Technocrat

Don't Let Congress Shackle Digital Music!

Technocrat.net Editor
Fri Apr 28 15:31:57 -0700 2006
Electronic+Freedom.
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Dianne Feinstein's "Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act" would permanently hobble your ability to record off the radio and force webcasters to use DRM formats. Read on for an action alert from EFF. 

                  If passed, future satellite and digital radio receivers 

                  would be limited by law to what the bill calls "reasonable 

                  recording."  To the RIAA, this means that all consumers will 

                  be banned from choosing and playing back selections based on 

                  song title, artist, or genre.  According to the Consumer 

                  Electronics Retailers Coalition, even the transmission of a 

                  recording from room to room inside a house would be 

                  restricted by mandatory blocks and controls.

                  PERFORM would also mess with streaming Internet radio 

                  stations.  Right now, MP3 or open format Internet radio can 

                  take advantage of statutory copyright licensing to 

                  remunerate rights holders and artists.  After PERFORM, all 

                  streaming music that uses statutory licensing will be 

                  required to be in a DRM-encumbered format that forbids 

                  interoperability or user-editing.  Wave goodbye to MP3 

                  streaming and to moving recorded webcasts to the portable 

                  player of your choice.

                  PERFORM is yet another petulant scrawl by the RIAA on the 

                  statute books, placing their short term interests over the 

                  freedom to innovate and the future freedoms of America's 

                  musicians and customers.  Tell your representative not to 

                  co-sponsor or vote for PERFORM in the Senate or its 

                  companion bill in the House.

                  Take action now:

                  <http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=221>

                  Details and full text of the bill:

                  <http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=S3510&dbname=2006_record>

                  EFF's summary of the bill's implications:

                  <http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004587.php>
Don't Let Congress Shackle Digital Music!
Clay Barnes
Fri Apr 28 18:31:14 -0700 2006
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Being rather new (only really aware for a few years---at which point, from sheer terror, I switched to Linux only) to the world of electronic rights, I lack long-term perspective, so perhaps more seasoned people can enlighten me:

Is the legal battle for (keeping) our rights to fair use and anonymity getting worse, or has it been this offensive (the "leaders's" actions, not the battle) all along?
Don't Let Congress Shackle Digital Music!
jay car
Fri Apr 28 21:18:43 -0700 2006
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I don't know how "seasoned" I am, but my own point of view is that it has all been going on for a long time.  It doesn't seem to be getting better though.  It seems to me that those who are pushing so many restrictive laws through (world-wide) are getting more arrogant and outrageous.  I'm not sure if it's a sign of desperation and panic on their parts - because the major content controllers (music, movie, software, games, or whatever) suddenly realized they had lost control of the public's wallets - or if it's because the present administration has too many other things to deal with to care much about consumer's fair use rights, especially when the content industry contributes so wonderfully to campaign funds.   We do seem to be getting overwhelmed with restrictions nowadays.  Maybe they just want to get as many restrictive laws past as possible, before this administration leaves. 

Truthfully, even if it WERE to get better at some point, we still could never let down our guard for a second, because they'll always be looking for new ways to fence us in.

I'm just an old lady, but I know what freedom is, and I want my grandchildren to know what it is too.  I fear for their futures. 

reactionaries

zogger
Fri Apr 28 21:44:00 -0700 2006
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they are reactionaries..as close as I can tell, every time there's a decent tech advance that allows regular users something spiffy, WHAM, they pass a law that somehow restricts advances only to established wealthy corporations. Look at copyrights...as soon as some of the more famous old stuff was going to fall into public domain-disney stuff is the classic example-WHAM, copyright extension. Ability to get cheap copies of digitized material by burning CDs-WHAM DMCA. And so forth. Peer to peer file sharing, threatens the old cartel model of media distribution, poof, nailed. Napster by far was the big thing that scared them, an entire middleman industry was threatened overnight-it became more or less redundant (and unnecessarily expensive) in the digital age, so they just lobbied their way into more laws. This deal with MP3 streaming is similar, home users can capture the content openly, so it threatens their business model. (analog OTA radio is the same, I remember way way back them complaining about *that* when folks only had reel to reel tape recorders!)

 The big companies want all the advantages, ALL of them, full tech advances, but don't want you to have any at all except what THEY pick out and control. They are trying to perpetuate a buggywhip industry near as I can see it. Like, why haven't DVDs dropped in price relative to VHS tapes? It costs them a LOT less to make and distribute copies now on a slim cheap disk compared to tapes, so why no significant price drops? I'll answer it, because they can, it's a cartel, they want ownership of the tech, they want the advantages and profit, so they get more and more laws passed because they got the lobbying juice. Once it ceases being a cartel, they mostly evaporate.

This is like in the olden days when it was against the law to teach people of the lower clases to *read* or something like that.

BAD ANALOGY TIME

I live and work on a farm. If tomorrow someone invented the universal gourmet food replicator, it would "threaten" my job big time. Big-time.. Would I care? Heck no! That would be some slick tech, really be of usefullness to the planet earth!! I could go do something else, because I know that would be the right thing to do in that situation, I'm not afraid of that. But THESE guys, nope, faced with a similar decision, from a situation that really did happen, revolutionary technological advances, they caved, chickened out, took the easy way, so they want to force their old models on people in perpetuity.

  We had an information revolution with the digital advances in the last ten years or so, truly paradigm shifiting in societal potential-instead, we get laws to keep us in the bad old days.

So ya, they have always been doing this as long as I can remember, they are just on crack and steroids now trying to hold back scientific history.

It won't work in the long run, but they DO have the power to make things really ugly now unless a LOT of people get in their face and say NO.
reactionaries
Clay Barnes
Fri Apr 28 23:28:41 -0700 2006
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"It won't work in the long run, but they DO have the power to make things really ugly now unless a LOT of people get in their face and say NO."

That's what scares me most.  I live in a dorm, and all the time I try to scare people into doing *something*---a call, an e-mail, *anything,* but nothing but apathy greets me.  People are so willing to give up their rights little by little because they're not totally dependent on them because fighting it is too much "work."

As for the farm, I think any ethical person who loves what they do would agree with you.  My aunt is a dentist, and if she were offered a means to prevent tooth decay *today* she would welcome it.  She's there for the people and the good she does, not for the money.

That's why the RIAA is evil.  Doing anything for the money means you have no interest in the world but taking money---never *giving.*  Capitalism is a good thing, but only in a carefully monitered and reasonably regulated society (note that no city or country has collapsed from over-regulation of industry (except possibly communism, which is actually not even related to capitalism, being command and control only), but how many cities have gone to dust from un-regulation?  Thousands in the US alone.)

I fear.  I wish more other people would get as scared as I am.
Don't Let Congress Shackle Digital Music!
the womble
Mon May 01 04:14:57 -0700 2006
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It is part of a wider change that goes beyond media industries.

I general there is a drift in government policy (globally) from free markets (i.e. enforcing competition) to "business friendly".

What politicians think is:
1) capitalism is best,
2) Therefore whatever encourages capitalism is good
3) High profits encourage capitalism
4) Therefore we must encourage high profits

Of course encouraging high profits means sheltering companies from competition, and siding with suppliers against consumers.
 

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