Blew my mind.

בקטגוריות: Uncategorized

5 Jul 2004

Cory Doctorow, an EFF activist, gave a speech to some Microsoft Research about DRM and copyright law. (via the Phorum)
The full transcript is available here, and is very well reasoned, in my opinion. But my main point is this one comment of his about the disposability of physical mediums – which I totally agree with – but which never occured to me:

I landed at SEA-TAC on Monday and burned a couple CDs from my music collection [on my laptop. A.K.]to listen to in the
rental car. When I drop the car off, I’ll leave them behind. Who needs ’em?

(Note: For those who are concerned by this, he is referring to legal digital copies of purchased music)

I have a laptop with a CD burner. I have several gigs of music on it. All I need is to make sure I have a couple of CD-RWs on me and I can burn a CD for the morning drive. CD burners have gotten fast and reliable. My CD player may not recognize RWs, but even CD-Rs are a possibility – even if it is somewhat extravagant to leave them behind everywhere.

Cool. Very cool.

4 תגובות על Blew my mind.

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ijon

5 בJuly, 2004 בשעה 09:35

I agree that it’s cool, and sympathize with the sentiment.

A technical correction, though: from a legal point of view, it is at least irresponsible to leave these admittedly-legal copies behind, because once someone else retrieves them, they are ipso facto illegal copies.

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Anonymous

8 בJuly, 2004 בשעה 06:16

Funny Law

When I buy a CD – so they tell me – I buy more than plastic. I buy the music. I buy the right to make more copies of the music, on plastic, on pyromagnetics, or on my very own neural network. I buy the right to whistle and hum more and more copies of that music onto other neural networks.

Do I really have to buy all this stuff? Is anyone asking me? Is there a moral issue here?

Is it even slightly reasonable that my freedom to leave all the aforementioned copies behind me in a rental car is a privilege I need to pay for?

From a legal point of view, as you remarked, my copies could turn offensive in other hands, but does that really make me irresponsible? I guess I just can’t seem to get a decent feeling of responsibility for stupid laws.

The paragraph following the one quoted by Ygg:
Whenever a new technology has disrupted copyright, we’ve changed copyright. Copyright isn’t an ethical proposition, it’s a utlititarian (sic) one. There’s nothing *moral* about paying a composer tuppence for the piano-roll rights, there’s nothing *immoral* about not paying Hollywood for the right to videotape a movie off your TV. They’re just the best way of balancing out so that people’s physical property rights in their VCRs and phonographs are respected and so that creators get enough of a dangling carrot to go on making shows and music and books and paintings.

It’s really very well written, and – more importantly – very well thought.

I.

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ijon

8 בJuly, 2004 בשעה 06:33

Re: Funny Law

d00d, it would really help if you got yourself an account. That would let me reply to your comments at my leisure, relying on e-mail notification to let you know I did (I’m notorious for Very Late replies).

Hemingway, regarding the matter at hand: I did not say Ygg (or Doctorow) would be irresponsible. I said that legally (i.e. as the law stands), they would be irresponsible. I suppose that purely technically, they aren’t really; it’s entirely the fault of the one making use of the copy, just like it is the fault of the downloader of copyrighted music.

But that’s the law, and the law is stupid. We agree. I heartily support copyright reform and seriously rethinking the whole Intellectual Property notion. The work done by Lessig and the EFF is important and welcome.

Froggive any typos in this reply. There’s a dynamic kitten on my lap (and occasionally on my keyboard) as I type this.

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Anonymous

11 בJuly, 2004 בשעה 05:37

Come Come

d00d?
What’s with the 133ter then thou attitude?

Anyway, if I can deal with not being able to post anything on Ghost’s LJ, I can deal with your belated replies (ALEK belated, you replied this one so fast I shrugged it off at first as another glitch on my RSS client). Besides, you have my E-mail, my phone, my home address, and enough mutualities to assure that if you just holler my name loud enough I’ll get news of it within the hour.

Regarding the matter at hand, I guess we do see eye to eye (mostly). But it was a good opportunity to note that lovely paragraph, to say hi, and to refine a point or to regarding laws. To quote Herr Waldman’s disastrous words: “Das Gesetz ist das Gesetz!”

May your lap swarm with dynamic kittens,
I.

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