One thing Congress needs to do is REPEAL the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

[Ignacio Upton]

One of the worst assaults on our civil liberties over the last decade was the passage of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which not only was passed unanimously, but was also signed into law by Clinton.

The DMCA is the reason why Microsoft, Diebold, the RIAA and other dominant tech, music and movie companies can sue:

1. You for sharing copies of individual songs from a CD that YOU bought, even if you are only making copies of those songs for a handful of people.

2. Online radio stations for allowing users to record copies of songs that they play...which is legal under the 1992 Home Recording Act, but could get nullified in practice.

3. Diebold, against whistle blowers in late 2003 and early 2004.

4. The makers of DVD players against hackers who use Linux, and hack into their DVD's just so they can play them on their computers.

5. Suits against professors, websites and magazines for publicly TALKING about how certain technologies have flaws. For example, the MPAA sued 2600 Magazine because they published a program on their website that would help Linux users play DVD's. Another example is the case of Alex Halderman, a Princeton student who blogged about how SunnComm's anti-CD ripping technology can be disabled by holding down the shift key while the CD is loading.

It also stifles the free market. For example, with Apple's DRM software, you can't upload music from itunes onto more than one CD (what if that one gets broken?) or transfer it to another mp3 player. Another example is in the case of TiVo, where it decided not to include showing Yahoo video content in a deal it made with Yahoo, for fear that Comcast (which it also has a deal with) would use the wrath of the DMCA against it.

The issue of repealing the DMCA isn't a conventional Republican/Democrat issue. Prominent DMCA/RIAA apologists on our side include Biden (who supports restricting consumor's rights in recording music played in Podcast's) Diane Feinstein, and Hillary Rosen, the former RIAA head who appears/appeared on TV as a "Democratic Strategist" every now and then. On the other side, there is Orrin Hatch, who has in the past, advocated remotely destroying any computer that engages in file sharing (I guess destroying the computers of tens of millions of people is no biggie?)Interestingly enough, the Cato Institute has come out in full support of repealing the DMCA in its entirety:

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6025

However, I believe that under a Democratic-controlled Congress, we have a better chance of repealing the DMCA than under one controlled by the Republicans. I think that persuading someone like Bernie Sanders or Ron Paul will give us a leg up (the most stringent anti-copyright-abuse people I've met tend to be Socialist or Libertarian in ideology, so Sanders and Paul should both be trusted the most to make noise about the DMCA abuses.)

[Ignacio Upton]

1. Kick!

:kick:

[caseycoon]

2. DANG!

I hope they DO repeal it.