Thursday, March 01, 2007
Dep't of Framing: Consumer Rights in the Digital Age Edition
by Tom Bozzo
Rep. Rick Boucher recently introduced a bill, H.R. 1201, that would codify some exceptions to the anti-circumvention provision of the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (*), as well as enshrine in statute a version of the Supreme Court's Betamax decision. The latter provision would declare in some way that time-shifting broadcasts for personal use is not a copyright infringement. Text of the bill isn't yet available at the Library of Congress THOMAS site, so I'm not sure just what it will allow.
In the last two Congresses, predecessor legislation had been known as the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act, but who's for consumer rights? The new bill is entitled the Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007, or the FAIR USE Act. Nice.
To try to reduce content providers' opposition, the FAIR USE Act does reportedly eliminate the fair use defense for circumvention other than that specifically allowed by statute. This apparently is to no avail, as Playlist reports on the story under the headline "RIAA opposes new fair use bill."
Still, this sounds like a good thing for us netroots to agitate for, seeing how much we all depend on fair use.
RIAA, not surprisingly, oversells the benefits of DMCA's anti-circumvention provision, claiming that it has enabled much of the online digital-content distribution economy. This is a stretch when the top music download service's DRM is so weak as to barely limit rights (i.e., you can strip iTunes content of its DRM by allowed burning of iTunes tracks to CD), another service offers music with no DRM at all, and for that matter online games use copy-protection methods such as CD and DVD keys that would be familiar to old-skool gamers of the pre-DMCA era. But it's their job to be to fair use what the NRA is to gun control.
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(*) This makes it unlawful to circumvent copy protection systems for digital media.
The MSM has an annoying habit of using "Patriot Act" to refer to what should be the USA PATRIOT Act, which is an acronym for United States of America Prying and Tattling to Really Improve On Terrorism Act or something like that. Still, I have to smile when the good guys get in on the scam.
Rep. Rick Boucher recently introduced a bill, H.R. 1201, that would codify some exceptions to the anti-circumvention provision of the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (*), as well as enshrine in statute a version of the Supreme Court's Betamax decision. The latter provision would declare in some way that time-shifting broadcasts for personal use is not a copyright infringement. Text of the bill isn't yet available at the Library of Congress THOMAS site, so I'm not sure just what it will allow.
In the last two Congresses, predecessor legislation had been known as the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act, but who's for consumer rights? The new bill is entitled the Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007, or the FAIR USE Act. Nice.
To try to reduce content providers' opposition, the FAIR USE Act does reportedly eliminate the fair use defense for circumvention other than that specifically allowed by statute. This apparently is to no avail, as Playlist reports on the story under the headline "RIAA opposes new fair use bill."
Still, this sounds like a good thing for us netroots to agitate for, seeing how much we all depend on fair use.
RIAA, not surprisingly, oversells the benefits of DMCA's anti-circumvention provision, claiming that it has enabled much of the online digital-content distribution economy. This is a stretch when the top music download service's DRM is so weak as to barely limit rights (i.e., you can strip iTunes content of its DRM by allowed burning of iTunes tracks to CD), another service offers music with no DRM at all, and for that matter online games use copy-protection methods such as CD and DVD keys that would be familiar to old-skool gamers of the pre-DMCA era. But it's their job to be to fair use what the NRA is to gun control.
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(*) This makes it unlawful to circumvent copy protection systems for digital media.
Labels: DMCA, Music, software piracy
Friday, February 09, 2007
Risk Shifting has Consequences
by Ken Houghton
The reaction in the Russian educational community is as should have been expected:
Memo to Mr. Gates. The next time Mikhail Gorbachev asks you to intervene, a response of "don't blame us" probably won't be considered responsive. As we noted in the case of Romania, the pirates of today are the developers of tomorrow. (And, as Emil-Nicolaie noted in comments to that post, MSFT did themselves no long-term good in Romania either.)
UPDATE: The Russian court system does the right thing; it is left as an exercise to the reader whether MSFT should consider the case "trivial."
It appears that, in the new Russia, buying software from a vendor makes you entirely liable if it turns out not to be legal.
The reaction in the Russian educational community is as should have been expected:
Rather than attacking mobsters who peddle pirated copies of Windows directly to companies, the Russian [police] decided to lock up aSepich headmaster who bought hot Windows software which came from Perm region’s Capital Construction Administration.
Microsoft says that the incident has nothing to do with them, but it appears that Russian schools in the area are so scared about being shipped off to a Siberian Gulag, that they are buying Linux gear instead.
Memo to Mr. Gates. The next time Mikhail Gorbachev asks you to intervene, a response of "don't blame us" probably won't be considered responsive. As we noted in the case of Romania, the pirates of today are the developers of tomorrow. (And, as Emil-Nicolaie noted in comments to that post, MSFT did themselves no long-term good in Romania either.)
UPDATE: The Russian court system does the right thing; it is left as an exercise to the reader whether MSFT should consider the case "trivial."
Labels: Economic Development, education, MSFT, Russia, schools, software piracy
