> ..What I'm saying is that the argument is often made by
> people who do not make their living from the creative
> process ...
It's good to to stick up for creators. I do. The problem with current trends
in copyright regimes is that they're not really intended to protect
creators; they're concerned with maximising the revenues of middleman
corporations who own the copyright.
An interesting example of where creators sit in this new scheme of things is
shown by the way publishers try to wrest as many rights away from creators
as possible.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,44778,00.html
As well, the technical and legal mechanisms that are to be used to maximise
this revenue are nothing short of vandalism. They suppress academic research
(Ed Felten), criminalise the lawful work of software engineers (not
referring to Russian case) and interfere in traditional and so-far
successful ways in which members of our society access information products.
For example, Felten uncovered many weaknesses in Java early on, and in each
case Sun fixed the problems and commended Felten, which seems a logical way
to go about things. The music industry middlemen, though, threaten him with
lawsuits and pretend there's no problem.
There's a good discussion of intellectual property at the ACM site
http://www.acm.org/usacm/copyright/
Richard Smith has nice examples of the effects of DMCA
http://www.privacyfoundation.org/commentary/tipsheet.asp?id=47&action=0
Smith's examples:
1. If a media player contains a security hole that allows a hacker to break
into someone's computer, a researcher may not be able to alert the public
about the problem. If the vendor chooses not to fix the problem itself, the
researcher risks a lawsuit by going public with details. This provision of
the DMCA flies in the face of more than 20 years of computer industry
practice. Public disclosures of security flaws are important to get
companies to fix problems in a timely manner and to educate other
programmers on how not to make the same mistakes.
2. Virus writers can use the DMCA in a perverse way. Because computer
viruses are programs, they can be copyrighted just like a book, song, or
movie. If a virus writer were to use encryption to hide the code of a virus,
an anti-virus company could be forbidden by the DMCA to see how the virus
works without first getting the permission of the virus writer. If they didn
't, a virus writer could sue the anti-virus company under the DMCA.
Regards, Tony Healy
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.1 : Fri Aug 31 2001 - 03:10:03 EST