A Modest Proposal in the New Age of DMCA Takedown Aggression
sfconservancy.org
sfconservancy.org
The only thing that's going to make a difference is for someone to put their foot down and challenge §1201 in court. Code is speech. This is America. We can speak freely. §1201 should be struck from the DMCA on constitutional grounds. But no one has the pockets or the huevos to fight it.
Sadly though I think you're right, it won't actually make a difference. Even if somehow he did get everybody to sign, they'd surely find some other way to attack.
What a perfect encapsulation of the ridiculous asymmetry of the American legal system.
America already has tons of enforced restrictions on speech for many reasons.
Tom Scott explains the situation and the solution best. Just shorten copyright to 20 years (instead of life + 70 years).
.......that said, we did just strong-arm the world into matching US copyright law and I’m not sure we could do that now even if we wanted to.
(a) doesn't actually address the problem, because the content that DRM protects and that people want is stuff released within the last few months, and
(b) can't happen, as it sets copyright length back below what it was in 1909, before Disney even existed. In fact: the 1970s extension to copyright (the one predating "Sonny Bono" was done to bring the US into compliance with Europe.
People have weird thoughts about copyright.
That is, The Matrix being out of copyright tomorrow wouldn't change anything for DeCSS under 1201.
The linked blog post here is actually quite strange: the post is talking about 1201 abuse, but the proposal is about copyright infringement and 512 takedown, neither of which are really related to 1201. So its hard to see how this would "blunt" 1201 at all.
The recent high-profile situations have blurred the lines between the takedown provisions and the anticircumvention ones, especially as they just get listed in a "dmca" repository on Github, and the post even mentions this in the case of the Widevine takedowns, but the little technicalities do in fact matter here.
Shortening copyright would allow DRM to focus on a very small subset of works and allow everyone to use and enjoy older works.
Yes, DRM may be arbitrarily placed on anything but if the work can be freely acquired elsewhere without fear of retribution, then no one will seek out the DRM version anyway.
This is not the case actually; the problem is that while breaking "protection measures" on a non-copyrighted work may be legal per se, DMCA 1201 will still hinder development of tools to break such protection, as long as these same measures are being used to provide effective protection on copyrighted works.
Last I read they said something like "when a web site gets a certain amount of dmca complaints to us we will lower it's rank in the results, on top of removing pages that were takedown requested" - (purposely not explaining the number or percentage or time or whatever )
well I have a couple of sites that get "dmca emails" a few times a month- they are not legit - but I can see they are emailing multiple addys, and I assume google is one of them - I do take down stuff people request - but they do not need to threaten dmca to get it done - just ask - and with those sites things are deleted automatically in time anyway..
But I wonder if google is adding a negative to those sites for that - I assume no way to find out.
My solution to serve JavaScript validation notices for popular hosting ASNs and block lot of bots via cloudflare has worked well so far.
I don't think this means what the authors think it means. The idea is that the 'modest' proposal is actually an insane one, reducing to absurdity. This seems to be a genuine proposal?
I chose the title because the proposal should be not a big deal — especially given that these companies already demand that copyleft projects grant these 30 days — however, it's ultimately an untenable proposal. Just like the original Modest Proposal, it's made to a ruling class who don't realize their policies are completely unreasonable.
Tactical loss. Strategic victory.
Release it in two ways simultaneously.
One, public, going for maximum exposure. This causes (short-term) availability. Assume this channel can get compromised at any time. Ie. clearweb.
Two, at the same time, a more censorship resistant solution such as Tor or IPFS. Ie. darkweb.
At the very least you should research the second option beforehand. I'd say though, if you already include the address in say your GitHub, then this allows caching beforehand hence a smoother transition.
I saw this recently applied in alt-right movement. People getting banned from Twitter and Facebook already mentioning their contact info on darkweb beforehand cause they saw it coming.
https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch
IPFS mirrors:
Site: https://ipfs.io/ipns/QmYTEwv2GjQhtdN9bDfpLfQrVD7YLb1Sbh8igX8...
Git:
git clone https://ipfs.io/ipns/Qmed4r8yrBP162WK1ybd1DJWhLUi4t6mGuBoB9fLtjxR7u nvidia-patchExpecting domestic reforms is a sucker's game.
I wonder what the author could possibly be talking about.
The only boycott that could be effective is customers saying, en masse, that they will not watch some specific, otherwise-popular content because it is only available via DRM. I don't believe this has ever happened. I don't think even the hardest-core anti-DRM people I've ever known would simply refuse to watch a movie they think they would like on these grounds.
For example, Firefox refusing to support DRM would have been completely ineffective because essentially all users, on encountering video they want to watch that requires such DRM, would simply switch to Chrome to view that video.
Regardless, the post does realistically allow that no such boycott would be forthcoming now.
DVDs had weak DRM that was cracked in 1999. It was perhaps less of an encumbrance than the hassle and degredation of analog VHS tape, plus Macrovision.
>it's also the time of iTunes's initial growth, which also had DRM in those days.
iTMS DRM stood out as less restrictive than all other downloadable options up to that point. Apple's refusal to license their DRM and the popularity of iPods forced the music industry to offer DRM-free downloads. Many CDs had various attempts at DRM at that time as well.
One of the DMCA's many problems is that it doesn't really matter if the protection is easily broken: the legal jeopardy for doing so remains.
The apogee on the Music DRM side was in 2005 when Sony released a music CD that actually installed a rootkit on your PC[0].
As it turns out, "Don't buy music from Sony, it will put a virus on your computer" was a pretty effective way to hit Sony's public image and pocketbook.
After that, it was no longer hyperbole to describe DRM as malware, and it was apparent that the logical endpoint detractors were pointing to was not, in fact, dismissable as a reductio ad absurdum.
It was downhill for DRM from there. In 2008, Microsoft shut down their PlaysForSure servers[1], rendering protected media purchases useless, demonstrating that you couldn't rely on DRM systems to continue to work, even if the DRM vendor was the richest and most entrenched software company in the world.
One year after that, iTunes went DRM-free, which was the final nail in the coffin. At least for music DRM.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_roo...
However it just means that once the industry decided to allow some DRM-free distribution of most/all content, a DRM boycott worked.
Unfortunately it is still true that where the industry does not allow any DRM-free distribution of most content, no DRM boycott has occurred.
It's a lot easier (though not actually easy) to be a non-label independent musician than it is to be an independent filmmaker. There were some respectable efforts like the show Pioneer One, but there weren't ever enough high production value projects to make a dent in viewership.