Fwd: Please Stand Against the New Copyright Bill

Tue Aug 26 20:42:51 UTC 2008

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 04:06:44PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> 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.

But they are available.  Your inability to play it comes from not having
maintained a working player.  Not due to someone else deciding they no
longer want you to be able to play them.  It is an open fully understood
format.  I think there are even people who have managed to use scanners
to read vinyl and analyze them to generate the sound signal.  So there
is nothing there preventing you from playing them other than not being
willing to put whatever effort or cost is required into getting a method
to play them.  No one else is actively trying to prevent you from doing
so.

> "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.

Until enough DRM servers have been shut down that they stop buying it.
Quite a few already have.  Apparently none of them do enough business to
be viable to continue to operate.

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

Well if I buy a book, I get a book I can read wherever I want.

If I buy a CD, I get a disc I can play wherever I want.

If I buy a movie I expect to have a movie I can play wherever I want as
long as I have a player that supports it.  I do not expect that player
to need an internet connection to verify that this particular player
happens to be authorized to play this particular copy at this particular
time.

> 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).

They ought to be treated the same.

> 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?)

For electronic books, I agree a library doesn't work very well.  I
somewhat doubt aper books are going anywhere though.

I think that anyone that thinks physical books will go away anytime soon
(if ever) is completely out of touch with reality.

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

Tomorrow is the future, so the present counts just as much.  Trying to
make laws that only consider the present technology is of course not a
good idea.

> 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.

It makes sense to have first sale though, since after all if you buy a
painting from someone and it is the only one that exists, why shouldn't
you be able to sell that painting to someone else?  There is still only
one.  Now the painter may decide to make prints of their painting and
sell those, but only the painter has that right.  You can do what you
want with your copy though, as long as you don't make additional copies
for distribution to others.  The same ought to apply to books and music
and the like.

> 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).

DRM can't be used to do anything because it is fundamentally broken.  No
DRM can be implemented without secrecy because it relies un obscoruity
to control access along with "trusted software" to manage the final
presentation to the user.  So no open source software allowed anywhere
near the DRM stuff, and if anyone decides to break the DRM and suceeds
(as they always have and always will), then the DRM is gone.  DRM simply
is not a solution for any problem.  It only harms legitimate users and
is at most a slight inconvinience to those who choose to ignore the DRM.
making laws to make bypassing DRM is no solution either since those that
choose to ignore the rules don't care about laws either.  Again anti
circumvention laws only harm legitimate users.  Anything that suggests
the use of DRM should be immediately dismissed and ignored for being
completely flawed.

The way to generate pay for models is to offer people stuff to buy.
People will pay for it more often than not.  Those who don't pay are
usaully those that wouldn't have paid for it anyhow if that was the only
way for them to get it.  Those groups that have offered stuff up on the
internet without DRM and simply asked for people to pay for it have
actually managed quite well from what I can see.  And if people grab it
without paying, they may decide they really like what they got and then
go pay for it.  Of course the greedy corporations can't understand that
people might like to sample stuff before they buy.  Nor can they
understand that if you treat people like criminals they have a tendancy
to start acting like criminals out of spite.  After all if you are
trated like a criminal when you are not, you might as well get some
benefit from it and at least deserve the treatment.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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