 2kmaroThinkPremium,ExMod 1 BC
join:2000-07-11
ColossalCave | reply to Librarian
Re: i wait said by Librarian :
>
Huh? If that were the case, we couldn't have LIBRARIES! You have the right to let anyone borrow your CDs whenver you want and its not a gray area at all. Of course, its up to them to not make copies, but the burden of such an act is on them and not you, the lender.
You can freely let anyone borrow your CDs whenever you want.
Absolutely true.
The killer in all of this is the DMCA. Shares a tie for first place with the PATRIOT act in my book as being a knee-jerk 'solution' to a poorly understood and panic driven desire to find a solution. What everyone, not just those that would like to 'share' digital material, should do is let their representatives, local, state and most importantly, Federal, know that the DMCA needs to be repealed. Under that law, Fair Use as it applies to digial media pretty much went right out the window. The catch is that it is not illegal to make a personal copy of something you have purchased for archival, teaching or a few other legitimate reasons - it is ILLEGAL to circumvent any copy protection technology used to prevent your exercise of Fair Use. It's a circular argument used very effectively by the industry, so effectively they managed to pay enough legislators off er, lobby successfully to get the law passed. So they can then claim copyright infringement not by virtue of having copied something, but by having circumvented the encryption scheme used to prevent you from exercising Fair Use. Which very obviously, does away with Fair Use.
The DMCA is such a bad law that notable organizations such as the IEEE have even come out publicly against it, not so much from the murder of Fair Use, but from all the roadblocks and potential jail sentences that could be imposed by inventors and companies trying to bring you new, useful, fun, labor and time saving devices.
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...then THINK! again!! |
