161–170 of 173 posts
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When the boomers die out, the zoomers are going to obliterate DMCA. Their only exposure to it has been "thing that pisses off fav content creators"
Assuming zoomer political engagement vs letting politicians do what they want.
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Do not think this has been tested under the DMCA statute unfortunately. The closest parallel was when 2600 Magazine was prevented from publishing DeCSS on their website by a court decision. https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-fifteen-ye...
DMCA can not superseded the 1st amendment, sorry There would be no test, it is plain and clear violation to prohibit it, just like the crytowars case, which is why the DOJ dropped it
You may think that but unfortunately in several cases either the plaintiff attempts to scare off the defendant(s) with the prospect of a court case, offering a blanket settlement to discontinue certain actions of the plaintiffs choosing, or if the plaintiff is about to lose the case they may drop it entirely to avoid setting a precedent against themselves.
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What happens if you print out the source code and publish it as a book? Can the courts prohibit a book? Phil Zimmermann asked this question in the context of export controls on "cryptography technology", i.e. the PGP software. MIT Press published the source code in 1995. But the US dropped its objections and this wasn't specifically tested in court (AFAIK, though similar questions were). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…
> What happens if you print out the source code and publish it as a book? Can the courts prohibit a book? Certainly under most European circumvention prohibition laws there's no requirement for the distribution of the circumvention tool to be done electronically, so yes, you could definitely prohibit a book. (And books are prohibited in the likes of the UK by courts all the time for libel at al so it wouldn't be hard…
(*It's not that US courts can't find a book libelous; it's that the remedy in the US is monetary damages, not a sales ban).
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Do not think this has been tested under the DMCA statute unfortunately. The closest parallel was when 2600 Magazine was prevented from publishing DeCSS on their website by a court decision. https://www.eff.org/pages/unintended-consequences-fifteen-ye...
DMCA can not superseded the 1st amendment, sorry There would be no test, it is plain and clear violation to prohibit it, just like the crytowars case, which is why the DOJ dropped it
You might ask how we reconcile this with Bernstein, where the first amendment arguments were doing so well. One answer is that because of the DOJ tactic you mention, Bernstein isn't binding precedent.
I think other answers are about "atmospherics": grad students asserting first amendment rights in software are more sympathetic than hacker journalists, even if both are ultimately pretty antiestablishment. Also, as someone else brought up elsewhere in this thread, the courts are probably more used to seeing government suppression of speech as a first amendment problem than suppression of speech through civil litigation by private parties. For instance, the courts surely hate the idea of "banning books", yet they're happy to issue an injunction against a book if they conclude it's defamatory after a libel trial.
So, we might have been better off if a first amendment challenge to §1201 had been raised for the first time in a criminal prosecution of an academic or mainstream journalist. Which indeed would probably never have happened because the DOJ would have been reluctant to go ahead with it. Everyone in the legal system is interested in picking cases of first impression tactically.
There's still ongoing work to challenge §1201 under the first amendment, but it's not as obvious as you suggest that it will work out.
Good. Like it or not, anticircumvention measures are black-letter law in much of the world. In the USA, producing or distributing software designed to circumvent DRM can subject you to civil and criminal penalties. According to 17 U.S.C. section 512, it is not necessary for the material itself to be infringing in order for a DMCA notice to be valid. If "an activity using the material" is infringing, the material must…
> Good. I don't get your comment. Are you happy that the law is being enforced, or happy that the law is like that?
I know enough people in creative industries to know that digital distribution just isn't viable without DRM -- and that creatives want an environment with strongly enforced copyright. As a society we value the livelihood of artists over the convenience of their audience, and that's why we pass laws like the DMCA. The Napster era has totally destroyed interesting music scenes because the musicians couldn't put food on the table making music. DRM enforces copyright in an environment where infringement would otherwise be rampant because of how easy it is -- computers being, like VCRs, general purpose copyright infringement machines. Geez, even the concept of hypertext, as elucidated by Ted Nelson, had DRM built in because other people's IP rights become a fact of life you have to reckon with the minute you deal with readable material!
