Congressman Hollywood Wants To Make DMCA Tougher 228
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.'"
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.
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)
Re:The more things change ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Cash or charge please...
Scary thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)
[captcha=inputs]
Re:His view? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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.
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.
Hey, I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
But I fear the agreement ends here.
Re:Open source the government (Score:3, Insightful)
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"?
Re:His view? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
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
Re:The more things change ... (Score:1, Insightful)
We are actually hearing about stuff like this going through. In the previous incarnation of congress many small bills with wide effect went through without being reported on. I would rather see the corruption exposed than hidden.
Re:The more things change ... (Score:4, Insightful)
How can you defend the status quo??? (Score:1, Insightful)
First, the idea of "tyranny of the masses" is easily programmed out. Look at the other link already provided in this thread. In their FAQ, they explain how "mob rule" is entirely avoided through simple procedure: http://www.metagovernment.org/faq/ [metagovernment.org] That is nothing like rule by the masses; and yet every single person on the planet can participate.
As for the idea that governments have been well thought through; who is it that has been doing the thinking? A couple of leaders, right? How many people framed the U.S. Constitution? Now compare that tiny pool to the pool of everyone on the internet. If you allow everybody in the world to get together and decide how to formulate the government, wouldn't they have better resources to draw upon? That same website cited above proposes a scoring system not terribly unlike SlashDot's, but with numerous layers and with recursive scoring (so a high score from a person who has a low score doesn't count as much as a high score from a person who has a high score). Let a few billion people play with this system for a few years and do you really think it will still be inferior to the status quo?
Now think of what is NOT solved in the status quo, even in an alleged democracy such as the United States.
Here's how the U.S. picks a President. You as a citizen get to pick from a handful of rich, politically-connected people to represent one of two parties. For most citizens, by the time they get to vote in a primary, the candidate is pretty much already chosen for them. Then you get to vote again! Now you can choose from one of only two ('cause let's be realistic) politically connected rich people, and your vote is aggregated into a state's delegation to the congressional congress. You don't even get to pick who your delegate will be. Those delegates then pick one of those two people to rule the entire county with broad authority. You get no further say at all for four years, and that one person is free to do whatever the hell they want, as long as they don't completely piss off a large majority of the rich, politically connected people in Congress who were picked by the same process.
How is that democracy? It has the semblance of democracy. You get to cast a vote, meaningless though it is. But you get no real say in government unless you "know people."
And what's worse, you could be a genius with a wonderful solution to a significant problem... and you get the same quantity of votes as an idiot who doesn't know the first thing about any issue whatsoever. How is that good?
Yes, we have a nice history to developing our form of government, but sometimes we have to make a radical change. That's what the American Revolution was, after all. It is simply time for us to run another update and use modern technologies to implement something much more democratic. And much more effective.
Jack Johnson vs. John Jackson (Score:2, Insightful)
Fixed it for the Congressman.
Re:Open source the government (Score:3, Insightful)
To address a few other points:
1) The constitution does not grant rights, and the courts cannot uphold them. They are considered 'intrinsic' and are therefore beyond the scope of law to judge. It is the burden of the legislature to prove that its actions do not interfere with the enumerated rights or, very importantly, with the non-enumerated rights guaranteed- but not provided- by the tenth amendment.
2) Separation of powers does not give you certainty that the military will not launch a coup, or that the military will not be used by one branch of government against another. A case in point is the Nullification Crisis of 1832, another would be the 1876 elections in the Southern states.
3) The argument that modern governments (and, by extension, our government) are well thought through is to some degree bolstered by the extraordinary longevity of our constitution, but we must recognize that the elastic clause (article 8, section 18, U.S. Constitution) is not the iron band it once was. The original form of government envisioned by our forefathers is, mercifully , dead. We have since performed massive, but piecemeal, renovations on that framework, and have in doing so created a new form of government which we do not understand very fully. Personally, two quotes come to mind- the first, from the Langoliers, is that "I'm not sure that knowing what that is will save our asses, but I'm damn sure that not knowing will get us killed!", and the second, from Joel on Software, is that "it is easier to write code than to read it", in this case meaning that we had better understand what is changing, and why, if we are to preserve the freedoms we hold dear.
