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At some point all these exceptions to the dmca section 1201 do at some point indicate to me that we need to have the law updated to be more narrowly tailored ra

At some point all these exceptions to the dmca section 1201 do at some point indicate to me that we need to have the law updated to be more narrowly tailored rather than continuously apply exceptions to it which can later be taken away.

whatsmyusername 6y ago
Never happen unless the RIAA pays for it to benefit them or we see another full sweep of the house, senate, executive.
Zak 6y ago
I think given that it is entirely ineffectual for its nominal purpose of preventing piracy, there's no legitimate argument against a complete repeal.
ehsankia 6y ago
Absolutely, especially with all the mess on Twitch recently, and with Youtube for the past few years, it's very clear that DMCA needs to be updated. I do like Tom Scott's comprehensive video on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
VonGuard 6y ago
Speaking as someone who worked to get a 1201 exemption, and who personally shit in the MPAA, RIAA, and ESA's Cornflakes, I can confirm the 1201 process is stupid. Mainly because the RIAA,MPAA, and ESA always show up tp fight the exemption even when they know literally NOTHING about the exemption being asked for. We petitioned for an exemption to allow museums and libraries to reboot old MMOs in closed rooms with no network connections. That's because we couldn't get anything more from the Copyright office. Still, the RIAA's lawyer was there to lie and not understand a god damn thing we said, and accuse us of making tools that could be used to pirate any MMO. I begged for them to tell me where to find such tools, as it would make life so much easier. Their lawyers were complete imbeciles who seemed never to have touched a computer, yet here they were telling a group of game programmers what they could and could not do with their programs. Fucking horrible people, all of them.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Did you file ethics complaints with the RIAA lawyers' bar association(s)?
- gamblor956 6y ago
  There must be more to your story. The RIAA generally doesn't have any involvement in video games, other than where its members license music to games (i.e., GTA), and they generally wouldn't have any grounds for being part of the proceedings you've described if their involvement was just the music licensing. I can see the ESA being a huge dick in these proceedings, because it's their job to do that, but the RIAA literally wouldn't care as long as somebody paid the music licensing fee (for that low volume of users the licensing fee would generally be less than $100 annually, all inclusive). I've been on the other side of an RIAA negotiation, and they were very easy to work with. We theoretically owed them millions of dollars for several years of unlicensed music streaming, and they waived the statutory penalties they were legally entitled to in exchange for us agreeing to pay a few hundred dollars of royalties a year to stream their members' music. All told, we paid less than $2500/year for streaming licenses for all of the Big 3 labels and a dozen or more smaller labels.
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    Transcripts of these hearings are publicly available. This seems to be the hearing GP was referring to (it's proposed class 23 in this hearing): https://cdn.loc.gov/copyright/1201/2015/hearing-transcripts/1201-Rulemaking-Public-Roundtable-05-20-2015.pdf https://cdn.loc.gov/copyright/1201/2015/hearing-transcripts/... Appears the same lawyer was representing ESA/RIAA/MPAA. I briefly started reading some of them a while back and they're, uh, frustrating to read.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Lot of interesting info in there, thanks for the link.
- varispeed 6y ago
  This is fascinating and sad to hear. Do you have any theory why people won't get together and do something against these organisations? It is hard to see how they are working in the interests of the authors, but rather they seem to care about institutions that exploit them.
bleepblorp 6y ago
If you want the DMCA changed, you're going to need to find enough money to, as part of a competitive auction against the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA, successfully bribe: 218 Congresspeople 60 Senators 1 President 5 Supreme Court (in)justices. A conservative estimate is that getting the DMCA reformed would cost at least a billion dollars in bribes ('campaign contributions'). No one who has that much money spare has enough of an interest in public-interest copyright reform to be willing to spend that much money. As a practical matter, it's much more feasible to cultivate hosting infrastructure outside of the United States than to consider DMCA reform.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Europe also has copyright anti-circumvention laws...
  - Mindwipe 6y ago
    Stronger anti-circumvention laws than the US too. As they're written into international treaties every functional Western democracy has them. Pretty much the only exemption is Israel.
- varispeed 6y ago
  And any of the new billionaires is not eccentric enough to commission such bribe. They all want to be famous and be remembered by inventing another scooter or some form of a phone or another gizmo, but none of them think about freeing our culture from mafia like organisations gatekeeping it.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  That's not how buying government officials works. You don't have to buy a majority of them. You just need a couple who then go in and horse trade for the thing you want. Then they vote for some boondoggles and healthcare bills, and in exchange 51% of the other ones vote for the thing they (i.e. you) wanted. You can look up how much the RIAA and MPAA spent on campaign contributions. It wasn't a billion dollars. And "campaign contributions" are only one path to victory. You could also go the route of getting Wikipedia et al to do what they did for SOPA.
rpgmaker 6y ago
You're assuming those laws were passed with the public in mind.

whatsmyusername 6y ago

Never happen unless the RIAA pays for it to benefit them or we see another full sweep of the house, senate, executive.

