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Congressman Hollywood Wants To Make DMCA Tougher
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Dec 13, 2007 01:53 PM
from the who-elects-these-guys dept.
from the who-elects-these-guys dept.
Stormy seas writes "Congressman 'Hollywood' Howard Berman (D-CA) used a House subcommittee hearing today to express his view that the DMCA was in need of a rewrite. In his view, it doesn't go far enough. During his opening remarks for a hearing on the PRO-IP Act, Berman said that the DMCA's Safe Harbor needs further scrutiny and that it might be time to make filtering mandatory. There's more: Berman also 'wants to examine the "effectiveness of takedown notices" under the DMCA, and he'd like to take another look at whether filtering technology has advanced to the point where Congress ought to mandate it in certain situations.'"
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Your Rights Online: Congress Creates Copyright Cops 533 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Not satisfied with pitiful potential penalties of $150,000 for infringing upon a $0.99 song, Congress is proposing new copyright cops in the "'PRO IP' Act of 2007, specifically the creation of the Office of the United States Intellectual Property Enforcement Representative (USIPER). They also feel that the authorities need the authority to seize any computers used for infringement and to send copyright cops abroad to help other countries enforce US laws. MPAA boss Dan Glickman praised the bill saying that, 'films left costs foreign and domestic distributors, retailers and others $18 billion a year,' though Ars points out that it allegedly costs the studios only $6 billion."
Submission: Congressman Hollywood wants to revisit DMCA by Anonymous Coward
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The more things change ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And to think, I was happy when the Democrats took control of Congress back in November.
Meet the new schmucks, same as the old schmucks.
Re:The more things change ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cash or charge please...
Parent
Re:The more things change ... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a saying in poker: If you look around the table and you can't tell who the sucker is... it's you.
Why do we still think that we can swing between two parties that are the same in so many ways and have real change? Who's the real schmuck in that case?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Although articles abound (expecially those originating from the offending industry) claiming huge losses because of the so-called "piracy" in the music industry, it also was absent the reasons why downloading is so popular.
First of all, the "music" (a loosely used term) that the music industry foists upon us - the genre called "(C)rap" - is not very popular outside of the audience that has an intellect that is easily overwhelmed by common cockroaches. So who in their
Re:The more things change ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The more things change ... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Re:The more things change ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast majority of elected politicians have been in their offices for so long, they don't know what it's like to live in the real world under the laws that they have created, modified, or otherwise butchered. They're protected from these things. Then, every November, we go back only to send the same clowns right back in or send a clone in who may or may not be wearing the same letter (R or D) on his or her jacket. Once they get there, they're all the same... not really trying to do their jobs, but doing just enough to make sure they get all the special interest money to get reelected.
What will it take for the "middle" to finally get out there and say, "Enough is enough! We're tired of the status quo and want someone who has personal integrity and will do the job we sent him there to do"?
Parent
Re:The more things change ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And since his district includes parts of Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley, it's likely that anyone who replaced him would be just as favorable to the film industry.
Parent
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Anyone who has been in politics that long is virtually guarenteed to be completly out of touch with the real world. What's needed is something a long time lines of "no person can be in public office longer that 5 years in any one decade and no longer than a total of 10 years in their lifetime". Upping the minimum age of US Senators to 60 probably wouldn't be a bad
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You or your kid get caught doing something that they media
cartels don't approve of. It doesn't even have to be immoral
(much like drugs). So you get caught doing this dastardly
thing (like playing DVDs on your video ipod) and get all of
your computer equipment confiscated.
It's all OK because no one was killed... right?
Statutory damages are already out of hand.
There is already a federal enforcement agency to handle this stuff when it's a crime (FBI).
Letting
Wow. (Score:2)
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Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Their first attempts were very crude, and basically involved having operators inspect each packet by hand before allowing them to be sent. This was slow and time consuming, and delayed packet switching so badly that the Net in Germany became near unusable. As the Nazis wanted to be able to monitor communications, rather than simply eliminating communication, they knew they needed a better way.
They weren't able to come up with automated solutions until 1941, and even then they were slow and unreliable. The first techniques involved large machines with automated "hands" to pick out the packets and text scanners to look for offending text. However, the machines broke down frequently, and were easily defeated by employing simple encoding such as rot13, or even by intentionally misspelling banned words.
It wasn't until late 1944 that they were able to come up with a fully digital process, but of course by then it was too late to do much good.
Parent
His view? (Score:5, Insightful)
If not, then why is he pushing for greater power?
(In an ideal world, corporations are not constituents. People are)
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Wait... you don't really believe that "by the people for the people" thing, do you?
Re:His view? (Score:5, Insightful)
"The representative from Hollywood" isn't just hyperbole. He represents the 28th congressional district in California [wikipedia.org], which includes [govtrack.us] parts of Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. People in the film industry are his constituents.
