Hi Ricsi, I went to the U. S. Senate web site <www.senate.gov> and did a search for DMCA and came up with HR5522, (House of Representatives bill number 5522) which was introduced in October, 2002 and is now assigned to the courts subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee which is currently holding hearings on the bill. Transcripts of testimony before the subcommittee is available on the House web site <www.house.gov>.
Rather than reading what someone else has said about the bill, I read the bill itself. It appears to do the opposite of what you state. It states that it is NOT a copyright violation to make archival copies of digital media. The bill is very short and appears to be very favorable towards users of computers and digital media with regard to copyright protection. As far as bribery of journalists goes, I think that there are far too many journalists in the U. S. looking for a Pulitzer prize winning story for anybody to bribe all of them. After all, it was journalists that broke up Tammany Hall political corruption in New York City, and the <name escapes me> corrupt Kansas City government and probably brought to light 1001 other improper activities of governments throughout the country. Roger Turk Tucson, Arizona Ricsi wrote: . > Hi Roger! . > 02 Jan 2003, Roger Turk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: . > RT> What is DMCA and what is it supposed to do? . > digital millenium copyright act . > a law that was passed, which among other things forbades circumventing DRM . > (digital rights management) measures. . > The porblem is that it is soooo extremely biased towards the RIAA and big . > entertainment companies, that it is easily abused. . > http://anti-dmca.org/ . > RT> Do you have a bill number and the outcome of any votes in either the . > RT> House of Representatives or the Senate? Do you have a copy of the . > RT> bill that the President is ready to sign or has already signed? . > sorry ... no . > I only know that it was long ago passed ... (clinton era ??) . > ok I have searched ... it was passed dec. 1998 . > http://www.loc.gov/copyright/legislation/dmca.pdf . > RT> Could you identify the American journalists that have been bribed? . > RT> Who did the bribing and what is the going cost of a bribe, in today's . > RT> dollars? . > This was only my fantasyzing. . > There were no facts ... . > I simply asked myself how it is possible that all major journalists shut . > up when such an important issue is at stake. . > And bribing was the easiest sollution ... . > but it can naturally be other things. . > I can only repeat myself it is a shame that such things can happen, and . > that journalists don't care (??) to inform the population. . > Hell ... even kernel-traffic (linux kernel ML summary) wrote about it: . > Kernel Traffic #132 For 10 Sep 2001: . > The EFF has issued a call for action regarding Dmitry Sklyarov, who faces . > up to . > 25 years in prison for violating the DMCA. I urge everyone to participate . > in the letter-writing campaign currently in effect. Please do what you . > can to help . > prevent what threatens to become a terrible tragedy. For more information . > on the case, see http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov/. For more . > information on the DMCA, see http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/. To join the . > mailing list surrounding this issue, see . > http://zork.net/mailman/listinfo/free-sklyarov/. . > Kernel Traffic #148 For 31 Dec 2001 . > Elsewhere, Aaron suggested that Linux could bypass the hardware security . > by reverse-engineering the behavior and implementing it in software. But . > Dave Jones pointed out, "Remember DMCA ? Remember SSSCA ? What you . > propose is classed as "Bypassing an access control"." . > Kernel Traffic #161 For 8 Apr 2002 . > David Rees was unable to find the changelog for 2.2.20 on kernel.org, and . > Alan Cox said, "For non US citizens its available on . > http://www.thefreeworld.net"; Rasmus Bag Hansen asked how it could be . > possible that the patch would be legal in the US, but the changelog would . > not be. Mike Fedyk replied, "Basically, the politicians can't read the . > patch, but they might be able to understand the summary... Also, in many . > cases the change that fixes the security hole doesn't make exploit ideas . > obvious. While many times the security report includes the expliot . > itself." End of thread. . > Kernel Traffic #138 For 22 Oct 2001 . > An unidentified person suggested that modules could simply lie about their . > licensing and bypass these safeguards altogether, but Alan replied, . > "under the DMCA thats probably a criminal offence with five years in jail. . > I hope that this is enough for a wake-up call ... . > RT> Roger Turk . > CU, Ricsi
