Mm-hmm.

[silveradept]

So I went and goofed off today, like I shouldn't have. Exam still to come and all that, along with necessary writing. So tomorrow I'll make up for it with double-duty. And not game for the second day of the event. Or maybe game if I feel like I've progressed sufficiently. Probably not, though.

And someone might be shooting at a more favorite way of grabbing animation: Bittorrent tracker servers. Depending on which way who rules, the noose can tighten on plenty of fans.

And apparently, some people are raising eyebrows about sex scenes in shojo manga, and understandably so. Although, I might find it funny that something like Negima, which gets wrapped because of the age of the girls getting their clothes sneezed off (go read it, there's actually a good story mixed in with all the apparent fanservice.) receives the OT rating, where Fushigi Yugi is unwrapped but carries the same rating - and is far more brazen about some topics that Negima will probably ever be. Point, counterpoint. Why not read it and make a decision then?

Anyway, so long as people follow the ratings, I think they'll be fine (and you notice how usually the people who are getting in trouble over things like vid games and that aren't rated for them?) with some depictions.

Naturally, I'm also thinking about going to bed right now - work tomorrow, if not class, means I do have to get up at some point before noon, really. Much as I like not having to set an alarm for the moment, that is.

Comments

[silveradept]

So 'net services will follow the way of VCRs and DVRs and be legitimized in some form, made cheap enough for consumers to actually use them, and we'll go from there? We'll see. The Court may not prove to be so kind.

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

The problem now is that the music and film industries have, to an extent, learnt from those days. Now they want to make anything that "distributes their product" they can't control illegal - and the control involves mandated DRM systems. Even iTunes includes DRM, you can get around it easily enough but doing that is illegal. That needs emphasis in fact: doing what you want with the product you paid for is illegal thanks to the laws the media conglomerates have managed to buy (either directly at country levels or via WIPO).

Cheapness isn't the whole story, people want to be able to download a track and play it on any of their computers, their mp3 player or their car player. The *AAs want you to have to pay for each one (hell, their wet dream is one where you not only have to pay for each copy, they are time limited and you need to rent them. they know they can't get away with that just yet, but it isn't far off if they can get DRM to stick properly)

When the days of VCR-like freedom come again, it'll only be because someone has finally stood up to the media cartels and told them to shove it where the sun shineth not.

[silveradept]

Agreed. And it'll probably take a Court decision to tell them that they have to figure out some way of letting us use the stuff we buy in a manner that we consider fair, like the ways you've described music. After all, people are annoyed at the degrading DVDs enough to poke holes in their cases.

After all, taping off the radio's not illegal, is it? Ripping CDs to play on your home computer isn't illegal, right? It's where you start using material that is copyrighted that you don't own where the problems start... why not attack the problem of why people are sharing files instead of merely attacking people who share files?

[rimspace.livejournal.com]

And it'll probably take a Court decision to tell them that they have to figure out some way of letting us use the stuff we buy in a manner that we consider fair
I agree. Unfortunately, that may not happen - during Eldred v Ashcroft the courts basically said that defining the boundaries of copyright is the job of congress, not the courts. Fair use laws aren't quite the same (EvA was concerned with copyright term length) but they seem very reluctant to stick their necks out. Maybe it's just my natural pessimism about the state of the legal system.

After all, taping off the radio's not illegal, is it? Ripping CDs to play on your home computer isn't illegal, right?
IANAL, especially on US laws, but I believe so except that the DMCA (and the EUCD in Europe) complicates this for more modern forms of media*. If the data is protected by an "effective technological protection measure" (and the joke that was CSS was considered an effective TPM, so the bar for "effective" isn't high**) then you're allowed to try and break it yourself, you can exercise your fair use rights, but if you even tell anyone how to do it (let alone provide them with tools to do it) you're broken the law. Of course, this isn't quite so much of an issue at the moment, but it could be in the not distant future thanks to things like the TCPA (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html) among other things.

* this could even include corrupt "protected" CDs - I think the media cartels would have been laughed out of court if they'd tried to claim any of the techniques to date were "effective", but they're slowly rampin gup to the point where cracking protected CDs is non-trivial, at that point I expect them to start making noises.

** one digital rights place I frequent involved a thread where someone joked that rot13 would be considred effective by peopl elike the RIAA, untill people started thinking that it might be actually...

[silveradept]

If you were a lower court judge these days, with the political climate there is, would you want to stick your neck out too far?

If telling people how to do things like cracking CDs is illegal, then why are 2600 and publications of its like still around and printing? Wouldn't they all have been arrested by now?

And are the figures about how artists get pennies on every CD and their recording companies get the real money still true? Because while the artist might be interested in protecting their IP, the *AA's are interested in protecting their pocketbooks more than their artists... after all, they're the people who are turning out "the next new thing" in whatever genre of music every few years...

[greyweirdo.livejournal.com]

Court shmort. There is an enevitablity to this issue. Technology will win because there are enough people out there who want it to win. Copyright laws don't help in Tiwan and China, and as long as some in Tiwan or China wants to rip things off they'll make software to do it. That's what the industry people don't understand. They lost this fight a long time ago, they just didn't know it.