FIGHT FOR YOUR DIGITAL RIGHTS
Nov 1, 2001 12:00 PM,
By Robert DiCamillo
A BATTLE ON the frontiers of civil liberties is taking place around the Recording Industry Association of America’s ongoing efforts to change copyright law. The RIAA seeks to curtail consumers’ rights to copy digital media. This multi-pronged attack is happening through new technologies and the standard tools of politics: laws, litigation and lobbying.
Secure Digital Music Initiative
SDMI was an attempt to create a framework for copying digital audio to portable devices that included copy protection of music with an imbedded watermark or digital signature. The signature could identify the user and limit the number of copies made. But altering a digital audio file often affects the sound of the music; and audio engineers and audiophiles do not like what they’re hearing. Many professionals object on principle to any change to the mastering that engineers have tried so hard to optimize.
The legal danger of SDMI is that the music industry is circumventing Congress by regulating copyrights through technology. The RIAA violates the spirit of copyright law by restricting your right to copy published works even for personal use. Since the RIAA insists that its artists sign over the copyrights under contract, it can technically argue that it is defending musicians’ rights, but this pretext is shoddy.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
The DMCA makes it a crime to try to bypass a protection scheme. Enacted into law in 1998, before the SDMI, the DMCA protects even badly implemented watermarking technologies. The DMCA adds another dimension of insult and injury to civil liberties: It facilitates SDMI in taking copyright law out of Congress’s purview, and it tramples First Amendment rights. (Many constitutional scholars believe it will not stand for long.)
Security Systems Standards and Certification Act
Having failed to get manufacturers of portable digital devices to exclusively adopt SDMI, the entertainment industry has sponsored new legislation to further its agenda. The SSSCA is the latest attack on consumers’ digital rights and perhaps the most far-reaching piece of legislation thus far. The SSSCA would make it unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, or otherwise traffic any interactive digital device that does not use certified security technologies.
Basically, the RIAA is clinging to its profits and its entrenched modus operandi. It seems to feel entitled to control the distribution and price structure of digital music across all devices. But leveraging exclusive ownership (via copyright) of a distribution channel to exclude other music distributors is monopolistic. However, the Consumer Electronics Association is aware of the RIAA’s agenda to monopolize digital music distribution. Since copy protection schemes are only going to be liabilities for manufacturers of CD, MP3 and DVD players, the deep-pocketed CES is lobbying against the RIAA.
Electronic Disobedience
The RIAA is close to achieving a government-sponsored monopoly. Some professional engineers have responded with electronic civil disobedience. The last straw was the RIAA’s experiments to make it impossible to play legally purchased CDs on a computer. It is indeed a sad commentary that the music industry will sabotage the quality of its own product in a misguided attempt at protecting it.
The irony is that the music industry will waste millions of dollars developing technology that will be useless once it’s hacked, and consumers will be charged for it. In electronic civil disobedience, it only takes one person to distribute the software workaround to the latest copy-protection scheme to thousands of people. These initiatives are distractions to the music industry. The people behind them should accept the changing realities of technology and economics. If they really want to protect profits, they should add exclusive benefits that consumers would want in the original form only.
What You Can Do
If you can’t play a CD on your computer or transfer the files to your MP3 player or PDA, return the CD. The merchant is obligated to accept the return unless there is a clear disclaimer on the packaging stating the CD will not play on a computer. Support organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, and join their e-mail lists. Write your congressional representatives. Tell them you want to copy digital music you’ve paid for to and from your computer and digital devices without interference from the RIAA.
Robert DiCamillo was responsible for domestic and international source code releases including encryption and embargoed high technology.
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