#dmca copyright

[lexdmca]

YouTube copyright: How to avoid YouTube copyright claims

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I have spent a quarter century obsessed with the weirdest corner of the weirdest section of the worst internet law on the US statute books: Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the 1998 law that makes it a felony to help someone change how their own computer works so it serves them, rather than a distant corporation.

Under DMCA 1201, giving someone a tool to "bypass an access control for a copyrighted work" is a felony punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500k fine – for a first offense. This law can refer to access controls for traditional copyrighted works, like movies. Under DMCA 1201, if you help someone with photosensitive epilepsy add a plug-in to the Netflix player in their browser that blocks strobing pictures that can trigger seizures, you're a felon:

https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-media/2017Jul/0005.html

But software is a copyrighted work, and everything from printer cartridges to car-engine parts have software in them. If the manufacturer puts an "access control" on that software, they can send their customers (and competitors) to prison for passing around tools to help them fix their cars or use third-party ink.

Now, even though the DMCA is a copyright law (that's what the "C" in DMCA stands for, after all); and even though blocking video strobes, using third party ink, and fixing your car are not copyright violations, the DMCA can still send you to prison, for a long-ass time for doing these things, provided the manufacturer designs their product so that using it the way that suits you best involves getting around an "access control."

As you might expect, this is quite a tempting proposition for any manufacturer hoping to enshittify their products, because they know you can't legally disenshittify them. These access controls have metastasized into every kind of device imaginable.

Garage-door openers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Refrigerators:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

Dishwashers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/03/cassette-rewinder/#disher-bob

Treadmills:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/22/vapescreen/#jane-get-me-off-this-crazy-thing

Tractors:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

Cars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty

And even printer paper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#dymo-550

DMCA 1201 is the brainchild of Bruce Lehmann, Bill Clinton's Copyright Czar, who was repeatedly warned that cancerous proliferation this was the foreseeable, inevitable outcome of his pet policy. As a sop to his critics, Lehman added a largely ornamental safety valve to his law, ordering the US Copyright Office to invite submissions every three years petitioning for "use exemptions" to the blanket ban on circumventing access-controls.

I call this "ornamental" because if the Copyright Office thinks that, say, it should be legal for you to bypass an access control to use third-party ink in your printer, or a third-party app store in your phone, all they can do under DMCA 1201 is grant you the right to use a circumvention tool. But they can't give you the right to acquire that tool.

I know that sounds confusing, but that's only because it's very, very stupid. How stupid? Well, in 2001, the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the EU into adopting its own version of this law (Article 6 of the EUCD), and in 2003, Norway added the law to its lawbooks. On the eve of that addition, I traveled to Oslo to debate the minister involved:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

The minister praised his law, explaining that it gave blind people the right to bypass access controls on ebooks so that they could feed them to screen readers, Braille printers, and other assistive tools. OK, I said, but how do they get the software that jailbreaks their ebooks so they can make use of this exemption? Am I allowed to give them that tool?

No, the minister said, you're not allowed to do that, that would be a crime.

Is the Norwegian government allowed to give them that tool? No. How about a blind rights advocacy group? No, not them either. A university computer science department? Nope. A commercial vendor? Certainly not.

No, the minister explained, under his law, a blind person would be expected to personally reverse engineer a program like Adobe E-Reader, in hopes of discovering a defect that they could exploit by writing a program to extract the ebook text.

Oh, I said. But if a blind person did manage to do this, could they supply that tool to other blind people?

Well, no, the minister said. Each and every blind person must personally – without any help from anyone else – figure out how to reverse-engineer the ebook program, and then individually author their own alternative reader program that worked with the text of their ebooks.

That is what is meant by a use exemption without a tools exemption. It's useless. A sick joke, even.

