
Members of Congress finally introduce serious DMCA reform - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/members-of-congress-finally-introduce-serious-dmca-reform/
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mayneack
Plenty of great legislation is "introduced" all the time. Most never even gets
brought up in committee. Those that do get killed before hitting the floor.
Those that are passed get killed in the other chamber.

This is far from the least likely bill to pass, but I'm not getting my hopes
up.

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rhizome
What is behind the framing of these stories? "Fixes" the DMCA. "Serious" DMCA
reform. Are they trying to keep people from clamoring for more changes?
"Sorry, we took care of _everything_ last go 'round. Where were you?"

Frankly, if you ask me, this is a bare minimum.

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sinak
Realistically, if this bill were to pass unamended, it'd be a massive, massive
win for consumers and technologists. The odds are stacked massively against
us.

When the DMCA was passed, it was considered a "grand bargain" between the
content industry and ISPs/websites that allow user-generated content. In
exchange for not being directly liable for content their users post (the safe-
harbor provisions), the content industry were granted the anti-circumvention
provisions.

As far as Google (in particular Youtube), Yahoo, AT&T are concerned, the safe-
harbor provisions are absolutely fine as they are. The content industry argues
that they put a big burden on them by requiring them to scan and find
infringing content, and have repeatedly pushed to have the safe-harbor
provision weakened.

Regarding Section 1201 of "anti-circumvention" there really isn't a single
large lobby of folks who would want to push to have them weakened. Microsoft,
game developers, and other traditional software companies rely heavily on DRM,
and companies like Apple would rather not have their devices jailbroken. And
Google et al. don't want to disturb the existing peace with the content
producers - they think that opening up the DMCA in any way opens up an
opportunity for content producers to weaken the safe-harbor provisions.

As such, the only people pushing for DMCA reform are small independent groups
like mine, folks like Kyle Wiens at iFixit, and a handful of security
researchers and public interest groups. The content lobby can easily throw a
few dozen million at a lobbying effort to quash our efforts if they think
they'd increase piracy in any way shape or form, as the potential harm that
could come to them from an increase in piracy is massive. And carriers and
electronics manufacturers don't stand to gain by allowing things like
unlocking and jailbreaking.

That being said, there's really no good argument for anti-circumvention
applying in cases where there's clearly no copyright infringement. So our hope
is that common sense and advocacy campaigns like the one we're running now
will carry the day.

~~~
rhizome
_The odds are stacked massively against us._

Yes, which is what makes this merely a good start, where "good start" is
defined as "any change in favor of the citizen." Parity is still a long way
away; consider that the law is now almost 15 years old. Will it take another
15 years for another step in this direction to be taken?

~~~
shardling
I guess I don't understand your POV here. People are pleased that any change
is being made, but you somehow interpret this as compromise. It's not!

Small changes now can lead to bigger changes over time, and generally _don't_
generate complacency like you seem to fear.

~~~
rhizome
"Fixes the DMCA" is rather absolute, isn't it?

~~~
shardling
Nah, not to my ears, in this context.

~~~
rhizome
Is that context anything more than being aware that there are other problems?

