> A helpful link, wherein you can enter your zip and email a canned > protest letter, is > > http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010921_eff_sssca_alert.html
My letter from this morning, as an example should you want to craft your own. tack -------------------------------------- I'm concerned about legislation being proposed by Sen Hollings in the Commerce committee. On the surface, the SSSCA means well, but it fails to recognize the historical precedent of this type of legislation and it's future implications and abuses. For background, the SSSCA is a a bill which has been asked for by the movie industry to provide legislative enforcement of digital rights management (DRM) schemes. This is itself is somewhat innocuous, but there are two sticking points it's proponents have either ignored or purposely omitted from the debate. First, it mandates that all digital devices have digital rights management built in, so that only movies songs and books which the copyright holder gives permission to the user to use can be used. What they fail to bring up is how does one give that permission? What if the tools used to make a file viewable cost a lot of money, or were only licensed to the major media conglomerates? This would create a legal artificial barrier to entry into these markets. If I'm an independent film maker or musician, and I can't afford the tools to publish my work or otherwise obtain them legally, then I've been effectively censored, and media megacorps have been unduly entrenched. Second, given the aforementioned capability of the potential for the law to be abused to censor speech, it has historical precedent. In the 1930's, Germany confiscated all radios that could be tuned, and had them replaced with radios with preset frequencies which were controlled by the Nazi party. This was part of a larger propaganda campaign. The similarity to SSSCA is shocking. It mandates that general purpose devices which can receive any message be banned and replaced with devices which can only receive messages which contain government and corporate approval information. This is counter to the ideal that democracy depends on a well informed electorate. It is inevitable that the scheme enabled by this bill will be used to sway public opinion and censor counterevidence in public policy arguments. If politics is expanding into the digital realm, this law could kill the American political system. I think it's imperative that such a powerful means of "fooling all of the people some of the time" not be put in place. What can we do to stop such heinous misuses of a well meaning law from taking place? First, don't pass it. It echoes laws passed by Nazi Germany to silence dissent, and we saw what that led to. Losing the enabling literacy and awareness of our Democratic system would be a far more tragic loss to our society, culture and economy than what the proponents of this bill stand to lose. Second, if it can't be stopped from passing, these provisions might strike a productive compromise: 1. A requirement that the means of publishing media for use in a nationwide, or pervasive digital rights management scheme be freely available. Reasoning: in order to guarantee the right to free speech is not abridged, congress can not pass a law which would stop "unauthorized" messages from being received by citizens without ensuring that citizens have access to the means of "authorizing" their own messages for being received. The ability of entities to authorize viewing of content should not be greater than the ability of a citizen to do so. 2. Ensure that the enforcement provisions of bill require that the intent to enable or commit piracy be present and proven. We do not have the foresight to determine what technologies will develop down the road, and how that will shape our culture. We need to ensure that the fair uses of media in future contexts is not chilled, while still fighting piracy. 3. Digital rights management schemes should never grant lesser uses than the fair uses the Constitution and precedent allow. For instance: If a blind person is unable to convert a book for use with a braille terminal because of DRM, the author has been censored, and the fair use rights of the reader have been violated. There should be a provision that if the rules set forth for use by the copyright holder abridge the rights given the parties in the constitution and legal precedent, they forfeit the option of using the enforcement provisions in that law. This ensures that the copyright holders DRM rules enabled by the legislation aren't themselves unconstitutional. By mandating DRM on a legislative level, we indirectly make the rules set forth by individual copyright holders in the scheme part of that law. We can not pass this law while ignorant to the potentially unconstitutional implications of the rules set forth in the software, the people who use it or the peripheral tools needed to use it. In general, any law that makes censorship the rule, and "de-censoring" specific media the exception is terrifying. It is counter the the ideals and welfare of a democratic society. The potential for abuse is shocking. This potential bill and bills like it are extremely suspect. In my opinion, they must not pass. _______________________________________________ Bits mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sugoi.org/mailman/listinfo/bits
