OT: Copyright law changes could leave consumers vulnerable

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From:  <phiscock-g851W1bGYuGnS0EtXVNi6w at public.gmane.org>

| You've given us some hints, but it would help my enthusiasm for this cause
| if I understood what are the implications for someone who has no interest
| in popular culture, eg, does not own a TV set. (I suspect that many of us
| in this group have migrated from TV to things like Slashdot and
| Wikipedia.)

Lot of reasons.  Off the top of my head:

- locks you are forbidden to break, even if you have a legal right to
  access the locked stuff.

  What will be locked?  (What won't be locked?)

  - mass market computers (just as the xbox is locked now).

	We Linux users benefit from an accident: the raw hardware that
	the mass market has developed is amazingly suitable for our
	uses.  But the producers don't care about us.

	If they did, we think that they'd make things easier for us
	(publish specs, fix BIOS bugs that don't manifest themselves
	in MS Windows, provide Linux drivers, etc.).

	In actual fact, they would just as likely lock us out and
	produce special Linux modules with higher prices.  Mass
	marketers love to be able to price differentiate.  Most boxes
	running Linux are servers and could be charged a business
	premium.

	TPM, protected by anti-circumvention legislation would be
	an important tool to enable this.

	Remember: don't think short term.  This legislation sets the
	framework from now on.  I don't imagine anti-circumvention
	ever going away.  For one thing, that could be arguably
	be considered expropriation.  Copyright law is usually
	changed in the opposite direction.

  - many interesting peripherals.

	Example: creating SD drivers for open source has been very
	difficult.  It might become illegal.  SD is a medium with
	a lot of cool non-cultural uses.

  - whatever comes after the mass-market computer.

	The computer might well disappear over time (remember, I'm
	not just talking about tomorrow or next year).  The appliances
	that replace many of its current uses will each be a
	battleground.

	Right now: game systems, cell phones, music players, entertainment
	systems, home phones, embedded household computers.

I vaguely recollect that there is talk of changing the defacto
copyright regime for web pages.  So that schools, for example, will
pay a levy just so they can use the apparently free stuff on the web
(and that was considered a break for them -- the rest of us would not
have such an easy time).  I was never able to internalize what was
proposed.  I don't think that this was in this round of changes.

I personally think that copyright legislation enforcing DRM when that
DRM takes away the user's rights, is truly broken.  For example, DRM
will prevent access to works that fall out of copyright.  It will
prevent uses that come under Fair Dealing.  Outrageous.

| Incidentally, my MP is Jack Layton, and the NDP elected Peggy Nash to
| replace the liberal MP (name mercifully forgotten) who was pro DRM. So
| talking to the opposition might not be completely ineffective.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarmite_Bulte

At the all-candidates meeting that I attended in my riding, all
candidates strongly supported the new copyright legislation that had
just died on the order paper.  In fact they wanted more.  The
conservative did so without knowing anything about the issue.  This
was in response to a question from the head of one of the copyright
collectives (a lawyer, not an artist).  I did not ask a question
because the meeting was sponsored by a local rate-payers group and
they requested only locals ask questions.

The problem is that all are naturally supportive of artists.  They
don't realize that the copyright law changes are primarily in the
interests of the incumbent distribution channels, not the creators.
--
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