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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 143 responses total. |
krj
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response 100 of 143:
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May 8 18:14 UTC 2001 |
The simple answer to scg's question in resp:97 is that the courts
are rejecting "fair use" as a principal to invalidate the DMCA's
prohibitions on breaking encryption. If the copyright holder encrypts
it, they are allowed to do anything they want to control access and
the law will back them up. It also appears that the "First Sale
Doctrine," which allows a second-hand market in books/cds/videos/whatever,
is likely to get tossed out in the new era.
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russ
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response 101 of 143:
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May 9 04:35 UTC 2001 |
Re #97: To elaborate on Ken's explanation, the push appears to be to
make fair use impossible to exercise by outlawing every tool you might
use to achieve it. Fair use may entitle you to quote from a work, to
make archival copies of a work you own (so long as you do not sell any
of them apart from the work itself), to view it as you see fit (e.g.
magnifying the text and projecting it on the wall to make it easier for
a person with limited vision to read it) and to make any other use of it
that does not infringe on the owner's ability to profit from the right
to make and sell copies.... if you can do it without breaking the law.
The media companies are most definitely trying to make fair use
impossible to achieve in practice, via technical means which prohibit
you from e.g. quoting a work, making an archive copy, altering how the
work is displayed (like skipping the ads they put in your DVD)... The
problem with the DMCA is that it backs up the media companies in their
attempt to eliminate fair use, and the beknighted courts have been all
too willing to throw out the long-established principle of fair use to
uphold the DMCA.
I'm starting to agree with the WTO protestors, that corporations have
achieved far too much power over the laws which are meant to be to the
benefit of people in general. They're all take and no give. The
current terms and conditions of copy"right" aren't right, they are
blatant theft from the public domain.
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dbratman
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response 102 of 143:
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May 9 21:45 UTC 2001 |
I'm trying to think of pre-digital attempts to restrict fair use. One
that I can come up with from my college days in the '70s: the firm that
sold course notes at U.C. Berkeley distributed them dittoed in faint
green ink. This was (supposedly) impossible to photocopy.
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scg
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response 103 of 143:
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May 9 22:49 UTC 2001 |
I remember supposedly non-reproducable blue ink in software manuals from the
1980s. The approach seemed to be that you might be able to copy the disks,
but you had to buy the software to get the manual.
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gull
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response 104 of 143:
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May 9 23:03 UTC 2001 |
The RIAA tried to ban cassette recorders, as a way to restrict fair use.
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i
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response 105 of 143:
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May 10 00:27 UTC 2001 |
Weren't 'most all attempts to prevent copying by technical means in the
field of PC software defeated by the 100%-legal, low-tech strategy of
people not buying the copy-protected software?
It the problem that consumers are way too addicted to the music, video,
etc. that the mega-media companies are pushing to ever use that strategy?
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russ
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response 106 of 143:
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May 10 01:30 UTC 2001 |
Re #102: Except that the kind of use frustrated by un-copyable ink
is typically wholesale copying, which is not fair use. If you want
to look back to attempts to restrict fair use, you should think of the
attempts of publishers to prevent the re-sale of used books; this
led to the first sale doctrine, which is (not coincidentally) under
attack in the new media as well.
Richard Stallman has some words that ought to horrify you:
And this changing context changes the way copyright law works. You
see, copyright law no longer acts as an industrial regulation; it is
now a Draconian restriction on a general public. It used to be a
restriction on publishers for the sake of authors. Now, for practical
purposes, it's a restriction on a public for the sake of publishers.
Copyright used to be fairly painless and uncontroversial. It didn't
restrict the general public. Now that's not true. If you have a
computer, the publishers consider restricting you to be their highest
priority.
http://media-in-transition.mit.edu/forums/copyright/index_transcript.html
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scg
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response 107 of 143:
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May 10 02:08 UTC 2001 |
To be fair, it is most likely wholesale copying they are trying to prevent,
while the rest is "colateral damage."
DIVX certianly appears to have been killed by market pressure. Software copy
protection seems more likely to have gotten killed by the growing size of
software, and the evolution of PC technology such that people started running
programs off hard drives, rather than off the software publisher supplied
removable media. If you couldn't copy software off an installation disk, or
if you had to keep track of the installation disk so you could occasionally
insert it in the disk drive (what disk drive?) to show that you still had it,
the software would become pretty useless to modern computer users.
I think the big problem with the music industry's current copyright fight is
that it's now much easier to get an illegal copy of some music than a legal
one. If there's some piece of music I decide I want to listen to right now,
I can either walk to a record store a half hour walk away, sit in a traffic
jam for half an hour to get to a music store with nearby parking, or sit on
a train for half an hour to get to one of the downtown San Francisco music
stores. On the other hand, I can go online and find an illegal copy within
a couple of minutes. If I want to listen to something a lot, I buy the CD.
