Re: [DMCA-Activists] Leaflets

[Dan Barrett]

Summary: what can't people do now that they could prior to DMCA?
Twaddle:
  I'm not sure the general public can make the leap from DMCA to their own 
lives no matter how hard we leaflet.  At this point, it's still a fairly 
complex topic (ever try to explain your DeCSS t-shirt to a colleague in 
thirty seconds or less?  I end up either oversimplifying or sounding like the 
Unabomber).
  The other day I was trying to make a point about the implications of 
so-called "Digital Rights Management" schemes to one of my most cynical, 
well-informed friends -- like me, a card-carrying member of the ACLU.  She 
cut me off:  "Who cares?  I just want to rent movies without having to go to 
the video store."  That's what it boils down to.  As Jello Biafra put it, 
give me convenience or give me death.  I have watched people apply for a 
credit card to get the following items for "free": 
- a bag of Skittles
- a pair of sunglasses
- a paper-thin beach towel
- a t-shirt with the credit card company's logo on it
  
  If you're willing to trade all control over personal financial data for a 
freaking beach towel, then you're not going to understand the implications of 
the DMCA until you get burned.  It won't sink in until you cannot do 
something which you used to be able to do (e.g. check out a book from the 
library).
Similarly, corporations think the disemboweling of fair use is a great idea 
until they get burned: witness MIT Press's recent decision to assert their 
fair use rights in the face of unreasonable demands from the copyright 
holders 
(http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_03.shtml#001018).
  So, how has DMCA changed our rights, in concrete terms?  That's your leaflet 
material.

Yours,
d.

-- 
http://www.offthehill.org/~dan