Dark Rantings

When did these people get the idea that they could change the rules midstream? Why do they think they can continually mess with things that live in MY house that I bought for MY purposes? And why do American consumers allow Hollywood to pull this shit? Time to boycott TiVo until they wise up!

Plans for pop-up ads and restrictions on copying have some consumer advocates wondering about Tivo's commitment to customer control. The company says it has to bow some to Hollywood and advertiser interests. [Wired News]

Posted by mikki at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The latest terrorist threat? Bereaved families trying to get their loved one's remains home are likely just putting up a front to smuggle bad things in the URN. Yes, that's right...TSA is now going to require special containers for your loved one's remains so that they can X ray them properly. So, your mother, father, sister, or brother will have to be transported in a plastic baggie or perhaps a nice tupperware container until you get to your destination where a nice, friendly TSA partner funeral home will transfer the remains to something less tacky.

Always looking out for our personal safety, the TSA has offered to "partner" with funeral homes in order to provide this important service. So don't forget when your loved one dies suddenly and/or tragically, causing you to become so grief stricken you can hardly deal with your own life, don't forget to ask your funeral home if they are a TSA partner before you try to get the urn with the remains back home. Else you may not be allowed to take them on the plane with you.

Don't believe me? Check out their notice . So glad to see our government is out there taking care of us.

Posted by mikki at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Absolutely fantastic news: the aspects of the copyright mashup bill that had so many of us worried were dropped before it passed in the Senate this weekend. The omnibus is now a minibus -- S 3021 [PDF].

Kudos to Public Knowledge, the Home Recording Rights Coalition, the Consumer Electronics Association, NetCoalition, and many others for their hard work in this fight.

Says Gigi Sohn in the PK press release:

Consumers won a major victory when the Senate passed legislation removing the most egregious elements of the omnibus copyright bill that had previously been under consideration. We strongly support the version of the Family Movie Act included in the bill, which gives families more control over how they watch movies and television, preserving the right to skip over commercials. The bill will benefit consumers, both in their entertainment choices now, and from the innovation in technology that will result in coming years.

We are also pleased that HR 4077 was dropped from the bill that passed. That legislation would have lowered the standard for copyright infringement. The Senate also wisely removed the PIRATE Act, which would have made the government the entertainment industry’s private law firm at taxpayer expense.

The Senate should also be commended for including in the bill legislation helping to preserve orphan works and reauthorizing the National Film Preservation Board. These features of the bill are important steps in preserving our nation’s culture. We look forward to working with Congress in coming sessions to make further progress in advancing consumer interests and preserving copyright balance.

Later: Derek Slater: "Take note again of how much better the public interest is being represented today than just a few years ago. Still playing a lot of defense, but at least it's relatively successful defense."

Posted by mikki at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Senator McCain has become an important force for good in the land of IP extremism. I reported a hold he had placed on H.R. 4077 because of valid concerns about whether the freedoms it granted (to enable parents to filter "smut" from films) would be read to deny fair use in other cases.

The same careful eye has now caught a very elegant trap buried within the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2004.

That bill adds some "Anti-Counterfeiting Provisions" to regulate counterfeit or illicit "labels." Most thought its target was physical labels. But a careful reading revealed a real ambiguity in the statute, suggesting (as the MPAA believed) it regulated both tangible and intangible labels.

Why is that a problem? Well if the act makes it an offence to distribute unauthorized copies of labels, then there's a very simple way for content owners to hack around fair use: embed a watermark into the content, and then any clip, even if fair use, would also constitute an unauthorized copy of a label. Thus, DMCA-like, what copyright law gives, this labeling law would take away.

Senator McCain is thus floating an amendment, to limit the regulation of "illicit labels" to physical labels only. And he has proposed a savings clause, which states:

Savings Clause.--Nothing in Section 2318 of title 18, United States Code, as amended by this title, shall be construed to restrict defenses or limitations on rights under title 17, United States Code, for a phonorecord, a copy of a computer program, a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, a copy of a literary work, a copy of a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work, or a work of visual art, that a genuine certificate, licensing document, registration card, or similar labeling component is (1) affixed to, enclosing, or accompanying, or (2) designed to be affixed to, enclose, or accompany.