If I want to listen to something once, it's really not worth it. If there
were a legal way to download the music, and maybe even pay for it, I'd gladly
do so. I'd probably do so considerably more often than I buy CDs.
I get the impression the music industry is finally realizing they need to do
something to make money from on-line music downloads. What they don't seem
to realize is that people might actually obey they copyright law on their own,
if it were easy to do so.
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dbratman
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response 108 of 143:
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May 11 22:41 UTC 2001 |
resp: 106, Russ Cage: The green ink, if it prevented photocopying at
all, prevented the making of one photocopy just as efficiently as a
hundred. Indeed, it was single photocopying, rather than mass copying,
that the notes firm said it was concerned to prevent: if you wanted
their notes, you had to buy their copies, individual by individual.
That was what they said. A hypothetical person trying to go into
business by unethically mass-reproducing the notes was not their
concern. He would have a heck of a time recouping expenses, epsecially
given the notes' time value.
The rhetoric may be different, but the digital anti-copying devices
would prevent you from making a copy for your own use just as
efficiently as preventing you from putting it on Napster.
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russ
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response 109 of 143:
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May 12 02:35 UTC 2001 |
Re #33: You mistake the issue, sir.
De minimis copying of a course pack printed in uncopyable ink is easy.
You can copy lines, paragraphs and even a small number of pages by keying
them by hand or even writing them longhand. This is the kind of thing
you would do for fair use. Dropping the entire course pack into a
hopper-feeder and pressing "copy" is not; it would be infringement if
you transferred the copy to another person. (It would not infringe if
you kept both copies, of course.)
The problem with the DMCA and the like is that even de minimis copying,
such as quotes of a few seconds from a film for the purpose of criticism
or analysis, require tools which are presumptively illegal under the
current interpretation of the law. I can only hope that the appeals
court will find that the trial court erred in its interpretation, or
declares those sections of the DMCA unconstitutional.
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scott
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response 110 of 143:
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May 12 12:20 UTC 2001 |
Hmm.... Now I'm starting to put my creative hat on with this. What would be
the "copy a few lines longhand" version of taking a film clip? How about
re-enacting the scene? I could imagine this taking on a life and a style of
its own pretty quickly. :)
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remmers
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response 111 of 143:
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May 14 02:46 UTC 2001 |
(Reminds me of a movie I saw once where a guy did on on-stage
reenactment of the crop-dusting scene from "North by Northwest".
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dbratman
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response 112 of 143:
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May 16 20:42 UTC 2001 |
resp: 109 - typing or handwriting out something is not easy to do.
That's why fair use cases of this kind (as opposed to plagiarism, etc.)
essentially didn't exist before the photocopier. By creating
uncopyable print, the college notes service made a practical stop to
copying of this kind.
Hand-copying isn't as difficult as the equivalent work-around for
uncopyable sound recordings, which is to play the recording while
keeping a microphone up near the speaker. That may sound funny, but I
audio-recorded a fair number of tv shows that way before the days of
the commercial VCR. I wonder if you could use a camcorder that way too.
Of course the quality would be seriously degraded. But not as badly as
it was in the days I actually did that; and if you think the quality of
hand-copied text doesn't degrade, you'd be mistaken.
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krj
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response 113 of 143:
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May 17 15:47 UTC 2001 |
More weblog stuff...
From many sources: a news report that Napster, Inc, is seeking beta
testers for the for-pay secure Napster service which is supposed to
debut in July.
from http://www.zdnet.com : "No Free Ride for MP3Pro," the upgrade to the
MP3 format. The holders of the MP3 patents want more money for the use
of the new format, but it has to compete with Windows Media Audio which
some say is gaining market share even though it includes copy-prevention
stuff.
http://www.latimes.com/business/20010516/t000041036.html
reports that "the majority of TV makers" are prepared to include the
new anti-copying stuff in their digital TVs. "Some manufacturers,
including Sony Corp. and Mitsubishi Group, have already begun production
of the new sets, which are expected to arrive on store shelves later
this year.
"The technology, known as IEEE 1394, I.Link or FireWire, is a data
networking standard with tough security features... The technology
gives program producers, rather than consumers, the power to decide what
can and cannot be copied digitally..."
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krj
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response 114 of 143:
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May 17 22:32 UTC 2001 |
Oh dear oh dear oh dear...
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/expire.html
picks up on a NYTimes report where the new MusicNet pay download
service was demonstrated for Congress in the last couple of days.
The MP3newswire.net story focuses on the plan to make users pay, and
pay, and pay... "When a user downloads a song, it remains available
for 30 days at which point the user can decide to renew the license
for 30 more days, as long as the monthly fee is paid again...
... a typical $10 monthly subscription might include the ability
to download or listen to 75 songs."
I smell market rejection, but maybe I'm just too optimistic. :)
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mwg
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response 115 of 143:
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May 18 03:45 UTC 2001 |
This all gets irritating. How long before using terms from TV shows is
declared copyright infringment and payments asessed?