Parent
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Re:His view? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everyone in the industry is a mogul.
Allowing the fat cats to get all megalomaniacal because they
are all getting hysterical about "evil pirates" and such does
nothing to help 99.9% of the people in Mr. Hollywood's district.
Parent
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The vast majority of the people who work on a film set (caterers, electricians, photographers, camera crew, hairdressers, costume managers, props masters, set builders, etc.) are all paid up front. They do a job and are paid for it, just like any other contractor. Once they are finished, they receive no more money.
If your film does not make money because you priced it high and no one wants to buy it, it does not affect these people. Does the
Scary thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)
[captcha=inputs]
Business as usual (Score:2)
So the story is that yet another Congressman is proving himself to be an idiot. If he makes enough noise, he'll probably be indicted in a few years for some sort of unrelated wrongdoing. Welcome to the world of politics. Next time elect a better representative. Or even better, get involved and run for yourself. While I don't al
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Damages aren't enough already? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure damages are about steep enough as it is. Something $250,000 per album is the metric I think. Correct if me I'm wrong, that's just what I've seen suits for ip infringement go for (RIAA). I sincerely hope this guy does not get his way. With breaking net neutrality and introducing content filtering on the table I worry for the future of the web.
Hey, I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
But I fear the agreement ends here.
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How to tell when filtering is ready (Score:2)
In other words -- never.
More action, less whining? (Score:2)
Easy: No copyrighted stuff allowed over IP (Score:2)
(hopefully everyone can recognize this as satire)
This is big. Write your congressmen now! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear <Fill in the blank>,
I understand that the House Judiciary Committee recently introduced the PRO-IP act. I've read that Representative Berman of California has even discussed a congressional mandate of filtering technology. (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071213-time-to-revisit-the-dmca.html)
As a computer programmer, I generate intellectual property and I am all for tough laws to protect my rights. However, as a citizen, I am far more concerned about laws that force companies to raise their prices without benefiting their consumers (which is simply the equivalent of a tax on everyone that's spent on projects benefiting only a very few) and my personal freedoms.
The success of the Internet is entirely due to the ability of telecom providers to do their job: facilitate communication. They are not liable if a telephone or internet connection is used for committing a crime. The actual criminal is. As a consumer, I don't want to pay more for telecommunications because hollywood is too cheap to pursue legal action against pirates. After all, I don't ask the government to pay to put an alarm system on my home or car. Hollywood should bear the expense of protecting their intellectual property and pass that on to their customers so we all pay for the cost of producing movies and music based on how much of it we consume.
Furthermore, I have a much deeper concern about a congressional requirement for filtering technology. It is simply one more step towards a totalitarian state of big government with too much power. In America, we enjoy freedom of speech and press not only because our constitution mandates it, but because the free market has created the technology to facilitate it. Unlike in other countries such as China or North Korea, the government simply can't restrict speech because no one in America would obey such unconstitutional laws or policies. If the government puts in place a system that can limit what information can flow freely over the Internet, we're simply one law or government policy away from destroying the first amendment. Free speech is far to important to the American way of life to wait for the courts to declare such a thing unconstitutional.
Whether the technology is there or not, please vote against any legislation that attempts to mandate that internet service providers and/or telecommunications companies filter the information they are charged with transmitting on behalf of their customers. Such a policy would be devastating to both our economy and our democracy.
Sincerely,
Adam Carheden
Wait, there's more... (Score:2)
In other© news, C-SPAN(TM) has issued a press release(TM) supporting this as "double-plus good legislation®", and promising to do its part to aggressively defend its intellectual property, including all recordings and the C-SPAN(TM) logo from unauthorized
Once again... (Score:5, Interesting)
Politics is the enemy of technology.
It seems that the priorities of our politicians lie not with expanding the market for new technologies and benefitting the whole of the United States, but rather, with protecting the outdated market models of a few dominant players in the industry. It occurs neither to the politicians nor the industry that there is a lot of money to be made by embracing technology. If you want examples, look at Google. Look at Microsoft.
But instead of the RIAA and MPAA embracing technology, building new markets, and experiencing the stock-increase-frenzy of being the Next Big Thing(TM), they seek to expand copyright law, stifle the market, and strangle the industry. And when their efforts don't produce the increases they seek, what do they do? Blame piracy, of course!
Of course the artists are starving; the record companies don't know how to sell music!
And we're slipping farther along into becoming the technological backwater of the first world. Truly sad, that technology is being vilified for the evil that can be done with it, rather than the good that it already does society.