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:1, Insightful)
timocracy (society of honor), oligarchy (the rich rule), democracy (we all rule) and tyranny (one rules).
Self-interest cause timocracies to degenerate into either oligarchies or tyrannies. Oligarchies degenerate into tyrannies as as oligarchies see the need to co-ordinate and work against a common enemy or as one member outmaneuvers/outpowers the others. Tyrannies change into democracies as people revolt. Democracies change into timocracies, oligarchies, or tyrannies as they either take their freedom for granted and non-democratic behaviours to take hold or abuse it to persecute minorities (the Tyranny of the masses) or decay into decadence and need "someone or some group to fix things".
Platos "solution" to the problem is straight out of a B-movie dystopia, so it's not a solution anyone would like.
The American founding fathers were aware of the fragility of democracies and tries to design enough checks and balances to ensure that things wouldn't tilt too far away from the democractic ideal. But even they realized that it might not last forever, so they put the "right to bare arms" in the constitution to ensure that if things got too bad, a revolution could set things right.
But this is a different world. Puny weapons can't compete against weapons of mass destruction or chemical warfare so this right is pretty pointless and only serves to encourage inter-city violence. Globalization allows the super-powerful to gain influence *outside* the American countrol and use their influence to overpower the US. Politicians get praised for their visible programs (e.g. tax cuts or spending) but people don't see their invisible damage (e.g. increasing the govenment debt and thus putting the US in foreign control) and get blamed with they do the right long term things (e.g. pay the debt even if that means tax hikes and spending cuts to get American finance back in American's hands). Computers increasingly provide for 24 hour survallence. And although the amount of data to process is huge, algorithms are being refined to guess if you're trouble and deal with you. The algorithms don't have to be 100% accurate, just "accurate enough" to narrow down the "potential trouble makers" to a small enough group to be handled. Media consolidation has allowed "the one true message" to be sent to all people through enough apparently different sources that they appear to support each other (so they must be true). And TV is turning the US into an "entertainment society" like "Brave New World" where it doesn't matter if you're a mindless slave, as long as you can get your fix of Jerry Springer or "Reality TV" or Internet Porn.
So things look pretty bleak, but there are some signs of hope. On the plus side, the internet allows the free flow of information that's hard to restrict. Stenography and P2P makes filtering even harder. Non-violent influence also carries a lot more weight than it did back in the Founder's day so non-violent revolutions are possible (e.g. like the "Velvet Revolution" or the failed Soviet Coup attempt the tried to reverse Gorbachev's democratic reforms or Gandhi in India) and those methods are well understood (for now at least).
So I have no idea where things are going, but we're definitely living in interesting times.
Re:representation (Score:3, Insightful)
Congressman Howard Berman is reprehensible disgrace and his name and face should be plastered all over the Internet as an example of the kind of tumors who need to be excised from our government. There's a long list of them, too, Democrats and Republicans (to be fair, more GOP than Dems, but they are both well represented). He needs to be publicly disgraced until he resigns. I would much prefer a congressman whose worst offense is propositioning sex partners in public washrooms than one who sucks corporate cock right out in the open like Howard Berman.
Pardon my French.
Re:His view? (Score:3, Insightful)
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 construction crew that built a museum care if you charge a $200 admission and no one comes to the museum? No. They were paid up front.
If the film industry is making to many films and can't afford to hire more crews, again, that's NOT THE MARKET'S FAULT. Don't come crying to me because the second assistant grip has to send his kids to community college. He was paid for his services. If the industry really is losing money and can't afford to hire him, maybe he should be looking for work elsewhere.
Re:Effective protest (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The more things change ... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 idea either.
Re:The more things change ... (Score:3, Insightful)
OK - let's take disposable income, especially the disposable income of the 18 - 30 agegroup that historically purchased the most new music.
Where has that disposable income that used to be spent on CDs gone?
Well, there's been a property boom, so young people wanting to get on the ladder are spending more on mortgages. Mobile phone penetration accounts for a large percentage of the drop in available disposable income, too.
Simplistic assertions that 'piracy' has caused the drop off in sales are nonsense, and I'm not surprised that asshats like you post your RIAA shilling as AC.
If I get to metamod the parent comment, I'll be fully supporting the moderators of the GP, so I'll likely cancel out any of the RIAA cockmunchers that you call friends.