Very nice work by a very careful Senator. The Justice Department had expressed similar concerns about an earlier version in March. But the Senator has now given those concerns real life.

Posted by mikki at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After all these years and all the complaints, "better ideas," congressional testimony, flying around the world and being pelted with the same arguments, etc., that perhaps ICANN would get the clue that maybe it should stick to the mission it was assigned when it was created - protecting the technical stability of the Internet. But no...since this bastard child of Jones Day law firm was created, (ok, even BEFORE then), it's idea of "bottom up consensus" is what staff tells the board to do.

Despite the opinions of the REAL technical community, ICANN once again ignores what it's supposed to be doing in order to continue it's true mission - that of being beholden to intellectual property interests. And, as usual, Karl Auerbach tells it like it is.

ICANN at long last finally issued its so-called "Strategic Plan".

It's not a very good plan, at least not when viewed from the perspective of the users of the internet or from the perspective of a business that uses DNS or wants to enter the DNS business.

ICANN's plan does nothing to protect the technical stability of the net. ICANN is supposed to be our fire department to make sure that the net doesn't burn down. But ICANN seems rather more interested in trying to be the king of some other hill leaving the community of internet users unprotected and the internet vulnerable.

Below is the initial comment on this plan that I sent to ICANN's "comment" address:

To: strategic-plan-comments@icann.org

There is nothing in this plan that deals with ICANN's primary mision: the technical stability of the internet's domain name and IP addressing systems.

To be more specific, there is nothing in this plan that indicates that ICANN will have any role or duty whatsoever regarding the ability of the upper layers of the domain name system (DNS) to operate reliabily, efficiently, promptly, and accurately.

There is nothing in this plan that deals with the proper preparation of the root zone file and its dissemination to root servers.

There is nothing in this plan that deals with responsible operation of the root servers in normal times or in times of stress.

There is nothing in this plan that deals with sensible and balanced allocation of IP addresses.

Instead this plan is completely about business and economic regulation and, by implication, about the prohibition of innovation that is not in accord with ICANN's business and economic rules.

That is not only *not* a narrow mission but it is also a completely inappropriate mission for ICANN. The mission that ICANN describes for itself is that of a national legislature or heavy regulatory agency.

The community of internet users require from ICANN a guarantee that the internet's core infrastructures including the upper tiers of DNS and IP address allocation operate reliably.

The internet community does not require a body that imposes economic, business, and social policy on the internet.

Yet it is that former requirement that this plan ignores and it is that latter non-requirement that this plan proposes.

--karl--
Karl Auerbach
Santa Cruz, California, USA
Former elected ICANN Director for North America

Posted by mikki at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wired News: Senate May Ram Copyright Bill. Several lobbying camps from different industries and ideologies are joining forces to fight an overhaul of copyright law, which they say would radically shift in favor of Hollywood and the record companies and which Congress might try to push through during a lame-duck session that begins this week. The Senate might vote on HR2391, the Intellectual Property Protection Act, a comprehensive bill that opponents charge could make many users of peer-to-peer networks, digital-music players and other products criminally liable for copyright infringement. The bill would also undo centuries of "fair use" -- the principle that gives Americans the right to use small samples of the works of others without having to ask permission or pay.

This bill isn't just tweaking at the edges. It's a radical move, designed to control how we use digital media, mainly to prevent us from doing things with it that the copyright owners don't specifically authorize.

I'm tempted to laugh at the prohibition of skipping past commercials. To make this work, of course, we'll need to chain people to their chairs and sofas, prohibiting anyone from heading to the bathroom or refrigerator while the commercial is running.

Public Knowledge has more information on this atrocious bill, and a page that helps you fax your opposition to your members of Congress. I suggest you call them -- 202 224 3121 -- instead.

The cartel keeps pushing, pushing, pushing. Don't let them get away with it. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Posted by mikki at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Government Claims Need for Secrecy, Rebuffs Call for Open Access

San Antonio, TX - Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a reply brief in a federal court in Texas supporting its motion to unseal a secret court order. That order had led to the seizure of two servers hosting several websites and radio feeds belonging to Indymedia, a global collective of Independent Media Centers (IMCs) and thousands of journalists.

