DRM Critique Airs On National Public Radio

An anonymous reader writes to point out that a critique of Digital Rights Management made it onto the mainstream media this morning. NPR's Marketplace Morning Report ran a piece noting that with the demise of the VHS format we risk losing fair-use rights since we now have only digital media. From the article: "As our country moves forward to regulate digital copying, I urge us all to bear in mind T. S. Eliot's famous saying. 'Good poets borrow; great poets steal.'"

Missed it.

[sporkme (983186)]

RealMedia, barf. How appropriate that a commentary on the restrictive nature of digital media should be distributed in that format.

I think they are looking at the past through rose-colored glasses a bit here. The owners of copyright material have always made efforts to restrict duplication, even in the not-so-good-ol-days of analog tape. Drop a quick "VHS copy protection" into Google and you will see countless references of the restrictive nature of that media, both on the audio and video tracks. Analog audio tapes included a pleasnt high-pitched screeching boobytrap (spoiler signal) for would-be copiers.

It is not the death of the analog media that represents the end of part of our culture--and the risk of lost rights--as the commentary claims. It is the lack of spine in our leaders to stand up for what is right. It is the lack of foresight and hindsight on the part of the copyright owners and the consumers that patronize them. Make some noise about that, NPR.

I would also like to point out the self-destructive nature of the analog media they are pining over. About one third of the VHS tapes that remain in my collection are playable. The first DVD I ever bought does not skip once.

Re:Missed it.

[by Anonymous Coward]

They have a podcast [publicradio.org], so you can download the segment as MP3 (for now):

12/19/06 Marketplace Morning Report 2 [publicradio.org]

The segment is at 5:40 if you want to skip directly to it.

After all, it's produced using taxpayer money, it better be publicly accessible.

Re:Missed it.

[MysticOne (142751)]

Well, for one, this isn't NPR content. It's American Public Media, which is part of Minnesota Public Radio. While their public radio stations usually play NPR content, and these shows are usually syndicated, they aren't NPR programs. On top of that, public radio only gets a small portion of its funding from tax payer money. The majority of funding comes through donations during the pledge drives.

Remember one thing.

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

Even at 8 percent taxpayer funding, I hope the Free Market Radicals and Capitalist Pigs among us remember that this important story has been TOTALLY ignored by the mainstream commercial media, demonstrating that there is some value to Socialism after all.

Now you can go back to playing with your Milton Friedman action figures.

public radio is not produced with taxpayer money

[consumer (9588)]

Only 8% comes from government funding. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Missed it.

[Ingolfke (515826)]

It is not the death of the analog media that represents the end of part of our culture--and the risk of lost rights--as the commentary claims. It is the lack...

Everything after that was wrong...

The threat to your "rights" and the rights of copyright holders is low cost digital duplication and distribution. Guess what, 100 years ago copying a book required that you buy the physical materials to print the book on and an expensive printer to print the book. It wasn't cheap. Enter VHS and VCRs... all of sudden where copyright holders had been protected by the high cost of copying their products they're now exposed to easy ultra-low cost duplication means. Enter p2p and you're totally fucked if you create ideas and content and hope to sell it.

The model has been that you create content that people are willing to pay for, and you limit the distribution of that content, and people buy it. If you kill off the ability to limit the distribution of that content then you've killed off the incentive to invest resources into commercial media.

Sure, you'll have all types of mix-ins and exciting mashups and derivative works for the first few years, but who is going to invest in the next Star Wars? The only people with money to invest in expensive media projects that will not return direct profits will be corporations and the rich. Star Wars... in a Ford Focus far far away...

Copyright is good. Protecting it is good. DRM is not inherently evil. Yeah, the media giants are a pain in the ass and generally despicable, but that doesn't make copyright bad and it doesn't mean that they aren't going to be forced to change over time.

Re:Missed it.

[russotto (537200)]

The threat to your "rights" and the rights of copyright holders is low cost digital duplication and distribution. Guess what, 100 years ago copying a book required that you buy the physical materials to print the book on and an expensive printer to print the book.

So our rights were safe as long as we didn't have the means to effectively exercise them. As soon as we could exercise them, they were taken away. Thank you, Joseph Heller. Of course the fact that you put our rights in scare quotes and left their rights unadorned pretty much gave away what you think is important.

Copyright is good. Protecting it is good. DRM is not inherently evil.

The DMCA is inherently evil. The DMCA (or something like it) is the only way to protect the integrity of DRM, so DRM must also be evil. If DRM is the only way to protect copyright, then copyright must be evil.

Re:Missed it.

[Ingolfke (515826)]

So our rights were safe as long as we didn't have the means to effectively exercise them.

