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Similar in spirit?Similar in spirit?Posted Oct 5, 2006 23:00 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: Similar in spirit? by sepreece Parent article: Similar in spirit? I think I understood your point the first time, but the issue under discussion is completely different. Before, you had the right to copy certain things, and you could buy or build devices which did the copying. Today those copying devices are unlawful. Your intent doesn't matter; circumventing technical measures that protect copyrighted works is illegal, even if you do it to copy your own holiday pictures. Since DRM is based on those technical measures, you are screwed no matter what it protects. You don't have any recourse.
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Similar in spirit? Posted Oct 6, 2006 2:08 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] I completely agree that it should not be illegal to circumvent technological protection measures. I would be ecstatic to see the DCMA repealed.
Your point about your holiday pictures is wrong. It is not illegal to circumvent if you have the copyright holder's permission. Presumably, for your holiday pictures, you are the copyright holder. [In fairness, I had the same belief until I looked at the law again today.]
DRM didn't take away any rights you had [though the DMCA did]. The copyright holder always had the right to make it difficult or impossible to make copies.
DRM does take away rights Posted Oct 6, 2006 4:45 UTC (Fri) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] If content is locked up under DRM by an encryption key, and that key disappears, the content is lost forever.
Even if the key is not lost, if it is not available for someone who merely wants to exercise fair use rights, it effectively bans fair use. This destroys the balance of granting copyright for a limited time in exchange for fair use.
The average person should not have to jump thru hoops to exercise fair use rights. DRM requires that, even if the DMCA were to be repealed.
DRM does take away rights Posted Oct 6, 2006 13:27 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Sorry, I stand by what I said. "Fair use" is a defense to infringement, it is not a requirement that the copyright holder enable you to get or make copies.
If you think it should be (I wouldn't necessarily disagree), then you need to get the Act modified.
DRM does take away rights Posted Oct 12, 2006 16:54 UTC (Thu) by quintesse (subscriber, #14569) [Link] Saying the Fair Use is only some kind of excuse to allow infringement is showing a lack of respect for the intelligence of the people that actually penned down the act.
You have to remember that in those days the right you had as an auther either did not exist or followed the english model (IIRC) where the protection was absolute and for eternity.
It was recognized that neither was really any good because if you have no protection what incentive do you have in doing any original work? Somebody can just copy it 5 minutes after you put it on sale. But the other way around didn't work either because it stifled cultural and scientific progress.
So that's when they thought that a time-limited protection would be a good idea, I think it was only something like 7 years in the beginning? The idea being that in those years you could make enough money of your work but also recognizing that the term shouldn't be too long because again, what would be the incentive to make new work if you could live the rest of your live of a couple of good works? (In those days there was still a strong feeling that you actually had to work for a living)
But 7 years can still be a long time if you talk about scientific discoveries or about new important cultural developments. So in their wisdom they included, exactly, "Fair Use". With Fair Use you couldn't copy wholesale for publication or claim a work for your own but you could copy parts of it _for_publication_. You see, I'm not even talking about the possibility that you were able to extract part of the work, but you were even allowed to use it in your own works! That was considered to be a _very_ important part of the Copyright Act and can not be seen seperate from it or as being "tacked on" somehow.
In the end the Copyright Act was never about the authors, but about society: how to keep authors producing while preventing them from having a monopoly on their works and thereby depriving the society as a whole from learing and profiting from it.
But DRM is threatening to change all that. If you say that the Copyright Act says nothing about copyright holders being obliged to allow Fair Use you are exactly right, but you also have to remember that until now it was never _impossible_ to use your Fair Use rights given to you by the Copyright Act. And these protections are ever lasting as well, who is to say that in 90 years we're actually able to "crack" the DRM? Would we even be allowed to? Who knows existing work will still use the same DRM so it might still be illegal to crack the DRM because it would make existing work vulerable as well.
So yes, the best thing to do if you want to keep the spirit of the Copyright Act is to change it to include some limitations on what copyright holders can do in their crusade to prevent piracy. But with the kind of power the media companies have nowadays it's going to be a tough battle.
DRM does take away rights Posted Oct 13, 2006 6:54 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] With respect, I think you just said, at rather greater length, the same thing I had said - if you think there should be an additional right to access to make fair-use copies, then you need to work to change the Act.
Circumvention Posted Oct 6, 2006 6:50 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] It is not illegal to circumvent if you have the copyright holder's permission.IANAL, but paragraph 1201 says that No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.Then there are exceptions for certain classes of copyrighted works (as published by the Librarian of Congress) and uninfringing uses. I'd say it is illegal. Then it says that No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that [...] is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.This means that you cannot even get the circumvention from someone else; this time the Librarian has nothing to say. DRM didn't take away any rights you had [though the DMCA did].DRM is bad enough without DMCA, its evilness only tempered by the fact that it is probably doomed to fail. Combined with the DMCA, it is positively evil. Right now the DMCA is in effect (and we have a similar law in Europe); when it is repealed this argument may not be valid, but until then it looks like it is illegal to circumvent even for your own holiday pictures.
Circumvention Posted Oct 6, 2006 13:25 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Yes, but you're missing the definition of "circumvention" in (a) (1) (3): "to descamble, to decrypt ... without the authority of the copyright owner". So, if you have the copyright owner's permission, it isn't circumvention [so, I misworded my statement, too].
Circumvention Posted Oct 6, 2006 13:34 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] For circumvention to be illegal, it is enough that there is one work under valid copyright, not necessarily the one you want to access. Suppose you try to crack Microsoft's DRM scheme to gain access to: some outdated tunes from the 20's, a few excerpts for an academic study, or your own music. Since the "effective technological measure" also "controls access to a work protected under this title", you cannot circumvent it or even get a means to circumvent it from a third party.
Circumvention Posted Oct 6, 2006 17:10 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link] Yes, if you had your own content protected by the same DRM as other content, then it would be illegal to circumvent that protection. It's not necessarily a bizarre scenario, either, but one I would recommend avoiding.
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