[00:06.610 --> 00:08.090]  That one works.
[00:14.350 --> 00:15.230]  All right.
[00:16.010 --> 00:16.690]  Welcome.
[00:17.670 --> 00:20.830]  This panel is called the DMCA Legal Update.
[00:21.290 --> 00:29.370]  In case you've been living under a rock or in another country, the DMCA is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[00:30.490 --> 00:36.410]  2600 has had its fair share of experience and woe over this law.
[00:37.290 --> 00:48.390]  To my left is Robin Gross, an attorney for the EFF that has worked with 2600, that's the Electronic Freedom Foundation, and also Eric Grimm, who is a private attorney.
[00:48.550 --> 00:59.610]  He's worked with the Electronic Freedom Foundation and actually represented 2600 in the Ford case, which Ford, rather 2600, registered the site.
[00:59.790 --> 01:00.190]  What was it?
[01:00.190 --> 01:01.390]  Oh, fuck General Motors.
[01:01.610 --> 01:03.010]  Yeah, fuck General Motors.
[01:03.710 --> 01:11.110]  And so he has some good news about that case that happened in the last couple of weeks.
[01:12.790 --> 01:14.790]  But I will let these guys get started.
[01:14.950 --> 01:17.010]  This is the DMCA Legal Update.
[01:17.930 --> 01:18.250]  All right.
[01:18.290 --> 01:24.470]  Actually, we have a panel later on that will focus on some of the trademark issues and the Ford case more closely.
[01:24.470 --> 01:30.030]  This is going to be more on copyright issues and a lot of the developments that have been happening in the copyright field.
[01:30.710 --> 01:33.490]  So be sure to come back for the later panel also.
[01:34.670 --> 01:40.490]  A lot has happened on the copyright front since the last time we've met in the last two years.
[01:41.270 --> 01:41.770]  All right.
[01:43.010 --> 01:45.090]  And we have a lot of news for you.
[01:45.710 --> 01:54.410]  It's an understatement, especially looking at what's happened in Congress within the past few months even, to say that not all of it is good news.
[01:54.970 --> 02:00.610]  But there are a few high points that we do have to report and to tell you all about.
[02:01.510 --> 02:17.750]  Of course, the most important thing is that the visibility of a lot of these issues has increased substantially, especially as a result of the DeCSS case, in which 2600 and the Electronic Frontier Foundation were very much involved in that.
[02:17.750 --> 02:25.090]  And also the Napster case raised issues of copyright and how that affects individuals and the public consciousness.
[02:27.650 --> 02:49.310]  Another point, and Robin will elaborate on this later, is that the RIAA blinked and gave up the fight in the Ed Felton case, which is very big news that has to do with the right of academic researchers to conduct research into cryptography in connection with,
[02:49.450 --> 02:52.010]  in that case, it was the Secure Digital Music Initiative.
[02:54.330 --> 03:02.090]  The most important news that we have to deliver today, though, has to do with some of the lessons that we've learned over the last couple of years.
[03:02.090 --> 03:06.350]  And we've learned a lot about how these issues play in Congress.
[03:06.710 --> 03:10.070]  We've learned a lot about how these issues play in court.
[03:11.430 --> 03:21.990]  What we can really expect from the courts in terms of handling these issues and some of the things where we might have expected a little bit too much from them.
[03:24.450 --> 03:35.190]  We've learned a lot, especially in the course of active litigation, about the court system's justifiable discomfort with a lot of technological issues.
[03:35.390 --> 03:38.730]  Look, everybody in this room loves technology.
[03:39.590 --> 03:56.190]  It's obvious to all of us how wonderful the Internet is and obvious to us how much of a great vehicle for change, social change, political change, change in the right of individuals to express themselves.
[03:57.110 --> 03:59.370]  This is intuitively good to us.
[04:00.090 --> 04:03.710]  There are a lot of people in society where that's a very frightening thing.
[04:04.490 --> 04:06.710]  It's going to change the things that they're used to.
[04:06.930 --> 04:18.930]  I mean, if you're, you know, 60 years old and you're comfortable with the way things have been since you were a kid, all of these changes in getting up the learning curve can be daunting sometimes.
[04:23.840 --> 04:32.200]  I mean, I can tell you personally that in the last year or two, I've learned a lot about how naive I was about dealing with Internet issues.
[04:33.380 --> 04:59.400]  And we would not have won the 2600 versus Ford case in federal court unless I'd had the experience of having my head handed to me in a couple of cases that we did before that and learning a little bit about, you know, in 1998, about the time that the MCA was being passed and the motion picture in...
[04:59.400 --> 05:00.220]  What's that?
[05:03.020 --> 05:09.120]  Oh, I thought we were getting some feedback from the audience there, but it's just a phone conversation.
[05:11.980 --> 05:30.880]  In about the time that the DMCA was being passed and about the time that 2600 first became involved in the fight with the motion picture industry, I was also getting involved in other aspects of Internet litigation and defending some Internet cases.
[05:31.200 --> 05:45.620]  At that time, I had the naive view that I was going to go in and I was going to translate all this technology stuff into a usable format, put CD-ROM discs in front of the courts and all this technological stuff.
[05:45.660 --> 05:50.340]  They were going to be wowed by this information and see how utterly cool it was.
[05:50.980 --> 05:56.820]  And they were going to get it and they were going to understand why they needed to rule in my favor.
[05:57.100 --> 06:13.340]  The reality is, as I've learned from hard experience, especially in front of the First Circuit in a particular case, they're not even going to pay attention to that hyperlinked, hypermedia CD-ROM with all the fancy stuff that proves my case beyond a shadow of a doubt.
[06:16.480 --> 06:23.100]  They're not going to even touch the technology and they're going to make up the facts in order to rule the way they want to rule.
[06:24.060 --> 06:24.540]  Sometimes.
[06:28.560 --> 06:38.120]  But, by the same token, we've learned a lot more about some of the arguments that actually do play and some of the approaches that play better.
[06:38.360 --> 06:44.900]  We've learned more about the importance of choosing our battles carefully because this is going to be...
[06:44.900 --> 06:46.880]  I mean, this is a fight that we're in to win.
[06:48.080 --> 06:49.920]  We want to win this fight.
[06:50.220 --> 06:52.280]  We're on the right side of this fight.
[06:54.000 --> 06:59.100]  And in order to win this fight, it's important to choose the battleground on which we fight carefully.
[06:59.240 --> 07:24.820]  That's what the Felton case was about and that's exactly why the recording industry backed down in that case is because that was not the battle that they wanted to pick and that was not the person sitting in the witness stand on the other side of the case from them that they wanted to paint as the person that that statute is about even though it is directed at the Felton's of the world.
[07:38.120 --> 07:46.120]  When Larry Lessig talks about issues like this, he usually comes in and talks about how his publisher has told him to stay on brand.
[07:47.380 --> 07:49.600]  And his brand is pessimism.
[07:50.100 --> 08:09.260]  And, you know, there are choices that are being made right now but Lessig comes in and talks about the reality is that folks like you are apathetic enough that it's going to happen that the bad things are going to happen and not the good things that we're looking forward to.
[08:09.600 --> 08:12.340]  My brand happens to be controversy.
