[Anti-drm] DRM versus society

[Alexandre Oliva]

Copyright was originally designed to benefit society, but mislabeling
creative works as property has been used in the digital age to justify
measures that deprive society of both the works and the benefits.

Copyright was an incentive to creativity, to the publication of
creative works, through a temporary limited monopoly granted to
authors.  Once the monopoly expired, the status prior to copyright law
was restored: everyone could share and build upon the covered work.

Respecting the monopoly was everyone's short-term sacrifice for the
long-term availability of more and better creative works.  And it was
a small sacrifice, for the term was short, and publishing was costly
and difficult regardless of copyrights and fair use rights.

The mind-twisting phrase "intellectual property" turned upside-down
the logic behind this sacrifice: instead of serving society, the law
became a tool to defend intermediaries' interests that take away both
from society and from the authors they claim to represent.

Creative works are intangible, and thus non-rival, expressions.  It
does not make sense to regard them as property.  Indeed, copyright law
does not regulate the enjoyment of such creative works.

However, mislabeling them as property has enabled these intermediaries
to fool society into accepting extensions of copyright monopolies,
contradicting their very purpose: to make more creative works
available to the society, after a short period of deprivation.

In the digital age, it became much easier for anyone to create and
publish creative works.  It could have been a great benefit to
society.

But mislabeling such works as property has enabled the same
intermediaries to fool society into accepting such insulting and
costly measures as Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to patrol and
police uses of the works, to preserve the intermediaries' obsolete
business model.

DRM amounts to using general-purpose and specialized computers, such
as audio and video recorders and players, to stop the public from
using works in ways that are permitted by copyright law, but that
might enable future copyright infringement, regardless of whether
any infringement actually takes place or is even planned.

The public at large is thus proclaimed guilty of pre-crime, and denied
the benefits of technological advancements, of fair use rights and
even of the public domain.

Welcoming into law the presumption of guilt for whatever rules the
intermediaries manage to encode, in the devices necessary to enjoy the
creative works they publish, would turn the intermediaries into
private legislators and law enforcement agents in the digital age.

Having just visited Canada, I could have been fined and emprisoned if
Bill C-61 was in effect, just because I carry in my computer movies,
songs, and software needed to play them, even though copyright law
does not require a license for such works to be enjoyed or carried.

I would be disgusted if Canadian legislators were to pass a law that
required major sacrifices of everyone for the sake of promoting
(my?!?) interests whose very legitimacy can only appear to be
justifiable through the mental contortions of "intellectual property".

I, as author and copyright holder, do not side with the intermediaries
that claim to defend my interests when they lobby for this law.

Please do not move copyright law farther away from the goal of every
law: benefiting the society that establishes it.

Thank you,

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}