by: Jeffery Battersby
Originally published in the September 2002 issue of Macworld Magazine
Next time you’re standing in front of a mirror, take a long look at the face you see. Maybe even turn your head to the side and imagine a block of mug-shot numbers hanging around your neck, because that’s how some in the entertainment industry see you: guilty of what the hit summer movie Minority Report might call a precrime. You own all the tools necessary to commit an act of thievery, and whether you know it or not, you’re going to steal music. The media companies are out to stop you.
iMac, PowerBook, iPod, SuperDrive, CD-RW drive, cable modem, DSL–name your favorite piece of Apple’s digital hub, and chances are, you’ve come face-to-face with the entertainment industry’s greatest fear: perfect digital copies of its copyrighted material. “Digital technology,” says the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) Cary Sherman, “opens up all sorts of opportunities for new delivery options. But it also opens up the threat of uncontrolled piracy.” The fact is, it’s become very easy to make and disseminate perfect copies of digital media, and companies such as Sony and Disney are afraid that instead of buying their entertainment, you’re simply going to steal it.
Apple Accused
Who’s responsible for your newly acquired taste for a life of crime? According to the entertainment industry, it’s Apple. Testifying before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee in February 2002, Disney CEO Michael Eisner said Apple’s “Rip, Mix, Bum” ads suggested “that [you] can create a theft if you buy this computer.” Nonsense, says Apple, pointing to the “don’t steal music” message wrapped around just about every piece of its hardware that can make digital copies. “If you legally acquire music, you need to have the right to manage it on all other devices that you own,” Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal–a position that seems obvious to anyone with an MP3 player, but one that the entertainment industry plans on fighting tooth and nail.
To stem the tide of stolen music, record labels have begun copy-protecting CDs so that they can’t be played, much less copied, on your Mac (see “Copy Protection: The Day The Music Died?”). And they promise that more copy-protected discs are on the way. Tim O’Reilly, president of O’Reilly Publishing, thinks copy protection is a huge mistake that will result in even fewer music sales. “The software industry faces exactly the same conditions the entertainment industry fears will destroy its markets,” he says. “What’s more, copy protection was widely explored by software companies in the 1980s, and what they learned was that consumers avoided copy-protected products.”
All’s Fair
Two legal points lie at the heart of this debate. The first is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)–enacted in 1998 to prohibit decrypting copy-protected materials. The second is the Fair Use Doctrine–which is the portion of the Copyright Act that allows you to make legitimate copies of copyrighted materials for your personal, noncommercial use (see “Rip. Mix. Burn. Steal?” Mac Beat, October 2001). Historically, the Fair, Use Doctrine has allowed consumers to “time-shift” content-for example, recording a TV show on a VCR so they can watch it later. While it hasn’t yet been tested in the courts, “space-shifting”–moving content you own to your preferred listening platform, such as downloading songs from a CD you’ve bought into iTunes and transferring them to an iPod–is expected to be allowed as well.
And therein lies the rub. The language of the DMCA is open-ended and impacts everything from hardware, such as ReplayTV and TiVo video recorders, to streaming Internet radio stations. The way the current DMCA law is written, if you circumvent copy protection on a CD you own, it’s a crime—even if you’re just moving it to your iPod. It doesn’t matter that you have no criminal intent or that the act of circumvention is as easy as rubbing a magic marker around the edge of a CD.
What’s Ahead
So how can you keep the DMCA out of your computer? The answer might seem unbelievably obvious: Don’t steal music. Stealing simply bolsters the argument that allowing digital media to be copied leads to illegal distribution. Also, write, call, or e-mail your representatives in Congress, asking them to support any legislation that would limit the scope of the DMCA, and to uphold space-shifting as a legitimate aspect of the Fair Use Doctrine. Finally, let the entertainment companies know that if they limit your ability to legally use their products in any way you choose, you’ll find other ways to spend your money.
Otherwise, the only tune your iPod will be playing may be a swan song.
COPYRIGHT © 2002 Mac Publishing