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FW: London protest/digital preservation/ US Digital Millenium/Copyright Act (Alice in Wonderland)



Diane C. Russell [dcrussell@MAILANDNEWS.COM] do 23-8-01 12:54

 

…This is the same Adobe that recently prompted the arrest of a Russian

scientist speaking at a meeting on computer security, right?…

 

Sending the message about the title Alice in Wonderland, in my mind I did not make this click, but problably yes. I forward a message protesting this arrest. The mentioned article -  Cliff Lynch's article on " The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World" online at http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_6/lynch/index.html - enlightened me.

 

Apart from being funny, I personally think it is a nice case study to think about outcomes how ICT upset traditional publishing, the history of books (look at the titles named in the thread, amazing what happened since that time), thinking about archiving & archival methods, self archiving, the merging of knowledge held by records managers, archivists and librians, the design of the transcript of the interview (it is beautiful, hat off for the journalist and his staff!), the stand you take in these matters as a professional, ….

 

Bruno Bettelheim discusses in one of his books (I don’t remember the title, I would have to look in the library) to think before beginning to use  a new machine. His argument is this: for every new machine you take into use you have to let go of something, think about what you let go and consider if its worth the costs. His example is the washing machine replacing conversations between parents and their children while doing the dishes by hand. That’s one of the reasons Adobe’s is so funny and futureless, nobody will let go of the long tradition in reading, your own memories of being read to, and the pleasure of reading to your own children. Anyway, I will not.

 

So, in the near future I will be homeprinting & binding books and journals I want to read?

 

With my regards

 

Marianne Vos

mavos@xs4all.nl

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Digital-Preservation Announcement and Information List [mailto:DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On Behalf Of Neil Beagrie
Sent: donderdag 2 augustus 2001 17:19
To: DIGITAL-PRESERVATION@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: fwd: London protest/digital preservation/ US Digital Millenium Copyright Act

 

Dear all

I am forwarding this  for information because the issues and the case itself
will be of interest to many readers of the list in the UK and Overseas. A
previous list posting highlighted Cliff Lynch's article on " The Battle to
Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World" online at
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_6/lynch/index.html. Its discussion
of e-books and their associated hardware and software, the social
implications of digital content,content management and rights management
systems, and long-term preservation and access also looks very topical in
light of this case.

The DMCA allows exemptions for decoding for digital preservation purposes.
Similar technology protection measures are proposed in the EU Copyright
Directive and any exemptions for digital preservation will need to be enacted
in individual national legislation of this.

Please note the views expressed in
the email below are those of Richard Kay
who questions the practicalities of the DMCA exemption and also raises wider
issues for users.

Neil
> ----------
> From:     Richard Kay[SMTP:RICH@COPSEWOOD.NET]
> Sent:     Thursday, August 02, 2001 6:26:22 PM
> To:     JISC - PRESERVATION@JISC.AC.UK
> Cc:     Richard Kay
> Subject:     London protest about anti-preservation DMCA law
> Auto forwarded by a Rule
>
To all those concerned with digital preservation.

I know this is very short notice, but those who are concerned about
future knowledge of the past are likely to be interested in
a demonstration
occurring tomorrow (3rd August) against a US law
which has anti-preservation effects, known as the DMCA (Digital
Millenium Copyright Act), outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor
Square, near Hyde Park, London starting at 1PM.

Protests are taking place in many places worldwide against the  
imprisonment of Dmitry Sklyarov in the US who has been charged
with an offence under the DMCA.

The DMCA makes it a criminal offence in the US to publish
details of the scrambling or encryption methods used to lock
digital content to the hardware used to read it.
Try and imagine what the future would hold for libraries, if
in order to be able to read a book you had to maintain the
instance of a digital reading device in working order for
which your copy of the book was exclusively encoded. The
DMCA allows exemptions for decoding for digital preservation
purposes, but in practice this decoding is less likely to be
economically viable unless it can be provided for all fair
uses of the digital content protected, e.g. for allowing for
interfaces to braille readers and users to keep thier own
backups. More to the point, such decoding is much less likely
to be possible for digital content preservation unless the
information needed to do this decoding can legitimately be
made more generally available.

The Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov who was arrested a fortnight
ago in the US ago had been invited to speak at a computing
security conference in Las Vegas. He is currently in prison
awaiting trial on a charge relating to his Russian employer
(Elcomsoft) having developed and sold software which can be used to
interface the Adobe Ebook product to braille readers and to
allow purchasers of Ebook content to take backup copies.
Software sold in Russia must by law enable users to be able
to take backups so - to the extent Dmitry was involved in writing
this software - this was completely legal where this software
was written.

The DMCA attempts to override a long tradition of fair use
of copyrighted materials, for example allowing people to
sell second-hand copies of books, borrow books from libraries
and allowing teachers to photocopy small parts of books for
distribution to students. I think you will also find the DMCA
threatens our ability to archive in future the knowledge of
the past for the reasons stated above.

Even if you are unable to inform others within the UK library community of
this protest in time for tomorrow, it would be useful for information
about the DMCA to be disseminated and discussed in order to raise
awareness of these issues. It would be of very great assistance to
those within the software-engineering community who are attempting to
defend the rights to freedom of _expression_ and liberty of our colleagues
if you could use the networks available to information professionals
to help us in this activity.

You will find more information under the references:
http://freesklyarov.org/ and http://anti-dmca.org/ .

Many thanks for your consideration,

Yours sincerely,

Richard Kay
Senior Lecturer in Software Engineering,
Technology Innovation Centre,
University of Central England,
Perry Barr,
Birmingham B42 2SU
rich.kay@uce.ac.uk
also rich@copsewood.net