10 Years Of The DMCA: Time To Re-Examine The Premise

from the plan-b,-anyone? dept

One of my big complaints with the law making process is that there's no built-in process to make sure a law actually does what it's intended to do. Thanks to the law of unintended consequences, quite frequently, laws do plenty of other stuff, but do little to accomplish their stated purpose. Since politicians just want to pass laws so they can tell voters about the laws they passed, there's no real review process. So, as long as a Congress member can claim "I helped build houses/protect children/save jobs/etc.," because of a law that is called the Build Houses Act/Protect Kids Act/Save Jobs Act, they're happy -- even if the law did nothing to actually build houses, protect kids or save jobs.

In a business setting, if a course of action is agreed upon, there are usually regular milestones and checkups, whereby the business reviews whether the decided course of action has actually achieved its goals, or if those goals need to be revisited. A good business plan will often have alternative courses of action (i.e., "plan B, C, D, etc.") written in as well, so that it's easier to adjust should the original not get the job done. But, we almost never see any legislation show up that includes a clause where Congress goes back each year and determines: did this law build houses, protect kids or save jobs? So bad laws stay on the books, doing more harm than good for years, until some politician can push through an entirely new law that insists it will be the one that builds houses, protects kids or saves jobs.

So, with the DMCA hitting its 10 year anniversary today, it's good to see a bunch of folks are taking on the challenge of examining the law and noting all of its many, many faults. The EFF has released an updated version of its report on the unintended consequences of the DMCA, noting that rather than doing anything to actually help encourage the creation of new content (the purpose of copyright law) the DMCA has regularly been used to "stymie consumers, scientists, and small businesses."

Over at Princeton's Freedom To Tinker blog they're going to be running DMCA related posts all week. The first one, by David Robinson, looks at the underhanded way in which the law was first passed. Patent Commissioner Bruce Lehman wrote a whitepaper listing out a bunch of changes that he thought were necessary to improve the patent and copyright system, including much of what became the DMCA. Specifically, he claimed that content creators would never be willing to use the internet if their content wasn't protected and also claimed that an anti-circumvention clause, that banned any effort to circumvent DRM, would effectively deter copying.

Of course, it turns out he was entirely wrong on both accounts, but since there's no provision to go back and check the original assumptions against what actually happened, that doesn't matter.

Robinson highlights something even more disturbing: how the DMCA was shoved through by routing around the legislative process via international treaties -- one of our pet peeves. This is a scam used quite often by Big Content. They start frothing at the mouth about how we need to implement some sort of new draconian copyright laws "in order to comply with international treaties," leaving out the part where they were the ones who basically wrote the international treaties themselves and got unsuspecting trade representatives to approve them.

That's exactly what happened with the DMCA. Following Lehman's initial report, after there was some pushback by companies that recognized how dangerous the DMCA could be, Lehman quickly pushed for an international trade meeting, where a treaty was pushed through that was later used to urge lawmakers to pass the DMCA to "comply" (even though the DMCA went well beyond what the treaty required). This is why we should be quite worried about the similar situation shaping up today with the ACTA treaty. This copyright treaty is being negotiated in secret by both trade representatives and Big Content industry representatives, but no one looking out for the interests of consumers or the rest of society. Rest assured that if it's approved, we'll soon be hearing about the need to pass new laws to comply with ACTA and meet our international obligations.

Instead of doing that, can we take this unfortunate 10 year anniversary to get Congress to go back and look at the original rationale for the DMCA, note that it hasn't done what it was put in place to do, but has instead been widely abused to hurt other businesses and hold back innovative business models and opportunities for economic growth? And then can we repeal, or at least, amend it?
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Filed Under: 10 years, copyright, dmca, international treaties


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  1. identicon
    Evil Mike, 28 Oct 2008 @ 7:35am

    http://www.senacharim.com

    "One of my big complaints with the law making process is that there's no built-in process to make sure a law actually does what it's intended to do."

    I mentioned the exact same thing to my law professor some years back--along with an idea to fix it. His reply was along the lines of: "Good idea. It'll never happen, as it would take a law to make it happen and it would create too much work for the law makers if such a law passed."

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    SteveD, 28 Oct 2008 @ 7:47am

    The ACTA

    Looking to the next 10 years its quite frightening for what the ACTA might mean for the future, more so that its all being done behind closed doors.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    KJ, 28 Oct 2008 @ 8:13am

    You mean schoolhouse rock was over simplifying?

    I live in Canada, so I'm not very familiar with US lawmaking.

    It sounded like a pretty complicated process in "I'm just a bill"...I guess Schoolhouse Rock wasn't as jaded as they should have been...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEJL2Uuv-oQ

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    Greevar, 28 Oct 2008 @ 9:10am

    The DMCA is a power grab to legally circumvent people's fair use rights. "Oh sure, you can make legal archival backups of your purchased content, but if it is in DRM shrink wrap you can't break it or you are a criminal". XKCD was right on with the "you are a criminal no matter what you do" if you try to retain your legally purchased media.

    What does a citizen do when they can't defend their rights civilly? The only option is civil disobedience. Write DRM breaking applications and distribute them to the public and refuse to buy any more content with measures to violate your fair use rights.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    John Doe, 28 Oct 2008 @ 9:26am

    Re:

    Actually, the appropriate act of civil disobedience would be not to purchase (or steal) any of this content. The $ speaks louder than anything else. If the $$$ dry up entirely, then change will happen. All the illegal copying is doing is giving them ammo for new laws rather than addressing the real problem. Stop buying and copying and just watch how fast they get on board.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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