What is Censorship?
While, uh, randomly following referal links I found what I thought to be an odd rant on the EFF. It states that EFF supports censorship. This is in regard to Huntsman v. Soderbergh where people are using technology to view movies in different ways, mostly be bleeping out naughty words that offend delicate ears or too much skin that would offend sensitive eyes. It's the most ridiculous thing I've read all day, all let me tell you, there was a lot of ridiculous things on the net today.
From the EFF press release:
"If I buy a DVD and want to use some software to skip or mute parts of a movie I'm watching at home with my family, I should be able to do so," said EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz.
If you still think EFF is supporting censorship, I highly recommend you read the amicus brief which EFF filed in the case. If you only base your conclusion on comments in a slashdot thread, then I really don't think you are getting the real picture.
In my own opinion, which in incredibly biased since I work at EFF, this case is very much like the cases against Gator. The crux of the arguments being that copyright holders not only hold a monopoly on copying, but also on how people can view their work. This is just silly. Against Gator they claimed that putting another window over a window that happens to be showing their website is a violation of their copyright. Think about that for a second...now give me a list of applications that pop up windows which just might cover up a logo in a web browser window. Yeah, it's a pretty long list and includes about 50 from Microsoft itself.
But back to viewing movies the way the director intended... What if I watch the whole movie on mute? Is that censorship? I certainly watched any NBA game that Bill Walton was announcing on mute. I'm sure that violated the artistic integrity of the performance and I missed out on Tom Tolbert's continual Walton smack downs. Should I be sued? What about if I only have a black and white TV? Surely that would "ruin" Vanilla Sky! What if I hack my DVD player to always skip track 2 on any disc? Surely I will miss crucial plot points in The Blues Brothers! Worse yet, what if I'm color blind? Surely Kate Winslet's hair color must be viewed as it was dyed for the movie! Anything else is simply unthinkable! Somebody slap an injunction on me before I strike again! Oh the humanity! Think of the children!
If the service being provided was instead called "DirtyFlix" and promissed to add profanity, nudity, and punk rock hairdos to a movie using the same technology, and if EFF filed an amicus brief on their behalf, would they be supporting censorship? No. Just as they aren't in this case either.
Don't forget, before purchasing a DVD you must prove that you aren't colorblind!
Signed affidavits that anybody without 20/20 vision or better will have their corrective lenses on.
Regrettably, you're only getting half of the story, because I haven't yet published the part of the essay where I can explain this correctly, and I'm loath to try to condense it in front of an admittedly hostile audience.
Which I do not hold against you, I'm just trying to justify why I don't feel I can defend myself in a single comment on a website; if I felt like I could I wouldn't need an entire essay to build the conceptual infrastructure up to the point where what I'm saying makes sense. All the words I want to use to describe my stance have been abused into meaningless over the past thirty or so years. Both of your fun little wisecracks provide perfect demonstrations of this; the position you are taking potshots at bears no resemblence to the one I actually hold, they merely show you don't understand it. (Which you can hardly be faulted for since I haven't released it yet.) Instead you are criticising what you assume my stance is based off of a few key words and some logical leaps to what the foundation must be.
I hope you'll both read my full opinion when it comes out over the next few weeks; if you still don't understand why your cracks don't make sense applied to my opinions then I'll need a re-write. (Which isn't to claim you'll automatically agree, but you should see those are invalid criticisms.)
And I apologize for what must seem like evasion, but it's really hard to actually communicate anything in this domain, getting around the jingoism and almost-immediate knee-jerk reaction to key words is very, very difficult, and I am not a naturally skilled writer like some; it takes a lot of work for me.
But I can give you a date, so the evasion isn't indefinate: Three weeks. If you really want me to put up or shut up, I'd be happy to send an advance copy, on the understanding that the final edits haven't been done and it wasn't to go public. It's mostly written and should be comprehensible, but it needs more work.
Pat, you asked me to read the brief, and I have. I've seen that stuff before, three years ago, and it was actually such arguments that actually started me on the path to my current opinions. I'd ask that you return the favor and try to give me a reasonably open-minded reading of my "Message Integrity" chapter when it comes out, or on your request, when I email it to you. If it doesn't at least make you think and force you to more carefully justify your position, then it won't have been worth writing. (And the "ultimate goal" is just to make people think better, not necessarily to convince people of my rightnesss... though of course I wouldn't mind. ;-) )
I'd love to read the rest of the essay. In the meantime please note that I will have these questions in mind:
Who is being censored and how is EFF supporting that censorship with their amicus brief.
Can EFF's position on any future issue really be predicted by seeing which side "big business" is on? Would RIAA v. Verizon pass that test? EFF sided with Verizon, and they would win the "big business" label.
Is your idea of EFF's mission match EFF's stated mission?
Sorry Jeremey, I was making fun of the MPAA's position, not yours. I hope you weren't too offended.
My feelings on this issue are two-fold:
1) we should protect A's ability to communicate to B
2) we should protect B's ability to modify (by annotation, highlighting, etc.) that communication for personal use
When I was a boy my mum covered my eyes when Bruce Dern gets his hands chopped off in HUSH HUSH SWEET CHARLOTTE: I sure thought it was censorship then, and I do now. The fact that it was Mum and not Big Brother might have made it OK; but it didn't make it anything but censorship.
Again it should be noted that EFF was arguing against claims of COPYRIGHT infringement. This is what the case is about. Copyright. Copyright. Copyright. One more time, there is a quiz at the end. Copyright.