The US Copyright Office has been valiantly holding exemptions proceedings every three years since the start of this century, and they've granted many sensible exemptions, including ones to benefit people with disabilities, or to let you jailbreak your phone, or let media professors extract video clips from DVDs, and so on. Tens of thousands of person-hours have been flushed into this pointless exercise, generating a long list of things you are now technically allowed to do, but only if you are a reverse-engineering specialist type of computer programmer who can manage the process from beginning to end in total isolation and secrecy.

But there is one kind of use exception the Copyright Office can grant that is potentially game-changing: an exemption for decoding diagnostic codes.

You see, DMCA 1201 has been a critical weapon for the corporate anti-repair movement. By scrambling error codes in cars, tractors, appliances, insulin pumps, phones and other devices, manufacturers can wage war on independent repair, depriving third-party technicians of the diagnostic information they need to figure out how to fix your stuff and keep it going.

This is bad enough in normal times, but during the acute phase of the covid pandemic, hospitals found themselves unable to maintain their ventilators because of access controls. Nearly all ventilators come from a single med-tech monopolist, Medtronic, which charges hospitals hundreds of dollars to dispatch their own repair technicians to fix its products. But when covid ended nearly all travel, Medtronic could no longer provide on-site calls. Thankfully, an anonymous hacker started building homemade (illegal) circumvention devices to let hospital technicians fix the ventilators themselves, improvising housings for them from old clock radios, guitar pedals and whatever else was to hand, then mailing them anonymously to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/10/flintstone-delano-roosevelt/#medtronic-again

Once a manufacturer monopolizes repair in this way, they can force you to use their official service depots, charging you as much as they'd like; requiring you to use their official, expensive replacement parts; and dictating when your gadget is "too broken to fix," forcing you to buy a new one. That's bad enough when we're talking about refusing to fix a phone so you buy a new one – but imagine having a spinal injury and relying on a $100,000 exoskeleton to get from place to place and prevent muscle wasting, clots, and other immobility-related conditions, only to have the manufacturer decide that the gadget is too old to fix and refusing to give you the technical assistance to replace a watch battery so that you can get around again:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24255074/former-jockey-michael-straight-exoskeleton-repair-battery

When the US Copyright Office grants a use exemption for extracting diagnostic codes from a busted device, they empower repair advocates to put that gadget up on a workbench and torture it into giving up those codes. The codes can then be integrated into an unofficial diagnostic tool, one that can make sense of the scrambled, obfuscated error codes that a device sends when it breaks – without having to unscramble them. In other words, only the company that makes the diagnostic tool has to bypass an access control, but the people who use that tool later do not violate DMCA 1201.

This is all relevant this month because the US Copyright Office just released the latest batch of 1201 exemptions, and among them is the right to circumvent access controls "allowing for repair of retail-level food preparation equipment":

https://publicknowledge.org/public-knowledge-ifixit-free-the-mcflurry-win-copyright-office-dmca-exemption-for-ice-cream-machines/

While this covers all kinds of food prep gear, the exemption request – filed by Public Knowledge and Ifixit – was inspired by the bizarre war over the tragically fragile McFlurry machine. These machines – which extrude soft-serve frozen desserts – are notoriously failure-prone, with 5-16% of them broken at any given time. Taylor, the giant kitchen tech company that makes the machines, charges franchisees a fortune to repair them, producing a steady stream of profits for the company.

This sleazy business prompted some ice-cream hackers to found a startup called Kytch, a high-powered automation and diagnostic tool that was hugely popular with McDonald's franchisees (the gadget was partially designed by the legendary hardware hacker Andrew "bunnie" Huang!).