[08:14.220 --> 08:26.680]  And very often when I do these presentations, I've found that in practice, one of the most valuable services that I can deliver to my clients is to deliver to them the news that they don't want to hear.
[08:26.920 --> 08:29.500]  And sometimes that's helpful to deliver to audiences too.
[08:32.540 --> 08:42.400]  First piece of news that's unpleasant to hear is that each of you has the crosshairs pointed to your forehead by industry and by the government.
[08:44.160 --> 08:55.640]  And don't underestimate the resolve of the people on the other side of this battle to get what they want out of the political process.
[08:56.980 --> 09:04.160]  A lot of folks within the computer community have a libertarian view.
[09:04.400 --> 09:06.140]  We're not doing anything wrong.
[09:06.620 --> 09:08.320]  We're not breaking any laws.
[09:08.800 --> 09:11.980]  The government just needs to leave us alone and let us do our thing.
[09:12.540 --> 09:17.980]  Well, the reality is they don't want to leave you alone and they don't want to let you do your thing.
[09:17.980 --> 09:25.460]  And if you don't go and engage them on their turf, they're coming to get you.
[09:25.680 --> 09:41.740]  And especially in the last year with some of the legislative moves that we have with the CDBTPA, which is quite an acronym, they are literally trying to outlaw the general purpose computer right now.
[09:43.000 --> 09:51.580]  The very thing that most people in this room have grown up loving to work with because of the flexibility it gives you.
[09:54.060 --> 09:55.860]  This case is not...
[09:55.860 --> 10:04.000]  I mean, these issues and the way that it's playing out in the courts and in Congress, it's not about rewarding the good and punishing the wicked.
[10:04.460 --> 10:10.620]  What it's about is justifying the existence of offices and agencies of the federal government.
[10:10.840 --> 10:20.740]  We've seen a vast expansion of this homeland security thing, which is basically the Bush administration paying a lot of money to their friends in the military contractor community.
[10:21.740 --> 10:31.560]  You know, some people in this room may actually do quite well in getting some of the contracts that are going to be handed out in this homeland security thing.
[10:31.700 --> 10:41.700]  But what's happening in the political system right now is justifying the existence of federal agencies and staking out bureaucratic turf.
[10:42.280 --> 10:50.460]  In Washington, your power is a direct measure of how many people are working for you and what your budget is within the federal government.
[10:52.780 --> 11:05.440]  And that's particularly true with the Treasury Department and the Justice Department, which are the departments that go out and investigate and track down and prosecute hackers.
[11:07.240 --> 11:21.380]  We actually, in the process of choosing who the panelists were going to be today, I personally sent first an invitation to several people in the computer crime and intellectual property section of the Department of Justice.
[11:21.860 --> 11:24.360]  I said, why don't you come and talk to this audience?
[11:24.760 --> 11:33.740]  Because it would be a good thing to have that channel of communication open and to help both sides understand each other.
[11:34.200 --> 11:35.240]  That was declined.
[11:35.520 --> 11:41.220]  I then challenged them and said, I dare you to come and talk to the hacker community.
[11:42.060 --> 11:43.720]  And that was also declined.
[11:45.300 --> 11:54.000]  A couple of months ago, and I've just heard this from the grapevine and I'm not going to tell you anything about my sources, there was a conference on computer crime in Chicago.
[11:54.680 --> 12:05.240]  Same group of people, I mean, the same friend network within the Department of Justice had most of the population on the 15 different panels they had.
[12:05.640 --> 12:15.640]  The organizers wanted to have one panel on which one attorney, Jennifer Granick, who's represented some hackers in the criminal defense context, would speak.
[12:15.960 --> 12:25.840]  And then one panel on which they'd have three different people who work on computers and do computer security things from different perspectives.
[12:25.840 --> 12:30.920]  So a white hat, a gray hat, and a black hat hacker, essentially, to give their point of view.
[12:32.220 --> 12:38.600]  The Department of Justice people said, we're going to take our toys and go home if you have either of those panels.
[12:40.000 --> 12:52.220]  We don't want the government people and the industry executives who are going to this conference, even to see that point of view, we're going to tell them what the Department of Justice point of view is.
[12:52.340 --> 13:12.100]  And the most helpful thing to the people that are staking out their bureaucratic turf and trying to expand the powers of the Department of Justice is about having a nameless, faceless, boogeyman of a hacker that's very frightening and can retarget nuclear missiles and all kinds of other things that are completely preposterous.
[13:12.100 --> 13:28.200]  because if they actually have spokespeople out of the population of this room, it will quickly be apparent to the people that they're trying to justify themselves to that they're spending a ton of money on something that they don't need to be spending money on.
[13:33.100 --> 13:35.300]  Now that I've done my...
[13:35.300 --> 13:36.940]  Well, actually, let me...
[13:37.640 --> 13:46.320]  I want to say one other piece of bad news, and this is also from an experience that I've had directly with representing 2600 in a case.
[13:46.320 --> 13:58.320]  When we did the Ford lawsuit, I mean, you may think it looks funny for me to be here, and I'm really, in a sense, out of place in a room full of people with black t-shirts and all of that wearing a suit and tie.
[13:58.760 --> 14:00.460]  I mean, really.
[14:00.600 --> 14:01.980]  I mean, it does look out of place.
[14:03.040 --> 14:16.020]  In just the same way as if you're in the audience and you go to spectate on a federal court case to walk into a federal courtroom wearing a t-shirt and jeans and sneakers.
[14:17.440 --> 14:30.420]  And when we did the Ford case, we did have some people show up, some of whom were dressed in khakis and a knit shirt and all of that, which looked a little bit better.
[14:30.600 --> 14:41.360]  But the reality is, this was the one judge in that entire courthouse that had posted on a big sign outside of his chambers that said, these are the rules.
[14:41.600 --> 14:45.280]  And one of the rules are, you don't come into my courtroom unless you're wearing a tie.
[14:47.080 --> 14:59.940]  I did not know that before I got there, but I was very lucky that I'd already told my client in that case, you're going to do some of the things that we view as really trivial.
[15:01.500 --> 15:11.900]  And you're going to wear a tie and you're going to dress the way the court wants you to dress because this isn't about scoring petty points and saying, I'm going to dress the way that I want to in federal court.
[15:11.920 --> 15:13.920]  It's about winning the case at the end of the case.
[15:15.320 --> 15:21.940]  It's nice to have a story to tell about wearing a T-shirt while you're testifying on the witness stand.
[15:22.240 --> 15:30.240]  But really, the more valuable trophy to take home from a lawsuit is to be able to say, yeah, we beat Ford Motor Company.
[15:30.440 --> 15:31.900]  We handed them their heads.
[15:32.300 --> 15:33.740]  They lost completely.
[15:34.100 --> 15:40.020]  The court said, we're going to take everything that you're alleging in this lawsuit, we're going to take that as true.
[15:40.260 --> 15:42.880]  You still don't belong in court, Ford.
[15:43.800 --> 15:44.760]  That's a big win.
[15:45.340 --> 15:46.800]  That's a great thing to have.
[15:47.080 --> 15:52.700]  And that's what our objective is when we go to court, and that's what our objective is in going to Congress.