EFF filed its reply after the United States Attorney's Office in San Antonio, Texas, filed an opposition brief urging the federal court to refuse EFF's request to unseal. The opposition brief argued that secrecy was required to protect "an ongoing criminal terrorist investigation" and that the confidentiality provisions of a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) trumped the rights of Indymedia in this case.

This marks the first time that the federal government has formally admitted to the secret order's existence. In its reply brief, EFF reminded the government that treaties are limited by the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment right of access to court proceedings.

On October 7, the federal government secretly seized Indymedia's servers from San Antonio-based Rackspace Managed Hosting. Issued at the request of a foreign government, the seizure order resulted in more than 20 IMC websites and 10 streaming radio feeds being taken offline. Neither Rackspace nor the government has formally identified the foreign country that initiated the request, but language quoted in the government's refusal of EFF's first request matches a US treaty with Italy. Morena Plazzi, a deputy public prosecutor in Bologna, admitted that she requested server logs from Indymedia, but denied requesting a seizure.

"There are serious questions about whether the government or Rackspace overreached in responding to Italy's request," said Kurt Opsahl, EFF Staff Attorney. "The public needs to see the order so we can understand what went wrong and take steps to prevent this unconstitutional silencing of protected speech from happening again."

"The government's brief tacitly admits Italy issued the order, and the Italian government admits it sought information from Indymedia's servers," said Kevin Bankston, EFF Attorney and Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "By keeping the order secret, the government appears to be trying to hide serious procedural errors that led to the seizure, rather than legitimately protecting the secrecy of a 'terrorism' investigation."

Contacts:

Kevin Bankston
Attorney, Equal Justice Works / Bruce J. Ennis Fellow
Electronic Frontier Foundation
bankston@eff.org

Kurt Opsahl
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
kurt@eff.org

Posted by mikki at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, you thought that DRM schemes were just to make sure you paid for your copy of the latest CDs? Things are a lot more insidious that that, unfortunately. Not only do they want you to pay for the use of the content, but they also want to tell you precisely how you can use it in your own home once you've paid for it. And with the new High Definition television offerings coming down the pike, things are have become so much worse that the Betamax case, allowing us to time shift and archive programs in our own homes as we choose, has become largely irrelevant. Technology is being warped to disallow the Fair Use rights that copyright law was built around.

Both Dish Network and DirecTV now have DVRs (one Tivo, one Tivo "like") that allow you to record High Definition broadcasts. Both of them, prior to release of the units, advertised them as having firewire output so that you could archive the programs to your computer or to DVHS or DVD. This was a fantastic thing for those of us who were already archiving to DVHS tape via use of discontinued equipment (discontinued after it was found that we could actually record HD broadcasts and exercise our Fair Use rights). The ability to do this was destroyed when Dish changed satellites for High Definition broadcasts.

It was highly disappointing, but not surprising when both the DirecTV and Dish DVRs shipped without firewire outputs enabled. Now the only real way I know of to archive HD broadcasts in HD is to either purchase a new STB or send your old one into a company called 169time.com who puts in firewire outputs along with a small computer that allows you to synch the signal to a firewire equipped DVHS machine. And when you're stupid or confused, they give you fantastic tech support.

But it seems that's not enough. Now the MPAA is pushing to disallow us from even fast forwarding commercials. And, remember, this is for material we have PAID for either through subscription fees, satellite TV fees, cable fees, etc. Similar to purchasing a song through Apple iTunes and then being told you can't use it in Final Cut Pro to make it a background to your baby picture slide show.

So what's next? How else will corporations try to limit what we do with things we purchase? And the serious questions are 1) why do consumers put up with it and 2) why does Congress keep pandering to the content cartels?

Posted by mikki at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yet another encroachment of Hollywood into our homes in an attempt to dictate what we do with materials we PURCHASE from them. It's bad enough that they block our ability to forward through commercials on DVDs, but now they want to make it ILLEGAL to fast forward through them with your Tivo or ReplayTV. Absolutely pathetic. It's about time consumers stood up and said "enough is enough."

As early as this week, the Senate may try to quickly pass a bill that would radically change copyright law in favor of Hollywood and the music industry. One provision: Skipping commercials would be illegal. Michael Grebb reports from Washington. [Wired News]

Posted by mikki at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)