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Patrick has a nice article "Here's a surefire way to stifle innovation" in C|Net News, looking at the promises of Technological Protection Measures (TPM) and the perils of H.R. 1201:
[I]f HR-1201 becomes law, every consumer could legally hack any TPM by claiming fair use, and as fair use isn't codified, there would be as many definitions of it as there are consumers. Consumers would be legally sanctioned to break their contracts with the content provider.
No sane business operator enters a contract in which one party has the right to disregard its terms at will, but that's what HR-1201 permits. That hated TPM would disappear from the market, as there's no reason to employ a lock if everyone has a legal right to the key. But as TPM leaves, so do the digital offerings that come with it. To his Politech Newslist, Declan McCullagh takes umbrage ("I think Ross is misguided, irresponsibly overstates the alleged harm of permitting circumvention for fair use, and ignores the documented problems caused by the DMCA." -- surely that qualifies as umbrage.) He also cites to a recent article he co-authored.
The best part is the end of Declan's post, which says:
But nevertheless, the Progress and Freedom Foundation is an influential think tank with many fans among Republicans on Capitol Hill. (PFF recently hired Michael Powell's legal advisor, for instance, and its board is primarily former Reagan administration officials.) No wonder DMCA reform is going nowhere.
I will leave the last sentence to Ray & Company, since telecom is out of my job description. But I do note that my colleagues are working hard to develop good telecom proposals, and help them go somewhere, and that part of the job is to undermine bad proposals.
On the first part, though, let's hear again that line about INFLUENTIAL THINK TANK. I like it! The WaPo once wrote a snotty expose of the inordinate power and influence of some law firm, and I asked one of the partners if this bothered him. He shook his head and said: "It sure does. I don't think we have enough people to handle all the business this is going to bring in."
So, Yes! PFF is influential! People read our stuff and quake in their boots! Better pay attention!
CORRECTION (10-07): It has been pointed out to me that I confused DMCA reform with telecom reform (maybe because PFF calls its telecom reform project DACA). When Declan talks about DMCA "reform," he is talking about various things that we do not regard as reform at all, such as H.R. 1201. But if PFF is actually responsible for preventing such policy errors -- Wow! Hurray for us!
posted by James DeLong @ 3:38 PM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain
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