What are you talking about? Since the inception of copyright you did not have the right to copy a copyrighted work and distribute it without permission. But, the costs made doing this in any large scale impractical and therefore made copyright infringement more uncommon and easier to identify and prosecute... and thereby protect the copyright holder. Low cost and readily available means of duplication and distribution completely blew that inherent protection out of the water. So now copyright is being infringed upon left-and-right.

The DMCA is inherently evil. The DMCA (or something like it) is the only way to protect the integrity of DRM, so DRM must also be evil. If DRM is the only way to protect copyright, then copyright must be evil.

Why is the DMCA inherently evil? The DMCA is NOT the only way to protect the integrity of DRM... and what kind of logical transference principles did you just manufacture here. DRM is not the only way to protect copyright (they've been doing that for years without it). Your logic is laughable and indicative of a anti-DRM fanboi.

Look... I understand that DRM can be used by copyright holders to limit the use of a piece of media and create all types of other fees and crap. I understand that and it's an issue that needs to be considered and looked into. That said... they still have a right to protect the content they've created or invested in. The law says they do... tossing out DRM and copyright all together isn't realistic.

Re:Missed it.

[10101001 10101001 (732688)]

So our rights were safe as long as we didn't have the means to effectively exercise them.

What are you talking about? Since the inception of copyright you did not have the right to copy a copyrighted work and distribute it without permission.

He said "book", not "copyrighted book". Further, his main point was that "fair use" becoming a widely available option to people, with the availability of digital content, was counteracted by the DMCA and DRM blocking the ability to legally (at least, questionably legally) exercise such "fair use".

But, the costs made doing this in any large scale impractical and therefore made copyright infringement more uncommon and easier to identify and prosecute... and thereby protect the copyright holder.

Not exactly. Copyright came about precisely because it was so easy for publishers to print up "pirated" copies of works. In the American colonies, there were enough printing presses that a large share of the populace read daily newspapers. The fact that computers are now their own printing press certainly has greatly magnified that initial problem, but even today it's possible to track down the source of copyright infringement in many cases. The real problem is that there are so many infringers and that they don't have any direct commercial gain (even if it were merely the cost of the supplies to make the copies), that there's very little motivation to go after every last outfit that's mass copying works.

The DMCA is inherently evil. The DMCA (or something like it) is the only way to protect the integrity of DRM, so DRM must also be evil. If DRM is the only way to protect copyright, then copyright must be evil.

Why is the DMCA inherently evil?

The DMCA is inherently evil because its vague wording could be taken to make computers illegal. More generally, it makes it illegal to use the key included with content or the hardware to use said content, except in a narrow scope of exceptions. Further, it is illegal to provide information to others the information to find or use said key, even if they use it only under the narrow scope of legal exceptions. Together, this greatly hinders the ability to speak and effectively cuts off the ability of a vast majority of people to fair use, as they are too computer illiterate to discover on their own the techniques necessary to exercise their rights, and it's not possible to directly teach them the information to take advantage of their rights.

The DMCA is NOT the only way to protect the integrity of DRM....

From a practical standpoint, the DMCA isn't an effective way to protect the integrity of DRM as the same means that allows copyright infringement which DRM is meant to stop can be used to either (a) disseminate the cracked DRM-protected content or (b) disseminate the information to crack the DRM-protected content. From a legal standpoint, it provides further basis to punish copyright infringers as well as a stronger legal basis to shut down organizations that collaborate to break DRM schemes. From a technical standpoint, DRM is technologically flawed because it includes the key with the lock.

DRM is not the only way to protect copyright (they've been doing that for years without it).

As stated, DRM is not an effective way to protect copyright. In reality, there's no means of protecting copyrighted works. From a legal perspective, DRM is superfluous, as copyright infringement is already illegal. However, also from a legal perspective, the DMCA provides a means of effectively banning all varieties of DRM-cracking technology so long as there exists as least one copyrighted work protected by said DRM scheme. As such, the DMCA provides a very effective legal blockade to greatly hinder the open operation of technology that would allow people to perform le

Re:Missed it.

[Maxo-Texas (864189)]

Good points all.

I would only add two mildly tangental comments.

1) They keep extending the length of copyright and somehow treat creative works as different than other inventions (patents have a much shorter period and may be much more valuable than a book).

2) The idea of copyright is changing. Up until 30 years ago it was very common for songs to "steal" melodies from each other (hell most of blues is based on a small number of stolen phrases and would not exist if the first song that invented them locked them down). Then suddenly they started suing over small sequences of notes. The net result is that an interesting set of (7? 11?) musical notes is basically locked down for over a hundred years now. It may be legal but I don't think it is moral.

Re:Missed it.

[Pofy (471469)]

>Why is the DMCA inherently evil?

One new thing the DMCA and many similar laws introduced was a new "right" for the copyright holder, that of access. It is not really given as a new right, instead they are given the right to control the access but that is for the most part quite similar since it dissallows others the right to access. The right to access a work has not existed in most copyright laws before.