In response, Taylor played dirty, making a less-capable clone of the Kytch, trying to buy Kytch out, and teaming up with McDonald's corporate to bombard franchisees with legal scare-stories about the dangers of using a Kytch to keep their soft-serve flowing, thanks to DMCA 1201:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Kytch isn't the only beneficiary of the new exemption: all kinds of industrial kitchen equipment is covered. In upholding the Right to Repair, the Copyright Office overruled objections of some of its closest historical allies, the Entertainment Software Association, Motion Picture Association, and Recording Industry Association of America, who all sided with Taylor and McDonald's and opposed the exemption:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/10/us-copyright-office-frees-the-mcflurry-allowing-repair-of-ice-cream-machines/

This is literally the only useful kind of DMCA 1201 exemption the Copyright Office can grant, and the fact that they granted it (along with a similar exemption for medical devices) is a welcome bright spot. But make no mistake, the fact that we finally found a narrow way in which DMCA 1201 can be made slightly less stupid does not redeem this outrageous law. It should still be repealed and condemned to the scrapheap of history.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[alex-a-roman]

It’s finally time for me to make this post.

Since my 1st year here on Tumblr, every couple of months I find my own poetry copied word for word and signed under a different name. Those people don’t seem to shy away from interacting with my blog at the same time, which is how I usually find out.

At first I ignored them because I thought it wasn’t a big deal. I was expecting this to happen from time to time, but this year, it happened 3 or 4 times, all different people.

I can’t lie, it’s not pleasant to see your own work, often about deeply personal and sensitive topics signed under a different name, by someone who doesn’t have a clue what you’ve been through.

This happened again today!

I won’t mention the blog, it’s still active and it’s definitely ran by a real person. I just want to know why??? You’re not gaining anything from this. I know you’re not making money writing poetry because I’m not making money writing poetry. So what is the point? The ones you steal from are real people with real memories, emotions and life experiences that you’re trying to claim as your own. What you’re doing is messed up and I’m sure you’re aware.

[saturngalore]

it’s kinda wild that we gotta have “undergroud” sites and apps just to download early access and permanent access cc now 😭 like isn’t that ridiculous ???? this aint even illegal shit but some expensive ass pixels 😭😭😭😭

[spacefrog1984]

Lily Orchard: Piracy is OK! Fair use is not!

Lily, since you blocked this alt, I guess I have to post my response here.

Lily, I get it, who has sympathy for big greedy companies? I don't, most people don't. But you dodged the question, so I restated it in this ask (the one you blocked me for):

I guess I'll give you some credit here. It looks like you realized where I was going with this question (honestly, it doesn't take much intelligence to see through it, so don't pat yourself on the back too much).

Lily, I assume that your answer wouldn't change, that it would still be fine for you to pirate media produced by a smaller outlet. And this would lead you into a paradoxical stance: while on the one hand you feel justified in stealing media from small creators but you object to your own content being used in other peoples' work under fair use. That's what you did, you falsely DMCA struck the videos of Anthony Gramuglia and SaiScribbles for using some of your content (which didn't even need to be pirated since it's freely available on YouTube and was protected by the doctrine of fair use since their videos were transformative).

This says that you believe anything you consider "stealing" from you is unallowable, but simultaneously, you can have a clear conscious when outright stealing media from others for your own enjoyment or for making profit.

Maybe I'm wrong and you actually believe that pirating media from smaller creators is unethical. But if that's the case, then why not say that? You'd diffuse this whole line of questioning and not add to your horrendous number of hypocrisies. So that leads to only one conclusion, you avoided answering my question and blocked me because you indeed believe it's ethical to steal form others but if you so much as suspect someone is stealing from you, you're ready to throw down the hammer and destroy the channels of people you think have wronged you.

But if I am wrong, then respond to this post, tell me what you think. Clear your name. Show us that you're not as big of a hypocrite as we think you are. I'll send a link to this post as an anon-ask, so I know you'll see it. I'm waiting.