It must be nice to have a job where you can always blame your poor performance on the actions of others.
dear washington dc (Score:3, Interesting)
you frequently scold the theocracy in tehran on limitations on personal freedoms due to the need for a "virtuous" society
you frequently scold the autocracy in moscow in limitations ono personal freedoms due to the pressing need for "strength" in society
well, at least those assholes pretend to be working for the common in man in their evil propaganda
pray tell, when you sublimimated your understanding of what the founding father meant in the founding documents of this country to become a whore of a corporatocracy, did you even blink?
a corporation is an all consuming machine. it will destroy our culture by putting toll booths on every derivative of every utterance possible if they could with their legions of lawyers. in order to make one penny more
but there is more riches in this world than corporate coffers. cultural riches: books, music, movies. our shared cultural inheritance
and you can't even sing happy birthday without owing someone something
fucking h christ, this wrong
i'm not talking to you, mr. whore of the corporatocracy in washington dc, you're already bought and sold, a slave. you're unredeemable, pointless, corrupt. a waste of effort
i'm talking to you, average american in the street: fight back against these corporations, use every technological and socially disruptive means at your disposal. corporations are giant sucking vampires, that will mindlessly encroach more and more on our public domain, and they will not stop until even every single thought you possess has a price tag on it
bring the fucking corporations down, bring them to heel, break them. bring them to respect OUR shared cultural space. they will not do it. their paid whores in washington dc will not do it. only we can do it, the citizens the founding fathers had in mind, which aren't even considered in the decision making halls in washington dc anymore apparently on questions of media and its rightful relationship to our consumption as our shared heritage
Filtering is definitely required... (Score:5, Interesting)
I say we squeeze them so tight they literally crap themselves when they take "campaign contributions" from big business. I say we make the task of keeping track of all that "soft" money and other contributions so onerous that it will be more than it is worth -- for the most part. I say we, the people, take back our country (for those of us who live in the USA) and make the politicians once more SERVE the people and not their own self-interest, pocketbooks, or corporate greed.
I know this will probably never happen, at least not in my lifetime, but it is a nice dream to have.
Here is a parting quote I found interesting many years ago (and still do):
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commissioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
Sigh ... (Score:3)
Someone needs to explain to these people that mucking about with the core infrastructure on the presumption that every single action is likely infringing is just asinine.
Would this same congressman want that all cars have a breathalyzer interlock, because there could be drunk drivers? Or, have us prove that we're not about to commit wire fraud every time we dial the phone? Or, how about ensuring that every time you drive near a school zone you prove that you're not a registered child molester? Because, that's the level of burden he's placing on the industry with these laws.
The problem with these legislated methods of making the ISPs responsible for monitoring everything we do on the basis that some small subset of people are doing something illegal; is, that only that subset of people are doing something illegal. You can't realistically but the burden (and cost) of DRM and content filtering on absolutely everything onto everyone else.
The overwhelming majority of us aren't in the middle of stealing your damned movies or music; don't overburden the entire system (at someone else's expense) as a dragnet. If you think someone is infringing, go ahead, chase them, but we can't force the entire infrastructure of the internet to be built around protecting the interests of a few large companies.
This is trying to get the wishes of these big media companies paid for at taxpayers expense. Though, since apparently the US is pondering adding a copyright enforcement agency, maybe that battle has already been won.
Cheers
Hollywood Showdown (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'd really like to see would be a Congress enforce the Constitution, which says Congress can infringe our rights to free expression only to promote science and the useful arts by securing for limited time exclusive rights of authors to exploit their own work. Since exclusivity is at its lowest utility to protect motivating return on investment as it ever was, and free dissemination is at its greatest utility, I'd expect that limited time to be the shortest in history, at most its original 14 years, if not eliminated entirely.
But then I guess Hollywood Berman would have nothing to do.
Re:Open source the government (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, Direct Democracy (rule by consensus of the masses) has been considered many times in history. Unfortunately, no such democracy really got off the ground or survived. There are simply too many competing interests to make it viable. In the few instances where there is a consensus, a Tyranny of the Masses [wikipedia.org] can often create worse conditions for some individuals. Effectively, you have no real justice.
Representational Democracies are intended to blend the best aspects of consensus with the best aspects of a Benevolent Dictator [wikipedia.org]. (An example of such a dictator was Emporor Trajan [wikipedia.org] of the Roman Empire.) By electing someone to represent their views, the majority is able to have their viewpoints expressed but with their competing interests solved at the level of the representative. The representatives then work out their differences and come to an agreement that (if they're doing their job correctly) generally pleases the people they represent.
Of course, what is to stop the representatives from carrying out tyranny against people they do not represent? What is to prevent them from creating unjust conditions for individuals in their attempts to improve the life of the majority of those they represent? Worse yet, what is to prevent an official that the representatives grant power to from using that power to take control? (e.g. The Roman Republic being overthrown to become the Roman Empire.) That's where checks and balances step in.