Re:Missed it.

[cpt kangarooski (3773)]

Where, exactly, did the right to distribute other people's work originate?

God, apparently. That right is part of the right of free speech and press, which is inherent in humanity. Copyright is an infringement on this right, as it is a right by an author, not to create works (which he already had) but to deny other people their equally inherent right to copy them. It is an acceptable infringement under the right circumstances, but its true nature should not be forgotten. And under the wrong circumstances (i.e. bad, overexpansive copyright law) the artificial right of copyright is not an acceptable infringement on our natural rights.

The "Progress Clause"

[Garrett Fox (970174)]

I have to question you on this one. There are two main theories of where "intellectual property" comes from, and the debate over patent/copyright is contentious enough that law professors can't even agree on whether to refer to the Constitution's "IP Clause" or "Copyright Clause" or "Progress Clause." (I favor the latter.) Jefferson compared knowledge to a lighted taper [candle], that can be spread with no harm to the original holder; Franklin was a printer of pirated books. The actual wording that made it into the Constitution is ambiguous: patent/copyright law exists to "promote the progress of science and the useful arts," which suggests that ownership rights in ideas are not fundamental rights, but ones established through the government as a form of subsidy for creativity. The fact that these rights are "for a limited time" supports this notion. The other theory emphasizes the wording about "securing rights" as though people did have innate rights to exclusive control over their work. In either case, it's not "God" creating the rights but a social contract/natural law.

And in either case, you apparently do not have a Constitutionally protected right to copy media even under the First Amendment, because the Progress Clause grants "the exclusive right" to the creators. So, does the First Amendment override and destroy the Progress Clause? Or did the Founders understand the First Amendment to not cover copyright (which means there was a large hole knocked in it from the beginning)? I don't know the answer here, but there's troubling ambiguity even just from trying to figure out the original intent of the Constitution.

Dead Letter / Jefferson's Taper

[Garrett Fox (970174)]

Would you say, then, that the Progress Clause (or whatever we should call it) has always been a dead letter, overridden completely by the First Amendment? It's a legally plausible position, as you'd be saying that the Amendment (which came after the Clause) eliminates and blocks all restrictions on freedom of the press, therefore canceling the authority that the Clause gives Congress to grant exclusive reproduction rights to media. But if that's so, then all copyrights are unconstitutional, and possibly even patents.

A letter by Jefferson [uchicago.edu] presented his idea that "the exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society." He wrote that "natural law" or "universal law" or "nature" was the source of our rights. He distinguished between those rights "derived from nature" and those from "the gift of social law," putting patent/copyright firmly in the latter category and questioning its practical worth even in that capacity.

Re:Dead Letter / Jefferson's Taper

[Artifakt (700173)]

One thing to remember here is that the standard conservative position is that it's desireable for the Supreme Court judges to read letters such as the one you reference to help determine the framer's original intent. It's the standard liberal position that the constitution is a living document - for text book liberals, that doesn't mean the court shouldn't refer to intent, but that intent doesn't always govern.
      There are some very ignorant (or possibly just plain malicious) people who have started attacking the liberal viewpoint over the living document position - I say ignorant not because the 'original intent' position is necessarily wrong, but because they have opposed it by making original intent something the court should guess at in a near vacuum. Only certain other documents are supposed to be relevant to helping determine intent, and often judges who refer to other documents, such as the letter you mention, are falsely characterized as liberal activist judges who are not sticking with original intent at all.
      So you've given a very good arguement for the user's right to copy being a natural right, and creator copyright for a limited term being a gift of social law. It's actually an old style conservative arguement. At this point, it's not conservative enough for the 'right wing', and half the Fox comentators would call you a liberal. Now for the 64 dollar question. How do we fix the copyright system, if we let someone re-define the centrist position so that it's to the right of practically every poster to this thread.
     

Re:Missed it.

[jfmiller (119037)]

Wrong Question. Throughout most of recorded history it has been accepted that the replication of information was not only permissible but encouraged. There are at least a couple saints whose claim to the title rests in their prolific ability to copy not only the bible but scholarly books as well. The value of a late medieval musician was in his ability to remember the words and tune to a song after only a single hearing. It has only been in the past 200 years where copying has become a sin. It comes from the industrialization of creativity. Instead of paying people to create we are now paying for the commodity of the created work. Notice that it is the commodity whole saler (RIAA,MPAA) and not the creator that are spending the most effort to protect the commodity market. Copyrights are artificial monopolies granted by the government to encourage commodity production. Lets write this again copying is the historical universal human right, copyrights are the limiting of those rights.

Please go study a bit of history. (You'll probably have to pay to do this, because you don't have the right to read it freely any more.)

JFMILLER

Re:Missed it.

