More Longhorn News. Making Music safe.

[drag]

your over-reacting.

TCPA has some anti-free software designs in it, but it's nothing more then anything else that Microsoft gets into. It's more about customer lock-in. The idea is that people will buy their DRM-protected media and games and only be able to play that stuff on Microsoft or Apple (*cou..Itunes..gh*) operating systems.

You'd still be able to install whatever you want on it, nobody is that insane to think that they'd get away with consipiring with other companies to eliminate Windows only remaining compitition. People like to dog on Bush and conservitive-ness in the government, but they are 100x more likely to care more about dairy farmers then Microsoft. (beleive me, they need the votes from the red states). Nobody realy cares and the government is just as likely to use Linux as use Windows.


The more socialist European countries tend to be very economicly protective, true. But kicking Microsoft out would be insane. A large part of their infrastructure is based on Microsoft, like everybody else around the world and it would be stupid to go to economic war over a operating system anyways.

This anti-media player crap is just politics. It's 'oh, American corporation suck! So lets beat up on MS for a bit and make our surfs.. er.. citizens happy'

Same thing with cigerettes here in the US. It wasn't so much trying to stop smoking as letting the states get their cut of the profits by going after politically vunerable industry.

It's all a bunch of crap. Nobody is going to kick Microsoft out of their country. Nobody is going to create incompatable hardware platform just to avoid TCPA.. . It would allow them to impliment some crappy laws and regulations they wouldn't otherwise be able to screw around with.

Worst thing that would happen is they'd raise the Microsoft-will-pay-us-to-do-business-in-Europe tax, ....er sorry anti-monopoly fines... (I forget which BS excuse they used this time to milk money out of business and their citizens.)

If you want proof of what I am saying look at Ireland. They are a fairly small, but politically potent part of europe. Microsoft operations provide a VERY high percentage of their gross national product. And a few other countries in the EU are big freinds with MS.

Thinking that governments will kill off Microsoft is just a pipe dream for some people. Nobody in government realy gives a shit. The most they do is would tax... er sue... Microsoft time to time as a alternate source of income and to use MS as a political football to gain browny points from the more anti-corporate voters.

It's just silly.

China, maybe. But what is the point? Realy. What would it get them?

Nothing. And TCPA is something that would be very attractive to them, it would help with the whole censorhip/we will put you in jail for saying we suck-thing they have going for them.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: drag
Interesting news bit, here relating to DRM and trusted computing and all that in Longhorn.

Basicly the idea is that since PC's are less and less mere 'computers', but more and more consumer devices, that in order to make them palatable for media makers Microsoft (and the rest of the PC industry) needs to make assurances that their digital media data will be safe from their customers.

Some notable notables, like encrypted audio streams all the way thru your computer to be decrypted by your audio card's hardware and revision of the PCIe 1.1 specifications to allow possible 'TCS' devices in the actual PCIe add-on cards so that they can reject working with non-approved software.

Some interesting stuff.

Optical out + optical in = exact digital copy... F U again RIAA.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: drag
Thinking that governments will kill off Microsoft is just a pipe dream for some people.

For the record, I don't want to kill off Microsoft. I just want them to compete fairly, repect the rights of others, and not abuse/manipulate/coerce/mislead to obtain their profits.

 

[tk11]

And I just want the easter bunny to be real.

 

[dev0lution]

Copyright law needs to be reigned in a bit. The extensions granted to media companies on their copyrights is getting to be a bit ridiculous. Things need to become public property after a certain amount of time. Copyrights no longer just protect the author's or artist's ability to make money on their works, but rather fund corporations for perpetuity. Just be sure to vote with your wallets..

 

[drag]

Copyrights, generally, are a very good thing. Trouble is that it's for commercial protections, it's not suppose to allow you to dictate the behaviors of others because they happen to own a copy of your product, which is what the DMCA and similar legislation allows.

Actually I am all about copyrights. They are very good things.

Although currently it's a bit too longterm for my tastes, especially in modern times.

70 years after the original author's death OR 95 years after publication/120 years after creation (which ever is shorter).

Basicly it means that anything created within our lifetime will never become public domain. It's kinda complicated though.
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/expiration.html

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: drag
Copyrights, generally, are a very good thing. Trouble is that it's for commercial protections, it's not suppose to allow you to dictate the behaviors of others because they happen to own a copy of your product, which is what the DMCA and similar legislation allows.

Actually I am all about copyrights. They are very good things.

Although currently it's a bit too longterm for my tastes, especially in modern times.

70 years after the original author's death OR 95 years after publication/120 years after creation (which ever is shorter).

Basicly it means that anything created within our lifetime will never become public domain. It's kinda complicated though.
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/expiration.html

You know what I say? Fsck WIPO. Life of the author plus 50+ years became the standard because Victor Hugo threw a hissy fit (slight exaggeration, but generally factual). Furthermore, "for the life of the author" is criminal. So is retroactive extension (a "Fsck you too" goes out to Disney for this one).

These are the uses of copyright which I recognize (that I can think of right now):

1. to encourage the publication of works by allowing for "reasonable" profit,
2. to protect the reputations of creators of works from plagarism and blatently unskillful knock-offs,
3. to establish a record of authorship, and
4. to give copyleft a basis of legality.

Reason 1 gives publishers, as third parties, an incentive to help distribute culture and professionals the incentive to create in the first place; the use of this is increasingly not needed. Reasons 2 and 3 exist to protect those who fear non-attribution of their works. Reason 4 exists for obvious reasons.

 

[drag]

Well #2 is also to protect the customers, the end users.

