7 ms·

The linked article is good as far as it goes, but it fails to take the next logical step and call for the simple repeal of the anti-circumvention section 1201 o

by declan 11y ago

The linked article is good as far as it goes, but it fails to take the next logical step and call for the simple repeal of the anti-circumvention section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. I was living in Washington, D.C. and following the DMCA when it became law in 1998 -- I can assure you that nobody expected sec. 1201 to morph into the creature it has become today. It was sold to Congress as a non-controversial way to implement a pair of (yawn) WIPO Copyright Treaties. The DMCA was approved unanimously in the Senate and by a process reserved for non-controversial legislation in the House; there was not even a recorded vote. This is federal law as buggy and outdated code, which is badly in need of refactoring. I wrote about a proposed law to defang the DMCA back in 2003, once some of the 1201 problems became clear: http://news.cnet.com/Congress-mulls-revisions-to-DMCA/2100-1025_3-5211674.html http://news.cnet.com/Congress-mulls-revisions-to-DMCA/2100-1... But because of the influence of the copyright lobby, no amendments have ever succeeded. I wrote more about a better way to approach 1201 and, more broadly, federal DRM policy in this law review article here: http://mccullagh.org/misc/articles/michigan.state.drm.0605.pdf http://mccullagh.org/misc/articles/michigan.state.drm.0605.p... While letting people know about John Deere's comments to the Copyright Office is great, the only reason the Copyright Office has a role here is that 1201 authorizes them to set exemptions. But why should we have to beg the Feds for exemptions when the underlying logic of 1201 is suspect? At the very least 1201 deserves to be debated in Congress with an understanding of what it actually does and how it affects modern technology. When it was introduced 18 years ago, nobody could have known, and that debate has never happened.

bsder 11y ago
> I was living in Washington, D.C. and following the DMCA when it became law in 1998 -- I can assure you that nobody expected sec. 1201 to morph into the creature it has become today. I shake my head at this. Everybody in tech with 2 brain cells predicted this. The DMCA isn't buggy. It is functioning precisely as designed--protecting big businesses.
- declan 11y ago
  >Everybody in tech with 2 brain cells predicted this. Cite, please? Claiming, somewhat rudely, that was the case doesn't make it true. If you were prescient enough to publicly criticize the anti-circumvention sections of the DMCA in 1996-1997, you were virtually alone. The lone voices of criticism I remember came from the American Library Association and American University's Peter Jaszi. By 2000 or so, sure, some people had realized the problems, but what I'm talking about is what happened before 1201 became law. Here's one example: the DMCA was approved by both chambers of Congress and became law in October 1998. EFF's home page in October 1998 doesn't even mention the votes or the DMCA at all: https://web.archive.org/web/19981201054106/http://www2.eff.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/19981201054106/http://www2.eff.o... Of course, the EFF has arguably done more than any other single group to fix DMCA 1201 since then. But, again, I'm talking about when the legislation was still in Congress.
  - bsder 11y ago
    Well, "The Right to Read" was published in February of 1997 in "Communications of the ACM". So, it was enough of a problem that a mainstream computer research publication (which normally has a lag of 6-12 months) published it. In early 1997. Please do remember that you cannot rely on Google for history prior to about 1998. (Try hunting for information about VB6 programming for a concrete non-controversial example). Also, please do remember that we were fighting things on multiple fronts. Encryption was still a munition. The web was still in its infancy. DVD's had just come out in 1995 and file sharing was just reaching critical mass. Many of us were coordinating by email and Usenet(gasp) and long-distance phone(GASP!). In addition, many people had an attitude that we didn't need to fight since it was impossible for the law to touch the Internet (damage and routing around it and all that hooey). Boy were they wrong. To top it off, a bunch of companies that were the DotCom sweethearts were happy to sell out our rights in order to help their bottom lines. They were quite happy to support the DMCA, and many are now successful venture capitalists (they learned from Steve Jackson to sell out to the government). These folks are quite happy to whitewash their involvement in lobbying for the DMCA. So we were there. And we were fighting against it. We were just heavily outgunned.
    - 11y ago

by declan 11y ago

bsder 11y ago

> I was living in Washington, D.C. and following the DMCA when it became law in 1998 -- I can assure you that nobody expected sec. 1201 to morph into the creature it has become today. I shake my head at this. Everybody in tech with 2 brain cells predicted this. The DMCA isn't buggy. It is functioning precisely as designed--protecting big businesses.

declan 11y ago
>Everybody in tech with 2 brain cells predicted this. Cite, please? Claiming, somewhat rudely, that was the case doesn't make it true. If you were prescient enough to publicly criticize the anti-circumvention sections of the DMCA in 1996-1997, you were virtually alone. The lone voices of criticism I remember came from the American Library Association and American University's Peter Jaszi. By 2000 or so, sure, some people had realized the problems, but what I'm talking about is what happened before 1201 became law. Here's one example: the DMCA was approved by both chambers of Congress and became law in October 1998. EFF's home page in October 1998 doesn't even mention the votes or the DMCA at all: https://web.archive.org/web/19981201054106/http://www2.eff.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/19981201054106/http://www2.eff.o... Of course, the EFF has arguably done more than any other single group to fix DMCA 1201 since then. But, again, I'm talking about when the legislation was still in Congress.
- bsder 11y ago
  Well, "The Right to Read" was published in February of 1997 in "Communications of the ACM". So, it was enough of a problem that a mainstream computer research publication (which normally has a lag of 6-12 months) published it. In early 1997. Please do remember that you cannot rely on Google for history prior to about 1998. (Try hunting for information about VB6 programming for a concrete non-controversial example). Also, please do remember that we were fighting things on multiple fronts. Encryption was still a munition. The web was still in its infancy. DVD's had just come out in 1995 and file sharing was just reaching critical mass. Many of us were coordinating by email and Usenet(gasp) and long-distance phone(GASP!). In addition, many people had an attitude that we didn't need to fight since it was impossible for the law to touch the Internet (damage and routing around it and all that hooey). Boy were they wrong. To top it off, a bunch of companies that were the DotCom sweethearts were happy to sell out our rights in order to help their bottom lines. They were quite happy to support the DMCA, and many are now successful venture capitalists (they learned from Steve Jackson to sell out to the government). These folks are quite happy to whitewash their involvement in lobbying for the DMCA. So we were there. And we were fighting against it. We were just heavily outgunned.
  - 11y ago