Worth taking a look at the new BEUC (European consumer organisation) position paper on DRM. http://www.beuc.org/Content/Default.asp?PageID=103
Below is a general article by Danny O'Brien.
Teresa -------------
http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=1&id=mg183... 2.800 Stand up for your rights New Scientist vol 183 issue 2463 - 04 September 2004, page 15 Danny O'Brien
Overzealous copyright enforcement is changing the way we enjoy books, music and film. We risk losing some of our most basic freedoms, says Danny O'Brien
THERE are some things in life we take for granted. Among them are the ability to lend each other books, record TV programmes, back up expensive computer programs, and sell on our old CDs when we've got tired of them.
The fact that we are able do these things is not the result of magnanimity on the part of people who hold the copyright. Far from it. It is integral to the bargain that governments have brokered between copyright holders and the public. In the US, copyright owners can't ban you from reselling the CDs you have bought because of the legal doctrine of First Sale. In the UK you can record TV coverage of the Olympics while you're out at work to watch at some more convenient time because in 1988 the government said time-shifting was a permissible act. Copyright owners, understandably, don't like these limits on what they can stop people doing, and lobby hard to remove them. But they do have to obey the law.
That could change. New technologies are giving copyright owners the power to control the time and place we can view or play digital versions of music, films and text so tightly that we run the risk of losing these rights altogether. That would mean no more buying or selling of second-hand CDs or videos, or even lending them to friends. More seriously, it could affect the compromise at the heart of copyright: that all copyright material should, after a reasonable time, return to the public domain and be free for everyone.
These new restrictions are being made possible by a technology called digital rights management (DRM). To see how it works, take for example Apple's iTunes service. Music sold on the iTunes site is encrypted and can only be unlocked by a compatible player with the correct password. When you buy a new song, you hand over the unique code that identifies the player it will be used on, and that is used to generate the encryption key needed to play it back. Though you can copy the track onto a small number of other players, the fact that your password and user name must be entered to play it makes selling it on to someone else virtually impossible.
The principal reason DRM is so heavily promoted is to prevent digital piracy. But it does more than that. Copyright owners want to shift the way we consume entertainment - from selling us ownable copies of their content, which we can lend, exchange and sell as we please, to giving us restricted access to that content under rules they lay down. So, if you buy a film online or on DVD, they could charge every time the film is played on a machine that isn't yours - which means no more lending or swapping films. And while you currently have a right to pass on second-hand books to others, you don't necessarily have that right with DRM-protected e-books.
In April, highlighting just how important DRM technology will soon be, Microsoft and Time Warner announced their intention to join forces and buy a controlling stake in ContentGuard, a company that owns many of the key DRM patents. Rivals cried foul when they realised that this would give Microsoft a huge share of DRM patents. Add to that its dominant position in computing and it is no surprise that last month the European Commission (EC) decided to launch an investigation into whether Microsoft is gaining a monopoly position.
But this is not enough. The EC seems to have completely missed the bigger picture, which is that copyright owners are using DRM to trump the legal rights that society has till now expected from copyright holders in return for the privileges granted to them. If rights we now take for granted are to be protected in the era of digital media, action is needed now. At the very least, the EC and other regulators should force Microsoft and other DRM patent holders to find ways of making DRM technology compatible with these rights before the technology is deployed more widely.
There is a potential time bomb ticking here. Part of the bargain with authors of copyright material is that their work will be released into the public domain after they have been dead for a specified time - currently 70 years in Europe and the US, and 50 years in Australia. This could vanish. No existing DRM system is programmed to unlock itself after the copyright on its contents expires.
Future generations could suffer a tragic loss. Some music and films could disappear for ever if files become inaccessible when the original key holders have vanished. Historic government and business documents could be lost in the same way. Instead of enlarging the sum of public knowledge, DRM could destroy it.
Investigating Microsoft's monopoly on the DRM patents is all very well. But far more important is for regulators and law makers to explore the fundamental question of how to ensure that rights which we all take for granted today are not swept away by a wave of new technologies whose implications we neglected to come to grips with. Of course copyright owners have a right to protect their future interests. But not at the everyone else's expense.
Danny O'Brien Danny O'Brien is a writer based in San Jose ---------------- http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=1&id=mg183... 0.900
File-share snare
New Scientist vol 183 issue 2463 - 04 September 2004, page 5
THE cat-and-mouse battle over the sharing of copyright material such as music files on the internet is intensifying.
Last week the US Department of Justice announced it had targeted a group called The Underground Network. The FBI gained access to the network by packing two computers with copyrighted material that it made available to other members of the network. That allowed it to identify five other hubs sharing large volumes of copyrighted films, songs and software, and on 25 August the FBI raided five locations across the US, seizing computers, software and computer-related equipment.
In a separate development, the Recording Industry Association of America announced a new round of lawsuits against more than 700 individuals, claiming they have violated copyright by sharing music files over the net.
The action comes a week after an appeals court in San Francisco ruled that the makers of two leading file-sharing programs, Grokster and StreamCast, had not infringed the copyright of materials downloaded using their software, because they do not use central servers to point to copyrighted material.