[15:52.860 --> 15:55.500]  It's going to be a tough battle, but we are going to win it.
[15:55.740 --> 16:11.700]  Now, let's now that I've done the preliminaries, I think the organization is going to be, we're going to do a quick overview about what the DMCA is about, and then Robin and I will break up different aspects of the topics of the DMCA.
[16:12.000 --> 16:12.900]  Do you want to take over?
[16:13.080 --> 16:13.300]  Okay.
[16:15.880 --> 16:16.280]  Hello.
[16:16.720 --> 16:20.460]  Well, I'm going to give you a little bit of an overview of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[16:20.460 --> 16:36.440]  It's an extremely complex and long piece of federal litigation, excuse me, federal legislation, and it deals with all kinds of issues, everything from webcasting, and we heard some of the problems that it's presented for webcasters in the panel just previous to this one.
[16:36.600 --> 16:43.760]  There's a section in there, an online safe harbor section that has some notice and takedown provisions that we'll talk about a little bit later.
[16:43.960 --> 16:54.780]  There's the anti-circumvention provisions in there that the EFF is most concerned about, the chilling effect that they're presenting, and I'll go into a little more detail about that as well.
[16:55.520 --> 17:07.640]  Basically, what the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA has done is outlawed the act of circumventing technological protection measures that control access to a copyrighted work.
[17:08.730 --> 17:23.400]  Also, it has outlawed the act of providing tools or information, software, that could help someone else bypass technological protection measures that either control access or use of a work, a copyrighted work.
[17:23.600 --> 17:47.530]  So this is an extremely dramatic change in copyright law because now copyright holders are allowed to put technological restrictions around their intellectual property and basically control all the uses that are allowed to happen with those works because if you try to bypass those technological protections in order to,
[17:47.770 --> 17:56.100]  for example, make your fair use copy or access the work on a different operating system, you violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[17:57.030 --> 18:07.170]  Now, there are some exemptions in the statute, but they're really useless and nobody has been able to effectively rely upon them who's needed to.
[18:07.340 --> 18:08.320]  And I'll tell you why.
[18:08.320 --> 18:11.710]  there's an exemption in the statute for reverse engineering.
[18:12.710 --> 18:17.040]  So Hollywood says, don't worry you reverse engineers about the DMCA.
[18:17.270 --> 18:19.170]  There is an exemption in there for you.
[18:19.290 --> 18:20.800]  But that's not really true.
[18:21.010 --> 18:25.490]  And the reason is because that reverse engineering exemption applies only to computer programs.
[18:25.490 --> 18:28.620]  So it doesn't apply to things like DVDs or CDs.
[18:29.010 --> 18:36.710]  And it can only, you only, can only qualify for it if your sole purpose of doing so is in order to engage in interoperability.
[18:37.640 --> 18:41.400]  So it hasn't been particularly useful to anyone who's needed to use it yet.
[18:41.990 --> 18:45.340]  Another exemption in the statute is for encryption research.
[18:45.880 --> 18:48.510]  But again, that has been useless to anyone.
[18:48.690 --> 18:56.380]  And the reason is because you have to apply for authorization before you're allowed to do that testing and you can't publish your results.
[18:57.030 --> 18:58.990]  So you have to be quiet about what you learn.
[18:59.120 --> 19:04.800]  You can't talk about it with your peers, write a paper, give a presentation, build upon that knowledge, exchange it with others.
[19:05.010 --> 19:05.530]  Not allowed.
[19:06.340 --> 19:09.250]  There's also exemption in the DMCA for security testing.
[19:09.670 --> 19:14.490]  Supposedly, you can bypass technological protection measures in order to engage in security testing.
[19:14.900 --> 19:24.950]  But again, it's not a real exemption because you only qualify for it if the information is used solely to promote the security of the copyright owner.
[19:25.730 --> 19:30.210]  That information can be used for any other purpose, you're out of the exemption.
[19:30.430 --> 19:31.030]  You don't qualify.
[19:31.300 --> 19:43.540]  And if you distribute that information in a manner which could facilitate infringement, as in publication or presentation, just generally giving information out to the public, again, you fall outside of that exemption.
[19:43.950 --> 19:53.950]  So while the DMCA purports to have balance and particular exemptions, they're very, very narrow, limited, and no one has been able to use them thus far.
[19:55.300 --> 20:03.190]  So what is the impact on society of this new law that's dramatically changed copyright law?
[20:03.670 --> 20:05.540]  Well, a lot of things, actually.
[20:06.380 --> 20:11.030]  Particularly the chill that's being felt on freedom of speech.
[20:11.120 --> 20:12.470]  It's really all over the world.
[20:12.730 --> 20:13.600]  It's the U.S.
[20:13.750 --> 20:16.030]  statute, but it is being felt all over the world.
[20:16.190 --> 20:18.040]  There are international implications for this.
[20:18.860 --> 20:23.250]  For example, your fair use rights are being legally denied to you.
[20:23.400 --> 20:30.140]  On the one hand, copyright law gives you a right to make a personal use copy of something engaged in fair use.
[20:30.300 --> 20:39.840]  But if those technological protection measures prevent you and you try to bypass those, you fall outside of the statute again.
[20:39.950 --> 20:40.640]  You are prohibited.
[20:41.490 --> 20:43.800]  Another problem is what about the public domain?
[20:44.600 --> 20:50.730]  The whole point of copyright is to create this rich and vibrant public domain for everyone to share eventually.
[20:51.120 --> 21:01.250]  But these works are being released in encrypted form or with other kinds of restrictions that there is no mechanism to unlock them when they're supposed to fall into the public domain.
[21:01.430 --> 21:08.970]  So they basically can stay locked up forever and never reach the public domain as they were originally intended.
[21:10.040 --> 21:12.430]  And what about competition and innovation?
[21:12.800 --> 21:25.800]  Well, the DMCA is being used to prevent people from entering into the market to compete with the monopoly holders who are currently building devices or other kinds of hardware.
[21:26.710 --> 21:40.430]  So if you want to be able to build a DVD player, for example, that can read the movie studio's DVDs, you're going to have to get a license from DVD CCA at several tens of thousands of dollars just to, the cost just to apply.
[21:40.730 --> 21:48.790]  And then there are all kinds of restrictions that are imposed upon you in the license agreement as to what kinds of features you're allowed to give the consumers.
[21:50.490 --> 21:57.380]  So this is presenting a real problem for society, this chilling effect that we're having.
[21:57.480 --> 22:09.980]  All of the public's rights under the copyright bargain are essentially being whisked away because now copyright holders are allowed to control all uses, just encoded into the technology and anyone who bypasses it violates the law.
[22:10.760 --> 22:15.960]  There are more than just civil penalties involved in the DMCA as well.
[22:16.140 --> 22:23.900]  If you engage in any of these activities for profit or if there's some kind of economic benefit for you, that triggers the criminal penalties.
[22:24.220 --> 22:26.220]  And they can be pretty severe.
[22:27.220 --> 22:37.950]  Five years in prison or a $500,000 fine on your first event, first offense, or on your second offense, you could get up to 10 years in prison and a million dollar fine.
