Copyright Office chief: I'm a DMCA supporter
WASHINGTON--There's still a lot of hatred out there for a controversial law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but don't count the U.S. Copyright Office chief in that camp.
U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters
"I'm a supporter; I think it did what it was supposed to do," Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters said of the 1998 law at an appearance at the Future of Music Policy Summit here. "No law is ever perfect, but I remain a supporter."
The DMCA, among other things, dictates that "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device (or) component" that is primarily designed to bypass copy-protection technology. For that reason, it has long been unpopular among some hackers, programmers and open-source devotees--not to mention consumer groups that believe it unduly inhibits fair use rights.
"I'm not ready to dump the anticircumvention," Peters said in response to a question from an audience member who suggested as much. "I think that's a really important part of our copyright owners' quiver of arrows to defend themselves."
The law also requires that the Copyright Office meets periodically to decide whether it's necessary to specify narrow exemptions to the so-called anticircumvention rules. (Last year, the government decided it's lawful to unlock a cell phone's firmware for the purpose of switching carriers and to crack copy protection on audiovisual works to test for security flaws or vulnerabilities.)
Peters told summit attendees that at first she thought it was "stupid" to put the Copyright Office in the position of deciding whether certain locked content was problematic, but she eventually came around.
"It does bring attention to certain activities that maybe aren't so great," said the self-proclaimed "Luddite," who confessed she doesn't even have a computer at home. "In hindsight, maybe that's not such a bad thing."
Peters indicated she was less thrilled, however, about a portion of the DMCA that generally lets hosting companies off the hook for legal liability, as long as they don't turn a blind eye to copyright infringement and remove infringing material when notified. That's one of the major arguments Google is attempting to wield in fighting high-profile copyright lawsuits, including one brought by Viacom, against its YouTube subsidiary.
"Shouldn't you have to filter? Shouldn't you have to take reasonable steps to make sure illegal stuff that went up comes down?" she said. She added, without elaborating further, "I think there are some issues."
To someone to whom a VCR is current technology and a DVD player is the cutting edge doesn't see the downside of limiting media servers. They don't know what a media server is. To someone interested in technology, a media server is simply a device in their household; they're looking at things even more complicated. This means that the "luddites" are locking down entire categories of things simply because they're not personally interested.
Long live CC-BY-SA, GNU, BSD, MIT!
Tony ;-)
The phone company doesn't watch me to make sure I don't read someone a chapter of a copyrighted work over the phone. The email carrier isn't watching to see that I don't type in the copyrighted text of a book or lyrics and call it my own. The Post Office can't prevent me from infringing the text of a Hallmark card.
The "carrier" is not the "publisher." Obviously, imposing such a ridiculous duty on the carrier (Google, AOL, the phone company) is a technology killer.
Moreover, even if there emerged a cheap or free technology that could do such filtering, it is way wrong to deputise and delegate to a private company a duty to enforce copyright compliance without providing them the essential tools of determining copyright STATUS. Which do not exist. Further: Why should copyright get enforcement from a private carrier any more than "hate speech," defamation, trademark dilution, or any other of the endless forms of misconduct possible through a communications device?
Think this through, people!
Thanks for bringing this article to the readers of CNET. These DMCA issues are extremely relevant, and vitally important, in today's world
I know Ms. Peters and I think she is an excellent Register of Copyrights. She is both intelligent, analytical, and fair-minded. She won't be swayed by the massive truckloads of anti-copyright advocates, lawyers, and PR agents employed by companies like Google, and others, these days. She understands the importance of property rights, both physical and intellectual, to this country.
The market is solving the anti-circumvention "debate" on its own, but why copyright infringers believe they have a vote is simply beyond me. I wonder what they would say if we told them they couldn't put up a fence around their back yard or pool?
And how can Google help to organize all of the world's information (whether we want them to or not) with those security systems in place in all their houses?
There is no real need to change the DMCA here. Our problem is enforcement, not Constitutional rights or the law.
Ms. Peters makes an excellent point about the "safe harbor" provisions of that same law, however. They were NEVER meant to give known pirates a safe harbor to sail their infringement vessels into. I have never seen a clause so incorrectly interpreted (purposely, I might add) by so many, with such market power, in my entire career. And I've been at this game since the mid 70s.
Google, and other major search engine players in this country, and in others, intentionally, and routinely, misuse, and misrepresent the "safe harbor provisions" of the DMCA. I know. I was in the middle of a huge copyright infringement lawsuit when the DMCA first became law in 1998. It was NOT designed to encourage copyright infringement, to give unscrupulous web site publishers and distributors a place to hide, or to place the burden of policing violations on those who cannot control the distribution networks.
NONSENSE!
The law was never intended to give a large publicly funded company, such as Google, an escape from liability for obvious copyright infringement activity. Google's attorneys have simply used the technical confusion to mislead those in our "judicial" society that decide such things - the court appointed mediators, arbitrators, lawyers, judges, and juries ... let alone uninformed politicians. Back in my IBM days, we called it the spreading of the "FUD factor" ... Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.
We are fortunate to have a strong woman, such as Ms. Peters, at the helm up here in Washington. If only her judicial counterparts would use a little "common sense", we'd all have a better, and safer, Internet to browse, surf, and search.
Thanks again, Anne.
George P. Riddick, III
Chairman/CEO
Imageline, Inc.
griddick@imageline2.com
http://www.xtremedirectory.com
- Get back in the library
- by rvassar September 20, 2007 7:24 AM PDT
- She seems like a nice lady (most librarians are) but is completely
- Reply to this comment
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(7 Comments)out of touch with the current world of technology. Copyright laws
in the US are ridiculous and DMCA is just a corporate protection
plan. We need companies like Google to loosen things up.
Unfortunately, the only way things will change is if large corps like
Google pay off congress (more than the media giants)!