Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
The three examples cited are poor excuses for the law:
1- Netflix streaming videos are accessible on-demand at any time so there is no legal use that gets "solved" by letting the user make local copies of the content. They are no more in the business of providing permanent copies of digital content than they are of disk-based content; they sell nothing. They merely rent content. That does not give anybody any ownership rights.
2- Merging ebook collections into one device is already doable via legal means that don't require breaking existing law. More, few people actually need to do it anyway. Better excuses exist for breaking ebook DRM.
3- Samsung passing private info to third parties? No technical solution needed: don't buy from them. Or lobby for a law forbidding it. Sue them if you're bought one without doing your homework and reading the TOS. There might be a class action suit there.
If this is the best the anti-DRM evangelists can come up with, the IP lobbyists have nothing to fear; they can get the project canned on merit. It's a baby-with-the-bath-water proposal that kills legitimate business uses of DRM (digital rental, for starters) for no demonstrable common-good reason.
If they proponents don't come up with better justifications the lobbyists won't even have to call in favors or spend money on bribes.
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I believe those are Corey's personal examples. I agree he could have used better examples but I can understand each of them.
1) If you've paid a monthly fee for access to the Netflix content why is it any different than broadcast TV where personal recording and time shifting is allowed? Not everyone has internet access everywhere they go. Trains, planes, automobiles, camping etc... I can understand why cable cutters feel they should be able to PVR streamed video just like broadcast video.
2) It's clear that he's talking about a single ereader rendering engine and you can't do that today with DRM ebooks. Yes you can have separate DRM rendering engines on the same tablet but launching different applications with different settings and features is not what he's talking about.
3) If you spent $4K for a new TV and then found about the issue later I can understand why you'd want to fix the problem yourself.
As more and more companies get greedy and abuse DRM I think the general attitude will sway towards support of this type of law. Landfills are filled with the results of the print cartridge business model and soon they'll be filled with coffee makers.