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Lexmark Wields DMCA Against Third-party Competitor
Boucher Anti-DMCA Bill Back In Congress
The One-Way Internet
Russian Piracy Problems
DVD Sales Climb 111%
This Woman Owes You Money
Get Cash From RIAA
Norwegian DeCSS Author Acquitted
Thursday, January 9, 2003
Chrysler Hurls Tomahawk at Unsuspecting Public
Dodge debuts motorcycle -- heralds end of world as we know it.
This is from Dodge? The truck company? Let's strap a patent leather-wrapped Shania Twain on this and see what happens.
Lexmark Wields DMCA Against Third-party Competitor
Printer manufacturer Lexmark has filed a DMCA-based complaint against a third-party toner manufacturer, hoping to force the company off the market. By asserting the company's authentication software is being bypassed, Lexmark is attempting to use the DMCA to force Static Controls to cease manufacturing and sale of its Smartek chips.Third-party toner and ink cartridge sales are a significant portion of total cartridge sales each year, and manufacturers continually improve their lock-in technologies, hoping to keep printer buyers from using less expensive supplies.
An important aspect of this case is that as ever more common pieces of equipment become computerized the potential to use DMCA suits to stifle competition of any kind grows exponentially.
Lexmark invokes DMCA in toner suit. ZDNet Jan 9 2003 4:56AM ET[...] In a 17-page complaint filed on 30 December, 2002, the company claims the Smartek chip mimics the authentication sequence used by Lexmark chips and unlawfully tricks the printer into accepting an aftermarket cartridge. That "circumvents the technological measure that controls access to the Toner Loading Program and the Printer Engine Program", the complaint says. The Toner Loading Program checks toner levels in the cartridge, and the Printer Engine Program controls operations such as paper feed and the actual transfer of the dry ink to paper.
Lexmark is asking US district judge Karl Forester to order Static Control to "deliver up for destruction" all Smartek chips and to cease selling them. Static Control could not be reached on Wednesday for comment.[...] [Moreover - IP and patents news]
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
Boucher Anti-DMCA Bill Back In Congress
US Rep Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, is one of the most well-versed and cogent political representatives of the public's right to read, listen, and watch without undue interference. Boucher has reintroduced his Digital Media Consumer Rights Act. If you've not contacted your representative to support Boucher, please do so. If your Congressman is like mine he lacks even basic familiarity with matters of copyright and intellectual property, and is a perfect target for glib media lobbyists. (I know. I asked him about copyright at a town hall meeting. I got the equivalent of a blank stare.)If you want to know more about Boucher's ideas, and his practical approach to copyright protection you should read "Copy Fights" from the Cato Institute.
"Copy Fights" is a fascinating collection of papers from a 2001 Cato conference on technology and intellectual property. It has a complete transcript of Boucher's presentation, among a number of other interesting works.
Bill would allow copying of music, movies. Measure would allow for personal copies of files[...] The Digital Media Consumer Rights Acts, reintroduced by Representative Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, and three other lawmakers Tuesday, would trump the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) anticircumvention provisions, allowing consumers to break copy controls to do such things as make personal copies of songs or movies. If the consumer's action has a substantial legitimate use, it would fall under the fair use rights protected in the Boucher bill, instead of being a copyright violation, Boucher said. [...] [InfoWorld: Top News]
The One-Way Internet
The one-way Internet -- this is the best description of the broadband Internet I've heard.
Defining Broadband in Only One Direction. Wall Street Journal: After Internet's Big Bust, Broadband Shift Went On. Much of the new content being developed for broadband users is premised on the unproved assumption that people will be willing to pay for a wide range of entertainment on the Web. If they are, get ready for a two-tiered Internet, with the hottest content sites charging subscription fees.Implicit in this story, and the attitudes of the reporter and the companies mentioned, is the idea that broadband is solely about the delivery of "content" to consumers. This is little more than television, updated for online.
Oh, there will be some interactivity -- some clicking by users on buttons that say "Buy This" and "Vote" and other such things. But real interactivity requires bandwidth to be fast upstream, not just down.[...] [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
Dan Gillmor's description of the broadband conundrum is on target. The very notion of Asynchronous DSL is brain-damaged and a clear demonstration that broadband providers never imagined users would actually use the Internet. Rather, all they could see was consumers swallowing whatever providers could shove down the pipes. As Bob Frankston has said regarding the Net industry's fixation on entertainment, "You'd think the purpose of a roof is to keep rain off the television."
The media industry seemingly views itself as the only industry, and sees the only possible use for upstream bandwidth as a tool to steal from them. When stated so bluntly it's a preposterous position, but it is a real one.
The upstream speed on my DSL line is a pathetic 5-10k/sec. I use remote access software to get to my computer from outside the office, and even on high-speed lines the delay is interminable. There's no way I could ever run a server from home.
But I'd love to. I go to ClarkConnect in a heartbeat and buy one of their pre-packaged Linux home servers for $125 if I had decent bandwidth. And I'd sign up for their $7/month intrusion monitoring plan. No, I wouldn't host all my own web sites, but I'd host a single domain that I could use for storing photos, documents, and whatever else I wanted to access remotely. I'd start experimenting with audio and video blogging, and I'd develop my own photo albums for family.
