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Switchfoot, a Christian band currently experiencing crossover success, has “posted instructions for circumventing the copy protection on their new CD”:http://forums1.sonymusic.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/716102313/m/5201067064. Take note, because *this is illegal*.

The “Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA, a favorite in Congress, makes it illegal to circumvent encryption schemes, even if the end goal is perfectly legal. Switchfoot is helping their fans break United States law and circumvent measures their label has put into place to prevent piracy. And I applaud them for it.

The Wikipedia has a good article on the controversy around “Section 103’s anti-circumvention provisions”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMCA_anti-circumvention, but I’ll attempt to distill my complaints against the law down to a few sentences. The Supreme Court established fair use in the case Sony Corp v. Universal City Studios. I can already see your eyes glossing over, but stay with me here because if the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled in favor of fair use, you wouldn’t have a VCR. You see, the movie studios at the time were outraged that folks like you and I could use a VCR to make copies of their movies, so they tried to sue the VCR out of existence.

So what is fair use? It basically means that we can ignore copyrights as long as the copies we’re making aren’t:

# going to make us any money
# on a large scale
# isn’t going to deprive the copyright holder of signifigant chunks of money

Music fans everywhere enjoy fair use when they make (for my parents’ generation) mixed tapes or (my generation) rip mixed CDs. And that brings us back to Switchfoot and the DMCA.

You see, the DMCA makes it illegal for you to make those mixed tapes if the record label has some sort of encryption scheme on the albums. Even though the end goal is clearly legal under fair use, you’d have to break a law to get to the end goal. And that really sucks.

DMCA is badly in need of revision–Section 103 needs to be overhauled to account for fair use or dropped entirely. But until that happens, the only avenue left to protest is a time-honored tradition in American history: civil disobedience. I, for one, salute Switchfoot’s attempt to assist their customers in breaking the law. That’s a start.

But the Christian music industry needs to begin waking up to the new opportunities in the age of digital music. Bands with a strong fan base like Switchfoot no longer need a label to get their music out to the fans, between sites like “CDBaby”:http://www.cdbaby.com/ and the “iTunes Music Store”:http://www.itunes.com/ (with an 80% marketshare and a distribution deal with CDBaby). Furthermore, Christian artists need to begin looking at the “Creative Commons”:http://www.creativecommons.org/ for copyrights that would maintain their rights as artists while allowing freedom of use for their fans.

written by Kyle

Richard Stallman has written “an excellent explanation of why software patents are a very bad idea”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5219892-111020,00.html for the Guardian.

Go read that if you want an easy, literary-based explanation of the problem. Stallman uses the example of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables to explain, so if that tickles your fancy, don’t bother reading this post any further.
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written by Kyle

“Senate May Ram Copyright Bill”:http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,65704,00.html

Here we go again–the entertainment industry is trying to strip away consumer rights so that they can make more money. Take note the groups aligned against the bill: consumer rights advocates *and* conservative lobbyists. My favorite quote, from Stacie Rumenap, deputy directory of the American Conservative Union: “It’s just plain wrong to make the Department of Justice Hollywood’s law firm.”

Duh.

written by Kyle

From “Soccer Flick Has Legs Online” (at Wired News):

“We were pleased to see that there is interest in the film (online),” the spokesman said. “At the same time, we work with the MPAA and our legal department to vigorously prosecute those who take our property and use (it) for their own purposes.”

–Miramax spokesperson

Translation: “Wow, it’s cool people like this (cha-ching!). Now we will hunt you down like the criminals you are.”

Oh the irony…

written by Kyle

The Washington Post has a good mainstream article on DVDs and programs that bypass controls that movie studios put into place on DVDs.

DVD Piracy Paranoia Proves Counterproductive

The interesting point this article raises at the very end is that the so-called “pirates” are actually those adherring to the free-market spirit. So how did this country get to the point where the government started opressing free market ventures and supporting monopolies and oligarchies?
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written by Kyle

Senator OK with destroying PCs

I’ll summarize. During a hearing, Senator Orrin Hatch asked a witness, “Can you destroy their set in their home?” referring to a PC.

The witness, an employee of a company that helps record lables disrupt file sharing networks, replied saying that “nobody” was interested in that approach.

“I am,” replied Hatch, saying, “I’m interested in doing that. That may be the only way you can teach someone about copyright… That would be the ultimate way of making sure” no more copyright is infringed.

That was on Tuesday. On Wednesday someone discovered that the Senator’s web site (http://hatch.senate.gov) used code created by a U,K. company, Milonic Solutions. Milonic Solutions charges for the right to obtain a license, but Hatch’s site had the following comment in place of the license:

“i am the license for the menu (duh).”

So under Hatch’s proposed “solution”, Milonic Solutions would be able to legally (under U.S. law) destroy a U.S. government web site server.

Absolutely positively brilliant.

written by Kyle

Corporate lawyers sue couple.

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written by Kyle

Survey: Swappers buy music, too | CNET News.com

Take that music industry. Your best customers are those “pirates” out there on Kazaa, Morpheus, LimeWire, and other networks - yeah, the ones you’re trying to sue, harass, and otherwise alienate.

Way to go.

If you’d just get out there with a viable service (a la Apple’s iTunes Music Store) and a decent price (something signifigantly less than purchasing a physical CD), you’d see that money start rolling in.

written by Kyle

SARS gene patent application will help cure research, says B.C. Cancer Agency | CP

Now how the heck does someone patent DNA? I repsect Dr. Marco Marra for the position he takes, and applaud his choice to forgo personal glory and uphold personal ethics. I gotta think that the only entity with the right to patent a pre-existing DNA sequence would be God the Creator. Or Father Time, if you are an Atheist.

Regardless, no human should be allowed to patent a pre-existing DNA sequence. Things get more interesting when you start talking about gene splicing, recombinant DNA, and other techniques that create brand new sequences. But that’s not the case here, with the SARS virus.

written by Kyle

O’Reilly First to Adopt Founders’ Copyright: Publisher Restores Balance to Copyright with New Legal Option from Creative Commons

Yay O’Reilly! This is sweet stuff, and it’s good to see an intellectual property owner begin to take up these issues (as opposed to the consumer doing all the complaining). If only the rest of the curmudgeons out there would just open their minds a little…

written by Kyle