[didnt-hear-idsb-live-again]

I am sooooooo dangerously close to actually genuinely lawyering up and suing TikTok lol

[macmanx]

La Sirena just so happens to also be the name of one of DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc’s clients—La Sirena 69, an adult content creator notably not involved in the Star Trek fandom. In one recent copyright claim, the monitoring service targeted over 90 Tumblr posts that matched a keyword search of “la sirena.” But instead of alerting our team to La Sirena 69’s allegedly infringed content, the company reported a wide array of @mappinglasirena's original posts—like a short essay about a new La Sirena booklet, an article analysis of the starship’s design, and even the blog owner’s thoughts on the fourth trailer for Picard season two. None of these reported links from mappinglasirena.tumblr.com contained infringing content from La Sirena 69—instead, they focus on La Sirena, the starship. As you probably expect, we rejected this complaint.

A peek behind the curtain at [tumblr] keeping you safe from DMCA trolls.

[netscapenavigator-official]

My conspiracy for why Nintendo is currently going batshit with it’s DMCA takedown requests is because they’re about to pull a Wii U again, with the Switch 2, and they’re preemptively trying to penny pinch because they know sales are gonna either flop or fall off a cliff very quickly after launch.

After seeing what Microsoft and Sony are doing, the Steam Deck and other portable gaming machines come to market, they realized that their plans for the “Switch 2” weren’t gonna cut it, and now they’re panicking. They’re trying to do whatever it takes to keep their name relevant and penny pinch enough so they can hopefully cruise through the Switch 2 era without collapsing and get whatever the next-next console is gonna be, out, before too much damage occurs.

[magichats]

Man it really is a shame that as of this date (July 5th, 2023) that Cookie's Bustle is all but scrapped off the web at large.

There's only two videos discussing it directly (and that more about the take downs and not directly the game itself), with everything else turning up no results.

I know some people on twitter were thinking that it was for some sort of relaunch, but at this point I really don't think it's some sort of modern reboot.

This is really a bummer for game preservation. Also a bummer as a person who just likes weird obscure games.

[animepopheart]

I want to put this out there for others who may be dealing with this firm or with something similar in hopes of helping you.

Tumblr removed one of my posts on @beneaththetangles​ and gave us a strike (three and you're out!) because a DMCA firm claimed we stole it...

The post that I wrote..featuring photos I took...posted on a website I own...based on an interview I conducted with a personal friend.

The firm's name is DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. They're located out of Canada, apparently. The "copyright holder" is Michael Hecl, though through searches, I've seen other names used in other claims.

Here’s a portion of the letter Tumblr sent when the claim went through:

DMCA Piracy Prevention Inc. might be a scam or it might be a very poorly run company. Responses I’ve seen by them online indicate either could be true The company never reached out to me before submitting the claim and did not respond to repeated email requests I sent before I finally submitted a counter-claim to Tumblr.

Speaking of Tumblr, I don’t expect much to come out of my counter-claim. This site has denied me on four (!) previous occasions where I had received permission to post artwork but was reported as not having permission to do, even though I provided proof of my claim and followed all of Tumblr’s directions in doing so.

Just a reminder, I’m sure the people working at Tumblr are wonderful, but the firm is not on your side. They don’t support you, even though their marketing makes it seem as if they do. They are no better than Twitter, even though they’ve taken aim at that company as of late. In fact, Tumblr is similar to that platform when it comes to the issues they have, but with hypocrisy on top of it all (Look we’re selling a blue verification sticker haha we’re so clever! BUT PAY US FOR IT.).

I’ll repost this at some point with follow-up let you know how it resolves. DMCA Piracy Prevention has ten days to “initiate legal action directly against you for the alleged infringement” (way to scare off all the small artists and writers out there, yeesh!).

If you have similar problems with this company, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

[lexdmca]

Bloggers Beware: Safeguarding Your Intellectual Property from Plagiarism

In the vast digital landscape of the internet, bloggers stand as creators, crafting content that engages, informs, and entertains audiences worldwide. Every word written, every image curated, and every idea shared represents an investment of time, effort, and creativity. However, with the proliferation of online content, the risk of plagiarism looms large, posing a threat to the integrity and ownership of your work. As a blogger, safeguarding your content against plagiarism is essential to preserve your intellectual property rights and maintain the authenticity of your voice.