Drift of a sort. All this DMCA stupidity has my brain making odd
conncetions. It occurs to me that if the DMCA is not removed fairly soon,
then Microsoft has already won thier battle to illegalize open-source
software. If the interface to the device is encrypted, it becomes illegal
to reverse-engineer it for writing non-vendor drivers even if you are
using the interoperability exception that has been used now and then.
Drifting back, the copyguards on new technology present the content
producers with an interesting dilemma. If they turn on the copyguards too
soon, they risk wholesale rejection of the technologies. Do they have the
patience to leave the guards turned off for the number of years that
saturation of a new technology takes? Most consumers are not aware of any
of the nonsense under discussion in this item. It literally falls outside
thier world for now. Most people won't know that a device has
use-management built in until it bites them, by which time they've likely
no chance of returning the device.
If the public can find out about the copyguards ahead of time, the
question then becomes who can last longer in somethine like digital TV,
the manufacturers, who can coast for a while on accumulated money, or
consumers, who can use old technology for old recordings but cannot access
new programming when analog broadcasts become illegal?
There is no possibility of this actually happening, but I'd like to see a
truth-in-labeling applied to devices with use-management systems. On the
OUTSIDE of the box. Right now, the only warning most people get about
region control on DVDs is buried in the back of the instruction book,
after they have opened the box and hooked up the player. Imagine how well
a digital recorder would sell if the box had to say "This device contains
rights-management technology that may prevent you from recording a
program, copying it after recording, or playing it back more than once."
Neutronium balloons, anyone?
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gelinas
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response 116 of 143:
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May 18 03:50 UTC 2001 |
Hmmm.... Didn't the courts find that shrink-wrap licenses were illegal? How
is this different?
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krj
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response 117 of 143:
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May 18 19:49 UTC 2001 |
Wired.com has a couple of entertaining pieces today.
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,43894,00.html
is essentially a boring press release from InterTrust about their new
copy-prevention stuff which is already in use by some customers. But the
killer is the last paragraph, quoting an InterTrust executive vice
president:
((The record companies)) "...also have to move away from the CD and into a
protected medium with a disk with encrypted music on it.
Right now, it's like putting out master recordings that can
be immediately copied and traded on the Internet."
Exactly how the record companies would survive a drastic phaseout of
the CD is not explained. :)
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,43898,00.html
Essentially, the record companies are telling Congress that if there
is going to be music on the Internet, then the record companies have
to be able to run over the rights of songwriting copyright holders.
The record companies have now taken the place of Napster in arguing
for a mechanical rights formula, a solution they opposed when Napster
wanted it.
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gull
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response 118 of 143:
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May 21 15:00 UTC 2001 |
Re #116: I think there's a new law in the works that makes them legally
binding. Maybe it's already passed. You'd better start reading them more
carefully in case they say something like "you agree to give all your
worldly belongings to Yoyodyne Software, Inc. in the event the company
suffers financial difficulties." ;>
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krj
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response 119 of 143:
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May 21 16:17 UTC 2001 |
News item: mp3.com has been bought by Vivendi Universal. mp3.com had been
the largest source of legitimate music files from independent artists,
and Vivendi Universal is the world's largest music company.
News item: On the grounds of trademark infringement, Aimster has
lost its URL aimster.com to AOL.
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krj
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response 120 of 143:
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May 21 17:28 UTC 2001 |
(To crib from another analyst's piece, the mp3.com acquisition means
that the biggest Internet music operations are now in the hands of
the major labels. Can anyone think of any sizable independents that
are left?)
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dbratman
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response 121 of 143:
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May 21 20:04 UTC 2001 |
Perhaps it is slightly odd that if something called "Vivendi Universal"
is the world's largest music company, I have never heard of it before.
Or perhaps not.
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krj
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response 122 of 143:
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May 21 20:14 UTC 2001 |
((You just haven't been following the mergers. Seagrams, the Canadian
liquor company, bought MCA -- was that the mid-1990s?
At the time most of the music operations were under the MCA name.
Seagrams then bought the music operations of the Dutch firm Philips,
which were called Polygram. MCA and Polygram were rolled together
to create the Universal Music Group. Then in the last year the
French media conglomerate Vivendi bought Seagrams to create
Vivendi Universal.))
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krj
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response 123 of 143:
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May 21 20:21 UTC 2001 |
((David, Vivendi Universal might be of particular interest to you because
they control the biggest chunk of major-label classical catalog.
London/Decca, Angel, Deutsche Gramophon, Philips are just a few of
the brand labels & catalogs which Vivendi Universal has ended up with.))
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mcnally
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response 124 of 143:
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May 21 22:38 UTC 2001 |
re #118: You're probably talking about UCITA, which has been adopted
in several states and is being heavily lobbied in the rest.
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