copyright due for overhaul (Re: Software pirates face ten years in jail)

[Adam Back]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2002 at 02:37:14PM +0100, Nexus wrote:
> > Whenever any UK government legislates on issues with strong technological
> > overtones, just about the only certainty is that they will make a mess of
> > it.
> >
> >     Brian Gladman
> >
> 
> I'd add another certainty to that - even before the legislation and
> technical measures are in place, they _will_ be circumvented and the
> technique distributed.   Well, IMHO anyway ;-)

Cypherpunks write code and all that.

However in connection with copyright, that is what DMCA
anti-circumvention legislation is about -- making it illegal to
publish papers or software involving breaking things which are
obviously broken when that is related to copyright.

I find that a highly offensive and retrogressive piece of legislation.

The other big problem I see is eventually the copy-control cartel will
come to the realisation that privacy and strong privacy
(cryptographically assured anonymity) are not compatible with
copy-protection enforcement.

People will distribute academic papers, and software breaking
anonymously.  People will increasingly have an interest to participate
in file-sharing anonymously to avoid being ensnared in
anti-circumvention fishing expeditions and sting operations.

Then we'll see a head-on battle between the copy-protection cartel and
individual privacy.

Still in the more immediate term there are some interesting battles
brewing in the US over the attempted outlawing of general purpose
computers by the copy-protection cartel.  I think the computer
hardware industry is a few orders of magnitude larger than the film
and music industry so we'll see how that turns out.

Adam
--
http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/