Here are some invaluable tips to help you protect your content from plagiarism:

Understand Copyright Basics :- Before delving into strategies for protecting your content, it’s crucial to have a solid understanding of copyright law. Copyright grants you exclusive rights to your original creations, including blog posts, articles, photographs, and videos, giving you the authority to control how your work is used, reproduced, and distributed. Familiarize yourself with the duration of copyright protection, fair use guidelines, and the process of copyright registration to empower yourself as a content creator.

Create Unique and Original Content :- The foundation of protecting your content from plagiarism begins with creating unique and original work. Develop your distinct voice, style, and perspective to set your blog apart from others in your niche. Conduct thorough research to ensure that your ideas and insights are original, avoiding the temptation to replicate or paraphrase content from other sources. By prioritizing authenticity and creativity, you establish a strong defense against plagiarism accusations and establish yourself as a reputable authority in your field.

Use Plagiarism Detection Tools :- In the digital age, technology offers invaluable resources to help you identify instances of plagiarism and unauthorized use of your content. Utilize plagiarism detection tools such as Copyscape, Grammarly, and Turnitin to scan your blog posts and detect any duplicated or copied content across the web. Regularly running these checks can alert you to potential instances of plagiarism, allowing you to take prompt action to address the issue and protect your intellectual property rights.

Implement Copyright Notices and Watermarks :- Incorporating copyright notices and watermarks into your blog content serves as a visible deterrent against plagiarism and unauthorized usage. Place copyright notices at the bottom of your blog posts, asserting your ownership of the content and specifying the terms of use for readers. Additionally, consider watermarking your images and graphics with your blog’s logo or branding elements to prevent them from being misappropriated or used without permission.

Monitor and Enforce Your Rights :- Vigilance is key when it comes to protecting your content from plagiarism. Regularly monitor your blog posts, social media platforms, and other online channels for any instances of unauthorized use or duplication. If you discover that your content has been plagiarized, take swift action to enforce your rights. Send a cease-and-desist letter to the infringing party, demanding the removal of the plagiarized content and seeking compensation for damages incurred. In cases of severe infringement, consider seeking legal counsel to pursue legal remedies and uphold your rights as a content creator.

Monitor and Enforce Your Rights :- Vigilance is key when it comes to protecting your content from plagiarism. Regularly monitor your blog posts, social media platforms, and other online channels for any instances of unauthorized use or duplication. If you discover that your content has been plagiarized, take swift action to enforce your rights. 

Send a cease-and-desist letter to the infringing party, demanding the removal of the plagiarized content and seeking compensation for damages incurred. In cases of severe infringement, consider seeking legal counsel to pursue legal remedies and uphold your rights as a content creator.

Engage with a Creative Commons License :- Consider licensing your blog content under a Creative Commons license to clearly communicate the permissions and restrictions associated with your work. Creative Commons offers a range of licenses that allow you to specify how others can use, share, and modify your content while retaining certain rights. By choosing a Creative Commons license that aligns with your preferences, you can facilitate the legal and ethical sharing of your content while still maintaining control over its use and distribution.

Educate Your Audience about Copyright :- As a blogger, you have a unique opportunity to educate your audience about the importance of copyright protection and the ethical considerations surrounding content usage. Include a dedicated page on your blog outlining your copyright policy, fair use guidelines, and proper attribution practices. Encourage your readers to respect intellectual property rights and seek permission before reposting or repurposing your content. By fostering a culture of respect for copyright, you contribute to a more responsible and ethical online community.

Stay Informed and Adapt :- The landscape of online publishing and intellectual property is constantly evolving, with new challenges and opportunities emerging regularly. Stay informed about the latest developments in copyright law, digital rights management, and content protection strategies to adapt your approach accordingly.

Remain proactive in implementing new tools and techniques to safeguard your content from plagiarism and ensure that your rights as a content creator are upheld in an ever-changing digital environment.

