Intellectual Property

You may have been following the controversy over Sony's decision to ship a CD with software on it that takes over the  computer it runs on, preventing the owner of the computer from removing the copy protection software, and also allegedly acting as spyware (sending information back to Sony).  There's a new development: the Texas Attorney General has decided to sue Sony for this decision.  The lawsuit surprised the hell out of me; since when does government stand up for the people to a corporation like Sony?  On the national level, government has been bought by the media industry.  It seems local governments may still have a role to play in curbing the abuse of customers.

Of course, this issue is mostly academic for me; the first thing I do with a new music CD is get a full-quality (lossless) digital copy onto my computer... running Linux.  Then I put the CD away and listen to the digital copy.  So far, I've only had to go back to the originals once, when I decided to use a lossloss compression format (flac) rather than a lossy format (mp3/ogg).  But the real point is, since I'm running Linux, I don't have anything to fear from Sony's rootkit or any other Windows-based copy protection.

Of course, I don't distribute the result, I just listen to it. 

UPDATE: Wondering how big a deal this is?  Researchers have discovered a way to guage the spread of Sony's rootkit through the internet (by analyzing DNS cache data, if you're curious).  They produced a graphic showing the spread.  It's a big deal, folks.

This case involves the DMCA. DirecTV (a company providing television services using smart cards) is suing several people who have purchased smart card writing equipment. Apparantly DirecTV is under the impression that the only possible use of that equipment is for writing smart cards to illegally decode their TV signals, and that this somehow gives them the right to prevent people from purchasing that equipment entirely.

What we have here is a House bill that effectively allows a collection of facts (for example, a database of phone numbers, like the phone book) to be treated by the courts as property. I can perceive their motivation -- that is, corporations want to have some property right with respect to the information they collect on their customers -- but there are a lot of potential problems with this rule.

The law also covers "collections of data" like, for example, building codes. Yes, laws can become the private property of businesses, off-limits for personal reproduction and use. It's apparantly fairly lucrative if you can secure a monopoly on the right to publish the legal code of your city, county, or state! In the case of building codes, anyone who wants to build a new building or modify an older one needs to come to you and buy a copy of the laws they are required to follow.

And that's not even getting into issues like the AMA owning the billing codes hospitals use on itemized bills, so that if you want to decode your hospital bill you need to talk to -- and probably pay -- the AMA.

Read this good summary of the issues. And if you don't like what you see, complain to the committee members.

A California appeals court on Friday overturned as unconstitutional a 1999 trade secret injunction against Andrew Bunner that prohibited him from distributing the DeCSS DVD decryption computer code. The court found there was no evidence that the Content Scrambling System (CSS) encryption technology used in DVD movie disks was still a trade secret by the time that Bunner posted DeCSS code on his website. The Court therefore held that the injunction violated Bunner's constitutional free-speech rights.

"We are thrilled that the Appeal Court recognized that the injunction restricting Andrew Bunner's freedom of speech was not justified," said EFF Staff Attorney Gwen Hinze. "The Court's ruling that there was no evidence that CSS was still a trade secret when Bunner posted DeCSS vindicates what we have said all along: DeCSS has been available on thousands of websites around the world for many years."

The Justice Department said Wednesday it has formed an intellectual-property task force to analyze how the department addresses issues like piracy of software, music and movies.

Led by David Israelite, deputy chief of staff and counselor to the attorney general, the task force will also recommend what the Justice Department should do in the future to combat unauthorized use of copyright material.

The announcement took place on the same day that a House judiciary subcommittee unanimously approved a bill that would punish file swappers with up to three years in jail for first offenses, and up to six for repeat offenses.

Remember, the only thing p2p technology can share is information. Any attempt to deal with copyright violations must take the First Amendment into account.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is reporting that the broadcast flag requirement will be offered as an amendment in the Senate committee on Tuesday, June 21st, 2005:

 The Broadcast Flag was Hollywood's plan to point its remote control at your digital TV. It was a set of bits in the DTV standard that let broadcasters meddle with what could be done with publicly available broadcast video - even if those restrictions stomped on your fair use rights.

The courts struck down the original FCC proposal. Now, the lobbyists have turned to Congress. Rumor has it that a senator will introduce an amendment on Tuesday in the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science sub-committee to reintroduce the flag. On Thursday, it goes to a full committee vote.

If your state is listed below, then your senator is on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and you can help stop the Flag - but there isn't much time. Please write now.

For Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin constituents.

If you live in one of those states, tell your Senators to oppose the broadcast flag amendment.  If you're not sure what that is, imagine you have to submit a request to the FCC any time you want to record something on your VCR or TiVo or DVD burner, and if the material you are trying to record was originally broadcast, the FCC would say no.  And, of course, you would pay a fee for this "service" when you bought the recorder.