[free-sklyarov] Copyright Contradictions

Fri Aug 9 00:28:03 PDT 2002

This is the Kind of thing NY Fair Use is Focused on...

In Response to Seth's wonderful post (listed below)Ruben Wrote:

Well Done!

We have to keep hammering it just like that, line for line on
these arguements, just as they are laid out.

Jack Valenti and July 17th, Washington DC, Department of
Commercie DRM Workshop:

        "A little Demagogary Never Hurt anyone"

Jack agian in 1982:

        "The VCR is to Movies like the Boston Strangler 
        to Young Women"

Ruben Safir:  President of NYLXS and Co-Founder of NY Fair Use
August 2002:

        "Jack Valanti is to Private Ownership and Property 
        as the Boston Strangler to the VCR"

Jack Valenti again at the DRM Workshop:

        "If this body connot find a way to agree to find 
        a way which will protect private property from 
        Theft then we'll just have to go to Congress and 
        get it done"

Ruben Safir at the Press Conference after the Workshop:

        "I completely agree with Jack Valenti.  Congress
        has to step in and protect our private property 
        from theft.  It's my damn disk, my damn computer.  
        If someone breaks into my home and steals my computer
        and my DVD's, who calls the cops and files the police 
        report?

        Me or Universal Pictures?

        DRM is Theft.  Congress must pass a law which will 
        protect the property of every owner of a computer
        and purchaser of Digital Information by outlawing
        anything which prevents the full enjoyment of their
        property.  We don't need prior aproval of Warner 
        Brothers, Jack Valenti, or Barry Sorkin to use our 
        computers to augment our enjoyment of our property.
        There is no forced contract to a cash sale.  Forcing
        a contract on the public which they didn't negotiate
        as equal partners is a form of slavery no free citizen
        can put up with.

        That's why we propose a New Fair Use Bill, one which
        guarantees that Copyright is secondary to the 
        Constitutional Right of Security in ones Home and
        with one's pocessions.  Because Copyright is secondary
        to my property rights in my home and Congress has to make 
        it clear.  

        If anyone should be forced into a license, then Bertleson 
        should be forced to License to Listen.com.  That's why we 
        gave them the limited exclussive Monopoly in the first place, 
        to make sure the material is published.  If they don't want to 
        publish, too bad, make them do it anyway or strip them of 
        their Monopoly.

        How can we can we continue to expect to maintain a free 
        society if we can't accumulate, copy and archive on our 
        digital systems and information.  How are we expected to 
        be able to publish from annotated facts, with references 
        to the original works when everything on the internet can 
        expire or disapear.  We have to be able to copy to archive.
        It's essential to our politcal speech, or for that matter 
        our abilty to have party music mixed to our own enjoyment
        on Saturday Night."

