[FYI] (Fwd) FC: More on Howard Berman's war on P2P networks

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Mon, 01 Jul 2002 21:31:26 -0400
To:             	politech@politechbot.com
From:           	Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject:        	FC: More on Howard Berman's war on P2P networks
Send reply to:  	declan@well.com

Previous Politech message:

"Rep. Howard Berman declares war on P2P networks, plans new laws"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-03702.html

---

From: "Ellen Stroud" <eastroud@earthlink.net>
To: "'Declan McCullagh'" <declan@well.com>
Subject: FW: Rep. Howard Berman declares war on P2P networks, plans
new laws Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 23:04:36 -0700

Declan, Berman does not have a bill just his speech. The word from the
IP subcommittee is that they are going to mark-up his bill once it is
dropped (dropping it possibly the week of July 9) without first
holding a hearing. Not good. Hollywood is trying to sneak this in at
the last min.  Ellen

Ellen A. Stroud
Government Relations
StreamCast Networks, Inc.
650.678.4629

---

 From Anonymous:

Declan,

 Supposedly the bill is not yet drafted. Berman has successfully
 requested 
a hearing from the Chairman of House Judiciary's Subcommittee on
Intellectual Property. (Funny how quickly hearings happen when major
companies like Disney REALLY want them to occur...)

 The hearing, set for July 11th, is the date that we can expect the
 bill to 
become available in some form. Hopefully as a discussion draft, but it
may be the day that the Congressman introduces the bill, one never
knows.

 (Feel free to use this info, but as always sans attribution.)

---

 From Anonymous:

** CONFIDENTIAL DON'T USE MY NAME **

Declan,

I don't have a copy of the draft bill, but I've heard some details: it
includes a 'Safe Harbor' provision for good faith interdiction of P2P
activity -- that is, if a studio THINKS that my computer is serving
copyrighted content (theirs or someone else's), they would have the
legal right to HACK MY COMPUTER or my network activity (via DOS or
other attacks) without any fear of legal repercussions.

---


From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt@hotmail.com>
To: declan@well.com
Subject: Re: FC: Rep. Howard Berman declares war on P2P networks,
plans new laws Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 18:14:15 -0700

Bah! Is Rep. Berman suggesting that we arrest his daughter and the
other god knows how many million college age "criminal" intellectual
property theives?

Priracy on this scale only emerges when a vast disjunct between the
perceived value of what is delivered, and the cost of said good,
exists. The success of P2P networks, and of Netflix, which is nothing
more than a subscription movie on demand service (one that just
happens to be managed via the USPS), suggests the scale of the
opportunity being disregarded by the entertainment industry and it's
various lobbying arms (RIAA, MPAA, etc.).

Regards,
Thomas Leavitt

---

Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 17:29:59 -0700
To: declan@well.com
From: Carl Ellison <cme@acm.org>
Subject: Re: FC: Rep. Howard Berman declares war on P2P networks,
plans
   new laws
Cc: politech@politechbot.com, cme@acm.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

At 07:24 PM 6/28/2002 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
 >Berman's contributors -- top industry is tv/movies/music:
 >http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/indus.asp?CID=N00008094&cycle
 = >2002

..and his bottom contributing industry was the computer industry.

=============

Meanwhile, his 600,000 pirated movies every day stretches
credibility.  If these aren't DVD quality, then it's not worth my
notice.  At DVD quality, assuming single density, single disk, that's
4.7GB each or 32.6 GB/sec of movie traffic.  Even if everyone had
800Kb/sec cable modems, that's a third of a million people spending
every minute of every day downloading movies.  If they do anything
else with their time, that's that many more people.  Since I have
never met anyone who has downloaded a movie over the Internet, I have
trouble believing that that population is that high.

  - Carl

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 6.5.8

iQA/AwUBPRz/h3PxfjyW5ytxEQJmegCfXag4PaFbbciph+qF8xRlIR4n5CEAoMDD
RY2E7xBWTkCNXkvNtfFu/8KF
=XEhi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

---

Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 16:34:20 -0700
From: lizard <lizard@mrlizard.com>
To: declan@well.com
Subject: Re: FC: Rep. Howard Berman declares war on P2P networks,
plans new laws

I have an odd thought.

PResumably, to be Constitutional under the 1A, a law may not make
distinctions between different speakers; that is, a man who runs a
small press paper has the same rights, under the law, as the publisher
of the New york Times.

Thus, if the RIAA has the right to hack into my machine just to see if
I might have a pirate copy of some films (I don't, BTW -- I've never
even installed P2P software on my system. I get my pr0n the
old-fashioned way, from Usenet. Good thing no one in the mass media
knows it exists anymore) then, I, as a publisher of a web site, and,
for that matter, as a contributer to physical, in-print books and
magazines, have a right to hack into THEIR systems on the off-chance
someone is tealing MY stuff.

No?

