Copyright
Ask a question, get Slashdotted
Last week in DC at the Future of Music Policy Summit I listened to Marybeth Peters, the register of copyrights and Ann Chaitovitz from the USPTO have a discussion about Marybeth Peter's 40 years at the copyright office. It was a nice look back on the changes of copyright over the last 40 years. There wasn't much earthshaking in the discussion, but it was interesting to hear Mrs. Peters talk about how the copyright scene has changed.
Then during the Q&A portion I asked (paraphrased):
The anti-circumvention clause in the DMCA has spawned a number of copyright unrelated and stupid lawsuits. I'm talking about garage door openers, inkjet printers and now even a religious case. As a geek and engineer I object to the anti-circumvention clause. Can we dump it yet??
C-Net picked up on this question and promptly wrote about a portion of her answer (and they didn't mention me :-( ). Then Slashdot picked up on the C-Net story and it was all over the net. However, what C-Net didn't blog about was one comment that Mrs. Peters made:
All the lawsuits that have been spawned from the anti-circumvention clause have turned out right.
I'm not sure if all, but she does have a point that the major suits have been found in favor of those doing the circumventing and against those who tried to apply the DMCA outside of its original context. While she has a point, I fear that her and I are diametrically opposed on the virtues and the vices of the DMCA. Mrs Peters likes the anti-circumvention clause, but she doesn't like the safe-harbour clause:
Peters indicated she was less thrilled, however, about a portion of the DMCA that generally lets hosting companies off the hook for legal liability, as long as they don't turn a blind eye to copyright infringement and remove infringing material when notified.
The safe-harbour clause is the only redeeming clause in the DMCA, in my opinion. Thus Marybeth Peters and I (and I suspect tons of geeks in this country) are diametrically opposed on the DMCA. But this shouldn't come as a surprise as I am a tech geek and Mrs Peters is a luddite.
This country is sooo broken its sad.
Posted by Mayhem at September 23, 2007 12:02 PM