[22:38.210 --> 22:46.300]  So these are significant penalties and this is a dramatic change in our copyright law and our information policy law.
[22:46.840 --> 22:52.460]  And I also think it's important to recognize that the DMCA really isn't about copyright law.
[22:52.640 --> 22:54.170]  It's not copyright law per se.
[22:54.580 --> 22:56.620]  It's sort of anti-copyright law.
[22:56.710 --> 23:09.430]  It turns copyright on its head because copyright actually has some protections for the public that are completely done away with and eliminated any time owners get total control over the uses of works.
[23:09.430 --> 23:12.360]  So it's been a dramatic chilling effect.
[23:12.580 --> 23:15.100]  And like I said before, not just here but all over the world.
[23:15.300 --> 23:36.580]  After the arrest of Dmitry Sklarov last summer and his son, he was put in prison for five weeks not given bail originally, the state of Russia has issued a travel advisory warning its citizens about the dangers of traveling to the United States, particularly computer programmers,
[23:36.780 --> 23:39.520]  since the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[23:40.000 --> 23:46.560]  So it's having a real chilling effect not just here but everywhere and for all kinds of groups of people.
[23:47.190 --> 23:54.840]  There are librarians who are concerned about their ability to be able to continue to provide the public with access to information.
[23:55.380 --> 24:06.020]  There are computer researchers who are concerned about their ability to be able to talk about the research that they do and test certain kinds of technological technologies.
[24:06.670 --> 24:09.900]  There are teachers who are concerned about their fair use rights.
[24:10.040 --> 24:14.430]  How are they going to be able to make fair use copies of things to help educate their students.
[24:15.320 --> 24:27.340]  There's a whole slew of groups, special, sort of special interest groups if you will, that each are affected in different ways by the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and subsequent enforcement.
[24:28.760 --> 24:34.760]  So what EFF wants to do is to overturn this statute, particularly the anti-circumvention provisions.
[24:34.960 --> 24:41.320]  So we've been working on a few cases, the 2600 case, the Professor Felton's case.
[24:41.540 --> 24:43.220]  I'll tell you a little bit more about that.
[24:46.150 --> 25:01.880]  About a year and a half ago, SDMI, the Secure Digital Music Initiative, created a, they called it the SDMI Hack Challenge, where they invited the internet community to try to test their technology.
[25:02.400 --> 25:10.260]  They were coming up with a system of technological restrictions that was designed to control the public's use of all digital music.
[25:11.360 --> 25:17.930]  Now, 90% of the works that are, the music that's distributed in this country is through the RIAA.
[25:18.120 --> 25:19.480]  It's a substantial monopoly.
[25:20.430 --> 25:24.860]  Well, this professor and his research team decided to participate in this challenge.
[25:25.480 --> 25:27.950]  And they downloaded the technology and they tested it.
[25:28.190 --> 25:34.170]  And what they found was that it was remarkably weak and it would be cracked upon its immediate introduction into the marketplace.
[25:35.480 --> 25:38.540]  Now, these scientists felt like the public had a right to know this.
[25:38.760 --> 25:44.040]  That basically, all of the American public was being asked to buy into this technology.
[25:44.580 --> 25:48.190]  All of the musicians were being asked to buy into this technology.
[25:48.780 --> 25:51.100]  The claim was that it would protect their interests.
[25:51.100 --> 25:55.430]  But again, what Professor Felton discovered was that it would be cracked upon its introduction.
[25:55.960 --> 26:06.710]  And when he decided he was going to talk about this publicly, write a paper and give a presentation at a technical conference, he received a threat letter from the RIAA and SDMI.
[26:06.930 --> 26:08.450]  And it wasn't just Professor Felton.
[26:08.600 --> 26:26.100]  All of the members of his research team, including the conference organizers and the universities that they work for, all received these threat letters claiming that you will be sued under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if you go ahead and give this presentation to present this paper at this conference.
[26:26.880 --> 26:29.690]  Well, this created quite a backlash.
[26:29.930 --> 26:31.100]  The public was very upset.
[26:31.280 --> 26:38.360]  And EFF filed a declaratory judgment lawsuit on behalf of Professor Felton and his team.
[26:38.380 --> 26:44.060]  And we asked the court to rule that these scientists have a First Amendment right to publish their research.
[26:44.820 --> 26:49.620]  Well, once that happened, the recording industry sort of realized their mistake.
[26:49.820 --> 26:55.840]  There was such public outcry against them for threatening the professor in the first place that they really backed down.
[26:56.020 --> 27:02.580]  And they also could see that they were about to dramatically lose or at least have a small hole punched in the statute.
[27:02.740 --> 27:03.740]  So they backed down.
[27:03.880 --> 27:05.560]  They said, okay, we're sorry.
[27:05.710 --> 27:07.930]  We didn't mean to threaten the professor.
[27:07.980 --> 27:10.670]  And if we did threaten him, we don't mean it now.
[27:11.100 --> 27:17.040]  So he was able to go ahead and present at a subsequent conference, although the paper had been withdrawn for the first conference.
[27:17.360 --> 27:19.400]  But several months later, he was able to go ahead and publish.
[27:19.740 --> 27:24.060]  But it was only him and it was only for specific conferences.
[27:24.300 --> 27:36.280]  And the recording industry has reserved the right to sue these scientists if they want to talk about what they've learned in other conferences or in other papers, essentially build upon what they learned.
[27:36.430 --> 27:38.500]  So they still are under some threat here.
[27:38.640 --> 27:48.340]  It was only the conference and the issues that were really in the press, in the media that the recording industry was willing to say that they wouldn't sue for eventually.
[27:49.540 --> 28:10.820]  So while Professor Felton was able to publish, there's a whole lot of other scientists and even students and just young kids who have the capabilities of doing these activities but don't necessarily have groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation right at their disposal to be able to defend their rights to do these things.
[28:10.820 --> 28:19.210]  So for every one Professor Felton, there is thousands of just everyday average Joes who are not in such a lucky position.
[28:19.400 --> 28:31.170]  And so what we really need to do is get the statute changed, so overturned, so that no one will be under threat of prosecution when they talk about what they learn, the vulnerabilities of technologies.
[28:31.960 --> 28:45.740]  So that's sort of an overview of the DMCA, the anti-circumvention provisions, at least, addressed some of the problems and at least one of the cases that we've brought thus far under that statute to challenge it.
[28:45.860 --> 28:46.760]  We're looking for mores.
[28:47.340 --> 28:49.690]  We are determined to overturn the statute.
[28:49.930 --> 28:58.580]  And so if there are any facts, scenarios, or any threats that any of you have received under the DMCA that sound like good cases, come talk to me about it.
[28:59.080 --> 28:59.210]  Thanks.
[29:00.020 --> 29:04.690]  Should I cover the anti-circumvention of the notice and take-down?
[29:08.240 --> 29:11.360]  Next, we're going to cover the notice and take-down provisions.
[29:12.150 --> 29:25.540]  And let me give you an overview of what's really behind both notice and take-down and anti-circumvention, which is a dramatic departure from the way that copyright law has worked for 200 years.
