[Legal] LWN Letters on CBDTPTA (или как его там)

[Michael Shigorin]

	Здравствуйте.
Позволю себе привести два письма из последнего LWN.  Не сочтите за спам ;>

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From:	 Leon Brooks <leon на cyberknights.com.au>
To:	 Linux Weekly News <letters на lwn.net>
Subject: Disney hates baseball, film at 11?
Date:	 Fri, 29 Mar 2002 13:14:23 +0800
Cc:	 Jerry <wa6cvl на sbcglobal.net>

Jerry used the analogy of crime-proof cars to show the clumsy stupidity of 
the CBDTPA. Perhaps a more accurate analogy for Michael D Eisner's statements 
would lie in that all-American favourite, the sandlot baseball game (Aussies 
might relate better to backyard cricket matches).

What Michael is in essence proposing in analogy is that because he wants to 
be able to sell admission to Disney's baseball grounds, the US government 
should legislate that all open spaces possibly useable as baseball grounds 
must have security fencing, sight screens, a ticket office and so on, or be 
illegal to own or use.

The first analogical problem that would confront him in places like Australia 
(and some US states) is that there are so very *many* of these, and lots of 
them are crown land or reserves.

But the real flies in the ointment would be sandlot baseball, public parks, 
and undeveloped land. Oh, yes, and what would happen when the lawyers 
finished with all of these?

Anyone carrying a baseball glove across a vacant lot (or their own backyard) 
would be liable for prosecution. Actually getting together for a baseball 
game would be really asking to be jailed as criminals.

Councils could be prosecuted for making potential baseball diamonds (in the 
form of parks and gardens) available without properly licenced baseball 
fittings. Right-Of-Way laws and baseball control laws would clash.

The ultimate irony would be watching the Disney corporate Christmas party 
being rounded up and herded into paddy-wagons after some of the staff 
carelessly broke out bats and balls.

Carrying the analogy back to real life, Disney's overt goal is control over 
the viewing of their own media. In order to gain this control, they are 
apparently willing to enforce control over every medium, and every viewing 
device, regardless of purpose, location, ownership, cost or anything else. 

The kindest thing that could be said about that is `it is very irresponsible'.

It does not appear to have dawned on Disney that many viewing devices exist 
through which Disney footage has never passed and will never pass. Their 
proposal would make these devices every bit as illegal as the ones 
deliberately and carefully used by pirates to clone (for sale) copyrighted, 
commercial DVDs by the thousands.

Cheers; Leon

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From:	 "Charles Hethcoat" <Charles Hethcoat <clhiii на attglobal.net>>
To:	 letters на lwn.net
Subject: 
Date:	 Thu, 28 Mar 2002 21:15:27 -0600

Dear Editor:

Of all the self-serving balderdash floating about in Congress and
Hollywood, Michael Eisner's article in The Financial Times is just
about the worst I've seen.  Thanks for alerting us to it.

Eisner shamelessly quotes Abraham Lincoln's words while using them to
repress the very rights that Lincoln was talking about:

     "...The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, FOR
     A LIMITED TIME, the exclusive use of his invention; ..."

The key phrase in this quotation, completely ignored by Mr. Eisner,
was "for a limited time."  This is the important fact about patents
and copyrights that is being destroyed by the media moguls.  The
public interest is only served by (1) a /limited/ period of
government-protected monopoly (allowing for profit by the copyright
owner), followed by (2) an /unlimited/ period in the public domain.

The facts in the next paragraph come from the excellent article by
Neil Weinstock Netanel that appeared in 106 Yale Law Journal 283
(1996).  This article is MUST READING for you, me, Mr. Eisner, all of
Hollywood, and the U. S. Congress:

http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/nnetanel/yljarticle.htm

The Constitution demands that copyrights be limited in term.  Congress
originally (in an Act dated May 31, 1790) limited copyright to one
14-year term, renewable at most one time.  Since then, reacting to
commercial pressures, Congress, acting against longer-term public
interest, lengthened the term repeatedly (in 1831, again in 1909,
again in 1976).  The 1976 Act gave exclusive rights to the copyright's
owner for the life of the author plus 50 years.  According to the
article, another piece of legislation pending would extend this even
further, to life plus 70 years.  (I am not sure if it passed.)

Where will it end?  Apparently never, for, the Constitution
notwithstanding, the idea of a copyright has now been replaced by an
irritatingly wrongheaded notion of "intellectual property"---an idea
that basically makes a copyright into real property for perpetuity,
and gives the owner the right to shoot to kill, figuratively speaking.
(I am from Texas, where trespassers may be shot on sight.)  How bad
has it gotten?  Now the idea even has an acronym: IP.  I have even
seen help wanted ads for something called an "IP Manager."

If I could, I would ask Mr. Eisner a question:  How much longer does
he expect to continue getting richer and richer off of Mickey Mouse?
He (Mickey) should have gone into the public domain /years/ ago, if
Congress were doing its job.  And if Mr. Eisner were doing his job,
Disney would just have moved on to something else even newer, cuter
and more irresistible with which to lure us into movie houses and make
us buy DVDs.  Today, it should be perfectly legal for underpaid
watermelon farmers to eke out a living by making plywood Mickey
likenesses and hawk them from the back of a pickup truck on the
roadside.  But it isn't, of course; that is "theft of intellectual
property" and will be stopped immediately under the protection to
Disney afforded by Congress.

Eisner, the MPAA, and their storm troopers are the real thieves.  They
are stealing our money and stealing our way of government, and trying
to tell us that Abe would approve.  A pox on all their houses.

Charles Hethcoat

-- 
 ---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike на altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/