Zak 6y ago

I think given that it is entirely ineffectual for its nominal purpose of preventing piracy, there's no legitimate argument against a complete repeal.

ehsankia 6y ago

Absolutely, especially with all the mess on Twitch recently, and with Youtube for the past few years, it's very clear that DMCA needs to be updated. I do like Tom Scott's comprehensive video on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU

VonGuard 6y ago

Speaking as someone who worked to get a 1201 exemption, and who personally shit in the MPAA, RIAA, and ESA's Cornflakes, I can confirm the 1201 process is stupid. Mainly because the RIAA,MPAA, and ESA always show up tp fight the exemption even when they know literally NOTHING about the exemption being asked for. We petitioned for an exemption to allow museums and libraries to reboot old MMOs in closed rooms with no network connections. That's because we couldn't get anything more from the Copyright office. Still, the RIAA's lawyer was there to lie and not understand a god damn thing we said, and accuse us of making tools that could be used to pirate any MMO. I begged for them to tell me where to find such tools, as it would make life so much easier. Their lawyers were complete imbeciles who seemed never to have touched a computer, yet here they were telling a group of game programmers what they could and could not do with their programs. Fucking horrible people, all of them.

bleepblorp 6y ago
Did you file ethics complaints with the RIAA lawyers' bar association(s)?
gamblor956 6y ago
There must be more to your story. The RIAA generally doesn't have any involvement in video games, other than where its members license music to games (i.e., GTA), and they generally wouldn't have any grounds for being part of the proceedings you've described if their involvement was just the music licensing. I can see the ESA being a huge dick in these proceedings, because it's their job to do that, but the RIAA literally wouldn't care as long as somebody paid the music licensing fee (for that low volume of users the licensing fee would generally be less than $100 annually, all inclusive). I've been on the other side of an RIAA negotiation, and they were very easy to work with. We theoretically owed them millions of dollars for several years of unlicensed music streaming, and they waived the statutory penalties they were legally entitled to in exchange for us agreeing to pay a few hundred dollars of royalties a year to stream their members' music. All told, we paid less than $2500/year for streaming licenses for all of the Big 3 labels and a dozen or more smaller labels.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  Transcripts of these hearings are publicly available. This seems to be the hearing GP was referring to (it's proposed class 23 in this hearing): https://cdn.loc.gov/copyright/1201/2015/hearing-transcripts/1201-Rulemaking-Public-Roundtable-05-20-2015.pdf https://cdn.loc.gov/copyright/1201/2015/hearing-transcripts/... Appears the same lawyer was representing ESA/RIAA/MPAA. I briefly started reading some of them a while back and they're, uh, frustrating to read.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Lot of interesting info in there, thanks for the link.
varispeed 6y ago
This is fascinating and sad to hear. Do you have any theory why people won't get together and do something against these organisations? It is hard to see how they are working in the interests of the authors, but rather they seem to care about institutions that exploit them.

bleepblorp 6y ago

If you want the DMCA changed, you're going to need to find enough money to, as part of a competitive auction against the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA, successfully bribe: 218 Congresspeople 60 Senators 1 President 5 Supreme Court (in)justices. A conservative estimate is that getting the DMCA reformed would cost at least a billion dollars in bribes ('campaign contributions'). No one who has that much money spare has enough of an interest in public-interest copyright reform to be willing to spend that much money. As a practical matter, it's much more feasible to cultivate hosting infrastructure outside of the United States than to consider DMCA reform.

gamblor956 6y ago
Europe also has copyright anti-circumvention laws...
- Mindwipe 6y ago
  Stronger anti-circumvention laws than the US too. As they're written into international treaties every functional Western democracy has them. Pretty much the only exemption is Israel.
varispeed 6y ago
And any of the new billionaires is not eccentric enough to commission such bribe. They all want to be famous and be remembered by inventing another scooter or some form of a phone or another gizmo, but none of them think about freeing our culture from mafia like organisations gatekeeping it.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
That's not how buying government officials works. You don't have to buy a majority of them. You just need a couple who then go in and horse trade for the thing you want. Then they vote for some boondoggles and healthcare bills, and in exchange 51% of the other ones vote for the thing they (i.e. you) wanted. You can look up how much the RIAA and MPAA spent on campaign contributions. It wasn't a billion dollars. And "campaign contributions" are only one path to victory. You could also go the route of getting Wikipedia et al to do what they did for SOPA.

rpgmaker 6y ago

You're assuming those laws were passed with the public in mind.