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EFFector Vol. 19, No. 16 April 28, 2006 editor@eff.org
A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation
ISSN 1062-9424
In the 377th Issue of EFFector:
* Action Alert: Don't Let Congress Shackle Digital Music!
* Petition Congress to Oppose RIAA Lawsuits, Forge Better
Way Forward
* EFF Honors Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, and Jimmy Wales with
Pioneer Awards
* The Season of Bad Laws, Part 1: TM Dilution Revision Act
* The Season of Bad Laws, Part 2: Criminal Copyright
Infringement, Drug War Style
* Top Canadian Artists Oppose DRM, Suing Fans
* miniLinks (16): GETV at EFF Email Debate
* Staff Calendar
* Administrivia
For more information on EFF activities & alerts:
<http://www.eff.org/>
Make a donation and become an EFF member today!
<http://eff.org/support/>
Tell a friend about EFF:
http://action.eff.org/site/Ecard?ecard_id=1061
effector: n, Computer Sci. A device for producing a desired
change.
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* Action Alert: Don't Let Congress Shackle Digital Music!
Dianne Feinstein's "Platform Equality and Remedies for
Rights Holders in Music (PERFORM) Act" would permanently
hobble your ability to record off the radio and force
webcasters to use DRM formats.
If passed, future satellite and digital radio receivers
would be limited by law to what the bill calls "reasonable
recording." To the RIAA, this means that all consumers will
be banned from choosing and playing back selections based on
song title, artist, or genre. According to the Consumer
Electronics Retailers Coalition, even the transmission of a
recording from room to room inside a house would be
restricted by mandatory blocks and controls.
PERFORM would also mess with streaming Internet radio
stations. Right now, MP3 or open format Internet radio can
take advantage of statutory copyright licensing to
remunerate rights holders and artists. After PERFORM, all
streaming music that uses statutory licensing will be
required to be in a DRM-encumbered format that forbids
interoperability or user-editing. Wave goodbye to MP3
streaming and to moving recorded webcasts to the portable
player of your choice.
PERFORM is yet another petulant action by the RIAA on the
statute books, placing their short term interests over the
freedom to innovate and the future freedoms of America's
musicians and customers. Tell your representative not to
co-sponsor or vote for PERFORM in the Senate or its
companion bill in the House.
Take action now:
<http://action.eff.org/site/Advocacy?id=221>
Details and full text of the bill:
<http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=S3510&dbname=2006_record>
EFF's summary of the bill's implications:
<http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004587.php>
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* Petition Congress to Oppose RIAA Lawsuits, Forge Better
Way Forward
In response to the RIAA's irrational lawsuit campaign
against the tens of millions of American P2P users, EFF set
up a petition asking Congress to stop the madness and
support ways for artists to get paid without fans getting
sued. We're now close to our goal of 100,000 signatures,
and, with your help, we hope to surpass it by a longshot and
deliver the petition to Congress.
After over 18,000 lawsuits and counting, file sharing has
continued to increase rapidly. Meanwhile, music fans, like
12 year-old Brittany LaHara, college student Cassi Hunt, and
parent of five Cecilia Gonzalez, are being forced to pay
thousands of dollars they do not have to settle RIAA-member
lawsuits, and many other innocent individuals are being
caught in the crossfire.
But resistance to this shameful crusade is growing. Just
this week, many top Canadian musical artists, including
Barenaked Ladies and Avril Lavigne, called the lawsuits
"destructive and hypocritical," and a court threw out a
lawsuit against 14 year-old Brittany Chan.
It's time for Congress to join the chorus of opposition and
stop kowtowing to the content cartel. Sign the petition,
and donate to EFF to support a better way forward.
For the petition:
<http://www.eff.org/share/petition/>
To donate to EFF:
<http://www.eff.org/support/>
To learn more about EFF's Share campaign:
<http://www.eff.org/share/>
To read EFF's paper "RIAA v. People: Two Years Later":
<http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/RIAAatTWO_FINAL.pdf>
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* EFF Honors Craigslist, Gigi Sohn, and Jimmy Wales with
Pioneer Awards
15th Annual Ceremony Highlights Innovations in Information
Technology
Washington, DC - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
will honor craigslist and its leaders, Craig Newmark and Jim
Buckmaster; Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge; and Jimmy Wales
of Wikipedia at its 15th annual Pioneer Awards ceremony.
The presentation is at 7pm on Wednesday, May 3, at the
International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, in conjunction
with the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference (CFP).
This year's award winners all represent vital, community-
building organizations dedicated to spreading knowledge in
or about our digital world. They were nominated by the
public and then chosen by a panel of independent judges for
their innovations in the realm of information technology.
Craigslist is the world's most-used classified forum in any
medium, serving as a non-commercial community service.
Craigslist focuses on helping people with their basic needs
-- starting with housing and jobs -- with a pervasive
culture of trust. Craigslist's Craig Newmark founded the
online community in 1995, and he still acts as a customer
service representative. Jim Buckmaster has been
craigslist's CEO since November of 2000, helping to
transform it into one of the most popular websites in the
world while maintaining its renowned public service mission.