[by Anonymous Coward]

"Sure, you'll have all types of mix-ins and exciting mashups and derivative works for the first few years, but who is going to invest in the next Star Wars?"

If the death of copyright means that the like of Episodes 1 & 2 will never occur again, I'm probably okay with that.

Re:Missed it.

[Danse (1026)]

Copyright is good. Protecting it is good. DRM is not inherently evil. Yeah, the media giants are a pain in the ass and generally despicable, but that doesn't make copyright bad and it doesn't mean that they aren't going to be forced to change over time.

Wrong. Copyright refers to copyright law. Copyright law WAS good at one point. It doesn't even remotely resemble what it used to be. So no, copyright is not good. Protecting it is not good. DRM may not be inherently evil, but that doesn't matter a bit since it has only been used to enforce the perversion of copyright law that exists now. Furthermore, the evil media giants will only be forced to change if we stop supporting this crap they're calling copyright law, and stop pretending that it's a good thing and that it deserves to be respected. They got greedy and deserve to be punished for it. Retroactive copyright extensions? Terms longer than a human lifespan? Where the hell did the bargain between artists and the public go? They were supposed to get protection for a limited time, and then the work was supposed to become part of the public domain, and free for all to do whatever they want with. Nothing that was copyrighted has passed into the public domain for decades. We're supposed to be OK with that? I'm certainly not. It's not going to get any better if everyone keeps accepting the status quo either.

Re:Missed it.

[Java Ape (528857)]

Excellent comment Danse,

My wife is a best-selling author, and depends on copyright for her living, so believe me when I say that we understand the importance of protecting her work. However, the point of copyright is to encourage new creation, which was intended to become part of the public domain. The public basically grants a short-term monopoloy on duplication in exchange for the eventual use of the product. This deal was fair and mutually beneficial.

Big business has bought the government, and the deal is altered past all bounds of recognition or sanity. DRM is the icing on the cake, insuring that even when our current insane copyright terms finally allow ancient works to fall into the public domain, they'll be 'protected' by additional restrictions, assuming terms aren't extended indefinitely.

Even people who need copyright to make a living are shaking their heads and wondering what flavor of Kool-Aid is being passed around the government. Artists don't need 200-year monopolies and draconion punishment of their audience to make a living. I'm not sure who these provisions are supposed to benefit. . . the great-great-great grandchildren of famous movie-makers maybe? Why should the public commons be eliminated for their sakes? Something's not right.

Re:Missed it.

[Sydney Weidman (187981)]

The model has been that you create content that people are willing to pay for, and you limit the distribution of that content, and people buy it. If you kill off the ability to limit the distribution of that content then you've killed off the incentive to invest resources into commercial media.

Hooray. Commercial, one-way media of all kinds deserve to die, or at the very least stop multiplying like virii.

Some random thoughts on this topic:

Money encourages production, not creativity.

What is owned cannot be culture. For me that's an axiom.

Own it if you want, but don't pretend that its got anything to do with culture. If I have to ask someone's permission to use it, it isn't culture. Culture *is* that which can be freely shared.

If you pay me to say it, I'll eventually end up lying.

Money encourages production, but it often encourages the production of crap. The "market" doesn't impose any standard of quality on what gets produced.

The reason we give people a monopoly on copying is so that eventually we have lots of free stuff. Unless you can show that the benefit of increased production outweighs the harm of restricting freedom, don't dare talk about extending copyright in time or space. In fact, we should reduce the term and reach of copyright to the minimum level required to encourage production. *That* makes sense to me. The idea that all this shrink-wrapped blather is someone or other's private property seems to me to be a parlour game gone bad.

Creativity can be encouraged in many ways. In Canada, parents are paid to spend time (a year or something) with their newly born child. Why couldn't individuals be given sabbatical to produce something of cultural importance? If you don't produce, your time off is repaid from source deductions.

Re:Missed it.

[Maximum Prophet (716608)]

Dude, you are never, ever going to be paid for that post. Ever. Yet you posted. Why?

Re:Missed it.

[Petrushka (815171)]

Copyright is good. Protecting it is good. DRM is not inherently evil.

You need to start realising that the third sentence here has nothing whatsoever to do with the first two sentences.

DRM, inherently evil? You bet it is. DRM is an imposition on the rights of the public way beyond the restrictions imposed by copyright. It's double-dipping.

Copyright is saying, "I own this, so you're not allowed to make money out of it"; DRM is saying, "It doesn't matter whether I own this or not, but if you do anything with it that I choose to prevent you from doing, you're a criminal."

Copyright is a compromise that in a reasonable world should promote creativity. DRM is designed precisely to impose obligations and restrictions on the public that have nothing whatsoever to do with copyright, but everything to do with greed and taking away legitimate rights.

Re:Missed it.