In modern democracies, these checks tend to take the form of legalistic means or division of power. The U.S. Constitution, for example, grants basic rights which are then upheld by the courts. It is the responsibility of the Supreme Court to ensure that the representatives never override the intent of the basic rights granted by the Constitution. Another example is the control of the military. The direct control of military assets in the U.S. are divided among individual states. Funding for those assets is controlled by Congress. Use of the assets is controlled by the President, but War may not be declared without the approval of Congress.
This division of power ensures that neither the President or Congress can turn the military on their own people. Those in the military report to the President of the United States, but their actual responsibility is to the citizens and the states. (In ancient Rome, the responsibility of the soldiers was to their commander. A mistake that allowed Julius Caesar to seize control.)
What I'm getting at is that the design for modern governments has been well thought through. There are a lot of reasons behind the layout of our governments, and they are (to date) the best balance for free societies that history has been able to produce. Simply throwing away the government in favor of anarchy ignores the thousands of years of history that have lead to the abolishment of empires and dictator rule.
Today's governments can still be improved, but let's make sure we're making those improvements with a full awareness of what our ancestors learned.
Parent
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Technology has never been as large an effector in society as it is today. I see modern technology as being able to allow more fine-grained governing while also dealing with the mammoth problems that come from large populations and legal systems.
Technology is becoming more and more a part of the governmental process worldwide, does it make sense that we should require our leaders to have at least some level of technical sop
Re:Open source the government (Score:4, Interesting)
The governments of the world, if they were not effected by technology, would still be fighting wars using rocks and sticks and would not be taxing or regulating driving a car. Stories like Watergate may have never broken, and Tienamen Square almost certainly not. Our entire economy would be quite different if it wasn't for large sea-traveling things called ships which allow for import and export of goods.
People are running political campaigns online now. The people in Washington are trying to get a grasp on what "digital" means in connection with "copyright". They realize that it doesn't take thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours to make a printing press followed by a substantial effort to make a pamphlet. They also realize it takes just a few moments to get an entire book, movie, or music album copied now. That's why they're trying to adapt. They're clueless about it, and are doing a generally bad job. The next generation of people won't be.
The thing I find most humorous is this is largely the rebellious, rioting, demonstrating, power-fighting generation of the 1960's that is trying to squash the expression and civil disobedience of a younger generation. What's that old saying about maturity, that "Youth is when you blame everything on your parents, while maturity is when you learn everything is the fault of the younger generation." See, the problem is the 60's generation didn't grow up -- they just sold out. They changed what they believe and are still blaming everything on someone other than themselves. Meanwhile, the people who think it's wrong to upload copyrighted content for the whole world but who borrow an MP3 or two here or there are being made villains in the press and before Congress like they're pressing disks and making millions of dollars in some back alley.
Parent
Re:Open source the government (Score:5, Informative)
The founders were smarter than that. The US Constitution instead assumes that people have these rights (as expressed in the Declaration of Independence), and limits government interference with them. Read the 1st amendment: "Congress shall make no law...", later clarified to mean that no branch of the government at any level can do those things (interfere with speech, religion, the press, gathering).
Parent
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The U.S. Constitution, for example, grants basic rights which are then upheld by the courts.
Not to be terribly pedantic, but it's been mentioned here on numerous occasions that the constitution doesn't grant rights. Our rights are innate to our existence, and thus the constitution only mandates that laws are not created that might abridge our innate rights. And, it lists a few of the big ones, though it recognizes that there are others. At most, the constitution enumerates what aspects of governing the federal government can control, leaving everything else to states and the people.
Our representa
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The failure of our current representative democracy is that of education.
In part, I would agree. But I'd like to point out that it's likely that the failure is the direct result of letting every Tom, Dick and Harry vote. It was not always so.
If voting were limited once again to landowners (or real estate), people who are educated enough to have and keep a home, things would turn around pretty quick for the better.
Not against women voting, or "men of color", but it'd be nice if there were a responsibility requirement.
representation (Score:2)
I think the biggest problem today (besides corporate sponsorship) with the US government is that the representatives are elected by their constituent states. When a congressman thinks of "his people", he does not think of "Americans", he thinks of all the people back in Timbucktoo, Alabama that need a new hickway, erm Highway to Wockahooey, Alabama so he can get elected again. Meanwhile all his
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Actually in this case of "Congressman 'Hollywood' Howard Berman (D-CA)" his "people" are the corporate masters who sponsored the DMCA to begin with and who slip fat envelopes into Congressman Berman's pocket, via lobbyists, PACs and sleazy players.
Congressman Howard Berman is reprehensible disgrace and his name and face should be plastered all over the
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