On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 12:20:44AM -0400, Seth Johnson wrote:
> 
> 
> (I sent this to Declan but he didn't put it out on
> POLITECH.  You might want to read Charles Sims' comments
> from POLITECH, pasted below, first.  Sims represented the
> movie studios against 2600 magazine.  His comments were in
> response to Declan's posting of Siva Vaidhyanathan's
> Copyright Cudgel article.  -- Seth)
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2002 03:52:41 -0400
> From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org>
> To: declan at well.com
> CC: politech at politechbot.com, sivav at pobox.com
> 
> 
> Declan:
> 
> Charles Sims' comments illustrate the problem of encouraging
> people to equate the protection of private interests with
> the issues surrounding content control.  His emphasis on the
> question of access in his final comment plays that card. 
> However, the issues surrounding the impact of content
> control on the use of information, are not at all the same
> as the issues associated with the protection of private
> interests.
> 
> Copyright (more specifically in Constitutional terms,
> "exclusive Rights") is a limited, statutory right that
> Congress may grant (or for that matter, deny) for specific
> purposes (promoting the progress of the Useful Arts and
> Sciences) and within specific parameters with which we are
> all familiar (the First and Fourth Amendments ad nauseum, as
> well as numerous other aspects of the US Constitution which
> articulate rights that are *not* statutory and in that sense
> limited in provenance).
> 
> He also hangs his hat on the fact that under the current
> statute, fair use is no more than an exception to copyright
> (and only a defense that one may offer after the fact of
> being prosecuted).  In the service of his thesis that it is
> supposedly fraudulent to say "fair use is dying" at the
> hands of the DMCA, he overlooks the fact that the fair use
> provision can no longer work under the current state of
> technology in our society.
> 
> In strict Constitutional terms, copyright is an exception to
> the principles of a free society -- not the other way
> around.  "Fair use" is merely an escape valve (one of only a
> few!) that has been built into an outdated legal tradition,
> however fortuitously.
> 
> As soon as it no longer serves its purpose, "exclusive
> rights" must be made to serve core Constitutional
> principles.  However long it takes for people to realize
> this, there's really no getting around it.  It's easy to
> lean on the law and treat it as the foundation for one's
> analysis, because as the law it must presumably be endorsed;
> but Charles' comments are a perfect illustration of the old
> saw, "Some people are in the law for the law; others are in
> it for the people."
> 
> He may simply be being literal and pedantic, but for him to
> target the proposition that fair use is dying at the hands
> of the DMCA on the basis of the statutory structure, rather
> than to consider what those who make that very true
> statement really mean, certainly doesn't help things.
> 
> Seth Johnson
> 
> Declan McCullagh wrote:
> > 
> > Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 09:43:20 -0400
> > From: "Charles Sims" <CSims at proskauer.com>
> > 
> > Sloganeering is not journalism, and to repeat (or
> > republish) the canard that "fair use is dying" is
> > preposterous.  As you know, and as your readers
> > should know, the fair use doctrine of copyright
> > law is unchanged since 1976 (indeed, since the
> > 1840's, when Justice Story famously explicated it),
> > and it has not been amended or altered by the DMCA.
> > The DMCA does not impact, at all, the fair use
> > rights that US law has provided for more than 160
> > years.  It has not amended, or changed, Section
> > 107 of the copyright law, which now embodies the
> > fair use defense, at all.  So  quote and criticise
> > and review to your heart's content; but try to
> > avoid the knowing falsehoods.  You want to stare
> > at or photograph a Picasso in someone's home, or a
> > never-published manuscript of Orwell in someone's
> > office, the better to criticise or review them?
> > You can't.  But not because of the DMCA; the
> > reason is that fair use has never been a tool to
> > obtain access.
> 
> -- 
> 
> [CC] Counter-copyright:
> http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html
> 
> I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or
> distribution of this incidentally recorded communication. 
> Original authorship should be attributed reasonably, but
> only so far as such an expectation might hold for usual
> practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no
> claim of exclusive rights.
> 
> ____________________________
> New Yorkers for Fair Use -
> because it's either fair use or useless....

> BTW - no to evanglilize:  But that was possible because Seth and I were prepared
> for that oppurtunity and had our P&Q's in order with a program in place and ready
> to go.
> 
> It didn't happen by magic.  The reason why we took them by sprise was because
> we set up an ambush and Jack Valenti walked right in.
> 
> If he does this a few more times, we're gonna win this BIG.
> 
> 
> > There should be an opt-in mechanism for people who wish to become more
> > involved in any particular action.  I liked the way that Stakeholders
> > 7/17 "sucked you in", when you replied to the alert.  That gets you
> > right into it, like free-skyarov was in the first days.
> > 
> >
> -- 
> __________________________
> 
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> 
> 
> 
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-- 
__________________________

Brooklyn Linux Solutions
__________________________
http://www.mrbrklyn.com - Consulting
http://www.nylxs.com/radio - Free Software Radio Show and Archives
http://www.brooklynonline.com - For the love of Brooklyn
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.nyfairuse.org - The foundation of Democracy
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive or stories and articles from around the net
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/mp3/dr.mp3 - Imagine my surprise when I saw you...
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/downtown.html - See the New Downtown Brooklyn....

1-718-382-5752