Geeks built the Net. But as the commercial importance of the
Net increased, the businessmen are taking over the net. What is unfortunate is
that in the process of this take over, the Internet society is being so stifled
that there is a danger of the system collapsing under the weight of the
protective measures that are being hoisted on the society under various
regulations. No where else this trend is more visible than in the attempt to
transfer the Intellectual Property rights of the meta Society on the Cyber
society.
Take for example the Patent rights sought to be imposed on
"Hyper Linking" or "Doing Business on the network". Or Copyright imposition on
"Deep Linking" or "E-Book Reading". Or the Domain Name Disputes related to every
derivations of a Trade Mark. These are examples of IPR claims hitting at the
basic nature of the media. The draconian provisions of DMCA have been
highlighted many times on this site. The File Sharing Technology of Napster was
effectively torpedoed by the RIAA leading to a question mark on the fundamental
concept of an ASP or a Distributed Object processing system. The ridiculous
extent to which provisions of Copyright has been extended by Adobe in making
"Loud Reading of an E-Book" a copyright violation has created a sense of outrage
against the very idea of IPR. Left unchecked there is an attempt to make Selling
and Buying of printed books and lending through library, also an offense under
the Copyright protection measure.
Driven to the corner, the Cyber Society has started
organizing itself to fight against the exploitation. A movement has been
launched in USA to fight the narrow corporate interests which are using the
federal government to erect roadblocks that are slowing down the pace of
innovation and economic growth.
The GeekPAC and the American Open Technology Forum (AOTF)
are the two sister organisations that have been formed with the primary goal of
opposing the efforts to impose legislations aimed at
preserving the profit streams of a handful of big media companies, even if it
means stopping technological progress dead in its tracks.
The legislations that are being targeted as anti netizen are
the DMCA (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), UCITA (the Uniform Computer
Information Transactions Act), CARP (the Copyright Arbitration and Royalty
Panel), and the CBDTPA, South Carolina Sen. Fritz Hollings' ridiculously
misnamed Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act,
It is pointed out that the DMCA has already criminalized
software development -- in particular, the release of new software that decrypts
encoded recordings. It's as if the government banned saws because they can be
used to cut into someone's house. As a consequence, software developers who
experiment with new approaches to decryption, which could lead to progress in
other critical business-related software areas, now do so at the risk of being
thrown into jail.
CARP, meanwhile, promises to put fledgling online
broadcasters out of business by imposing royalty fees that competing traditional
broadcasters, who have better lobbyists, don't have to pay.
Yet another threat that has emerged is the recent
entertainment-industry-backed proposal, which would mandate that all future
home-entertainment electronic devices and computers contain "rights management"
technology patented by Microsoft.
If this legislation becomes law, new computers and
other electronic devices could play back only digital transmissions they're
authorized to receive. The content providers would also get control over when
and how many times their programs could be viewed.
As a result, consumers would lose the ability to decide which
digital goods they want to copy, when they can copy them, when they can listen
to or view programs or recordings they have purchased and who they can share
them with.
It is as if that the technological developments have brought
about convergence of Internet and Broadcasting, but the legislation is
converting the Internet into restrictive broadcasting. Instead of interactive
TVs, we may turn up having "Broadcast Computers".
It is time for all those who are concerned with development
to think
Is this the right path for technology to take? Should
regulation retard growth?
While the GeekPAC and the AOTF are currently focusing on
American legislation, it is necessary for Indians to be watchful so that
legislation similar to DMCA is not slipped through in India.
www.Cyberdemocracy.org and naavi.org will try to keep
bringing such issues to the public notice and hope that some public spirited
companies will take up promoting the issue in the necessary fora.
Naavi
April 24, 2002
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Soon There
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