Posted on 01/18/2002 12:36:29 PM PST by Resplendent
In short: The content industry wants to place a copyright cop in your computer.The so-called "content industry" shrieks censorship and waxes libertarian when anyone suggests reasonable labeling standards for adult material. Yet they want to turn our networks into gulags when their revenue streams are threatened.
Yes, but breaking the DMCA is illegal, so... oh wait, this must be your OTHER personality.Pish-posh. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and libertarians, which is redundant. Life is rich: learn to flow with it.
Yah yah, but it SHOULD be pointed out that Fair Use is a doctrine. It's in the unenumerated "penumbra." And the DMCA creates new federal felonies. You OK with all that?I have no idea what you're talking about, effendi. (I know about fair use, because it governs materials I cite in my papers etc. That sort of thing.)
The serious point being: The kind of freedom we lose if these schmucks put "a cop in every PC" is VERY analogous to the kind of freedom lost to the Drug War.
The serious point being: The kind of freedom we lose if these schmucks put "a cop in every PC" is VERY analogous to the kind of freedom lost to the Drug War.I am not trying to be difficult, effendi. But I honestly do not see the connection or the resemblance between the erosion of the fair use doctrine and the sorts of "freedoms lost to the drug war." I am not suggesting that you do not have a few legitimate claims: civil asset forfieture laws, erosions of the 4th amendment etc. I just do not see the connection between the distribution of intellectual property and the consumption of controlled substances.
It should say that if they or their dealers or agents accept your payment they are agreeing to your terms.
I won't elaborate on all the things you could include, but if you reverse the average shrink wrap contract so it is as much in favor of the buyer as the sofware companies shrink wrap contract is in favor of the software company you get the idea. It should day that clicking on any box or typing any letters or pressing any keys to cause the program to install or work ir for any purpose including but not limited to chance in no way constitutes acceptance of any terms.
If everyone did this in a national movement with lots of press it would reverse the situation. Trying to supplant conditions revealed to both the seller and buyer before the sale by the buyer, with conditions only revealed to the buyer after the transaction would be a tough legal road for Gates or anyone else to hoe.
I think you will find in common law that any buyer that states his conditions fo purchase before the sale, then offers his money on those terms, and the seller takes it, has bought the items on his terms. What he seller wants to happen after the sales is conumated by exchange of money for product not worth a warm pitcher of legal spit.
Let Eisner, Rosen of the RIAA, and others of their ilk rot in copyright legal hell.
Copyrights are not eternal and all works were intended to lapse into the public domain (they weren't supposed to renew much past the death of the creator of the work).
Now that entities are posied to see their vast archives of 20th century pop culture lapse into public domain, copyright law is changing to permit more extensions, retroactively expired rights were extended.
All of this is more laughable when one investigates copyright law at the beginning of the 20th century, when the Supreme Court originally ruled that performers on records did not need to pay the original author of the songs. Then when radio came along, the SC ruled that radio stations playing records did not need to pay labels, artists, songwriters.
Each of these changes to copyright law happened because of lobbying by the entertainment industry and always because the next change will somehow end all that came before it. If people can buy records, they won't see live music again! If people can hear records on the radio, they won't buy them in stores and bands on the radio will be replaced by records (didn't really happen until television came along, and the performers just went to tv).
Now the RIAA goes after camp counselors who lead sing-alongs without paying royalties.
Payola predates records and radio. It stretched back to when songwriters would bribe to get their songs sung in vaudville houses (in the 1800s). Paid plants would sing-a-long in the audience to cause other people to believe the song was popular. Other ploys would be to get someone to sing the song around the corner at the bar. The profit motive was this, kids would hawk the sheet music between the acts.
There were the same kinds of investigations and bans on this payola as would later come to radio.
This is about money, it is not about securing "artists" rights. Anyone who has ever had an auditor go through the books of the industry has always collected money that didn't make its way to the artist.
I am not trying to act like I know more than I know, but the Linux community gets off on stuff like this.
I bought an iPAQ PDA recently specifically because there is a Linux port to it, and you have to flash the RAM to get it in there.
This morning's Slashdot has a link to a project for flashing Linux firmware to 802.11b wireless access points.
The DVD encryption algorithm didn't even make it onto the market before it was cracked.
Hardware copy protection schemes will certainly come, but my bet is that 14-year old hardcore hackers will make short work of them.
I hope they do, anyway.
First thing that came to me also. Probably everybody else reading this thread I'm sure.
The content companies, with Eisner in the lead, argue that failure to build copy protection into the very digital environment itself will lead to their industry's destruction.
Don't get my hopes up.
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