Of course, DRM schemes fail, and that's where the law comes in. Section 1201 delegitimizes markets for DRM exploits that would otherwise return us to a situation where infringement is rampant, easy, and undetectable. It drives circumvention activity underground, adding friction to the process and making it more difficult than simply buying the material.
There's a real simple principle that geeks don't seem to get: If you want access to digital content without being sued or jailed, just buy it legitimately and don't fucking break the DRM. Abide by the terms the author or publisher has set, or don't buy the content at all. The droit d'auteur, as a moral principle, means that said author or publisher has a moral right to determine how their work is to be exhibited or viewed.
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> Good. I don't get your comment. Are you happy that the law is being enforced, or happy that the law is like that?
Both. I know enough people in creative industries to know that digital distribution just isn't viable without DRM -- and that creatives want an environment with strongly enforced copyright. As a society we value the livelihood of artists over the convenience of their audience, and that's why we pass laws like the DMCA. The Napster era has totally destroyed interesting music scenes because the musicians couldn't put f…
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DMCA can not superseded the 1st amendment, sorry There would be no test, it is plain and clear violation to prohibit it, just like the crytowars case, which is why the DOJ dropped it
The SDNY and Second Circuit rejected the defendants' first amendment arguments in the Corley case. That was one of the most upsetting events of that decade for me, but I would insist that the first amendment argument has been tried, and at least in that context and those courts, it lost. You might ask how we reconcile this with Bernstein, where the first amendment arguments were doing so well. One answer is that beca…
Another comment in this thread made me check this and find out that it's actually controversial and not well-established that courts should do this. I don't know how that normally works in practice!
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> Good. I don't get your comment. Are you happy that the law is being enforced, or happy that the law is like that?
Both. I know enough people in creative industries to know that digital distribution just isn't viable without DRM -- and that creatives want an environment with strongly enforced copyright. As a society we value the livelihood of artists over the convenience of their audience, and that's why we pass laws like the DMCA. The Napster era has totally destroyed interesting music scenes because the musicians couldn't put f…
I'm not going to go off on how the rest of your reply feels extremely wrong to me, but I will respond to this. What if I bought content legitimately but the DRM prevents me from viewing/using it as I wish? If I buy a book, I can read it in any way I want, I can use glasses or photocopy it so the letters get big enough to read it without discomfort. I can also tear it apart, replace the order of the pages, or even make a collage with the words if I so wish.
I can't do any of the above with DRM'd content.
Why would you want to live in a reality in which the author of a work can dictate how a copy of their content can be watched or consumed even after the consumer has bought it? Even the reason for copyright itself as stated in the Copyright Act is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
It's supposed to be an incentive for artists to make more works as they have a government-guaranteed monopoly over their creations. That monopoly is intended to incentivize potential artists, not to be a moral guide for what rights they should indefinitely have.
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The law allows people to circumvent copy protection to access works they are entitled to access. There is also a provision against sharing copy protection breaking methods. I never interpreted them as clashing, merely that I can't knowingly share copy breaking mechanisms with people who are unauthorized to use a work. If they do clash then you have to side with the consumer.
> The law allows people to circumvent copy protection to access works they are entitled to access. Claiming that such an allowance exists is not the same as actually identifying the statute or ruling that creates the allowance. What is your textual basis for claiming that there's a general permission for circumvention? > If they do clash then you have to side with the consumer. This sounds like you're referring to a…
Full text of 1201 here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201. Note the many exemptions. You could just call it encryption research. You also need to look at the list of exemptions granted by the library of congress, which is quite extensive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A....
I can't actually find the thing I am looking for. AFAIR the Cornell law site does not have the updated version that I need to reference, but you can see by the exemptions granted they are just codifying your rights to continue to use a work, even if it is not necessarily obsolete, if the copy protection has gotten in your way.
To actually change this rightsholders would have to lease works instead of selling them, but they still use the word "sell" when interacting with consumers.