In conclusion, as a blogger, your content is your intellectual property, representing the culmination of your creativity, expertise, and passion. Protecting your content from plagiarism is not only essential for preserving your rights as a creator but also for maintaining the integrity and credibility of your blog. By following these tips and adopting proactive measures to safeguard your content, you can mitigate the risks of plagiarism and empower yourself as a responsible and respected member of the online community. Remember, your words have power, and it’s up to you to ensure that they are shared and respected ethically and legally.

Blog Resource : https://lexdmca.com/casestudy/safeguarding-your-intellectual-property-from-plagiarism/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification

THIS WEEKEND (November 8-10), I'll be in TUCSON, AZ: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

Nineties kids had a good reason to be excited about the internet's promise of disintermediation: the gatekeepers who controlled our access to culture, politics, and opportunity were crooked as hell, and besides, they sucked.

For a second there, we really did get a lot of disintermediation, which created a big, weird, diverse pluralistic space for all kinds of voices, ideas, identities, hobbies, businesses and movements. Lots of these were either deeply objectionable or really stupid, or both, but there was also so much cool stuff on the old, good internet.

Then, after about ten seconds of sheer joy, we got all-new gatekeepers, who were at least as bad, and even more powerful, than the old ones. The net became Tom Eastman's "Five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four." Culture, politics, finance, news, and especially power have been gathered into the hands of unaccountable, greedy, and often cruel intermediaries.

Oh, also, we had an election.

This isn't an election post. I have many thoughts about the election, but they're still these big, unformed blobs of anger, fear and sorrow. Experience teaches me that the only way to get past this is to just let all that bad stuff sit for a while and offgas its most noxious compounds, so that I can handle it safely and figure out what to do with it.

While I wait that out, I'm just getting the job done. Chop wood, carry water. I've got a book to write, Enshittification, for Farar, Straus, Giroux's MCD Books, and it's very nearly done:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adoctorow+%23dailywords&src=typed_query&f=live

Compartmentalizing my anxieties and plowing that energy into productive work isn't necessarily the healthiest coping strategy, but it's not the worst, either. It's how I wrote nine books during the covid lockdowns.

And sometimes, when you're not staring directly at something, you get past the tunnel vision that makes it impossible to see its edges, fracture lines, and weak points.

So I'm working on the book. It's a book about platforms, because enshittification is a phenomenon that is most visible and toxic on platforms. Platforms are intermediaries, who connect buyers and sellers, creators and audiences, workers and employers, politicians and voters, activists and crowds, as well as families, communities, and would-be romantic partners.

There's a reason we keep reinventing these intermediaries: they're useful. Like, it's technically possible for a writer to also be their own editor, printer, distributor, promoter and sales-force:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

But without middlemen, those are the only writers we'll get. The set of all writers who have something to say that I want to read is much larger than the set of all writers who are capable of running their own publishing operation.

The problem isn't middlemen: the problem is powerful middlemen. When an intermediary gets powerful enough to usurp the relationship between the parties on either side of the transaction, everything turns to shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/direct-the-problem-of-middlemen/

A dating service that faces pressure from competition, regulation, interoperability and a committed workforce will try as hard as it can to help you find Your Person. A dating service that buys up all its competitors, cows its workforce, captures its regulators and harnesses IP law to block interoperators will redesign its service so that you keep paying forever, and never find love:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/02/13/1228749143/the-dating-app-paradox-why-dating-apps-may-be-worse-than-ever

Multiply this a millionfold, in every sector of our complex, high-tech world where we necessarily rely on skilled intermediaries to handle technical aspects of our lives that we can't – or shouldn't – manage ourselves. That world is beholden to predators who screw us and screw us and screw us, jacking up our rents:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/yes-there-are-antitrust-voters-in

Cranking up the price of food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

And everything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

(Maybe this is a post about the election after all?)

The difference between a helpmeet and a parasite is power. If we want to enjoy the benefits of intermediaries without the risks, we need policies that keep middlemen weak. That's the opposite of the system we have now.

