Cell phone owners can now break locks to use their handsets with competing carriers, while film professors have the right to copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations...
Other rights declared in the government's triennial review of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act seek to improve access for the blind and to obsolete works and let security researchers try to break copy-protection technologies embedded in CDs.
Unfortunately for consumers, the Copyright Office "rejected a number of exemptions that could have benefited consumers, including one that would let owners of DVDs legally copy movies for use on Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod and other music players." In other words, the types of uses that consumers desire when they purchase DVDs and CDs.
I truly despise the DMCA for its obliteration of fair use and its intrusion into consumers' rights. If I buy 10 CDs and then burn songs from each of those onto a different CD, I don't think that's a copyright infringement. But the music industry does, and they want to keep you from doing it. And the fact that the encryption on DVDs and CDs doesn't expire means that the copyright owners have a permanent injunction against copying, something which completely defies the purpose of allowing copyrights in the first place. While our liberal friends are complaining about big business, why not add the music, recording, and film industries to the list?
That was an excellent post, except for the last sentence.
ReplyDelete1. You seem to imply, by that, that it's somehow the responsibility of "liberals" to complain about "big business" - even though in this post you are yourself complaining about the power that big business has to control your government, in ways that benefit big business but not you.
2. In fact (if you read liberal blogs) you would know that DMCA issues and customer protection is something that liberals are more likely to write about than conservatives, since conservatives tend to have the attitude that whatever benefits big business is right and just... until it inconveniences them personally.
I'm not implying that liberals have a responsibility to complain about big business (including the recording industry). I'm saying that liberals spend a great deal of time complaining about big business, so add this to the list.
ReplyDeleteAnd your statement about conservatives is also misleading. It would be more accurate to say that conservatives embrace a free market economy in which people and companies get to profit from their innovations and products without government interference or restrictions.
I'm saying that liberals spend a great deal of time complaining about big business, so add this to the list.
ReplyDeleteIf you read liberal blogs, you'd know we already do. ;-)
. It would be more accurate to say that conservatives embrace a free market economy in which people and companies get to profit from their innovations and products without government interference or restrictions.
Not that I've ever noticed. Conservatives support government interference and restrictions when they benefit large companies: the only objections come when the benefits to large companies actually interfere with things individual conservatives want to do.
Not that I've ever noticed. Conservatives support government interference and restrictions when they benefit large companies: the only objections come when the benefits to large companies actually interfere with things individual conservatives want to do.
ReplyDeleteWell, I could make the same argument about liberals: they like restrictions on businesses unless those restrictions affect something they want to do. Like get abortions, for example.