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John Lemke

Rep. Goodlatte Slips Secret Change Into Phone Unlocking Bill That Opens The DMCA Up For Wider Abuse | Techdirt - 0 views

  • Because of section 1201 of the DMCA, the "anti-circumvention" provision, companies have been abusing copyright law to block all sorts of actions that are totally unrelated to copyright. That's because 1201 makes it illegal to circumvent basically any "technological protection measures." The intent of the copyright maximalists was to use this section to stop people from breaking DRM. However, other companies soon distorted the language to argue that it could be used to block certain actions totally unrelated to copyright law -- such as unlocking garage doors, ink jet cartridges, gaming accessories... and phones
  • Separately, every three years, the Librarian of Congress gets to announce "exemptions" to section 1201 where it feels that things are being locked up that shouldn't be. Back in 2006, one of these exemptions involved mobile phone unlocking.
  • Every three years this exemption was modified a bit, but in 2012, for unexplained reasons, the Librarian of Congress dropped that exemption entirely, meaning that starting in late January of 2013, it was possible to interpret the DMCA to mean that phone unlocking was illegal. In response to this there was a major White House petition -- which got over 100,000 signatures, leading the White House to announce (just weeks later) that it thought unlocking should be legal -- though, oddly, it seemed to place the issue with the FCC to fix, rather than recognizing the problem was with current copyright law.
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  • While this gives Goodlatte and other maximalists some sort of plausible deniability that this bill is making no statement one way or the other on bulk unlocking, it certainly very strongly implies that Congress believes bulk unlocking is, in fact, still illegal. And that's massively problematic on any number of levels, in part suggesting that the unlocker's motives in unlocking has an impact on the determination under Section 1201 as to whether or not it's legal. And that's an entirely subjective distinction when a bill seems to assume motives, which makes an already problematic Section 1201 much more problematic. Without that clause, this seemed like a bill that was making it clear that you can't use the DMCA to interfere with an issue that is clearly unrelated to copyright, such as phone unlocking. But with this clause, it suggests that perhaps the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause can be used for entirely non-copyright issues if someone doesn't like the "motive" behind the unlocker.
  • Unfortunately, the bill was deemed so uncontroversial that it's been listed on the suspension calendar of the House, which is where non-controversial bills are put to ensure quick passage. That means that, not only did Goodlatte slip in a significant change to this bill that impacts the entire meaning and intent of the bill long after it went through the committee process (and without informing anyone about it), but he also got it put on the list of non-controversial bills to try to have it slip through without anyone even noticing.
John Lemke

Iron Maiden makes millions of dollars by playing live for pirates | The Verge - 0 views

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    The only thing the article got wrong is that they are not "pirates"... they are fans.
John Lemke

CRIA Watches Massive Music Piracy Crisis Devastate Unknown Band | TorrentFreak - 0 views

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    A band, almost entirely unknown, is reportedly devastated by piracy.  Thing is, seems there are no torrents out there.
John Lemke

CRIA Watches Massive Music Piracy Crisis Devastate Unknown Band | TorrentFreak - 0 views

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    "The Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) states that, to achieve Platinum status, an album must achieve sales of 100,000 copies/downloads of an album. Sales…that's the key. A random polling of several torrent site's downloads-ILLEGAL downloads-has shown that 1ST, the debut cd by ONE SOUL THRUST has been downloaded over 100,000 times," he wrote. Now, 100,000 downloads is a lot, especially for a band like One Soul Thrust who have just 176 Twitter followers and a single short, non-musical video on their YouTube channel which at the time of writing has 79 views. Incidentally, the video is quite nice, since they have actually taken the time out to thank a radio station for playing one of their songs. However, the band are less pleased that people are apparently sampling their music using newer methods, i.e BitTorrent. "We paid to create that album totally out of our own pockets. People think of illegal downloading not hurting anyone, but we're real people too- with real mortgages, real family to feed and real bills to pay," said lead-vocalist Salem Jones. "By downloading our album from pirate sites, people have stolen from us, our families, everyone involved in the production of our album, and their families."
John Lemke

Ice cream seller accused of dealing drugs - Yahoo! News - 0 views

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    Louis Scala sold ice cream to children from his "Lickity Split" truck and would allegedly make stops at prearranged spots where customers knew they could buy pills, according to the New York Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor. Scala, 40, is accused of selling more than 40,000 prescription oxycodone pills from his ice cream truck in the borough of Staten Island and heading up a 30-person drug ring that included more than two dozen runners to fill fake prescriptions, prosecutors said.
John Lemke

Fraudsters break all records in Japan relief ripoffs - Boing Boing - 0 views

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    Fraudster scumbags have beaten all records in setting up fake Japan relief pages, fielding more than 1.7 million malware pages, 419 scams trading on the Japanese disasters, 50+ fake domains with "Japan tsunami" or "Japan earthquake" in their URLs. MacWorld recommends donating via the Red Cross, or other established charities that you're familiar with.
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