[29:26.480 --> 29:38.880]  Up until the DMCA, it used to be the business of copyright owners that they would have to go out and find whoever it is who's actually infringing their copyrights.
[29:38.980 --> 29:48.760]  And what their remedy is, is once they find that person and they develop the evidence that they need, they go to court and they ask for one of two things.
[29:49.210 --> 29:54.280]  They ask for money damages, which are really quite substantial when you've got a real infringer.
[29:54.280 --> 29:56.120]  I mean, you're really going to...
[29:57.390 --> 30:00.480]  you're going to put them out of business forever if you get copyright damages.
[30:01.150 --> 30:05.540]  And number two, you can ask for a court order that says stop doing it.
[30:07.390 --> 30:15.800]  What the DMCA is about is making it so that the copyright owners don't even have to go into court in the first place.
[30:17.460 --> 30:26.950]  Especially the anti-circumvention provisions presume that everybody, everybody is already an infringer.
[30:27.060 --> 30:28.080]  You're all pirates.
[30:30.100 --> 30:33.720]  And the copyright industry is going to tell you what to do with their stuff.
[30:33.740 --> 30:44.560]  And if you try to use it some other way than the way they tell you to, that must mean you're a real pirate and you're a persistent pirate too.
[30:44.720 --> 30:47.500]  Because they've already told you that you're a pirate and you're going to use it their way.
[30:48.220 --> 30:52.600]  And that's what the technological protection measure enables them to do.
[30:53.420 --> 31:07.840]  They're delegating the enforcement power and putting it in the technology itself so that the technology forces you to use it the way that the copyright owner wants to dictate to everybody.
[31:07.840 --> 31:18.840]  The notice and takedown provisions are another effort to delegate away from the copyright owners and take the cost off of their shoulders and to put it on somebody else.
[31:19.260 --> 31:33.060]  And somebody else would be web hosting companies, even companies like Google, that make it possible to search for and get a hyperlink to, at least allegedly, infringing content.
[31:35.980 --> 31:56.520]  The way that it works is, and it's probably also helpful to point out, that while the copyright industry presented to Congress and is still presenting to Congress just a ton of hyperbole about how the barriers to entry for everybody becoming a publisher are so low,
[31:56.520 --> 31:59.320]  and that's the reason why everybody's going to become a pirate.
[31:59.460 --> 32:09.500]  We're all going to be publishing tons of music and whole movies and everybody's going to just drive the cost of all of their stuff to zero.
[32:09.710 --> 32:12.040]  I mean, in reality, that's not happening.
[32:12.190 --> 32:14.280]  It would have happened by now if that was really going to happen.
[32:16.580 --> 32:18.690]  But that's the hyperbole that they're saying.
[32:18.780 --> 32:27.620]  What that really is is misdirection because the other thing that's going to zero is the cost of actually detecting copies.
[32:28.080 --> 32:29.760]  They're able to automate that.
[32:30.000 --> 32:35.460]  I mean, they used to have to have people go out physically and look for copies in the real world.
[32:35.620 --> 32:39.710]  Now they're able to do it over the internet at near zero cost.
[32:39.740 --> 32:41.690]  Very easily, very efficiently.
[32:41.860 --> 32:44.380]  They have very high-powered computer programs doing this.
[32:44.380 --> 32:47.080]  So it's actually making their job easier.
[32:49.830 --> 32:51.580]  But they've used...
[32:51.580 --> 33:11.780]  Instead of saying, okay, there's parity in the decrease in costs on both sides, they've emphasized the one and used that as a device to create these takedown provisions which eliminate also their cost of doing business in terms of lawsuits in order to get things taken down.
[33:12.840 --> 33:19.120]  The way that notice and takedown works is once they detect something that they allege to be infringing.
[33:19.240 --> 33:21.170]  It doesn't have to be a real infringement.
[33:21.600 --> 33:32.500]  And the Church of Scientology in particular is going around and alleging that a whole lot of things that honestly, from a legal standpoint, that they're just not infringement.
[33:32.710 --> 33:34.560]  But they're alleging that it's infringement.
[33:35.670 --> 33:40.240]  And what they do is they don't go to the person who's accused of infringing.
[33:40.240 --> 33:47.020]  What they do is they go to the person that's hosting the website or is otherwise providing some connectivity to the alleged infringer.
[33:47.840 --> 33:51.400]  And they delegate the enforcement task to that person.
[33:51.640 --> 33:56.190]  And they say, look, we're going to sue you for contributory infringement.
[33:56.190 --> 34:00.210]  And now you're on notice of what we say is the infringement.
[34:00.380 --> 34:03.780]  You take it down right now, this instant.
[34:03.780 --> 34:06.980]  Or we're taking you, the web host, to court.
[34:08.520 --> 34:26.960]  But there's a big carrot in the statute also, which says that, well, web hosting company, if you do what the Church of Scientology or Jack Valenti or whoever tells you to do, then you're going to have a safe harbor.
[34:26.960 --> 34:27.720]  You're immune.
[34:28.040 --> 34:34.320]  You can't be sued by your customer and you can't be sued by Jack Valenti as long as you obey.
[34:35.460 --> 34:42.600]  And believe me, that has meant there is a lot of content that gets taken down.
[34:42.740 --> 34:43.820]  There is an industry...
[34:43.820 --> 34:46.700]  This is the Copyright Lawyers Full Employment Act.
[34:46.700 --> 34:51.820]  I know so many people that spend their whole days just going around the Internet.
[34:52.140 --> 34:53.260]  It's a great job, really.
[34:53.520 --> 34:55.880]  They just go around the Internet.
[34:55.880 --> 34:58.920]  They find stuff that they want to accuse people of infringing.
[34:59.000 --> 35:01.840]  And then they send out these letters and they get it taken down instantly.
[35:02.740 --> 35:09.000]  Now, there is a counter-notification provision, which means that once it gets taken down, the customer does get notified.
[35:10.220 --> 35:18.340]  And in order to get it put back up, let's say that you're engaging in fair use or political protest or something like that, and you want your website put back up.
[35:18.640 --> 35:20.440]  Or maybe they took down too much.
[35:20.520 --> 35:23.140]  They took down the whole website because of just one picture on there.
[35:26.140 --> 35:28.720]  Well, sure, you can give counter-notification.
[35:28.720 --> 35:34.420]  You can swear under penalty of perjury that you don't think that it's an infringement and this is what your position is.
[35:34.460 --> 35:41.920]  But you also have to submit to jurisdiction where the hosting company is.
[35:43.340 --> 35:50.720]  Or in the case of Google, you'd have to submit to jurisdiction wherever Google's headquarters is, which may be very far away from where you are.
[35:54.860 --> 36:00.660]  And of course, the copyright industry, especially the big players, can litigate anywhere at virtually the same cost.
[36:00.800 --> 36:07.220]  So it creates a potential inconvenience for the alleged infringer, makes things very convenient for the copyright companies.
[36:08.300 --> 36:11.500]  But the procedure is you would submit to that jurisdiction.
[36:11.760 --> 36:16.120]  You give them all the information they need to initiate a lawsuit against you.
[36:16.640 --> 36:24.100]  So basically, if you do the counter-notification to get your stuff back up and to keep publishing, you've bought yourself a lawsuit.
