DMCA... do we really need it?

While I was doing a research on the net about cryptography I came across the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) website and I got a little bit distracted by it.

I started reading pages after pages on several lawsuits popping here and there across America, not only the ones from RIAA but several others.

One in special got my attention. It was not a lawsuit, it was censorship. Worse, it was SELF censorship.

It is an old case, but valid nonetheless. It's about a guy called Niels Ferguson. He lives in Amsterdam and discovered a serious flaw in Intel's High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP for short) that could render the said protection useless.

Any sane person in the world would toss this discovery over to the wind, the more people knew about it the better, after all we are talking about a protection system that can protect your work too.

However, Ferguson was advised by US attorneys not to publish his findings because he could be prosecuted by ANY American citizen that felt affected by his paper.

When I read this I could almost see several MPAA lawyers sharpening their axes.

If you want to know more about it, Ferguson keeps a website about this at https://www.macfergus.com/niels/dmca.

I am not a lawyer, nor I am in any length an expert on the subject, but given the amount of trouble that DMCA is causing since it was signed I wonder if it's not the time for it to be reviewed.

I'd like to get something straight first.

I think the American Judicial System is one of the best in the world, but sometimes I can't stop thinking that something in the system is incredibly wrong.

Let's take RIAA lawsuits for instance. If I were a judge I wouldn't accept such cases in my court. Not in a million years. "But they are criminals!" would claim RIAA's supporters.

Are they? Let's see... (the figures are made up -- if you know the right figures let me know)

How much does it cost to produce a single CD that is sold to the public at any convenience store?

• $ 4.00 for the recording company


• $ 3.50 for transportation


• $ 1.00 for the artist/composer


• $ 1.00 for the store profit


• ¢ 50 for the physical media

Summing up $10 for a CD (cheap isn't it) divided by an average of 15 tracks per CD, gives us ¢ 66 per music.

iTunes sells songs by ¢ 99 each.

That's 50% more expensive than buying the whole CD for the same songs, or 147% more expensive if you take into consideration that you don't have transportation and media costs.

Who's being the criminal here?

“But they are violating copyright laws”, scream RIAA's supporters.

Well, let's go back a few years in the past. In the 60's we had those huge vinyl records (the quality was a little better than a scratchy noise), and a lot of people wanted to share the music they liked and so they transferred the music to (an even worse) tape.

As long as they didn't sell the tape there was no harm done.

Back then there was an understanding that if you are not making profit with your copy you could freely distribute it. Why? Simple, because at $1 a tape it wasn't worth making more than a few copies to share with your closest friends.

Now, let's fast forward to the present. The price per copy of anything is close to $0, there is no cost for transportation, so you can make more and more copies of anything, and instead of giving just a few tapes to your friends you can give the same thing to hundreds of thousands of your acquaintance's.

And that's when RIAA screams "not fair". Because they see those hundreds of thousands copies you freely give to your acquaintances as "lost sales", instead of the more appropriate "free advertising".

I did an informal and unscientific survey among my friends and every single one of them had downloaded at least one song from the Internet. And they liked the song so much that they bought the CD AFTER they downloaded the song.

And if they own the CD they can have it in their computers.

So there's no copyright infringement here.

“But a lot of them doesn't have the CD”, say the RIAA's supporters scratching their heads.

A lot of people listen to radio and record the music on tapes. Some radio stations go even further and promote sessions EXCLUSIVELY to be recorded.

“But... but... but... Does this all mean that you are pro piracy?”

Not at all. I am STRONGLY against piracy. I do have some creative work myself, and I don't like to see my work everywhere without the proper recognition.

But instead of keeping my work closed and private, I make it available for free... Well almost, all I ask is a little recognition by the part of the person using my work by placing my name in his or her “About Boxes”.

Now I ask you to take a step further...

Write to your congressmen, let them know that you are not happy with the way things are being held. Let them know that the law is, if not wrong, at least, misleading.

I already did my part.