Has there ever been a clearer acknowledgement that the government, and by
obvious extension the cultural industries lobby, consider all cultural
creations as a privately owned commodity ONLY, none of which can be allowed
to "belong" to the people even after it reaches their hands by being bought
and paid for? There is simply no respect for that nasty old unlucrative
public domain concept in either of these quarters. All the rest of us are
being led by fools who are determined to force feed us the destruction of
any ability to mutually determine and direct our OWN culture for our own
purposes, even as our ever-perverse technology is screaming DO IT more
than ever before. They are demanding that home cooking be prevented, it's
ALL gotta be store bought now, every single meal... but so what, just keep
eating, that's the important thing.
It might be useful to start associating the term, public domain, with the
term, self detertmination, because that may possibly register somehow
inside these mud brained politicians as being something they may have seen
carved into marble somewhere around Washington, and which might be some
kind of principle they're supposed to be concerned about preserving for ALL
the people who live here.
But then they are not in the habit of considering how a society's culture,
not it's economic politics, is the most important thing any society
delivers to its people. Economics MAY sustain them if they're lucky, but
culture SHAPES THEM ALL whether they're lucky or not! Culture factories and
their bribed politicians are now shaping a culture of intellectually lazy
spectators who are habitually dependent on the bread and circus of
"professional" diversions obssessed with all the most trivial of pursuits.
I believe this was more or less the situation just before Rome fell too, so
let's hope there is no uncivilized crises approaching which might require a
citizenry inclined and able to think for themselves in creative,
resourceful, or self-determining ways because that is the last thing this
culture is preparing us for.
Ha, ha, I can hear the snickering now, you mean eliminating re-use
capabilities on our home sound systems is going to do THIS?
Well, you'ld be surprised how such a "little" but universal thing
reinforces the already culturally enforced mental paradigm we are all
encouraged to get lost in - the one that says we are all utterly helpless,
consuming sponges with no role to play in creating, or particularly
recreating, our own culture, ESPECIALY after we have actually consumed it.
You exist to soak it up ONLY. Hey, turn off your creative brain, all that
kind of stuff will be done for you at all times, it's completely "finished"
when you receive it, and no further acts or reconsiderations with or about
it from the untalented populace in the peanut gallery will be allowed. It
is open to neither re-use nor re-working for THEIR purposes because, of
course, THEY have no purpose except to consume it. The average citizen has
been and will continue to be shut out and cut off from any POSSIBILITY of
actually participating in their own society's cultural output BY LAW. We
can all see how this increasing diminishment of grass roots re-nourishment
has not only actually made TRUE folk music, a form that by definition is
based on copying and recycling with personal adjustments, utterly
impossible and now TOTALLY EXTINCT, but it has also produced an
alienatingly outsized, over-priced, sensationalized, glamor and glitz
factory culture of the irrelevant based purely on the word "Wow." The legal
proposal below fits into this state of affairs very nicely, don't you
think?
DJ
Negativland
>Text of SSSCA draft bill:
>http://www.politechbot.com/docs/hollings.090701.html
>
>Politech archive on DMCA:
>http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=dmca
>
>---
>
>http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46655,00.html
>
> New Copyright Bill Heading to DC
> By Declan McCullagh (declanATwired.com)
> 4:19 p.m. Sep. 7, 2001 PDT
>
> WASHINGTON -- Music and record industry lobbyists are quietly
>readying
> an all-out assault on Congress this fall in hopes of dramatically
> rewriting copyright laws.
>
> With the help of Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.), the powerful chairman of
>the
> Senate Commerce committee, they hope to embed copy-protection
>controls
> in nearly all consumer electronic devices and PCs. All types of
> digital content, including music, video and e-books, are covered.
>
> The Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA),
> scheduled to be introduced by Hollings, backs up this requirement
>with
> teeth: It would be a civil offense to create or sell any kind of
> computer equipment that "does not include and utilize certified
> security technologies" approved by the federal government.
>
> It also creates new federal felonies, punishable by five years in
> prison and fines of up to $500,000. Anyone who distributes
>copyrighted
> material with "security measures" disabled or has a
>network-attached
> computer that disables copy protection is covered.
>
> Hollings' draft bill, which Wired News obtained on Friday,
>represents
> the next round of the ongoing legal tussle between content holders
>and
> their opponents, including librarians, programmers and open-source
> advocates.
>
> [...]
>
>
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>---
>POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
>You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
>Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
>To subscribe to Politech:
>http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
>This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>---
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>This is the pho mailing list, managed by Majordomo 1.94.4.
>
>To send a message to the list, email phoATonehouse.com.
>To send a request to majordomo, email majordomoATonehouse.com and put your
>request in the body of the message (use request "help" for help).
>To unsubscribe from the list, email majordomoATonehouse.com and put
>"unsubscribe pho" in the body of the message.
----------------------------------------------------
Rumori, the Detritus.net Discussion List
to unsubscribe, send mail to majordomoATdetritus.net
with "unsubscribe rumori" in the message body.
----------------------------------------------------
Rumori list archives & other information are at
http://detritus.net/contact/rumori
----------------------------------------------------
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
N© Detritus.net. Sharerights extended to all.