[36:24.360 --> 36:29.400]  And you've made it as easy as possible for the other side to take you to court if they want to do it.
[36:30.870 --> 36:50.040]  And honestly, in my experience, the courts are much more willing to award attorney's fees and to make one of the sides, one of the litigants, whole in cases in which infringement is found than in cases in which no infringement is found.
[36:50.040 --> 36:56.480]  So let's say that I'm Universal Studios and I beat the other side.
[36:58.040 --> 37:14.560]  In my experience, it's much more likely that Universal Studios is going to go from there and not only win the copyright case, but also get to take their attorney's fees back from the poor person on the receiving end of the lawsuit than it is the other way around.
[37:15.460 --> 37:18.820]  If, I mean, in the Ford Motor Company, we tried to get our fees back.
[37:18.820 --> 37:20.540]  I mean, this thing was thrown out.
[37:20.740 --> 37:24.280]  The judge said, we'll believe everything that Ford has said in the pleadings.
[37:24.400 --> 37:26.500]  That still doesn't give you a court case.
[37:26.800 --> 37:35.980]  We said, if the lawsuit is that bogus, we should be compensated for what it costs to go through the court process.
[37:36.840 --> 37:57.620]  I mean, otherwise, just the threat of the lawsuit and the threat of having to spend that much money in order to continue exercising free speech is going to mean that a lot of people are going to choose not to engage in legitimate lawful free speech precisely because it's so expensive to pay the trademark tax or the copyright tax in order to defeat the lawsuit in order to keep speaking.
[37:58.560 --> 38:00.660]  And the judge said, no, I'm not going to give you your money.
[38:01.020 --> 38:03.520]  We don't think that it was quite oppressive enough.
[38:13.340 --> 38:18.180]  I think I've given you a quick overview of what the basic procedure is.
[38:18.380 --> 38:25.120]  The notice and takedown, which makes it really easy for the copyright owners to engage in censorship and all sorts of other bad behavior.
[38:25.120 --> 38:32.360]  And what the difficulty is from the free speech perspective, if you want to get things put back up, there is a procedure.
[38:34.220 --> 38:38.940]  But, boy, you have to be really determined if you want to engage in that procedure.
[38:40.480 --> 38:41.620]  Maybe we should go on.
[38:41.740 --> 38:44.900]  I'd say the replay TV cases.
[38:45.380 --> 38:46.760]  I think that'll be interesting.
[38:46.760 --> 38:54.740]  This is, again, one of the lessons that we've learned over time is that this is a tough battle.
[38:54.940 --> 39:00.100]  It's not going to be as easy to deal with the courts as we originally expected back in 1998.
[39:00.420 --> 39:09.460]  And choosing our battles carefully is going to be the most important part of our strategy in getting this statute struck down.
[39:09.500 --> 39:15.920]  And the replay TV case, I think, shows exactly what the right way to go about this is.
[39:15.920 --> 39:17.800]  And Robin's doing a great job on it.
[39:18.560 --> 39:27.400]  Well, it's not brought under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, per se, but it is part of the copyright industry's general strategy to really reshape copyright law.
[39:28.340 --> 39:40.280]  And this is an issue over the individuals, the public's right to use digital VCRs, TiVo, Replay TV, that sort of system.
[39:40.280 --> 39:54.700]  Last fall, 28 of the largest entertainment television broadcasting and movie studios sued Replay TV and Sonic Blue for providing these digital VCRs.
[39:54.700 --> 40:00.300]  And basically what they're alleging is that these devices are tools of infringement.
[40:00.500 --> 40:08.360]  Because people can use them to copy entire movies and television programs without the permission of the copyright holder.
[40:08.580 --> 40:17.900]  And they're able to take those shows that they record and then send them to other devices so they can watch them in other places.
[40:17.900 --> 40:24.680]  And they also allege, and perhaps their biggest problem is with the notion of commercial skipping.
[40:25.480 --> 40:30.320]  Their claim is that by not watching the commercials, you're actually engaging in theft.
[40:30.360 --> 40:33.620]  And this is in all of the court pleadings that were filed in that case.
[40:34.520 --> 40:42.060]  And more notably, however, are the statements by Jamie Kellner, the CEO of Turner Broadcasting.
[40:42.700 --> 40:51.620]  He was interviewed in Inside Magazine a couple months ago about this lawsuit and these devices that skip over commercials.
[40:51.860 --> 40:56.780]  And his claim was that any time you don't watch a commercial, you're actually stealing the content.
[40:57.000 --> 40:58.360]  You are committing theft.
[40:58.580 --> 40:59.860]  This is his claim.
[41:00.800 --> 41:09.680]  And the person who was interviewing Mr. Kellner was a little shocked by this and said, well, what about when people have to go to the bathroom during commercials?
[41:10.440 --> 41:17.060]  And Mr. Kellner said, well, there is a certain amount of bathroom use that we are willing to tolerate.
[41:19.940 --> 41:23.360]  But I think this really goes to show the arrogance of the industry.
[41:23.560 --> 41:25.300]  That they really feel entitled.
[41:25.620 --> 41:27.800]  That they own your attention.
[41:27.800 --> 41:31.100]  They don't have to earn it.
[41:31.180 --> 41:32.800]  They don't have to be worthy of it.
[41:32.920 --> 41:34.780]  You just have to give it to them, basically.
[41:35.320 --> 41:38.720]  And this was very troubling to a lot of people.
[41:39.540 --> 41:49.240]  Another thing that recently happened in that case that was filed last fall was the recording industry asked the court.
[41:49.240 --> 42:06.740]  And the court granted, initially, an order that Replay TV go back, rewrite its software in order to monitor all the uses of all their customers, and report that information, collect all that data, and report it over to the recording industry for their litigation purposes.
[42:07.700 --> 42:13.120]  Well, again, this really got people upset, and Replay TV objected to this.
[42:13.580 --> 42:20.880]  Several groups, including the EFF, filed an amicus brief based on the privacy rights of the Replay TV customers.
[42:21.240 --> 42:24.860]  And that particular order was subsequently overturned.
[42:25.840 --> 42:33.700]  Well, again, this really was upsetting to a lot of the Replay TV customers, these kinds of litigation tactics.
[42:33.700 --> 42:38.980]  And so, several of them got in touch with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
[42:39.260 --> 42:54.520]  And what we did last month was file a declaratory judgment suit on behalf of five Replay TV owners, essentially asking the court to declare that their use of these digital VCRs is perfectly lawful under copyright law.
[42:55.760 --> 43:02.500]  So far, the recording industry, the studios have been, they haven't answered our complaint.
[43:02.500 --> 43:05.440]  In fact, they're trying to keep us out of the case.
[43:05.600 --> 43:09.560]  They don't want the actual customers to be part of this case.
[43:09.920 --> 43:16.500]  Their claim is that their problem is with the Replay TV, and not with the individual customers.
[43:16.680 --> 43:23.740]  But really, it's kind of an end run around the customer's rights, because it is the customer's activities that are ultimately in question here.
[43:23.740 --> 43:30.960]  The recording industry's claims, Hollywood's claims, is that everyone is just downloading HBO and sharing it with each other.
