Even if they don’t seem to be doing anything at first, complaints to the competition bureau about false advertising and labelling issue are recorded and show up in their annual reports. And even if we are aware of someone else writing about the issue doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t add our own voice. The more we push this onto the radar of the bureau, the more likely they are to help solve this anti-competitive and false advertising problem.

BTW: There are a lot of language problems. There will be claims that what they are selling you is the media and a license to access the work. In a lawyers mind saying “sell” and not offering what the majority of the world understands by the word “sell” is quite acceptable..

I believe that if an advertisement suggests that I can “BUY” a particular DVD, I should have every right to use and dispose of it as I see fit, no matter what some EULA suggests.

Some would say that this is a relatively minor matter and not worth spilling a little ink (or banging the tips of ones fingers); but I suggest, just as does the writer of the above posting, that “…the semantics of what we call something has a powerful effect on people’s perception and understanding of the thing…” As long as the cartels continue to practice the teachings of Josef Goebbels with impunity, they will be able to perpetuate the “righteousness” of their cause.

Theoretically, laws requiring truth in advertising are already in place and more laws would be redundant; but as is, the thrust of those laws is feeble and unless and until someone attempts to compel adherence by suing the cartels, they do little, if anything, to change the effect on people’s perception and understanding of what one is actually paying for when he or she tenders hard cold cash for the item.

(As an aside, but germane to the issue: activists for abortion rights gave up a lot of ground early on when they chose the wordings for their cause, and were pre-empted by phrases such as: “Right to Life” etc. “Pro-Life” is more compelling than “Pro-Choice”. See what I mean? As a homogenous group, we need to aggressively employ positive wording in everything we write or say with respect to our rights as citizens and consumers.)

What a DRM does or does not allow you (meaning the author or the audience) to do is not determined by the “copyright owner”. The “copyright owner” just encodes their license agreement terms in the DRM and it is up to the software offered by the DRM manufacturer to enforce (or not) those terms.

One of the types of DRM that is not well discussed is watermarks. Picture a DRM chip in your digital camera that detects watermarks. The claim is that this will stop you from pointing your camera at a movie in the theater or at home and recording it “without permission”. As you are taking your home video you notice that when you pan the room and the television comes into view, that your camera goes blank until the television is no longer in view.

Now imagine a politically controvercial scene, such as the various photographs taken of US soldiers returning from Iraq in coffins. All the US government would need to do is to have little video projectors that would output “water-marks” and the camera would then think that the photojournalist was trying to “infringe copyright”.

The fact is that no technology can ever know the difference between something being a copyright infringement or something that someone wants you not to be able to record for some other reason. The same tools that are used to “create” can be used to “re-create”, and there is no possible way a technology can ever tell the quite subjective difference between creativity and copyright infringement.

If we want to win this battle we need to realize it is not “copyright owners” vs. “audiences”, but specific “intermediaries” against everyone else — including both “copyright owners” and “audiences”. The “copyright owners” are being duped by the DRM manufacturers into supporting something that will violate their rights to a greater extent than any theoretical amount of copyright infringement.

I recommend people look at some of the material from the book “free culture” http://www.free-culture.cc/ , especially what happened with the motion picture industry under Thomas Edison’s patents.

http://www.honors.montana.edu/%7Ejjc/freeculture.html#page67

This time there is no “west coast” for creators to go to to hide from the lawyers from the tech companies that are being granted excessive control. In this case many of the creators and other “copyright holders” are so misinformed as to be lobbying on behalf of the technology companies that they will be trying to flea from in the future once they finally figure out what is really going on.

The recording industry will be interesting to watch. It is unlikely they will be able to survive long in a world where DRM is fully deployed and legally protected. That Graham Henderson is so clued-out to be asking parliament to chop his head of faster would be amusing to watch if it was only the major labels he “represents” that were going to be decimated by his lack of knowledge.

Digital Restrictions Management

IMHO this is how “DRM” needs to be referred to from now on. The only rights inferred by DRM are those of the copyright “owners”. As far as the public is concerned, DRM is designed only to restrict and exclude. It’s a bit like the ranting I’ve been on about for years to not call file sharing “piracy”. The semantics of what we call something has a powerful effect on people’s perception and understanding of the thing. Just my 2 cents for today.

K