Wednesday, September 01, 2004

http://akma.disseminary.org/archives/001518.html

its an interesting article that ran on slashdot today. thinking it over, im finding it tough to find a good way to approach this kind of logic, on the behest of the officer... who, according to my research, is completely in the wrong; unless this should be some local municipalitiy's implementation. regardless, the officer reduced the situation to "its like stealing cable tv" . well. id go for, "its like watching someone elses cable tv" but how can something freely distrubuted be counted as theft, if it is infact being utilized in the very same manner which IS prescribed for free distribution? im not saying that free things cannot be stolen, they can be. say Baskin Robbins decided to give away free ice cream on saturday; that does not entitle you to ask for it on wednesday; nor to break in and steal it friday night. the ice cream is free, under the condition that it is the free ice cream they are giving away, and being given to you on saturday, under the circumstances of the free give away. tounge twister. but were not talking about stealing anything per se. no theft is going on. what this man was doing was utilizing the free, and publically subsidized, access that is free, any time, for anyone, at that location. he wasnt hacking into someones network, he didnt initiate and DDOS attack, and he wasnt trying to zombie out other's equipment to suck down that "free" bandwidth. he was sitting on the park bench, using the internet connection. what makes this any different than if the library had a public use tv set with cable television programming, and the man turned it on to watch tv? a step farther; what makes it different than reading the newspaper the library has on the shelf? sure, we could draw some pretty ingenious sets of circumstances about the cable tv theft issue the office retorted back with; but it doesnt hold up. go back to our ice cream idea. do you cuff the man who is eating his free ice cream, given to him by Baskins Robbins on saturday, at the free ice cream station, and charge him with larceny for wrongfull taking of their ice cream? sounds like this officer might though. the heart of the matter is what eats away like an acid the principles of fair use and acceptable exemptions from copywright and registered marks; that little by little, the consumer's right to fair use exemptions is quickly erroding in this new digital age. what was free, is no longer free. what we call free is really so paired down, its not what you bargained for anymore. we dont bother to tell you that. and we also dont bother to print up the fine print for it. in fact, we just make up the rules as we go along. and whats fair about that? what is fair about fair use, in the digital age, when nothing is fair, if you intend to use it? granted, the fair use exemptions, as aforementioned, dont entitle you to make off with whatever youd please, but under specific circumstance, and under the correct auspices, you are entitled to your own fair use of the good/commodity/property in question. when you sing a Britney Spears song in the shower, when you write a note in the margain of the textbook, and when you photo copy a picture of a loved one; you are exhibiting the everyday expressed value of fair use. the law is quite clear that unless you release a cd of your shower songs, or if you plan to resell that textbook [with your changes] as your own work, or if you are planning on using those photographic duplications to avoid paying the reprinting fees at studio; you stand well within your right to an exemption of applicable copyright law. without that written, codified, exemption status, Brit can sue the shit out of you and your estate. but thats not at all what this is about. this is about the further constraint upon a commodity [for lack of more exacting definition of 'bandwidth'], which is being made available expressly under fair use practices. and im not arguing that this point can not be done. [hell, the federal government has been changing the way you own items around your house for the last 15 years, you just never realized how, or why it matters] but, the idea im reaching around to is, this commodity is being used under the perfect ascription to the rules of fair use, and we are trying to stifle even that. snuff out the last of the embers of acceptable and legitimate use, that have been a part of our recognized codification of copyright doctrination for the past millenium. just throw it out. rip out those pages from the big tomes of legal babble. no more xerox machines either. you should just purchase additional volumes of text books for citation reasons. get rid of high lighters, since those are making an infringing practice of altering the text in that god-given copy of a James Joyce collection, quash the practice of buying cds because if the singer wanted you to hear theyd sing it infront of you; and just euthanize the arts of influence and inspiration since you are just a petty criminal taking away another's good work. instead, help usher in the era of new "rights" where free internet isnt free, where you pay to listen to a radio station, and where the police are free to make up laws to make it all "fair" for you.