Soon you’ll be lucky if your electronic device plays music or movies. A Wired news article, ‘Shop ‘Til They Lock’, talks about how “many consumer electronics firms are hobbling their own devices to protect themselves from (RIAA) potential lawsuits.”
There are still a few fighting the trend, one being Neuros Technology.
However, the article continues, “Last Friday, the House Judiciary committee introduced a bill (www.publicknowledge.org) that would require all digital devices that can output to or record from the analog hole to adhere to two specific DRM signals.” Thus legislating away the rest of our fair use rights not already lost via DCMA (The Digital Millennium Copyright Act).
See what the DCMA is doing to Patricia Santangelo, a single mom with five kids, Mom Fights RIAA Suit Solo.
Excellent post! They will try and try but there are simply too many ways despite any sort of copy right protection to break them wide open.
Technically “there are simply too many ways” for copy schemes to be broken open . The DCMA and other potential laws, however, are poised to take away the fair use rights we have to use legally acquired material. This will make it more difficult and probably illegal to make the changes to your legally acquired hardware or use software to exercise your fair use rights.
You can see the effects the DCMA is having by the RIAA use against Patricia Santangelo, who (according to all reports), did not even know how to download a song.
This does not mean that creators of intellectual property shouldn’t be compensated, they should! But the paradigm is changing and the providers should change, the consumer should not be the one penalized.
I see two issues here. The first is that an industry is now penalizing people because they abandoned new technology along time ago, and the technology caught on. Because of this industries lack of foresight, they are now playing catch-up, and using the government to back their desires. I am not saying that because I know how to use the internet that music should be free. Rather, I am saying that I should not be penalized for taking advantage of a system that they couldn’t think about. I personally do not download music off the internet, and agree that the artists really should be compensated for their work. I like the Apple scheme of purchasing, because its one of the best ones out there, however, I still think there are flaws in it.
As for the analog ports being required to accept copyright stream notification, well, that just means that I will continue to use my ancient stereo system. Or, maybe it means that I will invest in several Amps that use technology so ancient that I need enough to cover the 7.1 spectrum, and will re-encode everything back together, creating a copyright free file. Oh, well, I probably shouldn’t say that, because they will make outdated technology illegal then.
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And, the second issue that I see, is that Parents should be knowledgable of what their children are doing. If the woman doesn’t know enough about how to download a file, then, maybe she should go learn about it. In the end, a parent should be held responsible for the actions of their children until the child can be held responsible for their own actions. I think this is the route to a better society.
So true that the Music & Movie industries are trying to play catch up and is using the legislation to keep technology from progressing. It’s time for the these industries to realize the time have changed and find ways to profit from the new technologies.
As for parents being responsible for their children, I agree. However, todays computer users have trouble keeping viruses off their computers. And parents, whos kids know more about the computer than they, may never be able to understand or reach the sophistication their kids have. That being said there are resources to help them protect their computers and children. But even with many security tools available, a large number of users do not even know how to protect their computer from hackers, viruses and spyware. Who really thinks it’s reasonable that they will understand what their kids are doing on the computer.