Book People Archive

Re: [ebook-community] Sen. Hollings plans to introduce DMCA sequel: The SSSCA (fwd)

This certainly is directing in the totally wrong direction, where
greed is giving people a kind of totalitarian control over what
people can do in their own private environment. I think we here
have to make a kind choice, whether we want this type of
totalitarian control, for the sake of the interest of a few large
right's holders, or want to continue to respect privacy and
freedom of expression, which will imply that we will have to change
the way copyrights work in an environment that has dramatically
changed since the time that the means of copying data effectively
was in the hands of just a few.

It would be my choice to abolish copyright restrictions altogether
in the private realm -- as we do not consider it worth the invasion
of privacy and totalitarian type of restriction of free speech that
the enforcement of such a copyright would require in the current
state of technology.

Ofcourse we need an alternative plan to continue "supporting the
progress of science and arts", that is, that the creative people
get paid for their work, and one option might be to add a levy to
empty media. These media are still being produced in large plants,
and thus can be effectively controlled, without the unacceptable
impact on privacy and freedom of speech. So far, my major objection
against such a scheme had been that the distribution of such funds
is quite arbitrary and non-transparant. I think that can easily
be solved by making the buyer of the media himself decide where his
levy will go to. -- I can envision a system in which people can
simply send their "copyright money", already paid when they bought
the media, to the author of whatever work they wish to put on it.
Some mechanisms must be build in that nobody will be able to
systematically send all his money to the same author (for example
himself), so people should be limited to paying for one copy (what
is the point of having more copies anyway) of any particular
work. I can envision cryptographic protocols that can achieve this
effect, without giving away the identity of people when it is not
needed.

If people are interested, I can work out the details of such a scheme.
Ofcourse it will also require support from legislation, but
on much less draconion and invasive scale as now proposed.

Jeroen Hellingman.

> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46655,00.html
>            
>     New Copyright Bill Heading to DC
>     By Declan McCullagh (declan@[redacted]
>     4:19 p.m. Sep. 7, 2001 PDT
>
> WASHINGTON -- Music and record industry lobbyists are quietly readying
> an all-out assault on Congress this fall in hopes of dramatically
> rewriting copyright laws.
>
> With the help of Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), the powerful chairman of
> the Senate Commerce committee, they hope to embed copy-protection
> controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs. All types
> of digital content, including music, video and e-books, are covered.