Danny Thorne's Bookmarks tagged dmca →  View Popular

• 
  You buy a CD but can't take it to the gym. The Audio Home Recording
  Act legalized our right to copy music for personal use -- for
  example, making a tape of a CD to use in a Walkman. But new
  copyright legislation makes it a crime to extract music from
  copy-protected CDs.
  



• 
  You pay for cable but you aren't allowed to use your VCR. In the
  Betamax case, the Supreme Court ruled that making a copy of a
  TV show was a legal, non-infringing use of broadcast content. But
  new HDTV standards will make it illegal to copy a digital broadcast
  without the permission of the TV station.
  



• 
  You buy a DVD but you can't watch it the way you want to. It seems
  obvious that users should have the ability to fast-forward and
  rewind movies as they see fit. But new copyright laws threaten that
  right: it is a crime to sell a DVD player that would allow a
  consumer to fast-forward through the ads at the beginning of a DVD!
  



• 
  You own an electronic book, but you can't lend it to your son at
  college. Your right to lend a physical book is protected by the
  "first sale doctrine." This law states that purchasers of
  copyrighted works such as music or books have the right to dispose
  of the works in any way that they wish: they can sell them, loan
  them, rent them, or give them away. But new copyright laws
  criminalize all of those activities for digital content such as
  electronic books.

Congress, for its part, is content to let them make the rules they want to.

That puts us in very real danger of adopting a set of rules for our information society that few of us can live with. Deferring to the copyright bar to write those rules will serve us badly, but persuading Congress to use another approach is, at best, unlikely to succeed. Since members of Congress are disinclined to ask the right questions without prodding from their constituents, it has become crucially important for the general polity to appreciate the huge stake it has in how those questions are answered.