from the central point of these copyright laws by suggesting
inconsequential maybes and sort-ofs as rationales why security measures
are illegal. The fact is, if you use these products fairly, you should
have no need to break or bypass the security.
> Just to top it off, they are even trying for injunctions against web
> sites that link to code that cracks their encryption. It is possible
> they could get an injunction against our host, Eric Ray, forcing him
> to take down his archive copy of one of my posts:
>http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/archives/0107/techwhirl-0107-00070.html
> It was posted a week or two before Sklyarov's arrest and points to his
> company and several others offering similar services.
These are ludicrous extremes that are neither practical nor likely. Again,
the issue is copyright protection, not suppression of free speech. You can
say whatever you want. But you can't steal people's work.
This is the artists problem. If you accept a low paying job - who is at
fault? You for taking the job at a low wage. That's how the system works.
Just because the record companies make a hefty profit from their
investments, does not mean they are evil. Remember, Salon shows you ONE
example of a profitable band that is in demand. They don't show you the
50,000 failed bands that were a total loss to the record company.
Andrew Plato
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