[Jah-Wren Ryel (80510)]

Guess what, 100 years ago copying a book required that you buy the physical materials to print the book on and an expensive printer to print the book. It wasn't cheap. Enter VHS and VCRs... all of sudden where copyright holders had been protected by the high cost of copying their products they're now exposed to easy ultra-low cost duplication means. Enter p2p and you're totally fucked if you create ideas and content and hope to sell it.

So, what you are saying is that when the copyright social contract was made a few hundred years ago, the average Joe really didn't give up much because it was next to impossible for him to make a copy anyway. Joe gave away something of no value (the right to make copies that he couldn't possibly make in the first place) in exchange for encouraging creators to create.

So, now that any Joe can make as many copies as he wants for almost zero cost, don't you think it is time for the contract to be renegotiated? After all, what was a good deal for Joe 100 years is no longer a good deal anymore. Isn't that what a smart businessman would do in the same situation?

After all, copyright only exists at Joe's discretion anyway. If the public collectively decides that copyright is no longer a worthwhile bargain, well, that would be the end of copyright now wouldn't it?

We lost our fair use rights years ago...

[MinutiaeMan (681498)]

Most people don't realize that even certain VHS tapes had DRM -- or at least a basic form thereof. Many years ago, for a high school video project, I wanted to splice a little scene from "Return of the Jedi" into our project. (The scene with the Ewoks bowing and scraping to Threepio, as a metaphor for the Aztecs greeting Cortez.) But when I tried to record it onto the family VHS video camera for splicing and transfer (we were using our VCR and the camera to create a very basic editing system; this was 1996!), the camera would quit recording after a few seconds, saying something about a "protected" video or something.

I forget how I got around it, but it was a pain in the ass. All for less than thirty seconds of fair-use footage for a damn high school project!

Re:

[ConceptJunkie (24823)]

Google "Macrovision", before creating various forms of digital rights management, as well as acquiring InstallShield for some strange reason, they were the leading name in "analog rights management", i.e., screwing up VHS tapes to prevent dubbing.

Re:We lost our fair use rights years ago...

[StinkiePhish (891084)]

Yep. It started in 1983 with the establishment of Macrovision Corporation.

From Wikipedia...
"The 1984 film "The Cotton Club" was the first videocassette to be encoded with the Macrovision technology when it was released in 1985"

"A VHS videotape or DVD (no laserdisc or video CD players implement it) or digital cable/satellite boxes receiving a data stream encoded with Macrovision will cause a VCR set to record it to fail (excluding very old models, modified VCRs, or those approved for "professional usage"). This is usually visible as a scrambled picture as if the tracking were incorrect, or the picture will fade between overly light and dark. A 6-head or 8-head VCR (most are 4-head) can minimize this fluctuation, so it is not as noticeable. A DVD recorder will simply display a message saying the source is copy-protected, and will pause the recording."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrovision [wikipedia.org]

Incorrect

[geekoid (135745)]

We did not loose fair rights.
Companies have been preventing us from exercising them.
I know the difference is very subtle.

You must know this and get used to saying it bacause from a legal, and political view point, you still ahve those rights. SO when you say we 'lost our rights' it makes you look ignorant, and can be rubutted with "No we didn't you still ahve the right to do that."

Also, you can make the corporations l;ook bad and not the politicians, which is a better way of communicating with your elected

Re:Incorrect

[mrchaotica (681592)]

You must know this and get used to saying it bacause from a legal, and political view point, you still ahve those rights.

No, we lost them -- go read the DMCA. All the copyright holder has to do is say "this was ROT13 encrypted twice" and you have no Fair Use rights anymore.

Re:Incorrect

[node 3 (115640)]

You must know this and get used to saying it bacause from a legal, and political view point, you still ahve those rights. SO when you say we 'lost our rights' it makes you look ignorant, and can be rubutted with "No we didn't you still ahve the right to do that."

I agree, in general, with the rest of your post, but disagree with this point.

If you have a right, but are prevented from using it, you really *don't* have that right anymore. Just being written down somewhere doesn't make a right a right. The written form is just the description of the right. A right is only a right when it can actually be exercised. Regarding the topic at hand, the corporations have actually taken away (violated) our right to fair use.

The flaw in your argument, as I see it, is the implicit assumption that only the government can take away or grant rights. In reality, it's those with power that grant or take away rights. It just so happens that usually it's the state that has ultimate power, but if the state leaves things to their own devices (ie: free market fundamentalism), all they have done is given the crown of ultimate power over to the next in line, which in the case of America, is the corporations (in other countries, the next in line might be corporations, organized crime organizations, warlords, etc).

Your argument, while it does make the corporations look bad, also absolves them of any legal (which for some, equates to moral) wrong-doing, and undermines efforts to have the government step in to protect our rights.

