[Linux-aus] Re: DMCA on slashdot

[Kelly Daly]

Hi Mark,



This argument isn't just about the media.  These have been chosen as an
example of what *most* people would understand due to the populatrity of
dvds, cds, ipods, etc - what we like to do for our own entertainment...  To
go into everything it may or may not effect in their daily lives will be too
much.

Take a look at the following before making the blanket statement that
nothing has happened.
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/unintended_consequences.php

This is stuff that HAS happened.  These are REAL cases.  It has happened
where the DMCA has already been introduced - having said that, the USA also
have fair use laws to protect them from a large extent of it.  We don't.
That is the scary bit.  It's also the bit where people go "oh, there's too
many pages of that to read, so I won't bother".  To go into the detail would
mean that most people would never know anything about it, which is why we
target what they do know and what they don't want to lose.  A
teensie-weensie portion of the problem.

The people who have had something to say on this mailing list are passionate
for a reason - not just because it's cool to get involved or to panic for
panics sake.

Cheers,
Kelly


On 7/7/06, Mark Newton <newton at atdot.dotat.org> wrote:
>
> Adam Hawes wrote:
>
> > We are getting DMCA and DRM in some form whether we like it
> > or not.
>
> Agreed.  But thankfully it won't make any difference to anything.
>
> The copyfights have been going on for the last decade, at least.
> At every step of the way the content industry has said that they're
> about to go out of business, and folks like us have said that culture
> as we know it is going to be firewalled.
>
> The fight has been going on for long enough that if either of those
> things were going to happen they'd have happened already.  But,
> no, they haven't, and what we have instead is a ten-year-long string
> of failed predictions made by people who, somehow, expect to maintain
> their credibility when they make their next predictions, which will
> be just as inevitably wrong when we review them in a few years time.
>
> I don't trust the four-letter-industry-associations.  But I don't
> have much more faith in the activists on the other side, either.
> They've been just as wrong for just as long, after all.  Despite the
> corporatization of media in recent years and the shrill arguments
> about how much damage it'd do to society, in 2006 we're able to
> use more types of media in more ways, on more devices, more creatively,
> and cheaper than we've ever been able to use it in human history.  So,
> like, who cares?  Art is still being produced, derivative works are
> still adding to the wealth of human creativity, the planet has not
> turned into a Disneyland-style theme park dominated by corporate
> culture owners.
>
> I think the next ten years is going to give us more of the same, DMCA
> or no DMCA.  Copyright will continue to be a stupid law;  Citizens
> who object to the stupidity will continue to infringe;  and copyright
> owners will continue to sabre-rattle by spending ridiculous amounts
> of money on show-trials for a negligible proportion of the infringing
> population, in a vain attempt to induce the infringers who giggle at
> the "Don't Steal Music!" ads in the cinema to give it a second thought
> before they burn their next DVD
>
> And laws will continue to get stricter, in the breathtakingly bizarre
> (but sadly predictable) belief that the way to stop people from breaking
> laws is to make more of them.
>
> The end-game for the copyfights will be a copyright law which says
> that any use whatsoever of creative content is illegal, which is
> routinely ignored by every living, breathing, sentient being on the
> planet.
>
> Who wants to archive this thread and come back in ten years to review
> it? :-)
>
>    - mark
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> I tried an internal modem,                    newton at atdot.dotat.org
>       but it hurt when I walked.                          Mark Newton
> ----- Voice: +61-4-1620-2223 ------------- Fax: +61-8-82231777 -----
>
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-- 
kelly at somewoman.com
kelly at mel8ourne.org

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