Blogging Ottinger (tim)

From Glen, I find a new challenge to Fair Use. It looks like someone is trying to take this away from us. The DTCSA doesn’t remotely look like a good idea.

According to Reps. Sensenbrenner and Conyers, the legislation is absolutely necessary because of the dire threat PCs and the Internet pose to the content-creation industry’s very livelihood

Probably true, if you believe that it’s absolutely necessary for the “content-creation industy” to continue into the future unchanged while the rest of the world adjusts to new markets and new technologies. Do you really believe that this is “the way forward”? That we need to preserve the past by force of law?

Of course, it was also absolutely necessary to prevent home consumers from having VHS recorders and players, because of the threat to the industry’s livelihood. That was before VHS sales were better money-makers than actual movie watching. And of course, before that, it was absolutely necessary to prevent home consumers from having tape recorders, which would allow them to make copies of albums and even radio broadcasts. That was before the recording industry made a mint off of audio tapes. Oh, and digital content (DVDs, CDs) had to be kept from the hands of home consumers, because allowed them to make perfect copies, whereby the industry would collapse overnight. Never mind that CDs are dead cheap to make and sell for 20x their cost, or that DVDs are an incredibly lucrative business. The idea apparently is that if there were no room for alternatives, the industry could charge even more.

Maybe they think that the future of content is to get out of producing it and into suing over it.

This is the stupidest world yet. Look, you can’t stop the future. It helps to remember that your customers made you successful to begin with. You can’t rely on law to force your customers to tolerate being run over by corporate fear and corporate ambition. The market doesn’t like to serve corporations. The market expects to be served. Ultimately, the market gets to choose. Don’t make your customers hate you.

For the kind of control these guy want, you have to have control over the media players by law. Hey! Let’s make it illegal to develop music players and video players. What a great idea for the industry!

Worse, this isn’t going to work. What it will do, perhaps, is get a lot of harmless people sued or arrested. Why put ridiculous limits on your faithful repeat customers. It won’t stop those people (who make no money) on the freely-copying side. There is no market for content you cannot copy or convert. The market clearly prefers format-shifting.

Another important fair use factor is whether your use deprives the copyright owner of income or undermines a new or potential market for the copyrighted work. As we indicated previously, depriving a copyright owner of income is very likely to trigger a lawsuit. This is true even if you are not competing directly with the original work.

Hmm… what if the copyright owner is depriving themselves of a income, reputation, and a new or potential market for their work? Copying a movie that I actually purchase (at a ridiculous profit) from a companty to VHS or MPG/AVI/wahtever for viewing on my (hypothetical) iPod video, (dream) ArchOS, (hypothetical unwanted) windows computer, (actual, beloved) linux computers, etc. is not a loss of revenue. If I can’t copy my CD to .ogg and play it on my (actual) Zaurus PDA, then I don’t want the CD. I don’t want to spend money (especially TAX mone) on building limits on my freedom.

Here’s another link to info on the doctrine.