Fwd: Please Stand Against the New Copyright Bill

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| There are plenty of devices you can buy today that supports playing
| 78rpm records.  So you are completely wrong there.

They are not widely or cheaply available.  78s are very different from
33s and 45s.  In particular, the stylus for a 78 is quite different.

| Anything that requires remote access to work is not acceptable since
| some users may be in places where that simply can't be done.

"Not acceptable" to you (or me).  But it might be/become acceptable to a
sufficiently vast population of paying customers to make it work as a
business model.

|  Why should
| the thing they paid for not work in such places?

Just what did they pay for?  That is actually a key question, not a
silly one.  A tricky question too.

|  Books on paper seem to
| work everywhere and this hasn't put publishers out of business yet.

Books are a very interesting example.  Especially compared to recorded
music.  The current copyright law treats them quite differently.  As a
computer programmer, I don't like that (simplicity is a prime virtue).

| Indigo/chapters may have put some of them out of business, but the book
| format hasn't.  Libraries haven't either.

Book stores and libraries are like caches.  Under a reasonable future
regime neither are guaranteed to exist.  Analogy: fetch a book; if in
library, don't pay for fetching from publisher -- so the cost of the
fetch is lower.  If the fetch from the publisher works well, no need
for the cache.  Disintermediation!  (Reintermediation?  iTunes?)

Libraries might add value and hence might continue to exist.  The
librarian functions of ordering, selecting, searching might be worth
money while the stacks might disappear.

| > I want us to think ahead to how the new law will affect the future.
| 
| How about their affect on the present?

Everyone is paying attention (a bit) to that.  In the long run, the
future matters more :-) and takes a little more imaginative thinking.

| > 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.

| Oh they would love rentals and libraries to be banned.  People should
| have to bay for every use after all. :)

My recollection is that libraries were kind of banned and became legal
through the "first sale doctrine" in the US, but I don't really
understand.  I've glanced at
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
and found it interesting.  Read "Microsoft v. Zamos" section for an
off-topic amusement.

DRM certainly can prevent free lending libraries.  But it can be used
to create reasonable for-pay models.  I like free lending libraries
but that isn't a fundamental right -- everything is on the table, even
if this isn't recognized by the public (or the party in power).
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