Gigi B. Sohn is president and co-founder of Public
Knowledge, a nonprofit organization that addresses the
public's stake in the convergence of communications policy
and intellectual property law, and serves as PK's chief
strategist, fundraiser and public face. Sohn often
testifies before Congress on intellectual property and
technology policy, and she takes an active part in debates
about proposed legislation.
Jimmy Wales is the founder and president of the Wikimedia
Foundation, a non-profit corporation that operates Wikipedia
-- a free, online, collaborative encyclopedia. Wikipedia
started in January of 2001, and now it's one of the most-
used reference sites on the Internet, with editions in over
200 languages.
"I'm thrilled to honor this year's Pioneer Award
recipients," said EFF's Executive Director, Shari Steele.
"The Internet is a web of communities, among other things,
and Craig, Jim, Gigi and Jimmy have all been instrumental in
helping to give people the tools they need for sharing
information online."
The judges for this year's awards were Kim Alexander
(President and Founder, California Voter Foundation), Esther
Dyson (editor, Release 1.0, CNET Networks), Edward W. Felten
(Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs, Princeton
University), Mitch Kapor (Chair, Open Source Applications
Foundation), Drazen Pantic (Co-Director, Location One, New
York), Barbara Simons (IBM Research [Retired] and former
President ACM), and James Tyre (Founder, The Censorware
Project).
Since 1991, the EFF Pioneer Awards have recognized
individuals and organizations that have made significant and
influential contributions to the development of computer-
mediated communications or to the empowerment of individuals
in using computers and the Internet. Past winners include
Tim Berners-Lee, Linus Torvalds, and Ed Felten, among many
others.
This year, the Pioneer Awards are sponsored by Sling Media,
a consumer electronics company working to demystify
convergence technologies and to create empowering
experiences for the digital media consumer. Sling Media's
Slingbox transforms Windows-based laptops, desktops, PDAs,
and smartphones into personal on-the-go digital TVs. Learn
more about Sling Media at http://www.slingmedia.com .
More on the EFF Pioneer Awards:
<http://www.eff.org/awards/pioneer/>
For this release:
<http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_04.php#004590>
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* The Season of Bad Laws, Part 1: TM Dilution Revision Act
Congress appears to be awash in dangerous trademark and
copyright bills. One is H.R. 683, "The Trademark Dilution
Revision Act," a revision to the trademark laws that
includes a little-noticed change that will put those who
want to poke fun at big brands in jeopardy. EFF, Public
Citizen, Public Knowledge, and others have been pushing
lawmakers to restore protections for fair use, news
reporting, and noncommercial uses.
Editor & Publisher magazine has published an excellent
overview of the issue. The article reports that the bill
would narrow three key exceptions to trademark law: fair
use, news reporting and commentary, and non-commercial use.
While still available in trademark dilution cases -- where a
mark's distinctiveness is tarnished, though not actually
used -- these defenses would no longer apply in all other
trademark contexts. In turn, the bill would "would
overnight put newspapers at much greater risk of trademark
infringement actions being brought against them, for
everything from a columnist's or editorial writer's ill-
received reference to a company's trademark, to, say, a news
photograph of a homeless person's shopping cart parked in
front of a row of gleaming, readily identifiable new-model
cars at the dealership of a well-known automaker."
Read the Editor & Publisher article:
<http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002384406>
For this post:
<http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/>
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* The Season of Bad Laws, Part 2: Criminal Copyright
Infringement, Drug War Style
The Department of Justice (DoJ) is pushing for legislation
that would expand the scope of, and stiffen the penalties
for, criminal copyright infringement. The legislation has
not yet been introduced, but the relevant subcommittee of
the House Judiciary Committee has quietly circulated a draft
bill based on the DoJ wish list.
The DoJ proposal is an outrage.
Keep in mind that criminal copyright infringement is no
longer limited to situations involving commercial piracy.
Thanks to laws like the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act and
the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act (FECA), the feds
can now bring criminal charges against people for simply
uploading a single "pre-release" song (as two Ryan Adams
fans discovered last month when they were brought up on
federal charges for uploading tracks from pre-release
promotional CDs).
Most of the changes sought by DoJ fall into two broad
categories: (1) making it easier to convict people of
criminal copyright infringement by eliminating the
inconvenient necessity of proving that actual infringement
took place; and (2) increasing the financial and criminal
penalties when someone is convicted.
This guarantees one result: more innocent people will be
punished. After all, if you're wrongly accused, but you
know the feds don't have to prove their case and you're
facing serious jail time, you're more likely to accept a
plea bargain.
In fact, DoJ will have an easier time convicting you of
criminal charges than civil litigants will have suing you
for money. This is exactly backwards. Before they throw
people in jail for copyright infringement (especially where
the infringement does not involve a commercial motive), the
feds should have to prove their case, just like copyright
owners in civil cases. Is it too much to ask that DoJ
actually do its homework and prove its case before it
imprisons people and seizes their assets for uploading a
Ryan Adams song?
