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.'"
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.
Re:The more things change ... (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 right mind would want to download this ooze?
A small CD replication firm has given me a per-unit CD price quote of 24 cents in a 25,000 quantity. Based on the numbers the recording companies sell (in the millions) I suspect their actual product cost is about 10 cents each. At an average retail price of $19.95 for a music CD - of which about 25 cents is for artist royalties - that leaves about $10 profit for the recording companies after the wholesale costs are subtracted. When you sell something at 100 times your cost, I can't help wondering who the "real" pirates are in this industry.
If the energy companies sold power to California at 100 times their cost, this would be a much different conversation. I guess laws regarding greed don't apply to the liberal-dominated entertainment industry.
No wonder many new artists (including myself) are opting for publishing direct via the internet. Even if we sell less copies, we make much more than the 10-cent per unit pittance the record labels "give" us.
In spite of an economy that has been declining for almost two years - with a corresponding decrease in consumer purchasing power, the music industry's greed has basically put themselves out of business. Lowering prices a few percent won't bring people back in the stores.
Henry Ford senior had it right: "the only thing that makes something not sell is too high a price."
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.
Re:How can you defend the status quo??? (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
And that's precisely what it says on that same website [metagovernment.org]:
"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1810
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"
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.
Re:Open source the government (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Open source the government (Score:2, Interesting)
I didn't know Switzerland failed to survive. It the most well known example of direct democracy. You just wrote that paragraph without checking any fact. With two minutes searching on the Internet, you could have come up with this example.
Re:Open source the government (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Open source the government (Score:1, Interesting)
The first census here counted 4 million Americans. My state has more than that now. Heck, there are 2 *cities* which *each* have more than that population. The geographic area of the country is several times larger, as well.
Is there any shame in saying "well, maybe it didn't scale up 2 orders of magnitude so well"? If I built something for 20 people, and along came 3000 people, it probably wouldn't work as-is. And I'm OK with that! So throw it out and build something better suited to it. Social structures tend to scale very poorly; imagine one teacher for 20 students, and then for 3000 students.
Sure, direct democracy in the past hasn't lasted. Before 1776, representative democracy hadn't lasted, either. The experiment started by Adams, Washington, Franklin, and the rest has worked remarkably well, for over 10 generations. Bravo. But I don't think anybody would claim that nothing has changed.
Nobody is proposing to "ignore thousands of years of history". (If we were, we might be proposing something that sounds good but failed, like socialism!) We want to learn from it, and build something better. Maybe it's never been done before, but the last time we tried something new in this country, it worked really well. It seems weird to argue in favor of the status quo when it was itself revolutionary in its heyday.
If you want to argue from history, I'd say having rulers thousands of miles away deciding policies for you hasn't worked out, and that's exactly what we have today. To pretend that nothing has changed since 1776, on the other hand, would be to ignore history.