January 15, 2003
Damn. The US Supreme Court ruled against Eldred, 7-2. Lawrence Lessig has copies of the rulings on his weblog.
Update: I like what Dan Gillmor has to say: "Supreme Court Endorses Copyright Theft."
The thieves are the members of the copyright cartel. Hollywood, the music industry, publishers and their vassals in Congress have continually heisted what you should already own: the words and songs and films and more of people, long dead, who have already been richly (and justly under copyright law's original intent) rewarded for their creations.
They call it piracy now when a college student downloads an MP3. The most recent extension of copyright terms, giving huge corporations royalties on ancient art for another 20 years for no other reason than pure greed and corruption, is the single greatest act of copyright piracy in history.
On a more positive, related note, here's an interview with Representative Rick Boucher, who's introduced a bill to fix the DMCA: the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act (HR 107).
The bill is very simple. It says that if a person is bypassing for a lawful purpose, then the bypass itself is lawful. If a person bypasses for the purpose of piracy or otherwise infringing the copyright, then the bypass and the infringement would remain unlawful. The bill also says that the manufacturer of technology that has multiple uses, some of which are potentially infringing, and others of which are useful, will be permitted under the DMCA; and that the manufacturer will not be punished under the DMCA, if the technology is capable of substantial noninfringing uses.
