what moral obligation? (Re: DRM technology and policy)

[Tim May]

On Tuesday, April 29, 2003, at 06:23  AM, David Howe wrote:

> at Tuesday, April 29, 2003 2:17 AM, Major Variola (ret) <mv at cdc.gov>
> was seen to say:
>> AFAIK, not true in the US.  You are from the UK, according to your
>> address,
> Close enough - GMX is actually a german webmail service, but I *am* in 
> the UK ;)
>
>> and you haven't even freedom of speech, so its not
>> surprising you're assumed to be guilty, and fined, without evidence.
> *lol* FoS is more seen in the breach than in the observance in the US  
> I have noticed.  But
> you are right - the UK is even worse; as an example, one anti-war 
> protestor was recently
> jailed for burning a flag outside a US base (the flag wasn't the us 
> one, but was close
> enough to pass for one on casual inspection; the stars had been 
> replaced with various oil
> company logos). Burning the same flag *in* the US would have been a 
> legally-protected
> expression of protest.... as would have been burning a genuine flag.
>
> Of course, in the US she could have been declared an enemy combatant 
> (even if a US citizen)
> and held indefinitely without evidence, trial or access to lawyers.
>
> Anyhow, back to the subject :)
>
> I believe the blank media "tax" was an international invention 
> (amongst the music industry
> of course - no point letting anyone else have a vote :) adopted in 
> america the same year it
> was agreed (1992) but AFAIK restricted just to digital media (so CDR, 
> DVD and minidisk) - If
> there is a media tax on analog recording, I am not aware of where it 
> is established

Home (Audio) Recording Act of 1992.

It created the tax and specifically immunized those who make recordings 
for personal use, not for profit or sale.

As I have said here before, a somewhat obsessive friend of mine has a 
library now of at least 4000 CDs recorded onto DAT and CD-R. He goes on 
"library runs" where  he visits 5-6 nearby library branches and checks 
out the maximum number of CDs at each, sometimes as many as 15 per 
branch. He started out by loading them into a CD changer and 
automatically duping them to DAT. Now he just uses a 48x reader and 24x 
writer (I think that's the speed) and copies each in a matter of a 
couple of minutes. The usual online sources give the songs, from a code 
on the CD, and his color printer prints a label which he affixes to the 
CD-R.

I know other people who do the same thing with DVDs, though this is not 
legal under the above Act. And there are issues of quality with DIVX 
(not the Circuit City scheme, but another).

--Tim May
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice."--Barry Goldwater