(See Mossberg article at the bottom of this thread. -- Seth)
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [IP] more on Summerized -- Mossberg: Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers' Activities Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 01:06:56 -0700 From: Seth Johnson seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org To: dave@farber.net
The best thing would be to just stop putting policy related to TPMs under the umbrella of copyright policy. Really, what's being attempted with "DRM" and TPM is a weird effort to do something less than actual publishing of information. The theory that controlling public uses of published information is a natural function of copyright, is really, really specious, to put it mildly.
It isn't the work, ultimately, that we want out of copyright; it's the shared (published) information, the knowledge and understanding and facts and ideas which promote the progress of science and the useful arts. The information within the work, when we make a distinction from original expression, is free to be used. That this is the case is not a mere legal artifice; it is in the intrinsic nature of publishing any information at all. It's nothing new; it's not a result of the digital revolution; it's a result of the nature of information, regardless of the medium or the form in which it is represented -- and this has always been the case, and will always be the case.
Distinguishing copyright and private interest uses of TPMs lets you start sorting things out and begin articulating a sensible policy that lives in the real world. You want to control a transaction, use access control. That's more of a private interest concept than copyright policy is designed to accomplish.
You want to set special terms for exactly what sort of transaction is taking place when someone obtains a work from you, then we need to confront those policy implications forthrightly. But what's going on there isn't really copyright: even though TPMs may be strengthened by enforcement under the misnamed Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the terms that are imposed in these transactions are not really in principle valid under copyright -- and on the other hand they're often not really good models of valid, consensual contractual arrangements.
Now, to look at it from that perspective, contractual arrangements that go beyond transfers of specific exclusive rights that authors hold, are about private interest and they also happen to be consensual; whereas authors may exercise their exclusive rights under copyright even without a consensual contract. There's a deep mismatch there. The rights that we choose to give to authors under a copyright policy appropriate for the digital age have to be considered in this light.
The confusion evaporates after you recognize these distinctions between copyright and attempts to impose prior restraints on how others can use the information contained within expressive works.
I might add, that clarifying the above is completely inconsistent with a basic purpose behind the various attempts to promulgate the notion of "DRM": the idea being to mix copyright policy with private interest perspectives until something very, very different from valid copyright can be established, and a new precedent can be set, that will hopefully trump traditional jurisprudence. If this cannot be accomplished through laws enacted by representatives directly accountable to their constituencies, then the intention is to do so through international treaties enacted by unelected representatives.
Seth Johnson
David Farber wrote:
Begin forwarded message:
From: TClaburn@cmp.com Date: October 20, 2005 11:10:25 AM EDT To: dave@farber.net Subject: Re: [IP] Summerized -- Mossberg: Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers' Activities
I agree wholeheartedly with Walter Mossberg, though I believe he misses the mark on this point:
"I believe Congress should rewrite the copyright laws to carve out a broad exemption for personal, noncommercial use by consumers, including sharing small numbers of copies among families."
While it would be helpful to have fair use codified, consumers already have these rights in theory. But they cannot exercise them because of technical protection methods/digital rights management.
If the law is to be of assistance here, it needs to limit DRM. And that's not likely to happen until Congress revisits the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the circumvention of DRM technology. As Lawrence Lessig has suggested, code is law.
Thomas Claburn InformationWeek http://www.lot49.com
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [IP] Summerized -- Mossberg: Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers' Activities Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 10:00:20 -0400 From: David Farber dave@farber.net Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: Ip Ip ip@v2.listbox.com References: BF7D1441.3B7C7%rforno@infowarrior.org
Begin forwarded message:
From: Richard Forno rforno@infowarrior.org Date: October 20, 2005 9:30:41 AM EDT To: Infowarrior List infowarrior@g2-forward.org Cc: Dave Farber dave@farber.net Subject: Mossberg: Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers' Activities
(Agree 100% with him.....rf)
Media Companies Go Too Far in Curbing Consumers' Activities
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20051020.html They stand for Digital Rights Management, a set of technologies for limiting how people can use the music and video files they've purchased from legal downloading services. DRM is even being used to limit what you can do with the music you buy on physical CDs, or the TV shows you record with a TiVo or other digital video recorder.
Once mainly known inside the media industries and among activists who follow copyright issues, DRM is gradually becoming familiar to average consumers, who are increasingly bumping up against its limitations.
...Using a DRM system it invented called FairPlay, Apple has rigged its songs, at the insistence of the record companies, so that they can be played only on a maximum of five computers, and so that you can burn only seven CDs containing the same playlist of purchased tracks.
...Some CD buyers are discovering to their dismay that new releases from certain record companies contain DRM code that makes it difficult to copy the songs to their computers, where millions prefer to keep their music.
...They believe that once a consumer legally buys a song or a video clip, the companies that sold them have no right to limit how the consumer uses them, any more than a car company should be able to limit what you can do with a car you've bought.
...The companies believe they need DRM technology to block the possibility that a song or video can be copied in large quantities and distributed over the Internet, thus robbing them of legitimate sales.
...Millions of copies of songs, TV shows and movies are being distributed over the Internet by people who have no legal right to do so, robbing media companies and artists of rightful compensation for their work.
...On the other hand, I believe that consumers should have broad leeway to use legally purchased music and video for personal, noncommercial purposes in any way they want -- as long as they don't engage in mass distribution.
...Instead of using DRM to stop some individual from copying a song to give to her brother, the industry should be focusing on ways to use DRM to stop the serious pirates -- people who upload massive quantities of music and videos to so-called file-sharing sites, or factories in China that churn out millions of pirate CDs and DVDs.