A Copyfighter’s Musings

The DMCA exemptions were surprising and fortunate, but, as always, disappointing.

Bill Herman at PK: “In 2000 and 2003, they vocally rejected any and all classes of works that were defined, even in part, by reference to specific users or intended uses. Classes of works had to be defined strictly in terms of the qualities of the works themselves. In 2006, however, the intended use and/or user are part of 4 of the 6 granted exemptions.”

Fred von Lohmann: “I am very encouraged by the fact that the Copyright Office is willing to recognize exemptions for archivists, cell phone recyclers and computer security experts. Frankly I’m surprised and pleased they were granted.” (Business Week)

“Unfortunately, just as we predicted, all the proposed exemptions that would benefit consumers were denied (space-shifting, region coding, backing up DVDs). So, while we’re pleased that film professors, archivists, cellphone recyclers, and security researchers were able to successfully navigate the exemption process, it appears that digital consumers still have no choice but to get Congress to amend the DMCA. We look forward to Rep. Rick Boucher reintroducing his DMCA reform bill, H.R. 1201, in the new Congress next year.” (DeepLinks)

Aaron Perzanowski: “I think the harm of the DMCA to consumers and innovators has been established with sufficient force and regularity that we shouldn’t risk creating misconceptions about the scope and availability of exemptions that offer important new safeguards for the sake of reiterating the parade of horribles created by the law.”

The exemptions also don’t make it lawful to provide circumvention tools — so media professors have the right to circumvent CSS, but technically no one is allowed to provide them with the tools to do so. Aaron’s right that this ruling is better than nothing, but (as he also agrees) the exemption process remains woefully inadequate to deal with the DMCA’s myriad harms.

Filed by Derek Slater at 7:55 pm under Uncategorized
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My 15 year old cousin tells me he doesn’t use email except to communicate with adults or send in homework. That’s not so surprising, since I’ve watched from afar as he shares photos from his phone and campaigns for student council via Facebook. It’s also consistent with surveys regarding “digital natives.”

But it’s not just teens who look at email differently. My fellow 23 year old roommates use MySpace to communicate with their friends and use their GMail or Yahoo! accounts for buying stuff online, if at all.

This shift makes me feel very out-of-step with my peers and relatives, but that’s not why I’m writing this post — there’s a broader significance here, it seems. Spam and phishing have spurred technical attempts to “fix” email. These schemes often threaten email as a vibrant medium for speech and rely on an incorrect assumption: to accommodate certain uses, we have to sacrifice email’s relative openness, low barriers to use, and/or support for anonymity.

But that’s a false choice. We could also do as the digital natives already are — when email doesn’t suit their needs, they use one of many alternatives. They can move fluidly between MySpace, IM, blogs, other tools, and email. Spam can happen through other tools too, but now you can mix and match more closed, limited communication systems with more open systems like email — for example, you can use a friends-only whitelist for Facebook messages but let everything through to your email box, and, that way, you get the best of both worlds.

Digital natives don’t seem to care much about changing email, and that should give businesses and policymakers pause when they consider “fixing” it.

Filed by Derek Slater at 7:46 pm under Uncategorized
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Whatever you think of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act’s (UIGEA) medium-to-long run impacts, the short run effects are clear. WaPo’s blog reports, “According to Nielsen/NetRatings, which tracks Web use, traffic to the top 10 Internet gambling sites dropped a staggering 56 percent in October” (via Iggy). PartyPoker, which promptly banned US players, apparently dropped from 7.5 million unique users in September to 2.5 million in October.

In time, many players will likely turn to various work-arounds or switch to sites like FullTilt and PokerStars so long as they accept US players. But the switching costs aren’t solely responsible for the decrease in online poker playing. With online poker and casino gambling booming before, sites like Party Poker were able to liberally hand out bonuses to customers — free money just for signing up or making a new deposit. These bonuses helped lure in new players or bring back existing ones, and a larger playerbase meant they could spread more games and increase the value of the site overall.

Given the current uncertainty, I doubt these businesses can hand out large bonuses — at least, I don’t see any sites providing bonuses comparable to PartyPoker’s past offers. In the short run, that’s also going to hurt businesses’ ability to bring in players.

See also: this interesting post at 2+2, also via Iggy.

Filed by Derek Slater at 6:23 pm under Uncategorized
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Filed by Derek Slater at 2:18 pm under Uncategorized
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