Digital Citizen

Sen. Clinton (D-NY) and John Edwards (former Democratic Party senator from North Carolina) got what they wanted—Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) announced today he was dropping his presidential bid. The corporate media mentions Kucinich’s name now chiefly to draw attention to his competitors for his House seat; no need to let issues like challenging the Iraq occupation, threatening Iran, corporate hegemony, or the ongoing lack of fairness in mass media get in the way of covering a horse race that might rid the media of an agitant.

Now the Progressive Left is free to support their favorite pro-war, anti-universal single-payer health care candidate of their choice without interference from the “not serious” candidates…again…just like they did in 2004. Rather than object about poor choices by organizing for a third party or independent candidate who reflects the values they claim to hold (the values they go on about 3 years out of every 4), they can rationalize their Democratic Party vote by arguing the margins of difference between the remaining Democratic Party candidates. They can tell us how important this election will be, despite how worse the same indicators will be in 4 years as a result of consistently voting the least worst. No need for a grass-roots campaign of birddogging every candidate who voted for the Iraq war and the Iran resolution, no need to hound one’s elected officials to co-sponsor and vote for HR676 (the Conyers-Kucinich single-payer universal health care plan).

And what do you know: the New York Times accurately “projected” back in July 2007 who would be left in the Democratic Party race: Clinton, Edwards, and Obama. It’s a good thing the other Democratic Party contenders with something different to offer weren’t excluded from any of the televised “debates” (high-bandwidth audio, low-bandwidth audio, video—currently unavailable, transcript), or else it would be too obvious that the corporate media is trying to manage the election, rigging the choices to guarantee a corporate-friendly outcome.

Boing Boing celebrated Public Domain Day today, when many works by authors who died in 1957 enter the public domain in countries that use a “life plus 50 years” term of copyright for personal works (the minimum term required by the Berne Convention). Celebrations like these invariably remind us of what we’re restricted from doing if we abide by the law. One of the Boing Boing followups struck me as interesting:

Eclectro says “I consider the Copyright Term Extension act the most vile piece of copyright legislation to date, moreso than the horrible DMCA.”

Neither is desirable, both should be repealed, and there should be no more extensions to the term of copyright. I’d rather not get into a dispute over which is worse. However the effects of the DMCA which allow copyright holders to control access to works last far longer than the US Constitution would let copyright’s term last outright. The term of copyright is finite but the anti-circumvention provisions in the DMCA don’t expire. Magnetic media (like videotapes) will eventually become unplayable and there’s plenty of work only distributed on digital media with digital restrictions management (DRM) applied. When the DMCA was signed into law it was possible that a movie on an encrypted DVD could enter the public domain while disallowing you from breaking the DRM to get to that PD movie.

DMCA exceptions are artificially hard to obtain, they’re only considered periodically, and they have to be renewed to last. The DMCA makes it hard to do things people will want and need to do including legally circumvent the encryption on an encrypted DVD, tell anyone how to break it, or distribute a device that breaks it. One could make their own deCSS on their own but that’s very unlikely to happen yet people need a way to leverage fair use by copying extracts of their legally obtained media.

DRM must be implemented with proprietary software because people won’t tolerate digital restrictions if they don’t have to. Free software hackers will remove the DRM from free software and distribute their improved DRM-less version of a program which will then become the more preferred version of the program to run, study, and build upon.

Publishers are pushing for electronic media which give the copyright holder unprecedented power over how the media is used. It’s not hard for engineers to imagine how GPS data (which tells where the device is on the planet), wireless communication devices, and clocks can be used together to make a media player that restricts where and when the user can play, read, or see certain tracks, books, or movies. Digital restrictions seem to come before good answers to social questions like how one lends a digital work, transfers ownership of a digital work without a copyright holder’s permission or notification, or how someone sees or hears in a digital work without copyright holder permission or notification—in short, how do we do the things we are all used to doing with paper books, DVDs, and older audio players?

Should anyone have to live sub rosa so they can enjoy their new digital media at least as freely they used to enjoy older media? Is it appropriate to give up treating one’s friends like friends and withholding copies or lending in order to satisfy publisher’s profit and control desires?