[svlug] Re: [nylug-talk] Bunch of Cuckoo's FoilingNapsterUsers?? (fwd)

[Ruben I Safir]

Ruben I Safir

ruben at sruben.dental.nyu.edu
ruben at wynn.noSppam.com

Perl Notes:
http://www.wynn.com/jewish/perl_course

http://www.brooklynonline.com
Manager of Intranet Development NYU College of Dentistry
Resume:  http://www.wynn.com/jewish/resume.html



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2000 19:12:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Ruben I Safir <ruben at sruben.dental.nyu.edu>
To: Jeffrey B. Siegal <jbs at quiotix.com>
Cc: nylug-talk at nylug.org
Subject: Re: [svlug] Re: [nylug-talk] Bunch of Cuckoo's FoilingNapsterUsers??

Jeff:

There was a case very early in copyright law where a Department Store
recieved a shipment of Books and decided to sell them at a really low
price as a promotion of the store.

In this case, the holder of the copyright tried to make a condition of
distribution of the material that it's resale required a mandatory set
price above the selling price that was offered by the department store.

the court held that the copyright holder could not restrict the sale of
the product under copright.  

This would seem to support your statement...but...

Copyright is involved with many aspects of use of copyrighted material
including, but not limited to the direct copying of material. Sports bars
have been sued for playing Ballgames under copyright law, Reading Rooms
tha sell coffee sued for making the material available as part of their
business etc.

Generally I agree with you.  I just turned down a job to do
Perl/Apache/Linux for a company on Broadway because the CI made a smart
remark in regard to Napster which got my blood to boil.  And the RPIAA's
attach on Napster is just as you call it ... about complete control.
I would go even further than you and say, not only can one not be pro Open
SOurce, but if you understand the issues correctly, you can't be for
Democracy!!  Democracy requires uninhibited right to associate and
innovate, to think freely and have a right to be educated and publish.

Even still, Napster is a private corperation and put on their website that
you will never find no name artists on Napster --- As Billy said - that's
a smoking gun!

DeCss is a comunity project.  At it's most basic, people, breathing human
individuals must have the right to reverse engineer and share their work
with others.  People must have the basic right to make Fair Use
uninhibited of the property they lawfully purchase, especially if
that material is a form of a copy of a creative work, news,
information, or any form of speach. 

Less Basic, even Businesses must have the right to reverse engineer
without prior aproval, at the minimum for fair compition and innovation.

The worse thing that can happen for Linux is that Napstar looses because
it permited copying, and then DeCss looses for the same reason.  Napster
is trying to turn a profit.  DeCss is simply trying to obtain Fair Use.
I'm not a felon for sharing a music file with a freind.  And I'm certainly
not a felon for watching a DVD on Linux with an open sourced product.

Napster is not an open sourced product.  It's just a company trying to
make a profit.


Ruben I Safir

ruben at sruben.dental.nyu.edu
ruben at wynn.noSppam.com

Perl Notes:
http://www.wynn.com/jewish/perl_course

http://www.brooklynonline.com
Manager of Intranet Development NYU College of Dentistry
Resume:  http://www.wynn.com/jewish/resume.html



On Sun, 20 Aug 2000, Jeffrey B. Siegal wrote:

> Ruben I Safir wrote:
> > Napstar is a traditional corparation guilty of traditional
> > copyright infringment.
> 
> It is nothing of the sort.  A traditional case of commercial copyright
> infringement involves a factory which manufactures and sells unauthorized CDs,
> etc.  Regardless of whether or not you believe it is a good thing, Napster is
> nothing like this.
> 
> Napster is simply a technology for sharing audio files.  Nothing more, nothing
> less.  The audio files might be copyrighted music, or they might be
> uncopyrighted music (or copyrighted music with permission), they might be my
> daughter's piano lessons, or they might be Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandella or
> Richard Stallman giving a speech.
> 
> Napster happens to be designed to share audio files, but similar systems also
> share text, computer programs, images, video, etc. (Even Napster can do this
> using a hack called Wrapster which makes the files look like mp3s.)  The issues
> are identical.  An attack against the right of Napster, Inc. to create a system
> for sharing audio files is an attack against the right of anyone to create a
> system for sharing of *any* files.
> 
> I would agree with your statement that the DeCSS case and Napster case are very
> different, in terms of legal analysis.  However, the are *very similar* in that
> they represent examples of a copyright oligopoly so intent on suppressing
> threats to their control that they are willing to ignore the limits on their
> power set both by the law and by good sense.
> 
> Linux and open source generally are similarly threatened, because computers and
> networks are, by their nature, highly efficient copying machines.  The copyright
> industry would like to see manditory "rights management" systems everywhere,
> which means an having an extraordinary degree of control over the hardware and
> software in use.  In the world they want to create, there will be no room for
> being able to modify source code because that can easily be used to circumvent
> "rights management" and even viewing source code will be viewed as a threat to
> their security-by-obscurity (i.e. "trade secrets").
> 
> It is impossible for people to be rationally in favor of open source and not be
> opposed to the actions of the copyright industry in both the DeCSS and Napster
> cases, assuming they understand the technology and the issues well enough.
> 
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