Take interoperability and IP law. Interoperability (basically, plugging new things into existing things) is a really powerful check against powerful middlemen. If you rely on an ad-exchange to fund your newsgathering and they start ripping you off, then an interoperable system that lets you use a different exchange will not only end the rip off – it'll make it less likely to happen in the first place because the ad-tech platform will be afraid of losing your business:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Interoperability means that when a printer company gouges you on ink, you can buy cheap third party ink cartridges and escape their grasp forever:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Interoperability means that when Amazon rips off audiobook authors to the tune of $100m, those authors can pull their books from Amazon and sell them elsewhere and know that their listeners can move their libraries over to a different app:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

But interoperability has been in retreat for 40 years, as IP law has expanded to criminalize otherwise normal activities, so that middlemen can use IP rights to protect themselves from their end-users and business customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That's what I mean when I say that "IP" is "any law that lets a business reach beyond its own walls and control the actions of its customers, competitors and critics."

For example, there's a pernicious law 1998 US law that I write about all the time, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the "anticircumvention law." This is a law that felonizes tampering with copyright locks, even if you are the creator of the undelying work.

So Amazon – the owner of the monopoly audiobook platform Audible – puts a mandatory copyright lock around every audiobook they sell. I, as an author who writes, finances and narrates the audiobook, can't provide you, my customer, with a tool to remove that lock. If I do so, I face criminal sanctions: a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

In other words: if I let you take my own copyrighted work out of Amazon's app, I commit a felony, with penalties that are far stiffer than the penalties you would face if you were to simply pirate that audiobook. The penalties for you shoplifting the audiobook on CD at a truck-stop are lower than the penalties the author and publisher of the book would face if they simply gave you a tool to de-Amazon the file. Indeed, even if you hijacked the truck that delivered the CDs, you'd probably be looking at a shorter sentence.

This is a law that is purpose-built to encourage intermediaries to usurp the relationship between buyers and sellers, creators and audiences. It's a charter for parasitism and predation.

But as bad as that is, there's another aspect of DMCA 1201 that's even worse: the exemptions process.

You might have read recently about the Copyright Office "freeing the McFlurry" by granting a DMCA 1201 exemption for companies that want to reverse-engineer the error-codes from McDonald's finicky, unreliable frozen custard machines:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Under DMCA 1201, the Copyright Office hears petitions for these exemptions every three years. If they judge that anticircumvention law is interfering with some legitimate activity, the statute empowers them to grant an exemption.

When the DMCA passed in 1998 (and when the US Trade Rep pressured other world governments into passing nearly identical laws in the decades that followed), this exemptions process was billed as a "pressure valve" that would prevent abuses of anticircumvention law.

But this was a cynical trick. The way the law is structured, the Copyright Office can only grant "use" exemptions, but not "tools" exemptions. So if you are granted the right to move Audible audiobooks into a third-party app, you are personally required to figure out how to do that. You have to dump the machine code of the Audible app, decompile it, scan it for vulnerabilities, and bootstrap your own jailbreaking program to take Audible wrapper off the file.

No one is allowed to help you with this. You aren't allowed to discuss any of this publicly, or share a tool that you make with anyone else. Doing any of this is a potential felony.

In other words, DMCA 1201 gives intermediaries power over you, but bans you from asking an intermediary to help you escape another abusive middleman.

This is the exact opposite of how intermediary law should work. We should have rules that ban intermediaries from exercising undue power over the parties they serve, and we should have rules empowering intermediaries to erode the advantage of powerful intermediaries.

The fact that the Copyright Office grants you an exemption to anticircumvention law means nothing unless you can delegate that right to an intermediary who can exercise it on your behalf.

A world without publishing intermediaries is one in which the only writers who thrive are the ones capable of being publishers, too, and that's a tiny fraction of all the writers with something to say.