---

From: "Amos Satterlee" <amos@satterlee.com>
To: declan@well.com
Subject: RE: Rep. Howard Berman declares war on P2P networks, plans
new laws Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 09:10:41 GMT

Declan:
There are a number of assumptions in Berman's speech that are
questionable. 1. Disengagement between the tech sector and government.
For as long as I have been involved in the tech business, the
government's attitude has been one of hands-off. Government has
accepted a reactive stance, getting involved to correct perceived
abuses. Now Berman says governement wants to be a player at the table
and take a proactive role. This is a substantial change in attitude
and should be addressed as such. What, for instance, are the rules of
engagement? 2. The future and fate of the tech sector is tied to the
entertainment industry. I think it goes the other way. The future and
fate of the entertainment industry is tied to that of the tech sector.
Berman is positing that the entertainment industry is the horse and
tech is the cart. This is contrary to reality and to
political-economic mandates. We want tech to create the tools and to
push forward what the existing tools can do and to develop new tools
for the use by all industries, not just entertainment. To set up a
priori limitations, which is what Berman suggests, is
counter-productive and will stifle the curiosity and invention (i.e.
true innovation) that drives the tech sector. There is also a scale
issue that Berman ignores. The entertainment industry is an oligarchy,
with power concentrated in the hands of a very few global
conglomerates. The tech industry, on the other hand, is still
primarily a collection of smaller, independent players. The one is by
nature economically conservative and reactionary, trying to maintain
and further consolidate influence and concentrate power. The other is
by nature more progressive and proactive, trying to create new sources
of influence and to decentralize power. The only way that Berman's
position makes sense is if the consolidation of the tech sector into
an oligarchy is deemed a foregone conclusion and is, in fact,
considered to be a Good Thing to be supported by government. 3.
...present creators, artists, and media companies with untold new
opportunities. It is tiring to constantly read statements like this.
Creators and artists are one group and media companies are another
group. They have different requirements, different agendas, different
goals and different metrics of success. To lump them together does the
creators and artists a disservice, because it imposes the agendas of
the media companies on their actions. 4. Primary among these obstacles
is piracy of copyrighted works. The whole issue of copyright
protection is a stalking horse. The real issue, as witnessed by
numerous testimonies of the RIAA and the MPAA, is absolute control.
The RIAA and MPAA are not interested in copyright law -- they are
four-square against the doctrine of fair use (which is the essential
quid pro quo for getting any protection). Further, the purpose of
copyright law is to give an inventor or creator time to develop the
economic benefit of the work before the work is put into the general
creative pool of possibilities. The extensions that the copyright
oligarchs have pushed through are only about controlling economic
benefit from past works. They do not care about expanding the creative
possibilities of our society. Clearly, the thinking is that if Disney
loses its franchise on Mickey Mouse, the company will collapse causing
untold economic disaster. I think this is an overstatement of the
importance of the entertainment industry to our economy. It goes
against the economic and political underpinnings of our country. It is
an insult to all creative people, be they in the entertainment
industry or the tech sector. In short, the entertainment industry
should get some cahoonas, quit whining and act like the real creators
they claim to be. 5. Digital Rights Management If Berman really cares
about the consumer, he should be spending his time discussing what is
the appropriate scope of any DRM solution. A primary reason that the
tech sector (Palladium notwithstanding) is dithering about rights
management is to make sure that any DRM solution does not inhibit
future tech innovation. The solutions suggested by the entertainment
industry, based on its desire for absolute control of the means of
delivery, will impede future technological advances. Berman carefully
glosses over the issue of defining unauthorized reproduction. He talks
about consumer-friendly DRM, but this is a sophistry unless there is a
real discussion about the limits to be placed on the control by the
entertainment industry of the creative product. 6. His "solution" As
with all "solutions" existing are proposed by entertainment industry
voices, Berman's proposal is based on a concept of guilty until proven
innocent. It abolishes the concept of due process. Industry is given
the power to judge culpability and then to enforce its judgement
without prior notice. This is a Bad Thing. It's also technically
clueless. Recent reports show that many P2P applications by default
open the entire hard drive to the internet, so many users are exposing
files that they may not have intended to share. His proposal is also
an insult to consumers and creates a bifurcated society. Corporate
systems are not to be broken into by consumers, but it's ok for
coporations to invade consumer systems. 7. Conclusion We are at a
point in time when the very unstructured nature of the Internet is
being called into question. However, if we as a society are going to
address this issue in a meaningful way, we need to do so in a
reasoned, balanced way. All parties involved must compromise. At root
is agreeing on what the internet can do for us. The media industry
seems bent on creating yet another centralized infrastructure that
allows consumers only a passive role. While the economic incentive
seems clear, I believe that it is short-sighted and contrary to the
best interest of our country. The beauty of the internet is its very
peer-to-peer nature. From that evolves a whole system of communication
and interaction that is controllable by the end user. Most current
uses are appropriate, some may not be, but I believe that the
fundamental structure of the internet needs to remain sacrosanct as an
essential tool in the further development of our free and open
society. Berman's proposal is an unbalanced, uncompromising sop to the
media industry and goes against the best interests of our polity. Amos
Satterlee

---




----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing
list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this
notice. To subscribe to Politech:
http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is
archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs
are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- Like Politech? Make a donation here:
http://www.politechbot.com/donate/
----------------------------------------------------------------------
---

------- End of forwarded message -------


-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: debate-unsubscribe@lists.fitug.de
For additional commands, e-mail: debate-help@lists.fitug.de