Re:Fair use is a defence, not a right

[node 3 (115640)]

You are under the mistaken assumption that the doctrine of Fair Use is a right. It is not, and never has been, a right. It is a defence to the charge of copyright infringement.

You are wrong on two counts.

First, that I am unaware of the actual legal standing of fair use.

Second, that it does not grant rights. It, in fact, does. I am allowed the *right* to copy copyrighted works, if my copying falls under fair use.

This *right* has been repeatedly affirmed by the courts.

This legal distinction appears to be lost on most who contribute to the neverending copyright debate on slashdot.

Not in any generally meaningful way. While people do tend to misunderstand the details of fair use, the fact that it exists and allows for some rights for the consumer is both fact and law.

Re:Incorrect

[Elemenope (905108)]

Yes. Yes, it does. And before this degenerates into a 'yes it does, no it doesn't' slapfest, it might be best to analyze the underpinnings of the two sides.

The 'no' side is predicated upon the basic (and I believe ultimately erroneous) assumption that some rights are 'inherent'; that is, they literally inhere to (i.e. dwell within) certain classes of beings by virtue of those beings merely existing. This is the only way that one could argue that an unexerciseable right is still a right; it ontologically exists but is 'suppressed' in a manner of speaking by prevailing local conditions. It is certainly *possible* that this view is correct, but I think it problematic because it requires a large degree of epistemic faith, that is, that certain things exist of which we have absolutely no detectable evidence and yet are firmly believed must still exist. Such claims are always rooted in metaphysical arrogance and basically cash out as follows: "the world *must* work this way (despite lack of evidence that it does) because if it didn't, my word-view would collapse!" American society, and world-view, is predicated upon the inherency of certain rights, some of which are listed explicitly in black-and-white in the Declaration of Independence, and others are implied strongly in the Bill of Rights.

The 'yes' side posits the epistemologically more reasonable position that rights adhere to their subjects, and are created, maintained, divested, and destroyed by some agency independent of mere existence. That is, either the agent or some agency on behalf of the agent must use force (take action in any form) to guarantee that the 'right' adheres to the agent and has functional substance. Absent that force, the right dissipates. This seems much more in keeping with evidence observable through the course of human history.

Rights are only such if they can be cashed out into reality. Otherwise, they are just pretty words on paper. I agree with you on the very limited point that rights don't depend on just government, and so your statement "If your government doesn't protect your rights, it doesn't mean you don't still have them." is quite true. There are other means to project force to secure the practical adherence of a right beyond the reliance upon a government, and in fact it would be foolish in many cases to depend on the government to secure some of those rights. But, it does not then logically follow that, as you state, "everyone has rights". There are some people who do not use force and for whom no force is expended to adhere rights to them. Victims of genocide come to mind as the easiest example. They are deprived of rights; literally, they do not possess any.

demise of vhs? wtf?

[rucs_hack (784150)]

I've still got a vhs recorder, tons of tapes, and a large library, recorded and bought. Plus I don't see any reduction in the places that I can buy tapes.

VHS isn't dead, nor will it be for a very long time. There's a big difference between DRM supporting companies wishing it would die, and it actually dying.

Incidentally, we have a record shop in town that does a brisk trade in the vinyl media that *ahem* 'died' a few years back....

Re:demise of vhs? wtf?

[the_humeister (922869)]

I still have an 8-track player and a whole collection of tunes on 8-track tape. And silly people kept saying 8-track was dying...

The DMCA became law in 1998

[troll -1 (956834)]

Thank you, Rip Van Winkle.

A thousand Slashdot readers curse T.S. Eliot....

[ElBuf (887442)]

Good poets borrow; great poets violate copyright, which is nothing like stealing!!!

Re:

[Brandybuck (704397)]

People say "steal" because it is one syllable, as opposed to the six for "violate copyright". No, it's not synonymous with armed robbery, but it is stealing. Get a dictionary and look it up! If copyright is a property, then copyright violation can indeed be stealing. If copyright isn't a property, then stop according property rights to your creative works (such as using the GPL).

Last week I went to a wedding. While there I stole a kiss from the bride. So why can I steal a kiss but I can't steal a poem?

I for

Mainstream Media?

[rossz (67331)]

When did NPR become part of the mainstream media?

Re:Mainstream Media?

[StikyPad (445176)]

Likewise, I'd describe ambiguous inapplicable analogies with no supportive statements the same way that I would describe fruit.

VHS has little to do with it.

[mr_matticus (928346)]

The 'demise of VHS' is about as relevant to the erosion of "fair use" as the price of canvas was to the demise of sailing ships.

People are willing to sell away anything to get a lower initial price--they're willing to accept more restrictive use if it means saving a buck. It's not just media entertainment, but food, furniture, and almost anything that involves the exchange of money. They'll reserve the right to complain later, but the remedy of that complaint can NEVER be raising the prices to fix what consumers voluntarily sold off.

