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

[David Howe]

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

Canadian law doesn't distinguish between analog and digital; initially, the tax on a blank
CDR was to be $2.50 but given the then current cost of the media was under $2 that was
considered a little excessive by the public

In the UK there is no such levy, as making copies, even for personal use, is a crime (as is
in theory use of a vcr to timeshift. the UK sucks)

> Were it true here, copyright "infringement" would be *more* than
> justified morally,
> since we'd have paid for it, under threat of violence, without even
> having done it.
Yup. and copy protected audio "non cds" such as the more recent album releases are actually
an attempt to prevent you using your fair use rights, which are of course legal, without
performing an illegal circumvention of the protection under the terms of the DMCA.  Note
such prevention is not illegal in itself, despite the levy on blank media - the RIAA are
permitted to block you in any manner they see fit, they just can't sue you if you record
their stuff (but of course now they can claim you *must* have borken the DMCA terms in order
to so record *sigh*)