[ale] Revolution OS

[aaron]

On Tuesday 02 April 2002 10:14, you wrote:
> quite  large and less than legal I assume.
> But then again, is it legal
> to tape from TV?

Yes. Taping from media delivery services falls under fair use.

Fair use covers most any recording or duplication of legally obtained 
media content and software for personal archiving, backup, time shifting, 
et al.  Any other recording, copying or distribution can be assumed to be 
copyright infringement unless specific license or permission for 
duplication is given by the content licensees, owners or producers.

Fair use protections have consistently been upheld in the courts so far, 
even after the corporate and monopoly assaults on free dissemination of 
information that comprise the DMCA.

However, a more insidious new round of attacks on free speech is 
currently being launched through bills like the CBDTPA (Consumer 
Broadband and Digital Television Protection Act, originally the SSSCA). 
This legislation would classify most common, present day data and media 
storage practices a crime and, consequently, make any free exchange of 
information nearly impossible.  If these laws are enacted, the only 
"legal" data and media storage devices that could be distributed in the 
U.S. would incorporate encoding circuitry which blocks and precludes 
reading or writing of "unauthorized" content.  The only data that could 
be *legally* stored or transferred would have to include encryption 
codes that are specified and regulated by the most fascist Federal 
government money can buy. Bypassing or tampering with the encryption 
technology would, of course, be similarly criminalized.  Worse is that 
provisions within these horrendous proposals all but designate by name 
that the encryption scheme will be created by "private sector" corporate 
media conglomerates and a computer software monopoly.

So laugh if you want, but it could well be that your new digital 
camcorder will only let you tape birthday parties if they're Big 
Brother's or Black Billy's. :-/

peace
(after justice)
aaron

---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.