Don’t fence me in
p2p news / p2pnet: In the 1960’s there were discussions including consumer advocate Ralph Nader about the need for seatbelts in cars. Policy makers didn’t understood the need, and wouldn’t mandate that manufacturers installed them in cars, until finally a simple idea clicked in their mind. The need for seatbelts didn’t relate to the car hitting something (the "first collision"), but the body hitting the car (the "second collision").
Until people recognized the existence of the second collision ,they couldn’t see the point of safety devices that didn’t avoid the first collision.
The discussions about Digital Rights Management (DRM), or other controversial uses of technical measures by copyright holders, has the same type of conceptual problem.
Copyright holders sheepishly suggest they’re are putting digital locks, or "fences," around their own "property", and that the only people who’d disagree with this are people who want to "steal" that property.
For DRM to do what copyright holders want, the technology people use to access this content must disobey the instructions of its owners. What this means is: this "fence" must not only be around the digital content, but the technologies.
This technology is owned by someone other other than the copyright holder. It isn’t copyright holders putting a fence around their "property": rather, i’s the third parties putting a fence around *MY* property.
Just like there was a need for laws mandating seatbelts be installed in cars to protect us from this "second collision", there’s increasing awareness for the need for laws which protect citizens from this "second digital fence".
The practice of putting a "digital fence" around someone else’s property shouldn’t be supported in law. This suggests anti-circumvention laws such as those proposed in the 1996 WIPO treaties, and implemented in the USA’s controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), shouldn’t exist.
This lack of legal protection for this "second fence" isn’t enough. Most citizens aren’t technical enough to be aware of this harmful behaviour, or be able to on their own protect their technology property rights.
Powerful government officials have started to weigh in on this debate.
In November 2005 Stewart Baker, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for policy, said to the industry, "It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property – it’s not your computer".
In February, Jonathan Frenkel, director of law enforcement policy at the U.S Department of Homeland Security, gave a speech at the RSA Conference 2006 where he suggested that "RootKits" should be outlawed.
A simple definition of a "RootKit" would be a modification to the operating system of information technology which hides its operations from the owner of the computer, and controls the computer in ways not authorized by this owner. This definition it would properly catch the controversial aspects of DRM in any law that outlaws "RootKits".
It should be unlawful to install DRM on my computer without my permission. It should also be unlawful to make it a condition of purchasing someone’s content that I put DRM on my computer, something that echoes a concept in the privacy act which says you can’t make it a condition of buying something that the customer waive their privacy rights.
Schedule 1 of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) includes:
4.3.3
An organization shall not, as a condition of the supply of a product or service, require an individual to consent to the collection, use, or disclosure of information beyond that required to fulfil the explicitly specified, and legitimate purposes.
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons).]
