> People commit crimes, not things. This is why photocopiers are ok, why dual VCRs are ok, and why the law against distributing DVD decryption algorithms is nutso wrong.
>

Why exactly is it wrong? I think I might be misunderstanding what you're getting at.

I recognize that, for the most part, encrypting video is essentially a futile endeavor since there will always be someone out there who can break it. Knowing that, some companies do not even bother putting securities on their products. But I believe they have a right at least to /attempt/ to secure their products from unauthorized reproduction.

Photocopiers and videotapes have never been that much a threat to the industry because any duplicates of these items are created by analog means and are oftentimes inferior to the original. DVDs and MP3s, on the other hand, have been regarded with some degree of fear by the movie and music industry -- they reproduce the multimedia with a degree of fidelity that is effectively close to that of the master print. Not only that, but the digital nature of these media makes it all too easy to rapidly duplicate them. So what is a recording company supposed to do about all this? Totally ignore the possibility of finding an digital encryption scheme that works and try to keep it working?


> However, Napster is not "a photocopier," it is a single privately-owned business entity. If a court of law determines that the people who operate Napster have been irresponsible about taking reasonable precautions about removing copyrighted material from their service (ha!) then they have every right to shut them down, and I'm sort of amazed that hasn't happened already.

I would agree that as a "direct person-to-person non-commercial file-sharing enterprise," Napster nevertheless makes shameless exploitation of copyrighted material in a way most people understand is illegal. However, the issue seems to be more than "stealing profits" from the creators of the said music. The issue appears more to be one of control. Consider MP3.com, which actually made compensation arrangements with the artists it was representing. The musicians themselves desired to gain greater exposure over the Internet by distributing free copies of their singles. Several major record labels disagreed and sued MP3.com for loss of CD sales.

This is stupid, and a loss to the artists, because what was 'stolen' from them was profits which they never would have had in the first place. "Try before you buy" policies work on anything from laundry soap to magazine subscriptions to cars. So why not on music distributed through the Internet? Well, in an ideal world it should work. But the problem remains that digital technology transfers still scare the producers due to their unforeseeable consequences.

For example, Microsoft is well aware that one of the reasons it has attained such a broad market share is due to piracy of its operating systems and products. Does widespread stealing from Microsoft make the theft all right? Of course not. But ironically they wouldn't be where they are today without essentially having gone through a huge, free "try before you buy" campaign. And now, in an attempt to control piracy and track legit users, they have been thinking of setting up a database registration system which verges on the draconian. Not only will consumers have to register software the first time around in order to get it to work, they will have to reregister *each time* any new piece of hardware is added or removed from a computer system. Needless to say, this isn't going to stop software piracy, and issues of privacy will be at fore.

What I am saying in a roundabout way, I suppose, is that no one as yet knows how to deal with, or protect, their products from being mass data transfers in cyberspace. Into this knowledge void comes attempts to legislate control through legal means. If you read this month's Discover magazine article, which gabby seems to be referring to ("A Love Song for Napster"), you'll see how one musician/computer engineer believes that killing off Napster might "unwittingly set us on a road that ends in a massive government-imposed protection racket, [where] The logic of the situation compel[s] intervention in private as well as commercial communications." Scary stuff.

Wolfspirit