[43:31.100 --> 43:32.980]  And that simply isn't the case.
[43:32.980 --> 43:36.720]  And we want the actual customers to be a part of this lawsuit.
[43:36.720 --> 43:53.100]  So the court can really understand the kinds of activities that people are engaging in, as opposed to the imagined horrors and these horrible boogeyman pirates that the recording industry and the movie studios are dreaming up in order to tell the court the story that they want to tell the story.
[43:53.480 --> 44:04.260]  Again, the assumption and the allegation in all of these cases is that every single person in this room and every single customer all across America and all over the world, you're all pirates.
[44:04.260 --> 44:06.020]  That's what it's based on.
[44:06.120 --> 44:06.900]  That's the presumption.
[44:07.480 --> 44:08.480]  Go ahead.
[44:12.320 --> 44:20.860]  So, some of the plaintiffs that we've brought in this case include Craig Newmark, the founder of craigslist.org.
[44:21.060 --> 44:22.640]  Some of you might be familiar with him.
[44:22.960 --> 44:29.960]  Also, a parent who wants to be able to control the amount of advertising that his children are exposed to.
[44:30.560 --> 44:35.480]  He's able to zap off some of those commercials and he feels like that's his right and responsibility as a parent.
[44:36.260 --> 44:45.320]  Apparently, Jack Bellini feels like he's got some right to that parent's child's time, irrespective of the parent's wishes.
[44:46.140 --> 44:53.720]  So this really is a very important battle for a lot of different reasons and for affecting a lot of different people very differently.
[44:55.040 --> 45:04.800]  So far, we don't have any court dates set in that case, although we're hoping to have a motion to consolidate a hearing on July 22nd.
[45:05.080 --> 45:07.880]  Again, the recording industry, Hollywood, they want to keep us out of this case.
[45:07.880 --> 45:11.760]  They don't want the actual customers to be before the court.
[45:12.080 --> 45:17.500]  So that will be the first big battle is whether or not we are actually allowed to stay in the case.
[45:19.380 --> 45:20.960]  A couple more points.
[45:21.200 --> 45:22.940]  We only have a few minutes left.
[45:24.240 --> 45:32.680]  There's actually what is probably easier to call DMCA-2 that's right now in front of Congress.
[45:33.620 --> 45:50.720]  A couple of very, very powerful senators and a couple of very powerful members of the House who happen to have very strong relationships, including financial relationships in terms of fundraising, with the Disney Corporation, with some other big movie studios,
[45:50.980 --> 45:54.620]  have introduced legislation.
[45:54.620 --> 46:18.020]  They have told the computer industry, you are going to have to sit down with the movie industry and come up with something that satisfies the movie industry, or Congress is going to make you change your computer products down to the CPU in order to lock up copyrighted content.
[46:19.340 --> 46:29.320]  The amount of control that is, at least that Disney is pushing for in computers, is breathtaking.
[46:30.960 --> 46:35.320]  I don't want to go into too much detail, but it's very important.
[46:35.480 --> 46:51.800]  There's a lot of material on the EFF website that goes into what is wrong with this approach and just how dramatically undemocratic the process is in this ongoing negotiation.
[46:51.940 --> 46:57.900]  Fortunately, EFF has had some people at least there as observers, although they're not really listened to by anybody.
[47:00.140 --> 47:01.600]  It's very frightening.
[47:01.820 --> 47:16.140]  The other thing that we might want to mention, and this is copyright related but not necessarily DMCA related, are a couple of lawsuits, one of which, surprisingly, the United States Supreme Court granted cert on, which is the Eldred v. Ashcroft case.
[47:17.660 --> 47:20.400]  Professor Lessig is one of the lead attorneys on it.
[47:20.400 --> 47:28.920]  And this has to do with, there's this huge backlog of stuff that's supposed to enter the public domain.
[47:29.220 --> 47:53.940]  And every time it comes up, and we're a year away from that stuff going into the public domain, and people being able to quote from it freely and use that as raw material for new creative works and things like that, Congress extends the deadline by another 20 years and gives the Disney Corporation and Time Warner and all sorts of music companies another 20 years worth of revenue on all of this
[47:53.940 --> 47:56.680]  stuff that does belong in the public domain at this point.
[47:56.900 --> 48:05.140]  They are challenging that on a variety of reasons, especially the retroactive application of the extension in front of the Supreme Court.
[48:06.680 --> 48:16.240]  And that will be argued very early on, I think in October of this year, in the new term of the Supreme Court.
[48:16.400 --> 48:18.060]  That will be a very exciting case to watch.
[48:18.640 --> 48:24.400]  The other one is in a district court in Colorado, and it presents an even more alarming picture.
[48:24.520 --> 48:25.340]  This is the Golan v. Ashcroft case.
[48:26.560 --> 48:45.740]  And that has to do with the retroactive revival of copyrights, which means that things that have already passed into the public domain, and that belong to you and me and everybody, and we all have access to that freely, have been taken back out of the public domain and awarded back to the copyright owners so that they can start charging us for it.
[48:46.340 --> 48:49.080]  And that's also being challenged on constitutional grounds.
[48:49.300 --> 48:51.460]  I don't know if we have a couple minutes for questions.
[48:58.200 --> 49:01.960]  It's helpful in question and answer periods.
[49:05.100 --> 49:05.820]  How are you doing?
[49:05.920 --> 49:06.840]  Thank you for speaking today.
[49:07.480 --> 49:14.320]  I'd like both of your thoughts on the DMCA affecting offshore site management and information technology.
[49:14.520 --> 49:22.020]  And would you recommend temporarily moving operations offshore until you can get this piece of legislation overturned?
[49:22.120 --> 49:22.600]  Thank you.
[49:23.120 --> 49:24.020]  Well, I'll take that.
[49:24.080 --> 49:25.460]  Actually, that's a very good question.
[49:25.500 --> 49:29.040]  And I think we can answer that by looking at the Dmitry Sklarov case.
[49:29.740 --> 49:42.180]  Dmitry worked for Elkomsoft in Russia and was building a software program that would interoperate with Adobe's software that essentially controls the viewing of electronic books.
[49:42.500 --> 49:51.220]  And while all this was done in another country, they did all the research, wrote the software, selling it from a website over the internet.
[49:51.560 --> 49:58.620]  Basically, that created the jurisdiction, according to the court, here in the United States for them to be sued under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act here.
[49:59.200 --> 50:07.220]  So I don't think there's a whole lot of solace in going overseas to do these activities if there's some kind of U.S.
[50:07.340 --> 50:10.120]  connection, because that's where they'll shut you down.
[50:11.640 --> 50:18.060]  And if you ever want to travel here, again, that would be a problem for you as well.
[50:18.060 --> 50:20.720]  You could potentially be prosecuted if you did things overseas.
[50:21.000 --> 50:25.560]  If the computer programs found their way here and you came here, you could be prosecuted.
[50:25.720 --> 50:29.460]  So I'm not sure it's really a wise recommendation.
[50:32.120 --> 50:40.240]  First, I just want to say that you and all your associates deserve thanks far beyond what any of us could provide for all you do, especially when it's all free of charge often.
