[olug] congressman Terry needs more attention

[Thomas D. Williamson]

I see what you are saying. I have friends who have no TV in their home. They
will be adversely effected by this should there be restriction on what types of
machines or types of media can be used for recording and viewing or listening
all ready owned work to preserve what they have in hand. One project for them
has been transferring music accompany tapes from cassette tape to CD. The issue
for them is that many of these songs are not being reproduced on CD and the only
media format they have is the cassette. Now there are some advantages to what he
has done. The tapes were getting stretched and the music was distorting. The
software he found to copy and record has the capacity to adjust the tonal and
timing differences so that they sound as good as new (in some cases better than
new because some background noise is filtered out). All of this is legal under
the fair use provision of copyright law.

It appears that the changes proposed for the laws if passed will give the RIAA
and MPAA the right to determine what kind of recording can be, how the
broadcast can be recorded and how it can be replayed. For those with Tivo and
MythTV there could be a halt to the ability to record for future or alternate
time for viewing preferred television programs. Of course the transferance of
those programs for other people to view becomes the problem, that is not fully
covered in the fair use concept. What may happen is Tivo and other commercial
products will work out a fee to pay MPAA and the television production
companies so those machines will work. Open-source and free-ware products will
be blocked from access. But knowing how parts of the Open-source community
works, there will be work arounds. The issue at that point will doing so break
a federal law with severe penalties or a lesser agreement with few actions
against those who take such action.

Tom Williamson

Quoting jman at neonramp.com:

> Correction.
>
> One solution would be to stop watching so much TV (stop getting plugged in).
> It feeds the marketing campaigns that fuel such movements. Loss of revenue.
> TV is good for all and all good, not.
>
> It is like a drug. We all want to get another fix without the pushers
> control. If it wasn't money for them they wouldn't pursue it. If it isn't a
> fix for us we would not fight it.
>
> My TV consumption a week = < 2 hours. Transform the news paper into an
> electronic form would they bitch about copyright? Like most services that
> produce paper publications. They put online their pubs in limited fashion and
> offer subsciption services for the complete service. It is lost revenue for
> the publisher to place the entire piece online subjecting themselves to lost
> revenue w/o advertisements from hyjacked stories broadcast in email etc.
>
> Forgive me if I am out of line. It is not my intention.
>
> John
>
> Neal Rauhauser wrote ..
> >
> >   Congress is at it again - more attempts at welfare for MPAA and RIAA
> > members. Our very own congressman Terry is one of the people behind this:
> >
> >
>
https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?JServSessionIdr001=03qen86ok1.app2a&cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=181
> >
> >   An email counts as one voter, a call counts as ten, and a faxed or
> > mailed letter counts as a hundred. Don't be a sissy - take the time to
> > write a letter and fax it to him.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > OLUG mailing list
> > OLUG at olug.org
> > http://lists.olug.org/mailman/listinfo/olug
>


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