Yeah, we can sue McDonald's for making us fat, or we could stop thinking that paying $15 for a restaurant meal that won't kill you is some great injustice. We can complain all we want about outsourcing support jobs to wherever, but good god, don't charge us $20 more for our computers. We can balk at the several hundred dollar price of hardwood furniture and complain about deforestation, but IKEA still gets frowned upon for its "cheap" quality in comparison (when in fact, many of their products are surprisingly durable for being made of sawdust and paper).

Price is all-important, and anything that gets us a lower price is a good idea...until we realize that what we threw out the window to get there might actually have been important. Then we want it back, but we want someone else to eat the costs involved with bringing it back.

Re:VHS has little to do with it.

[mr_matticus (928346)]

Not quite. The cost of DRM itself is minimal and a predictable consequence of digital media--not a necessary restriction on fair use rights. People are willing to do anything to drive down the cost of purchasing music, including accepting narrower usage.

The fewer rights you transfer from the owner, the lower the sale price of the artwork. Media price isn't tied to production costs (if it were, small indie artists would be much more expensive, because their relative costs per unit would be way higher than the "big" pop artists). Instead, it's tied to the level of the licensing. Copies for renting out or public performance are substantially more expensive than the "home use" versions (even dating back to VHS and vinyl), even though they contain the exact same product. Likewise, digital files contain the same content (ignoring the low quality currently offered) for a lower price because they are transfers of fewer rights. This isn't to say that the labels' pricing for mp3s isn't greedy; that's a separate issue, but the point is that the price is lower, and by enough that it's starting to make a difference.

It's not solely about materials cost, and it isn't in other markets, either. The ingredients McDonald's purchases aren't the big reason why the food's bad for you--it's the method. Same reason why good furniture is expensive: the wood is expensive, but so is the craftsmanship and the process.

A small nitpick...

[alerante (781942)]

Marketplace isn't an NPR program; the show is produced and distributed by American Public Media [publicradio.org]. Though many public radio stations air programs from both NPR and APM (as well as other orgnizations like Public Radio International), the two are distinct entities.

Yet another thing...

[The Master Control P (655590)]

Yet another thing that Congress made illegal and which law enforcement makes no meaningful attempt to enforce. Which means it will go the same way as most of the rest of the US legal code: Never actually enforced until the cops (or the ones holding their leash) really, REALLY want to get someone (for reasons good or for bad); Then a careful search of the legal code is all but gauranteed to reveal something that makes you a criminal.

After all, it's impossible to control people who aren't criminals. You see it on Law & Order all the time: If someone isn't cooperating, they threaten to enforce some other law unless the guy does cooperate. As shit laws like these pile up, the state becomes fascist through no particular malice or evil intent. You being a thorn in their side? Well, I'd sure hate to take your entire DVD collection to make sure they weren't pirated. And you better have receipts, too.

Dead serious: Before any new law may be passed, the legal code shall be reviewed in it's entirety and thoroughly checked for existing laws serving the same purpose. If any such law shall exist, the proposed law may not be passed. If multiple laws serving the same purpose are found, they shall be reconciled into one non-self-contradictory law with the eldest law taking precedence. Not only will Congress be too preoccupied by this to do any more damage, but eventually the legal code will become understandable again. Imagine... justice returns as rich/well-funded criminals can no longer appeal their sentences for 25 years before they go to jail. To help initial implementation, I suggest forming a "council" of 1000 lawyers covering every legal field, and directing them to find contradictory and/or redundant laws.

The problem is that as the legal code grows, the most general search becomes O(N^2) because you need to compare every law with every other law. This needs to happen before N becomes so large that the only way to finish before the End of Time is to completely reboot. Queue arguments that we're already there...

Re:Yet another thing...

[cpt kangarooski (3773)]

Well that's just idiotic. The right amount of laws to have is what works best to establish and maintain a desirable society and polity, not some arbitrary number you've clearly pulled out of your ass.

Besides, your idea is unworkable on its face: laws are lengthy and complex when there is a desire for certainty. When laws are short and simple, there is less certainty as to what they mean (which, incidentally, means that you want to use caselaw, since then the courts will be able to all agree and take a largely uniform approach, rather than varying wildly as they all take their best guess, which will differ).

Saying that the law should be as you describe is as stupid as if I said that the source code for an entire, fast, efficient, feature-packed OS, windowing UI, and apps (office suite, web browser, media player, etc.) should all fit, uncompressed, on a single floppy, and be human-readable, and easily understood by any average high school graduate. It would be nice, but it's a foolish demand to make, and probably can't even be done because some things are simply complicated, and that's how life is.

