"Kristin A. Ruhle" wrote:
> {snip} I am so
> angry at record companies for planning to adopt copy protection technology
> that once such "protected" discs hit the stores,i am going to try to
> organize a massive consumer boycott.
Sounds good to me. (But lots of people won't want to stop acquiring
music - which leaves defeating the 'protection' as their only
alternative to paying what the record companies want to charge. There
are several ways to do this....)
> The DMCA law that allowed this has
> killed fair use,
1.) The DMCA is not needed in order for the record companies to
encrypt of 'copy protect' their products. What the DMCA does is make
it illegal to 'crack' the encryption.
2.) It is not clear that the prohibition on making copies of 'copy
protected' works preclude 'fair use'. (The fact that something is
'copy protected' does make it a little harder to make 'fair use'
copies - but it might still be legal to make 'fair use' copies.)
3.) There is some doubt as to the Constitutionality of the DMCA, and
for that matter of the current length of copyright protection (is
'life of the author plus 70 years' really 'for a limited time'?).
However the appropriate cases have not yet reached the Supreme Court.
(and then there are some complications with the Berne Convention and
WIPO. We do live in interesting times.)
> and whatever methods they will let you use to make
> personal copies will probably be incompatible across different record
> labels, so that a label could let you make your own compilations only of
> their own songs - or sell you ready made ones! I am also afraid these
> schemes will interfere not only with the record function in programs like
> RealJukebox but also with playback.
Initially this may well be so. However in the longer run the
advantages of a universal standard and being able to buy individual
songs should change this.
> Where does that leave me?
<chuckle> Tapping your feet to bootleg copies?
> When copy protected discs hit the stores DON'T BUY THEM.
I certainly won't!
> Tell the record companies this whole thing absolutely sucks and we
> want our fair use back!
Considering the economics of government and the inertia of the
record companies I suspect that this will take a case going to the
Supreme Court. I doubt that enough people will boycott copy-protected
disks for the record companies to notice - although 'rampant piracy'
may eventually facilitate them realizing there are better models.
> As for piracy: yeah, it's a long term thing but
> the only way to stop piracy is to teach better ethics in schools. Most
> people who download so called pirate MP3s do not consider it stealing -
> this tells me we need to change the way we educate our young.
Making an infringing copy of copyrighted material is not stealing
and never has been. An essential part of 'stealing' is that the
property be removed from the possession of the rightful owner -
infringing someone's copyrighted material can be a bad thing for many
different reasons, but it intrinsically lacks that particular feature
of 'stealing'.
There is no way to stop people from making copies of a book or song
that they like, but there are several ways to minimize the damage
that such copies cause - and there are even ways to benefit from it.
One approach is to make it easier/of more use to the copier to 'do
the right thing' than it is to make an infringing copy.
cheers,
christopher
--
Christopher Gwyn
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.wolfenet.com/~cgwyn/SomeCopyrightLinks
http://www.wolfenet.com/~cgwyn/digitalcopyright.html
