MESSAGE
| DATE | 2002-05-08 |
| FROM | jonathan
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] edited commentary
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another edited version
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I feel as though I'm missing some of this conversation,
but instead of answering every subparagraph,
i'll focus on a few points and how I think we need to procede.
It's now early in the morning. I just came home from a
NY Fair Use meeting in which we discussed these subjects
in detail for several hours.
First, let us look at the threat that the Hollings Bill and
the DMCA present to Free Software. Even under the DMCA, if the
major manufacturers choose to end free software, they can easily do so
by encrypting any copyrighted part of the system. The system BIOS
is a good example: Machines can be constructed
such that booting anything other than an approved operating
system would be a felony under the DMCA. As you listen to the DMCA
fair use exemption hearings at the LOC, this becomes clear. It's just
a matter of time before this is implemented; such is the nature of the world.
When the ATM machines first came out, banks begged people to use them
instead of tellers because of the cost savings. Initially they didn't change for
the service. After the public became dependent on the machines, the banks started
charging to use them.
The same will happen with copyrighted bios. Today, the public would be outraged
if MS and Intel prevented other OS's from being installed on the system.
But already MS is re-educating the public about the property rights of their
PC, and making claims that only their OS is authorized on machines (see the
recent flap about schools getting donated systems on slashdot). MS is moving
rapidly to a model of "OS assurance" and "Automatic upgrades". They claim they
are offering security and content management protection, but it is clear that
what they are really doing is trying to force exclusive use of their operating
system and to extort additional payments from customers for "upgrades".
The Hollings bills, by whatever name they are called this week, call for legal enforcement
of the worse case scenario of the DMCA. If passed, the bills would immediately
end Free Software because they demand secret control of your system to protect
copyright monopoly franchises. Free Software can't be secret...
The issue is: what to WE do now that these bills and other legislative and
regulatory activities threaten to remove our basic (and heretofore thought to
be inalienable) rights to property and free speech.
We MUST stop chasing out tails.
We tend to respond (and ineffectively I might add) to individual rulings and bills, one
after the next. We should take a broader view and broaden our constituency.
Tony pointed out, quite correctly, that the Hollings bill is ultimately
a starting point of for re-eduation of the public and a negoiating point for
the assult on the 4th and 1st amendments. (And, as I can see it, the courts
are not prepared to uphold the publics interest in the face of legislation
which prevents wiretapping and property damage to privately owned computers
with regard to monopoly franchises.) We need to go on the offensive and turn the tables.
We need to control the language used in debate and discussion of these issues. We
need to pro-actively present bills which redefine copyright.
For one thing, we need to always publicly say that any law that seeks to prevent
your full use of legally acquired information is a law that deprives you of your
right to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure. That such laws give
the government the right to knock down your door and steal your computer, music
and books, and that once we buy something - a book, a cd, a piece of software - we,
and we alone, have the right to determine how we'll use it. Published don't determine,
whether we read our books aloud or when we read them. Record companies don't determine
when we play the records we buy. The don't determine the frequency with which we
play them. They don't determine the volume at which we play them, and they don't determine,
which sections of a cd we listen to.
Yet,this is JUST what Adobe and Time-Warner are trying to do. They are couching it
it other language, but, clearly they're trying to say that when we access one of
their DVD's it is they who must determine how we use it. And they say that any
other use is stealing.
Thus, we need to speak out immediately and clearly and frequently. We need to
turn it around and make the public aware that these companies are seeking to
deprive them of their property rights.
Also, we need to introduce bills that will protect fair use
and property rights, bills that will re-assert our 4th amendment rights and
prevent abuses of those rights such as those inflicted by the DMCA and bills
that will prevent the continuation of Congress's wholesale sellout of the
American people to the media monopoly.
Jeanne Thewell, who is someone I would trust my life with, is a lawyer
working with NY Fair Use to draft such a bill. (thelwell-at-mindspring.com).
The broad outline of the bill is as follows:
The legislation to be drafted will accomplsih the following main stream objectives which
all reasonable people can expect:
All copyrights to individual scores, writings, and recordings will be returned to the
original artist after a period of 10 years.
No technology can be deployed which spies on, wiretaps or descloses privately owned information
which is stored on digital devices by any government agency or private 3rd party without the
issuance of a publically pronounced annd disclosed warrant l limited to a specific criminal
investigation.
All copyright cases must prove, prior to a judgement of guilt, proof that the actions in question
did not infringe on Fair Use, and the individuals rights under the 4th and 1st ammendment of the Bill
of rights US Constition.
Ownership of all physical media and devices to read such media, is the sole property of the purchaser
of the media, without an expressely negotiated and signed contract between both the copyright holder
and the purchaser.
No technological software or hardware method can be deployed in a digital product available for normal
retail sale which inhibits in any way the full enjoyment of the property by the purchasers, regardless of
any agreement between the designer of the hardware or software products. Such agreements are null, and
not contractable.
Copyright is an exception to Fair Use as it limited the ability for individuals to enjoy their private
property and express themselves with the use of such copyrighted materials. Fair Use is a doctrin to be
based on the 4th and 1st amendments of the Constitutions.
Individuals have the right to express themselves to others about the means, mechanism and workings of
all digital devices, including but not limited to discussion on how to make fair use of media, how to
improve such devices, or to reverse engineer all such devices and the allgorithims which are used to
help them display, copy or run media.
We need to get as many big guns on this as possible and then relentlessly campaign, actively working to
elect supporters and unelect opposition. In fact, we should look to defeat, not just the proposed spyware
legistlation, but also defeat Senator Hollings
WE CAN force him from office, because he's a radical.
Finally, the issue of developing friends and allies.
They have to be cultivated. Boucher is not powerful by himself, but if
we get Weiner to become vocal on this issue as well, we WILL turn the tied,
especially since Weiner was Chuck Schumers chief of staff. Right now, we need
to find him, where ever he speaks, and ask him about this issue, over and over
again.
ALL POLITICS is LOCAL.
I'd love to expand on how to target a congressmen. It's got to be done
like Tammany Hall, machine politics, in the neighborhoods, and focusing on
not only software, but the effects on education, libraries and wiretapping!
Ruben
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
____________________________
New Yorker Linux Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
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