A legal system can be simple, consistant, just, and efficient, but not all at the same time. In our society, and pretty much every other civilized society, we've chosen to go for just and consistant and where possible, efficient. Most simple and efficient legal systems tend to be of the 'might makes right' or 'eye for an eye' variety, and usually are not very consistant or just.

Great Bootlegs...

[creimer (824291)]

Good poets borrow; great poets steal.

Maybe that's why the underground economy in China is so great.

Still not yelling loud enough.

[Chuqmystr (126045)]

Call me wrong if I am but it seems to me that most folks who listen to NPR are at least somewhat familiar with what DRM is and all that accompanies it. At least for myself and the other NPR listeners I talk to that's he way it is. Still, good to see the word is getting out beyond just the Internet. Forgive me for stating the obious but what really should be done concerning rights management as far as media is concerned would be campaigns on the order of the bullshit the which the RIAA and MPAA have been spewing, sans the bullshit of course. Perhaps this is a step in that direction. Keep it up NPR.

As for the Real Media encoding from what I remember it was the only useable and widely accepted option around when NPR first started offing audio content online. Still, much better options abound these days. They should at least transition to them over a few weeks or months time if they're woried about pissing off listeners who are unaware and set in their ways. -C

See, This is What Happens...

[Bob9113 (14996)]

Now do you see? Now do you understand why we have to get rid of this particular evil? This simply cannot be allowed to survive, because it is standing in the way of progress.

As long as we continue to have media outlets that are not owned by corporations, we will continue to have reports like this that fail to toe the corporatist line. Were it not for NPR, reports like this, critical of DRM, would be relegated to the backwater of Internet blogs and college-town weeklies. We have failed to completely destroy NPRs credibility as a media outlet despite our constant efforts. We must stamp it out altogether, or face continued non-corporate-approved reporting.

Who are the real thieves? They are!

[Simonetta (207550)]

With all the talk about 'theft' and 'piracy' it's easy to lose track of who the real thieves are here. It's the global media corporations who stole the public domain by bribing the politicians to implement a permanent extension of copyright.

    Suppose that you buy a car on 'time' and agree to make five years worth of monthly payments. After five years (if you don't miss payments) then the car is yours. Suppose that after four years and six months, the finance company bribes the local legislature to extend the amount of time that you have to make payments for another five years. Emmimently fair for them; a rip-off for you. If you refuse to make another payment after the initial five years of payments have come to completion, they call you a thief and get the local law to take your car at gunpoint and put you in jail.

    Copyright works the same way. Agreement is made to make payments for an agreed time period for the use of the films, books, or recordings. After that period is up, the films, books, and recordings are paid for and can be used by the public freely. The material enters the public domain.

  Paying off politicians to extend this period is theft: it is theft of the public domain. The global media companies have relentlessly and successfully lobbied and bribed for 'extensions' of the copyright period in individual countries throughout the world. They keep extending the time period that the public must pay them in total violation of the spirit of the balance between copyright and public domain. They are the real thieves here, not someone burning a CD or downloading a movie. Never forget this.

    Criminals don't get to chose which laws are enforced for all the rest of us. Nor do we have to pay serious attention to the justifications that they use to legitimize their criminal behavior.

If it's property...

[Belial6 (794905)]

I always say that if it is property, then there should be a property tax on it. Let the copyright holder declare the value of their "intellectual property". If they set the value at $100, then they can only sue for $100. If the set the value at $100,000,000 then they can sue for $100,000,000, but they also have to pay property taxes on $100,000,000 worth of property. Of course they should be able to abdicate their ownership at any time both relieving them of copyright and tax liability.

This would limit copyright holders from hording just for the sake of hording, as they would have to pay for it. We would see large numbers of works currently under copyright, pushed out to the public domain as a tax savings. It would not prevent anyone that is currently making a profit from their works from continuing to do so as they would be encourage to declare a fair market value for their works to properly balance protection and tax liability. It would limit the outrageous lawsuits as the value of the work would be pre-determined.

His quote bears true...

[ItMustBeEsoteric (732632)]

Being that Eliot *actually* said, "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different."

DRM will kill itself

[bensafrickingenius (828123)]

I bought Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy in Adobe ebook format from Amazon a couple of years ago (I bought each book as it came available, actually). Well, that all started 3 laptops and 2 Palm PDAs ago. I got the urge to read the trilogy again last month, and found that I could no longer activate my Adobe ebooks. Seems that I'd accessed them on too many devices. Adobe tech support basically told me to go fuck myself. So I bought the dead tree versions of the books. I then emailed Adobe copies of the Amazon invoices for the ebooks and the subsequent hardcover purchases, along with a note explaining that I'd bought my last ebook. No surprise that I haven't heard back, but I'm sure they'll get the point when more and more of their paying customers have a problem with their legally purchased books being stolen from them by Adobe. Anyway, I'm praying that things change, and the sooner the better.