* Betamax Under Siege - Again

By Fred von Lohmann
EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney

The Senate Judiciary Committee, responding to the hail of
brickbats that greeted Senator Hatch's (R-UT) "Induce Act,"
asked the US Copyright Office to propose alternative wording
that would be more popular with the technology community.
Here's the heart of what it came up with:

"Whoever manufactures, offers to the public, provides,
or otherwise traffics in any product or service, such
as a computer program, technology, device or component,
that is a cause of individuals engaging in infringing
public dissemination of copyrighted works shall be
liable as an infringer where such activity: (A) relies
on infringing public dissemination for its commercial
viability; (B) derives a predominant portion of its
revenues from infringing public dissemination; or (C)
principally relies on infringing public dissemination
to attract individuals to the product or service."

In other words, for all wireless and networked (e.g.,
"dissemination") technologies and services, the
tried-and-true "Betamax" defense would be replaced with the
new 3-part test in the paragraph above.

This reminds me of the bill introduced in 1906 at the behest
of music publishers, which would have given them the exclusive
right to make machines capable of reproducing sound. In
essence, the Copyright Office is proposing that copyright
owners get a new exclusive right over a certain subset of
machines that are capable of "disseminating" copyrighted
works.

If this isn't about using copyright law to squash disruptive
technological innovation, I don't know what is. Transport
yourself back to 1976, substitute the word "reproduction" in
place of "public dissemination," and you would see the VCR
and the cassette recorder banned. Today, because any effort
to ban those kinds of private copying technologies would
result in public outcry, the Copyright Office takes aim
at the technologies of the future: wireless and networking.

Some try to justify this arbitrary line between past and future
by arguing that "mass distribution is different." Of course,
that's what the entertainment oligopolists said about "mass
reproduction" and "mass broadcasting" back in the day. Only
because they were not able to stop those technologies did
they discover the new business opportunities that they
enabled.

So let me tell it like it is: The Copyright Office proposal
is profoundly and fundamentally anti-innovation. Were it to
become law, it would be very bad news for creator and
consumer alike.

For the original version of this piece online:
<http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/001900.php>

Of the people, by the people, for the people.

Not the greedy money and blood-sucking "industrialites"

Hmmmmm....Do tell....

Terms like "predominant" and "principally" really bother me in this, because who decides what they mean specifically? The courts? Cary? Orrin? It leaves a lot open to interpretation, and I wouldn't trust the RIAA to be fair about something like that.

I have an idea regarding the anticircumvention clause of the DMCA.

They refer in the DMCA, from what i remember reading, to "effective" technical protection measures. Obviously, a lock that is easily picked cannot be considered "effective" because they were able to develop a way to open it.

This is a loophole which I have yet to see used.
Effectiveness means that people are incapable of circumvention, thus nothing which circumvents a technical protection measure should be bannable because that protection measure was proven ineffective by the device/program.

I'm interested in input, and confirmation on the "effective" thing.

I figured "effective" entailed something with "security through obscurity"; if people don't know it's there, it can't be broken, and thus "effective". Then there's also the "trade secrets" thing. Unless I misinterpret you...

There is an old saying, "Locks were made to keeps honest people honest." The problem is with ineffectivbe locks is that the law makes it illegal to even try, or to pocess the tools to try. If this were the case in "Meatspace" it would be against the law to own a file, a hacksaw, boltcutters, or even a vehicle of jerking a locked door off its hinges.

Seems there are enough creative people here to create a video or animation "Congress gone wild" showing some of the crazy legislation that has been introduced in the past few years at the behest of the "copyright cartel" also known as 'OPEC' (Our Property Excludes Citizens'

One of the earliest forms of "locks" was an intricately tied knot that only the owner knew how to untie.

Then, someone thought of using a knife on it.

"So it goes." Kurt Vonnegut

The RIAA reminds me a little spoiled kid who, when desiring to win more frequently than playing fairly can achieve, decides to resort to amending the rules in his favor.