piracy

[maryannemoll]

hi. i was just prodded into thinking of copyright laws and piracy after I viewed that thread in Of Macs and (Wo)men.

seriously, shouldn't they be installing a sort of control on all our burners? so we cannot burn copyrighted material without paying for that copy first? as it is, they are giving us too much power already, not that we're abusing it.

what do you think?

[maryannemoll]

wait lang. let me correct myself. not all people pala are respectfuly of copyright laws. when i said we're not abusing this, i was referring generally to philmuggers.

[gonz]

Originally posted by maryannemoll
seriously, shouldn't they be installing a sort of control on all our burners? so we cannot burn copyrighted material without paying for that copy first?

I absolutely oppose any effort by either hardware manufacturers, software publishers, movie studios, the recording companies, or any other group to impose physical limitations or otherwise cripple the capabilities of media recording devices that we, as law abiding consumers, have legally acquired and paid for.

We have already seen some of the negative and deleterious effects of overzealous copy protection -- newer audio CD's simply cannot be played in Mac CD-ROM drives (I refer you to the Evil Beastie Boys CD thread elsewhere in this forum). This is an unintended but inevitable side effect of the new CD copy protections scheme, which tramples all over our rights as consumers. What if my Mac was my main and only CD player? This would mean that I have been excluded from playing these new copy-protected audio CD's, simply because I own a Mac and not a set-top CD player, or a Windows PC. Such copy protection schemes discriminate against me simply because I am a Mac user.

Another example: what if your friend, who paid for a CD but doesn't have a CD burner, asks you to make a legal copy of your friend's CD on your CD burner. Legal copy because each of us is allowed to create one backup copy of the software that we own, based on most End User License Agreements (EULAs). But because you have not paid for your friend's software, you are not allowed to make the copy. How can any copy protection scheme distinguish between the person who paid for the CD, and any other person?

In brief, I vigorously oppose any device or hardware modification, or any software-based copy protection scheme, that limits my rights as a consumer. If the hardware or content companies start screwing me like that, then I'm going to fight back using every means possible.

Nothing personal, but I find your way of thinking very dangerous. Any time someone advocates outside control (i.e., government/big business/big brother) that curtails our personal rights, that scares me deeply. We should all be fighting for The Man to have less control over our lives, not more! Are we children who require some outside authority to dictate to us what we can and cannot do with our legally-acquired media burners? I think we should all have a healthy distrust of authority. And if we follow the law, it is only because we have first questioned, reflected upon and agreed with the law, ensuring that it is in accord with our own personal beliefs.

[Edited on 7-12-2004 by gonz]

[elbert]

I agree with Gonz that there shouldn't be installed restrictions. I believe in self-policing. People should know right from wrong and decide for themselves whether or not to limit themselves within those parameters.

I wouldn't want to buy a car with a limiter that restricts me from traveling more than 100kph (our national speed limit).

[Jughead]

I agree with Gonz. Copy protection is not part of the solution, it's actually part of the problem. If we're going to limit this discussion to say, music CD's, I'll say that there are ways in which we can "share" our music without necessarily committing any violation on applicable copyright infringement laws.

I already mentioned one in the thread maryannemoll mentioned. If you want to compile songs you bought from iTMS and give them away, then you have to remove those songs from your hard drive and not keep copies of these songs for yourself. In effect, you're just relinquishing your legal rights to those songs to someone else and not actually sharing them since you no longer have them in your possession.

Another is to just merely borrow the CD. I don't have to own copies of my favorite songs in order to listen to them from time to time. I can always borrow CD's from my friends and for as long as I don't copy the songs from the borrowed CD's in question and as long as my friends who lent me the CD's don't make extra copies for themselves (other than their legally-allowed backup copy), then there's no copyright infringement on anyone's part. There is no law against borrowing music as far as I can recall.

And yet another one is to simply request for such songs to be played on the radio or music video stations, who are legally allowed to broadcast songs and in effect, "share" them to everyone. I'm not exactly sure if taping a song being played on the radio or a broadcast on television is illegal but if it's only for one's personal use, then I don't think it's immoral.

If we're really gonna be strict about all this copyright stuff, then the first "offenders" would be the broadcast networks. But then again, it would truly be a sad day for all of us if some wise guy legislators would actually pass a stupid law that would even prevent radio and TV from "sharing" the music, which is essentially what these institutions are doing all these years.

[Edited on 7-12-2004 by Jughead]

[Jiru-chan]

I agree with all the points stated by Gonz, Elbert and Jughead. I really dislike it when music corporations like Sony Music come up with these really absurd ways of copy-protecting their CDs. I know some people who REFUSE to buy original CDs because they know that these copy-protected CDs simply will NOT work on their CD players. So, instead of discouraging piracy, these copy-protection technologies actually have a hand in *encouraging* consumers to support piracy. I have seen people in other communities I'm a member in who, as much as they regret downloading music online, have no other choice but to do so because they've learned that buying these copy-protected CDs would render their CD players useless.

Of course, this is just one part of the picture. Like Gonz, I also oppose any scheme that limits my rights as a consumer. IMO, what makes copying these CDs wrong is when I will actually try to *sell* them. I don't think it's wrong to make a back-up copy of the album... just because I don't like the idea of letting my friends borrow the original CD (I'm possessive that way, hehe).

Just my :2cents:

[super_ed]

ditto.

btw, this reminds me of the thread earlier about iPods as security threats..

[elbert]

Originally posted by Jiru-chan
I really dislike it when music corporations like Sony Music come up with these really absurd ways of copy-protecting their CDs.

BTW, Sony the hardware company, was likewise a victim of Sony, the music company. Those CDs didn't play on their machines as well. Wawa naman their customers. Talk about an internal struggle.

[Jughead]

Same with most, if not all of the new releases by EMI will take you to copy-protection hell.

[maryannemoll]

ok. then that's settled. what about our data then? like photographs or manuscripts? is there any way we can safeguard these from being copied by other people from the cds that we burn? sometimes kasi we share them with people we trust, but accidents do happen. parang di na to piracy, but it still is concerned with ownership of material.