RE: Independent thought under fire (RE: Fair Use Under Fire)

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

DRM could be a much more efficient means of enforcing decisions -whether
commercial or governmental, as to what is and is not "appropriate" for
others to read, see or listen to- under what conditions, and even what
content will and will not survive.

In the US we've seen enough of current developments--intentional
destruction and recall of previously public information, log-ons for
individuals on public computers in libraries, tracking of individual
online activities--with or without cause,-

The music industry only has to assert that someone has done something
wrong, no proof required, to get at you, your identify, your PC-and what
you've been doing--you might have illegal music-- And that's nothing that
impacts national security!

There are a host of other developments in the last two years that are
signposts of the massive potential for abuse in controlling exactly what
individuals can and can't do with information, with digital files.

If we grant commercial entities rights that previously governments had to
have sufficient cause to invoke, where is this headed???

Add the potential of absolute control of commercially developed DRM
(probably in cooperation with government gurus-with super user rights?)-

I think we should be extremely concerned about where this is going.

We have super-holders right now of cryptography keys, super-user rights
with little court oversight for wiretapping and tracking internet
activities.

DRM could enable even more far reaching controls.

Who can read what,who saw what, when, recall of files, over-writes of
files, changes to content without notice, removal of "incorrect"
information, automatic self-destruct dates, etc. tracking what you did
with that file, who you sent it to, how many times you forwarded it, where
you listened to it, or saw it. etc.

It isn't "just" the commercial applications that we have to be concerned
about.

I can't think of any single area more critical to our collective future.

I agree with Carrie --if librarians aren't in the middle of those
discussions then we may not have a future.

If independent thought is under fire, its in the near future (and now) of
controlling what you can read, see, listen to, and exactly what you can do
with digital content. DRM can enforce decisons from both content owners
and those who control content for other reasons.

Get that future then you can look for independent thought and it will be
difficult to find.

Chuck Hamaker

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Anderson [mailto:rickand@unr.edu]
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2003 2:40 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Independent thought under fire (RE: Fair Use Under Fire)

> If you accept that the future is digital, then you must also accept that
> the work of librarians, whose very enterprise is dependent upon fair use,
> is threatened by the current DRM agenda.

So _that's_ what I'm supposed to believe!  Thank heaven for the ALA.  Can
you imagine the chaos if each of us had to work through issues like this
on our own?  Why, we might take into account the diverse interests
involved and the legal and moral complexity of the whole DRM issue, and
arrive at any number of different conclusions.  The result would be...
chaos!  Moral confusion!  Ambiguity!  A diversity of professional opinion!  
Luckily, the ALA is there to short-circuit that whole messy process and
tell us exactly what it is that we "must" accept and "must" work for.

Whew!  Now I can get back to claiming... Let's see, I think I'm doing
third claims this week...

-------------
Rick Anderson
rickand@unr.edu