I'm hopeful that eventually the old regimes will fall and we'll get to the point that the Internet can be used to improve the way we live and work on a broad scale. For that to happen we must get to a realistic market structure for bandwidth, and past the idea that the Internet is a one-way street.
Terry Frazier at 6:21 PM
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Tuesday, January 7, 2003
Russian Piracy Problems
Piracy is a legitimate concern for the film and music industries, just as it is for the software industry. Sadly, it's not real pirates the industry is trying to stop. The real problem is large-scale piracy, often government supported, in Asia, Russia, and other Eurasian countries. The industry doesn't know how to stop this so they focus on harassing legitimate customers. It's a very unfortunate situation.My stance against the media industry's bone-headed, technophobic anti-piracy policies and corrupt, political machinations should never be construed as a piracy endorsement. Rather it's an endorsement of an individual's right to read, listen, and watch without restraint, while simultaneously supporting legitimate efforts to stop large-scale piracy operations.
Russia battles against CD piracy
Tuesday, 7 January, 2003, 14:08 GMT
BBC Russian serviceBy Alexander Koliandre
[...] Russia has the second largest music piracy market in the world, after China, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the organisation representing the recording industry worldwide.
It also has one of the highest piracy rates in the world at 65%. More troubling is that the 200 million pirated CDs produced in Russia dwarf the country's total market for CDs by eight times.
Pirated CDs made in Russia are smuggled to the Western Europe and can be found in Paris, London and Amsterdam. [BBC News]
DVD Sales Climb 111%
Chopping yet one more leg from the "Internet piracy is killing our business" stand is the latest research on DVD sales from the UK. No doubt Jack Valenti will find these figures "stunning".
Record year for DVDsDVD players hit record sales of 3.8 million last year - double that of the previous 12 months.
And DVD disc sales reached 80 million last year, representing a 111% increase on 2001, according to the figures released by the DVD Committee of the British Video Association. [...] [Ananova: Business]
This Woman Owes You Money
Make Hilary pay.
Get Cash From RIAA
If you bought a CD between 1995 and 2000 you are entitled to a refund of up to $20 as part of a price fixing settlement against the Big Five recording companies. Go here and sign up.Remember, this is the same group that is under Congressional investigation in California for its contract practices with musicians. Basically, this is an industry that cheats both its suppliers and its customers (on a massive scale) and then pays technophobes like Hilary Rosen to make impassioned public speeches about morality.
The music industry STILL owes you $20!. Man, this is disappointing. Every US resident who bought a CD in the US between 1995 and 2000 is entitled to up to $20 from the music cartel as part of a court-mandated settlement over the labels' illegal price-fixing, which is one way that the music industry has ripped off the public.All you need to do is sign up at this site, and the RIAA will mail you a check. If so many people sign up that the settlement ends up getting spread too thin, the RIAA will mail charitable organizations the checks instead. You can't lose!
Unless you don't sign up. Despite notices of the settlement in TV Guide and throughout blogistan, the cash remains unclaimed. What are you waiting for? Claim it! [Boing Boing Blog]
Norwegian DeCSS Author Acquitted
Today's NYT (registration required) has an article on the Oslo ruling in favor of DVD-Jon, the creator of DeCSS. I had hoped the Norwegian court would show some modicum of rationality and common sense:
[...] Head judge Irene Sogn, in reading the verdict, said no one could be convicted of breaking into their own property, and that there was no proof that Johansen or others had used the program to access illegal pirate copies of films.''The court finds that someone who buys a DVD film that has been legally produced has legal access the film. Something else would apply if the film had been an illegal ... pirate copy,'' the ruling said.
The attempt here by the government -- to show that Johansen had violated laws and cheated the MPAA by viewing his own movie on his own equipment -- shows the depravity of the MPAA/RIAA position. Their war is not against piracy -- it is against users, legal or not. They're seeking a position of unequivocal control over how, when, where, and why users view films or listen to music. No right-thinking individual can support that. The industry is entitled to add or subtract functionality to any or all of its products, in any manner it sees fit. But it can never be allowed to eliminate competition by fiat, or dictate the way users access legally purchased property.
Jon Johansen acquitted!. Jon Johansen, the Norwegian teenager who helped develop DeCSS -- a piece of software that allowed him to watch the DVDs he'd bought in France on the DVD player he'd bought in Norway -- has finally been acquitted. Pending appeal.
The three-member Oslo City Court found Johansen, now 19 and a household name as DVD-Jon in Norway, innocent on all counts in a unanimous 25-page ruling in the latest setback for the film industry's drive to prevent film copying.(Thanks, Jim!) [Boing Boing Blog]''I'm very satisfied. We won support on all points. I had figured that we could win, but it can go either way,'' said Johansen after the verdict was read out.
The prosecution said it would decide in the next two weeks whether to appeal. Johansen said he expects another round because this is the first such case in Norway...
Prosecutors had called for a 90-day suspended jail sentence, confiscation of computer equipment and court costs, all of which were rejected in the ruling.
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