[Cdn-DMCA] Rights Management Information - some thoughts.

[Tom Trottier]

On Friday, April 05, 2002 at 1:09, farrellj <canada-dmca-
opponents at flora.org>
wrote re "Re: [Cdn-DMCA] Rights Management Information - so" saying:

> On Fri, 5 Apr 2002, Russell McOrmond wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, farrellj wrote:
...
> >   I also don't buy the rhetoric that private copying is harm to the
> > artists.  I believe it is advertising, and thus obviously do not support
> > laws that treat this advertising as a crime.
> 
> 	As I said, to me it is like the Mandelbrot fractal...if you cover
> everything but the edges, you cover most of the problem. It's that last 1 %
> at the boarders that you shouldn't worry about, and that is the public. Mass
> copying by criminal and the industry itself (the so call "cleans") probably
> make up about 99% of all unpaidfor copies. Many of these appear in record
> stores, and we are none the wiser.
...

Some comments:

1. I think that what is repugnant to us all is the extension of 
corporate power into our home. Why should multinationals, or local 
firms, dictate to us what we can do at home with something we buy?

Every road in Canada has a speed limit. But no cars in Canada have 
governors that restrict the cars's speed.

Why should the corporations make (& change) arbitrary rules, for the 
sole purpose of enriching themselves, that can make criminals of us 
while we sit in our living rooms or at our own computer? 

Why should creative works, which we have paid for, self-destruct in 3 
plays or 24 hours, or be inaccessible to us because we use Linux 
instead of Windows?

Let the law govern and protect distribution/publishing actions, not 
personal use.

2. If creative works are so bounded by laws and technology, what 
happens when the technology changes? We can read written works today 
that are 5,000 years old, but can hardly find a reader to read 
computer tapes and disks just 30 years old. 

How much more difficult will it be in the future if ten thousand 
publishers tie up creative works, not just with proprietary 
technology, but with a  thousand different proprietary encodings 
whose purpose is to hide the works? This is book burning with a time 
delay.

So let us not outlaw devices and research. Outlaw commercial piracy 
only.


Tom
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but large things break through and escape.
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