For a detailed look at the bill's provisions:
<http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004586.php>
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* Top Canadian Artists Oppose DRM, Suing Fans
Several Canadian record labels recently walked out on CRIA,
the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA. Now a bunch of them
just launched a new coalition for Canadian musicians called
the "Canadian Music Creators Coalition," and their founding
principles are pretty rad:
1. Suing Our Fans Is Destructive and Hypocritical
2. Digital Locks Are Risky and Counterproductive
3. Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists
This remarkably reasonable and consumer-friendly stance is
backed by some big artists, too. For example: Barenaked
Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk,
Sum 41, Stars, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini
(Rheostatics), Billy Talent, John K. Samson (Weakerthans),
Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Andrew Cash and Bob Wiseman (Co-
founder Blue Rodeo).
For the Coalition:
<http://www.musiccreators.ca/>
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* miniLinks
miniLinks features noteworthy news items from around the
Internet.
~ GETV at EFF Email Debate
Geek Entertainment TV interviews moderator Mitch Kapor and
debaters Danny O'Brien and Esther Dyson about the future of
email.
<http://www.geekentertainment.tv/2006/04/22/eff-email-debate-should-the-sender-pay/>
~ New Hampshire Stands Against Federal ID Cards
Will other states refuse to comply with the Real ID
guidelines?
<http://www.techliberation.com/archives/038392.php>
~ Is US Proposing a Global ID System?
We imagine this will go down well among UN admirers.
<http://www.politechbot.com/2006/04/26/forget-a-national/>
~ Can Foreign Governments Be Trusted With Your Travel
Records?
Privacy International blows the whistle to the EU about US
plans to re-use foreign citizens' airline passenger records.
<http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-536344>
~ And They Worry About CD *Burners*?
Great photograph of 80,000 pirated CDs destroyed in Lima,
Peru. Isn't this who the record labels should be targeting?
<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/dip?o=10&f=/g/archive/2006/04/25/dip.DTL>
~ Amateur-to-Amateur: The Rise of a New Creative Culture
"Let a thousand technologies bloom" -- Cato Institute
continues its analysis of copyright and unleashing truly
free markets.
<http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6359>
~ William Patry: Protecting the Idle Rich
William Patry's landmark legal paper on the futility of
copyright extension.
<http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~dkarjala/OpposingCopyrightExtension/constitutionality/PatryNotreDameArt1997.html>
~ German Moderators Liable for Forum Commenters
Judge suggests you pre-mod comments or shut down site.
<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/21/moderator_liable_for_comments/>
~ Cato's Copyright Cage Fight
Intellectuals on both sides of the IP debate spar at the
Cato Institute. (RealPlayer archives available soon).
<http://www.cato.org/events/060426conf.html>
~ IP Senators: No, No, Wrong Kind of Kickback
Senator Conrad Burns returns his iPod, despite taking $59K
from the entertainment industry.
<http://ipaction.org/blog/2006/04/conrad-burns-returns-ipod-swears-off.html>
~ Creative Commons SF Salon in May
Creative Commons is holding a salon on May 10th in San
Francisco. Share the date!
<http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Salon>
~ Watching the Watchers: Video of Congress With Metadata
Metavid is a UCSC project to provide a public, searchable
archive of CPAN. Would the Broadcast Treaty kill this
innovation?
<http://metavid.ucsc.edu/>
~ Gonzales Calls for Mandatory Web Labeling Law
Among the requirements, draft law requires a warning on
"initially viewable" portions of the website. Mandatory
interstitials?
<http://news.com.com/Gonzales+calls+for+mandatory+Web+labeling+law/2100-1028_3-6063554.html>
~ Free Software Author Told to Pay $203,000 for Railroad
Patent
Turned out the software he was being sued for was, in
itself, prior art.
<http://righttocreate.blogspot.com/2006/04/write-free-software-pay-203000-to.html>
~ Email: Who (if Anyone) Should Pay?
Dan Farber's summary of the EFF fundraising debate between
Esther Dyson and Danny O'Brien
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2903>
~ Public Knowledge: Net Neutrality Video
Public Knowledge spells out net neutrality in 30 seconds.
<http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/307>
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* Staff Calendar
For a complete listing of EFF speaking engagements (with
locations and times), please visit the full calendar:
<http://www.eff.org/calendar/>
May 2-4 -
Many EFFers at 6th Annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy
conference in Washington, DC.
<http://www.cfp2006.org/>
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* Administrivia
EFFector is published by:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco CA 94110-1914 USA
+1 415 436 9333 (voice)
+1 415 436 9993 (fax)
<http://www.eff.org/>
Editor:
Derek Slater, Activist
derek@eff.org
Membership & donation queries:
membership@eff.org
General EFF, legal, policy, or online resources queries:
information@eff.org
Reproduction of this publication in electronic media is
encouraged. Signed articles do not necessarily represent the
views of EFF. To reproduce signed articles individually,
please contact the authors for their express permission.
Press releases and EFF announcements & articles may be
reproduced individually at will.
Current and back issues of EFFector are available via the
Web at:
<http://www.eff.org/effector/>
This newsletter is printed on 100% recycled electrons.
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