Fwd: Please Stand Against the New Copyright Bill

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>

| Ian Petersen wrote:
| > On the subject of remote permission servers, I think it was Yahoo!
| > that recently shut its servers down.  People who had shown themselves
| > to be paying customers by buying DRM'ed music and allowing their music
| > players to check with Yahoo! for permission before each performance of
| > a "protected" work were suddenly screwed out of their money because

| Not too long ago, some major league (baseball IIRC) fans found themselves in
| that position.  They'd paid for their DVDs, but found they could no longer
| watch them, as the content provider switched servers and essentially said
| "tough luck".  I seem to recall Microsoft was also recently involved in such a
| scam too.

I think that it is important to realize that the new law won't just be
slapped onto our current behaviour and expectations, it will form our
behaviour and expectations.  It is hard to think this through, but it is 
the way with all important changes.  Eg: the personal computer didn't just 
make it more convenient to run payroll and accounting applications of big 
companies, it made computers available for previously impractical 
and even unimagined purposes.

I buy books and own them as long as I want.  Well, not quite.  Some books 
I bought 30 years ago are getting fragile due to the acid in the wood 
pulp.  Books from 150 years ago actually last longer.  I have a few, but I 
didn't buy them, they were passed on to me.  Try passing on DRMed
stuff.

Software I bought 10 years ago is almost all useless.  We laughingly call 
it bit rot.  I touched on this in my Linux Symposium talk this year 
(comparing Red Hat Linux 5.1 of about 10 years ago with CentOS of today).

- the environment needed to run old software no longer exists (the OS
  has moved on, the hardware has moved on (no floppies)).

- security updates are not available

- updates to match new laws are not available (DST changes, GST
  changes, ...)

Open source is better than closed source, but the problem still
exists.

We now think that it would be outrageous for a DVD to stop working but
we accept not being able to play 78 RPM records (I just gave some
away).

If the law enables sellers to yank back "content" by DRM, we are soon
going to accept this behaviour.  Just like we accept software EOL from
Microsoft and Red Hat.  We quibble with the details but we start to
accept overall result.

I want us to think ahead to how the new law will affect the future.

The key idea is that DRM allows fine-grained control by the vendor.
We collectively already thought that control by vendors was too great
in some cases: first sale doctrine.  You ain't seen nothing yet.

What are imaginable affects of this fine-grained control?

- many many more business models (many might be good).  For example,
  rental of content (previously possible due to the mechanical
  embodiment of content (i.e. physical DVD)).

- great opporunities for price differentiation.  So the price can be
  tailored to some surrogate of the value to the customer.  I hate
  price differentiation, but there are rational arguments for it.

- great opportunities for social control.  Think of all the stories
  about the Chinese governments control over things around the
  olympics.  Now think what would happen if the government (or other
  large entity) had control of virtually everything through DRM.

- virtually every clump of information gets an owner.  Forever.  And
  it isn't you -- you just get to use it, at the owners pleasure, in
  the ways contemplated by the owner.

- various monopolies are strengthened.  Gee, that sounds good.

This is not the way I want the world to head.


In the consultation on the copyright whitepaper of perhaps a decade
ago, I proposed that a work lose copyright protection if it had DRM
that prevented otherwise legal use.  In other words, DRM would be
supported by copyright law only if it did not extend control.

This may now seem radical, but why should copyright law sanction a
unilateral power grab by the producer?  That this seems radical just
shows how much expectations have been shifted in a decade.
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