Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Greg London" <email AT greglondon.com>]

If I understand correctly, the idea that the
anti-circumvention clause applies to owners of
the DRM technology, not the owners of teh content
that got placed inside the DRM technology, is,
effectively, arguing for security by obscurity,
and more importantly maintains an unneccesary
monopoly.

The DMCA says its illegal to circumvent DRM.
Even if it was your content placed in the DRM.
If the argument goes that cracking the DRM to
access your own content would not be supported
by the courts, then the essential argument to
support that idea is that DRM is secure only
so long as any weakness is obscure. That to crack
DRM for a legitmate reason (say: to access your own
CC-SA content that some asshole put under DRM
restrictions so you can't make copies of something
you wrote and hold the copyright to) is to crack
all instances of that DRM, is an attempt to keep
the Genie in the bottle through draconian law.

This no longer creates an incentive for creators
of content. This creates an incentive for anyone
who can come up with some piece of shit DRM
technology, which allows them to grab any available
works, place it under their DRM control, and effectively
own the work.

Look who benefits by this. Certainly not content
creators. Rather, it is the middlemen. Distributers
such as record and movie companies who had massive
monopolies because old technology required middlemen,
but now that new technology is making the middlemen,
the central distributers, obsolete, they've bribed
our politicians, the people's "representatives", to
enact a chartered monopoly in the form of DRM and
enforced this monopoly through the anti-circumvention
clause.

Even though current technology no longer needs centralized
distribution for content, DRM and DMCA act together to
maintain a centralized monopoly, unnaturalistically, and
anti-competively. All to reward the monopoly, the middlemen,
at the cost of content creators, the people who copyright
was intended to reward.

DRM creates a monopolized distribution channel that
rewards the distributers, not the creators.

Greg


> rob AT robmyers.org wrote:
>>  Quoting Terry Hancock <hancock AT anansispaceworks.com>:
>> > What we're asking for, essentially, is a license that says "I'll
>> > let you use this pasture of mine. I'll even let you put a fence
>> > around it. But you have to promise to let anyone cut that fence in
>> > order to get to the pasture".
>>
>>  The problem with DRM is that you have signed a contract with
>>  FenceCorp to install and maintain the fence around your pasture. The
>>  fence is *their* property, you do not own it. You have no right to
>>  allow damage to the property of other people. You therefore cannot
>>  allow anyone else to cut FenceCorp's fence. If you say to someone
>>  "sure, go ahead, cut the fence around my property" you are inciting
>>  them to criminal damage of other people's property. You are inciting
>>  them to break the law.
>
> So, the fundamental absurdity is this idea that cracking a DRM scheme
> to access a file, somehow damages the "property" of the DRM company?
>
> Wow. That is a really insane idea.
>
> You, know, I'm thinking now, maybe I should sue you for punitive
> damages for destroying my argument.  Should be legal under that
> logic!
>
> Cheers,
> Terry
>
> --
> Terry Hancock (hancock AT AnansiSpaceworks.com)
> Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
>
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>


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