[50:40.740 --> 50:41.600]  My question
[50:47.680 --> 51:09.040]  is, are there any other examples of litigation now that has ever been considered or exists where the public is considered guilty by default before a crime has ever been committed and is handled as such across the board, or is this really the first time that we are affected as such with laws?
[51:11.580 --> 51:13.160]  Well, I don't know the answer to that.
[51:13.400 --> 51:17.400]  I'm sure that there may have been, but certainly not on this scale.
[51:20.780 --> 51:26.620]  We have a lot of people who want to ask questions, so we may extend this panel for just a couple of minutes, but we need to wrap up pretty quickly.
[51:26.840 --> 51:27.580]  Who is over here?
[51:29.100 --> 51:35.860]  This is just a comment for those of you who want more information on some of the copyright issues with regard to this.
[51:36.060 --> 51:40.860]  We're going to continue this topic tomorrow in the GNU radio panel.
[51:41.040 --> 51:43.460]  We're going to also talk a lot about the technology and how we're doing it.
[51:43.460 --> 51:48.740]  One of our goals is to build like the mother of all digital VCRs all in software.
[51:49.520 --> 52:02.340]  And right now we're... I've made presentations to the MPAA's copy protection technology working group and those thugs and explained what we're up to and why this is a good thing for everyone.
[52:02.500 --> 52:03.740]  So anyway, more about this tomorrow.
[52:05.040 --> 52:08.460]  And I promise there'll be plenty of technical stuff for people who want that part also.
[52:10.000 --> 52:10.520]  All right.
[52:10.680 --> 52:12.880]  Does anybody have a question that's not a shameless plug?
[52:16.990 --> 52:20.050]  You said that the DMCA has had global effects.
[52:20.190 --> 52:22.150]  Would that have anything to do with the World Trade Organization?
[52:22.370 --> 52:28.370]  And if it has, is there anything that we can do to stop it since it's run out of Geneva and it's not accountable to any public source at all?
[52:28.630 --> 52:31.350]  Like, is there any way possible to overturn the law, period?
[52:31.350 --> 52:40.890]  Well, that actually combines two ideas together, both of which are valid ideas, but they're not necessarily connected with one another.
[52:41.090 --> 52:47.550]  The global effect of the DMCA has to do with the United States asserting jurisdiction extra-territorially.
[52:48.030 --> 52:48.630]  U.S.
[52:49.070 --> 52:55.330]  courts saying, we're going to reach out to people in Europe, we're going to reach out to people in Asia, and they can be sued in U.S.
[52:55.470 --> 52:57.550]  court or they can be prosecuted in U.S.
[52:57.650 --> 53:02.790]  court for things that they do abroad that has an effect on the United States.
[53:02.790 --> 53:18.910]  In other contexts, I've been very much involved in arguing to the courts, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully, about exercising some judicial restraint in terms of extra-territorial jurisdiction.
[53:20.810 --> 53:22.250]  Some judges get it.
[53:22.750 --> 53:30.410]  There have been some that just say, we think that it's a bad thing and the United States courts had better be able to do that.
[53:30.410 --> 53:37.350]  Now, as far as the WTO goes, there is an effort going on with the WTO and with trade negotiations.
[53:37.690 --> 53:45.870]  Actually, Robin has a great story on what happened with the negotiations with China for most favored nation status.
[53:47.630 --> 54:00.170]  But what happens with the WTO is they do have, in connection with each of their trade rounds, a negotiation about trips, which are trade-related intellectual property issues.
[54:00.790 --> 54:09.170]  And in each of their rounds, they will negotiate things that give U.S.
[54:09.350 --> 54:17.710]  copyright holders additional rights if they decide to sue in the courts of another WTO signatory.
[54:17.710 --> 54:25.270]  And I agree with you, you're absolutely correct, that there is a tremendous lack of accountability in that organization.
[54:27.310 --> 54:29.670]  Most of us don't really have a voice in there.
[54:29.850 --> 54:31.890]  The people of the world don't have a voice.
[54:31.890 --> 54:48.650]  And it's really commercial interests that are forcing policies that literally could not be adopted through domestic political systems by way of this international end run around individual national sovereignty.
[54:49.410 --> 54:52.930]  But Robin's story on the Chinese.
[54:53.250 --> 54:53.510]  Go ahead.
[54:53.510 --> 55:14.210]  Back in 1996, when China was applying for most favored nation trading status, the administration required of China that they add copyright infringement to their list of capital offenses in order for them to meet the qualifications for being considered a most favored nation.
[55:14.430 --> 55:16.010]  So they're very serious folks.
[55:16.310 --> 55:16.510]  Pardon?
[55:16.770 --> 55:17.270]  Death penalty.
[55:17.650 --> 55:18.830]  A capital offense.
[55:18.910 --> 55:20.090]  As in death penalty.
[55:20.670 --> 55:24.850]  Now, of course, it's not a death penalty in the United States, but think about it.
[55:24.970 --> 55:34.670]  We're criticizing the Chinese for prison labor and for massive abuses in terms of how they treat their prison population and their criminal justice system.
[55:35.030 --> 55:49.350]  But at the same time, despite all that public criticism, we turn around and when it comes to copyright, we're insisting on even more draconian penalties and abuse of people's rights over there than we even have here.
[55:49.350 --> 55:50.030]  It's unbelievable.
[55:50.670 --> 55:50.770]  All right.
[55:50.910 --> 55:53.850]  He's got one quick question and then we have to wrap up for the next panel.
[55:55.030 --> 55:56.210]  Thanks again for your work.
[55:56.290 --> 56:04.470]  If you could just mention, please, the congressmen and senators that are working on this next generation, DMCA2, and bypassing normal legislative process.
[56:07.910 --> 56:17.730]  Senator Hollings is the representative who has introduced the Consumer Broadband Television Promotion Act, which is really an oxymoron.
[56:18.450 --> 56:28.450]  So that's sort of on the bad side, as well as Billy Towson out of Louisiana and Bourbon out of Southern California.
[56:28.690 --> 56:35.150]  Those are some of the folks that are really working very hard to restrict the public's rights even further under copyright.
[56:35.570 --> 56:41.750]  In terms of a congressman who's sort of on the other side of that equation is Representative Boucher, a Democrat out of Virginia.
[56:41.750 --> 56:49.630]  He wants to do some... or he's been making claims about wanting to revise, repeal some of these anti-circumvention provisions.
[56:49.870 --> 56:53.550]  If I can just make a shameless membership pitch while I've got the microphone.
[56:53.750 --> 56:57.030]  My colleague over here, Ladrina, has got some membership applications.
[56:57.070 --> 57:00.830]  And so I'd like to encourage you all to come join the EFF so we can continue this fight.
[57:01.130 --> 57:01.330]  Thank you.
[57:01.330 --> 57:08.670]  On the Senate side, Patrick Leahy also is thinking in good ways about these sorts of issues.
[57:09.590 --> 57:10.230]  Excellent.
[57:10.610 --> 57:11.090]  Thanks, guys.
[57:11.430 --> 57:13.770]  Again, Robin Gross and Eric Grimm.
[57:22.940 --> 57:24.880]  The next panel is going to...