A world without interoperability intermediaries is one in which the only platform users who thrive are also skilled reverse-engineering ninja hackers – and that's an infinitesimal fraction of the platform users who would benefit from interoperabilty.

Let this be your north star in evaluating platform regulation proposals. Platform regulation should weaken intermediaries' powers over their users, and strengthen their power over other middlemen.

Put in this light, it's easy to see why the ill-informed calls to abolish Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which makes platform users, not platforms, responsible for most unlawful speech) are so misguided:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

If we require platforms to surveil all user speech and block anything that might violate any law, we give the largest, most powerful platforms a permanent advantage over smaller, better platforms, run by co-ops, hobbyists, nonprofits local governments, and startups. The big platforms have the capital to rig up massive, automated surveillance and censorship systems, and the only alternatives that can spring up have to be just as big and powerful as the Big Tech platforms we're so desperate to escape:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/23/evacuate-the-platforms/#let-the-platforms-burn

This is especially grave given the current political current, where fascist politicians are threatening platforms with brutal punishments for failing to censor disfavored political views.

Anyone who tells you that "it's only censorship when the government does it" is badly confused. It's only a First Amendment violation when the government does it, sure – but censorship has always relied on intermediaries. From the Inquisition to the Comics Code, government censors were only able to do their jobs because powerful middlemen, fearing state punishments, blocked anything that might cross the line, censoring far beyond the material actually prohibited by the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/22/self-censorship/#hugos

We live in a world of powerful, corrupt middlemen. From payments to real-estate, from job-search to romance, there's a legion of parasites masquerading as helpmeets, burying their greedy mouthparts into our tender flesh:

https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/visas-hidden-tax-on-americans

But intermediaries aren't the problem. You shouldn't have to stand up your own payment processor, or learn the ins and outs of real-estate law, or start your own single's bar. The problem is power, not intermediation.

As we set out to build a new, good internet (with a lot less help from the US government than seemed likely as recently as last week), let's remember that lesson: the point isn't disintermediation, it's weak intermediation.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/07/usurpers-helpmeets/#disreintermediation

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en (Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

[socialjusticefail]

This article reflect on the 25th anniversary of the DMCA and how safe harbors helped the online space. The other thing this article talks about is the stuff about how the DMCA prevents you from circumventing DRM and why that is very bad.

[patmax17]

Question about copyright and IP on creator sites like etsy or redbubble

My wife is considering selling her craft/artwork on etsy and/or redbubble. She mostly makes fan art, and we're wondering how the fan products sold on those (and other similar) sites aren't taken down for copyright infringement? If I want to sell a pokémon t-shirt on redbubble, or a plush on etsy, wouldn't that be copyright infringement because I'm making money off the pokémon IP?

I tried to google some information and everything seems to point at the fact that it would actually be a violation of the copyright. My guess is that it *is* copyright infringement, but it's simply tolerated by the IP copyright owners.

Can anyone help?

[supreme-leader-stoat]

You may or may not are, but just in case, iirc adblock is legal but circumventing adblock detection is not

How's that supposedly work?

[hometownrockstar]

there should be more of a conversation about what exactly "art theft" is. So art theft is taking already made art and using it somewhere else without the artist's permission, sometimes while taking credit for it. so if i trace a piece of art and post that, is that art theft? some people will say yes, even if it is technically a different piece of art, some people will say its copying, but what is copying and how is it different from theft while remaining bad? what if i only trace or copy a specific part of a piece, like a lineart style or a color palette, does that count? at what point does something stop being inspired and becomes theft or copying? is money the end-all-be-all of this, the idea that an artist could no longer profit off of an intellectual property via this theft, or do their concern and feelings still matter even if no profit is being made? Btw none of this is a challenge or me trying to say one answer is wrong and what is right, im trying to point out how subjective all of this is and how starting a dialogue would be most useful for this, considering how much of this is filtered through capitalist ideas of property ownership and investment rather than actual effort put into a piece of work.