Berners-Lee Speaks Out Against DRM, Advocates Net Neutrality

narramissic writes "Speaking before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee advocated for net neutrality, saying that the Web deserves 'special treatment' as a communications medium to protect its nondiscriminatory approach to content. Berners-Lee's more controversial statements came on the topic of DRM, in which he suggested that instead of DRM, copyright holders should provide information on how to legally use online material, allowing users the opportunity 'to do the right thing.' This led to an odd exchange with Representative Mary Bono who compared Berner-Lee's suggestion to 'having a speed limit but not enforcing the speed limit.'"

Bono's Patent Comment

[nameer]

FTFA: But Bono said strong protections for digital content are needed. "With great respect to Steve Jobs, he's trying to sell hardware, first and foremost," she said. "I wonder if he would feel the same way about his patents being on the Internet free of patent protection."

Umm... They are, at www.uspto.gov. There is no "patent protection" keeping people from the information. If Steve wants to enforce his patents, he can file a civil suit, but the information in the patents themselves is available to all.

Re:For once "education" is in fact needed

[shark72]

"For reasons of fairness, people also need to be taught that it's not a crime -- it is a tort (which has a victim by definition). Since it's a tort, it is up to the victim, not the police, to enforce this law."

In the United states, it's both. This is what the "severe civil and criminal penalties" phrase means on the FBI warnings on DVDs, but I'm guessing most people reading this get their movies via BT with the FBI warning redacted.

If anybody's interested, here's the relevant section of US copyright law [copyright.gov] that covers criminal infringement and penalties. With the bar being only $1K retail value, it's pretty easy for your average kid with a share directory to cross into criminal territory (that's only a thousand songs) but so far, copyright holders have limited themselves to civil suits in the case of garden variety file sharers.

The police can and do enforce S506, but it's typically for instances where the infringement is north of $50K or so. News of criminal convictions shows up on Slashdot from time to time.

Re:Driving LESS THAN the speed limit is illegal to

[fourchannel]

It's not even the same as that, because driving more than 20 MPH lower than the posted speed limit is illegal.

That's not quite true. It depends on, for a few things, the state you're in, interstate vs. municiple streets, etc.

For example: I can bring my car to a dead stop, legally, on a city street. If I go to the interstate, I must go at least 40 mph.

This has nothing to do with sensible driving, but the legality of it. If I drove 40 mph on the interstate I would greatly endanger everyone from going painfully slow.

background on Mary Bono

[nandnor]

for anyone who doesn't know the backstory, she is the widow of faux hippie turned politician Sonny Bono, who is best known for:

The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998--alternatively known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act or pejoratively as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act--extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Before the act (under the Copyright Act of 1976), copyright would last for the life of the author plus 50 years, or 75 years for a work of corporate authorship; the act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and 95 years respectively. The act also affected copyright terms for copyrighted works published prior to January 1, 1978, increasing their term of protection by 20 years as well. This effectively 'froze' the advancement date of the public domain in the United States for works covered by the older fixed term copyright rules. Under this act, no additional works made in 1923 or afterwards that were still copyrighted in 1998 will enter the public domain until 2019...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Bono_Copyright_ Term_Extension_Act [wikipedia.org]

and here's something from her entry in Wikipedia:

Bono said in May 2006 that she depended on royalties from Sonny Bono's estate to supplement her US$165,200 congressional salary in order pay her son's college expenses. In addition, in 2006, it was reported that she had received $30,000 from the later-indicted Jack Abaramoff.[7][8] In her official 2005 filing, Bono stated that her income from royalties and dividends was between US$402,000 and US$3.3 million

Insert your punchline here!