You don't want to go buy 'Grand Theft Auto 4' with the box art and the same characters names and places of the the original games, and find out it realy sucks and was realy done by FlyByNight Software out of Miami or something like that (although this is more of a description of trademarks, but you get the idea).

What it all comes down to it, ethicly, is the doctrine of the 'greater good'. At what point does copyright laws/enforcement harm society more then it benifits from it?

It's obviously in our best intrest to have strong copyright protections. People need money to do stuff, the capitolist system is the most efficient way to distribute sociaty's resources that currently exists (although China and Europe seem to be big fans of socialist government combined with limited capitolism is the way to go, which I completely abhor personally. But it seems to be the way things are heading in the US, unfortunately).

So since we determine what gets done in the country by capitalism (you pay money for good stuff, ignore crappy stuff, and therefore more good stuff gets made.) you need copyright to protect that functioning. Personally, I think things like the DMCA crosses the line.

It's like the difference between owning a gun and robbing a bank with it. Applied in those terms the DMCA makes it illegal to OWN a peice of software, rather then violating copyright protections with it.

Without the DMCA the stuff like DRM and TCPA would be fairly pointless. But with the DMCA owning or producing something as simple as a Optical output to Optical input cable that will simply ALLOW you record music digitally is illegal if it can be used to circumvent encryption used in DRM-protected music.

As far as length of copyright protections I figure something like a 40 year copyright from point of creation, or 25-30 year copyright from point of publication would be very cool (which ever is lower) and is much better then the stuff we face now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that copyright protection, should have an upper-bounds limit, not to exceed the life of the author. (The original, actual author of the work, not some corporation. In this plan, authors could in fact sub-license the financial monopoly over the work to a corporation, but they could not, legally, sign over the copyright itself. That should be granted, directly to the author of the work in question.)

The lower-bound limit, which would be variable, would depend on whether or not the work was currently "in publication or distribution", and thus available to the public. If the work isn't available *at all*, then it should be society's collective right, to take and use that work as they wish. If the copyright owner feels that they can no longer obtain any commercial benefit from their work, then at that point, society should be able to make use of it, without penalty. However, I'm actually not suggesting that works would fall into the public domain at that point. I'm suggesting that after two years have passed, without the work being "officially" available, then not-for-profit (non-commercial) duplication/distribution/derivation should be legally allowed. If, at some point, due to a resurgance in interest, the publisher feels that they can again obtain commercial benefit from that work, then they should put it back into "official" publication/distribution, and at that point, any futher not-for-profit duplication should cease, or be punishable.

That way, the copyright owner doesn't have the ability to "hide" the work from the public, because that would be against the original spirit of copyright law. (In order to enrich society as a whole, by *encouraging* authors/artists to publish their creative works, rather than hide them away privately - in exchange for a limited-time monopoly over their works. IOW, a "bribe", a form of financial motivation, to encourage them to disclose their works to the public.) If the copyright owner does this, then after two years, the public is free to non-commercially utilize the work. The reason that it must be non-commercial, is because the original intent of copyright law was based in civil law, and if the original author is not selling the work, then any non-commercial duplication of the work isn't costing them any money/profit either, so there are no damages for them to sue for. However, they do not stop being the copyright owner, until their death, at which point ownership of the work passes to society in general, as their work becomes public-domain. (This would explicitly not allow the copyright to be passed down to heirs - since it is not real property at all, but simply a limited gov't-conferred right, which can also be revoked at any time by the gov't. Unlike real/private property, which the gov't has no right to take without just compensation.) Any 3rd-party interested in commercial use/republication/derivation of the work, could still license said work from the copyright owner. So this would still be in keeping with the protection of the author, financially. As a bonus, the non-commercial circulation/distribution/use of the work, could well actually be a factor leading to an increase in the popularity of the work, and thus lead to the original author re-publishing it and benefiting commercially from it. It really seems like a win-win situation all around, at least to me.

Also, I would change how software copyrights are given out. In keeping with the original spirit of copyright law, protections would only be extended to human-viewable/readable works. That means, compilied binary computer code would not be given copyright protection, *except* as a mathematical/logical "derivative work" of the original work, the human-readable/human-authored source code. That means, in order for software to be extended copyright protection at all, then the full source-code must be placed in deposit with the Libary of Congress.

The reason for that is, what is the "benefit to society", currently, after the copyright expires on a work made of compiled binary computer software? The computer systems capable of running those programs are long since obsolete, and that work cannot be re-used by society, like books and paintings can, to inspire the creation of other works, because the source code is long since gone and not visiable at all. Where are the masterful data-structures and algorithms used? It's like.. putting a book or a painting through a shredder first, and then given the public the bits and pieces left over, as "public domain". It's useless at that point.

So in effect, software authors/publishers, that are obtaining copyright protection for compiled works, without the corresponding source code, are stealing from the public, because they are obtaining a benefit, but not returning anything substantial back to society. Society, is getting a raw deal here.

But because copyright law protects against un-authorized derivative works, it would work to require the source code of the original work on file, and it would also work to prevent theft and re-use of source code outright, in other commercial works, that were not licensed as legal derivative works of the original. It would also make it far easier, for the courts to scan two pieces of software, for potentially-infringing code. (This would make the courts more efficient as well, esp. when dealing with software copyright-infringement issues.)

See, it really could all work out... if companies weren't so da** greedy about things all of the time.

 

[Philippine Mango]

I swear to go were going to go into the dark ages all because of friggen bill gates and his damn DRM. I'm telling you guys, it's just like deus ex....