[Gllug] Regarding priracy (sic)

[Mark Preston]

Hi Tethys,
I believe censorship, copyright and freedom of speech are all 
inextricably linked.
The core problem with copyright is that enforcement of it requires 
monitoring, and you cannot guarantee free speech if someone is 
monitoring everything you say. This is important, most people fail to 
address this point when debating the issue of copyright. So, basically:-

You cannot guarantee freedom of speech and enforce copyright law.

I would prefer to have the benefits of anonymity and freedom of speech 
at the expense of copyright law and censorship when dealing with the 
internet. It may be possible to have good copyright law, but IMHO it is 
not possible to have good censorship, without having bad censorship.
That's the crux of my argument and I do believe it is not a ludicrous 
one, but a very serious one.

Re
">Copyright and software patent issues are difficult issues to get
 >right in the digital age.
Not at all. They have exactly the same legitimacy that they had in
previous times. The issues haven't changed. The *only* issue is
the duration of the government endorsed monopoly."

More rigid enforcement now though.
The term "fair use" in the context of copyright is a term
that was used in American law, before it was specifically written out
when the Digital millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)was passed in 2000. the
equivalent term in UK law is "fair dealing". The European Union
Copyright Directive which is very similar in scope to the DMCA has
been passed by the EU.


In my sphere of dentistry password protected dental text books are 
becoming a reality. One of the first "successes" of the DMCA.
For the argument in favour see

http://www.vitalbook.com/press/2001/0310_cutteeth.html

And a discussion of the wider issues, which mostly disapproves see

http://slashdot.org/yro/00/08/28/1158221.shtml

This imaginary quote based on the situation at New York University would 
be funny if
it weren't actually so close to the truth.
"But professor, this ebook contains material that supports my
arguements. However, you'll need to pay $399.95 in order to read it.
I could let you read it, but then I'd have to have you arrested."
This is not the kind of electronic future I wish to see encouraged.

  Big companies will soon start to use Digital Rights Management
(DRM) software to release their material. This is basically designed
to stop cutting and pasting or printing of documents - and it will be
a serious offence if you try to crack this software. This is called
copy protection by it's proponents, but is in fact copy prevention. In
the case of DRM controlled ebooks basic "fair use" rights will
effectively be removed.

The follow up to the DMCA is a proposed new law called the Security
Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA). This is being
promoted by lobbying organizations such as the Music Publisher's
Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association
of America. The MPAA brought the case against Napster. This law has at
it's core the idea that making copies of files is evil. Computers will
be manufactured to make sure that trying to circumvent copyright is
impossible. Computer programming will be illegal without a licence,
and everything you do on a computer will be supervised to ensure
compliance. So I repeat - you cannot guarantee freedom of speech and
enforce copyright law. Things are bad enough now with all the software
"patents" that abound. Regarding music - it's basically down to the 
musician how they wish to copyright their own music. However, to some 
degree it's all derivative. The big advantage software producers have, 
in this respect, is that they can distribute executables and keep their 
source codes secret.

Naturally there is a fair amount of opposition to these proposed
changes. This opposition varies from the copyleft proposal of Richard
Stallman, who produces free software and actively encourages copying
and modifications. Following on from this people are actively engaged
in producing free online encyclopaedias etc, and the idea behind this
sort of activity is that if a large volume of reference material is
freely available then who would want to sign up to a restrictively
licensed alternative? Freenet is a good example of a future network that 
actively encourages anonymity and freedom of speech, and therefore by 
definition discourages copyright protection and censorship.

BTW Chris Wareham has written to me and says he has unsubscribed from 
this list, which is a pity. I have written a reply to him that includes 
many of the arguments above. I have also written to say that if he gets 
any Linux related technical problems I'm sure that there's plenty of 
people on the list who will try and help him out if he posts anything in 
the future.
Regards,
Mark Preston

Tethys wrote:

Mark Preston writes:

 >Copyright and software patent issues are difficult issues to get
 >right in the digital age.

Not at all. They have exactly the same legitimacy that they had in
previous times. The issues haven't changed. The *only* issue is
the duration of the government endorsed monopoly. It's clear that
much over 5 years for many IT related innovations is detrimental to
society, rather than beneficial. The same is hard to argue for music,
however. The fact that technology has progressed to the point where
it's now feasible to share your entire music collection with others
hasn't changed the legality of ethics of the act, or the fact that
music has a longer shelf life than a 48K spectrum game, for example.
The duration needs to be appropriate to the subject matter. When
properly used, copyrights and patents are a *good* thing.

 >Before I try and put forward a non ludicrous argument against
 >copyright law I wonder Chris if you would be so kind as to give the
 >group the benefit of your thinking regarding censorship and the
 >internet?

Maybe he will choose to do so anyway, but these are *completely*
unrelated concepts, and I'm not quite sure why you're trying to
connect them...

Tet





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