Culture: October 2002 Archives
October 21, 2002
The O'Reilly Network has an interesting article by Richard Koman up, called Lessons from the Internet Bookmobile. The author spent 10 days traveling across the country in a bookmobile. This particular bookmobile was a little different in that it didn't actually carry any books; instead,
Loaded in the back of the Bookmobile were an HP duplexing color printer, a couple of laptops, a desktop binding machine, and a paper cutter. On top was a MotoSat dish with Internet connection. [We took] ASCII text versions of public domain works available online and turn[ed] them into books. When the Bookmobile shows up at a school, kids get to operate the paper cutter to make books, each classroom gets a few books to keep, and everyone gets a lesson in the applications of the public domain.
The entire setup cost $15,000 (plus less than $4,000 for the van itself), a fraction of the cost of many new bookmobiles. A similar (and similarly cheap) setup could revolutionize aspects of libraries, schools, and even bookstores. Imagine walking into a library to borrow a copy of a public domain text—and being handed a freshly printed and bound copy that didn't need to be returned (because it only cost the library $1 to make).
Applications like these depend on a large, and largely digitized, public domain, another point addressed by the article. Fortunately initiatives like the Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg exist to digitize our public domain works, but there's always more to do. Here's hoping the SCOTUS rules against the Bono extension act, and keeps adding to our universal data store.
October 8, 2002
There's a couple of encouraging developments in the War on Fair Use. Two bills have been introduced to Congress (though they will almost certainly sit still until the next session) which would return significant Fair Use rights to consumers of digital media, mostly removed by the DMCA. The first is the Digital Choice and Freedom Act. The DCFA would explicitly provide consumers with the same Fair Use rights with digital media they enjoy with analog media (such as cassettes and VCR tapes), among them the right to make personal copies and compilations.
The second act in question is the Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act. This act would counteract the portions of the DMCA which make circumventing copy-protection schemes illegal even for uses previously covered under Fair Use. Essentially the act would make it legal to bypass the copy protection on a DVD in order to make a backup copy or to extract clips from the film for use in a personal compilation. (Currently even attempting to bypass such protections is illegal.) This has very, very important consequences for digital research—there have been a number of important cases where legitimate academic researchers have had their research shut down (or chilled, which amounts to the same thing proactively) by the threat of prosecution. The bill also would extend some pretty strong protection to devices which merely are "capable of enabling significant non-infringing use of a copyrighted work", in stark contrast to the DMCA's inverse requirement.
As noted, the bad news is that neither of these bills will go anywhere until next session—and in fact, probably neither will be passed. The hope is that by introducing two such bills, Congress will be forced to address the issue somehow—preferably by repealing or significantly reworking the DMCA itself.
This provides a unique opportunity, since there is an election coming up, after all (nice timing by the bills' supporters). Send the candidates in your area letters or e-mails requesting that they clarify their stance on the two bills in question, and vote your conscience. It's time the consumers had a say in the Rape of Copyright.
Saw this via Ars Technica.
