[TriLUG] lots of stuff to think about regarding SSSCA

[rpjday]

  in order to track down more background on the SSSCA, i emailed
eben moglen earlier this morning (my original note is included at
the bottom).  in less than half an hour, i got the following
reply, in its entirety.  enjoy.

  (note well that he will be speaking locally in november.)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 06:57:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Eben Moglen <moglen at columbia.edu>
To: rpjday <rpjday at mindspring.com>
Subject: Re: SSSCA in the larger context

Nice to meet you Rob.

Your instinct is a very good one, and no, there's nothing that does
that job right, which is why a chapter of the book I am writing this
fall, now slightly interrupted by events here in New York, is called
"Not Making it Anymore? Vaporizing the Public Domain."  It will
probably appear in due course at moglen.law.columbia.edu, along with
the rest of my book, which is titled (for the moment) "The Invisible
Barbecue."

You are also certainly right to think that stopping SSSCA is crucial.
If you look on my website under "speeches and interviews," you'll find
listenable audio and useless video of a talk I gave at NYU Law School
eighteen months ago, called "The Empire Strikes Back: Free Software
Meets the Mouse Menace," which is a strategic analysis of free
software's coming conflict with Hollywood, ending in the prediction of
the SSSCA.  You will probably find those twenty minutes of my blather
a little helpful.

But I should also say that you don't have to write a treatise in order
to write a good letter.  SSSCA is Fritz Hollings' attempt to forestall
a primary challenger in your neighboring state by earning an even
larger paycheck than usual from Disney, which is one of his most
important "patrons."  It constitutes the Disney maximum shopping list,
and will be opposed by hardware and consumer electronics businesses,
aggregately much larger than Hollywood, who have no intention of
allowing the federal government to tell them in detail how to build
their products.  So there will be an attempt to generate an
inter-industry consensus, on something less than SSSCA and more than
DMCA.  Your letter should be calculated to interfere with that
development, by explaining to your representatives that the free
market in technological ideas is a critical part of a free society and
a vibrant economy.  You want to point out that SSSCA is not a
copyright act, no matter what it calls itself, but a technology
control law, and that such laws are neither constitutional nor wise.
That way you show that the ideas offered by the industries that will
oppose SSSCA for their own convenience have also voter support behind
them.

SSSCA can be stalled until the 2002 elections, with luck in our new
"wartime" world, and after that the playing field will be different.
If we can win the cases now pending in which DMCA is used against our
guys (which I am also explaining in that talk, and which are now
balanced on waiting for a judgment in the Second Circuit Court of
Appeals in New York), SSSCA may even become constitutionally suspect,
which will not stop it but will slow it down.

I wish that I had more direct help to offer by way of references.  I
should mention that I will be at a conference on this subject at Duke
Law School over the weekend of November 9, which I think may be a
closed conference, but will also be giving a public talk at UNC
Chapel Hill on the evening of November 8.  Perhaps we will have an
opportunity to meet and talk in person.

Best regards,
Eben

--
 Eben Moglen                       voice: 212-854-8382
 Professor of Law & Legal History    fax: 212-854-7946       moglen@
 Columbia Law School, 435 West 116th Street, NYC 10027     columbia.edu
 General Counsel, Free Software Foundation   http://moglen.law.columbia.edu

On Friday, 14 September 2001, rpjday wrote:


    hi, my name's rob day, and i've been following your work for quite
  some time, in "the nation" for instance.

    i'm a member of a linux user group in the RTP area of NC, and we're
  thinking of drafting a letter to send to our U.S. senators opposing
  the SSSCA, but i thought it might be more effective to put this new
  piece of legislation in a larger context of the numerous pieces of
  (proposed and passed) legislation that's come down the pike lately --
  DMCA, UCITA and so on.  and i thought it might be valuable to start
  with the fact that the length of copyright in the U.S. has been
  extended several times since its original length of 17(?) years.

    have you written on that specific topic?  do you have a pointer
  to any article(s) that discuss the (apparently perpetual) extension
  of copyright (which seems, coincidentally, to match whenever disney
  is about to lose mickey to the public domain)?

    any references you can give me would be helpful.  thanks.

  rday