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Antie
Skeptic Friend
USA
101 Posts |
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Lars_H
SFN Regular
Germany
630 Posts |
 Posted - 06/16/2002 : 03:07:06 [Permalink]
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Senator Hollings and his crazy ideas are an emrassment fot the United States. Not only does he not even make an attempt to hide the fact, that he is owned, body and soul, by Disney and the entertainment industry he also demonstrates openly, that he has no idea what the hell he is talking about.
I know that politicians are not known for being able to think things through, but this law is rediculous.
It basically outlaws any form of soft- or hard-ware that does not include approved copy-protection.
You might not think this a big problem at first glance. Diskdrives would get an extra-chip and get a bit more expensive and programms like Windows-Media-Player or real player would get a few more lines of code and crash a bit more often. Not much of an inconvenience, is it?
But the Bill would aply to any 'digital media device' that can display or reproduce copyrighted works. That definition includes a lot. The simpelst DOS commands to copy or edit text-files would fall in that definition. It would basically abolish open-source software and cancel the fair-use exception for copyrighted work. It would override court decisions that made VCRs and MP3-players legal in the US. There is no way to guess how the law will extend to the Net but you better prepare for the worst case scenario.
The Bill pretends to do something for the consumer but it is obvious that it is written in favour of the entertainment industry. The ones opposing them are the high-tech industry like microsoft, who realize that the bill would be very harmfull to their industry. It takes no genius to figure out, that ones everybody has reached an agreement the consumers will be the last to profit from it.
I would gloat about the stupidity of US lawmakers, if the EU had not recently abolished privacy on the net to show that they don't have a clue either.
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2002 : 15:26:09 [Permalink]
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Consider some of the avatars on this website. Some are copyrighted although i don't feel badly about using them as avatars myself I could face jail time if this bill passes. I could go on and on but i suggest people read this article instead: http://news.com.com/2009-1023-877317.html
 @tomic
Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law! |
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ktesibios
SFN Regular
USA
505 Posts |
Posted - 06/27/2002 : 01:40:34 [Permalink]
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Actually, if the CBDTPA goes through it will have a pronounced negative effect on the entertainment industry as well- at least the part of it that actually produces the "content" the suits are so up in arms to "protect".
A few-odd examples: the recording industry isn't tape-based anymore. The vast majority of the sessions I see are using multitrack digital workstations- and the de facto industry standard, ProTools, runs on a Mac platform.
Apart from the question of what the gummint-approved anti-copy features would do to such a production system, and what hoops we'd have to jump through to get some work done, the bill would make it illegal to "traffic in" the old non-policeware systems. Now, the studio where I work currently owns 9 48-channel ProTools rigs, and we're in the process of migrating from the older 24-bit 48 kHz systems to the new 24/192 system.
Normally, what happens is that we sell the old rigs to someone a step lower on the food chain and put the money into upgrading. That's how we made the transition out of tape-based recording. But, if trafficking in non-policeware systems becomes illegal, that won't be possible.
Wonderful. Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of capital equipment rendered essentially valueless. The boss'll just LOVE that.
Also, some of the things we do would be indistinguishable from piracy to an anti-copy system as paranoid as the suits will doubtless demand. Several times in the last few weeks I've taken an audio CD, ripped it to an mp3 file and either emailed it to someone or uploaded it to an ftp site.
Now, an RIAA-approved copy prohibit system would surely look at what I was doing and conclude that I was engaging in piracy.
Nope. That's just how one gets a mix from LA to a label zark in, say, New York or London when it's too late at night to FedEx out a CD or a DAT.
If we can't do that sort of thing anymore, then mixes will just have to left up (meaning that you can't start on the next one)while a physical medium gets shipped to wherever for approval. When the cost of leaving a room set up is 3 grand a day, not counting the engineer's fee, it's going to have a bite.
Also, a great deal of the tracking for pop, R&B and hip-hop music is done in "project" studios, i.e., someone's home setup, using systems based on home computer platforms. This saves quite a bit of money in production by avoiding the need to buy studio time for every bit of recording. CBDTPA-mandated copy-protection will doubtless have a negative effect on that as well.
Those are just three of the things that pop into my mind about how the CBDTPA can screw up the process of making music commercially. Odds are that the film industry would also suffer similar effects, but I'm not well-versed enough in the techie aspects of that industry to spot them.
I remember the RIAA's jihad against the RDAT format, and what a clusterf***k that was. This aims to be a lot worse.
As I've said before, this industry used to be run by thugs and gangsters. Now it's run by a bunch of lawyers and MBAs and things. The thugs and gangsters had better ears and broader minds- and now it's looking like they had more common sense as well.
Ford, there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out. |
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